As he lurched up over the top, with the scuff and rattle of the pursuing akinji sounding loud behind him, he caught a glimpse of soldiers standing behind a line of what appeared to be narrow, chest-high tables, and he heard someone’s agonized yelclass="underline" “My God, dive for it, Duffy!”
He caught the urgency in the voice, and without pausing kicked forward in a long dive down the inward slope, ripping his leather gloves and banging his helmet and knees as he tumbled across the raw stones. Even as he moved, a quick series of ten loud explosions concussed the air in front of him like very rapid hammer-strokes; there followed two more stuttering blasts of ten, and then there was a pause.
Duffy had rolled to the gravelly bottom of the slope with his face down and his legs up, and by the time he’d struggled into a sitting position he realized what the tablelike things were—sets of ten small cannons braced together like log rafts, fired by putting a match to the trail of serpentine powder poured across all the touchholes. Orgelgeschutzen, the Austrians called them, though from his stay in Venice Duffy thought of them as ribaldos, their Italian name.
“Quick, Duff, get back here,” came Eilif’s voice. The Irishman got to his feet and sprinted ten yards to where the troops were clustered. “Why did you stay out there?” Eilif demanded. “You knew we were to fire two volleys and then fall back to let them run into the teeth of these things.” He waved at the ribaldos.
“I,” Duffy panted, “figured our retreat would look more convincing if a man or two hung on.”
The Swiss landsknecht raised a dusty eyebrow and stared hard at Duffy. “Really?”
There was another rush of akinji over the splintered barricade along the top, but it seemed disspirited; when two more bursts of the small-calibre cannon-fire whipped them apart, the survivors backed off fast, and a few seconds later the sentries on the wall called down the news that the akinji were retreating back toward their lines.
“Well of course really,” Duffy answered. “What did you think, that I just forgot?”
Eilif grinned. “Sorry.” He gestured at the new corpses on the crest and shrugged. “I guess it was a clever move.” He trotted away to the slope and began climbing up to see in what direction the Turks retreated.
The Irishman felt hot blood running down his side and gathering at his belt, and suddenly remembered the wound he’d taken. He pressed a hand to it and plodded through the reassembling ranks, looking for a surgeon. His mind, though, wasn’t on the sword-cut—in his head he was listening again to his brief dialogue with Eilif, and uneasily admiring his own quick improvisation. Because actually, he thought, your first suspicion was right, Eilif. I did forget. And what does that say about me?
The sun had risen above the eastern horizon, but the bulk of the ruined wall cast a shadow that was still dark enough to make readily visible the watch-fires up and down the street. Duffy stumbled about randomly until his eyes adjusted to the dimness, and very shortly he was surprised to see Aurelianus warming his hands over one of the fires. Their eyes met, so the Irishman reluctantly crossed the littered space of cobbles to where the wizard stood.
“Keeping the home fires burning, eh?” Duffy said with a pinched and artificial smile. “And what brings you so uncharacteristically close to the front line?”
“This is childish enough,” the wizard said bitterly, “without a theatrical rendition of ignorant innocence from you. What were you thinking, a—ach, you’re bleeding! Come here.”
Newly awakened soldiers were dashing up from the direction of the barracks, shivering in their chilly chain mail and rubbing their eyes, and other men were dragging the wounded back inside. Duffy sat down beside Aurelianus’ fire. The sorcerer had taken his medicine box out of his pouch and fished from it a bag that was spilling yellow powder. “Lie down,” he said.
Duffy brushed away some scattered stones and complied. Aurelianus opened the Irishman’s doublet and lifted his rusty mail shirt. “Why the hell don’t you keep your hauberk clean?” he snapped. “This doesn’t look too bad, though. He obviously didn’t lean into the thrust.” He tapped some of the powder into the wound.
“What’s that stuff?” asked Duffy, frowning.
“What do you care? It’ll keep you from getting poisoned, which is what you deserve, wearing a rusty hauberk.” He took a roll of linen from the box and expertly bandaged the wound, running strips around Duffy’s back to hold it in place. “There,” he said. “That ought to hold body and soul together. Get up.”
Duffy did, puzzled by the harshness in the wizard’s voice. “What—” he began.
“Shut up. I want to know about your little trick last night. What were you thinking, an eye for an eye, a girl for a girl?”
The Irishman felt something that might become a vast anger begin to build up in himself. “I don’t think I understand,” he said carefully. “Are you talking about my... the way I... the way Epiphany died?”
“I’m talking about your theft of my book, damn it, while I was pottering about in the chapel afterward. You will give it back.”
Sudden apprehension scattered the kindling of Duffy’s rage. His eyes widened. “Good God, do you mean Didlio’s Whirling Gambits or whatever it’s called? Listen, I didn’t—”
“No, not Didius’ Gambit.” Aurelianus was maintaining his offended frown, but his wrinkle-bordered eyes were beginning to look disconcerted. “I hid that Monday night, after talking to... you. No, I mean Becky’s book.”
“Who the hell—oh, that book your witch girlfriend gave you, three hundred years ago? I didn’t take it.” Duffy shrugged. “What would I want with the damned thing?”
Aurelianus’ expression held for another moment, then without too much change became a frown of worry. “I believe you. Hell! I was hoping it would turn out to have been you.”
“Why?”
“Because, for one thing, I’d have been able to get it back without much trouble. You wouldn’t have been troublesome about it, would you? I didn’t think so. And for another thing, I could have assumed no one had interfered with my guards.”
Duffy sighed and sat down again beside the fire. “What guards?”
“Little birdlike creatures that live in that dollhouse structure above my door—pretty things they are, with fine leathery wings of a mother-of-pearl luster, but savage as kill-trained dogs and quick as arrows.” Aurelianus crouched near him. “I have a dozen of them, and I’ve trained them to refrain from attacking me, or any visitors that come into the room with my evident approval. When you were there five or six months ago I conveyed to them by signals that you were to be permitted to enter the room alone. Don’t be too flattered—I just figured that in the heat of these last battles I might sometime want to send you back there for something, while staying at the scene of the action myself.”
Duffy nodded. “Ah. Don’t worry, I wasn’t flattered. And there is no one else they’ve been instructed to let in alone?” The wizard shook his head. “Then you’ve got inadequate guards,” the Irishman said helplessly. “Somebody got by them. Did you check whether they’re still in their nest, and alive?”
“Yes. They’re in there, in perfect health.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “That means the intruder was an initiate of certain very secret mysteries, or the lackey of such a one. Those creatures are from another sort of world, and very few people know about them. Ibrahim probably knows, and no doubt whoever broke in was a spy of Ibrahim’s which I should have anticipated. Why do I keep failing to—”