An Evening at Joe's (35 page)

Kirschner threw an armoured leg over the barrel-girth of his towering warhorse and surveyed with satisfaction the pressing throng. Dracula had entrusted to him the charge of foot down the slippery slope to separate the Ottoman infantry from the Kapikulu horsemen. It was absolutely essential that the line advance unbroken. Repeatedly he had plunged into the seething mass, leading reinforcements to buttress a weakening link in the formation.

There, in the insanity of the melee, with mace in one hand and sword in the other, he parried and hacked and stabbed until blood splattered the grey steel of his harness up to the palderons. So numbed were his arms by the relentless deadening impacts, so unconscious his responses, that through the narrow eye-slit of his visor he fancied he watched another man do battle. The constant violent jostle and tumultuous clamor made Hans feel as though he were being flogged on all sides by wet sandbags. Eventually, the sensory overload became so overwhelming that all Kirschner could feel, or hear, was the surge of his own adrenaline, and the roar of his own pulse in his ears.

The line did more than hold. Slowly at first, then with increasing momentum, it advanced. The Turkish vanguard wavered but a second. It was enough. With bile burning in the back of their throats, the Wallachians surged forward with demonic power. The Ottoman fell before the savage onslaught, like trees caught in an avalanche.

Kirschner stood in the stirrups astride the mountain of sable muscle that was his destrier. The advance, he assured himself, was strong and uniform. Only then did his grim smile fade, as the forward progress of the fray revealed the ground over which the battle had joined and was contested for a brutal, bitter hour.

Bodies... many twisted into obscene contortions by the trample of a thousand boots. Mutilated and dismembered, they lay in jumbled heaps or strewn asunder, as though sullenly flung by a Titan's tantrum. Nearby a severed limb still clutched a sword in futile, eternal defiance.

But if one could stand to look past the steaming carnage, there remained one horrible discrepancy. One blatant overwhelming wrongness, so palpably conspicuous that it required conscious effort to force the brain to acknowledge it.

It was winter....

The ground was red.

Scattered like pearls in a sea of scarlet, patches of unsullied white brazenly proclaimed their purity. As the prince's men advanced they left in their wake a reeking crimson swath of trodden, sodden snow.

Kirschner wheeled his mount away from the grotesque spectacle, and spurred it to a gallop towards a clutch of Moldavian guardsmen above whom snapped the red and gold dragon standard of the prince. Dracula himself had led the cavalry assault, smashing the Turkish host apart like a splitting wedge through a log. But now, as Kirschner drew up near the guard phalanx, the prince, in his distinctive armour, was nowhere to be seen. This was passing strange; were the prince dead, the guard would scarce be standing about in such a manner. Yet if he were leading men his banner would ride beside him. Kirschner knew the prince's capriciousness, and comprehended a third explanation that he liked not a whit.

"Where is my lord, the Prince?" demanded Hans of the nearest Moldav.

"He has ridden to observe our enemy's defeat," beamed the young guard officer.

Alone, of course, the damn fool, thought Kirschner, although he understood full well the reasoning. Dracula's standard had to remain near the battle as reassurance, and a rallying point. But although Dracula was often rash and impetuous, yet he was not a fool; he would hardly strike out without a guard if he could be recognized. Therefore, he would...

Kirschner shouldered his horse between the guardsmen, searching the ground for something he dreaded to find.

There! Near the standard-bearer lay the body of a Turkish sipahi— by the look of his armour, an officer of some consequence, probably an alay bey. But the picture he presented was incomplete in a way his death in battle could not explain. His çiçak helmet, normally secured by a chin-strap, was missing, as was the rich silk brocade surcoat that would normally be worn, cape-like, over his harness.

"Which way?" roared Kirschner, spinning his horse about. Startled by his outburst, the guardsman pointed to the hillside down which Kirschner had led his troops; the only high ground for miles.

Hans thundered off, the drumming of his steed's hooves impelling from him a stream of guttural, imaginative invective.

It was not uncommon for Dracula to make a personal reconnaissance while in disguise, but never in broad daylight under such fool- hardy circumstances. Although the prince would naturally seek the high ground, the lower portion of the hill still contained hundreds of Wallachian archers and a small contingent of infantry, stationed to prevent the Turk from using the hill to circumvent the bottle-neck of the engagement and flank their rear. But it was not just the danger presented by his own troops that Kirschner feared. The Sultan's forces included native Wallachian Voyniks. These men, many of whose families had suffered the excesses of Dracula's previous reigns, would not be disposed to merely capture him should he be recognized. His enormous black charger plowed its way labouriously up the hill, snow often reaching near its belly. Kirschner leaned forward onto its thick neck and strained his eyes up the slope, through the bare trees searching for unnatural colour against a background of yet-unsullied white.

Kirschner reined in his mount and stood high in the stirrups, his eyes narrowing as he tried to feel the ghostly stirring of the proximity of the Gift. Suddenly, through a haze of frosty breath, a flurry of movement danced in his peripheral vision. There, to his right, a small group of soldiers fought through knee-deep drifts to disappear over a shallow rise. Hans snapped the reins and urged his horse forward. Sounds began to reach him as he plunged upwards towards the knoll's crest; vicious oaths and the sharp ring of steel rent the frigid air. He burst through a drift in an explosion of white to see...

Dracula. Clad in peacock-blue Turkish silk, his sword flashed in blurred arcs as he kept at bay his two remaining adversaries. Two other figures lay contorted, staining the snow.

The Prince bellowed with rage as he whirled his blade, vociferously proclaiming his tide, and threatening the men with the direst of punishments.

Futilely, it occurred to Kirschner. His clothing notwithstanding, Dracula's borrowed helmet had a chainmail aventail that extended around its front, and hooked to the descending nasal bar. Only the Prince's eyes were visible behind its mask. Besides—these soldiers, even though part of Vlad's army, were probably not Wallachian. Almost three-quarters of the royal host were Moldavs and Transylvanians who had probably never seen the Prince up close. And, knowing the presence of Voyniks and Vlaches in the enemy's rank, the fact that this man was raging in Romani would not have lent the content of his invective the slightest credibility.

Kirschner jerked his head to the right. The four soldiers he had circled past were now gaining the pinnacle. Dracula was a fearsomely accomplished warrior, but even Hans could not stand long against six while knee-deep in snow.

Kirschner hesitated; perhaps this was as it was meant to be. After all, he had been attending on this man's death for two years now. What would it serve to his purpose to save him now?

Ruefully, he answered his own question. It was not if, but how he might die that Kirschner could not risk. Were the Prince to be inadvertently beheaded with him this close by, he could not escape being trapped in the fury of the Quickening. After being lashed by such forces, he would be seriously compromised in his ability to defend himself. And if the soldiers merely fled, the tale they would relate could prove inconvenient to him, at the least.

The four reinforcements were closing on Dracula. Thinking sour thoughts Kirschner silently withdrew a yard of well-honed steel from its scabbard. With his left hand he closed his visor with a muffled click, then unhooked the mace from its saddle-ring. He took a deep breath and released it with an even, menacing hiss.

"You damn well better prove worth it," he muttered darkly, a goad of his heels, the giant shire-horse surged forward towards the startled men.

The charger burst through a sparkling constellation of kicked-up snow like a cannon-shot through smoke. Kirschner drove for the two rearmost men, and cut the horse left at the last possible second. Three-quarters of a ton of armoured war-horse slammed sideways into one hundred and sixty pounds of soldier with predictable results. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Dracula closed with his two antagonists and, in seconds, a third man lay, a leaking corpse.

Four to two now—the odds were manageable. But one man had a pole-axe, a dangerous prospect for a man in the saddle, and his mount encumbered with the snow. Keeping the horse between himself and the other two men, Hans dismounted and slapped his destrier to one side. The soldiers gave it a wide berth as it thundered past. A riderless warhorse was the proverbial loose cannon on the deck. Lashing out with iron-shod hooves the size of dinner plates, it would stomp any- one but its knight to a paste.

Kirschner took a calculated risk. Hoping the men might recognize him, or at least realize his armour could not possibly be Turkish, he pushed up his visor and yelled.

"Give way, you fools! This
is
the Prince! My Liege—remove your helmet. Let them see!"

The four soldiers hesitated for a moment, but their expressions didn't alter. These were the faces of men assessing a new tactical situation, not considering the plausibility of mistaken identity. Kirschner snarled a guttural obscenity to himself. In his haste, there was one possibility he had not considered. This could well be a deliberate assassination attempt.

Taking advantage of the temporary lull of hostilities, Dracula moved swiftly. With both hands he reached up to wrench the helmet from off his head. In doing so the shoulder-length chainmail aventail dragged over his face, briefly blinding him.

Sensing a singular opportunity, the soldiers fell upon him like famished wolves. Dracula ripped the helmet free and hurled it forcefully at his closest assailant, even as the other two split away to encircle him.

Kirschner managed two labourious strides before the fourth man came upon him from the rear, cleaving a blow to the back of Hans' neck. Kirschner pivoted around, bringing his sword up in a sloping ward that sent the man's blade grazing off to the right. Then, sinking into the blow, he swung down in an anti-clockwise arc, slashing the man under his kneecap. Instantly, flowing with the torque of his cut, he rose forward, twisting to the right. The mace swept up in a blur, and connected with a sickening viscous crunch against the soldier's temple. The man pitched sideways to bury himself in a drift.

Hans wheeled about just in time to witness the conclusion of Dracula's mortal existence. One of his three attackers knelt in the snow, doubled over a fearful abdominal wound, but the two remaining had flanked Dracula on two sides. The swordsman struck first, compelling the Prince to defend. An instant later the pole-axeman lunged forward, driving the weapon's spike through the lower region of Dracula's backplate.

The shock trauma of such a terrible wound would have felled a raging bear. A pity for the assassin that his erstwhile prey was not so predictable a creature. The thrust snapped Dracula's body to rigid attention. Then, with a demonic roar, he spun towards his stunned killer. The strength of the turn tore the shaft of the weapon from the man's hands, bending the point in the wound agonizingly. The Prince swung his sword straight- armed, describing a curve with almost five and a half feet of reach. The soldier, caught off balance by the unimagined fury of the attack, desperately tried to jerk back out of its range.

Nothing human could have moved that fast. Dracula's sword-tip sheared through the wretched man's trachea with a horrible liquid snick.

The momentum of his superhuman effort brought him to his knees. His sword hung loosely at his side, his head lowered until his chin touched his chest. Then, with a slow, stately grace, the Prince of Wallachia toppled sideways into a downy pillow of snow.

The last remaining attacker had stood almost mesmerized by the sight of his companion's death. Suddenly a thought occurred to him— there was another. He began to turn; perhaps he saw the sun flare brightly on the moving blade. And then he saw no more.

Kirschner stood in silence and assessed the situation. To his right his mount pawed the ground to uncover grass, munching in a bored, desultory manner. Beyond the crest of the hill, Dracula's horse regarded the scene indifferently. Then, from behind him, came the dull crunch of compressing snow. Hans spun about in a low crouch. It was the eighth soldier, the one he had broadsided with his horse. Stunned and temporarily hors de combat, he had recovered his senses, taken one look at the gruesome tableau, and had decided to do any further thinking with his legs. Kirschner fumed with disgust as he watched the man half run, half roll down the hill, irrevocably beyond his reach.

There lived a witness. He had killed this last man for nothing. Kirschner put away his weapons and began to go from corpse to corpse, turning over bodies, removing helmets and arming caps. Finally, after about ten minutes of quantitative assessment, he chose the first soldier he had slain. So as not to leave drag marks in the snow, he slung him onto his shoulders with a tired grunt and staggered towards the body of the Prince, muttering all the while.

"Couldn't wait, could you? Had to see for yourself. Couldn't stay under your banner with the troops where you belonged..."

He dropped the body with a muffled thud beside Dracula. Checking the two men side by side, he assured himself that they were close to the same height. He knelt and began to strip the armour from the dead soldier. That done, he removed the armour first from Dracula's limbs, and belted them onto the nameless corpse that lay alongside. First the legs—cuisse, poleyn, and greave; then the arms—vambrace, couter, and rerebrace. Finally Kirschner required the cloak, breast, and back-plate. He unceremoniously placed a steel-clad foot in the centre of the late Prince's back, took the shaft of the pole-axe in both hands, and wrenched it out to the accompanying squeak of metal. He unhooked the stained brocade, then clamshelled off the back and front of the cuirass. He then unlaced the arming cap and pulled it free, to a cascade of sable curls.