The Drawing of the Dark

Page 31

 

  'To hell with that,' said Eilif carelessly. 'They've tried to mutiny before, and with a lot more cause than that. I have a talent for putting down mutinies. Besides, you are the man for the job - few of my lads have had the years of experience you have, and you're lots smarter than they are. '

  'And for you to refuse,' Vertot pointed out with a smile, 'would almost Constitute a mutiny right there. '

  'Duffy knows that,' snapped Eilif.

  'Of course,' acknowledged the Irishman. 'And I'm not going to refuse. ' He looked away and saw Ebers,

  a cask under one arm, elbowing angry drinkers out of his way as he struggled back toward the table.

  'The beer arrives,' Stein pronounced, getting to his feet. I He drew his sword with a ringing rasp of steel and I confronted Ebers' pursuers. 'What he has done was by my

  order!' he shouted. 'Back, you dogs, unless you want to leave here carrying your livers in your hands. '

  The gang of irate landsknechten fell back, grumbling about the privileges of rank. Ebers set the cask on the table and saluted. 'Mission accomplished, sir. '

  'Well done. Draw yourself a cup and then go away.

  'That's settled, then,' said Eilif, who had opened the tap and was filling several cups from the steady brown stream. 'You'll accompany me to the Zimmermann in the morning. ' He turned the tap off and set one of the filled mugs in front of the Irishman, then commenced wiping up the puddle of spilled beer with a crust of bread.

  'Right. ' Duffy took a deep breath and drained half the mug at one draught. Damn, he thought. The stuff is good. Eilif, chewing with relish on the soggy bread, seemed to be of the same opinion.

  Fenn stumped up to the table, pivoting expertly on his wooden leg. 'What's the riot here?' he inquired, grinning wolfishly. '1 run a quiet, family-type place. '

  'We know you do, Fenn, and that's why we brought your excellent beer over here for safekeeping,' Duffy told him, 'away from those damn drunkards. ' By way of punctuation he drank off what remained in his cup and refilled it.

  'Am I to understand you are buying the whole cask?'

  'That's right,' confirmed Stein. 'In celebration of Duffy's promotion to lieutenant. '

  'Hah!' barked Fenn, pounding his peg leg on the floor in what was evidently a substitute for slapping his knee. 'Duffy? The human wineskin? A wise move! That way you're sure to have Dionysus and Silenus and Bacchus watching over you. ' The Irishman looked up suspiciously at the last name, but Fenn was just laughing good-naturedly. 'This calls for a song!' the host shouted.

  There was scattered applause at that, and a slight quieting of the steady din of voices, for Fenn's songs were popular. 'Give us The Signifying Monkey,' bawled one soldier. 'No, Saint Ursula Going Down for the Third Time,' yelled another.

  'Shut up, you rats,' said Fenn. 'This is a serious occasion. Brian Duffy has been promoted to the office of lieutenant in the company of Eilif the Swiss. ' There were cheers, for despite Duffy's predictions of mutiny, he was liked and respected among the troops. The one-legged man moved quickly, with a gait like a barrel being rolled on one corner, to the counter on which sat the wine kegs and his harp. Picking up the latter he caressed a long, soft chord out of the instrument; then he smote the strings with the firstnotes of the old goliard song, Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi.

  Fenn sang, and nearly the entire crowd raised their voices in approximate harmony in the chorus, shouting the ancient lyrics that celebrated the vagaries of Fortune's wheel. Duffy sang as loudly as the rest, after pausing only long enough to drain his refilled cup so that he might beat time with it on the table top.

  When Fenn finished the song, the company showed no intention of ceasing to sing the choruses, so the host shrugged and began it a second time. Duffy sat back and filled his cup once again with the brown beer. He sipped it thoughtfully.

  Just as certain tunes will bring clearly back decades-old memories, -and occasional untraceable aromas call up long-forgotten emotions of childhood, so the taste of the beer, combined with the antique goliard melody, was prodding some sleeping memory of his, something pleasant he'd forgotten long ago. Usually reluctant to rouse his

  U

  faculties of recollection, he pursued this one elusive scrap with all the recklessness and single-mindedness of a drunkard.

  Then Eilif was blinking up at him with an expression of puzzlement, for the Irishman had risen to his feet with a shout that broke the back of the song, which had been limping a bit by this time anyway. He glanced around at the merry and curious faces, and, raising his foaming cup, called something in a language no one in the room understood.

  'That's Gaelic or something,' Fenn said. 'Ho, Duffy! None of your barbaric tongues here! You're lucky I don't make everyone speak God-fearing Latin in my house. '

  The Irishman seemed to see that no one had understood him, so he laughed and strode up to where Fenn stood, and held out his hands for the harp.

  The host laughed uncertainly, as if not entirely sure he knew who this was; but after only a moment's hesitation he let him have the harp. Duffy took it, and his fingers played softly over the strings, wringing out soft flickering snatches of melody, like music faintly heard from far away. He looked up, started to speak, and paused. Then, 'Aperte fenestras!' he called.

  Hah!' Fenn was delighted. 'Latin I asked for and Latin I get. Didn't you hear him, you clods? Open the windows!'

  Puzzled but drunkenly willing to go along, a number of the mercenaries leaped to the several narrow windows, unlatched them and pushed them open. Duffy turned to a heavy door behind him, slid back its bolt with one hand and drove it open with a forceful shove of his boot. It couldn't have been a door Fenn intended for use, for there was the sound of boxes falling on the other side, but the host just laughed as the western breeze swept through the room.

  Then the Irishman began to play, and it was a quick, darting tune in which tension and menace were tempered by a strong note of exhilaration. There was in it the wary excitement of crouching in the chill of dawn, fingering the worn grip of a trusted weapon and eyeing the near gap from which the enemy would appear; the cold-bellied, dry-mouthed thrill of charging a horse down a dangerously steep slope; and the wonder of standing at the bow of an outward-bound ship, watching the sun sink ahead over uncharted seas. The room became almost quiet as the soldiers harkened to the music, and much of the haze of drunkenness was sluiced out of their eyes as if by the fresh breeze.

  A certain tune had been building up in the background of his playing, and now he brought it to front and center, giving full rein to the alternately regal and elfin melody. His audience stirred with recognition, so the Irishman began to sing, in the language Fenn had described as 'Gaelic or something'.

  Several German voices joined him, and a moment later several more. But it was an ancient song that had passed through many languages, and soon Fenn was roaring English lyrics, and Vertot's Frenchmen were singing along in a minor key that reflected the main theme and was almost a mirror image of it, convex to concave.

  Before long the room thundered with the song, and many of the men had got to their feet to give their lungs fuller play, and the interweaving polyglot chorus set the fancy glass beer pitchers rattling musically on their high shelf.

  The Irishman wrung stronger chords from the instrument as the song neared its crest, and then, just as it did, the bells heralding eight o'clock mass began ringing in the tower of St Stephen's. The song reached crescendo gracefully, effortlessly taking in the pealing of the bells as accompaniment; and a moment later a deep, window-rattling bass was provided by rumbling cannon-fire from the city walls.

  After whipping the tail end of the melody through a couple of unnecessary flourishes Duffy handed the harp back to Fenn. All the men were on their feet now, clapping and cheering, and Duffy bowed and made his way back to his table.

  His eyes looked a bit haunted and scared, but nobody noticed it. 'That was good,'
pronounced Stein. 'After twelve days of being cooped up within these walls, the men tend to lose heart. Music like that gives it back to them. '

  'And you can fight too, from what I hear,' Vertot commented. 'Yes, you have picked a good man to be your lieutenant, Eilif. '

  The cannon-fire was not followed by the alarum bells, so they knew Bluto was just sending a few balls arcing through the night to remind the Turks he was there. More beer was poured, and the evening proceeded noisily but uneventfully. After a while someone complained of the draft, and the windows were closed again.

  A couple of hours later Eilif and Duffy were staggering back toward the barracks. 'Grab as much sleep as you can,' Eilif advised. 'We've got this meeting to go to tomorrow morning. '

  'Meeting! What meeting?'

  'Never mind. I'll have one of the lads dump a bucket of water over you when the time come's. '

  'Make it beer. '

  'Right. A malty baptism. Say, when did you learn to play the harp. '

  Duffy stared at the Street, which seemed to be rocking in front of him. 'I never did,' he said. 'I never did. '

  The second hour after dawn found Eilif and Duffy, both dressed fairly respectably, striding up the Rotenturmstrasse. The sky was overcast and the air was chilly, and the Irishman pulled the gauntlets of his gloves up over his tunic sleeves,

  'How are we doing for time ?' he asked, his breath steaming.

  'We're a bit early - I don't think Stein had left yet when we did. Von Salm will probably be late anyway, to show us that he isn't impressed by our position. I think we can make a good case, though - and you just nod and look determined at whatever I say, got it?'

  'Certainly,' Duffy agreed airily, though privately resolving to speak up if he should want to. They turned left, and soon he could see their destination, several blocks ahead.

  The Zimmermann Inn stood at the wall end of the Tuchlauben in the north section of the city, a good half mile from the actual focus of the Turkish offensive, and something very like Vienna's normal daily life still went on here. No soldiers trooped by, the streets were free of rubble and charred lumber and masonry-scarred cannon balls, and the west wind kept the smoke away; it was possible to imagine, seeing the usual milkmaids and beggars, that there were not seventy-five thousand Turks only three miles to the south.

  The place looked, in fact, just as it had five months ago when he'd seen it, and he couldn't suppress a reflexive home-at-last feeling. He had to remind himself that this was also the home of a sorcerer whose goal it was to drive him literally out of his head.

  And it's also Epiphany's home, he thought, my old girl-friend who, until I finally left here, had got to the point of bursting into tears every time she saw me. The Irishman had a tendency to let long-standing guilt dry out into annoyance, and it had happened in his dealings with Mrs Hallstadt. Why do women have to be that way, he wondered impatiently. Very well, I did let her down, broke a promise - admit it! But do you suppose a man would let something like that sour the rest of his life? Hah! Why, you could show me the Nine Virgins of Luxor this minute, all of them naked and beckoning, and spirit them away from me a minute later, and a cup of wine would clear me of the tragedy. And it's been five months, after all. Hell, maybe she has got over me by now.

  He strode on more cheerfully then, ignoring a faint, uneasy suspicion that he bad not quite honestly assessed Epiphany's feelings, nor his own.

  Eilif led the way up to the step and pulled open the front door. They stepped through the vestibule and entered the dining room, where a couple of captains already sat at a long table by the windows. From a corner of his eye Duffy noticed Lothario Mothertongue sitting by himself at a table in the far corner. I see nothing's changed, he thought - except that Lothario is looking a bit more haggard. But so are we all.

  'Good morning, lads,' Eilif greeted. 'This is my second-in-command, Brian Duffy. Brian, this is Fernando Villanueva of Aragon, and Franz Lainzer of the Tyrol. '

  Duffy nodded as he sat down, and the Spaniard smiled. 'I enjoyed your harping last night,' he said. 'You must play for us all once again before the walls come down. '

  'I'm not sure that gives enough time,' replied Duffy with a grin. 'I have to have drunk a huge quantity of beer to do it, and Suleilman's likely to have the wall down by mid-day. '

  'Then you'd certainly better start now,' Villanueva decided 'Ho, someone in the kitchen there! Beer for our musical friend! And for the rest of us, too!'

  Eilif was looking out the window, which had been repaired with clear glass after Bobo's passage through it. 'Several people coming,' he said.

  Behind him the kitchen door swung open, and Epiphany came walking across to the table, carrying a tray with a pitcher of beer and a half dozen mugs on it. Duffy averted his eyes uncomfortably, reflecting that she looked both older and dearer. Then she saw him - he heard a gasp, and a moment later a clatter and splash as the tray hit the floor. He looked up in time to see her run, weeping, back into the kitchen. Mothertongue got up from his seat and

  hurried after her.

  The Spaniard blinked in astonishment. 'She obviously disapproves of drinking in the morning, ' he said. 'Ho, miss! Landlord! Anyone! We don't intend to Lap it up off the floor like cats!'

  After several moments Werner appeared at the kitchen door, his eyebrows raised in impatient inquiry. Then he saw the foamy puddle on the floor. 'Epiphany did that?' he asked of no one in particular. 'This is positively the last! Anna,' he called over his shoulder, 'don't you go look for her. She just ran off because she spilled all this beer, and knows what I'll do this time - which is sack the lushy bitch!' He disappeared back into the kitchen.