'God's hooks, Brian, why do you worry so much about the point? It's only effeminate Spaniards and Italians that use it - mainly because they don't have the strength or courage for a good chop.' He swung an imaginary sword in a mighty arc. 'Hah! Parry that, you Estebans and Julios!'

Duffy grinned. 'For your sake, Eilif, I hope you never run into Esteban or Julio. He'll have you looking like St Sebastian after they pulled out all the arrows.'

'Is that so? I believe you spent too much time in Venice, Duff, that's all.'

'No doubt. Well in any case, thank you. With this I can certainly deal with such swordsmen as are in Vienna. Uh, except, possibly, for a few of the landsknechten,' he added, seeing Eilif's quick frown.

'Possibly a few,' the Swiss agreed judiciously. 'It sounds like the dining room's filling up,' he observed, cocking a thumb at the double door. 'Hadn't you better be getting in there?'

'No. I'm ditching it tonight,' the Irishman told him. 'Aurelianus suggested I give the innkeeper a respite from my abrasive personality for a bit - every time the man speaks to me he gets so angry he has to go unwind at that poet Kretchmer's house, where he's apparently something of a lapdog. Spent last night there after I allegedly tried to blow up the stables.' Duffy sheathed the new

sword and strapped it to his belt. 'Drink up my share, though, will you?'

'Rely on me.'

Duffy left the building through the kitchen, thrusting his hands deeply into the pockets of his cloak as the chilly wind found him. Patchy clouds hurried across the face of the just-past-full moon, and the gothic and medieval rooftops showed up dimly frosted against the sky's deep black. Feeling like a goblin of shadows, Duffy made his way silently past several oases of warm light and music, on a course that would lead him to the wide Rotenturmstrasse and, after a left turn, to the north gate of the city. Aurelianus had paid some of the local lads to keep a watchman's vigil on the Viking ship, and he had suggested that tonight Duffy earn his keep by checking up on them.

The west wind was sluicing down the street like water down a channel, and to stop his cloak from flapping around his ankles the Irishman turned left into an alley that would take him to the north gate by way of St Ruprecht's Church.

He was aware of comforting domestic smells now, seeping out from under doors and around window shutters: hot bread, and cabbage, and wood burning in fireplaces. It was on just such a night as this, he reflected, about fifteen years ago, that I first met Epiphany Vogel. She was about twenty-five, a slim - well, skinny, to be precise - dark-haired girl who somehow managed, as some people can think in a foreign language, actually to think in whimsy and endearing nonsense; forever depressed or elated over incomprehensible trifles, and supporting her statements with misquoted snatches of poetry and Scripture.

I was sitting, Duffy recalled, for a portrait by her father, who was then still a respected painter. It was supposed to be a picture of John the Baptist or somebody, and he had

accosted me in a tavern, telling me I possessed exactly the visage he required. The painting, which come to think of it was called St Michael the Archangel, had taken several weeks to finish, and by the end of that time I was hopelessly in love with his daughter.

And here the year 1529 finds us: Vogel is a mad, blind old drunkard, Epiphany is a gray drudge with nearly all the spice pounded out of her, and I'm a scarred old tomcat with a poor attitude and no prospects, and all of us sitting dumbly in the path of the vigorous Turkish onslaught. The Irishman laughed and did a few capering jig steps: for it seemed to him that, though that was unarguably how it would look to an outsider, and even to himself, it still wasn't quite the whole story.

He was crossing a small square that ringed a dormant fountain when a flapping from above made him glance up, and his quiet thoughts scattered like startled sparrows -for two black, man-shaped creatures were spiralling down toward him out of the sky. The moonlight gleamed on their billowing wings, curved scabbards and - a puzzling note

- their high-soled clog shoes.

Horrified, Duffy reflexively snatched at his sword, but his darting left hand never reached the hilt.

He was abruptly seized, not externally but from within, as if a hitherto-unsuspected fellow-driver had shoved him away and taken the reins. In a helpless panic he watched his own left hand draw his dagger instead, and then deeply plough its razor edge across his right palm, so that blood was spilling out even before the blade was clear.

Hold off, devils, he thought hysterically. Give me two minutes and Ill evidently chop myself to bits, and save you the trouble. With all the strength of his mind he struggled to regain control of his body, but it seemed that the more he tried to resist his present state, the more complete it became.

His slashed right hand drew the sword now, and held it down, so that the point scraped on the flagstones; blood trickled through his fingers and ran under the looped guard onto the blade. His left hand hefted the shell-hilted dagger

- as the tall creatures folded their wings and touched down, their stilted shoes knocking on the flags - and extended it in a cautious en guarde.

Seen at this distance of only a dozen feet, the things did not really look very human. Their eyes were far too big, and their foreheads sloped back parallel with their long, many-fronded ears; their shoulders were broad but hunched, and a fixed, wolflike grin curled under their muzzles. Even as Duffy gathered these first impressions one of them raised to its lips a tiny pipe and began to play a shrill, wild melody.

Duffy growled a curse in a language he didn't understand and, painfully dragging his sword behind him on the pavement, made a long hop toward the piper and slashed at its head with the dagger.

The thing leaped back out of distance, blinking and confused. Its companion chittered in obvious disappointment and pointed at the Irishman's sword, down the channel of which his blood had already run all the way to the tip - then the creature drew a long scimitar and, poised tense as an insect, advanced on Duffy while the piper stepped back and resumed its eerie playing.

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.'

'Somebody's -got to bind up his cuts,' Anna protested, 'or his hands will mortify.'

'Hush, girl,' said Aurelianus, flapping his hands at her. 'I was patching up wounded men long before you were born. Come along, uh. . .Brian.'

Duffy obediently took hold of the tankard, carrying it carefully in both mangled hands, and followed the old man through the ancient stone arch of the kitchen doorway. Aurelianus dragged two stools up beside the coping-stones of the open fire and shoved away several soot-and-grease-crusted iron poles; wrapping his hands first in an old towel, he carefully lifted down a pot of boiling water from a chain over the fire. He then fumbled about under

his gown and at last produced a metal box and two small pouches. 'Give me your hands,' he snapped.

Duffy extended them, and Aurelianus dipped the towel in the scalding water, shook it out gingerly and then wiped the blood off the Irishman's hands. Duffy winced and was about to voice a complaint when the old man loosed the drawstring of one of the pouches and sprinkled green powder over the lacerations; a sharp coldness spread into Duffy's hands through the cuts, and the hot, throbbing pain went out like a snuffed candle flame.