Empire of Fear

by Brian Stableford

  Though one in four of their number was cut down during the first two charges, the remainder of the valiant company went for the third time at the ragged ruin of the wall, and this time found the cannon exhausted and the musketeers falling away. The breach could not be held. Even John gave a cheer when the horsemen attained their end, balling his fist within his sequined gauntlet.

  ‘Now,’ murmured Dragulya. ‘Now it begins, in earnest.’

  With each turn of the cavalry the supporting infantrymen had crept closer behind, well within the range of the defending cannon but no longer fearful of their fire. They were ready now to run forward in great waves, vampires and common men together, to sweep into the streets of Mdina. A great roar went up from these ranks when the cavalry broke through, and they swarmed up the hill yelling in triumph and exultation. Dragulya muttered an invocation in his own tongue, and drew a curious glance from John, but the would-be prince of Grand Normandy ventured no more ironies. Dragulya had erased the last vestiges of honest superstition from his thinking a hundred years before, but he was still inclined to mutter spells and incantations in such moments as this, out of habit and excitement, and in the knowledge that they could do no harm.

  In the far distance, Dragulya could see other signs of the battle’s impending climax. The longbowmen which Richard had brought from Normandy had moved into a position from which they could fire over the north-western wall into the town. Their shieldbearers had made them a wall of wood and iron behind which they crouched, rising in unison with arrows notched to loose volley after volley to skim the ramparts. They were within the range of enemy guns, but they drew little fire in return, either from cannon or crossbows. The defenders plainly had the opinion that they had less to fear from these relics of the past than from artillerists and musketeers; but this disregard was a boon to the bowmen which they were exploiting to the full. In declining to mount an effective defence against them, Durand’s men were allowing the archers to make full use of their skills, and their arrows were more accurate than musket-shot. The defenders were not ashamed to use their own wooden bows to what effect they could, but there was no way that the Maltese bowmen could match the massed ranks of Richard’s men arrow for arrow.

  Dragulya requested that John should send a courier to tell the bowmen that his own men would soon be within the city wall, and that the hail of arrows must cease for fear of hitting friend instead of foe. Then it would be the turn of the Norman vampire knights, who must ride for the city gates as soon as they could be opened. John did as he was bid, willingly. The heir to Grand Normandy’s throne was quite content to act as second-in-command to the Walachian warlord; Dragulya doubted that Richard would have shown the same deference or the same willingness to carry out the agreed plan.

  A messenger came from the south, where another contingent of Dragulya’s cavalry were trying to force a second breach. His news was that they had come under heavy fire, but that the cannons’ power had been sapped by lack of powder and shot. Such opposition as was now to be faced seemed likely to come mainly from crossbows. The courier reported that many were injured, vampires and commoners alike, but few fatally.

  Dragulya received this intelligence with a mirthless smile. Crossbow bolts could not long delay a company of vampires, and it was plain that the defenders of Mdina no longer had the resources to make further resistance.

  This town had stood fast against a Turkish troop a hundred years before, with the same Durand in command, and that had been written down as a great victory for Gaul against the fiercest of its foes. But Dragulya knew full well that the Turkish army had been little more than a pirate band, numerous enough but essentially ill-armed and ill-disciplined. Those walls, and the guns set to defend them, had not been built to stand against the force which now assailed them – a force which could have taken any city in Gaul.

  ‘They should have agreed to my brother’s terms of surrender,’ said John laconically. ‘Twould have saved a deal of trouble, and a great many Maltese lives.’

  ‘There is naught like fire and threat of death to increase the worth of mercy,’ Dragulya told him. ‘Had Durand given in without a fight, any sparing of life which we did would be clemency in debased coinage. Now, we may burn whatever in that stony citadel can be put to the torch, and impale as many of the knights and their friends as will give the others appropriate pause for thought. Those we take back into the Gaulish fold will be tearful with gratitude, chastened and loyal. Rome will send its inquisitors to the cathedral, and Charlemagne will place a group of his favourites as Grandmaster and Pillars of the Order. Under their governance, every man, woman and child on the island will learn to curse the memory and name of Noell Cordery. We’ll make him the kind of demon which Gregory sought to make of Attila and Aetius.’

  ‘It is very necessary,’ said John, judiciously. ‘It is a lesson they must be taught, and must be seen to learn – a lesson in fear and authority. My brother could not see the logic of such a case, but we might now forgive him that, for he belonged to a more innocent age, which may now be buried with him. He liked to be loved, even by the people who were only his by conquest, and never understood why they did not pay full credit to his nobility. His ideas were shaped too much by minstrels, and he believed too much in the flattery offered by his courtiers. Perhaps he was not often enough in the company of women to learn the possibilities of perfidy.’

  ‘And you are very different, no doubt, though you were born just a little later?’ said Dragulya, who understood well enough that this was a speech carefully calculated to win his favour and approval.

  ‘It is the duty of an heir apparent to learn from the deficiencies of his predecessor.’

  ‘And will you lead the Normans to conquer England for a second time?’

  ‘Perhaps I will,’ replied the other, ‘if Charles is pleased to order it. I could do it, with help from Geoffrey, who will be a better friend to me than ever he was to our elder brother, but Britain is a dreary isle, when all is said and done. There are other conquests to be planned, now that we know of the New World in the west. We must carry the Imperium hastily to the lands of Atlantis and Hy-Brasil, lest they fall instead to the legions made by Master Cordery’s elixir. We need now to fight the British and the Dutch in the farthest corners of the world, and on their own soil as well.’

  ‘I wish you well of it,’ said the voivode, drily. ‘As I wish you well in the defence of Gaul against the Mohammedans. The gilded days of old will indeed be interred with your foolish brother, but the age of iron which is to come will be hard enough to bear.’

  ‘We are victorious here,’ said John, boldly. ‘There is nothing that cannot now be achieved by the combined might of Gaul and Walachia. The new world will be ours, like the old, and we’ll hold it all the tighter now that this rebellion is crushed.’

  ‘I have said that I wish you well of it,’ repeated Dragulya. ‘We have a thousand years to fight for, you and I, and we will preserve what we can of our dominion. But take care lest your ambition outreach your grasp. Vampire has now been set against vampire for the first time since Attila defeated the legions of Rome. The making of vampires is known now to be a matter of machinery and not of magic, and all the commoners in Europe know now how little more than men their masters truly are. This day is won, and a forest of sharpened stakes will warn the world that our empires will not readily give way to rebellion. But the world is not ours by right, little princeling, and our might is revealed now for what it truly is. There is a darkness come to Gaul and Walachia, eager to quench the light of our glory, and our empires are under a siege which can never finally be lifted.’

  John looked into the voivode’s eyes while this bitter oration proceeded to its end, but when it was over, he tore his gaze away, to stare with grim countenance at the walls of Mdina, swarming with men whose shouts of pain and exultation were clearly audible now that the guns were hushed.

  The Walachian foot-soldiers had full command of the broken wall, whose defenders had been driv
en back by the cavalry, and the men who were marching up the hill to fill the breach were no longer under fire. Dragulya’s attention, drawn back to the battle, moved to the city gate, and he tried to picture in his mind’s eye the progress which his men must now be making, along the inside of the wall. No doubt the Maltese were fighting, with their swords and their crossbows and such muskets as they still had powder to fire, but they could make no stand now, as the streets were flooded with men, and chaos reached its angry fingers into every corner and hidey-hole.

  ‘Come to your horse,’ said the voivode to the prince, in a much kinder voice. ‘It is time for us to seek out your troublesome Master Cordery, and make him safe. We must ride beneath our banners into this wretched city, that we may be seen by all as its destroyers, you in your white-clad armour and I in my black quilt: Gaul and Walachia side by side.’

  ‘United and unconquerable,’ agreed Prince John, too quietly for his words to seem ironic.

  So they went to their horses, Dragulya to a mount as black as he could find, John to a grey, so that when they went side by side they might strike as fine a picture as any tale-teller might imagine. Each brought three dozen vampire knights into a company with which they would make their charge. All of Dragulya’s had muskets, and were trained to use them from horseback, but those which John had inherited from his brother had been too long accustomed to the play of tourneys, and they carried naught but their broadswords in their hands.

  These fighting men walked their horses down the hill to ford a small stream, and then began to climb the planted terraces, taking a diagonal course towards the city’s largest gate. The fighting about that gate was fierce now, but Dragulya had sent so many vampires across the wall to prepare his way for him that the defenders – no matter how many had partaken of Cordery’s elixir – would be vastly outmanned as well as outgunned.

  The Norman vampire knights, amassed ahead and ready for their own charge, surged suddenly forward as the gate began to open. It seemed for a moment that all resistance had ended, but then from the walls to the west of the gate a sudden hail of crossbow bolts met their charge. Though this was unexpected, and the range was close, these were no mortal men, and their mail protected them from peripheral blows even when their shields were passed or splintered. Those who fell as their horses poured into the gateway were a mere handful, and the exultant cries of the Normans mingled with the loud greetings of the Walachians within the wall.

  ‘The way is clear, my noble prince,’ called Dragulya to his companion, as he urged his horse into a canter.

  John, who had an armoured helm upon his head, raised his sword in a high salute to the Walachian warlord, and urged his own horse more rapidly forward.

  As they came to the gate there seemed to be no resistance left at all, but when they drew near, five men with crossbows appeared from hiding on a roof which overlooked the open space within the gate. As these ambushers released their bolts, Dragulya’s musketeers returned their fire, and Norman musketeers who had occupied the walls joined in with them. At least four were hit by these volleys, but all five must have been vampires, for only two fell mortally hurt. The other three reloaded, and fired again.

  There was no doubt that these five had been stationed to make targets of the warlord and the prince, for one of the first five shots took Dragulya in the arm, while another whistled past his face. One more struck John’s shield, and another hit the Norman’s nearest companion hard enough to carry him from his saddle.

  The bolt which had hit Dragulya went clean through the flesh of his right arm and stuck fast. The pain struck at him like lightning before he could tense himself to control it, forcing him to grit his teeth. He fought to keep his balance on the horse, and when the animal was still he reached across with his left hand to snap the bolt behind the head. Then he dragged the shaft backwards from his arm and threw it aside. The flow of blood was stanched very quickly, but the muscle was so badly torn that the arm would be useless for two days or more, and Dragulya cursed his luck.

  The second shots launched by the would-be assassins all found targets, but not the ones intended. John, sheltering behind his shield, deflected another bolt so that it hit a Norman knight in the upper leg, but he had taken sufficient force from the shot to make it less damaging than a direct hit. The knight pulled it out immediately, ignoring the extra damage which he would inflict by dragging it back against the barb, and howled his contempt at the enemy. A second bolt hit one of Dragulya’s men full in the face, smashing through his cheekbone to cause a very ugly wound, but one which would not be fatal to a vampire. The third of these shots hit John’s grey horse behind the ear, and it went down like a slaughtered ox, killed instantly.

  Dragulya smiled grimly, not only because the remaining three snipers were now felled by bullets which would likely kill them, vampires though they were, but because he could not find it in himself to be entirely displeased by John’s ignominious tumble. No doubt the prince would quickly find another horse, but in the meantime, Dragulya could ride on alone, past the Great House of the Inguanez family, along Villegaignon Street, and then around and about, to see what havoc his men were making. He had done his bit, he thought, to stage a pretty picture of union, and now he had a chance to stain his sword with the blood of conquered men, before he must come at last to the great Cathedral itself, where he would wait for the humiliation of his enemies to be completed.

  The last of the vampire assassins rolled from the roof which had been his station, and Dragulya called out an order to one of his foot-soldiers to mark the man, if he was still alive, for impalement.

  As the Walachian moved to obey, though, he had to sidestep as something else clattered down the roof to fall beside the Maltese vampire. It was a pot of some kind, which shattered when it hit the stone pavement, red liquid bursting out of it and drenching the recumbent man.

  ‘What is that?’ demanded Dragulya.

  The foot-soldier shook his head in puzzlement, but John was on his feet now, livid with anger at his fall, and he strode past the voivode’s black to look at the man who had shot his grey, and at the stain which had splashed over him.

  ‘It looks like blood,’ he said, his voice grating with anger at the humiliation of his fall.

  ‘Wait!’ said Dragulya, but John had already bent down to smear his fingers upon a shard of the pot, and lifted them to his lips. He sniffed the liquid first, then tasted it with his tongue. He turned around to look up at the voivode, who licked his own dry lips, but not with any imagined relish.

  ‘It is only blood, my friend,’ said the heir to Grand Normandy. ‘Only common blood. The streets are full of it.’

  The warlord made no reply aloud, but murmured to himself, beneath his breath: ‘Aye, and so they are. But is there a reason, I wonder, why they have gathered it in pots which stand beside their archers?’

  He remembered, then, how Edmund Cordery had died.

  TEN

  Noell Cordery offered no resistance when the Walachian soldiers burst into his room in the archbishop’s residence.

  He was standing by the window, despairingly watching the tumult, and there was such a desolation in his heart that he could hardly bear to turn to look at them, but they had to be faced.

  The first of the invaders, a fair-haired common man with an ugly face, crazy with excitement, seemed ready to put him instantly to the sword. Doubtless the soldier saw only an old man wearing spectacles, whose plain clothes had no badge of rank to make him any different from many others equally helpless. Noell, in fact, moved as if to offer his breast to the Walachian’s sword, and was waiting for the blow when a vampire captain shoved the common man aside, cursing him in his own tongue. Then Noell knew that it might not be so easy to die. The vampire did not know him yet, but feared to make a mistake.

  The soldiers made him a prisoner, and took him away, showing him to others they had captured, until someone was found who was persuaded to name him. Until then, they treated him roughly, but when they knew who
he was they became more careful. Noell saw the Walachian captain stare at him with fear and loathing, and with great puzzlement; clearly he did not look the part of a master alchemist and black magician.

  His hands were bound tight behind him with a curtain sash, but first he was taken back to the chamber where they had found him, while the captain looked about the room, sorting through the papers on the desk as though to evaluate them – though he probably knew no written English, and seemed unable to speak even a few words of the language.

  After a few moments of pretence, the captain instructed his men to gather up everything, and bring it with them. Then he led Noell away again, to bring him from the residence to his fated meeting with Vlad Tepes.

  He did not need to be taken far, for Dragulya had made his headquarters in what was called the Palace of the University, where the Commune of the Maltese islanders had convened to exercise those rights and privileges which were guaranteed to them by the Grandmaster of St. John. The Palace had been the principal magisterial court in Mdina, where the Maltese received whatever justice was offered to them by their own nobles, and Dragulya plainly thought it apt that he should use the place for the court where he would pass sentence on the defenders of the island, who had sought to separate it from the Imperium of Gaul and make it the cradle of a New Order.

  That emergent order seemed now to be dead in its womb, a corpse to be dissected by Dragulya’s wooden stakes, but Noell, disheartened though he was by what he saw in the bloody streets, knew that the appearance might yet prove deceptive.

  The voivode was waiting in a small chamber beside the main hall of the palace, where he had made himself comfortable. He was not alone, but those who were with him were not fighting men, being nobles of a different stripe. When the captain told the warlord who his prisoner was, Dragulya received the information impassively, and told the soldiers to leave him and withdraw.