A Carpathian Campaign: The Powers Book 1

by Alma Boykin

  His father held out the letter and a letter opener. “Or would you prefer not to open this in the presence of your betrothed?” His expression, and shifting eye color, suggested that his son and heir had a great deal of explaining to do and had best do it quickly.

  István opened the letter, keeping the packet at arm’s length as he did. The perfume became eye watering and Barbara covered her nose with the hem of her riding habit. He returned the opener to his father and unfolded the missive, thee pages of heavy pale pink paper. “Pink?” a muffled voice choked behind him.

  “Pink. Aunt Claudia believes in using stationary that matches one’s personality, and her advisor informed her that she was pink.”

  “Aunt Claudia?” Janos inquired.

  István skimmed the letter, frowning with confusion until he parsed the woman’s terrible Latin. “Aunt Claudia. Martin Halasz’s grandaunt, related to the Horthy family on the paternal side. I mentioned visiting her as a favor to Martin, Pater. She is a Healer—minor but skilled.”

  The light dawned and his father’s pending anger shifted to a wry smile. “That Claudia.”

  Beside him, Barbara reached for the letter and István handed it to her. Her lips moved as she tried to read the page. “Latin? I didn’t realize she was that old fashioned. Bless her soul.” She shook her head and returned the letter.

  Janos waved away the scent and István folded the pages, stuffing them into a pocket on his hacking jacket. “She has been suffering from a head cold,” István explained. “And she scents her own paper. All of it, business as well as personal.”

  Barbara made a face. “Oh dear.”

  “Speaking of business, Barbara, I must ask you to excuse my son for a moment.”

  István knew the tone and felt his heart dropping. “I apologize, Barbara,” he began.

  She waved him off. “No need. I see Sarah waiting for me, and I have correspondence I must attend to.” He waited until she disappeared down the hall to the guest rooms, followed by her maid, before turning back to his father, who handed him a telegram.

  “Damn and blast it.” He looked up, tipping his head toward the smoking room door. Janos nodded and brought the rest of the mail with them. He dropped it on the table to the side of the fireplace while István opened and read the telegram. “I’ve been recalled to the regiment early, Pater. Have to leave day after tomorrow.” His father offered him the cigarette case and he took one, lighting it from his father’s match. “Thank you.”

  His father looked troubled, his turquoise eyes swirling a little. “Any sense why?” István shook his head as he pulled on the cigarette. Janos smoothed the hair on the back of his neck and rubbed under his collar as if the muscles had gone tight. “Not war with Russia, that much I can be certain of,” Janos thought aloud. “Probably some ridiculous puffing and huffing in the southeast. Again. Or those fools around Venice braying about unifying Italy and restoring the glories of old Rome.”

  “Likely the Russians making noise about the Galician border again, Pater,” István snorted. “More of their all-Slav foolishness, giving everyone else headaches because it makes Berlin nervous.”

  “Which is utterly foolish, as everyone outside Berlin well knows. If King Wilhelm would see reason and quit trying to play ‘mine’s bigger’ with the British Navy, he’d have an army the Russians would respect.” István blinked at his father’s harsh words. Janos shook his head and continued, “After all, the Russians hate us, not the Prussians, or at least they say they hate us. As if they had any just grounds for encouraging that Serbian and Bulgarian business.” Both men rolled their eyes at the tsar’s claims. “We drove the Turks out of Serbia, not the tsar. But the Serbs have short memories.”

  So do our own Magyar so-called nationalists, Pater, more’s the pity, István thought to himself. But that was old and pointless business. He nodded. “Which is why I am not interested in serving with the diplomats, Pater. I do not see how Count Berchtold and Archduke Josef Karl can tolerate all that puff and bluster.” After all, everyone knew that the Russians were still suffering after getting beaten by the Japanese eight years before. And even their best generals were still fighting Napoleon and using wagon teams while the rest of Europe had discovered steam engines, gaslights, and electricity. They are so far behind us it’s almost laughable. Almost. The guns they are supposedly putting in those border fortresses are rumored to be huge. And they have more men than we do, assuming they can put every peasant into a uniform and give him a gun. But they can’t, and they can’t match our fighting spirit.

  István pulled hard on the cigarette, exhaling a long stream of smoke. Every year the Russians or French threatened war, and every year the threat turned into smoke and puffery. 1908, 1909, 1911, 1912. Even the chieftains in the Balkans only dared fight each other, or the Turks, and István was more than happy to let them squabble on their own. The Habsburg Imperial Army, including his regiment, had enough to deal with keeping the Russians and Germans from starting trouble. And the French keep making noises, but they’re French.

  His father interrupted his musings. “They tolerate them precisely the same way you tolerate ‘Aunt’ Claudia. You never let yourself forget the fangs and claws.” Janos gestured with his own cigarette. “Even if they strike out for foolish reasons, they can still do damage. What happened in 1867, pray tell? Wilhelm the First and his creature Bismarck almost undid all of the empire’s work, maneuvering us into a bad spot and then starting a war. Uncle Tómas still claims Königgratz was closer than the official reports say.”

  Close or not, we won, Pater. I wish I could have been there to see the look on Willie the First’s face when his lines broke and he had to flee as fast as his horse could run. His marvelous needle guns worked better on the French. Deep down István knew from his reading that the Imperial army had come within a few minutes of losing the battle, which was why even his cavalry unit now had rapid-firing, breech-loading rifles and carbines, and practiced working with artillery as well as infantry. And isn’t it a pain in the ass trying to teach draftees how to shoot the damn things, and to keep their horses quiet when the big guns fire from behind us. So glad I’m not doing that anymore. You needed infantry and artillery, but at the end of the day, cavalry still carried the battlefield. István thought for a moment. “Well, I suspect whatever the reason, it will be over by St. Martin’s Day, just like the spat down near Trieste with the so-called Italian Patriots last year, and the foolishness between the Rumanians and Serbs the year before. The Russians and their pets will bluster, the Kaiser will proclaim, and nothing more will come of it.”

  “May the Lord hear your words,” Janos said. The two men smoked and finished sorting the post in silence. Then Janos asked, “Along that line, what do you intend to do about Barbara?”

  István sensed the Power speaking through his father, and the House listening in. He’d made his decision during their morning ride and answered with a clear heart, “I intend to tell her about the House, of course, but slowly, and only as much as she needs to know. After we are married, because otherwise she’ll tell her mother no matter what promise I ask of her, and Lady Agatha will . . . She will not react well.” He shrugged.

  The Power, House, and his father exchanged something before replying, “That would be wise. Barbara has latent telepathy and carries the Healing gift but cannot use it herself. She will be a useful addition to the bloodline.”

  István pulled half the remaining cigarette into his lungs as he tried to keep from snarling, “And she’s a charming, intelligent, loveable woman, and pretty, too.” At his family’s rank, personal attraction mattered very little. House alliances made even the Habsburg marriage negotiations simple by comparison, especially on those—thankfully rare—occasions when the Powers became involved. Most people, even within the Houses, remained ignorant of the alliances with the Powers, and only twice had István heard of a Power intervening in a House marriage. The Powers remained outside of human ken, even for those few people like István and J
anos who could communicate with the creatures and tap into their energies.

  It sometimes seemed to István that half of a House Head’s duties centered on shielding the other House members from contact with a Power, if the House possessed such an alliance. It led to greater formality than even the Eszterházy family’s social and financial status warranted, especially at court. But once István had seen how the stifling etiquette of the imperial court served in part to buffer those outside the Houses, including many empresses, from contact with the Powers, the formality and distance seemed reasonable. István loathed it, but it made sense, especially now that he’d seen firsthand how outsiders fared in Power-connected families. Temper once more in hand, he replied, “That is good to know. I am glad the House’s approval remains in place.”

  Janos, now fully himself again, smiled. “I wouldn’t force you to marry someone truly incompatible, son. We are not, thanks be to God, in Claudia’s position.”

  “For which I do give earnest thanks every day, Pater.” He finished his smoke and tossed the ashes into the cold fireplace. “Since I have only one day left, I think I need to go out on my own tomorrow.”

  “You do. I’ll make your excuses to the ladies. Do you want to be indisposed or out hunting?”

  István thought about it as he leafed through the rest of his mail. “Out hunting. I don’t think I can pretend to get drunk enough to be indisposed, and I won’t have a chance to eat something off.” He also lacked the excuse that the women who acted as House Heads could sometimes claim for sudden disappearances and not leaving their chambers.

  “No. Lady Agatha is a bit too watchful, I agree,” came an answering sigh. Her thirst for gossip made her an excellent observer of people, alas, greatly complicating life for those attempting to sneak around her.

  István went out before dawn. He carried a shotgun, but did not intend to use it unless he had to. Instead, Hans would find something, or perhaps not. Even the best hunters had off days. István climbed into the hills, making steady progress up the long trail to the ruined “chapel” near the top of the mountain. The jumble of pale rocks and knee-high bits of overgrown wall predated the coming of the Church, tracing back to the misty time when long-ago men had worshipped the Powers as gods. István stopped, lowering his shields completely and “listening” for any House members or other humans. He sensed a faint hint of someone gathering wood on the other side of the mountain, well away from him, and relaxed. Mental defenses still down, he climbed higher, to the open meadow on the peak’s crest.

  Mountains rose to the west, east, and north, the rim of the Carpathian uplands. House Sarkány-Kárpátok’s land stretched north and east, beyond the next ridge and into the rolling area that led to the High Carpathians to the north. It stopped at the western flank of Mt. Kékes to the west and extended fifty kilometers and more to the east, almost to the wide floodlands of the Tisa River, blending into House Rakozi’s domains in a buffer zone that neither lineage wanted to precisely define. István turned and looked south, where the hills dropped away into the enormous sprawl of the Carpathian Basin, the Pannonian Plain, open all the way to Bucharest and the cock-pit that was the Balkans. The House’s domains stopped at the foot of the hills. From there another, stronger Power held sway, and House Habsburg kept direct control over the land. István’s people came from the northern mountains and preferred to stay there. As he looked at the land, István agreed once again with his ancestor’s decision: let their distant Eszterházy cousins, the younger branch of the family, hold court at Eisenstadt. The Eszterházys of Sarkány-Kárpátok held the true wealth.

  István reached down into the land. The Power, the near-ageless creature that dwelled in and on energies amassed over the eons, responded. Even though he was not yet Head of the House, István already had permission to speak with the Power of the land—although “speak” didn’t adequately describe the communication between HalfDragon and Power. Information, energy, feelings, and more passed between the two. All seemed well, although the Power carried a sense of restlessness with it, not for its own interests but of another Power or Powers. Was it House related, István asked. The creature seemed uncertain, almost as if something larger and far-reaching moved, disturbing balances and energies among all the Powers. István caught a sense of foreboding, like that described in one of the House chronicles before the great earthquake of 1326 in Swabia. He acknowledged the caution. The Power withdrew and István sat hard, drained almost to the point of immobility by its sudden departure.

  He reached into his hunting bag and pulled out a hard candy, stuffing it into his mouth. The sugar helped, and after a few minutes his swirling head settled down. The sun had moved well to the west, almost past the noon point, and he blinked. If this is what Pater goes through just with this Power, I hate to imagine what the Habsburgs sense. Once the world settled, he stood and began retracing his steps along the trail to the chapel. The woods felt quiet, almost oddly so. Perhaps a storm is coming tonight, but I don’t see any clouds. Or is it just the noon lull? He raised his shields enough to keep from accidentally reading someone. Once back under the trees, he made good time down the mountain. The shade kept the wild roses and other low plants at bay in this part of the forest. It also limited the deer browse, although the acorns attracted wild pigs.

  That night, Herzogin Agatha inquired about his lack of success. “All of us have off days, my lady. Perhaps the deer are pestering the men trying to harvest the wheat and grapes.”

  “Likely so, given that harvest looks so promising,” Janos sighed. “Oh, Mátyás wrote that he will be finishing early, in December, and will take up his duties after New Years.”

  Agatha sniffed a little, but let the topic of universities and the nobility pass without comment this time. István could well imagine her thoughts, something like, “Well, he can’t serve in the military or clergy, poor man, and with that leg he won’t be representing the government on diplomatic missions, so he might as well make himself useful some other way.” He’d heard other, less charitable, comments from his army associates. István’s willingness to fight for his brother’s honor had brought those to a rapid end, at least within his hearing. Just because he can barely walk and can’t ride doesn’t mean he’s any less smart, wise, or important to the House, István growled again.

  Barbara gave him a sympathetic look. She said nothing because her mother didn’t give her a chance, instead announcing, “Oh, yes, luck. Don’t you think it was fortunate that Count . . .” and she was off with a piece of gossip about a marriage gone wrong and a husband’s untimely unannounced return to the Schwarzenberg’s hunting lodge at Hluboká after his horse went lame.

  «Any difficulties?» István heard his mother inquiring.

  As he made a polite noise and ate a bite of fish, he replied, «None at all, Mater. Although the Power felt watchful.» He passed along the sensation.

  His mother raised an eyebrow at Lady Agatha’s story and sent, «Interesting. I wonder if we should start preparing for trouble of some kind.» She sounded more thoughtful than concerned and István shrugged a little. “That was indeed unfortunate,” she said aloud to Agatha. “I trust it was handled discreetly.”

  “Oh yes, well, that is, he tried. Erzsébet would talk, you know, despite Paul’s best efforts to be calm about it.” Agatha heaved a deep sigh as a footman removed her half-eaten fish course.

  Barbara rolled her eyes before taking a sip of wine. István nodded and the corner of her mouth lifted in an answering half-smile before she ventured, “I understand you must leave sooner than planned, István?”

  “Yes, my lady. Duty calls, I fear, although I suspect it is nothing more than the regiment being included in show maneuvers at the last minute. King Wilhelm is making an ‘informal’ visit to the border, and he always likes to watch training and maneuvers, especially cavalry.” István smoothed his mustache and wondered just what sort of chaos would result this time. Wilhelm liked to participate, and of course couldn’t be allowed to be on the
losing side, even as an uninvited guest, requiring last-minute changes to everything. I wonder if the stories are true that his favorite character in Wagner is Loki? He certainly spreads chaos around him, at least when he joins in maneuvers. And when he acted as his own foreign minister, István recalled with a slight wince. The king of Prussia really needed someone stable at his right hand, but would never stoop to admit it.

  «Stable like Archduke Rudolph?» His father inquired with a pointed look. «Check your shields.»

  «At least his grace seems to be able to confine his, um, eccentricity to times and places without reporters and foreign ambassadors present. So far,» István said.

  Janos cut into the main dish of the meat course, a lovely saddle of venison larded with bacon and served with potatoes and turnips. «So far. And he is not the Emperor of the Germans, either,» he allowed. «But keep your shields up before you get into bad habits.»

  István made his farewells that evening because he needed to leave very early the next day to start his trip west to Pressburg and thence north to Brüm to meet his regiment. He’d have to travel without his usual servants, but that’s what first class train cars were for. Gold kronen, plus orders and his hussar’s uniform, worked wonders to get people out of his way. Lady Agatha gave him a dark look when he took Barbara’s hand and kissed her on the cheek. The older woman relaxed when he stepped away, leaving sufficient space between him and his betrothed to preclude further physical contact. Barbara seemed disappointed, but he wasn’t going to court Lady Agatha’s wrath by pressing for a second kiss or embrace. His mother kissed both his cheeks, and Judit hugged him so hard he could feel every button on her dress, it seemed like.