[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

moving his head, and saw nothing but dusty pews to one side and shifting
raintracks on the I stained glass to the other. 'Where did your Dark Birds go?
Did I kill them all?'
'No. Two of them are dead on the floor over here - I'll have someone come in
and deal with the corpses - and five of them ran off to steal a sip of the
Dark.' The old man had produced various pouches and boxes from under his robe,
and was already cleaning and dressing the wound.
'Shouldn't you be - ouch! - stopping them?' Aurelianus had got out a needle
and thread and was stitching the cut now; Duffy felt no real pain, just a
tugging sensation across his left cheek and temple.
'Oh, no,' the wizard said. 'Gambrinus has defenses against such as those; as
they probably file:///F|/rah/Tim%20Powers/The%20Drawing%20Of%20The%20Dark.txt
(108 of 132) [8/31/03 4:59:42 PM]
Page 145
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
file:///F|/rah/Tim%20Powers/The%20Drawing%20Of%20The%20Dark.txt suspected,
since they wanted me to fetch the stuff for them. Still, desperate men will
face almost anything, and trapped rats throw themselves into the catchers'
nets. I'm glad to let Gambrinus finish the job for us.'
'The wall is down, by the southeast corner,' Duffy muttered sleepily. 'Wrecked
our barracks. I'm going to sleep here, out in the stables where the Vikings
were; I can't remember anything about last night, not one isolated thing, but
it certainly doesn't feel like I got any sleep. Those
Janissaries just kept coming, like it had been a dam that burst. There are
corpses everywhere - if tomorrow and the next day are sunny, there'll be
plague. I wonder why they pulled back? That was the best chance they could
have hoped for, with them in force and us completely taken by surprise.'
There was a snip sound, and Aurelianus stood up. 'There,' he said. 'You'll
have a scar, but at least the hole's closed and it ought not to fester.'
Duffy rolled over, got up on his hands and knees, and from there to his feet.
'Thanks. Eilif was going to do it. Probably would have got things inside out,
so I could grow a beard in my mouth and taste things with my cheek.'
'What a disgusting idea.'
'Sorry. The charming, sprightly ideas aren't se easy to come by anymore.' He
picked up his sword, wiped it and sheathed it, and strode wearily out of the
dim chapel.
Anna worried for a while about the five wild-eyed men who'd burst past her and
clattered down the stairs to the brewing cellar, and when she heard thin,
reedy screams faintly from below she got
Mothertongue, for want of anyone hardier, to go down there with her to see
what went on.
A charred meat aroma was blended not unpleasantly with the usual malt smell,
and they found
Gambrinus placidly juggling a number of small irregular spheres of ivory. He
assured them that all was well, and Anna didn't begin to feel ill until, back
in the dining room, Mother-tongue asked her where she supposed the brewmaster
had got those five little monkey skulls he'd been playing with.
At eleven the rain began to abate, and by noon the clouds were breaking up,
letting a strained, pale sunlight play intermittently over the sundered
section of wall. The gap was roughly two hundred feet wide, and the wall as it
continued on either side -a surprising hundred-and-fifty feet thick in exposed
cross-section - leaned dangerously outward. While sharpshooters with fresh
loads hammered into their rifled guns watched the distant Turkish lines,
hastily assembled gangs of soldiers and laborers built solid barricades in a
straight line across the rubble-choked gap, and threw up a fifty-yard-radius
semicircle of deep-moored open-frame wooden obstructions on the slope outside.
Chalk dust was scattered thickly beyond the semicircle, most of it darkening
into gray mud as it soaked up moisture from the wet ground.
Several smoldering fires started by the explosion were finally put out, a task
that hadn't been top priority because the rain had prevented them from
spreading. All three corpse wagons were working their slow way across the
devastated area, collecting their grisly cargo - one had already filled, left,
and returned.
During that morning and afternoon the hunchbacked figure of Bluto was to be
seen everywhere along the battlements, ordering the re-laying of many cannon
and culverins, overseeing their cleaning and loading, shouting ignored advice
down to the men outside who were building braces and buttresses to prop the
leaning wall in place. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]