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'Not so fast. If he works for you, why did he and his "brothers" try to kill me the night I met you?'
'Honestly, Brian, can't you trust me? I told them to provoke a fight with you so that I'd have an excuse to speak to you and offer you the job you now have. And they weren't really trying to kill you. I'd instructed them to make the skirmish look convincing, but to deliver no real, damaging blows. Besides, I knew you could take care of yourself. Now come on.'
He got three steps higher before the Irishman's hand on his shoulder stopped him again. 'What if I'd delivered a real, damaging blow to one of them? And what do you -
'If you'd killed one of them,' Aurelianus interrupted impatiently, 'I'd simply have phrased my proposal to you differently. Instead of praising your tolerant restraint in a fight, I'd have complimented you on your decisive, no-nonsense reactions. It doesn't matter. There are much more important -
'It matters to me. And what do you mean, you knew I could take care of myself? I thought that evening was the first time you'd seen or heard of me. Why did you go to so much trouble to get me here, when there must have been a dozen guys in Vienna alone that could do the job better than I can? Damn it, I want some explanations that don't raise a hundred more questions. I -
Aurelianus sighed. 'I will,' he said, 'explain all when we get to my room.
Duffy squinted suspiciously at him. 'All?' The old man looked vaguely offended as they resumed their ascent of the stairs. 'I'm a man of my word, Brian.'
Aurelianus' room at the Zimmermann Inn looked very like his room in Venice. It was a clutter of tapestries, books, scrolls, jewelled daggers, colored liquids in glass jars, odd sextant-like devices, and a cabinet of good wines. The curtains were drawn against the morning brightness, and the chamber was inefficiently lit by a half-dozen candles. The air was close and musty.>One thing is sure - I've been lied to a number of times, and can't even guess why. I don't like it when strangers pry into my affairs, but I absolutely can't bear it when they know more about my affairs than I do myself.
He stood up and walked to the servants' hall, picking up an empty beer mug on the way.
He placed his feet carefully on the cellar stairs as he descended them so as not to awaken the sleeping Gambrinus, and then padded cautiously across the stone floor to the door the ghost had gone through that afternoon. The hinges must have been recently oiled, for they didn't squeak when the Irishman slowly drew the door open. He groped his way to the huge vat in the pitchy blackness, and then felt for the lowest of the three spigots. It turned grittily when he exerted some strength; then when he judged he'd drawn half a cup he shut the valve and, closing the vat-room behind him, hurried up the stairs to the dining room.
He lit the candle at his table and peered suspiciously at the few ounces of thick black liquid that swirled in the bottom of the mug. Looks pretty vile, he thought. Then he sat down, and even without bringing the cup to his nose be smelled the heady, heavily aromatic bouquet. God bless us, he thought rapturously, this is the nectar of which even the finest, rarest bock in the world is only the vaguest hint. In one long, slow, savoring -swallow he emptied the cup.
His first thought was: Sneak downstairs, Duffy lad, and fill the cup this time. He got to his feet - or tried to, rather, and was only able to shift slightly in his chair. What's this? he thought apprehensively; I recover from a lifetime's worth of dire wounds only to be paralyzed by a mouthful of beer? He attempted again to heave himself out of the chair, and this time didn't move at all.
Then he was moving - no, being carried. He was exhausted, and a frigid wind hacked savagely through the joints in his plate armor. He rolled over, moaning with the pain in his head.
'Lie still, my King,' came a tense, worried voice.
'You'll only open your wound again if you thrash about so.,
He groped chilly fingers to his head, and felt the great gash in his temple, rough with dried, clotted blood. 'Who.., who has done this?' he gasped.
'Your son, King. But rest easy - you slew him even as he dealt you the blow.'
I'm glad of that, anyway, he thought. 'It's frightful
cold,' he said. 'My feet are as numb as if they belonged to someone else.'
'We'll rest soon,' came the voice of the attendant. 'When we reach the bank of yonder lake.'
He painfully raised his head from the pallet on which he was being carried, and saw ahead a vast, still lake reflecting the full moon. After a while he was set down by his two panting companions, and he could hear water splashing gently among rocks and weeds, and could smell the cold, briny breath of the lake.
'My sword!' he whispered. 'Where is it? Did I -'Here it is.' A heavy hilt was laid in his hand.
'Ah. I'm too weak - one of you must throw it into the lake. It's my last order,' he added when they began to protest. Grudgingly, one of them took the sword and strode away through the shadowy underbrush.
He lay on the ground, breathing carefully, wishing his heart wouldn't pound so. My rushing blood is sure to force the wound open again, he thought, and I'll die soon enough even without that.
The attendant came back. 'I've done as you said, Sire.'
Like hell, he thought. 'Oh? And what did you see when you threw it in?'
'See? A splash. And then just ripples.'
'Go back, and this time do as I said.'
The man shambled away again, confused and embarrassed. It's the jewels in the hilt, the dying man thought. He can't bear to think of them at the bottom of the lake.
The attendant looked subdued and scared when he returned this time. '1 did it, Sire.'
