by Tim Powers
Page 39
Duffy parried a hard poke at his face and then fell to his
hands and knees even as a mingled roar of gun-fire went off at his back and the cold air around him was filled with the whiz-and-thud of lead balls striking flesh. 'On your feet!' he yelled a moment later, hopping up to meet the next wave of akinji as their predecessors reeled back and fell.
The man on Duffy's right took a sword through his belly and, clutching himself, somersaulted down the slope, so that the Irishman suddenly found himself facing two -then three - of the akinji. All at once his cautious confidence in his own skill was eroding, and he sensed the nearness of real, incapacitating fear. 'Get over here, somebody!' he yelled, desperately parrying the licking scimitars with sword and dagger. His troop of men had retreated away from him, though, and he hadn't even a wall to get his back to. He took a flying leap at the Turk on his right, trusting his hauberk and salade to absorb the worst of the attacks of the other two; he swept the man's scimitar away in a low line with both his sword and dagger, and riposted with a long thrust of the dagger that he accurately drove into the Turk's throat. The other two akinji struck at Duffy then; one of them swung a hard cut at Duffy's shoulder, and though the blow stung, the mail blocked the sword-edge and the scimitar flew into three pieces; the other lunged in with his sword extended straight, and his point, cutting through the Irishman's leather doublet, found one of the gaps in his mail shirt and sank an inch into his side.
Duffy whirled back when he felt the shock of cold steel in him and sent the Turk's wide-eyed head spinning from his shoulders with a furious scything chop. The field momentarily clear, he scrambled a few steps up the slope and through one of the openings in the barricade that divided the rocky crest, to rejoin his fellow Austrians.
As he lurched up over the top, with the scuff and rattle of the pursuing akinji sounding loud behind him, he caught
a glimpse of soldiers standing behind a line of what appeared to be narrow, chest-high tables, and he heard someone's agonized yell: 'My God, dive for it, Duffy!'
He caught the urgency in the voice, and without pausing kicked forward in a long dive down the inward slope, ripping his leather gloves and banging his helmet and knees as he tumbled across the raw stones. Even as he moved, a quick series of ten loud explosions concussed the air in front of him like very rapid hammer-strokes; there followed two more stuttering blasts often, and then there was a pause.
Duffy had rolled to the gravelly bottom of the slope with his face down and his legs up, and by the time he'd struggled into a sitting position he realized what the tablelike things were - sets of ten small cannons braced together like log rafts, fired by putting a match to the trail of serpentine powder poured across all the touchholes.
Orgelgeschutzen, the Austrians called them, though from his stay in Venice Duffy thought of them as ribaldos, their Italian name.
'Quick, Duff, get back here,' came Eilif's voice. The Irishman got to his feet and sprinted ten yards to where the troops were clustered. 'Why did you stay out there?' Eilif demanded. 'You knew we were to fire two volleys and then fall back to let them run into the teeth of these things. ' He waved at the ribaldos.
'I,' Duffy panted, 'figured our retreat would look more convincing if a man or two hung on. '
The Swiss landsknecht raised a dusty eyebrow and stared hard at Duffy. 'Really?'
There was another rush of akinji over the splintered barricade along the top, but it seemed dispirited; when two more bursts of the small-calibre cannon-fire whipped them apart, the survivors backed off fast, and a few seconds later the sentries on the wall called down the news that the akinji were retreating back toward their lines.
'Well of course really,' Duffy answered. 'What did you think, that I just forgot?'
Eilif grinned. 'Sorry. ' He gestured at the new corpses on the crest and shrugged. 'I guess it was a clever move. ' He trotted away to the slope and began climbing up to see in what direction the Turks retreated.
The Irishman felt hot blood running down his side and gathering at his belt, and suddenly remembered the wound he'd taken. He pressed a hand to it and plodded through the reassembling ranks, looking for a surgeon. His mind, though, wasn't on the sword-cut - in his head he was listening again to his brief dialogue with Eilif , and uneasily admiring his own quick improvisation. Because actually, he thought, your first suspicion was right, Eiif. I did forget. And what does that say about me?
The sun had risen above the eastern horizon, but the bulk of the ruined wall cast a shadow that was still dark enough to make readily visible the watch-fires up and down the street. Duffy stumbled about randomly until his eyes adjusted to the dimness, and very shortly he was surprised to see Aurelianus warming his hands over one of the fires. Their eyes met, so the Irishman reluctantly crossed the littered space of cobbles to where the wizard stood.
'Keeping the home fires burning, eh?' Duffy said with a pinched and artificial smile. 'And what brings you so uncharacteristically close to the front line?'
'This is childish enough,' the wizard said bitterly, 'without a theatrical rendition of ignorant innocence from you. What were you thinking, a - ach, you're bleeding! Come here. '
Newly awakened soldiers were dashing up from the direction of the barracks, shivering in their chilly chain mail and rubbing their eyes, and other men were dragging the wounded back inside. Duffy sat down beside Aurelianus' fire. The sorcerer had taken his medicine box
out of his pouch and fished from it a bag that was spilling yellow powder. 'Lie down,' he said.
Duffy brushed away some scattered stones and complied. Aurelianus opened the Irishman's doublet and lifted his rusty mail shirt. 'Why the hell don't you keep your hauberk clean?' he snapped. 'This doesn't look too bad, though. He obviously didn't lean into the thrust. ' He tapped some of the powder into the wound.
'What's that stuff?' asked Duffy, frowning.
'What do you care? It'll keep you from getting poisoned, which is what you deserve, wearing a rusty hauberk. ' He took a roll of linen from the box and expertly bandaged the wound, running strips around Duffy's back to hold it in place. 'There,' he said. 'That ought to hold body and soul together. Get up. '
Duffy did, puzzled by the harshness in the wizard's voice. 'What -' he began.
'Shut up. I want to know about your little trick last night. What were you thinking, an eye for an eye, a girl for a girl?'
The Irishman felt something that might become a vast anger begin to build up in himself. 'I don't think I understand,' he said carefully. 'Are you talking about my. . . the way I. . . the way Epiphany died?'
'I'm talking about your theft of my book, damn it, while I was pottering about in the chapel afterward. You will give it back. '
Sudden apprehension scattered the kindling of Duffy's rage. His eyes widened. 'Good God, do you mean Didlio's Whirling Gambits or whatever it's called? Listen, I didn't -'
'No, not Didius' Gambit. ' Aurelianus was maintaining his offended frown, but his wrinkle-bordered eyes were beginning to look disconcerted. 'I hid that Monday night, after talking to. . . you. No, I mean Becky's book. '
'Who the hell - oh, that book your witch girlfriend gave
you, three hundred years ago? I didn't take it. ' Duffy shrugged. 'What would I want with the damned thing?'
Aurelianus' expression held for another moment, then without too much change became a frown of worry. 'I believe you. Hell! I was hoping it would turn out to have been you.
'Why?'
'Because, for one things I'd have been able to get it back without much trouble. You wouldn't have been troublesome about it, would you? I didn't think so. And for another thing, I could have assumed no one had interfered with my guards. '
Duffy sighed and sat down again beside the fire. 'What guards?'
'Little birdlike creatures that live in that dollhouse structure above my door - pretty things they are, with fine leathery wings of a mothe
r-of-pearl luster, but savage as kill-trained dogs and quick as arrows. ' Aurelianus crouched near him. 'I have a dozen of them, and I've trained them to refrain from attacking me, or any visitors that come into the room with my evident approval. When you were there five or six months ago I conveyed to them by signals that you were to be permitted to enter the room alone. Don't be too flattered - just figured that in the heat of these last battles I might sometime want to send you back there for something, while staying at the scene of the action myself. '
Duffy nodded. 'Ah. Don't worry, I wasn't flattered. And there is no one else they've been-instructed to let in alone?' The wizard shook his head. 'Then you've got inadequate guards,' the Irishman said helplessly. 'Somebody got by them. Did you check whether they're still in their nest, and alive?'
'Yes. They're in there, in perfect health. ' He rubbed his eyes tiredly. 'That means the intruder was an initiate of certain very secret mysteries, or the lackey of such a one.
Those are from another sort of world, and very few people know about them. Ibrahim probably knows, and no doubt whoever broke in was a spy of Ibrahim's which I should have anticipated. Why-do I keep failing to -'
'How would this person have knocked them out?' Duffy interrupted. The sun was beginning to clear the mound, and he raised a hand to shield his eyes.
'Oh, there are two notes which, though pitched too high to be audible to the human ear, can counter and blank out the brain waves of these things; the two notes correspond to the pulse of their brains, but are contrary, and have an effect like stopping a garden swing by leaning back and forth at the wrong times. I've seen it done - the man used a tiny one-holed pipe and blew a long steady breath, rapidly covering and uncovering the hole with one finger:
the cageful of little fellows just pitched over as if dead. Then when he stopped they all got up again. '
'Could he do it inhaling?' Duffy asked sharply.
Aurelianus looked started. 'No, as a matter of fact. The tones would be wrong - two low, maybe even audible.
'Quick as arrows, you said. By how far is that an exaggeration?'
'Not very damned far. ' The sorcerer smiled sheepishly. 'I see what you mean, of course. For anything more than the quickest look-and-grab it would have had to be two men taking turns, one piping while the other catches his breath and uses two hands on something. '
Duffy got to his feet and moved to the side, so that he could see Aurelianus without squinting into the sun. 'Are you certain someone got in? To judge by the mess that room is in, losing one book would be so easy as to be almost inevitable. '
'I'm certain. I know exactly where I left it. Besides, there were other signs of an intruder - things were picked up and replaced in not quite the same position, a number
of books were looked at, to judge by the scuffing of the dust on the shelves, and one of my smoking-snakes was bitten. Someone evidently assumed it was a sort of sweetmeat. '
Duffy shuddered, imagining the person's surprise and dismay. 'It was Werner,' he said.
'Werner? Don't be ridic -
'I saw a one-holed pipe on the table in his little wine-closet, and I remember it wouldn't produce any noise I could hear. This poet friend of his, this Kretchmer, must be a spy for the Turks. Wait a minute, don't interrupt! Through flattery of Werner's doubtless trashy poetry, and the bestowal of sexual favors by some woman pretending to be Kretchmer's wife, the man has got your poor innkeeper into a state where he'd do anything for him. '
Aurelianus was silent for a few moments. 'Even a woman, eh? The silly old fool. Fancies himself the great poet and lover, I expect. I'll bet you're right. Damn, why wasn't I suspicious of Kretchmer from the start?' He slapped his forehead. 'I'm as easily taken in as poor Werner. Kretchmer must have been ordered by Ibrahim to get my copy of Didius' Dire Gambit Overwhelming. Yes, and wasn't Werner asking me months ago if he could borrow some books sometime, with the hint that he'd like free access to my library? Then when I refused, Kretchmer would have had to learn of my little guards - I'd like to have seen that brief encounter - and then consult Ibrahim for a way to get around them. It must have taken some time to get in touch with the Turkish adept, for it was only this last Monday I thought I saw footprints in the dust on my floor; the two of them must just have been taking inventory that time, after which Kretchmer would somehow have got outside to show the list of books to the then nearby Ibrahim. Right! And Ibrahim would have known which of those books it would be in, and he sent them back to get it. '
'But you hid it Monday night,' Duffy remembered.
'Yes. So last night, Tuesday night, they whistled their way in again, failed to find the book where they'd last seen it, and grabbed probably several books at random, of which Becky's is the only one I've missed. I'll have to do an inventory myself. Damn. I should probably check the wine cabinet, too'.
Duffy started to speak, but Aurelianus interrupted him with a bark of laughter. 'Do you remember when Werner turned up all bloody and limping, and claimed one of your Vikings had got drunk and tried to kill him? No, that's right, you had already moved out by then. In any case, Bugge denied it when I asked him about it. '
'So?'
'So Werner was probably the one who first discovered my guards. He couldn't have got more than a step or two into the room, or he'd never have got back out alive. '
The cool west wind had blown away the gunpowder smell, and now Duffy could catch the aroma of a pot of oniony stew cooking somewhere. He looked up and down the street, and soon noticed the half-dozen men huddled around one of the fires fifty yards south of him. The Irishman yanked straight his hauberk and tunic with, he hoped, an air of finality and conclusion. 'So what will you do now?' he asked.
