Much Fall of Blood: Chapter Forty

PART III
September, 1540 A.D.

    Vlad looked despairingly at his recruits attempts to hit targets with their new arquebuses. He himself carried two of the Smerek pistols. And he could hit a target with them, while on horseback. This lot, it would appear, could not have hit a barn door from the inside. Wreathed in smoke, they fired at targets fifty paces off . . . and missed.

    “Don’t worry, Drac,” said Sergeant Emil, when he commented on it. “They’re as good as King Emeric’s arquebuses. Maybe better. The guns are better. And it’s not about accuracy, really. It’s about massed fire. They’re not shooting at targets. They’re just shooting at the charging mass.”

    “But will they even get that right?” asked Vlad.

    The Sergeant nodded. “We don’t tell them so, but they’re better than most levies. They’ll get there, Sire. It’s whether they can do so when they’ve got a regiment of Magyar charging down on them that you have to worry about. And if they don’t, well, at least we won’t have to worry about it.”

    “Why not?”

    “Because we’ll all be dead,” said the sergeant with macabre humor. “If they break and run, we’ll be run down and spitted. It’ll be like a pack of wolves among newborn lambs.”

    “It’s a small garrison, Sire. And we need to blood the troops somehow. And we need food and a victory,” said Emil.

    Vlad considered the rough map. So far every action had been a rearguard and defensive one . . . no matter how successful they’d been, he knew that sooner or later they would have to go on the offensive. “How well can we scout the area? We don’t want to put our heads into a trap. We need to be able to get in, and get out. We still can’t dream of holding a town.”

    The sergeant beamed. “That’s why it is such a good target, Sire. We’ve sent scouts right to the walls. And there is one road in from Gara. It’s a good two leagues off. There is only a garrison there at all because of the silver-mine.”

    “Ah. Silver mine,” said Vlad, keeping his voice even.

    The Sergeant looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes Sire. It’s a wealthy little place, because of that. And it is your silver, Sire.”

    Vlad had had no idea how much war or an army cost, and of the influence of money, back when he had been a prince locked in a tower in Buda. He was better informed today. Plainly, so was his Sergeant. “I will need to accompany the scouts,” he said, thoughtfully.

    Vlad was surprised how the knowledge that an attack was imminent galvanized his troops. They weren’t supposed to know. Somehow they did. “You always do,” said the quartermaster, when he commented on it. “Of course you get the place and time wrong, sometimes, Sire. But even the lowliest trooper has his ear to the rumor mill.”

    It made spies and the extracting of information from captives a lot more of a threat. He’d have to do something about that. Soon. After taking Gara.

    Vlad was quite pleased with his plan. They made a night-march and then waited in the pease-fields just outside the town. There were scouts on the Lesu road, in case they somehow came to the relief of Gara’s garrison. All the plans were made, the men instructed, primed and ready. At first light, a cart, heavily laden with hay, arrived at the gates. Demanded entry. On being admitted . . .

    As the guard came down to demand to know just who they were, the two men took action. They were supposed to light the fuse that would set off the charge that would break the axle, and leave the cart stuck in the gate-arch. The Smerek brothers assured him it would be no more than a sharp crack, as if the axle had merely collapsed under the weight. Then with the gate open, Vlad’s men would charge into the town.

    The cart rolled forward and Vlad watched . . . as it all went awry.

    Firstly, the guard was not prepared to let the men stop in the gateway. He belted the ox with his spear-shaft. The charge of explosive went off . . . A lot louder than a mere cracking axle. The guard started fighting the two men on the cart, and the gate . . . swung ponderously closed as they raced towards it. Someone on the wall above the gate fired on them. Vlad saw it go all wrong as an explosion roared and a column of flames leapt above the gate.

    “Haycart caught fire” said Sergeant Emil. There had been a powder charge in the bottom in case the guard had stopped the cart outside the gate. More shots rang out over their heads. Vlad realized with gloomy certainty that they could not take the gate. And he’d lost two men. “Sound the retreat.”

    “Yes Sire.” The man winded his horn.

    “Well, back to the mountains. We’ll need to move camp,” said Vlad, determined not show any sign of the fury and embarrassment he felt.

    The Sergeant cleared his throat. “The boys will be over the back wall by now, Sire. No point in our going too far.”

    “What?”

    The Sergeant looked distinctly nervous. “Well, Sire. We’re veterans of King Emeric’s campaigns, Mirko and me. And the king makes these complicated plans. They go wrong nine times out of ten, and . . . well, we get punished for failing. So we got used to making a second plan or two. Just in case. The king usually isn’t near at hand to know that the officers . . . um, modified things a bit. And that if they get a chance, the sergeants and men do it too. But you’re here, sire, so you have to know. We had some of the men make ladders and wait for the commotion on this side.”

    Vlad was silent. Then he sighed. “I have learned three things from this, Emil.” The first is that in war, things will go wrong. The second is that I need to have thought of a second plan.”

    “And the third, Sire?”

    “To choose my officers carefully, and to listen when they wish to tell me about their experiences.” Vlad could hear the shooting now, from the far side of the small walled town. “Do we ride to join them or wait here?

    “They’ll open the gate for us, Sire.”

    Very rapidly, riding into the small town, Vlad realized that it was not only how to assault towns and conduct wars that he still had to learn about, but that the attack itself was only a small part of what he should have planned. He had won, yes. The small garrison had been outnumbered . . . and the survivors surrendered. And had been murdered out of hand, to Vlad’s anger and embarrassment. And now his men seemed to have scattered into the houses and shops in an orgy of looting and mayhem. Vlad tried to round his men up, with limited success. He wanted silver, and he wanted food for his men. There was going to be precious little of either, at this rate.

    The woman in the torn dress was screaming in terror as she ran, head down, not looking where she was going. She almost ran headlong into Vlad’s horse. And behind her came . . . not the horrors of hell, but three of Vlad’s own. “What do you think you are doing?” he asked them, icily.

    The men were already drunk enough for one to try and answer the question. “Victor’s rights . . .” he said, his voice surly, doubt and shame making him angry both with himself and his Prince.

    She clung to his stirrup. “Lord, they killed my man. Save me.”

    “He’s not dead. Jus’ knocked him down . . .” A sense of shame now seemed to be returning to the men, the third one was sidling backwards, desperate to be away from what might have seemed acceptable, and a good idea, moments earlier.

    “Hell’s teeth, are you a pack of ravening animals?” Vlad felt the fury that had been building in him start to rise. “This is my land. My town too. Yours too, damn you.” He turned to the Sergeant. “Sound that horn. Sound the retreat. We ride through the streets in one circuit. Any man who does not answer the call, I’ll leave to get hung by the locals or Emeric, whoever gets them first.”

    “Sire . . . the silver.”

    “Devil take it, man. I’ll have my due, brought to me. Not taken at knife-point over the raped bodies of my people’s daughters. She could have been your sister, you animals. Sound that horn, Emil. And you three,” he pointed at the would-be rapists. “Be happy that she got to me in time, or I’d make an example of you with the butcher’s knife. Fall in.”

    The woman’s eyes were wide. She knelt. But Vlad did not wait to hear what she had to say. He’d plucked the horn from the Sergeant. He did not know how to blow it correctly. But he did. It made a noise . . . a horrible one. It was just as well. It stirred him from his fury, and spared the life of the three, who had not yet managed to get in place behind him. He handed it back to Emil. “Blow it. Properly.”

    They rode on, with the sergeant sounding the horn, and Vlad’s men straggling onto the road behind them. They rode past the burned hay-cart, lying crashed where the panicked oxen had dragged it. The fire had spread to the next buildings. Vlad did not stop. He knew that not all of his men were behind him. He supposed he ought to halt, do a roll-call and send a few squads back to dig out the missing, be they dead or engaged in sacking. But his disgust was such that he just had to get away from there.

    Part of that disgust was with himself. He’d known, briefly, a surge of triumph, and a surge of lust. A desire to raven too. He’d turned it into anger with his peasant recruits. He remembered them now, waiting in the darkness. The half-frightened bravado. The odd silences. The whispered prayers — he had very keen hearing. How had it turned into this?

    They were met barely half a mile from the town, on a bend just short of the crest of the rise by one of the scouts, pushing his horse as fast as he could. “They’re coming, Sire,” panted the man. “Thank God you are here. They’re between us and the pass, already.”

    There was nowhere to run to. They could retreat on the town . . . Vlad was damned if he would. “Let us see if these men of ours can stand up to that cavalry charge, Sergeant. It’s that or, as you said, be slaughtered like lambs.”

    Vlad’s Sergeants had been a silent group on their retreat from the town. Now they took charge, positioning the arquebussiers on the ridge either side of the road, and in a block, kneeling, standing and waiting in the middle of the trail. Vlad and his handful of ‘cavalry’ waited too, off on the left flank. If anyone broke through, they would have to deal with them.

    They did not have long to wait. The fleeing scout had plainly been seen in his panicked flight . . . but it was also obvious that the cavalry had not expected to find Vlad’s soldiers so far outside the town, arrayed for battle. Moving at a distance-eating canter, the Magyar cavalry were a little strung out, but still in fairly close formation when the leaders, coming up to the ridge, saw Vlad’s arquebussiers. To give the Magyar credit, they did not hesitate. Lances dipped. And to give Vlad’s arquebussiers equal credit . . . the sight did not make them break and run. The first volley was a little ragged. But the second rank fired in an almost simultaneous discharge. Wreathed in powder smoke, the third rank fired — and the flanking arquebussiers cut loose too. The charging cavalry fell, but did not stop.

    Neither did the massed fire. The green irregulars worked as if this was a drill, and they were an experienced drill team. As if the Magyar lances were not out, dipped and racing towards them.

    Gun-smoke and thunder, and his men standing like a wall before the wave . . . would it overtop them? But the wave faltered and broke before the massed fire of the Smerek arquebuses. If the cavalry had realized that they were flanked earlier . . . or if they had realized just how shallow those flanks were . . . but they had not. The terrain had favored Vlad’s men. The Magyar retreated — in bad order. They’d pushed the charge too hard and too far, believing that the enemy would break. When they had not, it had been they that had been broken.

    “Stand!” yelled one of Sergeants, when Vlad’s stunned men saw the charge turn to a rout. “Stand, damn you. Recharge your weapons.”

    It looked then as if the discipline, so strong in adversity, might just break . . . the line was breaking up into men chasing after cavalry, cheering and yelling. Vlad had seen his troops come to pieces once that day, in victory. It wasn’t going to happen again. He rode up. “Back. NOW. Form up, and ready your weapons.” His voice halted and held them.

    Sure enough, the second rush came, this time with the riders caracoling and firing horse-pistols. Vlad exhaled sharply. Had they encountered a scattered rabble chasing after them, even this scanty remnant would have had no trouble riding them down. But the massed fire and the extra range of the Smerek arquebuses . . . turned the second advance into a bloody retreat too.

    Now Vlad’s troops made no move without an order. The heavy arquebuses were recharged. Vlad sent his scouts out, and a few minutes later they began to march forward, through the killing zone. Vlad realized that they had in the course of one fractured morning passed from recruits to into being soldiers. “They fought well,” he said to Emil who seemed to have elected himself as his Prince’s aide-de-camp . . . well that, or watchdog.

    “Yes, Sire. Shall I have a squad detailed to collect weapons from the dead. We’re a bit short, sire, though we have good guns, I’ll grant. And we’ve got a few wounded there. Ours and theirs.”

    “Ours we take with us. Theirs we will disarm. We cannot care for them. I just hope we reach the trail back into mountains before we have to fight again.” He turned to Emil, letting his guard slip, briefly, “How is it that they were such lions here, and such jackals back there?” he said, plaintively.

    “Reckon there is a bit of animal, all kinds of animal in all of us, Sire,” said the Sergeant uncomfortably. “Most officers don’t set the standards you do. It’s . . . it’s kind of normal. Armies do that.”

    Vlad looked at him coldly. Yes. There was a beast within him too. But he kept it leashed . . . because . . . because if he ever simply let go he knew that it would destroy all in its path. And it would destroy him too. “Emeric’s army behaves like that. But these are my towns, and my people. I have come to liberate them, not use terror to make them my slaves.”

    Sergeant Emil was either a very brave or very foolish man. He shook his head. “You can’t stop an army looting a bit, sire. I’m sorry. I’ve spent too long as a soldier to believe otherwise. Maybe you, Sire, can stop them short of rapine, and murder. But ordinary soldiers . . . will take small things, Sire. They’re poor men. And only human.”

    Vlad was silent. Then he said: “I will put up with them being only human. It’s them being ravening animals that I will not. I will put up with them being humans because they have shown me that they can also be men.” He sighed. “The animal and the man do war within each and every one of us, Sergeant. Me too. We may not be strong enough to win every battle there, but if we lose more than the smallest skirmishes . . . if we give ground, the animal wins.”

    A quiet voice within him said ‘but sometimes the man may not be strong enough to defeat the enemy outside. Sometimes we may need that animal.’ He banished the thought. It frightened him. Like the animal darkness that rose in him sometimes, he could neither understand nor control it.

    It was much later on the ride, when they were heading deeper into the safety of the mountains and his head was replaying the events of the day, that it occurred to him: why had the relief column come at all? And if he had not become so angry, they would have caught him with his men scattered through the small town, drunken and dispersed. He pointed it out to Emil. The Sergeant nodded. “Yes, Drac. The men are already asking how you knew it was going to be a trap.”

    Vlad did not know how to answer. He felt a suspicion that legend was writing itself around him, in spite of himself.

    He suspected it would betray him, one day.