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Evidently angry at not being listened to, he swung in with a roundhouse chop at Duffy's ribs. Duffy yanked his hilt down to belt level and let the Oriental's sword rebound ringingly from the upright blade, and then he lunged forward.
Antoku's face had one instant to gape in horror before the fiercely driven edge sheared half of it away. As the body crumpled, the Irishman paused only long enough to strike off the maimed head before running forward toward Aurelianus and the King.
The crouching sorcerer was desperately flinging his
arms about, directing the bolts of blue light that were jumping, ever more weakly, from the ground up toward the three hovering, flapping devils, whose claws and scimitars licked hungrily down at him. The magical lightning appeared to be doing no more now than jolting the creatures, and they were beginning to close in.
'Merlin!' the Irishman shouted hoarsely. 'Use it all up in one flash!' He stopped and turned, staring back at the fight.
Falling to his knees, the exhausted sorcerer threw both arms toward the closest afrit, and with a thundering crack a man-thick blast of sunfire arced up from the soil and punched the thing out of the sky.
Duffy turned and leaped even as the first echoes were booming in the trees and Aurelianus was toppling forward onto the ground. Calad Bolg, swung overhead at the apex of the leap, clanked through the spinal column of one of the blinded devils. The thing screeched and thrashed heavily to earth as the Irishman landed bent-kneed and spun away toward the remaining one, which was flapping sightlessly upward, chittering in panic and becoming entangled in the branches. It was out of Duffy's reach, but two of the King's winged guards noticed its plight and, arrowing across the clearing, made short work of the creature.
Leaning on his sword and panting like a bellows, Duffy surveyed the scene: the Hungarian force was routed, and being pursued south toward the Wienerwald track by several of the remaining northmen; the wagon stood where he'd left it, though surrounded now by sprawled corpses, and one of the horses slumped dead in the harness; and Rikard Bugge sat on the grass, humming a tune and knotting a length of bloodspotted cloth around his thigh. Duffy glanced toward the prostrate Fisher King, who smiled wanly and held up two crossed fingers.
Aurelianus got shakily to his feet and leaned against a tree trunk. 'That was.. .close to the bone,' he gasped, speaking contemporary Austrian again. 'You're all right, Brian?'
All right? Duffy thought irritably. Why shouldn't I be all right? Then the sword slipped from his numb fingers and he looked quickly around, suddenly conscious of great fatigue.
'What the hell just happened?' he asked, trying to keep the shrillness of sudden fright out of his voice.
Aurelianus, staring at the battle-debris down the slope, nodded almost absently. 'You don't remember.'
'No, damn it - the last thing I remember is... seeing the flying sentries stoop from the sky.'
The sorcerer nodded. 'I thought so. It was Arthur who fought here.
Duffyturned, punching a finger toward the magician. 'It was not,' he shouted. 'I'll remember in a moment- I've often seen people temporarily lose the memory of something rough, some violent action.' Savagely he kicked the hideous foot of the dead afrit, and added, in a whisper, 'Which this evidently was.' He paced back and forth, pursing his lips as he stepped around the wide burned spot in the grass. 'Very well,' he snapped finally, pointing down the slope, 'who are those men?'
'Hungarian, mostly,' answered Aurelianus calmly. 'I have hopes, though not much confidence, of finding Zapolya's corpse among them. The one halfway up here is Antoku. You apparently killed him.'
'Who? Oh, the mandarino? Oh.' Duffy shrugged. 'I guess that's good.'
'Yes.'
'What the hell went wrong, anyway, with all your turn-'em-around and get-'em-lost spells?'
The wizard frowned defensively, with a furtive glance down at the King? Nothing. These lads didn't have the sorcerous talents to penetrate my magical camouflage
.but I guess they had enough skill in forestcraft to follow someone who did.' He had got his breath back now, and stepped briskly away from the trunk. 'Round up those of our lads who can stand,' he told Duffy, 'and get them to carry the King to the wagon. I'd counsel you to jettison the dead horse, too. I'll see to the wounded.' To the King he added, 'Excuse me, Sire,' then he started down the slope.
Duffy stooped to pick up his dropped sword, and noticed which one it was. 'Hey,' he called after the wizard. 'Why was I using this? I thought.. .he and I .agreed it was outmoded.'
Aurelianus half-turned. 'That was when you and he were kind of talking in unison,' he called. 'I guess when it's him alone, he still prefers it. Good thing I thought to bring it along.' He strode onward a few paces, then stooped to examine one of the wounded northmen.
'Take it easy, lad,' said the Fisher King to Brian, softly. 'I know it's hard. But if it were easy, they'd have got somebody else to do it.'
Duffy stared after Aurelianus and shrugged helplessly. 'Then it must be easy,' he said, 'because it certainly looks like they've got somebody else to do it.'
* * *
Book Three
'And there was a tumult as of great battles out upon the plain that night, and shifting fires no man could explain, and wonders in the sky...'
-from the journal of
Kemal Pasha Zadeh,
