An Evening at Joe's (34 page)

"Yes... yes," suspirated Dracula intensely, whitening his moustache in a cloud of frosty breath. "And leaving the left hand free to oppose his sword-arm."

Kirschner nodded sagaciously. "Also, be wary of blows where the edge seems to face away from you. If your Grace will oblige me with a high ward in dexter..."

Dracula rose swiftly, and made to parry his right chest and neck. Kirschner brought the blade up slowly, his knuckles pointing to the ground, and transferring his weight into a moderate left lunge. The spine of the kilij clunked dully onto the edge of Dracula's ward, but the blade's arc bent it around the parry so that its thick point touched Vlad's chain-mail aventail directly above the carotid artery.

"That," observed Dracula, "would be annoying."

"Only for a brief second, I assure you," admonished Hans. "On such an attack it is necessary to step to the opposite direction, and slightly forward, to negate the effect of the curve."

Dracula complied, and the point slipped away by eight inches. "What other vulnerabilities?" he demanded enthusiastically.

"The Turk does not commonly employ armoured gauntlets and, oft when they do, they are mail. Stand off your man and utilize your sword's superior reach to advantage. Swing up from a low ward and fetch him a cut upon the inside wrist, the thumb, or the back of the hand." Kirschner transferred his sword to his left hand, where he held it by the blade, signifying the conclusion of the lesson.

"Excellent," grinned Dracula. He looked about him, taking bracing lungfuls of frigid winter air. "Come, shall we sit?" The two men walked over and, with a creak of frozen leather, ensconced themselves on a stone bench, under the lead-tiled eaves of the monk's walk that encompassed the courtyard.

"Such exercise—it keeps one young, does it not, my Ritter?" "My intention leans more to keeping one alive. Youth is wasted on the dead."

Dracula chuckled gutturally. "Always the stoic. Often, I think you could have instructed Zeno. Tell me—were you this old when you were younger than you now are?

No, thought Kirschner, it took about a century. "Stoicism implies indifference to both pain and pleasure, your Grace. Since I am immured to one, and jaded of the other, this term could hardly apply to me."

"You are a cynic then?" baited Dracula.

"Pertaining to matters wherein it is wise to be. In all things politic it serves one best to see things as they are, rather than as one would wish them to be."

"If wishes were horses..." nodded Dracula, quoting an old homily. "Reality can be an annoying distraction to those whose scepter is a looking glass."

Hans regarded Dracula with quiet deliberation. "One cannot improve a cynic's vision by putting out his eyes."

Dracula's eyebrows raised and he cast an askant glance at Kirschner. "I flatter myself that my vision has been as acute as your own for many years, friend Hans, else I would not have likely survived to make your acquaintance." He leaned back against the wall and gazed up at the grey-granite sky. "Do you find you miss your homeland, Hans? You have been away for many years now."

Twenty-seven, to be exact. Kirschner had departed the Holy Roman Empire in 1439, on the command of Albrect II of Habsburg, to find allies in their fight against the Turk. Finding potential confederates preoccupied with Ottoman expansion on their own borders, Kirschner pragmatically decided to fight them where he found them. He served in the army of John Hunyadi in the 1440's, when that great warrior was the interregnum governor of Hungary. Fate had drawn Kirschner to Italy scant years before Dracula, deposed of his second reign by his Turkophile brother Radu, fled to the court of the Transylvanian Prince. Hunyadi, never one to pass up earning the indebtedness of a prince, became Dracula's military and political mentor for five years.

Years after the event, Kirschner learned that Hunyadi had fallen in the siege of Belgrade, and that his son Mathias was now King of Hungary. Sensing distinct possibilities inherent in renewing an old, albeit vague, acquaintance with new royalty, Kirschner slowly made his way back to Visegrad. At the time of his arrival Dracula had been a "guest" of Mathias for over eleven years. For days Kirschner had experienced the disconcerting presence of the Gift, but had been frustrated in his attempt to identify the source. It was with no little trepidation that he finally accepted that it emanated from Solomon's Tower, whose sole resident was the man known as "Tepes"—the Impaler.

Kirschner thought for a moment, then spread his hands indifferently. "Wallachia is not so dissimilar. The Dambovita is as blue as the Danube, the forests as green, the sky as somber. I have traveled much. Home"—he tapped the slate floor with the tip of his sword—"is where you make it."

"That sounds to me like a convenient excuse to remain rootless," mused Dracula, absently worrying the end of his moustache. "You are demonstrably not a man who shuns commitment. Perhaps someday, when we have our leisure, we might explore the true source of your professed wanderlust. Myself," he said, stretching his legs, "I have always loved this land, and would still were I not its Prince. And I'll be damned if I will allow its crown, or its people, to continue to be simpering vassals to a Sultan."

"From whom I am sure we can expect a reaction presently," observed Kirschner. "Your coronation is a month behind us, and the bulk of our former army has marched back across our borders. I doubt this has escaped notice in Constantinople."

"Oh, I am sure that I do not scratch my backside, but that His Omnipresence takes wind of it. I pity those who dwell by public roads. The nightly din of boyars' messengers must make for fitful sleep."

"When think you we can anticipate an invasion?"

"Soon. I am but lately come again to power, and have gained no new loyalties. My army is the weakest it has ever been, and my allies remote. And, although the boyars have the wit not to conspire against me openly, neither will it serve their purpose to render me aid."

"The season is our chiefest ally," observed Kirschner. "If they wait another month the mountain passes will be snowed over, and without crops they cannot forage. Once here, they cannot besiege; they must commit themselves to a swift, decisive victory else the winter traps them."

"Very true," grinned Dracula accordingly. "So let them come. Since it seems I am not destined to reap the allegiance of my fellow man, I shall curry favour with nature by feeding her children. The wolf and carrion crow shall not lack for sustenance this winter."

Kirschner shook his head in mock disapproval. "You spoil your pets to feast them on such savory fare."

"Don't worry, Ritter," chuckled Dracula as he rose and stomped his feet briskly. "They have long since acquired a palate for boyar, and after we have entertained the Turk, I am sure a fresh supply of such viands will become apparent. Come, sup with me. Exercise and anticipation are always a mighty whet to my appetite."

Enemies swell up around you like the tide and yet you live, thought Kirschner as he followed the prince out of the courtyard. And every ward and wile I teach you only serves to lengthen my wait. Men such as you, he mused, imbued with arrogant recklessness—they seldom die abed. Oh well, he reasoned as he contemplated the evening's repast; if patience is a virtue, there are less commodious places in which to exercise it than the palace of a prince.

The invasion came within a fortnight. Mehmet II, a seasoned campaigner, knew full well that his old enemy would never again be in such a depleted condition. And waiting for the thaw was not an option—by spring he might well end up facing the combined forces of Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, and Hungary. Not their full armies, to be sure, but their combined contingents, under experienced warlords, could easily repel whatever forces he might muster. Thrice he had faced Dracula on the field, and thrice he had led a bleeding army back across the frontier, having each time lost over fifty percent of his host. Once, while preparing to seige Dracula's capital of Targoviste, the prince had personally led a midnight cavalry charge through the tents of the encamped Turks. So swift and savage was the assault that Dracula actually cut a swath to within less than a hundred yards from the pavilion of the Sultan himself. The bloody devastation of the attack impressed itself so indelibly on the Turkish consciousness that it was henceforth recorded in the histories as "the Night of Terror."

But even that could not possibly have prepared them for what lay ahead. Dracula's forces had retreated following a scorched earth policy. The sultan's triumphant entrance into Targoviste was somewhat diminished by the resounding emptiness of its walls. Its people had fled, its treasures—indeed, anything of the remotest value—spirited away. Some buildings had been put to the torch, the wells poisoned, and the croplands burned. It was a hollow victory, and soon to prove a pyrrhic one as well. A familiar and sickening odour had begun to permeate through the eye-stinging haze, and it filled Mehmet with horror and dread. There, outside the city's south wall was found its source. Twenty thousand raven-ravaged corpses stood in rigid agony upon as many stakes; Turkish prisoners of war that Dracula felt disposed to return to their master.

Mehmet's eyes clenched tightly shut as memories of that day returned unbidden, like a frozen hand on the back of his neck. Stunned numb by the sheer enormity of such a savage deed, he could manage but a whisper. "What can we do against a man capable of such a thing?" And then he turned and rode away.

It was then, in desolate and ignominious retreat, that Mehmet would learn to what depths pure hatred could delve. Dracula still rent his enemies far beyond the range of a bow-shaft. Understanding well the "needs" of an army on the march, the Prince had sent into the Turkish camps prostitutes infected with leprosy and the bubonic plague. Now, dulled by fatigue and despair, the viruses began to break forth. By the time they reached the Bosphorous, fifty thousand men lay dead, smote by a distant prince who wielded a weapon against which no armour was proof. Mehmet's eyes opened, and stared with hollow, grim resolve. Vulnerable as Dracula seemed, it was utter folly to underestimate such a man. But it was strike now, or not at all. As an army of twenty thousand slogged their shivering way to the confluence of the Danube and the Dambovita, Mehmet II prayed that one way or another, the upcoming battle would be the last.
"Here! On this ground shall we meet them." Dracula stabbed a long white finger towards the map spread out on a trestle-table in the tapestry-draped great-hall.

"Since they are determined to march, then let them. We'll not tire ourselves by meeting them half-way. Their force is equally divided between sipahi cavalry and janissary infantry, half whose ranks will be foot archers. At this point"—he tapped the yellowing parchment— "the land is at its narrowest. The river to their left and wooded foothills to their right will funnel their advance. We will present our cavalry to oppose theirs. As their sipahis charge, our horse will wheel onto their right flank and push them towards the river. Our archers hidden on the hillsides shall then loose their bows upon the janissaries, while our own infantry swarms down the slopes to form a line across this new front. We then will strive to push their two forces apart from one another."

Kirschner regarded the small assemblage of knights and nobles. "Pushed into the frozen marsh, their cavalry will lose its momentum. Their infantry, exposed and without support, cannot flank us, being denied the hills. And although their numbers greatly outweigh our own, the lay of the land restricts their ability to bring the full force of their numbers against us en masse."

"Should our infantry falter," said Dracula, with a look that suggested the impropriety of such a possibility, "it shall withdraw back up the hills, with our archers harassing any pursuit. Our cavalry will then wheel left and retreat. We shall then retire to the citadel, and watch them freeze. We are full-provisioned, and the Turk is unprepared to invest a siege." Dracula folded his arms with an air of finality, and looked to Kirschner.

"Nevertheless," continued Hans, "it is our Prince's intention that the Turk be put to rout. All those who escape our blades we shall simply face again come spring. Let us see what exhausts itself first," he posed, meeting the eye of each man present, "the sultan's soldiers or his will."

Kirschner's proposal was met with smiles of grim resolve. "Go then, assemble your men," commanded Dracula. "Tomorrow, the price of our vassalage increases once again. Together we shall plumb the depths of the sultan's purse."

Most people, if pressed, will admit to a certain degree of surprise upon the occasion of witnessing their first battle. Things are never quite as they expect them to be, which seems to indicate there is a limit to the normal human mind's ability to contemplate the nature of horror.

The first apparent contradiction is the seeming lack of any obvious movement; two contending mobs locked as if in a massive football scrum. Cautiously moving closer, one receives their first intimation of violence—first from the larger weapons. Pole-axes, glaives and berdiches rise and fall like trip-hammers. Then, smaller, faster motions resolve themselves. Sword blades flailing in a flashing downward blur like metronomes gone mad. The curt outline of the cruel triangular flanges of a mace poised briefly in midair, then descending with brutal purpose into the sea of bobbing helmets.

Here and there, the besmirched colours of a pennon or galfanon dance violently at the end of a pole—rallying, exhorting. The bob and duck of helmets, and the wrenching twist of torsos, are grim suggestions of actions yet unseen—the crush of contending shields and desperate pistoning of thrusts. And overhead, arcing down like driving sleet, yard-long steel-tipped shafts rain upon the heaving fray.

Now add the noise. There is no fabled "ring of steel"—blade seldom encounters blade. Instead, a cacophony of dull, crunching metallic thuds, like a thousand madmen beating on tin pots with hammers. And above this unholy din, barely recognizable as human, a thunder of inarticulate roars, hoarse and ragged, torn unawares by savage exertion from parched throats. And finally, shrill screams that pierce the ear like needles, and haunt the soul's memory long after they are stilled.