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The old wizard was mildly annoyed. 'May have worked? It did work, you clod. Have you seen any big cannons among the Turk formations, like the ones they overthrew Rhodes with? No, you haven't. My heavy rains forced Suleiman to leave them behind.'
'The rain was damned fortunate, certainly,' Duffy agreed. 'But can you be sure it was summoned rain, and not a natural phenomenon that was going to happen anyway?'
'You were there. You know. You just want to argue with me.'
'Very well, I admit it worked that time in May. But what's the use of having a wizard on our side if he can't do any wizardry?'
Aurelianus let a long stream of smoke out in a sigh. 'Picture yourself in a corps-a-corps with a swordsman who is your equal in skill; your dagger is blocking his dagger, and your sword his sword. Now your dagger isn't free to stab with - but would you say it's useless?'
'No.. .but I wouldn't just stand there straining. I'd knee the bastard and spit in his eyes. Listen, when you were describing this deadlock in advance, you said it would be virtually unbreakable.'
Aurelianus frowned. 'Yes. It is.'
'Virtually doesn't mean the same thing as absolutely.'
'Hell, man, the sun is virtually certain to rise tomorrow morning, the sea is -'It could be broken, though? It'd be tremendously difficult or unlikely, but it could?'
'Could a man amputate, butcher and cook his own legs to avoid starvation? Yes.'
'How? Not this starving man, I mean -'I know. Very well, there are two courses I could take
that would free all the potency of military magic. One is horribly uncertain, and the other is horribly certain. Which one would you like to hear about?'
'Both. What's the uncertain one?'
'Well, the present balance is between Ibrahim and me; it would tilt in our favor if 'the Fisher King himself were actually to ride out and join his will with mine in a battle. Do you understand? He'd have to be there physically and take part in it. That's unthinkably dangerous, like recklessly advancing your king out from behind the pawn wall in a chess game when your life and the lives of everyone you know are somehow at stake.' He spread his hands. 'After all, Vienna isn't the absolutely final place in which to make a last stand against the East. There are other strength-spots where we could regroup and not be too much worse off than we are now.
'But there is no other Fisher King to be had. If he were to be struck by a stray harquebus ball, or cut down by a particularly energetic Janissary, or simply suffer heart failure from exertion or tension.. .well, that would be the end of the story. If the West seems chaotic and disorganized now, when he's only injured, try to imagine how it will be if he dies.'
'Pretty bad, no doubt. Uh. . .there'd be no way for the Turks to counter this escalation?'
'Not as things stand, no. The only way would be for the Eastern King to join in the conflict too, which would simply maintain the deadlock; it would just be tenser, with more force being exerted on both sides. But of course their King is safely hidden in Turkey or somewhere.'
Duffy scratched his chin. 'Would it really be so mad to bring the Fisher King into a battle? It seems to me -'You have no conception of the stakes,' Aurelianus snapped. 'If anything went wrong we'd lose everything There would be no kingdoms of the West, just a wasteland of hastily organized tribes, living in the burned-out ruins of cities, waiting, probably eagerly, for Suleiman to ride through and take formal possession.
'Oh, come on,' Duffy protested, 'let's be realistic. I'll take your word that it would be bad, but it couldn't be that bad.'
'Said the expert on metaphysical history! Brian, you've never seen a culture that has lost its center, its soul. I was not exaggerating.'
The Irishman took a deep sip of the brandy. 'Very well. Tell me about the other way, the.. ."horribly certain" way.
Aurelianus frowned deeply. 'I will, though it will mean breaking a fairly important vow of silence. There is a.. .process, a certain unholy gambit, which would shatter the deadlock and blow away all obstacles for any number of devastating magical attacks on our enemies. It would be equivalent to -
'What is it?' Duffy interrupted.
'It's a physical action which, with certain entreaties, becomes an invocation, a summoning of a vast spirit that is old and evil beyond human understanding. His - its - participation would break this present balance of power like a keg of bricks dropped on one tray of a jeweller's scale.'
'What is it?' Duffy repeated.
'To the handful who know of it it's know as Didius' Dire Gambit Overwhelming; it was discovered by a Roman sorcerer roughly a thousand years ago, and it has been hesitantly preserved and recopied through the centuries by a few notably educated and unprincipled men. It has never actually been used. At the present time I believe there are only two copies of the procedure in the world -one is said to exist in the most restricted vault of the Vatican Library, and one -' he pointed at his bookcase, 'is in a very old manuscript there.' The Irishman started to speak, but Aurelianus raised a hand for silence. 'The action that opens the gates for this dreadful aid is, baldly stated, the blood sacrifice of one thousand baptized souls.'
Duffy blinked. 'Oh. I see.'
'It could be done, of course. I imagine I could exert all my influence and trickery and engineer a suicide charge of a thousand men, and then watch from the battlements as they died, and pronounce the secret words. And it would certainly save Vienna.. .from the Turks. I think, though, that it would be better to die clean, without such assistance. A black gambit like that would ruin the soul of the sorcerer who performed it - among other effects, I'd likely be nothing but a drooling idiot afterward - but more importantly, it would taint the entire West. A connoisseur would be able to taste the difference in the very beer.'
Duffy drained his glass again. 'I notice,' he said finally, 'that you.. .haven't destroyed your copy of the thing.'
Aurelianus didn't answer, just gave him a cold stare. 'Do I tell you how to grip a sword?'
