The Golden Portifor - 22. Chapter 22

Willi von Strelsau awoke to find Serge smiling quirkily down at him. He stretched and yawned. ‘What is it Phoebus?’

‘I have a busy day ahead of me, and I just wanted the image of you looking peaceful in my mind before I left. I’m glad you’re staying in Laibach, and not accompanying the army.’

‘I had no choice really, darling Phoebus. Henry more or less begged me to. It was the only way he could get Rica to stay, knowing I’d be here to amuse her. Otherwise of course I’d have followed you to war. Such a thrilling experience it must be. Come back safe, idiot.’

‘Of course, darling lunatic. Count on me to fight my way back to you.’

‘Hopefully undamaged too. I suppose that if you get taken prisoner, the Turks will maybe offer you to ransom. But don’t you worry. If you’re enslaved, I’ll come looking for you and buy you back. It’ll make for an interesting future relationship.’

‘From what Prince Eugene was saying, the Turks in the heat of battle offer no quarter, but it won’t come to that. Our prince strikes me as one of those generals whom Caesar talks of, the ones who might get a lot of people killed but will emerge victorious and unscathed.’

‘I’m not entirely comforted by that observation, Phoebus. Ah well. I shall in due course arise, do my toilette and wave you goodbye.’

‘It’ll be a glorious sight when we leave,’ Serge said, relaxing back into the pillows. ‘The vanguard must already have taken the road to Fiume and the coast. The rest of the column is set to depart in its echelons beginning at nine, and I’ll be trotting ahead of it, so I’d better be up and packed soon. Then it’s a five-day march through hilly country, arriving in good time for the celebration of the feast of the Annunciation. In the meantime before we go there’s a mass at the cathedral for the safety of the prince and the success of his army. I am assuming you’ll wish to be there to take your formal leave of His Royal Highness.’

‘I shall, and I may weep pitifully,’ Willi said, looking genuinely glum at the prospect, before continuing with an expression of distaste on his face. ‘You know there are spies in the army, Serge my dear, and not just for the Austrians and Venetians and quite possibly Turks too. My damnable uncle also has his informers here, and very quick they are with any news for him. He’s already been alerted to my unlikely elevation to be head of Zeus’s household, supreme over Bedchamber and Backstairs alike. Henry’s had a stern letter about his profligacy with fees and favours that are not his to grant out. He’s had his income from the exchequer curtailed and been instructed that from now on he must maintain his establishment from his revenues as Duke of Mittenheim, apart from the expenses of this glorious campaign.’

‘Now that is petty,’ Serge frowned. ‘What, the Marmorpalast and all his household, not to mention Rica? I’d doubt that Mittenheim can bear all that expense; her wardrobe fills three warehouses.’

‘It’s a jerk at Henry’s chain. His father wants to keep him beholden, and he’s getting too independent. Needless to say, he’s taken it badly. Quite how badly I believe we’re about to discover. Now, time for one long, last fuck I think. Give me something to remember you by. Take me from the front, dearest, and kiss me hard the while.’

***

An Elphberg rage was something to see, and left no one who witnessed it unmoved. Prince Henry stomped the Hall of State of the Castle of Laibach like a thunderstorm crystallised into human form. His courtiers stood against the wall, some flinching away from his gaze as it swept them. The Lady Ulrica alone seemed unmoved, sitting in a window niche and absently gazing out over the city towers and roofs below.

‘So here I am about to go to war, and my damnable father stabs me in the back as treacherously as French Louis did the Emperor in ’88. No wonder the Turks still rule south of the Donau! It’s the old story. There was never any greater enemy of the crusade than the crusaders themselves, back even to the days of the English King Lionheart. He had to hold off the French king with one hand even as he was locked in battle with the great Saladin. And so Jerusalem remained to the unbeliever.’

Finally he ended his pacing and stood next to his mistress, who reached up and gripped his hand. The prince of a sudden spun around. ‘This is the way it shall be then. If I have to rely on Mittenheim for the food on my plate, then I will be Duke of Mittenheim. My lord chamberlain!’ He fixed a fierce look on Willi. ‘You will prepare the following patents in my name as duke. The Freiherr von Tarlenheim is to be Lord Marshal of the duchy. He, yourself, General Dudley, the Reverend Father Heer, the Graf von Speyer, the Graf Almaric and my Lady Ulrica are to form my Council of State.

‘And mark this, the Lady Ulrica von Ebersfeld will be henceforth known as Her Excellency the Gräfin Ulrica of Vesterborg, which I believe was a title held within the former ducal family, my ancestors. Oh yes ... and finally, an order of chivalry shall be proclaimed, or rather revived: the Noble Crusading Order of the Dragon of Mittenheim, of which the members of my council shall all be Knight or Lady. Get busy creating the insignia, Willi. Investitures shall be held on our return from the campaign. Now, out! All of you! Except my lord Sergius and the Countess of Vesterborg.’

The prince took a seat and glowered at the floor as the hall emptied. After a long silence he finally looked up, heaved a sigh and gave a lopsided smile at Serge. ‘So my Lord Marshal, I assume you will take the honour being offered and then proceed to give me your usual frank advice, delicately and politely masked though it will be. So cut to the chase, Serge. Tell me I’m an idiot.’

‘No sire,’ Serge replied with a bow, ‘you are a prince and your honour makes its demands. Your father has been intemperate, but nonetheless your actions will be taken as a severe rebuke from son to father. I have no doubt that some account of the words you’ve just spoken will very soon be on their way to him. However, while you are in the field he will have to muzzle his resentment. The Emperor will make sure of that. On our return to Ruritania, whatever the issue of the campaign, His Majesty must then decide whether to continue this feud or offer a reconciliation. Of course, sire, should you return garlanded with the laurels of victory it will be harder for him to avoid a retreat, though he may well not forgive the necessity.’

The prince frowned, then looked at Ulrica. ‘What say you, my lady countess?’

‘Serge has the right of it of course, my love. You may get away with your defiance of your father in the short term, but he won’t forget it in a hurry. You’d best hope the French march on Strelsau and Vienna after the business of the League is done. He’ll then have to admit to himself you’re indispensable to him and must be treated as a partner in the Elphberg enterprise, rather than as a wilful child.’

Prince Henry grunted. ‘Then I’d better get myself down to the muster and bring back to Laibach and Strelsau the plunder of Ragusa and the head of the Pasha Mehmed on a pike.’

***

Near a village called Matulji, six miles from Fiume, according to Serge’s calculations, Karl Wollherz asked Serge politely what had gone wrong with the sky.

‘Wrong?

‘It’s like someone lit up a lamp, sir. It’s brighter in the direction we’re going.’

‘Ah. Then I think we’re just about to see something we’ve none of us three seen before, but which you and Andreas will have heard of.’

‘Sir?’

Serge and the boys were riding in advance of the army’s main column, but a half mile behind the vanguard. The weather had been dry the past week, which spared the road, though the cavalry had left plenty of other evidence of its passage. They had ridden for five days in a stench of horse dung, not that Karl and Andreas noticed or cared. Serge found it oppressive in the day’s heat however, for the weather was warm for March.

The road crested a hill and Serge had a disconcerting feeling of vertigo, for the land fell away into a gulf and didn’t rise up again, instead the horizon became an unnatural straight blue line across a glowing sky.

Andreas gasped. ‘That’s the sea, my lord!’

‘Worth the trip then?’

‘Oh yes, sir!’

‘We’ll be only two days at Fiume, but there’s a chance you’ll be able to make its closer acquaintance. Can either of you swim?’

Karl exchanged glances with Andreas. ‘A friend taught us in the Starel, sir,’ he replied, almost truthfully.

The coast at Fiume was rock-bound around a great bay. The city lay behind walls and towers on a river plain where the Flaum reached the Adriatic Sea. On the other side of the river rose cliffs upon which was the commanding fortress of Trsat, built when the city was a possession of the Kingdom of Hungary. The bay was deep and the port of Fiume bristled with shipping, with some sizable galleons drawn up to the long quays. Serge made a note of this. It occurred to him that this was not necessarily a sign of flourishing trade. These vessels were taking shelter from the depredations of Pasha Mehmed’s privateer fleet.

Serge was quartered with several other senior officers on a merchant house opposite the church of St Vitus. There was a large stable to the rear of the property, so Karl and Andreas were well able to make their various charges comfortable.

‘Brunhild says Orcus is complaining about the hoof of his right forefoot,’ Karl commented. Andreas had given up wondering how he knew. ‘I’d better take a look. Mind you, Orcus is a right one for niggling.’

Karl checked the hoof and found the shoe had lost a nail. ‘Don’t look like he’s exaggerating this once. We need to get the sergeant farrier over to him from the Prinzengarde before we set off on the road again. I really need my own kit, ‘cos I think I could fix this sort of problem myself. Right Ando, want to wander down to look at the waves?’

The two boys hung up their hats and uniform coats and went out into the crowded streets of the city. The army was quartered and encamped south along the coastal road, the officers in the villages and their regiments either on pasture grounds or even upon the sands, at points where freshwater springs bubbled out of the cliffs above them.

It was at the nearest to the city of these beachfront camps that Andreas and Karl found the Mittenheimer Guard settling in, having just arrived with the rearguard. The regiment’s boys were easily located by their adolescent bellows and shrieks, leaping into the sea from a platform of rock jutting out into the waves. Karl and Andreas caught sight of Wilchin’s skinny body cannonballing into the water along with his mates. They rapidly stripped off, leaped on top of him and joined in the fun, gasping at the sea water, cold even though the afternoon was unseasonably warm.

Eventually all three boys hauled out on to a warm slab further out in the waves, reachable only by swimming, which few amongst the regiment’s boys knew how to do.

‘This makes the whole trip for me,’ Wilchin observed as he stretched his lean frame on the hot rock. ‘Wish Jonas wuz here. He’d love this.’

‘How’s the march been?’ Andreas asked, pushing the curtain of wet hair out of his eyes and dangling his feet in the sea, kicking the passing wave crests with his toes. Karl noted the fine dark hair matted on his friend’s legs below his knees, which wasn’t there the last time he recalled looking; his own were still smooth and hairless.

‘Not so bad,’ Wilchin replied. ‘All these Mittenheimer lads speak proper, none of that country speech gibberish. We only marches twelve or so miles a day and the drum’s not heavy, though me pack is. We don’t do the drumming all the way, just one of us sounds the beat for the company we’re marching wiv. I’m learning the fife too. I’m terrible. It makes an awful noise like I wuz squeezing a mouse to death. I tell yer, this is way more fun than the Conduit. The food’s not much worse and at least it’s regular; yer can get used to hard biscuit, specially wiv teeth like I got after Jonas did his magic on me.’

‘Jonas promised yer fun alright, and yer may be having fun,’ Karl observed. ‘Problem is, his idea of fun ain’t necessarily much of a laugh if you’re human. Something tells me the rest of the trip won’t be no holiday. Still, this bit I like at least. Brunhild is thrilled to be with all these horses, especially the Glottenburger cavalry who she’s never met before. They all know her now, and since I ride her they all know me.’

Andreas scoffed. ‘It’s true. He got in a game with some ensigns from the Glottenburg Dragoons, that he could tell them all their horse’s names. He walked away with ten crowns and left ‘em all scratching their heads, wondering what the trick was.’

‘Does yer need some cash, Wilchin?’ Karl asked.

‘Nah, I’m fine. I got a little game of pitch an’ toss going on wiv the drummers. These country kids are useless at it. Not like us. It’s what we did those lazy days on the Platz when it was hot and quiet and nothing going on. You wuz better at it than me, Ando.’

‘Don’t miss it. Life in Engelngasse is way better than those days, even though I can’t no longer do what I like and piss where I want. But that’s not true for you is it Wilchin?’ Andreas cocked an eyebrow at his friend. ‘You wuz born for the streets. No wonders yer and Jonas gets on so well. Yer both wild ones.’

‘True ‘nuff. This little adventure suits me just fine. I can use all me gutter skills. The other boys all looks up ter me, even though most is older.’ He got up and let loose a strong stream of pee into the passing waves, stretching himself as he pissed, the very picture of careless, boyish abandon, not even holding his penis as it sprayed its golden arc. Karl looked up at the boy, suddenly taken by Wilchin’s narrow waist, long legs and the curve of his tight buttocks, clenched and dimpled as he urinated.

Karl’s adolescent cock stirred and stiffened of its own accord. He didn’t cover it with his hands. It was a common enough event between him and Andreas in their bed together and not worth remark. But Andreas observed Karl’s erection, winked at him and made a jerking motion with his right hand. It was an act Karl had not yet indulged in, but he suddenly felt an urgent need to do just that. He must talk to Ando about it when they were alone in their stable with the horses that night.

***

As the army of the Catholic League took the coast road south, Serge had joined the party of generals riding alongside the prince at the head of the long column. A troop of the Prinzengarde jingled behind. Serge was one of several aides detailed to act as couriers and scouts. Despite the closing in of the weather, and the occasional lash of heavy showers driving off the sea to their right, he was enjoying the march. You could at least see the incoming grey veils of the storms well before they reached you off the sea, and get your cloak out. The land sloping up to the left of their road was less interesting: white limestone overgrown with small and twisted shrubs. If the sun had been out, the view in that direction would have been uncomfortably dazzling as well as dusty.

General Dudley was monitoring the march, despatching riders to check the progress of the column. He summoned Serge over. ‘Enjoying the ride, Serge? It won’t be so enjoyable after we cross into Venetian Dalmatia. We’re supposed to find the Croat irregular battalions awaiting us at Jabucovak. On past experience, I wonder whether they’ll be there at all. They were more of a nuisance than a help to the Army of Lombardy.

‘But if they are there they’ll already have stripped the land of livestock and firewood, and the local folk will be getting hostile. Supply becomes a problem when we’re beyond the reach of the emperor’s commissars. I managed to fill our wagons by purchase and intimidation at Fiume, but an army of this size burns though beans, flour and biscuit at a great rate. We need to push on with the march. Five days to our final depot at Karlobag, and three days more to Jabucovak by my calculation. At least no outbreak of the red flux as yet, though it will come sooner or later.

‘Now, Major von Tarlenheim, ride back along the column for me and give my regards to the Glottenburg major general, Tedorovic. You speak their lingo I believe, so ask as politely as you can after the state of their supply train. It’s a damnable nuisance in this army that our prince has no direct control over anything other than their dispositions in battle. Ride along with the Glottenburg brigades for the next day or two, and get a sense of what’s going on there for me. Much obliged, sir.’

Serge saluted, turned Acheron’s head and cantered him back along the column. The Prinzengarde was bringing up the rear of the Ruritanian brigades, following the artillery train. He called out his servants from the column and paused to exchange some words with Boromeo, who confessed he was enjoying this part of military life, and even mustered a smile for his brother.

Andreas and Karl trotted along after Serge as he returned down the road, passing the Glottenburger horse and dragoon regiments. As he went Serge noticed a peculiar thing. It was almost as if the horses of the entire column were swinging their heads in his direction as he passed. Some indeed shook their manes and snorted as he knew horses did as their way of greeting a friend. He looked behind him by reflex, but all he saw was Karl and Andreas on Brunhild and Jennet leading their pack horses.

Serge encountered General Taddeus Tedorovic with his staff sitting their horses on a bluff above the coast road, watching his battalions trudge past below like a giant olive-green caterpillar, for the Glottenburg regiments were all dressed in that colour apart from their artillery, which was in white. The Ruritanian infantry for its part was fitted out in a shade of medium blue unique to that kingdom’s army.

The Glottenburger order of march was being well kept. Each battalion was followed by its half battery of field artillery and supply wagons. The one difference from the Ruritanian foot regiments was the lack of pikemen. The Glottenburger infantry had followed the Austrians and Brandenburgers in dispensing with the pike and rearming with flintlocks to which bayonets could be attached. Serge may have been a Ruritanian by birth, but he was a Glottenburger by upbringing and a future peer of the duchy, and so he permitted himself some pride in the turnout of the army of Duke Willem Stanislas.

Serge raised his hat to the general in salute, and was acknowledged in Rothenian, not German. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘Max’s boy. Sergius is it not?’

‘Yes, general. May I have your permission to ride with your staff for a while?’

‘Hah! Dudley sent you to watch our doings, eh?’

‘As you say, sir. I believe he is distressed that there are no direct lines of communication between himself and your column.’

‘I heard your grandfather in that measured remark, my boy. Well enough. Join my staff here.’

Serge rode quietly alongside the white-moustachioed general for a while. Tedorovic pulled out a pipe and lit it. After puffing a while he observed meditatively, ‘Young Dudley’s a good fellow, Sergius, and a fine quartermaster general, the best I’ve met. I’ve not seen him in battle, but he’s studied under that mad Savoyard prince, so I assume he should know the importance of speed and decision. However, I fear that disposing of sacks of flour and magazines of powder take up more of his mind than they should. Generals need to be looking around themselves, not making neat little notes in their pocket books. For instance, I see none of our light horse up on the crests of the hills we are passing.

‘When I was a captain of horse in Sobieski’s army in Moldavia, during which I had the good fortune to be present at the field of Chocim, you did well to watch the horizon, because all of a sudden a torrent of sipahis might roll over it and you’d find yourself cut off and overwhelmed. That’s why scouts should be out at least a league inland. The fact we’re still in imperial territory is no guarantee of safety.

‘The best of the Turkish commanders know how to make deep raids and outflank, and from what I’ve heard of this young Pasha Mehmed he may be the most enterprising of his generation. He knows we are coming, and will have made his plans. So, Sergius, when you get back to your prince, you might casually observe on this deficiency to His Royal Highness. He is a brave and valiant youth I have no doubt, but unblooded as yet, and relying on generals with little experience of leading against the Turk.’

Reluctant to commit himself on the point, Serge merely observed that perhaps the senior officers should make an effort to communicate more directly. ‘Of course, Sergius, you’re right in that,’ the general agreed equably, ‘but you can’t ignore the dead weight of over two centuries of rivalry and warfare. Were this fifty years ago, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Even after the Peace of Orbeck, Glottenburg is a challenge to the legitimacy of the Elphberg state. And Ruritania has to be an offence to the Ruritanid dukes of Glottenburg who should in their own minds be ruling from Strelsau. So the soldiers in the service of either house cannot directly recognise the authority of the other. I’m sure you and your grandfather must have talked of this.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ Serge replied. ‘His belief is that time must do its work. He has high hopes that the marriage of young Willem Stanislas and Princess Dorothea Sophia will be a force for peace between the two realms.’

‘So do we all hope. The young prince Staszek is a very fine boy, and not unlike yourself in many ways, Master Sergius. Both of you have been brought up in a Glottenburg fashioned by Baron Maximilian Josef of Olmusch and show the mark of it. And to have the future lord of Olmusch in the service of the Elphbergs is yet another hopeful step. Should this campaign prove successful, yet more links of friendship will have been made. There are many in Glottenburg who hope so. It does no good for the Rothenian people to be sundered in so dangerous a world.’

***

Karlobag was a little port without much to justify its naming after the famous Emperor Karl IV, just a collection of white-painted cottages huddled under the Velebit coastal range. Its living was made from the sea, and large numbers of fishing boats were drawn up on its shingly beach. Most of the locals were there, the men smoking their pipes and glowering at the town, where the army of the League had commandeered their homes. The fact that they were being paid for the billeting didn’t make it any the less inconvenient, and to be on the safe side they had ferried their livestock to the relative security of the several islands across the bay before the army had arrived. Regardless, the army’s boys were happily frolicking in the blue sea, or sitting staring across the sparkling waters to the barren islands opposite, among them Karl, Andreas and Wilchin.

In the Intendant’s house, the only building in the town that had any claim to distinction other than the church, Prince Henry was listening as Venetian and Imperial officers briefed the meeting on the latest intelligence about Turkish movements to their south. Mehmed Pasha had moved forward and fortified a camp at Dugopolje, threatening Spalato and causing panic in Venice. Only one of the promised Croat battalions had as a result arrived, the others had been detained by the commandant of Spalato, who was fortifying his city for a siege. Then one after another of his generals gave their opinion on the next stage of their campaign. He called on General Dudley last of all.

‘Your Royal Highness,’ he said, ‘we now enter a race between the resources of our supply column and the inevitable attrition of disease. We’ve done well to get the army here relatively intact. In part this was judgement and in part luck. These are empty lands, and so our men haven’t yet been much afflicted by the smallpox, plague and fluxes that devastate the armies quartered on the towns of the Rhineland and Lombardy. What illness we have, we’ve brought with us. But as we go beyond our final depot here at Karlobag we go into lands where water will be scarce and easily contaminated, and the land is not such that we and our horses can live easily off it. Hunger and the flux will carry off hundreds by the day. If we are to take the coastal route then my advice is we must strike quickly towards the enemy’s fortified camp at Dugopolje and bring him to battle. It will be a hard march, nine days at least over bad roads, and our soldiers will have to carry what they can. We cannot be encumbered with a long supply train.’

The prince sat silent for some minutes when Dudley had finished. ‘My inclination is to strike fast and hard, gentlemen, which I see is the majority opinion amongst you. But how about this for an idea.’ He stood and pointed at the map spread on the table in front of him. ‘Here where the road leaves the coast is the Venetian fortress of Sebenico. I suggest that as we press on south we leave a force to build up a magazine and depot there some fourteen leagues to our rear, so that our depleted main force will be able to travel light but have the resources at hand to reprovision.’

***

In the afternoon of Monday 7 April 1692, the morrow of Easter, the army of the League reached the town of Sebenico, dusty and tired, to find the lion banner of St Mark still flying from St Michael’s Fortress. Enquiry from the small Venetian garrison learned that no Turkish troops had as yet been seen near there, but there had been no word from Spalato for two days, either by road or by sea. The captain commanding the garrison had no resources to scout out the road to the city, but peasants trickling into the town talked of a long cannonade being heard in the east and they repeated rumours of sipahis wasting the hinterland.

The cavalry brigades were allowed no rest. The companies of light horse were ordered to press on down the road till night fell to spread out and detect if they could any Turkish pickets. The dragoons and cuirassiers were to follow on ready to repel any sudden onslaught from Pasha Mehmed’s sipahis and Tartars.

Ensign Boromeo von Tarlenheim and his half-company were not amongst these, in fact at this point he was several days behind the main column amongst the escort for a long train of waggons bringing provisions and powder to set up the proposed supply depot east of Sebenico. To his displeasure, Major Barkozy had specifically detached him for the task. Boromeo was not fooled by the major’s flattery that he was being given his first independent command, and suspected his brother was behind it, so as to keep him out of the line of battle. He toiled, still disgruntled, into Sebenico on Thursday evening, three days after his regiment had departed for the assault on the Turks at Dugopolje.

On arrival the Venetians directed the supply column up out of the city and on to the Spalato road. At a wretched hilltop hamlet overlooking an inlet of the Adriatic a mile out of town, Boromeo found the camp, such as it was. Some half-hearted fortification was going on under the listless direction of a Croat captain who seemed to have less idea than Boromeo as to how this was to be done. So he ignored the captain and, with the stubborn aristocratic self-confidence towards others that his high birth had given him, ordered the wagons of the train to be circled as Major Barkozy had advised him should be done in such circumstances.

‘You see, young Boromeo,’ the major had said in one of his not infrequent fits of didacticism over a glass of wine and a pipe of tobacco, ‘our Rothenian ancestors in the great migrations of the peoples that brought us from the steppes to Central Europe, travelled as a people, men, women and children. Their great wagons were both their homes and their travelling fortresses. And within a half hour they could turn their columns into as solid a fortified camp as Caesar’s legions ever built.’

At his sergeant’s suggestion, before dark Boromeo got his men and the waggoners to unload the dozens of barrels of gunpowder and begin a deep trench to act as a temporary magazine. He planned to roof the trench over with canvas, with buckets of water at hand to soak the material in case of an assault on the camp. Between the major, his sergeant, and his innate sense of what was owed to a Freiherr of an ancient noble line, Boromeo von Tarlenheim was in fact quietly becoming an effective cavalry officer, respected by his men despite his youth.

***

The Friday morning, after the Prinzengarde were summoned from their cloaks by the company’s trumpeter, the Croat captain wandered over, pipe in hand and looked amused at the construction of the temporary magazine. He knew some French, and in a mutilated version of that language gave Boromeo to understand that he was wasting his efforts. ‘By tomorrow, young sir, the whole campaign will be done, and you will be heading back to Germany. When last we heard, the young prince was driving in the Turkish lines around Spalato. A party of wounded came in at dawn with news. They say there’s not much resistance.’

Satisfied with progress despite the captain’s discouragement, Boromeo walked over to the tents set up for the casualties. He was surprised to see a large number of boys in Ruritanian uniforms sitting around, most in the coloured and laced coats of regimental musicians but also among them were two very familiar figures in the white uniform of his own regiment.

The larger of them turned. ‘Hey, Karlo!’ he called to his friend, ‘It’s Boro!’

Boromeo somewhat resented the lack of deference shown to him by his brother’s servants, but on the other hand the peculiar circumstances that linked them hardly allowed him to keep any distance, so he put up with it.

As they sat and shared a water bottle under the shelter of one of the tents, he asked Andreas and Karl what had brought them there.

‘It’s like this, Boro. Once the pursuit of the Turks began, your big brother decided it was no place for the likes of us. So he sent us back out of harm’s way with the waggons full of soldiers who sickened on the march, and they’d picked up the younger drummer boys from the infantry regiments back along the column too. The kids are making themselves useful running around for the surgeons, while Karlo here is helping the farriers with the horses. He’s doing so good, they’ve given him a set of his own tools.’

Boromeo made a face. ‘They sent me out of the way too! But I should be up there with the Prinzengarde. Serge made it happen, I’m sure.’

Karl shook his head. ‘No he didn’t, Boro. It was the major all by himself. There’s no way he’d have you put in danger.’

‘What? Did my father tell him to do that?’

‘No. Look Boro, there’s things you really should know, things that Jonas told us. Things about General Dudley and Major Barkozy.’

‘But they’re my friends.’

Andreas shook his head. ‘It’s a long story, and if you were anyone else you’d not believe it. But you’ve met Jonas Niemand and you know he’s real and how powerful he is. So listen to me. It began with your grandfather ...’.

At that point shouts, shots and a scream from outside the tent caused the three boys to stand up and peer out. The camp was in sudden chaos. Croat irregulars were frantically mustering and loading their weapons. Their captain was sitting on the ground, pipe still in hand, staring aghast at the black arrow that now penetrated his chest. Ululations broke out from down the valley. Boromeo looked around and assessed the danger with a promptness of decision that did him credit.

‘My men!’ he yelled, ‘to the waggons! You sergeant, get the sick, wounded and horses within, as many as you can. Now!’ Despite his voice embarrassingly changing register as he shouted, he was obeyed. The drummer boys heard him too and rapidly swarmed up and over, or under, the waggons.

Boromeo coolly stood up on the nearest one, having drawn his sword. Andreas vaulted up beside him, his own sword in hand.

‘Looks like them Turks have found us, after all’ Andreas observed, as an arrow buried itself in the boards next to him. The shallow valley inland of the village was alive with galloping light horse, loosing off arrows and turning before any musket shots could reach them. The Croats had failed to form line, and most were now in a panicky rout in the direction of Sebenico, their backs to the sihapis, to whom they were providing entertaining target practice.

The road was already littered with dozens of their arrow-feathered corpses. Maybe a score of them had made the wagons. Boromeo’s sergeant was driving them with his riding crop to the barricades, where the Prinzengarde were already loosing off their pistols and carbines in a brisk fire at the raiders, to deter any approach to the surgeons and drummer lads hauling the wounded within the protection of the wagon park.

Andreas looked around assessing the situation, then glanced down at the sword he had brought back from Faërie. It tingled in his hand, and a surge of confidence and strength washed through him from it, taking all his fear away. ‘Got an idea, Boro,’ he said. ‘This is what we’re gonna do.’