by Tim Powers
Page 30
Without pausing, he kicked away a crescent blade that
was coming at him in a low line, and clubbed the wielder in the jaw with the heavy sword-pommel. Another of the battle-maddened Turks was rushing at him, and he knocked the scimitar away with a high parry and let the man run onto the extended dagger.
Then a physical shock whiplashed through the press as the galloping knights ploughed into the Janissary-choked gap between the two groups of landsknechten. The huge broadswords in the hands of the steel-cased riders rose and fell, and the Turks gave way like a tangle of driftwood before a crashing wave.
Duffy took advantage of the distraction to strike the head off one Turk with a whirling chop, axe-style. A moment later there were two landsknechten beside him and one hard-pressed Turk in front; then that one turned and was running, along with perhaps a dozen other remaining Janissaries.
'Let them go!' boomed the deep voice of von Salm. 'Advance at a walk to the place they held!'
A walk was all Duffy could have done anyway. He managed to lift and sheathe his weapons, and plodded forward, panting, lacking the strength to reach up and wipe the froth from his lips.
In a few minutes they stood on the wall-topped rise. Ignoring an admonitory bark from von Salm, Duffy sat down on the masonry and stared back at the high walls of Vienna. The city looked impossibly safe and far away. If Suleiman orders a vigorous counter-charge now, he thought dully, the knights would make it back, but damned few of the landsknechten. I wouldn't make it, for damned sure.
He heard a heavy, multiple-clank thud and looked behind him. One of the knights had fallen from his horse, though whether from a wound or heat-prostration Duffy couldn't tell. 'Strip off his armor,' von Salm ordered. The count had raised his visor, and with his red, sweat gleaming face looked on the verge of heat-prostration himself.
Do we have time?' one of the mercenaries asked anxiously. The silence was beginning to weigh heavily on the small, isolated group. 'We could just carry him -'Damn it, will you. . . obey me?'
With a shrug the mercenary squatted and began tugging at the straps and buckles. He was quickly joined by two of his fellows, and in a few moments they had unfastened all the armor - revealing the knight to be dead, of a thrust in the side between the breast and back plates.
'Very well,' said von Salm wearily. 'Now untie these two bombs, join their fuses and splice a length of match-cord to them. I want a long fuse. '
The dozen retreating Janissaries had reached the Turkish lines, and there seemed to be activity there. What is he clowning with? Duffy wondered impatiently. This is a time for retreating, not cleverness.
'Good,' said the count. 'Now reassemble that armor with the bombs inside. ' He looked at the knight beside him. 'I had planned only to demolish this wall, but possibly we can lure in an eager Moslem or two as well. '
When the sweating footsoldiers had done as he ordered, and leaned the suit of armor in a standing position against the wall, von Salm had them light the cord that dangled from the empty helmet. 'Back home now!' he called. 'At a leisurely pace, landsknechten flanking. '
Duffy had almost completely got his breath back, and walked around the assembling horses to where Eilif's company was regathering. Eilif stood apparently unscathed at the front, but Duffy didn't see Bobo. The Irishman got in line and just stared at the ground, channeling all his attention into the tasks of breathing and relaxing his cramped hands.
'I see you've made it so far,' came a voice from beside him.
He raised his head. It was the young man of the mandrake root, his clothes dusty and torn and his face already showing bruises, but evidently unhurt. 'Oh, aye. ' He looked the young man up and down. 'I warned you about those clothes, if you recall. And I see you lost your magicus. '
'My what?'
'Your root, your mandrake charm. ' He pointed at the lad's undecorated belt.
The young man looked down, startled, saw it was true and pressed his lips together. He stretched on tip-toe to see von Satin, off to his right, and muttered, 'When are they going to get us moving?'
Before Duffy could answer, von Satin had flicked the reins of his horse and the several columns got under way, marching at a slow, easy walk west, toward the high city walls.
Though he had always been as at home in forests or at sea as in cities, the twelve-day confinement of the siege had given the Irishman something of the habitual city-dweller's point of view; it now felt unnatural to be seeing the walls of the city from the outside - an unnatural perspective, like looking up at the hull of a ship from under water, or seeing the back of one's own head.
They tramped on and the walls slowly drew nearer and still they heard no wailing battle cries or thunder of hooves from behind. Duffy could recognize men on the battlements now, and saw Bluto peering along a cannon barrel.
Then there was the drumming of hoof-beats from the Cast, and von Salm raised his hand to check the instinctive increase in speed. 'We will not run!' he shouted. 'They cannot reach us before we are inside. Anyway, I believe they want to deal with the guard we left by the wall. '
So the columns of knights and landsknechten marched on at the same agonizingly restrained pace, while the pursuit grew audibly nearer. The men on the walls were now calling to them to hurry.
Duffy turned to stare behind - a mercenary's luxury; the knights were etiquette-bound to look straight ahead and take their leader's word for what was happening - and saw perhaps two dozen mounted Janissaries riding after them, their long white robes whipping about like wings in the head-on breeze. He's right, the Irishman admitted to himself. They can't possibly get here before we get through the gate, and they'd be mad to ride within cannon-range in the attempt. I guess they must really think we've left men to guard that damned little wall.
Then the Janissaries had reached the wall, and were wheeling around it; and a moment later the wall's midsection silently turned into a skyward-rushing dustcloud, and Duffy saw several horses and riders on the periphery flung to the ground. After a second or two the boom of the explosion rolled across him.
They could hear the Carinthian gate being opened as they rounded the southeast corner, and von Satin, swaying in his saddle, did not object when they all quickened their pace.
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
As had recently become his involuntary habit, Duffy awoke as suddenly as if someone had punched him. He rolled out of his bunk and stood up, glaring round-about in an unspecific panic, wondering where he should have been at this moment and whether the dim light beyond the window was that of early dawn or late evening.
At Duffy's abrupt movement another man gasped and scrambled out of a bunk. 'What the hell?' he shouted, blinking rapidly and grabbing for his boots. 'What the hell?'
Several groans arose out of the room's shadowy expanse, and one voice at the other end called, 'What's the trouble, Suleiman goosing you in your sleep? Get drunk before you go to bed - then you won't dream. '
Well, I'm not sure that's true, Duffy thought. He relaxed and sat down on the bunk, having remembered, in less than the usual ten seconds, who he was, and where, and when. That's evening out there, he told himself proudly; this afternoon we sallied forth to drive the Turks back from that little rise, and my gun misfired, and poor old Bobo ate one scimitar while parrying two others. I remember it all.
He pulled on his boots and stood up again, wishing, not for the first time during the last twelve days, that there was water to be spared for bathing.
'That you, Duff?' came another voice, nearby.
'Yes. '
'Where you headed?'
'Out. Go drink somewhere. '
'Eilif's at the Peerless Ploughman, on the other side of the Kartnerstrasse by the Capuchin church. Know the place?'
'Oh, aye. ' Duffy had, during the last five months, been making up for his three-year absence from the legendary mercenaries' tavern, which had been founded
in 1518 by an expatriate Englishman who'd lost a leg in a minor skirmish on the Hungarian border. 'Perhaps I'll trot round that way myself. '
'A wise plan,' the other man agreed. 'He said he had something he wanted to tell you anyway. '
'That's where I'm likely to be, then. Come yourself whenever you think you've had enough sleep. '
Duffy stepped outside, breathing deeply in the cool west breeze that hadn't slacked in the last two weeks. The day's cloud cover was breaking up, and he could see Orion lying almost prone across the rooftops. Bonfires and braziers already flickered here and there on the rubble-strewn pavement; groups of soldiers hurried by with an air of purpose, and the little boys who sold firewood were scrabbling about in the wreckage of several shattered buildings, cautiously pleased by the quantity of windfall kindling they were able to fill their baskets with. Someone was strumming a lute in the next barracks, and Duffy hummed the tune as he strode away up the Schwarzenbergstrasse.
There was nothing much about the exterior of the Peerless Ploughman to distinguish it from any other building in the area; it was a low, shingle-roofed house whose small, leaded-glass windows spilled only a slight gleam of light out onto the cobblestones, and its sign, a rusty plough, was bolted flat against the bricks of the wall and practically invisible at night. Duffy clumped up to the heavy oaken door and pounded with his fist on
the worn spot below the empty knocker-hinge.
After a few seconds the door swung inward, letting more light and a mixture of smells - beef, beer, spices and sweat - out into the street. A big, sandy-haired young man with pop eyes peered at him over the top of a foaming beer mug.
'Can I come in?' Duffy asked with a smile. 'I'm with-'
'I know,' said the beer drinker, lowering the mug and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 'Eilif's company. I saw you from the wall today. Come on in. ' He stepped back and waved Duffy inside.
There were five steps down to the main floor, which made the heavy-beamed ceiling seem high. Lamps and candles cast a diffused yellow light from a dozen tables, and the surf-roar of conversation and laughter and rattling cups surged back and forth in the place, so completely contained by the massive wails and thick door that a passerby in the street outside would scarcely have known the house was occupied. There was music, too, for old Fenn, the host, had got out his antique harp - booty from God-knew-what long-forgotten campaign - and was strumming on it old country airs to which he'd improvised filthy and blasphemous lyrics. Duffy picked his way down the steps and began weaving through the crowd toward where he knew the wine was.
'Duffy!' sounded a shout through the babble. 'Damn it, Brian! Over here!'
The Irishman looked around and spotted Eilif, sitting with a couple of other landsknecht captains at a table by the wall. Several men stepped out of his way and he crossed to the table and sat down. Bits of bread and sausage-ends on the table top told Duffy that the captains had been there since dinner.
'Brian,' said Eilif, 'meet Jean Vertot and Karl Stein, captains of two of the Free Companies. '
Duffy nodded at the two men. Stein was tall and rangy, with an old scar curling vertically through the network of wrinkles around his left eye and down his cheek; Duffy had met him fifteen years ago, during the fighting on the Rhine. Vertot was a burly giant whose full beard was still pure black, despite at least two decades of being captain of one of the most savage bands of landsknechten - or lasquenets, as they were known in his native Normandy - in all of Europe.
'What are you drinking, Duffy?' asked Stein in a gravelly voice. Then before Duffy could answer Stein had reached behind him and snared one of the men from his own company. 'Ebers,' he said, 'bring us over the cask of that bock beer. '
'The cask, sir?' repeated Ebers doubtfully. 'Isn't it bolted down? How about -Damn you, if you were this slow to obey me in battle
we'd all have been wiped out years ago. You've got your orders - go!'
Duffy had opened his mouth to voice his preference for wine, but now shut it. I guess I can't turn down the beer, he thought helplessly, now that poor Ebers is off risking his life to bring it to us. He shrugged inwardly and turned to Stein with a smile. 'Bock beer? In October? Where does Fenn get that?'
'It's Herzwesten,' Stein said. 'The owner of the Zimmermann Inn - what's his name, Eilif? He hired your company. '
'Aurelianus,' Eilif answered.
'That's right. Aurelianus evidently saved a lot of the spring production for just such an emergency as this -'The broad wave accompanying the statement took in, Duffy gathered, the Turkish ranks massed outside the city, - 'and now he's distributing all of it among the troops. It's been twelve days now, and there must be ten thousand soldiers of one sort or other in the city; I'm amazed there's still any left. '
'Maybe it's like the loaves and the fishes,' Duffy suggested.
'I like this fellow Aurelianus' miracle better,' commented Vertot.
'Anyway, Duff,' said Eilif, who hadn't followed that last exchange, 'I called you over here because poor old Bobo was killed out there today. Tomorrow morning all the landsknecht captains and their lieutenants are meeting at the Zimmermann Inn with von Salm and some highly placed boys to ask for more money - our feeling is that we've got them over a barrel, you see - and we want to be well-represented. You, therefore, are hereby promoted to the post of lieutenant. '
'Me?' Duffy felt vaguely frightened by the sudden conjunction of drinking the Herzwesten bock and visiting the Zimmermann Inn. For the first time in five months he felt his sense of independence begin to waver. Maybe none of this, he thought, from Bobo's death to Ebers' beer-fetching mission, was accidental. 'But good God, Eilif, I'm your most recently acquired man! A dozen of your old wolves deserve the post more than I do, and they'll probably mutiny if I'm put over them. ' There was shouting from the other end of the room, and the sound of splintering wood.
