The Immortal Knight Chronicles Box Set 2

by Dan Davis

  “Come on!” I shouted. “We must break them. We will break them!”

  No one wanted to charge against such an implacable enemy but I rode up and down the front rank of my company.

  “We must not, Richard,” Rob said. “It is madness.”

  “William is there,” I roared. “He will be there, by the Sultan. This is our duty.”

  “Very well,” Rob said, exchanging a look with Walter. They closed their visors and waved my men into line.

  I led them forward and our charge was mighty indeed. We ran down the foremost ranks of the Janissaries and got in amongst those behind, cutting down scores of them.

  “We are surrounded!” Walt shouted. “We must break free or be lost.”

  “Damn you, man,” I swore. But he was not wrong and I ordered us to retreat once more.

  It was a bloody and desperate battle. Even then, after so many of us had been lost, we might have won the day. Might have reached the Sultan and ended him and his son before all the devastation that they and their descendants would wreak upon Christendom.

  But King Vladislaus III of Hungary was killed.

  The cry went up along the line that the king had fallen and all remaining fight went out of the crusaders.

  It was over. We knew we could not rally after such a loss.

  I joined Hunyadi and we attempted to rescue the king or recover his body, at least, but scores of men fell all around us and it quickly became clear that we could do no more without bringing the remaining army to disaster. The Janissaries advanced on us and we had to retreat.

  Our forces did not collapse and we disengaged carefully, though arrows fell and their hand-guns fired, we pulled away out of range. They were reeling from our assaults and their infantry could never have pursued our cavalry anyway.

  We retired to the wagonberg, and together fled the field in some semblance of good order. The surviving Turkish cavalry limped after us but they never attempted a proper assault. In our various national groups, we formed up and fled beyond the Turks, either along the lakeshore or through the hills or marshes and we all attempted to get as far away as fast as possible. Indeed, we rode through a portion of the night before stopping to rest and tend our wounds.

  I had just over fifty men left in my company and those that lived were battered and tired. Our remounts were needed but even those were exhausted and many of my servants rode two to a horse. We had left the company’s wagons and much of our supplies back at the camp but there was nothing to be done about that. Eva was angry at the decisions that had been made but I think mostly she was annoyed that she had missed out on the fighting. Stephen fretted about what it all might mean for Christendom, muttering of dark things, but Walt told him to hold his damned tongue. We had no time to indulge in anything but flight.

  The enemy did not have enough cavalry left to defeat our fleeing forces, for at least six thousand of our soldiers had survived. But we left ten thousand or so dead on the field and the Turks pursued us for days and weeks, as we rode back toward Hungary in a fog of defeat.

  It was a hard ride. We could not stop for long without falling behind and those that fell behind were in danger of falling to the Turks chasing us.

  But stop we did and word spread amongst us about what had happened at the end of the battle and I sought out witnesses.

  Later, during the journey, I found a Polish knight who had survived the charge alongside the King. The knight was recovering from multiple wounds, and the ones on his head seemed at first to have robbed him of his wits. Or, perhaps it was the horror of the battle that had done so. We crouched, shivering, over a tiny campfire, and I urged him to speak of it.

  “Did he reach the Sultan?”

  The knight’s eyes filled with orange tears that reflected the light of the fire. “Alas, no. It was not in some glorious combat with the Sultan or his son. First, he was shot by a slave armed with a cowardly, satanic weapon at a distance but that did not stop him. His horse was shot also, many times, but it did not slow. He charged on ahead of me, shouting for the Sultan to fight him. The king was almost at his tent when a man stepped forward with a long spear and thrust it up into him.” The Polish knight stopped speaking and stared through the fire.

  “A man?” I asked. “A Janissary?”

  The Pole shook his head slowly. “He was bareheaded and unarmoured, in fine clothes. Not a Turk. He had the look of a Frank. Or an Englishman.” He lifted his eyes to mine. “Like you.”

  A chill that was not from the night air ran through me. “His name is William. I believe they call him Zaganos Pasha, now.”

  “He was taken in the Blood Tax?” the knight asked.

  I shook my head. “What happened after he was speared? You saw him die? Or was he merely wounded?”

  The knight looked away again. “Your man, Zaganos Pasha, he pulled the king down from his horse as if he was no more than a child. Lifted him, in all his armour, and ripped off his helm with one hand and then he… he defiled him.”

  “Did he… forgive me, sir, did he bite the King?”

  The man’s eyes glowed. “Bite? He tore his face off with his teeth while the king screamed for God. And then with a long knife he cut his head from his body. The Janissaries cheered this.”

  “I am glad you survived to tell me what happened,” I said.

  He snapped his head up and glared at me. “I did all I could! My men pulled me away, forced me away, against my will, I would have died to defend him, would have died to defend his corpse from defilement.”

  I held up my frozen hands. “I meant no offence, sir, and apologise for having caused it. Others have told me of your bravery on the field and there is no man alive who doubts it, least of all me. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Just leave me be,” he said.

  The Polish knight died of his wounds two days later. Like many men in that desperate retreat, he was swiftly buried in whatever suitable site could be found before the pursuing Turks caught up. We left a trail of crusader bodies many weeks long as we followed the course of the Danube, seeking support from the local people of Bulgaria and then Wallachia.

  With the survivors of my company, I rode with Hunyadi’s dwindling group of loyal men. Companies broke off at various points so that each group could slip through a number of valleys and passes on our journey back to Transylvania and Hungary without running into enemy forces.

  Perhaps I should have abandoned Hunyadi but I wanted to help to defend him until he reached safety.

  One morning we were surrounded at both ends of a steep vale by hundreds of Wallachian horsemen. Some of them I am sure were those who had treacherously abandoned us at Varna.

  “We are here to escort you to my lord Vlad Dracul, the Voivode of Wallachia,” said the fat nobleman leading them, addressing Hunyadi directly.

  Hunyadi was furious but he controlled himself. “My thanks, sir, but we have no wish to do so. We are returning to Transylvania directly without your escort.”

  The Wallachian lord smiled through his beard, showing a mouthful of yellow teeth. “Forgive my unpractised Hungarian, my lord, but what I mean to say is that you are my prisoner. And soon you will be the prisoner of the Voivode of Wallachia, Vlad Dracul. Come with me now or we shall kill you here. Is that clear, my lord?”

  Hunyadi’s men stirred, some drawing their swords. I walked my own horse slowly forward closer to Hunyadi’s. We were outnumbered three to one and we were exhausted. But I thought we could break through if we fought together and meant to say so.

  Instead, Hunyadi gave himself, and all of us, up as prisoners.

  “Damned bastard,” Walt cursed him as we were escorted into Wallachia. “Bastard coward. We could have killed these useless dogs and been free.”

  “He is mortal,” I said. “And mortals must preserve their lives where we would risk them. We cannot fault him for this.”

  Walt was incensed. “You seen this Vlad Dracul with your own eyes. You met his son. Insulted him, to his face. Thes
e treacherous Wallachians will cross us and give us up to their friends the Turks, mark my words, Richard. Mark my words.”

  Looking up at the forested hills of Wallachia, I thought that Black Walter might just be right.

  2. Târgoviște

  1444 - 1447

  We were escorted northward through the Wallachian plains to the capital of Târgoviște. At the end of a long valley and at the foot of the hills that rose in the north to become a vast chain of mountains, the town had an attractive river running beside it that came tumbling and twisting down into a meandering course that irrigated the fields, then bare and cold. It would be a place I came to know and host to scenes that would haunt my nightmares for centuries, but the first time I laid eyes on it, it seemed a sturdy and well-appointed city in the German style.

  Certainly, the defences of Târgoviște had been attended to, for it was protected by a high and thick stone wall with sturdy towers at intervals around the perimeter and over every gate.

  Inside, the buildings were well made and of a good size, if far plainer when compared to the grand and intricate stonework of Buda or the ornate richness of Vienna. It had first been built by Saxon colonists and still retained that German character and, indeed, a large Saxon population who were responsible for most of the trade that went on in the city. But it was far more civilised than I had expected and as I entered through the gates I hoped that our captors would likewise prove to be more courteous than I had imagined.

  “Vlad Dracul is in residence,” Stephen mumbled, nudging me with his elbow and indicating a great dragon banner hung on the walls of the castle.

  “Thought he was supposed to be off waging war on the Turk?” Walt said.

  “So were we,” Rob replied.

  The ordinary soldiers, including my surviving men, were herded into tents in a huge field outside the walls and they would be damned uncomfortable but I reminded them to thank the Christ that the Wallachians had been so generous. They grumbled but they were hard fellows to a man, squires and servants included, and so they took to their quarters with stoicism.

  “Do not attempt to run,” I warned them before I went into the city. “We will play our parts and all will be well.”

  “Reckon they’ll have work for us, sir?”

  “We shall see.”

  As a leading mercenary captain and knight, I was allotted quarters for myself and my servants, those being Eva, Stephen, Walter and Rob and a handful of true servants. We were crammed into two dark rooms inside the castle within the city but it was warm and dry.

  “This is the finest prison I have ever been in,” I quipped as the door was slammed shut. “How lucky for us that warlords like Vlad Dracul rely on the services of mercenaries.”

  “We need blood,” Eva said, her face ashen and eyes dark. “I will bleed the servants. You must free us from this place.”

  “Certainly, my dear.”

  I spoke to placate her, because she was suffering from the blood sickness. But I knew it would not be so simple to extricate ourselves. The Wallachians were a people that seemed filled with violence, many appeared to feel vitriolic hatred for the Hungarians and for the people of any other nation who followed the Pope of Rome rather than their own Orthodox Church. We had been captured with Hunyadi and that might have meant we were destined to share whatever fate he would suffer. On the other hand, they had treated us well by providing pleasant quarters.

  We bled our servants and my immortals drank, sighing and calming themselves as the blood sickness symptoms retreated. Later, our captors brought bread, cheese, and cured pork, which we devoured, and even jugs of wine. Eva and I shared the main bed, Walt claimed one trundle bed and Stephen did the other. Our servants curled up where they could, and we passed the night in more warmth and comfort than we had experienced for many months. Still, Rob took the first watch and swapped with Walt, who swapped with Stephen. None came to harm us in the darkness. We may have been treated well but that did not mean I trusted our captors.

  The next day, I was taken to the great hall where Vlad Dracul sat on his throne with his eldest son, Mircea, beside him on a throne of his own. Light from windows high above the thrones illuminated them, while the rest of the room was lit only with lamps around the walls. A hot fire burned in the huge fireplace behind the throne but it was still cold in the hall.

  Vlad II Dracul was about fifty years old and he looked older but he was yet broad in the shoulder and straight backed. His face was fixed into a scowl, just as it had been when I had last seen him across a hall months before. I suspected from the depth of the lines on his face that the scowl was a permanent feature of it and had been s0 for decades. His dark eyes were narrowed beneath a low brow and his blade of a nose jutted from between them. His black moustache was as wide as his face and the oiled ends were curled up like two iron hooks.

  Before the prince and his son, on one side of the hall, stood the boyars, the great lords of Wallachia. In Wallachia, the commoners were made up from the masses of free peasantry and then there were the lords, who were called boyars, above them and then there was the voivode, which was a title meaning the Prince of Wallachia. I did not yet understand just how much power those boyars wielded in Wallachian society, but I was about to.

  On the other side of the hall stood the Hungarian and allied knights and nobles that had been captured along with Hunyadi, although Hunyadi himself was not present. There was an empty gulf between the two groups who stood glaring at each other and muttering amongst themselves. I slipped almost unnoticed into the rear of the hall and nodded to a couple of other knights who saw me. The boyars and Vlad Dracul’s personal guards were armed and the Hungarians and other survivors looked about them, wondering what was about to occur.

  It certainly seemed to me as though we were to be put on trial.

  I did not fancy being subjected to judgements that Vlad II Dracul would make.

  Almost as soon as I took my place, Janos Hunyadi was escorted into the great hall and every man turned to watch as he walked the length of the room. His servants were held back, and Hunyadi marched with his head held high to the base of the dais.

  He and Vlad stared at each other in silence for a moment that stretched and stretched. Young Mircea glared at Hunyadi with a smirk but the mighty Hungarian warlord had eyes only for Vlad. The boyars began to shift and glance sidelong at each other.

  “Janos Hunyadi, the White Knight of Transylvania,” Vlad Dracul said at last, speaking Hungarian, “through your actions, you have brought the great crusade into ruin. And even now, when you have personally caused the death of ten thousand Christian men, and so ruined the crusade to throw the Turk back into the wilderness where he belongs, you stand before me filled with arrogance. I see it upon your features. You dare to cast your eyes at me and be filled with pride, in spite of your utter failure. What will happen now, Hunyadi?”

  On the floor before the voivode, Hunyadi made to speak but Vlad spoke over him.

  “I tell you what will happen! The Turk shall take his revenge. That old goat-fucker Murad will come to my land. He will cross the Danube and burn and destroy all of Wallachia before crossing into Transylvania and he will do the same there. Your own lands shall burn. After Transylvania, Hungary will fall to the endless hordes of the Turk and his demons. And it was you who did this.” Vlad tore his mad eyes from Hunyadi and looked to his boyars. “I warned Hunyadi of what would happen. Did I not? Some men in this hall heard my words. You do not have enough men to face the Turk in open battle, I said. Your crusader army is smaller even than the Sultan’s hunting party that he takes into the plains from Edirne. Take his fortresses, I said. Take his ports and his castles, one by one, and avoid a battle that you are incapable of winning.” Vlad Dracul whipped his dark eyes back to Hunyadi and a mirthless grin stretched across his face. “Your arrogance is the cause of all this death. You believed in your own prowess more than you heed the advice of other, better men. You thought yourselves above all others and see where your hubris ha
s brought us. Has brought all Christendom. You thought of yourself as greater than your king and now your king is dead, his body ripped apart and unburied. One wonders if this was perhaps not your intention all along? Will you make yourself king, Hunyadi? Is that what you have wrought with your convenient defeat?”

  The boyars and watching Hungarians had been mumbling throughout the voivode’s verbal assault, and increasingly so, but this final accusation brought a chorus of angry cries and outraged denials. The Wallachians shouted down the Hungarians and Poles, who roared their protestations in defiance of the threats against them. They loved and admired Hunyadi, who had led them to a hundred unlikely victories in the mountains of Transylvania and elsewhere over decades.

  As subtly as I could, I sidled further away from the boyars and placed my hand near the handle of my knife.

  Mircea, the son of Vlad Dracul, sat still smirking at the riotous lords. Once I reached the side of the hall, I stayed as still and quiet as I could, feeling utterly adrift in the turbulence of Balkan politics. Also, I could understand only one out of every ten shouted words that filled the hall to the rafters.

  “Silence!” Roared Vlad Dracul, slamming his hands on the arms of his throne and standing. He was not a tall man, but he was broad and powerful, with a barrel chest and a herald’s piercing voice. Gradually, the lords calmed themselves and Vlad pointed at Hunyadi before sitting down. “You will now speak, Hunyadi. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Hunyadi waited until silence had settled once more and when he spoke it was with his customary clear and strong voice. “All men here know what happened. All men know who stood on the field and fought with honour and for Christ.” His head turned toward young Mircea, who blanched and glanced at his father. “And all men here know who did not.”

  The hall erupted once more, with the boyars on one side of the hall pushing and shoving the Hungarians and Poles and other crusaders on the other. Vlad’s personal guards pulled lords apart from one another and it took even longer for the noise to settle while Vlad stood with his hands raised.