Chapter Twenty-one

The dirty water of the Wiener-Bach, agitated by the occasional spray of ripped-up earth or shattered stone, reflected the blasts of flame from the cannons on the battlements above, so that Duffy, standing by the bank a hundred yards north of the new gap in the wall, saw two flashes for each shot when he looked behind him. The Turkish guns returned fire, distant flares of red light in the gathering darkness.

'Back inside, all of you!' shouted Count von Salm from the battlements. 'They won't be coming back tonight -it looks like we're just going to trade shot for an hour or so.' As if to emphasize his words, there came the jarring thumps of a couple of Turk cannon balls falling short.

The three companies outside the wall trotted wearily south, and though Duffy tried to hold his position in the lead company, he fell gradually back and was among the last to stumble over the mounded jagged stones of the new gap. He heard a clanking, realized he was absently dragging his sword, and carefully sheathed it. It took some nicks today, he thought; I'll have to get them pounded out sometime.

Inside the wall the soldiers were gathering around a fire. Hey, Duffy!' barked a tired, dust-streaked Eiif. 'It's past six, and Vertot's crew will stand in the hole for a while. Come here and have a cup of mulled ale. You're looking bashed-about.'

The Irishman strode on stiff, aching legs to the fire, and sat down in front of it with a deep sigh. He accepted a cup of hot ale from someone and took a long sip, exhaled, and then took another.

'Ah,' he breathed, stretching like a cat after a minute of letting his muscles adjust to the luxury of sitting down. 'Well, you know, lads,' he said expansively, 'I wouldn't like an easy defense. It wouldn't give me the feeling my capabilities were being truly tested.'

The men paused from drinking and tying bandaged to laugh at that, for Duffy was paraphrasing an inspirational sermon a priest had made to the troops during a respite period that afternoon. There followed a few weak jokes speculating about the battle tactics that priest would probably employ, and how he'd be likely to disport himself afterward, and whether Suleiman's troops had to put up with similar speeches from God-knew-what sort of Mohammedan elders.

'Dead!' came a call from up the dark, rubble-choked street, extinguishing the men's good humor like a bucket of sand flung on a candle. 'Night call for the dead!' A creaking, high-sided cart appeared from the shadows, and no one looked at the grisly cargo stacked in it. The driver was gibbering garbled prayers between calls, and his eyes glittered insanely between his tangled hair and beard. Somehow, though, Duffy thought uneasily, I think I know that man.

A crew of anonymous laborers left off their attempts to clear the street of debris, and set about carrying the day's corpses to the wagon and flopping them into its bed. While this was going on the driver buried his face in his hands and wept loudly. Whoever he is, Duffy thought, he's clearly mad. The soldiers around the fire shifted uncomfortably, embarrassed and vaguely upset in the presence of lunacy.

'Why can't they get a sane man to do that?' one of them

whispered. 'We fight all day and then have to put up with this.'

'Listen,' said Eiif, wiping dust and ale from his moustache, 'he may have been sane when he started.'

The cart loaded at last, its tailgate was swung up and latched, and the vehicle squeaked and rattled away down the street, the driver once again voicing his melancholy cry.

• Duffy knew he'd seen the man before, but these days he was not one to prod sleeping memories. 'More ale here,' he said. 'Top everybody up, in fact, and heat another pot of the stuff.'

Gradually, with the telling of a few jokes and the singing of an old ballad or two, the group around the fire regained their cautions, fragile cheer. Most of the soldiers who'd fought that day had plodded away to the barracks immediately; but, the Irishman reflected, there are always a few who prefer to stay up and talk for a bit, and get some distance between themselves and the day's events before submitting to the night's dreams.

After an hour they began to yawn and drift away, and a light sweep of rain, hissing as it hit the fire, sent the remaining men trudging off to their bunks. Duffy had just stood up when he heard a sharp call: 'Who's that? Identify yourself or I'll shoot!'

A moment later he heard a scuffle, and then the bang and ricochet of a gunshot, and a burly, redbearded man burst out of a doorway under the wall and came pelting up the street, running hard.

'Guards ho!' came a shout from behind the fleeing man. 'Stop him! He's a spy!'

Wearily, the Irishman drew his sword and dagger and stood in the man's path. 'Very well, Kretchmer, you'd better hold it,' he said loudly.

The bearded fugitive whipped out a sword of his own. 'Stand aside, Duffy!' he yelled.

Two guards came puffing up from one of the side streets, and a sentry on the wall was taking aim with a smoldering harquebus the rain had not yet damped, so the fleeing spy ran directly at Duffy, whirling his sword fiercely. Just before they collided, the red beard fell away on a string and Duffy was surprised to glimpse the fear-taut face of John Zapolya. Knocked unharmed to the side, the Irishman mustered his faculties and aimed a backhand cut at Zapolya's shoulder. It landed, and the Hungarian gasped in pain as the blade-edge grated against bone, but he kept running. The wall sentry's gun went off but was badly aimed in the uncertain light, and the ball spanged off the street several yards away. Duffy started after the fugitive, but, off balance, he slipped on the rain-wet cobbles and fell, cracking his knee painfully on a stone. When he wincingly got to his feet Zapolya had disappeared up the dim avenue, pursued by two of the guards.

'God damn it,' Duffy snarled, hobbling to the shelter of a dry doorway.

Pounding hoofbeats echoed now from the same direction Zapolya had come from, and a moment later a horse and rider appeared and paused in the middle of the street. The' firelight was dimming in the rain, so it wasn't until the rider called for the guards that Duffy recognized him.

'Hey. Aurelianus!' the Irishman called. Zapolya was just here! He ran away up the street.'

The wizard wheeled his horse and goaded it over to where Duffy stood. 'Zapolya too? Morrigan help us. Did the guards go after him?'

'Yes, two of them.'

'Did you see Kretchmer? I was chasing him.'

'That was Zapolya! Look, that's his fake beard on the Street there.'

Mananan and Llyr! I wonder if Kretchmer has always been Zapolya.'

Duffy rubbed his knee and limped a step or two on it. 'Well, of course,' he snapped irritably. 'Think about it -remember, Werner said Kretchmer wasn't home, the night of Easter Sunday? That was the night Zapolya was at the Zimmermann with his siege bombard.'

Aurelianus shook his head. 'A false beard of all things.' He spat disgustedly. 'Follow me. What, have you hurt your leg? Hop up behind me here, then, we've got to get out of the rain and do some talking.'

Duffy swung up onto the horse's rump and they clopped down the street to the southern guardhouse, where they dismounted. 'Hey, Duff,' said the captain who opened the door, 'I saw you land one on that spy. Too bad you couldn't get some muscle into the blow, you'd have split him.'

'I know,' said Duffy with a rueful grin as he and Aurelianus clumped inside and pulled a couple of chairs to a table in the corner. 'What was he doing when the

-sentry challenged him?'

'He was trying to open that old ferrier's door,' the captain answered. 'The one that crazy man sneaked out through this noon. They bricked it up, but apparently nobody told old Redbeard; he was trying to pull the bricks loose when Rahn saw him.'

The Irishman and Aurelianus sat down and the captain returned with a jug of fortified wine he'd been working on. When he had left the room Duffy poured two cups and looked up at the sorcerer. 'What went wrong with your trap?'

Aurelianus gulped the liquor. 'I should have had a whole Landsknecht company. Kretchmer and Werner came back to the inn just a few minutes ago, and I let them scuttle halfway across the dining room before I gave the whistle that brought two armed men out of every door. I called to

the pair that they were under arrest. Werner just stood and shouted, but Kretchmer - Zapolya! - snatched up a chair and brained one of my men, then drew his sword and disembowelled another. The rest of them cornered him, but he jumped through a window and sprinted east, so I got a horse and came after him.' He topped up his cup. 'He's fast.'

'I know,' said Duffy. The rain drumming on the roof had found a hole, and a drop plunked into Duffy's wine. He moved the cup absently.

'Werner ran for the window when his mentor had gone through it,' Aurelianus went on, 'and one of my eager lads put three inches of sword into his kidney. I don't know if he'll survive or not.' He looked up at the Irishman, a hard speculation glinting in his eyes. 'There's something you have to do tonight,'

'You mean catch Zapola? Hell, man, he could simply hide and sneak out through one of the gaps, or lower a rope outside the wall at some secluded -'Not Zapolya. He's a played card.'

The roof-leak thumped its slow drum beat four times on the table top. 'What, then?' Duffy asked quietly.

Aurelianus was picking at the candle on the table now, not looking at Duffy. 'This afternoon I got to wondering just exactly what spells were in Becky's book. I have a-'

'What does it matter what spells were in it?' Duffy interrupted. 'You and Ibrahim have blocked all the useful types of magic, haven't you? That's what you keep saying.'

Aurelianus shifted uncomfortably. 'Well, all the major types, yes. But not, I'm afraid, the kind of barnyard conjuring Becky dealt in. Hell, in a tense cease-fire, do warring kings think to forbid pea-shooters? Anyway, I keep a bibliography of all my books, so I looked up Becky's. I'd listed the entire contents page of the book,

so I could see what each of her spells is supposed to do.' He looked at Duffy unhappily. 'One of them is how to fox beer.'

Duffy was tired, and staring at the widening puddle on the table, and not concentrating on Aurelianus' words. 'So?'

'So, you say? Are you even listening? How to fox beer! Have you ever seen - worse, tasted - foxed beer? It's ropy, thick, like honey; spoiled, undrinkable. Ibrahim, if he noticed that spell - and I think we'd better assume he did - can fox the Herzwesten vat, spoil the beer for decades, maybe forever! We might just be able to save the higher levels with hyssop and salt, but the bottom levels

- the Dark, do you understand? - would be hopeless.'

'Oh. That's right.' Duffy raised his eyebrows helplessly. 'I don't know what to tell you. Set up some shields against it now. Or draw a keg off and hide it somewhere. I certainly -'

'It would take at least twelve hours to arrange counter-spells - you think Ibrahim will wait? And hiding a keg of it won't do. For one thing it has to mature, right there, over old Finn's grave, and for another, the spell will ruin any beer within its range - every drop of beer in the city will go foul, wherever it's hidden.'

'Are you sure Becky's spells work?' Duffy asked, trying to be helpful. 'I've known a lot of country witches, and they were all out-and-out fakes.'

Aurelianus shook his head. 'They work. Becky was the real thing. We have only one hook for hope. She was, as you say, a country witch, and her spells have a range of only about a mile. Also, nearly all of them have to be performed at precisely noon or midnight. The natural laws that must be overcome are weakest at those moments.'

'So?' said Duffy stonily. By God, he thought, let him say it clearly.

The sorcerer pursed his lips and spoke harshly. 'Ibrahim will try it tonight. He knows he can't delay - for one thing, the moon's waxing, and Becky's spells were all dark-of-the-moon ones. And because of the limited range, he'll have to come up quite close to the walls to cast it. What you'll -'

Duffy swept the puddle on the table pattering onto the floor. 'You want me to go try to stop him? While you and the old King get ready to escape through the tunnels, I suppose, in case I fail. Well, listen while I tell you something: no. Think again. Get yourself another reincarnated hero.'

The captain, who'd apparently been dozing in the next room, leaned his tousled head in through the doorway, wondering at the anger in Duffy's voice. Aurelianus waited until he'd returned to his bench before replying. 'That is not what I'm proposing,' he said quietly. 'I.. .have decided that it would be best to make our final win-or-forfeit stand right here, in Vienna. It would, I'm afraid, be madness to think of falling back and re-grouping somewhere and hope for even half the advantage we've got here and now. After all, the Turks are at least several weeks behind schedule, and Ibrahim has failed to acquire Didius' Gambit, and we've unmasked - unbearded, I should say - what must have been their chief spy.'

Duffy refilled their cups. 'And on their side of the ledger: they can ruin the beer from outside the wall.'

'Yes, but we know they'll have to be pretty close, for the Zimmermann is nearly half a mile into the city from the wall. And we know he'll do it at midnight. If this beer-fouling trick of theirs works, then I believe they'll have won even if we could physically retreat; and if it fails they'll go home and the Dark will be drawn on schedule. Therefore I attach a lot of importance to the outcome of tonight's venture.' His pose of calm rationality fell away for a moment and he banged the wet table top with a fist. 'Alone, or even with a body of soldiers, you couldn't go out and fight Ibrahim. For one thing, he's got personal bodyguards, of the species you saw when we fetched the King into the city - oh, that's right, Arthur had the reins in that fight, you wouldn't remember them; but they'd be something like the two things that tried to hypnotize you back in April. Anyway, they'd laugh at your swords and guns - if they were the sort of creature that ever laughed.' Though clearly apprehensive, the pale sorcerer managed to smile. 'It's a big wager, but I don't think we'll ever have better odds. I have decided to break the deadlock.'

'Good God, you mean you'll use Didius' Gambit? Why, how can you even -'No. Since I choose to view this as the decisive incident

in the question of any continuing lifeline of the West, I've decided to.. .do the other thing.' He sighed. 'The Fisher King and I will accompany you tonight.'

Duffyfrowned. 'The three of us? And you and I holding either end of his stretcher? Not exactly an imposing attack force.'

'It won't be quite that bad. Von Salm would never let me have any troops, of course, for an unexplainable midnight sortie, but he did say once that he'd be grateful if I'd take Bugge and the other northmen off his hands.'

The Irishman stared at him in disbelief, then gulped some of the wine. He shook his head, laughing in spite of himself. His laughter grew like a rolling snowball, until he was leaning forward on the table and gasping, with tears running from the corners of his eyes. He tried to speak, but managed only, '...Parade. .. .damned clowns.. .funny hats.'

Aurelianus hadn't even smiled. 'So we won't be entirely alone,' he said.

Duffy sniffled and wiped his eyes. 'Right. And how many men will Ibrahim have?'

'Aside from his.. .bodyguards? I don't know. Not many, since of course he doesn't want to be seen.' He shrugged. 'And after the deadlock breaks - who can tell? A lot of sorcerous pressure has built up on both sides; both of the forces will change, out there tonight, when the King of the West joins the battle.'

After opening his mouth, Duffy decided not to pursue it. Instead he said, 'I'm not sure I'm even ready for these bodyguards.'

'No, you're not,' Aurelianus agreed. 'But you will be, when you're carrying the right sword. That blade you're wearing now is fine for poking holes in Turkish soldiers, but if you're going to face.. .well, those other things, you need a sword they'll fear, one that can cut through their flinty flesh.'

The Irishman saw Aurelianus' direction and sighed. 'Calad Bolg.'

Exactly. Now listen - you get some sleep, it's only about a quarter of eight. I'll -,

'Sleep?' Duffy's momentary mirth had evaporated completely. He felt scared and vaguely nauseated, and rubbed his face with his hands. 'Is that a joke?'

'Rest, at least. I'll fetch Bugge and his men, and the King, and get the sword, and come back here. We'd better head out at roughly eleven.'

Duffy stood up, wishing he'd left the fortified wine alone. Am I bound to do this? he wondered. Well, if Merlin wants me to.. .But why should I care what Merlin wants? Does he care what I want? Has he ever? Well, to hell with the old-wizard, then - you're still a soldier, aren't you? All the bright, vague dreams of a slate-roofed cottage in Ireland died last night, fell on a knife in a shabby room. If you aren't a soldier, my lad, dedicated to fighting the Turks, I don't think you're anything at all.

'Very well,' he said, very quietly. 'I'll try to get some rest.'

Aurelianus laid his hand briefly on Duffy's shoulder, then left. A moment later the Irishman heard the horse's hoofbeats recede away up the street.

Under the rain-drummed roof of a lean-to that had been added onto the side of the southern barracks, Rikard Bugge hummed a dreary tune and pounded his dagger again and again into the barrack wall. Soldiers, trying to sleep on the other side, had several times come round to the lean-to's door and tried to get him to stop, but he never looked up or even stopped humming. The other Vikings, sprawled on straw-filled sacks in the slant-roofed structure, stared at their captain sympathetically. They knew well what was bothering him. They had all come on a long and troublesome, if not particularly risky, journey in order to defend the tomb of Balder against Surter and the legions of Muspelheim; and they had found the tomb, and Surter was now camped not three miles south - but the men in charge would not let them fight.

So they'd languished for several months in this hurriedly built shed, oiling and sharpening their weapons more from force of habit than any hope of using them.

Wham. Wham. WHAM. Bugge's dagger-blows had been gradually increasing in force, and he put his shoulder into the final one, punching the blade right through the wall up to the hilt. There were muffled shouts from the other side, but Bugge ignored them and stood up to face his men.

'We have,' he said, 'been patient. And we are stowed here like chickens in a coop while the dogs go hunting. We have waited for Sigmund to lead us into battle, and all he does is drink and make the old woman at the inn cry. We have obeyed the wishes of the little man who masqueraded as Odin, and he mouths burning serpents and tells us to wait. We have waited long enough.' His men growled their agreement, grinning and hefting their swords. 'We will not be lulled into forgetting what Gardvord sent us here to do,' Bugge said. 'We will take action.'

'You have anticipated me,' Aurelianus said in his fluent Norse as he stepped noiselessly into the lean-to. 'The time for action, as you have observed, has arrived.'

Bugge scowled skeptically at the sorcerer. 'We know what needs to be done,' he said. 'We don't need your counsel.' The other Vikings frowned and nodded.

'Of course not,' agreed Aurelianus. 'I'm not here as an adviser, but as a messenger.'

Bugge waited several seconds. 'Well,' he barked finally, 'what is your message?'

The wizard fixed the captain with an intense stare. 'My message is from Sigmund, whom you were sent here to obey, as you doubtless recall. He has discovered a plot of the Muspelheimers to poison Balder's barrow by means of filthy southern magic, which Surter's chief wizard, Ibrahim, will perform outside our walls tonight. Sigmund will ride out to stop him, armed with Odin's own dwarf-wrought sword; he sent me to tell you that the period of waiting is at an end, and to arm yourselves and meet him two hours from now at the guardhouse down the street.'

Bugge let out a howl of joy and embraced Aurelianus, then shoved the wizard toward the door. 'Tell your master we'll be there,' he said. 'It may be that we'll have breakfast with the gods in Asgard, but we'll send Surter's magician to keep Hel company in the underworld!'

Aurelianus bowed and exited, then galloped away toward the Zimmermann Inn as a chorus of Viking war-songs began behind him.

Duffy was lying down on a cot the captain of the guard had told him he could use, but he was far from asleep, in spite of the extra cup of fortified wine the captain had insisted he drink. Odd, he thought as he stared at the low

ceiling, how I can't imagine death. I've seen a lot of it, cautiously flirted with it, seen it take more friends than I'll let myself think about, but I have no idea what it really is. Death. All the word conjures up is the old Tarot card image, a skeleton in a black robe, waving something ominous like an hourglass or a scythe. I wonder what we will be facing out there, besides wholesome Turkish soldiers. Ibrahim's bodyguards.. .1 don't remember the fight in the Vienna woods, but I suppose they'll be like the things that flew over me that night on the south shore of the Neusiedler Lake, speaking some eastern tongue, and destroyed Yount's hides-wagons.

Then his stomach went cold at a sudden horrible comprehension. Good Jesus, Duffy thought, that was hini. I had supposed, mercifully hoped, that he was dead. God only knows how old Yount escaped those demons and made his way, mad but alive, to Vienna, to be given the village idiot's job of driving the nightshift corpse wagon; to be still, by some ghastly cosmic joke, a dealer in hides. Recoiling from these thoughts, the Irishman cast his mind's eye back again to the skeletal image of death. I guess it's not so bad, he decided hesitantly. Clearly there are worse cards in the deck.

The floor creaked as someone padded into the room, and Duffy sat up quickly, making the candle flame flicker. 'Oh, it's you, Merlin,' he said. 'For a second I thought it might be... another very old, thin, pale, black-clad person.' He chuckled grimly as he stood up. 'Is it eleven?'

'Coming up on. Bugge and his men are outside, armed and ready to chop the Fenris Wolf to cat-meat, and the King is lying in the wagon bed. Here.' He handed Duffy the heavy sword, and the Irishman took off Eilif's old rapier and slid his belt through the loops on the scabbard of Calad Bolg.

'It'll probably weigh me down on one side, so I walk like

a ship wallowing in its beam ends,' he said, but actually the sword's weight felt comfortable and familiar.

Although the gutter in the middle of the street flowed deeply and roof spouts still dribbled onto the pavement, the rain itself had stopped. A wagon stood by the wall; Bugge's men waited for Duffy in a group on the street, and torches in the hands of two of them reflected in their slitted eyes and on their helmets and mailshirts. Their coppery blond hair and beards had been braided and thonged back out of the way, and their callused hands fingered the worn leather of their sword grips expectantly. By God, Duffy thought as he grinned and nodded a greeting to them, whatever Turkish hell is churning out there in the dark, I couldn't ask for a much better crew of men to face it with.. .though it would be handier if we had some language in common.

But that's silly, he thought a moment later. Aren't these Vikings? Don't they understand Norse? He barked a greeting in a Norse dialect so archaic that Bugge could barely phrase an equivalent reply.

Duffy stepped up into the wagon's braced rear wheel and smiled at the white-bearded old 'man sitting up in the bed with a rich-looking tapestried blanket over his legs. 'Good evening, Sire,' he said. 'A peculiar battle it is in which the soldiers stay home and the leaders go fight.'

The king chuckled. 'I think it makes more sense this way. It's the leaders that have the quarrel.' He stared more closely at the Irishman. 'Ah,' he said softly, 'I see that both of you are awake.'

Duffy cocked his head. 'Yes, that's true, isn't it? You'd think that would be.. .clumsy, like two men in one outsize suit of armor, but it's more like two perfectly matched horses in harness; each one knows without thinking when to take, over, when to help, and when to back off. I don't know why I spent so much time being afraid of this and trying to resist it.'

He hopped down onto the street and walked over to where the wizard stood. 'Do you know for sure that Ibrahim is out there?' he asked quietly. 'And if so, where? We can't just go calling for him.'

Aurelianus seemed both steadier and more tense than usual. 'He's there. Perhaps two hundred yards east of the northwest corner of the wall, behind a low, weedy bluff. I've had watchers on the walls since eight, and it was only twenty minutes ago that Jock got a positive sighting.'

'Did he see any.. .did he see them very clearly?'

'Of course not. They've got dark-lanterns, apparently, and he only caught a couple of reflected blue flashes. He claims he heard them rustling around, too, but I told him he was too far away for that.'

He waved vaguely to the north. 'I think we should go over the wall - lowering the King and me in a pallet and sling - at the east end of the Wollzelle, and then find a sheltered spot where the King and I can get busy on the magical offensive, while you and your Vikings make a dash straight east -

'No, no.' Duffy shook his head. 'Certainly not. A direct frontal attack? There's not even enough moonlight to keep us from tripping over shattered tree branches; it'd take us ten minutes to reach them, and they'd have heard us coming for nine.' Aurelianus started to speak, but the Irishman raised his hand. 'No,' Duffy said. 'We'll go over the wall near the north gate, cross one of the bridges over the Donau Canal and get to the little pier off the Taborstrasse where they've got Bugge's old Viking ship moored. Untying her will be easy and quiet enough, and then we'll all of us simply drift east down the canal. Our sails will be reefed, of course, to avoid being seen, and we'll use a couple of the oars as barge poles, to keep us clear of the banks. It's from the north, you see, that our attack will come, and with, I hope, no warning at all. That'll put you and the King among the canalside willows - a position that's both more secluded and closer to the action than any hillock on the eastern plain.'

The sorcerer bowed. 'Very well. Your idea is obviously better. You see my.. .ineptitude with matters of warfare.'

Duffy squinted at Aurelianus, suddenly suspicious. Had the old wizard intended from the start that they should attack by way of the canal, from the north, and only suggested a direct charge east so that the Irishman could gain some self-confidence by contradicting him?

Then Duffy smiled. Merlin was always devious, and it became a problem only at those rare times when his intentions differed significantly from one's own. He clapped Aurelianus on the shoulder. 'Don't feel bad about it.'

He waved at the northmen. 'Very well, then, lads, climb aboard!' he called. They just grinned and waved back, and the Irishman repeated his order in the Old Norse. Bugge translated it for his men, and they all clambered in, being careful not to kick or step on the King.

Duffy swung up onto the driver's bench and Aurelianus got up beside him. 'Everybody in?' Duffy asked. He took for assent the growls that came from the back, and snapped the long reins. The wagon rocked, wheeled about and then rattled away up the street. The two Vikings had extinguished their torches, and the street and buildings were palely illuminated only by a silvery glow that showed where the half moon hid behind the thinning clouds.

They all managed to climb unseen to the north wall catwalk, and with a couple of long lengths of rope and the aid of three of Bugge's men, the job of lowering the Fisher King to the ground outside proved to be much easier than Duffy had imagined. Aurelianus was lowered next, and Duffy and the northmen were about to follow when the Irishman heard, a dozen yards to the right, the rutch of a pebble turning under a boot.

He turned, and the flash, bang and whining ricochet were simultaneous. The lead ball had struck one of the merlons he'd been about to climb between. He froze.

'Nobody move, or the next one takes off a head,' came a shout from the same direction as the shot, followed by hurried footsteps.

'Don't move or speak;' the Irishman hissed in Old Norse. Bugge nodded.

'Oh, Jesus, it's Duffy!' exclaimed a voice Duffy recognized after a moment as Bluto's. 'Just what the hell are you doing, you troublesome son of a bitch?' Bluto hobbled up, accompanied by a burly guard who carried a fresh matchlock and blew vigilantly on the glowing end of the cord.

'That's 'a real quick-trigger man you've got there, Bluto,' Duffy observed mildly. The ball had struck so close to him that it was clear the man hadn't intended to miss.

'He was following orders, damn it,' snapped Bluto. 'All the sentries have been alerted that a spy was sighted and then lost in the city a few hours ago, and are ordered to stop anyone trying to go over the wall, and bring them, if still alive, to von Salm. I know you're not a spy, Duff, but I don't have any choice - you'll have to come with me.'

In the unsteady moonlight Duffy's eyes measured the distance from his right hand to the gun barrel; with a sideways lunge he might be able to knock it out of line. 'I'm sorry, Bluto,' he said. 'I can't.'

'It wasn't a suggestion. Brian,' the hunchback rasped. 'It was an order. To put it bluntly, you're under arrest.' The sentry took a step back, putting him out of Duffy's reach.

The Irishman heard the first notes of the bells of St

Stephen's tolling eleven o'clock. 'Look, Bluto,' he said urgently, 'I have to go out there. A sorcerous attack is building up out there on the plain, and if I, and my party, aren't out there when it starts, then things won't go too well for Vienna. You must have seen enough in the last six months to know that magic is playing a part in this struggle. I swear to you, as your oldest friend, who once saved your life and who carries a certain obligation in trust, that I have to go. And I will. You can permit it or you can have him shoot me in the back.' He turned to Bugge and gestured toward the rope. The Viking stepped up into the crenel, seized the rope and leaned outward, walking down the outside of the wall.

There was a scuffle and thud, and Duffy looked quickly around. Bluto was holding the long gun by the barrel with one hand, and with the other arm was lowering the unconscious sentry to the surface of the catwalk. He looked up unhappily. 'I hope I didn't hit him too hard. I don't know anything about any magic - but go, damn you. I've bought you some time with my neck.'

Duffy started to thank him, but the hunchback was walking away, and not looking back. Soon all the north-men had descended the rope, and Duffy climbed up and stood between the two bulky stone merlons.

As be looped the line behind his thigh and over his shoulder he sniffed the night air and wondered what quality had changed. Had a persistent sound ceased? A prevalent odor disappeared? Then he noticed the stillness of the air. That's what it is, he thought uneasily. It's stopped, the breeze that has blown from the west these past two weeks.

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