The scimitar lashed out in a lightning cut at the Irishman's neck, and Duffy knocked the blow away with the guard of his dagger.. .resisting the impulse to riposte, though, for his weapon didn't have nearly enough reach. Even so, he laughed with relief, for the move had been his own - he had regained control of his actions.
Another slash followed quickly, and as he parried it, low, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that, at the moment of dagger-and-scimitar contact, sparks flew from his pavement-scraping sword point; and suddenly he
knew, with an unexplainable conviction, that to lift the sword from the ground would mean his own death.
The devil attacked fiercely now, and fending off the licking scimitar with only the dagger required every bit of skill and agility the Irishman could muster. The piping became louder and faster, and blue fire snapped and glowed around Duffy's trailing sword point as he hopped about in a desperately complicated dance of advance and retreat.
'Help!' he bellowed hoarsely. 'Fetch the army, someone! Fetch a priest!' The pipe-music seemed to muffle his voice, though, and he couldn't even raise an echo.
The creature was inhumanly quick, darting now at Duffy's leg, an instant later at his face, then jabbing at his arm. flailing the dagger in wild parries, Duffy managed to keep the long blade away from his vital parts, though he was soon bleeding from a dozen minor cuts. The Irishman was panting heavily, and already the rainbow glitter of exhaustion flickered at the edges of his vision.
Then he parried a thrust low and outside, and inhaled a grating sob as the scimitar edge rasped across the bones of his knuckles instead of the steel guard. In an instant the guard was full of blood, and his grip was perilously slippery.
His adversary launched a fast jab at Duffy's eye, and he heaved the dagger up to block it - but it was only a feint, and the sword edge flipped in mid-lunge toward his unprotected left side. Instinctively Duffy whirled his sword up and caught the blow on the forte.. .but the moment his point was lifted from the flagstones, the shrieking music extinguished all his strength, and he pitched limply forward onto the pavement.
Still clutched in his left hand, the dagger - now streaked with his own blood - stuck firmly in a crack as he collapsed on it; instantly warmth seemed to rush up the blade from
the earth, lending the nearly Unconscious Irishman just enough power to roll over and raise the heavy sword in a clumsy stop-thrust as the monster leaped forward to bestow the last stab. The thing lunged directly onto the extended blade, and its own impetus drove it forward so that the point sprang a foot out of its back.
The piping abruptly ceased, and the spitted creature, lurching backward off the Irishman's sword, let out a ululating death yell that echoed back unmuffled from every wall. With a convulsive shudder it threw its scimitar away, loudly shattering some window, and then slumped forward, curling as it fell to land with a crack on its head.
The piper ignored the prostrate, gasping form of the Irishman and rushed to its slain fellow, lifted the corpse, and flapped heavily away up into the night sky.
Duffy lay where he was, panting like a dog as his drying blood glued his hilts to his ravaged hands, and followed the flier with his eyes until the thing disappeared over the roofs.
'With all due modesty,' Werner was saying, raising his voice to be heard over the usual dining room din, 'here I have been hiding my light under a bushel basket. Burying the talents I was entrusted with, instead of going out and investing them.'
Aurelianus smiled. 'You must let me see some of your verses before you go, Werner.'
The innkeeper wrinkled his forehead. 'Well, I'm not certain you'd get much out of them. They're pretty esoteric - full of obscure allusions to the classical philosophers; and I don't confine my muse to the pasture of any one language. I write, frankly, for the ultra-sophisticated .the literati . .the initiates.' He took a sip of his burgundy. 'It's a lonely craft, fully appreciated only by others like myself. Why, Johann was telling me - that's Johann Kretchmer, you know - he was saying that when he read his Observatii ab Supra Velar to the Emperor Charles himself, Charles clearly missed half the references. As a matter of fact, he even missed a very derogatory reference to himself, so couched was the passage in oriental imagery!' Werner dissolved in giggles at the very idea, shaking his head pityingly.
'Think of that,' sympathized Aurelianus. 'Well, we'll miss you. About Christmas, you think?'
'Yes. Johann and I plan to tour Greece and Italy, bask in the auras left by the great minds of the past.'
A trifle cold for a long journey, won't it be? Midwinter?'
Werner looked around, then leaned forward. 'Not necessarily. Johann has read the works of Radzivilius, Sacroboscus and Laurentius, and he has solved the mystery of radical heat and moisture.'
'I'll be damned. In that case, then, I guess you - what is it, Anna?'
The serving girl's face was cross, scared and impatient. 'It's Brian. He just came back and he's -'- Got into another drunken brawl, evidently,' finished
Werner, looking past Anna at Duffy's unsteadily approaching figure. '1 don't like to be mundane, Aurelianus, but that man is one of the reasons for my Planning to leave. In the grossest manner he has -Aurelianus was staring at Duffy, who now stood beside the table. Leave us, Werner,' he rasped. 'No, not another Word! Off!' -
Duffy collapsed onto the bench Werner vacated. 'A cup of beer, Anna,' he whispered.
'Go to the cellar, Anna,' Aurelianus said. 'Tell Gambrinus I said to draw a tall tankard of the bock for Duffy.' She nodded and hurried away. 'What has happened?'
The Irishman laughed weakly. 'Oh, nothing much. Two black devils came out of the sky and tried to make a shish-kebabby out of me.' He reached across the table and tapped the old sorcerer's chest with a blood-browned finger. 'And I want answers to some questions, clear and quick.'
'Of course, of course. Black devils, you say? flying ones? Great God. When Anna gets back we'll go...I don't know...into the kitchen, and you can tell me the whole story. Yes, yes, and I'll tell you what I know.' He looked up. 'Jock! Jock, lad! Get over here.'
A tall, rangy young man loped across the room to the table. That's a familiar face, the Irishman thought. Where do I know you from, Jock?'
Aurelianus' fingers clutched the baggy green satin of the man's sleeve. 'Go to the King,' the old sorcerer whispered hoarsely, 'all four of you, and guard him - with much more than your lives! An expected danger has shown up at an unexpected hour. Stay with him through the night, and come back when it's full dawn. I'll have made some sort of arrangements by then, I trust. Go!'
Jock nodded and sprinted to the servants' hail without ever having looked at Duffy. The old man was snapping his fingers impatiently. 'Where the hell - oh, here she is. Grab your beer and follow me.'