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Chapter Four
Five days later Johannes Freiburg sat in the taproom of the St Mungo Inn and, putting down his mug of ale, nodded to the wide-eyed old man sitting across the table from him. 'That's what I said. Escorted by every demon in the Alps. It was just at sunset, and I was crossing the Drava bridge with my goats, when I heard all this singing - hundreds of voices, all glass rim high, whirling like birds around this one weird tune - and I figured for a second it was God and all the saints, come for me at last. So I turned around, back toward the mountain, and here comes this tall, gray-haired man on a limping horse, riding down the path with the red sunlight on him like his own personal lantern; and behind him, perched on every ridge and crag, there were ranks and ranks of demons with bird heads, and wiverns, and every damned kind of monster you ever heard of, all singing like a church choir.'
The old man crossed himself and gulped. 'More ale here,' he quavered to the innkeeper. 'So who was he?' he asked his companion. 'Beelzebub?'
'I don't know. I took off pretty quick - didn't want to let him get close enough to bewitch me - but he looked... Oh my God, that's him just walked in the door.'
Duffy didn't even notice the old man who clapped his hands over his face and, squeaking shrilly, bolted out of the room as he entered it. The Irishman crossed to the bar and calmly asked for a cup of beer. His face was haggard and there were new wrinkles around his eyes. When his
beer had been drawn he took it to a back table and sat down to drink it slowly, unaware of Freiburg's intense, awed stare.
Well, thought Duffy, I can't pretend that was delirium tremens - not lasting six days like that. He sighed and shook his head. I really was escorted through the Predil Pass by a crew of fantastic beasts only hinted at even in mythology. They guided me, led me around areas I later saw to be unstable snow, kept me on whatever track that was. They always maintained a respectful distance, too, and bowed when I approached them! It was as if.. .as if I were a revered and long-absent king passing through their district.
He remembered the odd fear he'd felt a week ago in that mad tavern in Trieste - a fear of recognizing or remembering something. That's another thing to worry about, he thought; maybe the goat-footed man was real, not a hallucination at all. Hell, he was an everyday sight compared to the company I've kept during these past six days.
The tavern door swung open and a stout, bearded man clumped in, wearing flared-top boots that came up to his thighs. He glanced angrily around the room. 'Damn it, Freiburg,' he growled, 'have you seen Ludvig? He said he'd be drinking in here.'
Freiburg bobbed his head. 'Yes sir, Mr Yount. He.. .uh. . .just dashed out the back door.'
'Saw me coming, did he? The lazy old monkey - I'll break his jaw for him. He knows we -Freiburg was jiggling in his chair, winking, shaking his head and waving his hands. Yount stared at him in amazement, then caught on that the shepherd had something confidential to whisper to him.
Yount leaned down. 'What the hell is it?'
Don't blame Ludvig' the shepherd whispered. 'He's just scared of demons, which that gray-haired man over there is on intimate terms with.'
Yount glanced across the room at Duffy, who was still staring morosely into his beer. 'Oh, hell,' the bearded man said to Freiburg, 'you damned peasants can't take two steps without finding something to put the fear of the devil into you.'
'Hey, it's true,' protested the shepherd. 'I'm not making it up -'Oh, no doubt. Like last year, when you crucified all the cats in town because they were witches' familiars.'
'Now look, Mr Yount, there were apparitions -Yount made a rude suggestion concerning what stance Freiburg should assume the next time he met an apparition. 'Now where's my whimpering clerk? In here? Good Lord, hiding among the brooms and buckets. Out, Ludvig, you coward. We've got to be on the road, get those hides to Vienna before the rains can rot them.'
Duffy looked up. 'You're heading for Vienna?' he asked.
All three faces swivelled toward him, two of them pale and fearful and one thoughtful, appraising. 'That's right, stranger,' Yount said.
'I'd be glad to pay you to carry me,' Duffy said. 'My horse went lame on a... sort of forced march through the Alps, and I can't wait around for him to get straightened out. I wouldn't be much extra weight, and if you run across any bandits I imagine you'd be glad of another sword.'
'For the love of God, master,' Ludvig hissed, 'don't -''Shut up,' Yount snapped. 'Take holy water baths if you have to, or tattoo a cross on your forehead - I choose our personnel.' He turned to Duffy, who was highly puzzled by these reactions. 'Certainly, stranger. You can ride along. I'll charge you ten ducats, to be doubly refunded in the event that you help us repel any bandits.'
Ludvig began weeping, and Yount clouted him in the side of the head. 'Shut up, clerk.'
Birds were calling to each other through the trees as Yount's modest caravan got under way. Four barrel-chested horses were harnessed to the lead wagon, on the buckboard- of which sat Yount and the clerk, while Yount's two sons, having shed their shirts, were stretched out on the bundled hides to get a tan. There was another wagon being towed behind, and Duffy was sprawled across its bench, half napping in the midmorning sun. Little boys lined the road as the wagons rolled by, raising a cheer to see the departure of the cargo that had for two days given their town the pungent smell of a tannery. The Irishman tipped his hat. So long, horse, he thought. I believe you're better off without me.
In the morning sunshine, as he watched the birds hopping about on the new-budding branches and listened to the creaking and rattling of the carts, it was easy for him to regard the disturbing meetings in the mountains and Trieste as flukes, chance glimpses of survivals from the ancient world. Those things do still exist, he told himself, in the darker corners and cubbyholes of the world, and a traveller ought not to be upset at seeing them once in a while.
They camped that night by the banks of the Lab. Ludvig was careful to keep a distance between Duffy and himself, and always to sit on the opposite side of the fire; to make his feelings perfectly clear, every half hour or so he fled behind one of the parked wagons and could be heard praying loudly. Yount's sons, though, got along well with the Irishman, and he showed them how to play tunes on a piece of grass held between the thumbs. They grinned delightedly when he finished up his performance with a spirited rendering of a bit from Blaylock's Wilde Manne, but Ludvig, hiding behind a wagon again, howled to God to silence the devil-pipes.
'That's enough,' Yount said finally. 'You're scaring the daylights out of poor Ludvig. It's getting late anyway - I think we'd all better turn in.' He banked the fire and checked the horses' tethers while his sons crawled into sleeping bags and Duffy rolled himself up in his old fur cloak.
Clouds were plastered in handfuls over the low sky next morning, and Yount fretted for his hides. 'To hell with breakfast, boys,' he shouted, slapping the horses awake, 'I want us five miles north of the river five minutes from now.' Duffy climbed up onto the buckboard of the trailing wagon, turned up his frayed collar and resumed his interrupted sleep.
It was an oddly out-of-tune bird call that woke him again. I think that was a curlew, he told himself groggily as he sat up on the wagon bench, but I never heard one with such a flat voice. Then the call was answered, from the other side of the road, in the same not-quite-true tone
- and Duffy came fully awake. Those aren't curlews, he thought grimly. They're not even birds.
Trying to make it look casual, he stood up, balanced a moment on the footrest and then leaped across the gap onto the leading wagon's back rail. He pulled himself over the bar, clambered across the rocking bales of hides -nodding cheerfully to the two young men as he passed -and tapped Yount on the shoulder. 'Keep smiling like I am,' he told him, ignoring the trembling Ludvig, 'but give me a bow if you've got one. There are robbers in these woods.'
'Hell,' grated Yount. 'No, I don't have a bow.'
