The firing was sporadic, with the greater number of men on ship and shore conserving their powder and shot; all knew that they were set for a gruelling night, and were in no hurry to expend their best. The knights of St. John made only a desultory reply to Dragulya’s gunners, though they had more to gain for the moment by inflicting casualties before the invaders set foot on shore. The voivode could see that the captains on the shore were trying to summon reinforcements, arranging themselves as best they could to harry the attackers once the assault began in earnest. These were hardened soldiers which he had to face, and not the kind of rabble that he had often routed with cruel ease.
The other galleys of the squadron still came one by one through the channel between the forts, battered and broken but not completely crippled. The one disaster which Dragulya really feared – the destruction of a ship which would split his force in two – had been avoided long enough. Despite the hail of cannonfire, and the battering which a few of the galleys had already taken in the fight with la Valette’s galleons, the ships which ran the gauntlet continued to pass, one by one, and now it was time to begin the landing. Every vessel which had come through the neck of the bay to join the cluster in the quiet water was a further nail in the coffin of the rebellious order, and Dragulya smiled in the knowledge that the men on shore must feel that as keenly as he.
The hulls of the galleys which were massed close to the north shore, ready to discharge their cargo, were creeping ever closer now to the wharves where pirate ships and traders had earlier been berthed. The tired oarsmen had been roused to their one last effort. Dragulya ran toward the spur, where his men were already gathering.
The men on the quayside were drawing back from their firing positions, which were too exposed to be held at the range which now separated them from the shipboard musketeers. There were not sufficient numbers on the shore for any attempt to be made to board the ships, and the defenders preferred to fight from the buildings. That was not entirely to the voivode’s liking, for he never liked to attack a force which was scattered and hidden behind stone defences, but he had expected it. His captains knew what faced them, and how to carry such a fight to the enemy, when they had marshalled sufficient numbers on land.
Dragulya paused to help the men who were struggling to hold the horses, shouldering his way between the nervous animals regardless of the danger of being struck by a kick. He shouted orders, making his way to his own mount, a bulky black animal which noticed his arrival and became quieter than the rest. It was not a very quick horse, but it was steadfast under fire, and Dragulya trusted it to go ashore even over a narrow wooden bridge. If necessary, he knew that he could jump from deck to pier, if only the galley could be brought to a proper rest. He was glad to see that now the ships were almost all in quiet water the horses were allowing themselves to be calmed, and he knew that he would have enough of a mounted troop to lead when the moment came.
Closer and closer to shore edged the Cockatrice, under fire that was pouring now from dozens of upper windows in the buildings on the harbour-side. Though his own musketeers were firing more steadily now, he knew that theirs was far the more exposed position, and that these next minutes would be desperate. Further delay could only be damaging. The starboard oars were withdrawn as the ship came in to the quay, and Dragulya measured the distance of the pier as it lessened by degrees.
When he looked around he saw that at least half his troop had managed to get mounted, though some who had done so were wrestling to control their steeds and might not be able to use their weapons to full effect. Nevertheless, Dragulya knew, nothing alarmed an enemy so much as a cavalry charge, and so he drew his sword and prepared to lead the attack. He called to the lookouts in the rigging for advice on the condition of the other ships, and was told that they were coming safe to the shore, though not all had the benefit of a wharf at which to land. If fortune favoured him, Dragulya would be able to land two hundred horses and the greater part of a thousand infantrymen in a matter of minutes – sufficient, he hoped, to overwhelm the defenders on the shore.
As soon as the wooden hull began to scrape upon the stone, the seamen began to throw mooring ropes at the capstans, leaping from the decks to secure them, while others brought up bridges. Dragulya screamed to his men to begin the charge, and forward they went in a hurrying tide, every man anxious to get among the buildings, seeking cover from the fire which poured from the lofts and attics.
Dragulya spurred his horse, and clattered over a wooden causeway, turning to the left as he reined in, hugging the wall while he waited for others to group about him. There was too much confusion to allow accurate measurement of the progress of his men, but with the fervour of battle all around him Dragulya did not give himself pause. He was set to race away from Tigné with he knew not how many followers at his heels.
The guns became less vital now, as the loaders could not keep up with the human flood which erupted from the decks of the armada. Dragulya knew that when the Walachian horsemen first clashed with the cavalry of the defenders it would be lances and swords that would do most damage, once the initial volleys had been loosed. He did not bring the musket from its holster beside the saddle, but began to slash with his sword at the figures on the wharf, who ran to cut him down.
The noise of the battle was tremendous, but it did not take long for Dragulya to realise how thin the enemy lines actually were. The cavalry from the south shore of the bay would doubtless hurry around to meet his men as they cut inshore, with their infantry behind them, but they would be too late to help those few who were now trying to stem the tide of the invasion. These were mostly common men, who would die as easily as common men always did.
Cutting and slashing, Dragulya steadied his horse, then sent his entire troop coursing along the pavement, heading inland. The defenders had strung a low barricade across their path, between a warehouse and the lip of the wharf, and two dozen men crouched behind it, aiming their guns. But they could not co-ordinate their fire, and when the horsemen hurtled towards them, seemingly invulnerable to all that they could do, most of them scattered, running away in a hopeless search for better vantage points.
Dragulya threw himself forward, and urged his mount into a great leap which easily cleared the barricade, while his swirling sword cut the heads of two defenders who could not scramble out of the way. He felt some kind of blade nick his leg, but knew that no serious damage had been done. He wheeled about, slashing to left and right, but then heard a mighty explosion as a musket went off just beneath him, and was thrown as the horse, its head near blown to bits, collapsed in a heap.
His left leg was caught in the stirrup, and the horse landed partly across him, but his leg did not break, and he pulled himself from under it, quelling the wave of pain which the jarring impact sent all through his body. Had all the defenders stayed their ground, there might have been one at hand to strike a blow that might have changed the course of the war, but he had already done enough to save himself, and his companions were hurdling the barrier now to surround him with friends.
As he closed off the greater part of the pain, letting himself feel just sufficient to tell him where his hurt was and give an edge to his wrath, Dragulya knew that the battle was already half-won, and that nothing now would stop his troops landing in their thousands through the night. The men on shore could not possibly stand against the relentless tide and the bloodthirst of Attila’s kin. By the time the horsemen from the south shore rounded the bay and came to the aid of their fellows, they would meet the legions of "Walachia in the fullness of their strength and fury, and could only expend their charges hopelessly against the power of his guns.
Dragulya stood aside while Walachian horsemen poured past him, to race along the cobbled quay. He took advantage of the pause to lift the point of his sword to his mouth, and lick blood from the blade. The taste of it on his tongue renewed his excitement despite the dampening effect the suppression of his pain had had.
For Dragulya, the taking of
blood had never been a pseudosexual experience, reserved for pleasurable self-indulgence. He would take the blood of servants by necessity, but he always preferred the blood of an enemy. The earliest vampires of Europe, he was convinced, had been such fierce and indomitable warriors because they used their blood-hunger to drive them on in battle, ever-eager for new conquests. He despised the vampires of Gaul who had made that inner drive into a softer kind of lust, building it into their crass mythology of courtly love. In his thinking a vampire must be a predator: an eagle to feed on human carrion, not a lover to fondle and caress those whom nature commanded him to use.
The voivode called out to a horseman who had paused near the broken barricade, wheeling around with blood gouting from a bullet-wound in his neck. The man was a vampire, yet even so he did not find it easy to close off the wound, and he was swaying in the saddle, ready to fall. Dragulya came swiftly to his side and took the stricken man in his arms as he slid from his mount. He took the fallen man’s weight with ease, and laid him close to the wall, where he would not be trampled, holding meanwhile the rein of the horse, which waited, wild-eyed but still. Then Dragulya pulled himself up into the saddle, from which vantage point he could look again along the line of the shore, dim and grey in the fast-fading twilight, swarming with horses and men and alight with the fervour of battle.
Drunk with elation, Vlad Dragulya stabbed the sky with his bloody sword, howling now at his captains and his cavalrymen. He spurred his new mount back along the wharf to a pier where he could see the channel where his last few ships still laboured under the tired guns of the defending forts. Neither Tigné nor St. Elmo were bright-lit now, and he knew they must be sending men along the cliff’s edge to join the fight along the harbour’s edge. But there was nothing they could do; they might as well set out to defy the surge of the tide. Like great crashing waves Dragulya’s fighting men were bursting upon the quays in tens and hundreds, irresistible as they carried destruction into the shops and warehouses of the waterfront.
Hundreds of his common men were dying, and no doubt there were vampires falling who would never rise again from the long sleep, but the day was safe for Walachia now, and Malta was set to fall.
Dragulya galloped off, to catch with his sword more gore for his tongue to taste, to feed the thirst which burned in his belly and his brain. Michael Beheim, he told himself, would make such song of this as to warm the hearts and heads of the huns and their descendants for many years to come, while the ruins of this rebel isle would rot into foul and unlamented dereliction.
SIX
Richard the Norman, called Coeur-de-Lion, stood atop a small hill a mile from the walls of Mdina, and watched the soldiers of Walachia march out of the east like a great column of dark ants. The cavalry came two abreast, the foot soldiers three, and in between each company came wagons which bore the loot of Pietà, including all the cannon seized from those forts and barricades which had fallen to the assault. These cannon would be added to the ordnance brought by the Spanish and Italian cargo ships which had sailed with the war-galleys. All would be brought to bear upon the walls of Mdina, and would demolish them by degrees.
From where he stood Richard could count thirty of the wagons, and he knew that there would be hundreds more arriving through the afternoon and the subsequent night. What losses Dragulya had sustained in taking Pietà, Richard did not know as yet, but as he watched the army in its approach he judged that the knights of St. John had not inflicted half as much damage as they might have hoped to do. These soldiers were neither exhausted nor demoralised.
There was something about the mechanical regularity of the marching of the Walachians, and the metronomic precision of their drummers, which brought a shiver to Richard’s heart, though these were his friends and not his enemies. In the plan which he and Dragulya had with difficulty agreed, provision had been made to take Valetta should its defenders risk everything in support of their brethren in Marsa Mxett, but Richard judged now that the knights of St. John had taken the less bold course, and allowed the city to come under siege. Perhaps their commanders imagined that they might yet escape by sea, if la Valette’s pirate navy could bring relief.
Richard’s troops had not reproduced such unholy order in their own marching, but had come more raggedly from the north of the island. They had met substantial opposition, but such was the force of their numbers that the defences had crumbled very rapidly. There had been many skirmishes on the shores of St. Paul’s Bay, and a long exchange of cannonfire between the galleys and certain pestilent sailing ships which harried them throughout the difficult disembarkation; but there had been insufficient cannon on the shore to keep them back, and far too few vampires to oppose the immortal knights of Grand Normandy. The defenders had retreated towards Mdina, and would now be adding their strength to the walls of that notable city.
The greater fraction of Richard’s army had not yet been involved in a serious battle. Dragulya’s men, meanwhile, had passed through the flame in storming the defences of the Marsa Mxett and sacking Pietà; yet here they were, in obvious good order and apparently cheerful heart, ready to complete a great circle about the walls of Mdina, to seal a siege from which there could be no escape. Even Richard, who thought the Walachian soldiers rough and rude, could not help but admire their discipline and their tenacity of purpose.
A party of horsemen moved away from the head of the Walachian column, attracted toward the Norman banner which flew over Richard’s tent. Meanwhile, two riders approached from the south, one of them bearing a lance from which a white flag flew – messengers from Mdina.
Richard’s gaze moved from the one group to the other, his coppery eyes patiently measuring their respective progress. It was the messengers who arrived first, the unencumbered man leaping from his mount and bowing low before the prince. He held out a scroll of parchment which Richard’s brother and lieutenant, John, took from his hand. John passed the parchment immediately to Blondel de Nesle, who wrenched it open and scanned it quickly.
‘No surrender,’ said the minstrel, tersely.
Richard was not satisfied with that. ‘Read it,’ he commanded.
Blondel looked up at his master briefly, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘To Richard the Norman,’ he read. ‘Your knights have no more business here than in England, unless they have come to join our cause. You may lay down your arms and enter the city as a friend, else you must take your men from Maltese soil, and never return. Stay, and you will pay dearly for every Maltese life you seek to take.’
‘Whose signature does it bear?’ asked Richard, bleakly.
‘There are three,’ Blondel told him. ‘Sceberra, Baron of Castel Cicciano; Inguanez, Baron of Diar-il-Bniet and Bukana; Durand, Seigneur de Villegaignon. They are all nobles of the city, I believe. No mention of Cordery.’
‘And yet it is Cordery’s voice which I hear in the words,’ replied the prince, ‘speaking of England and not Grand Normandy. Still, I have given him the chance which his countrymen gave to me. I owe no debt to him now.’ The Norman prince turned to watch Dragulya’s party arrive on the ridge of the hill. As the voivode dismounted, Richard looked at the quilted armour, now stained, torn and dirty, for signs of injury. It was clear that any wounds which Dragulya had sustained were trivial. The Walachian’s stride, as he approached, was as arrogant as ever.
‘What have you there?’ asked Dragulya, his black eyes darting sideways to study the sweating horses which the messenger and his escort had ridden from the city gate.
‘I sent to the city offering terms of surrender,’ Richard told him. ‘This is their refusal.’
Dragulya took the parchment from Blondel’s hands, and glanced at it briefly. Then he looked hard at Richard, displeasure lining his face with a scowl. Without a word he passed into the Norman’s tent. Richard was at first surprised, then frowned at what seemed to him insulting impoliteness. He followed the voivode quickly, and not in good humour.
As soon as they were out of sight of the watching cr
owd Dragulya rounded on the Gaulish prince, no less wrathful himself. ‘What does this mean?’ he demanded. ‘By what right do you send messages to our enemy, before my forces arrive? This is no part of the plan which we decided.’
‘Plan?’ answered Richard, taken aback by the other’s fury. ‘Our plan was to conquer this island, and put down its rebellion. I sent to the city to offer terms of surrender, to secure that end. The Maltese must realise that the city cannot stand against us; the knights of St. John are defeated, most of them penned helplessly in Valetta. Our own cannon, together with those which we have captured, will soon be arrayed against the walls of Mdina, which are not thick enough to stand against such fire for more than a day. If they had been prepared to give up Cordery, and swear allegiance to the empire, our work would be done.’
‘Our work would be done!’ Dragulya, shaking his head, threw the parchment down. ‘As it was well done, no doubt, that you quit the nation over which you lately ruled. Did the rebels there send you a message, asking you meekly to take your leave? No doubt they did, and inflicted thereby such damage on your empire as a thousand cannon never could.’
‘I was betrayed,’ Richard told him, coldly. ‘The Tower had already fallen. Had I fought, it must have cost the life of every loyal knight in the realm. Yes, if you will, I thought to offer the people of Mdina the same gentle consideration which my enemies offered me. Their adventure is over, and they must know it. I suppose that you would gladly impale them all – man, woman and child – and are so thirsty to be about such work that you are deaf to any cry for mercy. You seek to make an example of these people … an example, no doubt, which will last in men’s memories for a thousand years, to set a tariff which you’ll essay to exact on every challenger of Attila’s rule. But this is Gaul, my lord, and there are many in that city who were recently loyal to Gaul. Many have been sucked into this rising against their will. I warn you now, Dragulya, that I will not lend my name to the wanton slaughter of innocents. I have a code of honour to uphold, and I am glad to say so.’
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