by Tim Powers
Duffy crossed to Aurelianus' table and sat down. 'Not bad. Drank up a lot of French wine and traded reminiscences with the landsknechten. No devils of any note approached me. Did I miss anything around here?'
'Not much. I broke the news to Werner that you're still an employee here, and he shouted for ten minutes and then stormed out. Tells me he's going to celebrate the vanquishing of winter in more edifying company - which I take to mean he's going to spend the night reciting poetry at Johann Kretchmer's place again. Oh, and the Brothers of St Christopher set up their usual puppet show in the yard, as they do every Easter, but your crew of Vikings thought the puppets were homunculi - they smashed up the box and chased the monks away. The kids were all
crying, so I had to go out there and do juggling tricks to restore order.'
Duffy nodded with a satisfied air. 'All emergencies kept well in hand, eh? Good work.'
Aurelianus smiled. 'And I did have a long talk with old Werner. before he made his exit.'
'Oh? That seems a waste of time.'
The old man reached behind him and picked up a candle from another table. 'Not completely. He tells me you are a perfectly disastrous bouncer - says you encourage fights when they start and start 'em when they don't.'
Duffy rocked his head judiciously. 'Well. . .a case could be made for that point of view.'
'No doubt. At any rate, as your employer, I have a proposal to present to you. I'd like to double your salary and promote you out of the bouncer position.'
'To what position?'
Aurelianus shrugged and spread his hands. 'Bodyguard, shall we say?'
'Whose body? Yours?' He watched as the sorcerer produced a tinder box from under his robe, opened it, and took out flint, steel and a handful of tinder.
'No, mine can take care of itself. .I mean the King.' Duffy laughed. 'Oh, certainly. Hell, I can't imagine how Charles has got along until now without - no; I see. You mean this other king of yours.' Aurelianus nodded, watching the Irishman closely. 'The one living outside Vienna,' Duffy went on, 'who outranks Charles, though nobody's ever heard of him.'
'A lot of people have heard of him,' corrected Aurelianus, striking sparks into the tinder; 'damn few know he actually exists.'
'Very well, what's his name?'
'He doesn't really have a name. He's known as the Fisher King.' The tinder was alight, and he held a sputtering straw to the wick of the new candle. It caught, and in a moment was burning brightly.
Duffy abruptly had the feeling that this conversation had occurred before, perhaps in a dream. The sensation puzzled and obscurely frightened him. 'And he's in danger, is he?' The Irishman's voice was gruff.
'Potentially. Some time during the next couple of days we'll have to go fetch him, bring him inside the city walls.
He hates the confinement, you see, of streets and gates and masonry - especially in his sick, wounded condition
- and he'd prefer to stay out in the woods until the last possible day. He is safe now, what with a dozen of our pit-summoned defenders circling over his cabin, and Suleiman an easy three months away, but Antoku's tricks have me worried - I'd sooner not take any chances. We'll bring him inside within the week.'
A sick hermit living in the woods, Duffy thought. I've never heard of him, but he's a greater king than the Emperor, Charles V, eh? No doubt, no doubt! Hah. Just another sad old phony, like those British shopkeepers who claim to be druids, and dance, rather self-consciously, at Stonehenge every midsummer's eve.
Duffy sighed. 'Yes, for double my salary I'll watch over this old king of yours - just so these.. .what? "Pit-summoned defenders'?.. .keep their distance.'
'They're on your side.'
'Still, I don't want to meet any. And what do you mean, Suleiman three months away? He's further off than that.'
'Not much further. His advance scouts left Constantinople today. He won't be more than a month behind.'
'Today? How can you know already?'
Aurelianus smiled tiredly. 'You know me better than that, Brian.'
The street door rattled and creaked open, and the hunchbacked figure of Bluto bulked against the late afternoon glow. 'Damn,' exclaimed the Swiss bombardier, 'I thought I'd be the first in line. I might have known you two would be here before anyone else.'
Aurelianus pushed back his bench and got to his feet. 'I was just chatting with Brian. I'm not much of a beer drinker, actually - my share of the bock is all yours.' He bowed and walked quietly out of the room.
Bluto crossed to Duffy's table and pulled up the bench at which Aurelianus had been sitting. 'Speaking of beer...'
Duffy grinned. 'Yes. Anna or Piff is in the kitchen. Why don't you have them pour us a last pitcher of the schenk beer, eh?'
'Good idea. My God, what happened to your face?'
'I was attacked in my sleep by mice. Go get the beer.'
Bluto did, and for twenty minutes the two of them sipped cool beer and discussed the possible Turkish lines of attack, the weak points in the city wall, and various defense arrangements.
'Charles has got to send reinforcements,' Bluto said worriedly. 'Pope Clement, too. Can it be they don't see the danger? Hell, Belgrade and Mohács were costly defeats, yes. They were the stepping-stones to the Holy Roman Empire. But Vienna is the damned front door. If the Turks take this place, the next spot to hold the line will be the English Channel.'
Duffy shrugged. 'What can I say? You're right.' He poured the last of the beer into Bluto's cup.
Shrub and a couple of the other yard boys had come in with ladders and were hanging cagelike grilles over the wall cressets. The hunchback watched them. 'Really expecting a wild crowd tonight, aren't you?'
'Evidently,' Duffy agreed. 'Back when this place was a monastery they used to drag kegs out and have the bock festival in the street. It got pretty berserk sometimes. Easter, the bock beer, and Spring are all the same thing in everybody's mind, and they really dive into it head first after a hard winter.'
Bluto drained his glass and stood. 'Say, Duff, it must be half past four now. When should I make sure to be here, to be at least among the first in line?'
'I don't know. Supper time, I guess.' He too stood up and stretched, yawning like a cat. 'Maybe I'll trot downstairs and ask Gambrinus. See you later.' He ambled off toward the cellar stairs, secretly hoping to get another advance taste of the Spring beer.
Duffy could hear someone moving about in the darkness below as he descended the stairs. 'Gambrinus!' he called, but there was no answer. Remembering the petard he'd found on the brewery door, he closed his fingers around his dagger hilt and took the remaining steps as quietly as possible.
When he stood at last on the damp paving stones, he peered cautiously around the dim cellar, but didn't see anyone. Maybe I'm now having auditory hallucinations to complement my moonlit-lake visual ones, be thought unhappily. Wait a moment! Who's that?
A tall figure had stepped out of the shadows behind the brick chimney, and now crossed to a door set in the wall next to the high-set copper tubs; in a moment he had opened the door and stepped through into the blackness beyond. The Irishman had caught only a quick glimpse of the stranger, but had noticed that he was blond or red-haired, and wore a loose cloak fastened at the throat by one metal button.
Duffy had his dagger out and strode to the door. 'Come out of there,' he barked.
There was only silence from the dark room beyond, and an intensification of the steamy malt smell.
Duffy retreated to the fireplace, picked up a coal with the tongs and held it to the wick of Gambrinus' lantern. Armed now with the light, he returned to the doorway and peered warily into the stone-walled room revealed within. He couldn't see anyone, and, assuming the intruder was hiding to one side of the door, leaped through with a whirl of the lantern and an intimidating yell.
The room was empty. 'Enough now, what is this?' the Irishman snarled. Setting down the lantern, he examined
the walls for evidence of a secret door, but found none.
The floor was simply moist earth, and the high-ceilinged room contained 'nothing but a monstrous wooden vat, taller by half than Duffy, the broad slats of its sides green with the moss of decades, perhaps centuries.
Duffy was about to go back to the dining room and worry about this new symptom of madness when he noticed three big, discolored wooden spigots set in the side of the vat, one at chest level, one at knee level, and one only a dozen inches above the dirt floor. Tarnished brass plates were nailed above the spigots, and he looked closely at them. The top one read LIGHT; the middle one BOCK; and the bottom one was so scaled with verdigris that it was indecipherable, and he had to scrape at it with the edge of his dagger. After a minute he had got it fairly clean, and could read its single word: DARK.
Now what the hell, he thought, forgetting the elusive intruder in his immediate puzzlement. He glanced up and saw a number of pipes emerging from the cellar wall and entering the vat at the top. Can this thing, he wondered queasily, be substituting for the tun tubs of a normal brewery? Does the fermentation of all Herzwesten beer take place, as it appears to do, in this great moldy vat? I wonder if they ever clean it.
After extinguishing the lantern he made his way thoughtfully back up the stairs. Maybe, he speculated, that fair-haired man, -whoever he was, led me into that room intentionally; wanted me to see that enigmatic vat.
He paused at the top of the stairs. I've frequently tasted Herzwesten Light, he thought, and every Spring I can have the Bock. What, though, is Herzwesten Dark, and why have I never heard of it?
Bluto had wandered off, and the only person in the dining room besides Shrub and his helpers was Epiphany.
She had wiped down the tables and washed and stacked the serving-boards for dinner, and was now slumped at the traditional employees' table, wearily slurping small beer.
'Piff, my love,' the Irishman exclaimed. 'Where have you been hiding?'
Epiphany started when he spoke, then smiled worriedly. 'You're the one that's been hiding, Brian,' she said. 'I've been looking for you all day. Anna tells me you were in a sword-fight last night. Good God!' she gasped as he approached her table. 'How did your face get all scratched?'
'Oh, the usual monsters have been giving me a rough time. But I give them a rough time, too. Are you working dinner?'
'no, thank God.' She brushed a damp strand of gray hair back from her forehead. 'I guess it'll be a real madhouse.'
'It's a madhouse anyway. I believe our employer is insane.' He reached across the table, picked up her beer and drank it off. 'Let's go up to your room. I've got a few things to tell you.'
She eyed him cautiously. 'Brian, you look like an old tomcat: this season's cuts crossing last year's scars.' After a moment she grinned and stood up. 'My room? This way.' Duffy followed her up the stairs, reflecting that it might still be possible to talk some of the old woman out of the girl.
Epiphany's room, a narrow one overlooking the stables, was neat, but, not intimidatingly so. Framed paintings leaned out from every wall, mostly religious canvases of her father's; though Duffy thought he recognized one as the work of Domenico Veneziano. A bird twittered manically in a cage that hung over a chessboard, the pieces of which stood unmoved in their four basic ranks. Duffy absently moved the white king's knight to the third row, over the ridge of the pawns.
'Sit down, Brian,' Epiphany said. Duffy dragged a chair up from beside the dresser and sat down on it while she perched on the bed.
'Let's see,' the Irishman said. 'I don't know where to start, Piff. Well. Do you know why Aurelianus lured me here from Venice?'
'To keep peace in the dining room.. .which you really -'
'Never mind. No. That was the story, yes, but he's dropped hints that that's not what he wanted me for at all. He thinks the Turks are coming to Vienna just to 'wreck this brewery, and he thinks - equally insane - that I can prevent them. Me, a stranger he just encountered at random hundreds of miles from here. And listen, that isn't all, he's got a madman's explanation for everything. You think Suleiman is the head man of the Ottoman Empire? Not according to Aurelianus! No, it's Ibrahim, the Grand Vizir, who also happens to be the son of an air-demon or something. And maybe you imagined Emperor Charles counted for something here in the West? Hell, no! There's an old fisherman in the forests outside town that's the real king.' Duffy kicked the bed post, secretly irritated to find some of his scornful incredulity feigned.
'It is all a lot of senile fantasies on Aurelianus' part,' he went on, trying to convince himself almost as much as Epiphany. 'Certainly, the old fellow can work magic tricks and conjure spirits out of holes in the ground.. .but, Christ, we're dealing with modern warfare here: cannons, troops, swords and mines. How can I save the damned brewery if the Hapsburg and Vatican armies fail to save Vienna? And if they do save the city, what point will there be in me standing vigilantly in front of the brewery flexing my sword hand? Hell - Aurelianus might have been something once, but he surely doesn't know what's going on now. The fact is that Suleiman wants the empire of Charles V, and is coming to break the eastern wall of it -and Aurelianus thinks the whole affair revolves around me, Herzwesten beer, and some old hermit in the woods who imagines he's a king!'
He had stood up in order to gesture more effectively during this speech, and now he sat down beside Epiphany on the bed. Her face was lit by the reflected, curtain-scrimmed orange light from the west, and for the first time since his return to Vienna she really looked familiar to him. This was Epiphany Vogel at last, beginning to shed the gray, acquired personality of Epiphany Hallstadt.
'Listen, Piff. I've done my share of killing Turks, and I don't see how my presence in Vienna could affect the coming battle one way or the other. Now I happen to have saved some money, and on top of that for some reason they're paying me a princely salary. I figure in a few weeks, early May, let's say, we'll have enough.. .that is, if it sounds as good to you as it does to me.. .what I mean is, what would you think of hoofing it to Ireland with me, before they lock Vienna's gates? We could get married -finally! - and live in a real slate-roofed cottage and, I don't know, raise goats or something. Don't tell anybody, though.'
'Oh, Brian, it sounds wonderful!' She blotted a tear with a beer-damp sleeve. 'I'd given up ideas like that till you came back from the dead. But can't I tell Anna?'
'Nobody. Aurelianus could legally prevent you from leaving, because you owe him money.'
She scratched her head. 'Do I?'
'Yes. Don't you remember? He bought up all the debts and bad accounts that were your legacy from that worm-gut son of a bitch Hallstadt, may he be turning on a spit this minute in hell.'
Epiphany was shocked. 'Brian! Max was your best friend once. You shouldn't hate him.'
'It's because he was my best friend that I do-did-hate him. I wouldn't have minded so much if a stranger had taken you from me.'
She put a hand on his arm. 'Don't dwell on all the stuff that's behind us. We can still spend our twilight years together.'
'Twilight years? I don't know about you, lady, but I'm as nimble and sharp as I was at twenty-five, which wasn't all that long ago.'
'Very well,' she said with an indulgent smile. 'Our early afternoon years. Oh, God.. .do you really think it's a possibility, after all this time?'
'After all this time,' Duffy asserted, 'it's an inevitability.'
He leaned forward and gave her a kiss, and it lingered past the point of being perfunctory. Gently transported by the dimness, and the brain-fumes of an afternoon's wine-drinking, he was at last in the arms of Gustav Vogel's impossibly attractive daughter; and he had, unnoticed, become again the Brian Duffy of 1512, whose glossy black hair did not yet have to be grown long in the back to cover a knotted white scar.
They fell back across the bed with the ponderousness, and something of the sound, of an old stone wall collapsing, and Epiphany pulled her mouth free and gasped, 'You're on duty tonight, aren't you? And dinner is probably being served this minute.'
'Damn duty and dinner,'
the Irishman muttered thickly; then, 'Oh, hell, you're right,' he said. 'Easter evening, the drawing of the bock, is what Aurelianus specifically hired me to watch over. For the money he's been paying me I guess I owe this much to him.'
He stood up reluctantly and looked down at Epiphany, who in the diminishing light was an indistinct figure stretched across the bed. 'I'll be back sometime,' he said.
'I hope so,' she answered in a small voice.
* * *
Chapter Twelve
Crowded into a shadowy corner, Duffy and Aurelianus watched three beer-crazed shepherds jigging on one of the tables while nearly everyone in that quarter of the dining room sang and clapped in accompaniment.
'Don't you think you should get those men down from there?' Aurelianus asked anxiously.
Duffy shook his head. 'No. The celebration spirit would only break out in some other activity, like maybe pitching beer mugs through the window. They're just enjoying themselves, and they're paying you for the beer. Why interfere?'
'Well.. .all right. You're the chucker-out, after all.' The old man leaned against the wall, apparently a little bewildered by the rowdiness of the bock celebration. 'Are you quite up to all this?' he asked. 'Have you rested up at all since our underground enterprise last night?'
'What? I can't hear you in this pandemonium.' Aurelianus repeated his last sentence, louder. 'Oh! Don't worry about me, I'm fine. These days it takes more than a few hobgoblins to disorder me.'
'Good. It's a wise tolerance to cultivate.'
'It's what? I didn't - God help us.' Duffy shoved several people aside, spilling their beer in all directions, and, taking a flying hop over a table, bowled off their feet two mercenaries who bad begun trading knife-thrusts. Before they could roll to their feet the Irishman had unsheathed his own dagger and cut, with two quick flicks of the blade,
their belts, so that their hands now had to be occupied with holding their clothing together. They left The room, red-faced, accompanied by howls of laughter.