by Dan Davis
VAMPIRE IMPALER
The Immortal Knight Chronicles
Book 6
Richard of Ashbury
and Vlad Dracula
1444 - 1476
Dan Davis
Copyright © 2019 Dan Davis
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
1. The Battle of Varna
2. Târgoviște
3. The Battle of Kosovo
4. Dracula
5. Constantinople
6. Escape
7. Wallachia
8. The Battle of Belgrade
9. The Boyars
10. Vlad and William
11. The Saxons
12. Ottoman Invasion
13. Night Attack at Târgoviște
14. The Throne
15. Moldavia
16. The Battle of Vaslui
17. Dracula Returns
18. Ambush
19. The Vampir
AUTHOR’S NOTE
BOOKS BY DAN DAVIS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
1. The Battle of Varna
1444
A hundred thousand Turks faced us across the plain. Banners snapped in the wind coming down from the hills and from the Black Sea close behind us.
It was to be the last battle of the last true crusade. The last time the kingdoms of Europe united to wage holy war on the enemies of Christ in a great battle.
“What do you reckon, Richard?” Walt asked me. “Biggest army you ever seen?”
We sat in the saddle in our armour, with the mercenary company I led around us. A hundred good fighting men, well equipped in steel and riding warhorses, plus their attendant squires, pages, grooms, and other servants which made me a minor though welcome addition to the crusade.
I looked out at the swarming mass of enemy horses and men filling the land from hills to hills and beyond, shining in their riot of armours and colours and raising noise enough to startle Heaven.
Across the plain in front of us, the azab infantry were robed and armed with spears. They were in effect a peasant militia, unmarried men who fought because they had no choice but were no less dangerous for all that. They might have been armed with just bows and spears, but there were many thousands of them that would have to be overcome.
It was not only low-quality men who were arrayed against us on foot, for the Anatolian infantry behind them wore mail with small plates, armed with spears and shields.
Beyond those infantry, in the centre of the entire army, thousands of elite Janissaries massed behind palisades, in their white or yellow robes, holding powerful recurved bows or the new hand-guns, and long, wicked polearms with spear heads, axe blades and hooks all on the same weapon. They also fought on foot but they were the most well-trained, well-equipped forces that the Sultan could deploy. At their sides were slung long, thin, curving swords that could split a man’s flesh to the bone in a single, swift cut. Beneath their robes, they were protected by a light coat of mail, some bore bronze shields with shining bosses and on their heads they all wore tall, white felt hats that made them impossible to miss even from across the battlefield.
The sipahi horsemen from Anatolia and from Rumelia – that is the Turkish-held lands of Europe such as Bulgaria - were heavily armoured, wearing steel turbans on their heads that had mail hanging down to protect their necks and long white feathers trailing from the top. Some wore mail shirts, others wore lamellar armour of hundreds of small steel plates sewn together. Their horses were likewise well armoured in strong, light steel. Their steel shone in the dim light as the masses of cavalry rode this way and that on the two wings of a front two miles wide.
Our great army of Hungarians, a few Serbs, and German and French knights, was far smaller. Vlad II Dracul of Wallachia sent a force of seven thousand men, though he would not join us for the whole campaign and had left us in anger before the battle.
We were led by King Vladislaus of Hungary but the true commander was a knight and great lord named Janos Hunyadi. His countless military successes against the Turks in the Balkans over many years had so invigorated Christendom that the Pope had called the crusade and so it was Hunyadi, as the best soldier in Christendom, who chose our strategy and our tactics.
“Can we win?” Walt asked.
The eyes of my closest companions, Eva, Rob, and Stephen, also turned to me.
I said nothing.
“One Christian is worth a dozen Turks,” Rob said, raising his voice. Some of the men of my company overheard and called out in affirmation.
“If we cannot win,” Stephen asked, speaking softly as he sidled his horse closer me, “would it not be reasonable to withdraw? Our company, I mean. Richard?”
“I took the cross,” I said. “I am sworn to fight. And so my men, who are sworn to me, are sworn to fight this battle also.” I looked at him. “You included, Stephen.”
“So, then, we fight,” Stephen said, scowling. “Even if our deaths are almost certain?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Nothing is certain,” Eva said, almost speaking over me. “Even our reasons for being here.”
I ignored her barbed comment. We were there because William was there, fighting for the Sultan. It was Eva and Stephen’s agents who had discovered him but she was right that it was not certain. Even so, I felt it in my bones that he was across the field that day. Hidden from my view by the blur of distance and the swirling of the ranks of men and horse, perhaps, yet there all the same.
And the odds were against us in the battle but we had not meant for it to be so.
Hunyadi’s plan for the crusade had been straightforward enough, in concept. We had followed the line of the Danube before crossing it in September 1444 and then westward into Bulgarian lands up to the Black Sea to the town of Varna. Instead of slowing our advance to take numerous, small enemy fortresses we had ignored them.
We knew of a great Turkish army coming to do battle with us but they refused to engage and so our advance to Varna was rapid.
From there, so we planned, we would push south into Turkish Rumelia and throw our enemy from Thrace and Bulgaria. The Turk had been in possession of those European lands for far too long already. And then we would go on, chasing them back across the Bosporus and back into Anatolia.
In all this we would be supported by fleets of Burgundian, Venetian, and Genoese ships who would close the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, denying the enemy the chance for reinforcements. Once we had the Turk on the run, we could pursue all the way to Jerusalem and win back the Holy City once and for all.
That was the plan.
But first, we had to defeat the great army of the Turks, led in person by Sultan Murad II.
We had reached Varna on a bitter day at the start of November and were shocked to discover the entire Turkish army camped just two miles away to the west beyond the hills. It was a failure on the part of our scouts and our leadership but once it was done, it could not be easily undone. Our army found itself trapped with the Black Sea to the east and the thickly forested hills in the north from where we had come. Between the northern hills on our right flank and the sea close behind us was an extensive marshland that meant we could not slip away quickly without being surrounded and destroyed.
“It is victory or destruction,” I said, raising my hand to point at the Turkish centre. “Besides, William is there.”
My companions looked at me once more.
“You do not know that,” Eva said.
“I know it.”
“You wish it,” Eva said. “Because your desire for revenge is so strong that
it has overcome your reason. You do not know.”
“Your own agents have said he sits at the Sultan’s ear, whispering that Christendom must be destroyed. And the Sultan is here, and so William is here.” I looked at the vast host. “He would not be elsewhere.”
“We are not certain that the man calling himself Zaganos Pasha is truly William,” Stephen pointed out. “None of us have seen him with our own eyes.”
“They say he is a tall and dark-haired Christian and none knows from where he has come. Some say he is Serbian, others Greek, and others that he is a Frank. It is typical of William to cause such confusion, sewing a dozen stories so that the truth is lost amongst the lies. This Zaganos Pasha has come from nowhere, at no time, and others whisper that he has always been there. He is feared and respected even by his enemies and the other pashas and viziers at the Sultan’s court. Who else could Zaganos Pasha be but William?”
“Even so,” Stephen began, “we are throwing our lot in with this doomed army without certain proof that—”
“You and Eva will retire to the wagonberg,” I said to him.
Stephen broke off and turned to look to our rear. Behind us, the centre of our position was a vast ring of a hundred fortified war wagons, emplaced on a section of higher ground.
“I would rather fight at your side,” Eva said.
“And I would rather that the work of the Order of the White Dagger continue,” I replied. “Should I fall today.”
She wished to argue but for the sake of appearances before my men, she simply nodded and pulled back to the wagonberg. Those one hundred war wagons were defended by hundreds of expert hand-gunners from Bohemia. The combination of war wagons and firearms were a remarkable military innovation by the Hussites that had been proven effective in their repeated victories against the great kingdoms of Christendom in the decade or two prior. An innovation embraced enthusiastically by our Transylvanian-born Hungarian leader Janos Hunyadi.
The wagons had high, solid walls on all sides from which the hand-gunners and crossbowmen shot at the enemy, along with men armed with polearms to protect their fellows should enemy cavalry ever reach the wooden walls of the wagon fortress. The solid wood sides dropped down to protect the wheels and the wagons were joined together by strong chains. I had seen wagons pulled into defensive formation before, indeed the Tartars had been well-known for the tactic, but first the Hussites and now the Hungarians had developed the concept into a sophisticated weapon of war that had proved all-but unassailable in previous battles in central and eastern Europe.
Indeed, the day before, when we had discovered the enemy horde were so close, a council of war was called. By that day at Varna, I had fought with Hunyadi for over a year and ever since I had impressed him in my first battle at his side he had invited me to join him at such councils.
It was the king’s tent, and King Vladislaus sat in a large chair at the high end of it, but it was Hunyadi who commanded proceedings from where he stood, to the side and two paces in front of the King.
Hunyadi was about forty years old at Varna, in the prime of his life, and he had been a soldier for all of that life already. He was no more than middling height, was rather dark, and he had a heavy brow and a magnificently large nose, but he was not unattractively featured for all that. His eyes were shrewd, pits, twinkling with the intelligence of the man behind them.
In his youth, Hunyadi had served as page for a famous Florentine knight, then as a squire for a great Hungarian lord who loved battle, before serving the Despot of Serbia. Because of his brilliance even as a young man, he had been brought into the retinue of Sigismund, the old King of Hungary, who ordered Hunyadi to join the army of the Duke of Milan so that he might learn the modern ways of battle in Italy. Later, Sigismund brought Hunyadi into Bohemia where the young knight had learned to admire the tactics and technology of the Hussites that he would later replicate.
I had arrived in Hungary, still assembling my own mercenary company, just in time to join Hunyadi in his campaign against the Turks. We fought the Turks in a dozen battles and won almost all of them, though we had ultimately failed to break through the Turkish strongpoints in our efforts to invest the Turkish capital of Edirne, which had once been called Adrianople by the Eastern Romans. Still, we had thrashed the Turks three ways from Sunday and I had been mightily impressed by Hunyadi’s tactics and his ability to lead men.
Still, many of his betters were jealous of his rise above them and they doubted his abilities to lead a crusade, even if it was in the name of King Vladislaus of Hungary.
“We are outnumbered and trapped,” Cardinal Cesarini had said, his eyes wild. He was a tall man, as finely armoured as a prince, and in the prime of his life. “It is not possible that we should win. All we can do is fortify ourselves within a wagonberg and wait for our great fleet to arrive, which surely they must at any moment.”
He was not just a representative of the Church of Rome but was a great lord in his own right, as were the other bishops and Church lords who had come as leaders. Each led their own contingents of powerful knights and other men-at-arms, meaning their words at a war council carried weight.
Many of the nobles in the tent called out their agreement.
Janos Hunyadi looked at each man who spoke and seemed to be fixing each of them in his mind as he did so. One by one, they fell silent. Some hung their heads, as if they were chastised boys.
“But even if it did arrive here, would the fleet be large enough to take all of our men from the coast?” Hunyadi asked. The lords spoke in French, occasionally in Latin, and sometimes in Hungarian. My Hungarian was improving every day but thankfully French was spoken by all lords, even those from the mountains of Thrace.
“God willing,” Cardinal Cesarini said, to general muttering. “Surely, my lords, with the fleets of the Burgundians, the Venetians, and the Genoese, we shall be saved from this disaster.”
“Indeed,” a young princeling said, raising his voice. “Indeed, my lords, we must not engage with the enemy. I will not lead my men into a fight they will not survive. We must withdraw tonight under cover of darkness. By morning we could be away toward the Danube.”
Voices were raised in agreement and many a man nodded to himself and to his neighbour.
Hunyadi caught my eye and nodded once to me.
I peered over the heads of the men in the command tent and looked down at the princeling that spoke to the great lords of Christendom with such surety. He was a stocky lad with a fluffy beard and moustache beneath a long, sharp nose.
“I beg your pardon but how old are you, little lord?” I called out. A round of stifled laughter flowed through the tent. Even Hunyadi’s mouth twitched and he covered it by scratching his cheek.
“Who said that?” the young prince snapped, turning around from the lords at the front. “Some coward who speaks from behind the safety of—”
He stopped as I pushed forward through the men and looked down at him. “I meant no offence, my lord. Your suggestion is not such a bad one. I simply wondered how much experience you have in warfare.”
The swarthy young fellow drew himself up as tall as he could and lifted his long nose. “I am Mircea of Wallachia, eldest son and heir of Vlad Dracul, Voivode of Wallachia. I bring seven thousand horsemen and am one of the leaders of this army. Who are you, you great Frankish oaf, to even address me?”
I smiled widely and bowed low. “Of course, now I recognise you. I met your father a few months ago, when he returned to his homeland. I believe your revered father said at that time that we had no chance of victory, did he not? In fact, I recall his very words. The Sultan’s hunting party is larger than your entire army, Hunyadi.” A few men behind me snorted and young Mircea of Wallachia’s dark face darkened further and I quickly raised my voice. “And he was right.”
The tent fell silent.
Mircea nodded and spoke warily. “So, you agree with me, sir? We must withdraw tonight, is that not so?”
I lifted my head and
pursed my lips, tempted to ask whether he still demanded my name now that he thought I agreed with him but there was no purpose to humiliating the fellow further, especially when he wielded such power. “A withdrawal through the hills at night is possible,” I said and turned to address all those present. “For some of us, perhaps. A thousand men might make it out, escaping detection. Two thousand, perhaps.” I turned back to Mircea. “Seven thousand, even.” His eyes widened. “But any man that attempts to leave this place shall be breaking his oath. What is more, he will be committing a great sin. The greatest sin, perhaps. Yes, any man who attempts to take his men away from the battlefield will not only be abandoning the King of Hungary and his fellow Christians, he shall be abandoning Christ.”
Mircea of Wallachia stiffened. “What are you suggesting, sir?”
“Yes,” Janos Hunyadi said. “Make your point, sir. There is much to discuss. Surely, you do not suggest dividing our army?”
“My lord,” I said and bowed, then I paused while every man looked at me, including the King of Hungary from his throne. “I suggest that tomorrow, we attack the Turk and drive him from Bulgaria forever!” Men cried out and began arguing with me and then with each other. Many seemed to agree with me, especially the French and German lords. But others disagreed, calling into question my sanity and my ability so that I raised my voice above them so I would be heard.
“We do not have the numbers!” the Bishop of Talotis cried. “Even with God on our side, we cannot defeat so many.”
“Do not let your eyes fool you, my lords,” I said. “Their numbers are swelled by the many thousands of azabs they will throw at us. These men are peasants, with no armour and almost no will to fight. We shall run them down without slowing our horses.”
“It is not the peasants but the sipahis that concern us,” said a young Hungarian nobleman named Stephen Bathory who was the Palatine of Hungary, which I understood to be as high a rank as a man could achieve in that kingdom and he was well-favoured by his king. “The sipahis are equal to our mounted men and they have two or three times our number. They are our only concern.”