Chapter Seventeen

He found her in the flour-dusty storeroom, sitting on a keg of salt and sobbing so convulsively that it looked as if a pack of invisible dogs was mauling her.

'Epiphany?'

She turned a tear-streaked face up toward him, then looked away, crying harder than before. 'Why did you come back?' she asked finally. 'Just to make me lose this job?'

'Hey, Piff,' Duffy said. 'Don't cry. Werner can't fire you; it's Aurelianus who owns the place, and I've still got influence with him. Hell, I'll tell him to give you a raise.

'Don't,' the old woman choked, 'mention the name ...of that little snake.'

'What little snake?' Duffy asked, bewildered. 'Aurelianus?'

'Yes. He's the one that put... some kind of filthy spell on you, to make you indifferent and cold toward me. Ohhh.' She went off into howls of grief again.

Duffy considered it unfair of her to switch the subject around like that. 'It's Werner we're talking about,' he said. 'And I'll see to it that he behaves himself in the future.'

'What do I care about the future?' Epiphany moaned. 'I have no future. I'm counting the hours until the Turks cut down the wails and knock my head off.' Duffy guessed she'd said that last sentence so often lately that she didn't

even bother to get the verbs in the right order anymore. 'I haven't even seen my father in two weeks,' she said brokenly. 'I simply intended to abandon him when you and I left.. .and now, remembering that, I just can't face him anymore!'

'Good Lord,' Duffy said. 'Who's bringing him food, then?'

'What? (sniff) Oh, I've got Shrub doing it.' She looked up at him blearily. 'Brian, if you do talk to that horrible Aurelianus, could you have him speak to Werner about my brandy? I've always been in the habit of having just a sip before I go to bed and when I get up in the morning, to help me work, you know, but now Werner insults me and says I can't have any, so I have to sneak it when no one's looking, which is so degrading. As if Werner ever does any work himself - he's always hidden away talking to that damned poet friend of his. Talk to him about it, Brian. You'll do at least that for me, won't you?'

The Irishman stared at her thoughtfully. Is this a gambit, he wondered, a story to make me feel properly guilty? Oh, Brian, look, you've driven me to drink, you heartless wretch. Is that what I'm supposed to understand?

My God, he thought suddenly, listen to yourself, Duffy. You are a heartless wretch. This old girl was quietly happy here until you showed up and made crazy promises to her that you couldn't keep. You have driven hereto drink.

He reached out a hesitant hand and lightly squeezed her shoulder. 'I'll talk to him,' he said softly, and left the room.

Anna was in the kitchen, and looked up when, simultaneously, Duffy appeared from the storeroom and Mothertongue stepped in from the yard.

'Where is - ' both men began at once.

'After you, sir,' said Mothertongue.

Thank you. Anna, where is Werner?'

'The same place he was before all the racket and weeping brought him out here a few minutes ago: his private wine cellar.' As the Irishman turned in the direction she'd pointed, she added, 'I wouldn't just barge in; that poet Kretchmer's in there with him - they're writing an epic or something, and won't have interruptions.'

'They'll have one,' Duffy predicted, walking on.

Behind him he heard Mothertongue ask, 'Where did Mrs Hallstadt go? She isn't out in the yard.'

'She's in the storeroom,' replied Anna tiredly.

Duffy paused and looked over his shoulder at Mother-tongue, who, facing the storeroom door, had paused to look back at him. The two men stared at each other for a second or two, then thoughtfully resumed moving in their separate directions.

The Irishman had never been in Werner's wine cellar, but he knew it was tucked under the main stairs, a step or two below floor level, and in a moment he stood before the low door, his hand raised to knock. Before he did, Though, it occurred to him that there was no reason to be polite - so he just grabbed the latch and yanked the door open.

The low-ceilinged room beyond was perhaps twelve feet long by eight wide, and bottles, casks and amphorae cluttered the shelves from floor to ceiling, softly lit by a lamp on the small table in the middle of the floor. Two men who had been sitting at the table had now sprung halfway up from their chairs, startled by Duffy's entrance, and he stared at both of them.

Werner was a bit heavier than Duffy remembered him, and his unusually fine clothes only served to set off the powdered pallor of his face and the gray in his oiled hair. Kretchmer was a tougher-looking man, his face tanned behind a startling red beard, but he was the one who seemed most upset.

'Ach! the poet exclaimed in a high, hoarse voice, staring nervously at the Irishman's feet. 'Common ruffians interrupt the sacred labors! A man of bloody hands intrudes into Aphrodite's very grove! I must avaunt!' He edged past Duffy, eyes still downcast, and hurried away down the hail.

Werner resumed his seat and threw up his hands. 'Can art not be wrought without all these mundane distractions?'

Duffy stared at him. 'What?'

Werner took a deep breath, then let it out. 'Never mind, Duffy. What do you want?'

The Irishman looked at the littered table and picked up a little wooden whistle that had only one fingerhole. 'Don't tell me: you're composing a musical High Mass.' He blew through it, but failed to get any audible note. 'I'd recommend a new pitch-pipe.'

Werner got up from the table and, with much suppressed wincing, limped around the table and snatched the whistle from Duffy's hand, then just as awkwardly returned to his chair. 'Was there something you wanted to say, or are you just bored?'

Duffy started to ask about the innkeeper's injuries, then remembered why he'd come.

'I want to tell you that you can't fire Epiphany Vogel. You -'

'I can do as I please in my place.'

The Irishman smiled arid sat down in Kretchmer's chair. 'That's the crux of it, all right. How is it that you keep forgetting this isn't your place? Aurelianus owns it, and he's an old friend of mine. He won't -'You've been gone half a year. I don't think he's a friend of yours anymore. And in any case,' he added with sudden heat, 'I run this place, damn you! I have my finger on the pulse at all times. He listens to me when it comes to operating the inn. Do you think he could do it himself, without me? No sir! The little old -'

Duffy laughed. 'Finger on the pulse? I like that! This place must be able to run itself, for as I recall you're hardly ever on the premises. You're always over at the house of that caricature of a poet. Hell, I remember Easter night, when Zapolya nearly blew this inn to bits - and you hadn't even heard of it the next morning! You were over at his place.. .quoting Petrarch and kissing Kretchmer's boots, I expect...'

Oddly, a sly look had sprung up in the innkeeper's eyes. 'Well.. .it wasn't exactly his boots.'

The Irishman squinted at him. 'What the hell do you mean?'

'Well, if you must know, Kretchmer wasn't home that night - but his wife was.' Werner smirked. 'His marvellously young and attractive wife, I might add.'

Duffy was genuinely puzzled. 'Do you mean to tell me his wife.. .and you...?'

'I say nothing!' exclaimed Werner, still smirking. 'I merely observe that sensitive, pretty young ladies tend to be swayed by the sort of verse I write. Swayed to an astonishing degree.' He actually winked.

Duffy stood up, somewhat surprised and disgusted.

Swayed right over to horizontal, I gather. Where was Kretchmer when all this wonderful stuff was going on?

Over here swigging the new bock, I suppose.'

'Possibly. I only know she gave me to understand he'd not be back until morning, at the soonest.'

if you'll excuse me,' Duffy said, waving at the papers on the table, 'I'll leave you to your epic now, and - vacate poor Aphrodite's grove. But Epiphany still works here, do you understand? And she's permitted to keep a bottle of brandy in her room. I'll have Aurelianus trot down presently and confirm it for you.' He walked to the door and turned around. 'You know, you'd better be careful. Have you taken a good look at the shoulders on that Kretchmer fellow? Damned wide, for a poet. He could rip you to hash.'

The powdered innkeeper chuckled confidently. 'I am not physically unfit. In fact, I have consistently beaten him at arm-wrestling.'

Duffy paused another moment, then shrugged. 'You'd know best,' he said, and left, closing the door behind him.

There's no way, he thought as he headed back to the kitchen, that Werner could honestly beat Kretchmer at arm-wrestling; either Werner lied or Kretchmer voluntarily allowed himself to lose. And why would he do that? And why - weirder still - would the wife of a big, healthy-looking fellow like that be attracted to the likes of Werner? And why do you bother your head about it? he asked himself impatiently.

He found Anna scraping a pile of chopped, dried meat off a board into a pot. 'Genuine beef,' she announced when she looked up and saw him. 'Most of the inns have been serving dog and cat since before the weekend, though not calling it that, of course. We were better stocked - we'll have real pork and beef till about Thursday.' She laughed wearily. 'And even then we'll probably keep our integrity, because there won't be any dogs or cats left.'

I've been in long-besieged towns where even the rats were all eaten,' Duffy said softly, 'and we ate ants, termites and cockroaches. Some ate worse things.'

Anna put on a fair imitation of a bright smile. 'Really? I must say this does open up whole vistas for a revised menu.

He hooked a thumb at the storeroom. 'Piff still in there?'

'Well,' she answered cautiously, 'yes...'

He pushed the door open quietly so as not to startle her, and saw her and Lothario Mothertongue sitting together

on one of the few remaining hundred-pound sacks of flour. They were talking in low mutters and Mothertongue was stroking her hair. The Irishman closed the door as silently as he'd opened it.

He stood beside Anna and watched her chop an onion and then dice it. 'How long has that been going on?'

She scooped up the white bits and flicked them off her hand into the pot. 'A few days. It seems like everybody's behavior has changed during these last two weeks.'

'Do tell. Well, I'll still speak for her to Aurelianus.' 'Now there's generosity!'

He nodded. 'Biting, Anna, very biting. Rest assured I'm cut to the quick. Where will I find him?'

'Hell, I'm sorry. In the old chapel, probably. He spends a lot of time in there, doing all kinds of peculiar things with weights and pendulums and little tops like the ones Jewish children play with. And any time there's a bit of sun he'll be waving a little mirror out one of the windows. Like he was signalling, you know, but it's a windowless, high-walled court out there - the only ones who could see the flashes would be birds overhead.'

'That's the sort of thing these magicians like to do,' Duffy told her. 'See you later.'

The long hail to the western side of the inn was just as dark at mid-day as at night, and it took Duffy several minutes to grope his way through its length of varying height, width and flooring all the way to the two tall doors of the chapel. He had been hearing voices for the last hundred feet, and now saw that one of the iron doors was ajar.

Though he couldn't hear distinct words, there was something in the tone of the voices that made him cover the last few yards silently, his hand dropping to loosen his dagger in its scabbard. The same piles of boxes and stacked mops obstructed the doorway, and he carefully sneaked around the side so that he could peer into the

chapel from between two inverted metal mop buckets set atop a stack of ancient carpet rolls.

Though the light through the stained glass windows was gray and dim, Duffy's long grope through the dark hail had made his eyes sensitive to the slightest illumination. The tableau he saw at the altar looked, he thought, like the frontispiece of a treatise on some League of Outlandish Nations; of the six - no, seven - men confronting Aurelianus, two were blacks (one in feathers, the other in a long robe and a burnoose), one was the copper-skinned, leather-clad savage Duffy remembered seeing about the place five months ago, another seemed to come from the same far isles as had Antoku Ten-no, and the other three were apparently Europeans, though one was a midget.

'You've asked this before,' Aurelianus was saying with perhaps exaggerated patience, 'and I've answered before.'

The midget spoke up. 'You misunderstand, sir. We aren't asking any longer.'

Duffy softly drew his dagger.

'You'd take it by force?' Aurelianus was grinning. 'Ho! You're children with sticks coming to rescue a favorite lamb from a hungry lion.'

The black man in desert garb stepped forward. 'Two things, Ambrosius, are unarguably true. First, your power is severely circumscribed by the proximity of your inimical peer, Ibrahim, while our powers, though initially less, have remained undiminished - you are on nearly an equal footing with us now, and I don't think you could overcome all seven of us if we were to work together.'

'Were those both true things,' Aurelianus asked politely, 'or was it just one?'

'That was one. The second is this: Ibrahim will have this city, and he'll have it long before the thirty-first. The walls are tottering already, and there are fifty thousand fanatic Janissaries out on the plain waiting for a gap to run

in through. There's no way on earth this brewery will last these two weeks until All Hallows' Eve. Ibrahim will be in here in half that time, and he'll poison the Mac Cool vat, or more likely just blow it to splinters and vapor with a bomb. Do you understand? What you hoped to accomplish with the Dark is simply impossible.'

'I'm being a dog in the manger, you're saying.'

'Precisely. You would preserve the Dark beer untouched - which only means that Ibrahim will be able to destroy every last drop of it, thus insuring that it will never do anyone any good. On the other hand, if you sell some of it to us - at a fabulously high price, never fear!

- it will have served a purpose, two purposes, actually: it will have saved our lives; and out of gratitude we will help you and your King to escape from this doomed city. For though the Dark, if drawn now, would not have quite attained its full empire-redeeming strength, you know it would certainly be powerful enough to restore and rejuvenate a few old men.'

'What makes you think escape is possible for anyone?' Aurelianus asked. 'The Turks surround the city completely, you know.'

The midget spoke up again. 'You're not dealing exclusively with foreigners. Ambrosius. You and I both know half-a-dozen subterranean routes out of Vienna - one of them,' he added, nodding at the altar, 'accessible from this very room.'

Aurelianus stepped up onto the dais around the marble altar, giving the seven men the look of supplicants. 'The battle being fought here,' he said, 'is not the concern of any of you, for you have all dispensed with whatever allegiances you may once have had to East or West. My counsel to you is that you flee, by any of the routes your colleague here knows of - and bring water or wine to quench your thirst, for you won't have a drop of the Dark.'

'Very well,' said the black man in the burnoose, 'you force us to -'Don't talk, old man,' Aurelianus interrupted. 'Show me. Come up here.' He stepped back and spread his arms wide, and Duffy, peering from his hiding place, thought he could see the old sorcerer's hands flickering almost imperceptibly; like a mirage. The seven Dark Birds hesitated. Contempt put a sneer in the wizard's voice as he went on: 'Come up here, you children-playing-at-magic! Try your little spells and cantrips against the Western Magic that was growing in the roots of Britain's dark forests ten thousand years before Christ, the magic at the heart of storms and tides and seasons! Come up to me! Who is it I shall face?' He threw back his black hood. 'You know who I am.'

Duffy was actually brushed with tingling awe, for the gray light seemed to make ancient, weather-chiselled granite out of the face that looked down on them all. This is Merlin, the Irishman reminded himself, the last prince of the Old Power, the figure that runs obscurely like an incongruous thread through the age-dimmed tapestry of British pre-history.

The sorcerer reached out a hand - it wavered, as if seen under agitated water - and seemed to grab an invisible loop or handle, and pulled. The black man stumbled forward involuntarily. Aurelianus stretched forth the other hand toward the midget, whose hair Duffy saw twitch and stiffen at a straight-out angle; the wizard closed the fingers of that hand and the little man yelped in pain. 'I'm going to show you another way to leave Vienna,' Aurelianus said softly.

Then all seven of the Dark Birds were running for the doors, the two held ones having wrenched themselves out of Aurelianus' magical grip. Duffy scarcely had time to scuttle around to the other side of the carpet stack before they rushed past him and were sandal-slapping away down the hall.

He looked back at the altar, and saw Aurelianus staring at him. 'You appear out of a carpet, like Cleopatra,' the old wizard observed.

Duffy stood up and walked to the communion rail. 'I see Antoku wasn't the only one to get demanding,' he said. 'I'm glad I didn't ask for permission before snitching my sip of it.'

Aurelianus cocked an eyebrow at him. 'The Dark? You tasted it? When?'

'Easter night.'

The wizard frowned, then shook his head. Well, you wouldn't have been able to turn the tap if they didn't want you to have any.' He looked intently at Duffy. 'Tell me - how was it?'

The Irishman spread his hands. 'It was.. .incredibly good. I'd have gone down for more, but it seemed to paralyze me.

The old man laughed quietly. 'Yes, I've heard of it having that effect.' He crossed to a couple of narrow chairs by the windows, sat down in one and waved at the other. 'Drop anchor. Drink? Snake?'

Duffy thought about it as he walked over. 'Snake,' he said, and kicking his rapier out of the way, perched on the edge of the chair.

Aurelianus opened a little box and handed Duffy one of the sticklike things. 'You've been fighting these days. How does it look? Was our thirsty friend correct about the walls?'

The Irishman leaned forward to get the snake's head into the flame of the candle Aurelianus held toward him. 'They've got miners and sappers under them, yes,' he said when he'd got it well lit, 'but your blackamoor is wrong in thinking that it's decisive. You've got to keep in mind that October is insanely late in the year for the Turks to be here - as far as supplies go, I suspect they're in worse shape than we are, and they still have to turn around and face a damned long trip home.' He puffed a smoke ring, grinned, and tried without success to do it again. 'The walls could probably be tumbled in a day or two; the question is, do they dare wait another day or two? To say nothing of the - I'd estimate - additional day or two of street-to-street fighting that would be necessary for them actually to take the city.'

Aurelianus waited a moment, then raised his white eyebrows. 'Well? Will they dare it?'

Duffy laughed. 'God, I don't know.'

'Would you, if you were in charge?'

'Let's see - no, I don't think I would. Already the Janissaries are probably on the brink of mutiny. They'll be wanting to get back home to Constantinople - for it will take months for them to get home, and even now they've waited too long to hope to elude winter. If Suleiman stays for the - let's say - additional week it would require to break and seize Vienna, he'd almost have to winter right here, and leave in the spring; and that's long enough for even Charles the Tardy to do something about it.' He shrugged. 'Of course guessing is just guessing. He may think he could keep his Janissaries in line and hold the city till spring, crumbled walls and all. It's hard to say. I think he's shown inexcusably bad judgment in hanging on here as long as he has.'

Aurelianus nodded. I suppose you're right, militarily speaking.'

The Irishman grinned sarcastically. 'Ah. But I'm all wrong spiritually speaking, eh?'

'Well, you've got to remember that Ibrahim is the one who finally decides, and his first concern is ruining the beer - when it comes to betting on the last card, he doesn't really care if Suleiman actually takes Vienna, or if the Janissaries all die on the way home, or if Charles bloodily evicts them all from here during the winter. If he can wreck the beer before the thirty-first of this month, when we hope to draw the Dark and give it to the Fisher King, he'll have done what he set out to do - and no cost will have been too dear.'

The Irishman stood up, trailing smoke. 'Then we'll have to rely on the homesickness of the Janissaries.'

'Tell me, are Bugge's Vikings proving to be of any use in the defense?'

'Well, no. Von Salm says they're unsuited for disciplined warfare. I suppose they'll be useful if it does come to hand-to-hand fighting in the streets, but right now they're just sitting idle and frustrated in a leanto by the north barracks. You might as well have kept them living here.'

'I couldn't. It seems one of them mauled Werner and pitched him down the stairs, and he insisted they be thrown out. Bugge denied it, but Werner was adamant. Poor fellow still limps.' He tapped the ashen head off his snake. 'You know, I still have hope that they'll figure in this in some significant way. They were sent here so.. .purposefully...'

'They're a bunch of old men.

'Yes. This is a war of old men. Oh, I know Suleiman is only thirty-four, and Charles isn't yet thirty, but the conflict is old, the true kings are old - and I am perhaps the oldest of all.'

Unable to think of a reply, Duffy turned to leave.

'Will you have a drink with me tonight in my room?' Aurelianus asked.

'No,' said the Irishman, recalling what had prompted him to leave five months ago. Then he remembered the harp-playing episode of the previous night, and he shrugged fatalistically. 'Oh, why not,' he sighed, 'I'm not really due back at the barracks till noon tomorrow. What time?'

'Nine?'

'Very well.'

Duffy left the chapel and made his way back to the dining room. The Zimmermann was too far north and west to attract many soldiers these days, and it was haggard citizens that filled the tables around him. A new girl was working, and he signalled her.

'I'll have a bowl of whatever Anna's got in the pot,' he told her, 'and a flagon of Werner's burgundy - oh hell; forget the wine, make it a flagon of beer.' Speaking of Werner had reminded him that he'd intended to talk to Aurelianus about Epiphany's job. I'll tell him tonight, he thought. 'Say, does Bluto come in here anymore?'

'Who, sir?'

'The man in charge of the cannons. He's a hunchback.'

'I don't think so.' She smiled politely and went onto the next table.

Duffy sat quietly waiting for his beer, savoring the weirdly wheaty aftertaste of the snake - which he'd ditched before entering the dining room - and ignoring the curious stares of the citizens around him. When the beer came, he poured himself a mug and sipped it slowly. After a while he noticed Shrub helping to carry steaming plates out to the tables.

'Hey, Shrub!' he called. 'Come here a minute.'

'Yes, Mr Duffy?' said the stable boy when he'd delivered a plate and made his way to the table.

'You've been bringing food to old Vogel? Epiphany's father?'

'I did for a few days, but he scares me. He kept calling me by the wrong name and telling me to get liquor for him,'

'You don't mean you just stopped? Holy

'No no!' the boy said hastily. 'I got Marko to do it. He's not scared of crazy old men.'

'Marko? Is he the kid with the red boots?'

'Yes, sir,' assented Shrub, obviously impressed by the idea of red boots.

'Very well. Uh, carry on.'

Perhaps as an apology for her shortness with him earlier, Anna had the new girl carry out to Duffy a capacious bowl of the stew, and he laid into it manfully, washing it down with liberal draughts of cool Herzwesten Light. At last he laid down his spoon and struggled to his feet; he looked around the room, but there was no one in the scared-eyed crowd he knew to say good-bye to, so he just lurched to the front door and out into the street.

To the plodding Irishman the whole outdoors seemed far too bright - though gray clouds hid the sky and made a diffused glow of the sun - and the breeze was too cold, and the yells of the ragged children were unbearably loud. How many hours of sleep did you get last night, Duff? he asked himself. Well, I don't know, but it was something less than adequate for a tired middle-aged soldier with a primordial king riding on his shoulders like the Old Man of the Sea.

He sighed heavily, and turned right at the corner of the inn instead of pressing on toward the Rotenturmstrasse. Soon he had come round into the inn's stableyard, and he leaned on a clothesline pole for a few moments and looked reminiscently about.

I see Werner hasn't re-roofed the stalls that were blown up by that petard, he noted. I wonder if he still thinks I was responsible for that. Probably he does. At least somebody patched the fence where Zapolya's damned forty-pound iron ball passed through it. And over there's where the northmen were quartered.

He crossed the yard to the stables and saw that there were still several straw-filled bunks against the back wall. Almost without conscious thought he rolled into the lowest, closed his eyes and was soon asleep.

With the lucidity typical of afternoon dreams, he was sitting across a table from Epiphany. Her hair was still more dark than gray, and her expressions and gestures hadn't yet lost the careless spontaneity of youth.

Though he couldn't hear his own words - in fact could apparently only speak as long as he didn't try to listen to himself - he knew he was talking earnestly to her, trying to make her understand something. What was it he had been trying to make her understand, that long-ago morning? Oh, of course! That she'd be mad to go through with her planned marriage to Max Hallstadt - that she ought instead to marry Duffy. He paused in his speech for a sip of beer, and had a moment of difficulty in regaining the thread of his faultlessly logical argument.

'Oh, Brian,' she said, rolling her eyes in half-feigned exasperation, 'why do you only bring these things up when you're sick, drunk or tired?'

'Epiphany!' he protested. 'I'm always sick, drunk 'or tired!'

The scene flickered away, and he found himself shoving his way into the vestibule of St Peter's Church. Several of Hallstadt's friends were there, evidently posted for the specific purpose of keeping the Irishman out if he should attempt to get in and disrupt the wedding.

'Come on, now, Brian,' spoke one - what had his name been? Klaus somebody. 'You're not a part of this picture anymore.

'Out of my way, you poxy toad,' Duffy said, in a voice loud enough to turn heads in the nearer pews. 'Hallstadt! Damn your eyes, you won't -'A fist in his stomach doubled him up and, silenced him for a moment, but then he had lashed out with a punch of his own, and Klaus was jigging backward at an impossible-to-maintain angle, and colliding with the baptismal font...

The yard-tall pillar with its marble bowl tottered, leaned

- as Klaus rolled off to one side - and then went to the

floor-tiles with a terrible echoing crash. Holy water splashed up into the faces of appalled ushers, and shards of marble were spinning across the floor. Another of Hallstadt's friends seized Duffy by the arm, but the Irishman shook him off.

He took a step up the aisle. 'Hallstadt, you son-of-a-whore, draw your sword and face me if you're not the eunuch everyone takes you for!'

People were leaping to their feet, and he caught one glimpse of Epiphany's veiled, horrified face before a hardy altar boy felled him unconscious with a tall iron crucifix.

Then he was simply falling through a vortex of old scenes and faces, over the muted babble of which he could hear an older man's voice raised in strong, delighted laughter.

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