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.

'Mr Duffy!' Shrub cried, waving from atop the bar.

'In a minute, Shrub,' Duffy called, for on the other side of the room a suddenly irate merchant was slapping his wife and calling her vile names. Muttering a quick apology, the Irishman snatched up a brimming mug from a table he passed, and then dashed its foaming contents forcefully into the face of the misogynist shopkeeper; the man had just been filling his lungs for another burst of abuse, and was choking now on a couple of ounces of beer he'd inadvertently inhaled. Duffy lifted him from his chair by a handful of hair and gave him a resounding slap on the back, then slammed him back down into his seat. 'There y'are, sir,' said the Irishman cheerfully. 'We don't want any of our patrons choking to death, eh?' He leaned down and said more sharply but in a whisper, 'Or getting their ribs kicked in, which will happen to you if you touch that lady again or say any more insulting things to her. Do I make myself clear? Hah? Good.'

'Mr Duffy!' Shrub called again. 'There's a man to see you -The table on which the shepherds were dancing collapsed then, spilling the three fuddled jiggers against the bar, which fell over against the wall with a multiple crash. Shrub leaped clear, but landed in a dish of roast pork on another table, and had to flee from the wrathful diners.

A little while later Duffy saw Bluto edge through the front door, and waved. The Irishman opened his mouth to shout that he'd squared it with the serving girls about Bluto's free beer, then decided that such a statement, shouted across the dangerously crowded room, could only cause a riot. I'll tell him when I can whisper it to him, Duffy decided. I wonder who this man is that Shrub tried to tell me about.

A youth with black curly hair was slouched against the wall, and pulled his hat down over his eyes as Duffy sidled past. That's what's-his-name, the Irishman thought, Jock, the lad Aurelianus sent out last night to keep an eye on that precious king of his. I'd swear I've seen him somewhere outside Vienna. Where?

Duffy tried to pursue the memory but was distracted by the necessity of rescuing one of the serving women from an old priest turned amorous by the evening's heady brew. After encouraging the clergyman to recall the dignity he owed the cloth, Duffy lifted a mug from a passing tray and drained it in two long swallows.

'Here, here! Pay for that, sir!' came a voice from behind him. He turned and Bluto grinned at him.

'Hello, Bluto,' Duffy said. 'I've told the girls you're to get free bock till ten.

'Till ten? What happens at ten?'

'You start paying for it.'

'I'd better get busy then. Oh,' Bluto spoke more quietly, 'I finished checking the stores this afternoon. There's about a hundred pounds of black powder missing.'

The Irishman nodded. 'Nothing else?'

'No. Oh, maybe. One of the old forty-pounder siege bombards seems to be missing, but the armorer probably miscounted them when he made the list back in 'twenty-four. I mean, how could anyone carry away a gun like that?'

Duffy frowned. 'I don't know. But I'll keep my eyes open. You haven't seen Shrub around, have you?'

'Yes. He's in the kitchen. I saw him peeking in here a minute ago, looking scared. Where are your Vikings?'

'In the stable, drinking and singing. I'm hoping that if I keep sending beer out to them they'll stay there, and not try to join the party in here. Oh no, what are those shepherds doing to that guy over there?'

'Baptizing him with beer, it looks like.'

'Excuse me.

Twenty minutes later Duffy sank exhausted onto a bench in the corner and signalled to Anna for a pitcher. He had put down so many uprisings in the still noisy room that people within earshot of him - not a great distance, to be sure - kept a wary eye on him; the rowdier drunkards were shaken and, in some cases, pulled down from chandeliers or out from under tables and told to stop it by their more sober friends.

Shrub edged his way nervously through the crowd, leading a tall, dark-faced man who wore a heavy cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. 'Mr Duffy,' the boy said before darting out of the room, 'this gentleman wanted to see you. He's a Spaniard.'

He looks more like a pirate than a gentleman, the Irishman thought, but I may as well be civil. 'Yes, sir?'

'Can I sit with you?'

Duffy's pitcher arrived then, giving him a more tolerant outlook. 'Very well,' he said, 'pull up a bench. Have you got a mug to drink from?'

The Spaniard swiped an empty one from the nearest table. 'Yes.'

'Then have some beer.' Duffy filled both their mugs. 'How can I be of service to you? Uh, the boy was mistaken, I assume, in describing you as a Spaniard.'

'Eh? Why do you say that?'

'Well, you're stretching your vowels, but your accent's Hungarian. Or so it seems to my possibly beer-dulled ears.

No, damn you, you're correct. I'm Hungarian. But I think it's your eyes that are beer-dulled if you don't recognize me.

The Irishman sighed, and with some effort focused his attention on the man's shadowed face, expecting to recognize some old comrade-in-arms who would probably want to borrow money.

Then his stomach went cold, and he suddenly felt much more sober; it was a face he had last seen on that awful morning in the late summer of 1526 when Duffy, wounded and exhausted, had breasted the broad tide of the Danube and dragged himself onto the north bank. The Turkish banners had been flying over the conquered town of Mohács behind him, and sixty thousand slain Hungarian soldiers were being buried on the battle-furrowed plain. That morning, on the river's north side, he had met the army of John Zapolya, for whom Archbishop Tomori and King Louis, both at that moment being laid unmourned in unmarked graves, had not waited. The battered Irishman had described to Zapolya the disastrous battle and rout of the previous afternoon, and Zapolya, shocked and angry, had within the hour led his army away westward. Duffy had rested in the woods for another day and then beaten a furtive, solitary retreat to the south, over the Alps to Venice. Years later he heard of Zapolya's subsequent defection to the Turkish side.

'By God,' he breathed now, 'how do you dare come here? After you sold your homeland to Suleiman I never thought I'd see you again.. .except perhaps over a gun-barrel or sword-point.'

John Zapolya's eyes narrowed, but his sardonic smile didn't falter. 'My loyalty is and has always been to Hungary, and it has been for her welfare that I have done everything.. .even this tonight.'

Duffy was still appalled at the man's very presence. 'What are you doing here tonight?' he asked. 'And why do you evidently suppose that I won't shout to this roomful of people the fact that this "Spaniard" is the man they've practically come to equate with Satan?'

'Well, lad, first because I've got a short-barrel monk's gun levelled at your stomach under the table. Yes, I'm afraid it's true. And second, there are four of my men in the alley out back, in what appears to be a hay wagon.

Duffy sighed wearily. 'And what is it really, John?' Zapolya sipped his beer, keeping his eyes on Duffyand his right hand under the table. 'Oh, it's a hay-wagon, but it holds more than hay.'

'Damn it, John, can't you -

Very well, take it easy. There's a siege bombard in it, loaded with a forty-pound ball of iron. Its barrel is laid horizontal, pointing at this building, and my men are carrying slowmatches.'

'If you'll pardon my saying so, John, none of this makes any sense. Why should you risk your life sneaking into Vienna, and then settle for just killing me and blowing up this inn?' Keep him talking, Duffy told himself; play for time and maybe some drunk will lurch into him, spoil his aim for one precious second.

'Don't play ignorant with me, old Duff,' said Zapolya with an easy smile. 'You wouldn't be here if you didn't know what this place is, and who you are.'

'Why must everyone speak to me in riddles?' Duffy complained. 'What is it you want? Why are you sitting in here if you've got a damned siege-gun levelled at the back door?'

'Keep your voice down. I'm sitting here because I'm a dispensable piece in this game, a rook they're willing to sacrifice for a solid checkmate. I've been sent here - at great personal risk, as you've noted - by my master, Ibrahim, to offer you a very high, very powerful position in the Eastern Empire.'

The amorous priest reeled by behind Zapolya's chair in pursuit of one of the serving women, but earned a mental curse from the Irishman for failing to collide with the traitorous Hungarian's chair. 'Position?' Duffy sighed. 'What sort of position?'

Zapolya stared at him with something like envy. 'A higher one than mine. If you play this game right, you could replace Suleiman himself.'

Duffy laughed derisively and gulped some beer, using the motion to let his hand fall nearer his dagger. 'I hate to be the first to tell you you're crazy, John. If I am.' He strove to keep his tone light while trying to guess the position of the other man's gun. 'Why should Ibrahim want me to replace the Sultan? The greatest Sultan the Ottomans have ever had! This really is madness. And I can just imagine the delight the Turks would exhibit at being led by an Irishman. Ho ho.'

'Much the same, I imagine, as their delight at having an orphan from Parga appointed Grand Vizir over Ahmed Pasha, who'd deserved the post for years. These things do happen, and the next step is always unimaginable until it's occurred.'

Can I flip this table over before he can pull the spark rasp of his gun? Duffy wondered. Probably not. 'Why me, John?' he stalled. 'Why Brian Duffy from Dingle? You haven't explained that yet.'

Zapolya, for the first time during the conversation, looked disconcerted. 'Brian.. .honestly, don't you know who.. .what. . .you are?'

A wrenching thunderclap sounded from the rear of the building, and the windows rattled furiously. Ladies screamed, serving women dropped laden trays, and Zapolya instinctively half-turned in his chair. Duffy leaped to his feet, overturning the table on the Hungarian, whose pinned gun sent a lead ball splintering into the floor between Duffy's boots.

There were screams and sword clangs from the back alley, and a fog of gunpowder smoke blew through the kitchen into the dining room, where the beer-fuddled crowd had united in a desperate, shouting rush for the front door. Duffy was knocked sprawling by a fat lady

who was bulling her way through the press, and he lost sight of Zapolya.

'Bluto!' Duffy yelled. 'Aurelianus, anyone! Grab that Spaniard! He's Zapolya!'

No one heard him, and by the time he'd kicked and cursed his way clear of the shouting crowd, the Hungarian was nowhere to be seen. The Irishman gritted an oath and ran through the smoke-fogged kitchen.

The stableyard beyond was all aglare, lit by a furiously burning haywagon that sat on its collapsed axles in the middle of the yard. A great gap had been torn in the back fence, and through it he could see flames licking about among a scattered rubble-heap that had been a leather shop that afternoon. Bugge' s Vikings fingered the grips of their bared swords and kept wary eyes on the shadows; and after a moment the Irishman noticed three bodies sprawled on the paving stones.

'Aurelianus!' he called. 'Bluto! Damn it, we can still catch him!'

'Who?' asked Aurelianus, who had followed him through the kitchen and now stood wringing his hands behind Duffy.

'Zapolya! He was here. Take a horse and race to the north gate. I'll take the Carinthian gate. Have them close it and let no one out.' Duffy had seized a wild-eyed horse as he spoke, and now scrambled up onto its bare back. 'Go!' Not pausing to see if the trembling old man obeyed him, Duffy put his heels to his mount's ribs and galloped out of the red-lit yard.

Bluto cut another notch in the candle's rim and watched the hot wax spill down the side. 'Anna,' he said. 'Another cup of bock.'

'It's after ten, you know.'

'I know.' The hunchback looked around the dining room. Most of the revellers had trickled back, but the room's warmth had been let out, and the chilly air reeked of gunpowder - it was a more subdued crowd gulping the beer now.

At the same moment, Duffy strode in from the kitchen and Aurelianus pushed open the street door. Both men looked tired and less than pleased. Without looking at each other they pulled up a chair and a bench at Bluto's table.

'Uh, make that a pitcher, and two more cups, Anna,' the hunchback called. Duffy and Aurelianus nodded agreement.

'Did he leave through the Carinthian gate?' the old man asked after a minute of breath-catching. 'I've got the north one closed and triply guarded.'

Duffy nodded. 'He did. Three minutes before I got there. I followed him south for a half mile, but even in this moonlight I lost his tracks.'

Aurelianus sighed. 'Are you sure it was him?'

'Yes. I used to know him, remember? He came to entice me over to the Turkish side, and to blow this place up. By the way, Bluto, I believe the missing siege mortar is in the middle of that bonfire out back.'

'It is,' Bluto confirmed. 'You can see it through the flames.'

'I wonder,' Duffy sighed, filling a cup with the newly arrived beer, 'why they aimed the thing the wrong way. Was it all a bluff? But why bring the gun at all if that was the case?'

'It wasn't a bluff,' Bluto told him. 'When your north-men saw those four men roll the wagon into the yard, they told them, in Norse and sign-language, to get it the hell out of there. Zapolya's men told them to shut up, so the Vikings turned the wagon around themselves, intending to shove it back out into -the street. That started a fistfight, and apparently these haywagon boys were carrying fire-pots or slowmatches. One of them was knocked unconscious and fell into the hay. A minute later the wagon was in flames, and a minute after that the mortar let go, taking out the fence and two buildings on the next street. Your Vikings figured this was an unfair weapon, so they unsheathed their swords and killed the remaining three intruders immediately.'

Duffy laughed grimly. 'And I thought they'd never earn their keep.'

'He tried to entice you, you say?' Aurelianus asked, leaning forward. 'By what persuasions?'

'Crazy things. He talked like you frequently do, as a matter of fact. That stranger-things-are-possible-than-you-know sort of nonsense.' Duffy refilled his mug. 'He said if I went along and signed up, that Ibrahim would make me Sultan and just depose old Suleiman, I guess.' He shook his head and sighed with genuine regret. 'Poor old John. I remember him before he lost his mind.'

Aurelianus was deep in thought. 'Yes,' he said finally, 'I can see what Ibrahim must have had in mind. A wild gambit indeed! Zapolya's mission was to buy you over or, failing that, to kill you. And to blow up this inn in any case.

'Ibrahim could have sent a better messenger,' Duffyobserved. 'John never got around to mentioning money.

Aurelianus stared at him. 'Money? He offered you the third highest position in the Eastern Empire!' He shook his head. 'Oh hell. I don't know; maybe it's a good thing you persist in regarding these matters in such a mundane light. Maybe that's your strength.'

'Ibrahim wants Duffy here for a sultan?' Bluto snickered, 'I thought sultans were supposed to be teetotallers.'

The Irishman wasn't listening. 'He did seem a little . . .at a loss, right at the end, like a man offering gold coins to a savage whose tribe barters only hides and fish. He said,

"Do you honestly not know who you are?" and then that gun went off.' He turned hesitantly to Aurelianus. 'Do you think...you don't think...Ibrahim really sent him? To offer me... that?'

Aurelianus looked away. 'I can't be sure,' he said, but Duffy got the impression that the old man's uncertainty was feigned.

'Who am I, then? What did he mean by all that?'

'You'll know soon enough,' Aurelianus said pleadingly. 'This is the sort of thing it's no use telling you about until you've more than half figured it out already. If I explained everything now, you'd laugh and say I was crazy. Have patience.'

Duffy was tired, or he might have pursued the point. As it was, he just shrugged: 'Let it lie, then. I'm fast losing interest in all this anyway.' 'His decision to flee with Epiphany had given him a pleasant sense of dissociation with all of Aurelianus' schemes and theories. 'More beer here, Anna! This pitcher's suddenly empty. Oh, by the way, Aurelianus, when do they draw the Herzwesten Dark?'

Aurelianus blinked. 'Who in hell have you been talking to? Bluto, would you leave us for a moment? This is a private business.

'Certainly, certainly!' Bluto stood up and went to another table, intercepting, to the Irishman's chagrin, the new pitcher.

'Who,' Aurelianus asked earnestly, 'told you about the Dark?'

'Nobody told me. I-heard a noise in the cellar and found some red-haired fellow wandering around down there. I followed him through the door in the wall, and saw that huge vat. Is all Herzwesten beer drawn from that?'

'Yes. Do you.. .have any idea who he was?' The old man's voice quivered with suppressed excitement.

'Me? No. He disappeared in the vat room. I looked all

over for a secret door, but couldn't find one.' Duffy laughed. 'I figured he must have been a ghost.'

'He was. Did he speak?'

'No. You've seen him yourself?' Duffy didn't relish the ghost idea, and wanted to establish the intruder's identity.

'I'm afraid I haven't. I've only heard him described by those who have.'

'Who,' Duffy asked, 'is he?'

Aurelianus sat back. 'I'll tell you that. But first let me mention that the vat you saw has been in operation ever since this brewery was started three and a half thousand years ago. Parts of it have been replaced, and it's been enlarged twice, but we. they.. .always kept the beer that was in there. It's a lot like the solera method of blending sherry. We pour the new wort in at the top and draw the beer out further down, so there's always a blending and aging process going on. In fact, there are probably still traces of the first season's barley in there, thirty-five hundred years old.'

Duffy nodded civilly, reflecting, though, that the surest way to get Aurelianus to talk about chickens was to ask him about cheese.

'Ordinarily,' Aurelianus went on, 'such a vat would have to be cleaned annually. We've avoided that necessity by leaving out the bottom boards entirely, so that the staves, and the beer, rest directly on the naked earth.'

Duffy gagged and set down his cup. 'You mean the beer is mixed right in with the mud! God help us, I never thought -'Relax, will you? The beer seeps down into the dirt, yes, but the dirt doesn't rise. We don't stir it. We just gently drain off the beer at various levels, and the mud isn't riled. Have you ever tasted better beer?'

'Well, no.'

'Then stop acting like a kid who just learned what tripes are.' The old man squinted critically at Duffy. 'I hope you're ready for all this. You ask questions and then get all upset at the beginnings of an answer.'

'I'll be quiet,' Duffy promised.

'Good enough. The man you saw was a ghost. Sorry. When you saw him he was returning to his grave.' He leaned forward again. 'By Llyr, I'm going to give it to you direct - it was the ghost of Finn Mac Cool, returning to whatever remains today of his earthly dust. Finn is buried, you see, six feet directly below that fermenting vat.'

Duffy blinked. 'And there's no bottom to it? He must be absolutely dissolved in beer.

'Right. And the beer upward is saturated with his ...essence and strength, the lower levels most strongly.'

'Then this Dark, being the lowest, must be nearly Finn-broth.'

'Spiritually speaking, that's right,' Aurelianus agreed. 'Though physically it's just unusually heavy, superaged beer. Don't get the idea that it clots, or that we get bones and teeth clogging the spigot.'

'Oh no!' Duffy said airily, though privately resolving never to drink any of it. 'So when is it drawn? I've never heard even a hint of it.'

'That's because the last time the Dark was drawn was in the year 829; when the Sons of poor Emperor Louis were turning against him, as I recall. We'll draw it again on the thirty-first of October of this year. That's right, we let every drop of Dark age seven hundred years.'

'But good Lord,' Duffy exclaimed, 'beer can't age that long. Brandy or claret couldn't age that long.'

'Well,' Aurelianus admitted, 'you can't really call the stuff beer after all that time, that's true. It becomes something else. Something similar in many ways to the wine you drank in Bacchus' tavern, in Trieste. And you

noticed, I assume, that the Dark spigot was only a few inches above the dirt floor? Only the next three or four inches above that are drawn at a time, so the Dark is always a terribly limited quantity.'

'Is there much demand for it?' Duffy asked, certain that there couldn't possibly be.

'Yes.. .but not from beer drinkers. Because of its, ah, source, the Dark is very potent stuff, psychically, spiritually.. .magically. Physically too, as a matter of fact - it often shows levels of alcohol content theoretically impossible from a natural fermentation process. Anyway, yes,, much more demand than the meagre supply can-accommodate. It, in fact, is what Antoku wanted from me - a cupful of it to maintain the life he should have given up a thousand years ago. He was killed as an infant in a Japanese sea-battle, you see. I did let him have a cupful last time -, He halted and glared defensively at Duffy; then smiled awkwardly, coughed and went on. 'In any case, he thinks it is now his right. He is, I'm afraid, incorrect. And all the other Dark Birds, the Ethiopian, the several Hindus, the New World aborigine and the rest of them, they too hope for a sip of it, and some of their cases are nearly as desperate as Antoku's. But they won't get any, either.'

'Who will you give it to?' Duffy asked, beginning in spite of himself to get curious about the brew. After all, he thought, that wine in Trieste was very nice.

'Antoku evidently thinks I intend to give it to you,' said Aurelianus, 'since he set those afrits onto you. Or maybe that was supposed to be a warning to me that he could kill someone even more vital.'

'Uh huh. So who does get it?' Evasion is this man's second nature, the Irishman reflected.

'This time? Our King - the Fisher King. I told you, didn't I, that he's ill? And so is the West. Which way the connection works I'm still not certain, but the connection works I'm still not certain, but the connection unarguably exists; when the King is well, the West is well.'

'And this beer will cure him?' asked Duffy, trying to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

'Yes. Our King is weakened, injured, his strength dissipated - and there's the strength and character of Finn, the first King, in the Dark. He'll be able to put his lands in order again.'

'And you'll draw the stuff in October? Can't you do it a bit early? After all, when you're talking about seven centuries, a few months one way or the other...'

'No,' said Aurelianus. 'It can't be hurried. The cycle has to come round completely, and there are stars and tides and births to be taken into account as much as fermentation and beercraft. On October thirty-first we'll draw the Dark, and not a day before.' He raised worried eyes to Duffy. 'Perhaps you can see now why Ibrahim is so anxious to destroy the brewery before then.'

At two in the morning the remainder of the crowd was sent home, and the lights were put out as the employees, having decided the clean-up could wait until the next morning, stumbled off to bed. Duffy took a walk out back, but all fires had been put out, his northmen snored peacefully in the stable and there was no evidence of smoldering bombs, so he went back inside.

Somehow he wasn't sleepy, in spite of having slept only four hours the night before, and all the drinking and running around of this evening. He sat down at his table in the dark dining room. As usual, he thought, Aurelianus managed to duck the question I most wanted an answer to, which is: Who or what am un this vast scheme? Why has everyone from Ibrahim to Bacchus taken an interest in me?

He silently lifted his chair further back into the shadows

then, for he heard two low voices in the kitchen conversing in Italian.

'Is there any word from Clement?' asked one.

'As a matter of fact,' replied the other, 'it looks like he will send troops this time. He's even trying for some kind of temporary truce with Luther so that the West can unreservedly unite against the Ottoman Empire.'

The two speakers emerged from the kitchen and started up the stairs without noticing Duffy. One was Aurelianus and the other was the swarthy, curly-haired young man, Jock, who'd pulled his hat down over his face when Duffy had passed him earlier in the evening.

Huh! the Irishman thought; didn't Aurelianus tell me in Venice that he didn't speak Italian? And speaking of Venice, it was there I first saw this Jock fellow, who introduced himself, that Ash Wednesday evening, as Giacomo Gritti. What connections are these?

The sorcerer and the young man ascended the stairs, and their whispering voices died away above. Those two are working together, then? Duffy mused. That would explain why young Gritti saved my life and directed me to a safe ship, that morning on the Venice docks, though it certainly doesn't shed any light on the ambush he and his brothers sprang on me the night before. Unless that fight was somehow staged...?

One thing is sure - I've been lied to a number of times, and can't even guess why. I don't like it when strangers pry into my affairs, but I absolutely can't bear it when they know more about my affairs than I do myself.

He stood up and walked to the servants' hall, picking up an empty beer mug on the way.

He placed his feet carefully on the cellar stairs as he descended them so as not to awaken the sleeping Gambrinus, and then padded cautiously across the stone floor to the door the ghost had gone through that afternoon. The hinges must have been recently oiled, for they didn't squeak when the Irishman slowly drew the door open. He groped his way to the huge vat in the pitchy blackness, and then felt for the lowest of the three spigots. It turned grittily when he exerted some strength; then when he judged he'd drawn half a cup he shut the valve and, closing the vat-room behind him, hurried up the stairs to the dining room.

He lit the candle at his table and peered suspiciously at the few ounces of thick black liquid that swirled in the bottom of the mug. Looks pretty vile, he thought. Then he sat down, and even without bringing the cup to his nose be smelled the heady, heavily aromatic bouquet. God bless us, he thought rapturously, this is the nectar of which even the finest, rarest bock in the world is only the vaguest hint. In one long, slow, savoring -swallow he emptied the cup.

His first thought was: Sneak downstairs, Duffy lad, and fill the cup this time. He got to his feet - or tried to, rather, and was only able to shift slightly in his chair. What's this? he thought apprehensively; I recover from a lifetime's worth of dire wounds only to be paralyzed by a mouthful of beer? He attempted again to heave himself out of the chair, and this time didn't move at all.

Then he was moving - no, being carried. He was exhausted, and a frigid wind hacked savagely through the joints in his plate armor. He rolled over, moaning with the pain in his head.

'Lie still, my King,' came a tense, worried voice.

'You'll only open your wound again if you thrash about so.,

He groped chilly fingers to his head, and felt the great gash in his temple, rough with dried, clotted blood. 'Who.., who has done this?' he gasped.

'Your son, King. But rest easy - you slew him even as he dealt you the blow.'

I'm glad of that, anyway, he thought. 'It's frightful

cold,' he said. 'My feet are as numb as if they belonged to someone else.'

'We'll rest soon,' came the voice of the attendant. 'When we reach the bank of yonder lake.'

He painfully raised his head from the pallet on which he was being carried, and saw ahead a vast, still lake reflecting the full moon. After a while he was set down by his two panting companions, and he could hear water splashing gently among rocks and weeds, and could smell the cold, briny breath of the lake.

'My sword!' he whispered. 'Where is it? Did I -'Here it is.' A heavy hilt was laid in his hand.

'Ah. I'm too weak - one of you must throw it into the lake. It's my last order,' he added when they began to protest. Grudgingly, one of them took the sword and strode away through the shadowy underbrush.

He lay on the ground, breathing carefully, wishing his heart wouldn't pound so. My rushing blood is sure to force the wound open again, he thought, and I'll die soon enough even without that.

The attendant came back. 'I've done as you said, Sire.'

Like hell, he thought. 'Oh? And what did you see when you threw it in?'

'See? A splash. And then just ripples.'

'Go back, and this time do as I said.'

The man shambled away again, confused and embarrassed. It's the jewels in the hilt, the dying man thought. He can't bear to think of them at the bottom of the lake.

The attendant looked subdued and scared when he returned this time. '1 did it, Sire.'

'What did you see?'

'A hand and arm rose out of the water and caught the sword by the grip, before it could splash, whirled the sword three times in the air, and then withdrew below the surface.'

'Ah.' He relaxed at last. 'Thank you. I want to leave no debts.'

A boat rocked at the edge of the water now, and a woman in muddy shoes leaned worriedly over him.

'Our son has killed me,' he told her, controlling his chattering teeth long enough to speak the sentence.

'Put him aboard my boat,' she said. 'He's not long for this world.'

He awoke frightened, on a hardwood floor, not daring to move for fear of attracting the notice of something he couldn't name. It was dark, and he didn't want to rouse his memory. Whatever has happened, he thought, whatever this place is, whatever is the name of my enemy - and myself - I'm better off ignorant of them. If I know nothing, admit nothing, acknowledge nothing, perhaps they'll leave me alone at last, and let me sleep. He drifted again into treasured oblivion.

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