by Tim Powers
Page 37
By the time he had walked all the way back to the Zimmermann Inn - God knew where the mare had wound up - the rain had stopped and his wound had started to
bleed again, so it was a gruesome figure that finally pushed open the front door and lurched into the dining room. There was a large but silent crowd, and they all looked up fearfully at him.
The black man in the burnoose stood. 'What news?' Duffy didn't relish the idea of a long speech. 'The wall is down at one point,' he said hoarsely. 'It was a near thing, but they were beaten back. Heavy losses on both sides. '
The man who'd asked looked around significantly and left the room, followed by several others. The Irishman paid no attention, but let his blurring gaze waver around the room until he saw Anna.
'Anna!' he croaked. 'Where is Aurelianus?'
'The chapel,' she said, hurrying to him. 'Here, lean on me and -'I can walk. '
The Irishman clumped heavily down the long, dark hall, and when he reached the tall doors he pushed through without stopping, stumbling over a half dozen brooms on the other side. In the chapel Aurelianus stood facing the same seven men that had been there the day before, but today each of them carried a drawn sword.
The midget looked around at the interruption. 'Why it's Miles Gloriosus. Out of here, clown. ' He turned back to Aurelianus, extending a short blade. 'Did you understand what Orkhan just said?' he asked, indicating the black man. 'The wall is down. They'll be in by dusk. Lead us to the cask now, or be killed. '
Aurelianus looked indignant, and raised a hand as if he were about to throw an invisible dart at the man. 'Be grateful, toad, that I am at present too occupied to punish this trespass. Now get out of here - while you can. '
The midget grinned. 'Go ahead. Blast me to ashes. We all know you can't. ' He jabbed the old sorcerer lightly in the abdomen.
The quiet, incense-scented air of the chapel was suddenly shattered by a savage yell as the Irishman bounded forward into the room, doing a quick hop-and-lunge that drove his sword-point through the midget's neck. Whirling with the impetus, he slashed black Orkhan's forearm to the bone. The copper-skinned man raised his sword and chopped at Duffy, but the Irishman ducked under the
I clumsy stroke and came up with a thrust into the man's belly. Duffy turned to face the remaining four, but one of them cried, 'Why kill Merlin? It's the Dark we want!' The five survivors ran from the chapel, angling wide around Duffy.
As soon as they were running away down the hall he collapsed as if dead. Aurelianus hurried to him, rolled him over onto his back and waved a little silver filigreed ball over the Irishman's nostrils; within seconds Duffy's eyes sprang open and a hand came up to brush the malodorous thing away. He lay there and stared at the ceiling, doing nothing but breathing.
Finally, 'What. . . just happened?' he gasped.
'You saved my life,' the sorcerer said. 'Or, more accurately, Arthur did; I recognized the old battle-cry. I'm flattered that the sight of me in peril brings him out. '
'He. . . does the heroics. . . and leaves the exhaustion to me'.
'I suppose that isn't quite fair,' said Aurelianus brightly. 'And what- have you done to your jaw?'
'Sew it up, will you? Surgeons too busy. ' He flicked his eyes around without moving his head, and saw nothing but dusty pews to one side and shifting raintracks on the I stained glass to the other. 'Where did your Dark Birds go? Did I kill them all?'
'No. Two of them are dead on the floor over here - I'll have someone come in and deal with the corpses - and five of them ran off to steal a sip of the Dark. ' The old man had produced various pouches and boxes from under his
robe, and was already cleaning and dressing the wound.
'Shouldn't you be - ouch! - stopping them?' Aurelianus had got out a needle and thread and was stitching the cut now; Duffy felt no real pain, just a tugging sensation across his left cheek and temple.
'Oh, no,' the wizard said. 'Gambrinus has defenses against such as those; as they probably suspected, since they wanted me to fetch the stuff for them. Still, desperate men will face almost anything, and trapped rats throw themselves into the catchers' nets. I'm glad to let Gambrinus finish the job for us. '
'The wall is down, by the southeast corner,' Duffy muttered sleepily. 'Wrecked our barracks. I'm going to sleep here, out in the stables where the Vikings were; I can't remember anything about last night, not one isolated thing, but it certainly doesn't feel like I got any sleep. Those Janissaries just kept coming, like it had been a dam that burst. There are corpses everywhere - if tomorrow and the next day are sunny, there'll be plague. I wonder why they pulled back? That was the best chance they could have hoped for, with them in force and us completely taken by surprise. '
There was a snip sound, and Aurelianus stood up. 'There,' he said. 'You'll have a scar, but at least the hole's closed and it ought not to fester. '
Duffy rolled over, got up on his hands and knees, and from there to his feet. 'Thanks. Eilif was going to do it. Probably would have got things inside out, so I could grow a beard in my mouth and taste things with my cheek. '
'What a disgusting idea. '
'Sorry. The charming, sprightly ideas aren't se easy to come by anymore. ' He picked up his sword, wiped it and sheathed it, and strode wearily out of the dim chapel.
Anna worried for a while about the five wild-eyed men who'd burst past her and clattered down the stairs to the brewing cellar, and when she heard thin, reedy screams faintly from below she got Mothertongue, for want of anyone hardier, to go down there with her to see what went on.
A charred meat aroma was blended not unpleasantly with the usual malt smell, and they found Gambrinus placidly juggling a number of small irregular spheres of ivory. He assured them that all was well, and Anna didn't begin to feel ill until, back in the dining room, Mother-tongue asked her where she supposed the brewmaster had got those five little monkey skulls he'd been playing with.
At eleven the rain began to abate, and by noon the clouds were breaking up, letting a strained, pale sunlight play intermittently over the sundered section of wall. The gap was roughly two hundred feet wide, and the wall as it continued on either side -a surprising hundred-and-fifty feet thick in exposed cross-section - leaned dangerously outward. While sharpshooters with fresh loads hammered into their rifled guns watched the distant Turkish lines, hastily assembled gangs of soldiers and laborers built solid barricades in a straight line across the rubble-choked gap, and threw up a fifty-yard-radius semicircle of deep-moored open-frame wooden obstructions on the slope outside. Chalk dust was scattered thickly beyond the semicircle, most of it darkening into gray mud as it soaked up moisture from the wet ground.
Several smoldering fires started by the explosion were finally put out, a task that hadn't been top priority because the rain had prevented them from spreading. All three corpse wagons were working their slow way across the devastated area, collecting their grisly cargo - one had already filled, left, and returned.
During that morning and afternoon the hunchbacked figure of Bluto was to be seen everywhere along the battlements, ordering the re-laying of many cannon and culverins, overseeing their cleaning and loading, shouting ignored advice down to the men outside who were building braces and buttresses to prop the leaning wall in place.
Count von Salm, ostensibly in charge, paced the street and watched all the activity, content to let experts pursue their crafts. He had ordered most of his troops to go eat and rest in what barracks remained, keeping only a minimal force on watch; there were men along the wail, though, who kept their eyes on the Turkish lines, ready at the first sign of offensive movement to signal von Salm and the bellringer in the St Stephen's spire.
Through the afternoon there was shifting along the Turkish front, banners moving back and forth above the occasional distant glint of sun on metal, but they seemed to be grouping to the west, toward the southern front of the city and away from the brea
k in the wall.
At four the haggard von Salm climbed the stone stairs of the wall at the Schwarzenbergstrasse and walked a hundred yards west along the catwalk to confer with the hunchbacked bombardier. The freshening western breeze swept the crenellations, drying the sweat on the commander's face and neck; in no hurry to climb back down to the muddy, windless streets, he chatted with Bluto about various aspects of the morning's battle.
'I'm tempted to cluster a large number of guns right along here,' Bluto said presently, 'from the Carinthian gate to the western corner. '
'Because of this shift of theirs? It's got to be a feint,' von Salm objected. He ran his fingers through his graying hair. 'Obviously they're not going to attack here, along this completely fortified and unweakened side, when there's a damned two-hundred-foot hole in the wall around the corner a hundred yards east. '
'Look at them, though,' said Bluto, leaning between two merlons and pointing south across the cloudshadowed plain. 'There's no one moving around to the eastern side; they're all focusing straight ahead, due south. Hell, man, if it is a feint it would take them a good half hour to re-group on the eastern plain - unless of course they want to run up close to the wall here, and run that hundred yards - within range of our guns'.
'That could be what they have in mind,' von Salm said.
'They'd lose a thousand Janissaries, even if half our lads were asleep. '
'Maybe Suleiman doesn't care. He's got more soldiers than time at this point. '
Bluto shook his head. 'Very well, if Suleiman isn't concerned about massive casualties, why not attack directly at the gap, and push until the defenders give way? Why this westward shift?'
'I don't know,' admitted von Salm. 'They may shift back under cover of darkness. That's what I would do, if I were Suleiman. But yes, set up. . . five guns along here, and I'll see you get enough men to work them. And if I see them come this way, or hear it during the night, I'll send more. ' He gnawed a knuckle and stared at the plain. 'What's the date today? Oh, the twelfth, of course. I wish there'd be more moon tonight, and a clear sky. I'll have a gang trot outside here and dump chalk in a wide line along this front, just to make you feel better, eh?'
'Both of us,' said Bluto dryly as the commander turned and began walking back the way he'd come.
The hunchback strode back and forth along the catwalk, peering through the crenels and thoughtfully laying flagged sticks at each point where he felt a gun should be wheeled up and bolted down, as the red sun sank behind the wooded hills to his right, and lights began to glow in the windows of the city at his back and, distantly in front of him, among the tents on the plain.
Since he'd lit the snake just as the bells overhead had ceased their deafening, bone-jarring announcement of nine o'clock, and it was now nearly burned down to his fingers, Duffy deduced that it must be nearly time for him to brace himself for the one stroke of the half hour. He flipped the coal-tipped stub spinning out over the rail, and watched it draw random red arabesques as it tumbled toward the square far below; then he turned to the wizard who was crouched over the telescope. 'Aren't we about due for -, the Irishman began, but he was interrupted by the preludial mechanical grinding from above, so he closed his eyes and shoved his fingers in his ears until the single bong had been struck, and the echoes were ringing away through the dark streets below.
'Due for what?' snapped Aurelianus irritably.
'Never mind. ' Duffy leaned out on the rail and looked up at the stars that were visible behind the high, rushing clouds. The crescent moon was nothing but a pale blur glowing intermittently in one of the widest patches of cloud.
A gust of particularly cold wind buffeted the cathedral tower, and the Irishman shivered and got back in under the sculptured arch of the small observatory alcove. Their narrow and drafty vantage point was not the highest or most easily accessible, but von Salm and various military advisors had two weeks ago sealed off and taken possession of the platform that commanded the best view. Aurelianus had said it didn't matter, that the little open landing they now occupied was high enough above the rooftops and street-smokes to make star-gazing possible; and for what Duffy considered to be a very long hour now that was what he had been doing.
Finally the old sorcerer leaned back from the eye-piece, rubbing the bridge of his nose with one hand and balancing the telescope on the rail with the other. 'It's chaotic,' he muttered. 'There's no order, nothing to be read. It's. . . un
pleasant to see the sky this way, it's like asking a question of an old, wise friend and getting imbecilic grunting and whining for an answer. ' The image seemed to upset Aurelianus, and he went on quickly. 'You're the cause, you know, the random factor, the undefinable cipher that makes gibberish of all the trusty old equations. '
The Irishman shrugged. 'Maybe you'd have been better off without me from the start. Saved your time. Hell, I haven't really done anything so far that any hired bravo couldn't have done.
'I don't know,' Aurelianus said. 'I'm limited to what I can actually see and touch - I don't know!' He looked at Duffy. 'Did you hear about the newest movement of the Janissaries?'
'Yes. They've shifted west, as if they intended a suicide charge at the unweakened southwestern front. What about it?'
'What do you think would happen if they did attack there?'
Duffy shrugged. 'Like I said - suicide. They'd lose a thousand men in five minutes. '
'Might one call it a. . . sacrifice?'
'To gain what? There'd be no sense in sending the Janissaries, their finest troops - oh my God. ' The Irishman carefully sat down and leaned his back against the rail. 'I thought you had one of the only two copies of the damned thing in the world. '