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... I 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 him. 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 night-shift 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 northeast 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 moon-light 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 canal-side 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.