by Dan Davis
“We ride with Wallachian horsemen,” Walt observed. “Many of them are the very same Wallachian horsemen that abandoned us at Varna.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And they deserted again at Kosovo.”
“Many are the same men, certainly.”
Walt nodded. “And these same lads are our allies now?”
“We are riding with them, that is all. When we reach Belgrade, Hunyadi will know not to trust these men.” I thought of Dracula’s earlier words. “Besides, they may not act as they have before.”
My men were not convinced.
“What if they do not flee,” Walt said, “but instead attack. Dracula is one of William’s and he will have ordered these men to fall upon the Hungarians at just the right moment. Did that occur to you?”
“I will warn Hunyadi, do not fear. Until then, we must treat our companions with respect and courtesy. Understand?”
“Can I not just keep apart from them instead?” Walt grumbled.
“Once our business in Belgrade is finished, we must return here and capture and kill their new prince. We cannot make enemies amongst the soldiery before then, and so you will be courteous,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “Like the knight you are. Come on.”
***
We marched first with the Hungarian and Transylvanian mercenaries from Wallachia across the plains to the Danube, crossing by boat, and then up into the mountains toward northern Serbia. The mercenaries knew they would be paid when they reached the Hungarian army at Belgrade but they also looked forward to the prospect of enormous quantities of loot, assuming of course that the Turks could be defeated.
We pushed hard and I drove my company faster than many of the others, gaining distance every day. The land was teeming with soldiers from all over, heading for Belgrade. There is no doubt that there were Turkish spies everywhere also, whether they were Anatolian, Bulgarian, Serbian, or Wallachian.
My company gained half a day and then a full day and soon we were one company out a day ahead of the mercenaries and the Wallachians a day behind them. It was no simple thing to cross from the plains of Wallachia into Serbia and the hills and valleys between the two seemed endless. It was a sparsely populated land but our guides knew their business and every day we rose early and stopped late. It was gruelling travel, especially for my mortal servants, but I dared not miss the battle. There was no doubt in my mind that William would be there and God alone knew what atrocities he could commit with his red-robed immortals. We could not face him directly, not yet, but we could not abandon our allies to face them alone, either.
Once we dropped down from the hills into the long, north-south valleys of Serbia, the going was far easier. We headed north, toward the Danube again, before crossing three wide, fertile plains as we headed west once more.
I grew up in hill country but where Derbyshire was rounded and filled with bright, verdant greens, and the rocks were warm, soft limestone and sandstone, Serbia was a land of all dark greens and the stone was jagged, hard and harsh, in deep greys and red-browns, and the soil thin and black. It seemed nowhere in the entire land was flat, other than their three valleys in the northeast, even as we followed the Danube for the final leg of the journey to the massive city that was our destination and our great hope for stopping the relentless advance of the Turks.
Belgrade was a Hungarian possession, but it remained to all intents a Serbian city. And the Serbs had, for once, decided to defy their Turkish overlords and were intent on defending the city. Indeed, they must have known that once Belgrade fell, there would be no Serbia left to resist the Turks at all.
The local Serbian population around the city had added to the number of defenders within it and the land all around had been well prepared by them for the siege. Defences had been dug, erected, and extended and fields of fire cleared for the cannons and gunners on the walls and towers. Indeed, Hunyadi had been lavishing vast sums on enhancing the defences at least since I had arrived in the region more than ten years earlier. But recently there had been a final surge in effort and the locals had been building the walls higher and stronger for months. Anything edible had been removed from the enemy’s line of march, all the water sources poisoned, and bridges destroyed. It would not stop the Turks but it would not help them, either.
“Come on,” I said every morning to my tired and aching men, “just a little further.” Our guides were eager to get us into Serbia and they ranged ahead every day to ensure the way was clear. When we reached the city, they came back and urged me to bring just a small party ahead to see for ourselves what awaited us.
Belgrade sat nestled between the River Sava where it ran into the Danube and as we approached the peak of the highest point a few miles from the city, we were awed by the scale of the fortress on the horizon.
And yet the triple-walled fortress city was not what stilled our tongues. We had been avoiding Turkish patrols in the hills for days before we arrived and dreaded what we would find as we crept through the long grass to the top of a ridge.
“We are too late,” Stephen muttered, looking out at the city close to the horizon where it sat at the confluence of two great rivers.
“Damn the bastards,” Walt hissed.
The army of the Turks was arrayed before Belgrade, encamped in an arc completely cutting them off. Tens of thousands of soldiers, horses, and great artillery pieces, already intent on reducing the outer limit of the fortifications. On the wide Danube, an enormous Turkish fleet swarmed the waters. The tributary Sava River looked clear of Turkish vessels but still the city was close to being cut off. More wagons and groups of riders trailed from the south up to the camp, bringing supplies and more men.
Though camp fires burned in the Turkish camps and lines and lines of trenches and earthworks were thrown up between the army and the city, the walls were intact and there was no fighting going on.
“The city is untouched,” I said. “We cannot have missed much.”
Walt scowled. “How are we going to get in past that lot?”
Stephen laughed. “Well, I think it is clear that we shall not do so, Walt.”
“What, then?” Walt said. “We going back to Wallachia?”
“William is down there,” I said. “And the Sultan, too, do you see his banner there in the centre camp? His vast tents below them. We will not flee.”
“Shall we camp in the hills, then?” Rob asked. “Sit and watch from afar, shall we? Move in when the fighting starts?”
“Patrols will find us before then,” Walt said. “It’ll take the Turks months to get in there. Look at the walls, by God. We should go north, cross the Danube, go into Hungary and back to Buda. I bet our good Regent is yet building his army, don’t you? Reckon we should join it.”
I scanned the river beyond, where it curled away into the horizon. There were no allied ships to be seen and no army on the banks. “Listen, Hunyadi knows just as well as anyone that a city, even one as well-fortified as this one, cannot resist these new cannons for long. Weeks or a month, perhaps. But they will blast away at the walls, like at Constantinople, and they will break through. Not in months but weeks and perhaps even days. Look how many cannons there are. A hundred? Three hundred?” They looked at me, waiting for the good news. “And that is why he was building an army which can bring the Turk to battle before that occurs.”
Walt held his hand out to the scene before us. “And where is this army?”
“He will come now, right away. He will be here any day. Tomorrow. Soon. He knows he cannot leave Belgrade to its fate and so he will come. He has to.”
“Remember that old Cardinal?” Rob said. “The one preaching for a crusade in Hungary before we left, commanding Christians to take up arms and come to the defence of the city.”
“John of Capistrano,” Eva said.
“That’s the fellow. Perhaps they are coming also?”
I shook my head. “The only men who listened were peasants. They started assembling in southern Hungary but
they had nought but slings and clubs, for God’s sake. What do you think they will do against the Janissaries?”
Rob shrugged. “Better than nothing.”
“Hunyadi is coming with the soldiers of Hungary but he is coming from the other side of the city. The other side of the siege, beyond the Sava. We must do two things. First, send word back to the mercenaries behind us and Wallachians behind them that if they come this way they will be seen due to their great numbers, and then they will be chased down by thousands of sipahis and defeated in a pointless battle. Secondly, once our message is sent, we must cross the Sava and join with Hunyadi’s approaching army.”
“Why not join the mercenaries behind us?” Stephen said. “There are thousands of them and we would be safer in numbers if we force a crossing of the tributary.”
“A small company like us can evade notice. Even if we are seen, no one will be overly concerned. If we are a force of a thousand or more, we will find ourselves run down by entire divisions of Turks. Their only hope of joining the battle is going around for miles or waiting in the east. It is up to them.”
“They’ll run,” Walt predicted. “They’ll just run.”
“Perhaps we should, too,” Stephen said. “This is too much. Too much.”
“It would do us no harm to take a few days to ride around,” Eva said.
“Longer we wait, the more dug in they’ll be,” Rob said. “Less chance of getting in at all.”
“And I will say it again,” Stephen snapped. “We need not fight every battle, especially when we are so likely to lose. William and the damned immortal Janissaries are there, I understand that. But approaching the city in these circumstances seems foolhardy at best.”
Walt shrugged. “Might be all right.”
“It is suicide!” Stephen said. “If we had any sense at all, we would flee and find another place to defend.”
“After Belgrade,” I said, “it will be Buda. After pacifying Hungary, it will be Vienna. And then where? Prague? Venice? If Venice, then Rome? We will not run. We will do our duty.” I pointed due west across the rear of the great Turkish camps with their hundred thousand soldiers and tens of thousands of horses and servants spread across the plain. “We make our way there, to the banks of the Sava.”
***
We reached the Sava a few miles upstream from the city in the night, at a place where the tributary curved into a great bow shape. Our guides had made contact with Serbian spies, and they assured us there would be Hungarian forces ready to ferry us across. I did not know what to expect but we moved across the Turk’s line of retreat to the water’s edge as dusk fell. Enemy horsemen roamed the countryside all around and we were certainly spotted more than once but we moved quickly and were not challenged directly. No doubt, they assumed we were allies or too small an enemy force to be concerned with.
“We’re in danger,” Walt muttered as we huddled in the orchard on the outskirts of an abandoned village for our guides to return. “Sat here like a bag of plums, ain’t we.”
The residents had likely fled into the city days or weeks before the first Turks arrived and they or the enemy had later burned half of it to the ground for good measure. The obvious thing would have been to take shelter in the ruins but I did not like my men to be so confined, should enemy cavalry find us. The banks of the river were a stone’s throw away and our position was sheltered by a rise on the landward side and I had positioned a few men up there to keep watch, and at our rear. Others kept an eye on the waters for the approach of the ships that would collect us. Our horses were nipping at the grass on the ground beneath the apple trees.
“The men are ready to repel an attack,” I said. “And we shall be across the river before dawn.”
“Balls, we will,” Walt muttered. “We’ll be sat here with our arses wet when the sun rises and an army of Turks is coming over that ridge down onto us.”
“Then we will fight our way clear. Or we will die. What has got your gizzard, Walter?”
“Don’t mind him, Richard,” Rob said. “He wagered Serban we would make it inside the city before the Turks arrived.”
“I would have thought you would welcome a quick death then, Walt, rather than part with your silver.”
“We’ve been abandoned,” Walt said. “Our damned guides have led us here and fled. Probably found a tub and rowed across to save themselves. Lying bastards, I’ll skin them alive when I find them.”
“They have not let us down so far.” I raised my voice just a little. “Serban?”
“My lord?” he said, shuffling over.
“Do you trust our guides?”
He scratched his weathered face. “They are Serbians. They can be trusted only so far.”
Walt scoffed. “There, you hear that? We have to run, now. Head south and see what’s what.”
“We shall wait.”
As the night drew on, I could not contain my own fears. In frustration, I went out on foot toward the river to see what was happening. The moon’s light was shaded by wisps of cloud and the wind whistled in my ears. The river was far wider than it had seemed at a distance, when I could compare it to the mighty Danube. Half of me had expected to be able to swim in, with our horses, should the boats not come, but looking at it close up I knew we would never make it across. Not even those of us who knew how to swim. Somewhere downstream along the bank, a grebe chattered its frantic, warbling trill and then a loon gave its long, mournful, two-tone wail. Further away, the loon’s mate gave it’s answering call which echoed across the water. It was eerie and unusual to hear them in the dead of night. I wondered if someone had disturbed them.
“You are afraid,” Eva said, from just behind my shoulder, startling me.
“Good God, Eva,” I snapped. “I am when you are creeping about like a bloody wraith, woman.”
“You are deciding whether to wait longer or to take the men away.”
“Walt is right,” I said. “Being here at sunrise is too great a risk. It is a wide river but perhaps there is a ford upstream.”
“The Sultan is five miles downstream.”
“Closer than that, even.”
“And William is very likely with him.”
“With tens of thousands of soldiers and five hundred immortals guarding him, so do not suggest we attempt to steal through their ranks to slit William’s throat. Believe me, Eva, if I thought it was possible, we would be attempting it.”
“I was not going to suggest it. All I suggest is that perhaps your mind is focused upon your brother instead of the battle ahead.”
“What do you mean?”
“The city is encircled by land and almost closed off by river. And you said it yourself, the Sultan has hundreds of cannon. Hundreds. Have you ever seen so many before? There are more here than at Constantinople, are there not? The city is doomed. And where is Hunyadi? Where are the Hungarians? Not even the crusader army of peasants has come.”
“Hunyadi will be here.”
“You like him as a man,” Eva said. “You like him as a fellow old soldier.”
“Speak plainly. You believe my judgement is clouded where Hunyadi is concerned? He has faced the Turks a hundred times and defeated them more times than he has lost. Who else can say such a thing?”
“He has done well. But he is old, now. His sons are taking their own commands. Hunyadi’s losses have taken the shine off the man and the lords of Hungary, who have always been jealous, are asking what comes next.”
I turned from the river and looked at her. “You think he will not come.”
“Already at Easter, the Hungarian lords were refusing to answer his summons. You said it yourself, all the crusade could recruit was useless peasants. You must consider the fact that Hunyadi may not have an army to bring.”
“He will come,” I said. “Alone if he has to.”
She did not reply. The loons had fallen silent and splashed out onto the dark river. Only the grebe still chattered, as if it was as nervous as I was.
“What would you have us do?” I asked.
“As you said. Go upstream, find a ford and head north until we can cross the Danube into Hungary.”
“Abandon Belgrade?”
“Only so we may fight another day.”
“You and Stephen are both pragmatic to a fault. Our Christian duty is to defend Christian lands from the infidel.”
“Our duty is to defeat William. Our oath is to accomplish what no one else can.”
“Perhaps—” I broke off at the sound of a large splash, staring out at the water and straining to hear it again. Whether it was a large fish jumping or a bird landing or something else, I could not say.
Eva said nothing, listening also.
Rob approached quickly, wading through the rustling tall grass behind me. “Riders approach,” he hissed. “Heading into the village.”
“Turks? How many?”
“Anatolian light horse,” Rob whispered. “Two score, perhaps.”
“We could kill them,” Eva said. “And flee south.”
“Not before some escaped and then we would be in a fighting retreat, looking for a ford and—”
I heard it again, only this time I was certain that it was not an animal.
“What is it?” Walt asked.
“Water slapping on wood,” I said. “Oars. A boat. Something. What can you see?”
They both peered out at the river, their eyes far better than mine at seeing into the darkness.
“It is boats,” Eva whispered. “Galleys, heading for the bank. For the landing stage by the village.”
“Ours? Or Turks?”
“I do not know.”
Leading them back quickly to the rest of the men, I called Walt, Stephen, and Serban to join us.
“Turks in the village,” I whispered. “Galleys coming to pick us up from there.”
Eva and Rob shot me looks but I ignored them. We would have to assume the ships were meant for us rather than for the Turks. And if they were not, perhaps we would have to kill the crew and row ourselves across. Sometimes one simply has to act decisively and push through.