Rakóssy

by Cecelia Holland

  “I won’t.”

  He kissed her. “Goodbye.”

  “János, be careful. Please.”

  She held him tight. He put his arms around her and kissed her. She shut her eyes. “This is so dangerous.”

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  “Can I help it?”

  “If you’re afraid, everybody else here will be. You have to keep them from panicking.”

  “I will.”

  She drew back and clasped her hands before her. He put his fingertips to the mole on her cheek.

  “Give Denis my love,” she said.

  He took a few steps away and turned. He smiled. “I will.”

  He mounted the black mare and rode out the gate. She went to the top of the wall, next to the gate, and watched him jog down the hill. He turned at the foot of it and threw up his hand in salute to her, and she raised her hand. He rode off again, and again he turned and waved. She thought, He acts as if he’s never coming back.

  “But that isn’t so,” she said. “It isn’t so.”

  Perhaps the Turks would not come. They might still have a long time ahead of them. How did he know that the Turks were coming? Only that Mustafa had gone south, and that if he himself were Sultan he would attack this year. His intuition. His mind, his eyes, his heart, his mouth, the touch of his hands.

  I was born in Jaen, and I was a lady-in-waiting to the Archduchess of Austria. When I was twenty-one years old I was married to Baron János Rakóssy of Hart Castle in Hungary. Now I am twenty-two, and soon, perhaps, I will have a child, whom he will love and I will love. When I am old, I shall be a dowager. My son will be the Baron Rakóssy. I was born in Jaen. . .

  She went slowly down to the courtyard.

  “Pál,” she said, and Pál came running. “Go get the oxen that draw the wagons with the cannon and put them in the stable. Send Sandor, the Sandor who is the carpenter, down to check those wagons. They’ve been in the stable all winter and who knows but they are rotten. If you want me, I shall be in the library. All of you must start putting the cannon on the walls. Do you know where they go?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  She went over to the pump and knelt by it and drank some of the fresh stony water. She ducked under the turnstile and slapped the pony on the rump.

  “Poor thing,” she said. “You must be terribly bored.”

  The pony cocked its ears at her. She went up to the library and made a list of all the things she was to do.

  A messenger came the next day from Rakóssy. Malencz was on the move and they were going to let him ride into a trap, he said. He needed bread. “We haven’t got anything to eat but what we shoot, and the game’s gone. Bread and some dried meat. I’ll put it on a pack horse.”

  Catharine stood up. “Come with me,” she said.

  “They’ve camped,” Imre said. He slid off his horse.

  “Where?”

  “Near Saint Stephan’s Cross, on the top of that knob hill there.”

  “How many?”

  “I counted five hundred seventy, but you know how hard it is.”

  Arpád whistled. Rakóssy said to him, “Wake everybody up.” He turned back to Imre. “Where are their horses?”

  “You know that hill?”

  “The knobby one with the aspen along the north side?”

  “Yes. On the south side there’s a kind of hollow, and the horses are there.”

  “How well guarded are they?”

  “I counted maybe twenty guards.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Are the horses hobbled?”

  Imre shook his head. “They’ve got a rope fence around them. They’re packed in pretty close.”

  Denis crawled up. “What are we going to do?”

  “Run off their horses.” Rakóssy stood up and waved in the rest of the men. They gathered in a dense circle around him.

  “The knights from Vrath are on the knob-shaped hill by the Stone Cross. Their horses are below the hill on the south side in a rope fence. Twenty sentries. How many here were at the attack on Kamal and Mustafa at Alder Springs?”

  Half his men raised their hands.

  “Good. We’ll do it like that. The ones who were with me then will go with me and the rest with Alexander. My band will take care of the sentries and run off the horses. Alexander’s will wait mounted to keep the loose horses bunched up and going in the right direction. We take as many of the sentries alive as possible.”

  He waited a moment. They all acted as if they understood.

  “There are five hundred and seventy knights on the top of that hill.”

  Somebody gasped.

  “Exactly,” Rakóssy said. “We have to move fast. Anybody who gets caught or trapped will be left behind. Now are there any questions?”

  A skinny young man lifted his hand. Rakóssy nodded. “At Alder Springs we used two men to a sentry. Same here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they all have to be taken prisoner? I mean, if we’re in trouble can we knock them on the head?”

  “And leave them? Yes.”

  Another arm shot up. “The cover around the south of that hill isn’t any too good.”

  “I know. We’ll go in after the moon sets. It could go down just after midnight.”

  There were no more questions. Rakóssy looked around. “All right. Everybody get some sleep. We’ll ride out at midnight.”

  Denis crept up to him. “I’m going with you,” he said.

  “All right. You can go in with me. Come over here and I’ll explain it.”

  They left their horses a good mile away from the knobby hill. Rakóssy’s men went off in pairs, running easily through the new grass. Rakóssy led Denis along toward the southeastern side of the hill. Denis’ mouth was dry. He kept thinking of the knights on the hill and how they might come charging down on them and cut them to ribbons in the darkness.

  It was so dark, now that the moon was down, that he could barely see his brother ahead of him. The ground seemed uneven and pitted under his feet, so that he felt about to trip with every stride. Rakóssy moved like a wraith before him. Suddenly Rakóssy dropped flat on his belly and started to crawl. Denis imitated him. They crawled up to a little ridge and looked over.

  The fires of the sentries were banked and dim. Denis saw the horses, penned and restive, and the blanket-wrapped lumps of the guards. He saw two men walk casually from deep cover across the open meadow before them and back into the deep cover. He glanced at Rakóssy.

  “That damned Arpád thinks he can get away with anything,” Rakóssy whispered. “Come on, and keep down.”

  He flopped over the crest of the little ridge and crawled down toward a rock at the edge of the meadow. Denis slithered after him. Suddenly he was not afraid anymore. He hurried, ran into his brother, and was kicked in the chest. Rakóssy pulled up behind the rock.

  An owl hooted off to their left. Denis felt the back of his neck break into goose flesh. A gigantic soundless body wheeled out across the meadow. Rakóssy crept out from the cover of the rock, and Denis charged after him on hands and knees.

  In the meadow there was a short animal scream. The owl settled to feed. Ahead of him his brother scurried on and dropped flat again behind another rock. Denis looked toward the sentries. He judged they were no more than fifty feet away. He could smell the rank smell of the bunched horses.

  Rakóssy was signaling him up. He scrambled up beside him and settled down, trying not to pant. Rakóssy put his mouth against Denis’ ear and said, “I’m going to give the others a little while longer.”

  “What are we going to do then?”

  Rakóssy pointed with his elbow at a hummock of grass midway between them and the nearest fire. It did not look large enough to hide a small rabbit.

  The owl hooted again. One of the sentries stood, kicked around in the dirt for a rock, and hurled it at the owl, which hooted again immediately from a far-distant place. The sentry swore. Denis could hear
him plainly.

  “Now,” Rakóssy said and scurried out into the open, headed for the tuft of grass. Denis waited, staring at the sentries, his heart banging against his ribs. Rakóssy had reached the hummock and was lying there, waiting. Denis hurled himself after him and flew more than crawled into the feeble cover.

  “Keep your head down,” Rakóssy said. He put his hands around his mouth, rolled over, and hooted at the sky.

  The sentry threw another rock. It bounced against Denis’ ankle. From across the meadow a woodcock called. Rakóssy rolled over again and got to his hands and knees. Without a pause he raced in toward the fires. Denis crossed himself and ran after him. The sentries did not see them until they were right above them. Rakóssy had his dagger in his hand. The sentries leapt up to face him. Instantly two of them were struck down from behind. The third opened his mouth to shout. Rakóssy hit him in the stomach with his fist. The sentry fell, clutching Rakóssy. They rolled wildly on the ground, inches from the fire. Denis hopped and danced around them, trying to get in a blow. The sentry’s arm arced out of the tangle, holding a great rock. Denis grabbed his wrist. Rakóssy reared up and hit the man in the face.

  “He’s out. Come on, damn it, come on.”

  Denis caught the sentry under the arms. Another of Rakóssy’s men jumped quietly from the trees and helped him. They carried the sentry to the horse herd, now stamping and surging against the rope fence, while Rakóssy’s men tried to catch mounts and get bridles on them.

  “Stallions,” Rakóssy said quietly. “God damn. Hurry it up.”

  Denis hauled himself onto a broad comfortable back and felt the long muscles under him tense and leap. Arpád scrambled up on the next horse. “Here,” he said and looped a rope over Denis’ horse’s neck. “Tie it. Hang on to that one.”

  The sentry was lying across the withers of Denis’ mount, face down. Denis made some knots, hardly knowing what he was tying together. It was too late to worry about that anyhow. The horses were moving.

  He saw his brother, shouting and waving his arms, on the ground between two trees, and he felt the horse under him bolt, collecting all his weight and flinging it forward. He was in the middle of a sea of horses, all neighing and rearing and riderless and wild. The trees whipped past them. He saw Rakóssy again, briefly, on a horse without bridle and saddle, deep in the center of the charging herd. He thought he could hear shouting from the hilltop.

  His and Arpád’s horses were roped together, he found. He thought that was a mistake, and he was groping for his dagger when he saw that Arpád was trying to tighten the knots. “Here,” Arpád said. “Let me help you.” He reached out with one hand and steadied Denis’ prisoner. “Grab your reins.”

  His horse was bridled, but the reins were flying around the horse’s knees. Denis took a breath, tightened his hold on the horse’s mane, and leaned down over the heaving shoulder. He snatched for one rein, missed, almost fell, and saw the ground driven to a morass by the hoofs of the horses ahead of his, heard the sounds, and saw the legs like scythes slashing back and forth. He snatched again and caught one rein and straightened up. That helped. He used the rein to steady himself and grabbed for the other. Suddenly his horse stumbled. He felt the prisoner sliding limply between his and Arpád’s horses, clutched at him, and hung on with his eyes clamped shut. When he looked again, he saw that the horse had stepped on the loose rein and broken it off.

  He concentrated on staying on and holding onto the prisoner. He saw his brother again briefly; Rakóssy’s horse was fighting with another, fighting at a dead run. The stallions squealed and neighed while they ran, and kicked out and reared and tried to leap on each other. They gashed at each other with their teeth. Denis offered up a short prayer.

  “Turks ride mares,” Arpád shouted and nodded at him.

  Denis laughed. He felt a horse collide with his, and his horse threw its weight back solidly against the other, trying to catch it with its teeth.

  “There’s Alexander.”

  Alexander and the others rode whooping out to head off the charge of the loose stallions. Denis thought, They’ll never stop them.

  “Hang on, they’re turning,” Rakóssy shouted right beside him. He was systematically beating his horse around the head and shoulders.

  Alexander and his men turned the leaders of the wild charge, swung them around in a circle, and headed them into the rear of the herd. The stallions surged together in a ring, slowed to a canter, to a trot, milled around for a while, and suddenly stopped dead. There was a ragged, breathless cheer.

  Denis slid down, gasping for air, and realized that he was on foot in the middle of the herd. Rakóssy gave him a hand and Denis climbed up behind him. The men were pushing slowly out of the herd. Rakóssy reached the open and swung down. He almost fell and grabbed for the mane of the horse he had been riding.

  “Are you all right?” Denis said.

  “I think one of them bit me. Arpád?”

  Arpád walked over.

  “Did anybody get hurt?”

  “None of ours.” Arpád wiped his hands on his shirt and counted heads. “I think we lost two of the prisoners.”

  “Get those stallions neck-roped together and let’s get out of here.”

  They roped the horses into strings of twenty and went back to their camp. Rakóssy counted the horses on the way back; they had taken five hundred and forty-two. He sent three men out to see if they had lost any horses and sat down beside his saddle to tend his leg. He took off his trousers and turned so that the fire shone on his leg.

  “You really got it,” Denis said.

  Rakóssy clenched his teeth and kneaded at the slash on his leg. “God damn horses. Why aren’t they sensible, like Turks? A mare wouldn’t cut anybody up like this.”

  His whole leg was bruised and raw. He took a jar of salve from his saddle pouch and smeared it on. It burned and he swore steadily at it and at all stallions.

  “What do we do now?” Denis said.

  Rakóssy let the cool air in against his leg and sat a moment winking back the tears. “It must be good stuff. It hurts like hell. That depends on Malencz.”

  He got up and hopped around, getting back into his trousers. Denis said, “What do you think he’ll do?”

  “Come after us.”

  “What then?”

  “We’ll show him that five hundred men on foot aren’t worth much against one hundred men mounted. As far as catching up with us is concerned. I’m not going to fight him.”

  “Oh,” Denis said.

  “You’ve gotten bloodthirsty lately.”

  “You never give me a chance to do anything.”

  “You’ll get your chance.”

  “When?”

  “Soon enough. Go to sleep.”

  Malencz did come after them, following the great trail of the stallions all that next day, and Rakóssy stayed easily away from him. He took the horses down to good grass and let them graze awhile, watered them up, and circled Malencz’s little army once, giving the horseless knights an occasional glimpse of the strings of stolen horses.

  That night Malencz camped in the middle of a great meadow. Either he had learned something or someone with him was clever and knew enough not to leave the camp open to a charge, because the knights spent a lot of time gathering brush and making a brush fence around the camp. Rakóssy let his horses rest and graze.

  In the morning the knights from Vrath set off grimly for home. They marched in neat columns and sang to keep their spirits up. Rakóssy watched them head off to the northwest and called Arpád.

  “They’re going to go through the pass by Etzel’s Well,” he said. "Take seventy of the men and close off the pass from the northwest.”

  Arpád looked uncertain. “There’s more than five hundred of them.”

  Rakóssy glared at him. “So what?”

  Alexander laughed. “God help Malencz.” He pulled his horse around. Arpád and most of the men jogged after him. Rakóssy waited until they were al
most out of sight. Denis reined up beside him. Rakóssy said, “Little brother, we are going to drive them mad.”

  He set off after the marching knights, keeping the strings of horses under close control. They caught up with Malencz’s men within an hour and Rakóssy ranged his men along a course roughly parallel with theirs. The unmounted knights trudged painfully along in the mud, their packs and saddles and armor on their backs. Rakóssy hooked his knee around his saddle pommel and rode that way, looking very relaxed and comfortable. His men shouted insults down to the men walking below.

  At first, Malencz’s knights ignored them. They marched close together, and it would be impossible to attack them. The sun rose higher and the ground grew rockier. Toward noon some of the knights suddenly broke formation and charged up the slope toward Rakóssy. He only laughed and, lifting his reins, let the black mare skitter away slightly. The knights subsided.

  Rakóssy’s men insulted them continually, and Malencz’s answered back, swearing and threatening. Once again, just before sundown, they seemed about to charge, and Rakóssy sent the horses in a wild scramble up the slope. The knights drew back, shouting coward at them. Rakóssy laughed.

  He made a camp within earshot of Malencz’s, kept most of his men in the saddle while the rest made their dinner, and spent the night dozing on horseback while the restless stallions browsed and fought on the slope. The mountless knights made three or four attempts to sneak out of their camp toward the horses, but each time they were seen and Rakóssy and his men scattered, making a great clamor in the night with their moving horses.

  The horses would not keep quiet. Rakóssy dared not let them loose to graze. All night long they stamped and neighed and fought. By morning Malencz’s knights looked angry enough to try another charge, and Rakóssy tempted them. He charged his own men and all the loose horses straight across their path and up the facing slope, shouting and laughing all the way.

  “God,” Denis said. “If I were they, I’d be ready to kill you by now.”

  “Malencz,” Rakóssy said.

  “What?”