by Dan Davis
VAMPIRE KHAN
The Immortal Knight Chronicles
Book 3
Richard of Ashbury
and the Mongol Invasion of Persia
1253 to 1266
Dan Davis
Copyright © 2018 Dan Davis
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Part One – Constantinople ~ 1253
Part Two - Pontic Steppe ~ 1253
Part Three – Karakorum ~ 1254
Part Four – Alamut ~ 1256
Part Five – Baghdad ~ 1258
Part Six – Maragha Feb ~ 1265
Part Seven – Venice ~ 1266
Author’s Note
Books by Dan Davis
About the Author
Part One – Constantinople ~ 1253
The banners of the knights whipped and snapped in the wind, framed by the vivid expanse of blue above. To my right, timber stands held the cheering spectators beneath the banners and blocked my view of the mighty walls of Constantinople on the horizon.
Through the eye slits of my helmet, I could see little enough. Straight ahead across the field, the line of knights struggled to contain their horses. Beside me, on my left and right, the men of my own side held their lances ready. Our horses stomped and shook their heads as the riders fought their beasts into submission and growled threats at them.
My destrier trembled. He was a monster. Too big and too slow for most knights and long in the tooth. Do not ride him into battle, a Burgundian man-at-arms had joked with me when I had purchased the animal, hitch him to a plough instead. But the beast rode as straight as an arrow in the charge and feared nothing. And he had a terrible anger when roused and would tear chunks from another horse’s neck in a fight.
My enemies that day were twenty knights from France, Navarre, Aragon, Acre and elsewhere. My side was twenty knights from all over Christendom. The tourney was a French invention but it had spread immediately to the English, who knew a good thing when we saw it. And it had, over the years, become popular in many kingdoms of Christendom. That day outside Constantinople we even had two knights from the Kingdom of Poland, three from Bohemia, and two from the Kingdom of Sicily.
And me. A knight of England, who had no lord and nothing to offer but his lance and his sword. My coat and shield were black, emblazoned with a single red chevron.
The others were a riot of red, blue, green, white and gold, with blazons of crosses, stripes, lions, eagles, and chalices. Lances raised, pennants flapping in the wind like a flock of exotic birds.
It was best to enter a tourney with a companion or two, at least, who will fight alongside you and watch your flanks while you watched theirs. Some tourneys had companies of ten or more men fighting as brothers. While I, close to friendless in a strange land, had to make do with two young Breton knights who pretended they were granting me a favour by allowing me to fight with them. They seemed to ride well enough and they swore they had broken lances in Picardie and Paris. The damned whoresons barely spoke to me because they thought I was poor and landless. Well, they were half right. Eva, my wife, said it was because they were afraid of me but then she said that about everybody.
Much of the noise, muffled already by my helm, faded away as the watching crowd fell into hushed anticipation. That meant they had seen the order given and were watching the trumpets raised.
My horse stamped a foot and quivered.
The trumpets sounded.
Across the field, the line of knights contracted as each man tensed into hunch behind his shield and raked his spurs into his horse’s flanks. I did the same, urging my destrier forward. The magnificent beast sighed with relief as he could at last give way to his instinct. Still, I held him to the trot and he would only reach a full charge as we met the enemy. He was a fine horse.
Beside me, the mounted knights leapt forward, pulling ahead as the men forgot everything we had discussed and urged their horses from dead standing straight into the charge.
If we did not meet the enemy line as one, then the most advanced of our knights would perhaps face two lances instead of one. My side would lose men to the initial charge and make my own fight all the harder.
And yet I made no attempt to keep up with them. I looked left and right, my view through the eye slits bouncing around. Already, our entire line was ragged. The centre, other than myself, was pulling ahead and the sides were lagging behind, but it was not a spearheaded charge.
Ahead, beyond the two Bretons, the knights against us lowered their lances and couched them. Both sides picked their final targets.
Mine was the man I had lined up against at the start. A knight of France named Bertrand de Cardaillac. A truly massive man in green and gold, newly arrived in Constantinople. Sir Bertrand was said to be a great knight with a reputation for brutality and no other wanted to face him, leaving me free to take the key position in the centre. I wanted his wealth. I wanted his horse and his purse.
And I wanted to see how good he truly was.
Two knights of Aragon flanked him, and they had together formed a temporary company for the tourney. As long as no other interfered, it would be my Bretons and me against Sir Bertrand and his Aragonese.
But the Bretons wanted his wealth, too, and they forgot their duty and aimed at him rather than the Aragonese on his flanks. In so doing, they narrowed the gap between their two horses and blocked my line of approach. What were they hoping to achieve? They had made it into a charge of three against two.
Stupid bloody fools.
My horse was annoyed and confused but I urged him on, faster, and lowered my lance. The crashing of lances on shields began to ring out up and down the line.
The Bretons in front smashed into the knights of Aragon. My supposed comrades were a mere lance length beyond me but even had they not deserved it, I could have done nothing to save them from their fate. It was three knights against the two impetuous Bretons.
And both Bretons were struck, hard.
I held my course as the crashing of dozens of wooden shields and lances echoed across the field, horses, and men crying out in triumph or fear.
Bertrand, the French knight, smashed through one of my Bretons, unhorsing him. Even through all the noise and the steel of my helm, I heard Bertrand shouting in triumph at his strike. His voice was as throaty as a bull’s and as he roared he half-turned to watch the Breton tumbling sideways from his saddle.
As the proverb says, pride goes before destruction, and I thanked God for prideful knights.
The blunted tip of my lance caught Bertrand de Cardaillac on the side of his helm. It was a hard strike, though of course the man’s head was knocked away at once, reducing the force compared to a hit to the chest or shield. But the blow knocked the knight from his horse, all sense gone. His arms stiffened and jutted up in front of him as he fell, dropping his lance and throwing his shield arm up and to the side. His helm, too, was ripped from his head. I heard but did not see him crash into the hard earth and I prayed he would not die.
A knight from Aragon lunged at me with his lance as we passed but I saw it coming and leaned away, making a show of my lack of concern. Still, it was closer than I had expected and scratched the paint on my shield. I prayed he would be disconcerted by my bravery rather than encouraged by my incompetence.
By then the lines were through each other and the knights of both sides wheeled about to reform. Dust thrown up by the galloping hooves drifted across the field. A few men were down in the middle of the field. Bertrand de Cardaillac was on the ground, unmoving. I searched for another target and found both Aragonese knights already moving their horses toward me with intent displayed in their movements. The enemy line opposite was unformed and yet already they were charging. The knights of my side were not c
ontent to wait either.
Already, the tourney would be every man for himself. Every man and his fellows, if they stuck by each other.
“With me,” I shouted to the remaining Breton knight, while he raked his spurs into his horse’s flanks and the beast jumped into movement.
“God, give me strength,” I muttered and urged my destrier into the fray. The noise of battle sounded once again, with shouts and the clattering of wood rising above the pounding of hooves on the hard ground.
My Breton clashed awkwardly with the Aragonese and both fell in a jumble, dragging their horses down with them.
Steady beneath me, my horse ignored the wildly kicking hooves and kept on toward the mounted knight aiming at me. As his blunted war lance thumped on my shield, my lance point bounced low and connected with his thigh and then his hip, knocking the lance from my grasp. My shield blocked my view but I continued past and drew my sword, turning about as swiftly as I could.
Few knights had made it through the melee in the centre and most were positioning themselves to fight from horseback with swords or other weapons. Broken and forgotten lances lay strewn about the dusty ground where the horses stomped and turned as groups of fighters formed. Sweat dripped into my eyes and my breath sounded like bellows in my ears. Already it was becoming difficult to know who was fighting for what side and the dust flew up, obscuring the men.
I pushed my way between two groups as the Aragonese knights, all on foot, came together with their swords drawn, one shield between the three of them. Bertrand de Cardaillac, massive as he was, looked dazed, blinking about him as though he had no idea how he had come to be here, with powdery pale earth caked to his big sweating face. The Aragonese knights, unlike my idiot Bretons, were doing their duty by holding him upright and guarding him while he recovered his senses. They were looking for a horse or at least a way out and away from the clashing men and kicking destriers around them.
I rode straight towards the three of them.
With cries of warning, the two knights tried to drag Bertrand away in two different directions, one on each arm, and so succeeded only in holding him steady and right in my path. My dear old horse reared his head but his powerful chest collided with Bertrand and knocked him down with more force than I intended. Thanks to God, he fell to one side and my horse avoided stamping on him.
I pulled up just beyond and dismounted while the other two ran back to protect him. Robust fellow that he was, he was already trying to get up.
“Yield,” I shouted as I approached on foot. I held my shield low and my sword point down.
The Aragonese came at me, circling to either side in an attempt to surround me and attack.
I charged the one without a shield, deflected his thrust on my shield and barged him to the ground faster than he could retreat. While he was stunned I banged the edge of my blade across the eye slits on his helmet.
“You are mine,” I yelled at him.
I turned at the sound of approaching feet and my sword point caught the charging knight on his mailed knee. The man screamed and went down, whimpering, all the fight gone out of him.
All around me, the tourney field was slowing down as men yielded. My side was victorious, despite my useless Bretons falling at the first charge and a ragged cheer went up from the exhausted knights and the crowd on their stand at the side of the field.
The knights from Aragon and the French giant gave up their swords to me, hilt first. I would have their horses and armour or the value of them.
And that was good because I needed gold and silver.
I needed it to help me to travel to the North, across the Black Sea, into the lands of the Tartars.
My immortal enemy, William, was there. And I was going to kill him.
***
Later that day, as the sun rolled its way down to the west across the tourney field, I sat in the shade of my tent with all four sides open and pinned well back so that the breeze could cool my skin. There was plenty of space around my tent and the other knights and squires ignored me, other than an occasional polite wave. Somewhere out of sight behind the tents, a smith tapped away on steel, reducing dents from helms and straightening blades. A gaggle of little pages ran by me, laughing and shouting abuse at each other in language so vulgar it would have made a Flemish mercenary blush. The smell of roasting meat wafted from somewhere and it made me salivate, even though I had already eaten my fill.
In the shade of my tent, with the sweat scrubbed from my body, dressed in a thin cotton tunic, and wine in my belly, my body was comfortable.
But my mind was troubled.
“You will never be content,” Eva said, sitting opposite me across the small, square table. She was dressed like a man and acting as my squire. She had learned over the years to control the swaying of her narrow hips when she walked and could mimic the swaying-armed strut of a young man. It would fool most men, from a distance, at least. “You will never be content as long as you live.”
“I am content,” I said, which was not true. “Those knights were just too poor. I should have collected more.”
“More what?”
“More silver from them,” I said. “More knights on the field. It was all over too quickly.”
“You always want more,” she said, shaking her head. “More fighting, more silver.”
“More wine?” I said and refilled her cup from the jug.
“We have enough silver now,” Eva pointed out.
“We should have more,” I said, feeling the anger build. “I should have taken everything from them.”
The squires of the two Aragonese knights had, to their credit, brought their masters’ horses and armour to my tent immediately after the tourney had been declared. Both of the young men wept before me like women as they begged to buy back their horses and armour from me there and then. Of course, coin was what I wanted anyway, so I agreed.
Two of the destriers were ancient and worth little enough. One was of particularly good breeding but it was close to lame.
“I could sell them to a butcher and get more than what you beggars are offering,” I shouted at them. “And when were these helms made? Were they worn at the Battle of Hastings? And the rings on the mail are thin and flat as a blade of grass. Are you certain that you serve knights and not paupers?” The squires cringed and wept harder. Blubbing about needing the armour for crusading. They begged, on their knees, for me to accept the paltry sums in silver that their masters offered and swore, upon the hands of God in Heaven, that it was all they had.
After accepting their modest bags of coins, the pair had wiped their eyes and strolled off talking about where to get some wine before returning to their masters. I swear they were laughing as they went and I was sorely tempted to give them both a brutal thrashing. But they were just doing their duty, the little sods.
“If you wanted more,” Eva said to me over her cup, “you should not be so susceptible to tears.”
“It was not the tears,” I said. “All Aragonese are like that, bawling at the slightest hint of strife. How could I take their horses and end those men’s Crusade? Now, they may continue on into the Holy Land.”
Eva nodded. “And sit in Acre drinking wine for a year before going home to tell stories for the rest of their mediocre lives about how they stuck it to the Saracens.”
I could not argue with that.
“Where is the damned French squire?” I asked, for the tenth time. “The day grows long.”
“The word is that this Sir Bertrand is an arrogant lord,” Eva said. “He will not take kindly to being carried off the field after his first charge. We know he was newly arrived from Acre and is on his way elsewhere, only delaying his departure to take part in that sad little tourney. Perhaps he will neglect to pay his debt.”
“I would go and take it from him.”
She wiped her lips. “Is it worth the trouble? We have what we need, now. Unless you would rather stay here or go elsewhere rather than North?”
&nbs
p; “It is the principle of the thing.”
“Oh?” she said, tilting her head. “You are principled now?”
“The principle is that the big bastard has wealth,” I said, “and I want it.”
Eva nodded over my shoulder, sat forward and lowered her voice. “Someone approaches.”
“A squire?”
“The squire of Methuselah, perhaps.”
“What?” I asked, confused, as I reached for my sword that was leaning against the table. Eva shook her head, pulled her hood close about her face and ducked away to make herself busy with our gear. I left my sword where it was, within arm’s reach.
“Sir, God give you good day.” A man’s voice called out as he approached.
I watched Eva. She made a show of wiping down the good saddle but tilted her head so that she could keep one beady eye on the man.
Slowly, I sipped my wine and I watched her. She watched him from beneath her hood, and I made ready to grab my sword if Eva gave me warning.
The man strode by the table, into my view and stopped across from me, standing behind the chair.
An older man, with noble bearing. His face was long and narrow but his jaw was square and his bones were big. No fat on his belly. A Templar and a knight, that much was clear, for he wore the white robe of a knighted member of that order and a sword hung at his side. Square shouldered and straight backed in spite of his advanced years, the old Templar looked me in the eye and held my gaze.
“You are the English knight Sir Richard, I am told?”
I said nothing, which was remarkably rude.
“My name is Sir Thomas de Vimory,” he said. “I should say, sir, that you fought very well today.”
I scoffed. “Hardly a fight.”
He inclined his head. “It was a rather brief tourney, somewhat unconventionally contested.”
I smiled at that. “This is not France. And no great lords wished to try their skill. It was a scrap between the dregs and the desperate as a brief diversion before they head east or west.” I lifted my cup. “Speaking as one of the dregs, of course.” I downed my wine.
