Chapter Four

Five days later Johannes Freiburg sat in the taproom of the St Mungo Inn and, putting down his mug of ale, nodded to the wide-eyed old man sitting across the table from him. 'That's what I said. Escorted by every demon in the Alps. It was just at sunset, and I was crossing the Drava bridge with my goats, when I heard all this singing - hundreds of voices, all glass rim high, whirling like birds around this one weird tune - and I figured for a second it was God and all the saints, come for me at last. So I turned around, back toward the mountain, and here comes this tall, gray-haired man on a limping horse, riding down the path with the red sunlight on him like his own personal lantern; and behind him, perched on every ridge and crag, there were ranks and ranks of demons with bird heads, and wiverns, and every damned kind of monster you ever heard of, all singing like a church choir.'

The old man crossed himself and gulped. 'More ale here,' he quavered to the innkeeper. 'So who was he?' he asked his companion. 'Beelzebub?'

'I don't know. I took off pretty quick - didn't want to let him get close enough to bewitch me - but he looked... Oh my God, that's him just walked in the door.'

Duffy didn't even notice the old man who clapped his hands over his face and, squeaking shrilly, bolted out of the room as he entered it. The Irishman crossed to the bar and calmly asked for a cup of beer. His face was haggard and there were new wrinkles around his eyes. When his

beer had been drawn he took it to a back table and sat down to drink it slowly, unaware of Freiburg's intense, awed stare.

Well, thought Duffy, I can't pretend that was delirium tremens - not lasting six days like that. He sighed and shook his head. I really was escorted through the Predil Pass by a crew of fantastic beasts only hinted at even in mythology. They guided me, led me around areas I later saw to be unstable snow, kept me on whatever track that was. They always maintained a respectful distance, too, and bowed when I approached them! It was as if.. .as if I were a revered and long-absent king passing through their district.

He remembered the odd fear he'd felt a week ago in that mad tavern in Trieste - a fear of recognizing or remembering something. That's another thing to worry about, he thought; maybe the goat-footed man was real, not a hallucination at all. Hell, he was an everyday sight compared to the company I've kept during these past six days.

The tavern door swung open and a stout, bearded man clumped in, wearing flared-top boots that came up to his thighs. He glanced angrily around the room. 'Damn it, Freiburg,' he growled, 'have you seen Ludvig? He said he'd be drinking in here.'

Freiburg bobbed his head. 'Yes sir, Mr Yount. He.. .uh. . .just dashed out the back door.'

'Saw me coming, did he? The lazy old monkey - I'll break his jaw for him. He knows we -Freiburg was jiggling in his chair, winking, shaking his head and waving his hands. Yount stared at him in amazement, then caught on that the shepherd had something confidential to whisper to him.

Yount leaned down. 'What the hell is it?'

Don't blame Ludvig' the shepherd whispered. 'He's just scared of demons, which that gray-haired man over there is on intimate terms with.'

Yount glanced across the room at Duffy, who was still staring morosely into his beer. 'Oh, hell,' the bearded man said to Freiburg, 'you damned peasants can't take two steps without finding something to put the fear of the devil into you.'

'Hey, it's true,' protested the shepherd. 'I'm not making it up -'Oh, no doubt. Like last year, when you crucified all the cats in town because they were witches' familiars.'

'Now look, Mr Yount, there were apparitions -Yount made a rude suggestion concerning what stance Freiburg should assume the next time he met an apparition. 'Now where's my whimpering clerk? In here? Good Lord, hiding among the brooms and buckets. Out, Ludvig, you coward. We've got to be on the road, get those hides to Vienna before the rains can rot them.'

Duffy looked up. 'You're heading for Vienna?' he asked.

All three faces swivelled toward him, two of them pale and fearful and one thoughtful, appraising. 'That's right, stranger,' Yount said.

'I'd be glad to pay you to carry me,' Duffy said. 'My horse went lame on a... sort of forced march through the Alps, and I can't wait around for him to get straightened out. I wouldn't be much extra weight, and if you run across any bandits I imagine you'd be glad of another sword.'

'For the love of God, master,' Ludvig hissed, 'don't -''Shut up,' Yount snapped. 'Take holy water baths if you have to, or tattoo a cross on your forehead - I choose our personnel.' He turned to Duffy, who was highly puzzled by these reactions. 'Certainly, stranger. You can ride along. I'll charge you ten ducats, to be doubly refunded in the event that you help us repel any bandits.'

Ludvig began weeping, and Yount clouted him in the side of the head. 'Shut up, clerk.'

Birds were calling to each other through the trees as Yount's modest caravan got under way. Four barrel-chested horses were harnessed to the lead wagon, on the buckboard- of which sat Yount and the clerk, while Yount's two sons, having shed their shirts, were stretched out on the bundled hides to get a tan. There was another wagon being towed behind, and Duffy was sprawled across its bench, half napping in the midmorning sun. Little boys lined the road as the wagons rolled by, raising a cheer to see the departure of the cargo that had for two days given their town the pungent smell of a tannery. The Irishman tipped his hat. So long, horse, he thought. I believe you're better off without me.

In the morning sunshine, as he watched the birds hopping about on the new-budding branches and listened to the creaking and rattling of the carts, it was easy for him to regard the disturbing meetings in the mountains and Trieste as flukes, chance glimpses of survivals from the ancient world. Those things do still exist, he told himself, in the darker corners and cubbyholes of the world, and a traveller ought not to be upset at seeing them once in a while.

They camped that night by the banks of the Lab. Ludvig was careful to keep a distance between Duffy and himself, and always to sit on the opposite side of the fire; to make his feelings perfectly clear, every half hour or so he fled behind one of the parked wagons and could be heard praying loudly. Yount's sons, though, got along well with the Irishman, and he showed them how to play tunes on a piece of grass held between the thumbs. They grinned delightedly when he finished up his performance with a spirited rendering of a bit from Blaylock's Wilde Manne, but Ludvig, hiding behind a wagon again, howled to God to silence the devil-pipes.

'That's enough,' Yount said finally. 'You're scaring the daylights out of poor Ludvig. It's getting late anyway - I think we'd all better turn in.' He banked the fire and checked the horses' tethers while his sons crawled into sleeping bags and Duffy rolled himself up in his old fur cloak.

Clouds were plastered in handfuls over the low sky next morning, and Yount fretted for his hides. 'To hell with breakfast, boys,' he shouted, slapping the horses awake, 'I want us five miles north of the river five minutes from now.' Duffy climbed up onto the buckboard of the trailing wagon, turned up his frayed collar and resumed his interrupted sleep.

It was an oddly out-of-tune bird call that woke him again. I think that was a curlew, he told himself groggily as he sat up on the wagon bench, but I never heard one with such a flat voice. Then the call was answered, from the other side of the road, in the same not-quite-true tone

- and Duffy came fully awake. Those aren't curlews, he thought grimly. They're not even birds.

Trying to make it look casual, he stood up, balanced a moment on the footrest and then leaped across the gap• onto the leading wagon's back rail. He pulled himself over the bar, clambered across the rocking bales of hides -nodding cheerfully to the two young men as he passed -and tapped Yount on the shoulder. 'Keep smiling like I am,' he told him, ignoring the trembling Ludvig, 'but give me a bow if you've got one. There are robbers in these woods.'

'Hell,' grated Yount. 'No, I don't have a bow.'

Duffy bit his lip, thinking. 'You certainly can't outrun them with this rig. I'd say you've got no choice but to give up once they make their entrance.'

'To hell with that. We'll fight them.'

Duffy shrugged. 'Very well. I'll go back to the rear wagon, then, and try to keep them from cutting it loose.' He crawled back across the hides, told the boys to go talk to their father in a minute, and then half-climbed, half-leaped back to his own wagon.

Back up on the driver's bench, he pulled his hatbrim down over his eyes and pretended to go back to sleep. He kept his hands near his hilts, though.

A low tree branch sprang up into the air as the wagons passed under it, and four men leaped catlike to the caravan. Two of them tumbled sprawling onto the bundles in the second wagon, and Duffy was on his feet and facing them in an instant, his sword singing out of the scabbard.

One of them was now brandishing his own sword, and threw a powerful wood-chopping cut at Duffy's skull; the Irishman parried it over his head and riposted immediately with a head-cut of his own. The man hopped back out of distance, but Duffy managed to steer his descending blade so that it nicked the man's sword wrist.

'Hah!' the Irishman barked. 'Robbers, Yount! Keep the horses moving.'

Three men on horseback, he noticed now, were galloping alongside. Good God, Duffy thought, they really do have us. The two bandits in the wagon, swords out and points in line, made a stumbling but combined rush at him. Braced on the bench, though, Duffy had the steadier position - he knocked one blade away with his dagger and, catching it in the dagger's quillons, twisted the sword out of the man's hand and flipped it over the rail. The other man's blade he parried down, hard, so that it stuck in the wood of the bench-back for a second while the Irishman riposted with a poke in the trachea. Clutching his throat, the bandit rolled backward over the side rail. The other man, disarmed and facing Duffy's two blades, vaulted the rail and dropped to the ground voluntarily.

Perhaps ten seconds had passed since the two men had leaped from the tree onto the wagon. Duffy turned to see how the lead wagon was faring. One of Yount's sons was snapping the reins and shouting abuse at the laboring horses. Yount and his other son, both bleeding from minor cuts, were waving axes and holding at bay two of the robbers, who crouched at the rear of the first wagon.

Before the men on horseback could shout a warning, Duffyleaped again across the gap between the wagons, whirling his sword in a great horizontal arc, and a head bounced in the dust of the road a moment later. The other bandit, whom Duffy had only knocked sprawling, scrabbled frantically for his fallen sword, but the Irishman lunged at him with the dagger, burying it to the hilt under the man's jaw.

Two of the three riders were now leaning from their saddles and hacking at the hawser connecting the two wagons. 'God,' Duffy breathed wearily, getting up. He leaned out from the rail and brought the flat of his sword down hard on the skull of one of the galloping horses. The beast screeched, stumbled and fell in a thrashing somersault, pitching its rider headfirst onto the road. The horse behind tripped over the fallen one, and it too went tumbling.

The last rider, finding himself the only remaining representative of the robber gang, fell back, dismayed and uncertain.

'You'd be wise to go home while you still can,' Duffy called to him.

Oh no, he thought, a moment later - he's got reinforcements. Two more riders were coming up fast from behind. Their swords were out and held low, and Duffy didn't relish the prospect of fighting them. They'll be passing that discouraged one in a second, he thought, and when he sees he's got support I'll have three of them to deal with.

Then Duffy blinked in astonishment, for one of the new riders had, in passing, casually leaned out and driven his blade through the back of the slower-riding robber. Why, they're reinforcements for us, the Irishman thought with relief. He grinned and sat back as one of them drew alongside, a blond, curly-haired young man.

'It's good to see you, lads,' Duffy called. 'Though a sooner appearance -' He leaped backward then like a startled cat, for the rider had made a terribly quick cut at his face. The sword point nicked the end of the Irishman's nose and then drove in at his chest; but Duffy had his own sword up by now, and parried the thrust.

'What's going on?' Yount called. 'Who are these bastards?'

'I don't know,' Duffy shouted, trying a feint and thrust at the young rider. The man effortlessly got a bind on Duffy's blade, and his parry and riposte were one movement. Not bad, considering he's fighting from the back of a horse, Duffy thought as he leaped back again and the stranger's sword lightly clipped his doublet.

The wagon rocked violently as the other of the pair leaped from his horse and swung aboard from the far side. Damnation, Duffy thought, whirling around just in time to block a flank cut from this new passenger, these boys are quick.

Yount and his son, hefting their axes, began clambering over the back rail of the first cart.

'Don't get yourselves hurt,' the young man called to them. 'It's him we want.' He pointed at Duffy.

'I told you!' howled old Ludvig, peering above the foremost bench-back. 'He's a devil!'

There was a quick whiz-and-thump then, and the young man cocked his head uncertainly, and a moment later toppled forward, a feathered arrow jutting from his back.

God help us, Duffy thought hysterically, what now?

'Keep the horses moving,' he yelled. 'We've got to get clear of this madhouse.'

There were men - little men - in the shrubbery beside the road. Duffy looked more closely, and saw to his astonishment that they were dwarfs, carrying bows and dressed in little suits of chain mail. The blond rider saw them too, paled, and spurred his horse to flee; before he'd got ten yards, though, a dozen hard-driven arrows had found the gaps between his ribs and he rolled out of the saddle as his horse galloped on.

The wagons rattled along down the road, the fletching-feathered corpse rolled limply to a stop, and the dwarfs slung their bows and knelt with lowered heads as Yount's hide shipment passed by.

The ranks of kneeling dwarfs stretched nearly a quarter of a mile, on both sides of the road. The Irishman slowly wiped his sword and sheathed it, but no one in the wagons spoke until the last dwarf had been five minutes' passed.

'They... rescued you, didn't they? The dwarfs?' Yount's voice was thoughtful.

Duffy shrugged gloomily. 'I don't know. I guess they did.'

'I've carted hides through these woods for years,' Yount said. 'I've seen bandits before. This is the first time I've seen dwarfs.'

'They bowed to him!' Ludvig called fearfully. 'They knelt when he went by! He's the king of the dwarfs!'

'Oh, for God's sake, clerk,' Yount said irritably, 'he's taller than I am.'

Duffy sat down on one of the bales, discouraged by these new developments. I hate times, he thought, when it seems like there's a.. .worldwide brotherhood whose one goal is to kill Brian Duffy. That's the kind of thing which, true or not, it's madness to believe. And even weirder is the brotherhood that seems to be dedicated to

helping me. Why' for instance, did Giacomo Gritti save my life in Venice last week? Why did all the monsters in the Julian Alps get together to guide me through the pass? And now why did these dwarfs - famous for their sullen, secretive ways - turn out in droves and kill my attackers?

'I won't ride with him.' Ludvig was in tears. 'I'm a devout man, and I won't travel with a king of dwarfs and mountain devils.'

Hmm, the Irishman thought uneasily - how did he hear of my Alpine guides?

'Shut up,' barked Yount, his voice harsh with uncertainty. 'We'll be in Vienna tomorrow afternoon, if we hurry. Whatever you are, stranger, I said you could ride with us, and I won't turn you out now, especially after you saved us from those highwaymen.'

'Then turn me out,' Ludvig said. Stop the wagons and let me get my stuff.'

Yount waved at him impatiently. 'Shut up and keep still.'

'I'm not joking,' the clerk said. 'Stop the wagons or I'll jump out while they're moving.'

Duffy stood up. 'Yes, Yount, you'd better put on the brakes. I'll walk from here. I don't want to deprive you of your clerk-he'd die for sure out here alone.

The old hides trader looked doubtful; clearly he'd be happy to be rid of the upsetting Irishman, but didn't want to violate travellers' courtesy. 'You're sure you want to leave us?' he asked. 'I won't force you off, even to save poor idiot Ludvig.'

'I'm sure. I'll do fine out here. If I get in any trouble I'll just whistle up some dwarfs.'

The wagons squeaked and lurched to a halt as Duffy shouldered on his knapsack, bundled up his fur cloak and swung to the ground. Yount's Sons sadly waved farewell

-clearly they'd found him much more interesting a

companion than the pious clerk. Duffy waved, and the wagons strained and heaved into motion again.

The Irishman cursed wearily and sat down under a tree to have a gulp or two of wine, for it had been an exhausting morning. I suppose, he told himself, savoring the lukewarm and now somewhat vinegary chianti, I could somehow have avoided this maroonment; turned on old Ludvig and hissed, If you don't shut up and let me ride along, I'll have my good pal Satan chase you from here to Gibraltar. Ho ho. Duffy cut himself chunks of cheese, salami, onion and bread, and washed it all down with some more of the wine. Then he rubbed a split garlic clove around the cut in his nose, to keep it from mortifying.

A minute or so later he stood up, set his hat firmly on his gray head, and trotted away northward, following the wagon tracks in the dusty road. His relaxed, jogging pace sent the miles pounding away behind beneath his boots; toward midafternoon he permitted himself a rest stop, but within five minutes he was moving again. His breathing by this time was not as easy and synchronized to his pace as it had been when he started, but he forced himself, gasping and sweating, to cover as much ground as possible before nightfall.

The sky had already begun to glow in-.the west when he rounded a curve in the road and saw before him the narrow eastern arm of the Neusiedler Lake, gleaming like tarnished silver under the darkening heavens. An abandoned-looking ferry dock and pulley were tucked into a cove to his left. Time to rest at last, he thought, sitting down right in the road and groping for his wineskin. Nobody could expect me to try to cross the lake at this hour.

A dot of orange light waxed and waned on the north shore. That must be Yount, Duffy thought. I've nearly kept up with him, in spite of being on foot.

The ground was damp, making him think of snakes and ghouls, so he climbed an oak and settled himself in a

natural hammock of branches that curled up around him like the fingers of a cupped hand. He had a supper of more bread, cheese, salami and wine, followed by a suck at the brandy bottle to keep off the chill. Then he hung his knapsack on a limb, wrapped up in the old cloak and heaved about on his perch until he found a comfortable posture.

Weariness and brandy made him sleep soundly in his treetop bed, but some time after midnight he was awakened by hoarse, deep-voiced calls. What the hell, he thought groggily; a gang of men on the road. Then he froze

- for the voices sounded from above, and the speakers, unless Duffy was the victim of some kind of ventriloquism, were moving across the sky.

He couldn't recognize the language in which they called to each other, but it sounded eastern; Egyptian, he thought, or Turkish, or Arabic. Can this be real, he wondered, or is it some madness brought on by the brandy?

With a sound like banners flapping in a stiff wind, the voices whirled away to the north, and Duffy permitted himself a deep sigh of relief when he heard them echoing over the lake.

Never in my life, he thought, trying to relax again, have I been so mobbed by the supernatural as during this last week and a half, since leaving Venice. He could recall two or three odd sights during his childhood - an elderly gentleman he'd seen fishing on the banks of the Liffey, who'd disappeared when the young Duffy had looked away for a moment; two clouds that had uncannily resembled a dragon and a bear fighting above the Wicklow hills; a tiny man that had crouched on a tree branch, winked at him, and then hopped and scuttled away through the foliage - but it was easy, thirty years later, to believe they'd been games or dreams. These recent events, though, were hopelessly real. I wonder what's

brought them all out of their holes, he thought. I wonder what's up.

He had begun to drift off to sleep again when a series of screams sounded faintly from the north; even from a distance Duffycould hear the stark fear in them. Good Lord, he thought, that must be Yount's group. The flying things are over there. He sat up - then shrugged helplessly and lay back down against the branches. What can I do? he thought. It's the middle of the night, the moon is down, and I'm on the other side of the lake. Even if I was still with them I don't think I could do anything against whatever those things are.

In a few minutes the screaming had stopped. The Irishman had another pull at the brandy - and another -and then closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

The next morning Duffy climbed down from his bending, creaking tree while a furious wind from the west flapped his cloak and blew his long hair into his face. When he dropped to the ground, bits of twigs and leaves were whipping through the air like debris dashed before a flood, and the gray clouds twisted in agonized tangles of muscular forms and ragged veils across the sky. Good Jesus, Duffy thought, holding his hat onto his head, I could believe this is the end of the world.

He walked down the road to the lake, leaning into the wind with every step and clutching the collar of his cloak to keep it from whirling away like a furry bat. I wonder, he thought, if I can possibly manipulate the ferry in this weather. I can give it a try, he decided - wondering, at the same time, why he was in such a hurry to get to Vienna. Am I that anxious to see Epiphany? He had for the moment nearly forgotten Yount.

The lake looked like a vast pane of glass across which an invisible army was marching in nailed boots; the wind tossed it into hundreds of individual currents and flecked

it with whitecaps. He glanced down the beach at the ferry platform, dreading the task of hauling the barge back across the lake, and was surprised to see the ferry moored on this side already. I know it wasn't here last night, he thought. Who hauled it back?

He plodded across the littered shore toward the platform, and suddenly noticed the old man standing in the ferry's bow. Although his fluttering hair and beard were as white as bones, he was fully six feet tall, broad shouldered and muscled like a wrestler. In spite of the chilly wind he wore only a loincloth and sandals.

'Two coins to cross,' the old man said, his deep voice effortlessly undercutting the screech of the wind.

Duffy clumped along the platform and stepped carefully into the ferry. 'What kind of coins?' he gasped, fumbling under his cloak. Thank God he's willing to risk a crossing, he thought; I damned well wouldn't, if it were my ferry.

'What do I care?' the ferryman growled. 'Two coins.'

Bless these unworldly backwoods men, Duffy thought, and dropped two sequins into the old man's leathery palm before sitting down on a section of bench somewhat sheltered from the wind by the high gunwale. The old ferrier untied the moorings, then braced his knotted legs below the bulwark and began laboriously pulling in the guide rope, and the flat craft, swinging and bucking in the agitated water like a fish on a leash, began moving away from the dock platform.

Duffystared at the man in amazement, having expected to find, on one shore or the other, oxen turning a wheel. He's doing all the pulling himself, he marvelled. And in a sea like this? His heart will burst in two minutes. 'Let me help you with that,' the Irishman said, getting cautiously to his feet.

'No,' said the ferrier. Stay where you are.' He does

sound tired, Duffy thought as he shrugged and took his seat again, but with a more long-term weariness, in which this effort this morning is no more remarkable than the all-but-worthless coins I gave him.

Duffy glanced ahead across the choppy water, and suddenly remembered the calls and screams he'd heard the night before. I wonder, he thought with something of his boatman's weariness, if those screams across the lake really were Yount's party. I suppose they were. I'd like to think those flying things had nothing to do with me, but I think perhaps old Ludvig was right after all. I was a Jonah to Yount's people.

He looked nervously up at the shredding sky, half fearing to see bat-winged black figures wheeling above. Then it occurred to him that, whatever they had been, they couldn't help being blown away east by this fierce wind. It's as if their presence here itched the earth, he thought, and it's sneezing.

The guide-rope was pulled tight across the water and thrummed like a bass lute string each time the old man clutched it. Duffygripped the rail and held on, still half-expecting the old man to drop dead.

By imperceptible stages, though, the shoreline worked nearer, and eventually the ferry's ragged bow bumped the pilings of the north side dock. Duffy stood up. 'Well, sir,' he said, 'thank you for the extraordinary -'

'Get out of the boat now,' the old man told him.

The Irishman frowned and climbed out. Laconic, these rural types are, he thought.

There was a clearing littered with torn hides and splintered wood and the trampled remains of a campfire, but he could see no bodies. He wasn't sure whether to feel better about that or not.

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