Much Fall of Blood-ARC Read online

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  Bortai struggled with her decision-making. She and Kildai could move faster than this. They had remounts. Not of the quality of the Knight's horses but still better than no remounts. And the Golden Horde ponies had more stamina, and carried less weight. Should they leave the knights? Allow them to ride rearguard? Go to call the Hawk Clan—or rather the remanents of it, to their rescue? The flaw, besides the lack of honor in this course, was that the orkhan was not that stupid. She'd bet that flanking Mingghans had been sent riding north. There would be, of course, an element of doubt in the minds of the orkhan's generals. Would these foreigners flee north or try to recross the great river? But her presence—and Kildai's presence, would make Northward seem likely. She saw how the party was split, and the direction they were taking. The heavy country against the mountains would favor the smaller party in some ways. Erik was a shrewd Orkhan. He just needed more scouts. It seemed logical to offer her services, as well as Tulkun's. Erik seemed a little taken aback. "But . . . you are a . . . ." he struggled, either with the concept or the language, "lady," he said, eventually.

  "Do ladies not do such things among your people? I am a Mongol of the Hawk clan. In war a woman must do what there are no men to do. That means we must fight and ride now."

  "Um." Erik took a deep breath. "It's not quite like that with us. But . . . well when we fought on Corfu . . . I learned that necessity can make deadly fighters of women. Thalia . . . A friend's wife, showed us that. If you will scout a path ahead for us, Lady, we would be grateful. You will ride with her, Tulkun? I would be happier with a warrior . . ." he seemed to realize he was saying the wrong thing, and stopped.

  Tulkun beamed. "She could kill me, Erik."

  The Ilkhan Mongol at least knew that. But it appeared that he knew her lineage. They had talked about wrestling. Princess Khutulun was a legend. Khutulun had defeated scores of suitors before Ulughachi had arrived at her father's gers, without the horses to make the wager . . . and still she had taken his challenge. Bortai had always wondered just why her great grandmother had lost. Bortai had a strong inclination to take on this mercenary Orkhan and show him a thing or two. Perhaps she would if they won free of this mess, even if he was one of the lesser peoples. An odd thought tickled her mind: what would she do, if, by some fluke, he won? Intermarriage happened . . . but never that way around.

  Erik explained what he wanted, what natural defenses he was looking for. He was good, Bortai acknowledged. The Mongol strategy here would be to get onto the flattest most open country and run. But Erik clearly understood that they could not do that, and that the people tracking them followed stray livestock when they were not at war. She wondered what the Hawk clan and its allies—if it still had any, were doing now. Normally the clans would disperse for winter. Family groups would move the herds to lower lands. But now . . . now she would bet the gers were being moved into the foothills and the clan was gathering for the war that seemed inevitable. Inevitable and wrong.

  Chapter 53

  It seemed odd to ride away from the high mountains—and not by night, but in the open. But skulking, the Primore Peter had assured him, would mean an attack. It made a kind of sense, Vlad supposed. Anyone skulking was up to no good. They had a reasonable force—some two hundred men—Twenty horsehead Székelers and another fifteen who had joined Vlad's infantry—enough to fight and yet not be an invading army, and a fair amount of gold. Basically, all the gold he had left . . . he had spent the rest on organizing winter billeting for the remainder of his men. He had requisitioned four wagons and twelve large carts. Vlad wondered why with 'requisitioning' at their disposal so many thieves resorted to theft. He had faggots . . . and sacks. If they had time they could always fill them with soil. And canvas. And a fair number of barrels, which the thirsty had discovered disappointingly, did not contain beer. An arrow would pass through stout canvas . . . but as Mirko pointed out, not going at the same speed it went in, and not with a burning oil-soaked rag. The rag would stay behind. Putting out a fire on stretched canvas was a lot easier than in faggots. Vlad had been surprised at just how much his quartermaster—sergeant had liked the whole idea.

  "It's easier for the troops to keep their heads, Sire, when a they've got a barrier between them and men on horseback. We should try it against King Emeric's troops," said the Sergeant.

  "But it's only a farm-cart, Mirko."

  The man shrugged. "Better than nothing when you're on foot and you've got a knight riding straight for you, Sire. Knights usually eat footmen for breakfast, unless the footmen have numbers and guns . . . or walls. This will take the walls with us. It could work. Especially if we stick some pikes out of the gaps and on the top of the carts. Landing on a pike could put a horseman off trying to jump into any gaps."

  So, with lots of fifteen foot pikes, an array of arquebus and horse-pistols . . . and some twenty small cannons, they set off. Vlad had felt that he might be overdoing things. Primore Peter had assured him that he wasn't. And Peter wasn't the sort of man who could be thought timid and overcautious.

  So far they'd seen no-one. Not for nearly four days, as they wound down to lower lands. That didn't prove anything, the Székelers gleefully informed him. The Golden Horde clans were very traditionalist. They moved with their herds. And there was, likely as not, to be a horseman watching them from a copse on a hillside. They could ride up out of nowhere and they were good with their bows. Pick a man out of the saddle and be gone before anyone could do anything about it. The trade flags would of course tell them that the party wanted to trade and not engage in warfare. It apparently was no guarantee that the Golden Horde clans would not decide that they would engage in the warfare, and it did say the caravan was probably worth looting. "We're on the edge of Hawk clan territory. They're traditionalists, hold by the Yasa code. On the other side are the Mink. And they're more into opportunistic looting."

  "We'll just have to hope we run into the Hawk clan then."

  The Székeler Primore nodded. "They've got their own code of honor. But the Hawk are far, far tougher in a fight. The Mink are all right. Just less disciplined."

  The man had hardly said that, when a warning horn-blast shattered the apparent tranquility. It was followed by a scout riding hell for leather back to the carts. The raid came quickly, but, thanks to the Székeler outrider's warning they had time to circle the carts and wagons. Men were still trying to un-hitch when the first arrows came.

  The Mink warriors learned a thing or two about disciplined, massed fire in the next few moments. Vlad's men even managed to get one of the small cannon unlimbered and primed and ready.

  The result of this, and the arquebusiers firing from shelter, was that a rather ragged attack turned into a rout, after barely two volleys and a single cannon-shot.

  The Székeler Primore Peter tugged his chin. "We'd best be moving on. Fairly fast. Those were young bucks out for some looting. What's left of them will be heading for the clan's Orkhan."

  "Orkhan?"

  "War leader. You just gave some of the Golden Horde warriors a bloody nose." He pointed. "I would say that there must be ten dead and twice that wounded out there. We have only a few arrow-wounds, nothing life threatening. They're going to be angry, and upset, and just a little bit afraid. That'll make them keen to deal with this new threat." He grinned. "Mind you, it could cost them dear, by the looks of it. This idea works better than I thought it would. We need to organize some sally-ports."

  "There were far less of them than of us," said Vlad, warily.

  "Yes, maybe seventy. But that would be enough, normally. One horseman is worth a good few infantry, and more so of mere merchants. The worst the Mink expected was to be fought off, but with us having to abandon some of the carts and goods and flee. They expected the balance of the losses to be with us."

  "Well, let us head towards another clan's lands before they make it true," said Vlad. "We can still be attacked by night, or on the move. And a larger force will overwhelm us then, I think."
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  The Székeler Primore looked at him, thoughtfully. "You know, Drac, the stories that reached us about your military victories . . . I'm a fighting man on the borderland. I thought that they were just stories. That you were lucky and a better military tactician than King Emeric's commanders . . . but that's not hard. They typically use an anvil to crack a walnut. In places where there is no space for an anvil, the walnut can survive. But I was wrong."

  "No. You were right," said Vlad, glad to admit it. "I need help. So far I have learned all I know of war from my sergeants."

  The battle-scarred captain laughed. "It's a good place to learn from."

  "I have found that," said Vlad seriously. "But it is difficult because they do not realize that I am ignorant."

  "They know, Drac. You can't fool sergeants. Not for long. But they must believe in you."

  "They do. And I cannot fail them. I need to learn more generalship."

  The Primore nodded. "I see why they follow you, Drac. I think the Székeler people will, when we hold our council of seat-captains at Udvarhely."

  This was something Vlad had hoped for, but not expected to happen easily. "I still need to learn more Generalship, Primore," he said, as the scouting Székelers rode out and the first cart began to roll. "Can you teach me?"

  The man laughed again. "I am just the captain of a handful of horsemen, and a border fort, Drac. I will teach you what I can. But you need more."

  "I know that. But it has been hard to find anyone to ask."

  That, several days later, was something that Vlad could have said about the Golden Horde too. They'd seen rich lands, and huge numbers of sheep and enormous herds of horses. They'd seen a few—very few—riders with them. Showing discretion could also apply if you were a Mongol shepherd, they'd kept away from the well armed party. There were plenty of rutted cart tracks from the Golden horde's own migrations. There were signs of where encampments had been, recently. They just weren't there, now.

  Vlad had talked a great deal about combat with the Primore, getting a grasp on the tactics of light cavalry. The Székely drew their origins from some earlier wave of horse-warriors sweeping out of the east, and had kept many of the traditions and organization and warfare-style, although they were more settled now. He also learned how the Székely stayed a people who were so apart. Feudalism as such did not exist in their lands. Lands were held in common, and a man could work what he could till. It made for relatively less powerful leaders, and a strong commons. "There are less Horseheads than we need, Drac. We have had no taxes until Emeric, but also no roads or bridges. It's a hard country."

  Vlad could see how much richer this lower land was. Much of the forest had plainly been cleared away and burned to make more grazing, and there was a lot of it. And a lot of grazing animals on it.

  So where were the all the people?

  It was plainly worrying the Primore, too. "It smells like trouble, Drac. I'm beginning to feel that we should head back up into the hills, horses or no horses. And please, Sire. Don't even suggest helping ourselves."

  Vlad shook his head. "I would not do that," he said, seriously.

  The Primore nodded. "I'd heard that. You know, Drac, it's a good thing you ran away. King Emeric would have put his appointees between you and the people. We need you."

  "I was helped to escape. Emeric was going to kill me."

  "Oh. We were told that you were going to be made our Prince. Why did they wish to kill you, sire?"

  "Because my father was dead," explained Vlad. "I hear that the King planned to put the Danesti in my place."

  "Oh. It was one of them who told the Székely council you were coming back," said the Primore, surprised. "He seemed very certain. And quite . . . relieved, Sire. So I was just surprised."

  So was Vlad. He'd accepted unconditionally the certainty that he was to be executed. Surely Elizabeth Bartholdy could not have been wrong?

  Like the way that Rosa had disappeared . . . there were too many mysteries. Too many things he did know or understand. He felt he was being moved about a game board he couldn't see by forces beyond his control, and he really did not like that.

  PART VI

  December, 1540 A.D.

  Chapter 54

  The great wheel of heaven turns and there are forces chained and liberated in regular sequences by the rotation. Even in ancient Babylon the workers of magic had established that. Earth, sun and moon are yoked together, in a long and endless dance. And the pattern repeats. Every nineteen thousand seven hundred and fifty six days it completes one full cycle. One great turn. The blood moon returns when the shadow devours the moon and the old magics are made strong again.

  The wolf-people lived by the moon. They had known these things for always and always, before the Dacian tribes, before the Romans. Back when these forest cloaked mountains were not the last refuge of the first ones. Before blades cut at the forest. Before iron. Before bronze. When the only things that cut were sharp edged stone, and tooth and claw.

  Now the ancient cycles called, called the children of the wolf back, back to their cradle-lands. Back with worrying word. Grigori ran through the daylight, and the young one ran beside him, in the easy lope that was the way of their kind, even when they were tired and harried. As Grigori had expected she had tracked them, sent her servants, possessed and driven men, to hunt them. She was afraid of the dragon. Not of them. Against the dragon she moved circumspectly now, wearing her cloak of lies and a mask of magical deceit. Against the wolves she deployed her minions. She had plainly gone back to her place of evil and immediately set her forces out to wait.

  They only had teeth. The foes had steel, and she directed them in their hunt. Not all the cunning of the old wolf had shaken the persuit.

  But a man, even in daylight with her guidance . . . was still just a man. There were five of them, with steel blade and firearms, in a narrow defile. More close behind. Dozens.

  Grigori did not wait for them to fire. The first one died with his neck snapped as the great wolf pulled him down. They had nets. Heavy, weighted nets. One flung his, enmeshing Grigori and the next man. Another tried to catch Miu. In the folds of the net Grigori's white teeth ripped again, finding a throat. To tear and shake as something stabbed him in own vitals.

  Despite the agony he changed. Only hands would do to free himself of the net.

  Miu was younger and faster. He slipped the net and tore the hamstrings of the one who had speared at his uncle. He was younger and less skilled too, so he failed at the clean snap of the neck as he bore the other victim down. A bullet burned across his side from the last man still standing. The man drew his sword. Staggering, bleeding, free from the net, Grigori turned on him, with nothing more than a rock. Miu worked tag now, ignoring the pain as the man, predator moments before, tried to keep the blade pointed at the white-fanged wolf and the man holding his own intestines in with one hand and a rock in the other. The wolf darted in, ripping flesh and tendons on one leg. And as the man turned slashing at it, Grigori closed swinging the rock at his head, oblivious of the blade that cut at him.

  The man Miu had merely felled to the ground had found his feet. He fired at the tangle of man and wolf. Hit man. And man-wolf. But not . . . the wolf. Miu was merely bullet-burned from the previous encounter. His leap was neither elegant nor anything but a fury of savage biting and scrabbling paws but he knocked the man down and they rolled, the desperate man wrestling, trying to fend him off. Miu bit at his face and arms, and eventually found the jugular. Once he'd torn it, he kept biting in fury. Then he got a grip on himself and pulled free.

  The man he'd so cleanly hamstrung first was quick to finish off. He turned back to his uncle.

  Grigori was half changed. The vast bloody muzzled wolf-head, the grey eyes unseeing, maw contorted in a last defiant snarl, teeth in the throat of the foe . . . .set on a man's torso.

  Miu knew that he could do nothing more for him. The other hunters would have heard the shots. He nosed the letter from his uncle's pocket,
and took it in his teeth He bowed his great head respectfully, briefly and turned to run on, again.

  The hunters would find something they all believed in, but had never seen. That was unavoidable. If the Drac, or his sister, did not renew the compact, they might all be hunted like this. And the little ones of the pack were easy prey.

  Full of fear and hatred for the old woman and her magics, Miu ran on alone. His kind were not solitary, and he was very afraid. Instinct said to hide, but the passing time pulled at him to run. To return to the heartlands.

  * * *

  Emil looked at his hands, looked at how his nails had been pulled away from the quick, and how the dirt was still stuck there. He shook his head trying to clear it. It was full of such terrible visons, like a cobwebbed maze of nightmares, with the same horror at every turn, no matter how he tried to flee from her, from the memory of her head at such an unnatural angle, and a dribble of blood leaking from the corner of her mouth. And now he was trapped, condemned and doomed. There seemed no way out of what he'd done. He'd buried her. There was still dirt under his nails from his efforts to make that shallow grave. Why had he killed her? Rosa had been a friend of his, in the way that she was a friend of half of the camp, including the Drac. It was all so confused, so misty in his head.

  He was so very afraid. And still so very compelled to do what he had to do.

  "Where do we go now?" asked one of the men he had taken with him.

  He couldn't answer at first, still knotted up inside with guilt and fear and uncertainty. He couldn't possibly escape the consequences of what he'd done. Surely, surely the Drac, or even Mirko, would realize that something was wrong, that he had chosen the worst, not the best.

  Emil waited for an answer that he knew would come unbidden to his mind. An instruction. A direction from the power that had usurped his mind the power that controlled him and drove him. Until now, it had had him pursuing a wolf hunt for days, but that was over now, it seemed.