Eric Flint - Much Fall Of Blood

Suddenly the coach lurched, and the horses broke into a gallop.

The coach swayed even more wildly and the coachman was plainly fighting for control. Vlad found himself flung about and clung desperately to the leather strap. Elizabeth, however, seemed perfectly in control. She leaned forward and tapped on the small window. Somewhat jerkily, it was opened. "What is happening out there?" she asked sharply.

"Don't know, milady. Horses panicked," said the struggling coachman.

After a while, he managed to bring the lathered horses under control. He opened the little window again. "Sorry, Milady, the offside wheeler is going lame. And all of the horses are tired. We'll need to rest them and see if we can find another team. There is a small inn in the hamlet about a mile ahead. Can I stop there?"

"If you must," said the countess, looking mildly irritated.

"Perhaps we could get something to eat there?" asked Vlad.

"I doubt if they will rise to much above porklot, which will mostly be cabbage. But nonetheless what you say is true. I have been very remiss in looking after you. We shall have to see what this little place offers. But do not expect too much."

Vlad did not know what to expect at all. However, whatever happened, he would be out of the stuffy swaying carriage for a while. Her scent was making him want to sneeze. He also felt as if he hadn't seen a meal for days. He was not too sure just what "porklot" would prove to be, but he would like to try it anyway.

The dwarf, who had also been on the box of the carriage with the driver, clambered down and lowered the stair. He handed the countess down into the crudely cobbled courtyard. She looked around. There was a dung heap. Scrawny chickens ran about. A pig peered at them from one of the empty stables.

"I think that I will get back into the carriage." She said, disdainfully.

Vlad emerged and stood blinking slightly in the bright sunlight. "I need to stretch my legs," he said. It was also fascinating and different.

She nodded. "Ficzko, accompany the prince." She climbed back into the carriage, and lay back on the velvet upholstered seats. She took a pomander from her reticule and sat swinging it under her nose.

The dwarf bowed to Vlad. It was a rather exaggerated bow, that did not go well with his sardonic grin, or his raised eyebrow.

"Come and survey your kingdom, oh great lord," he said. There was a faint mocking tone to his voice. Vlad took a strong dislike to him, although it seemed beneath him to detest a man who barely came up to his elbow. Vlad felt that he should rather be sorry for Ficzko, with his large head and small body. But the dwarf's attitude did not make it easy. Neither did the faint sneer he wore.

Vlad walked out into the village street. One street was all that there really was to the entire village. Still, it was a joy to stretch his legs and walk, knowing that he could walk as far as he wished. The countess's dwarf had to run to keep up with him.

And then he heard it again. A strange, lilting, wild music, played softly. It was coming from a narrow gap, a pathway between two of the roughly thatched village houses. Had this been a city, it might one day have achieved the status of being an alley.

Ficzko darted forward to stop him walking towards it. "Your Highness, you must not go down there! It is those filthy gypsies and their evil music."

Vlad found that he remembered the gypsies from his youth. They had always seemed so colorful. He wondered if these were the same gypsies that the dwarf was referring to. The music was suddenly enormously compelling. He had to go to it!

There was a yell and the thunder of hooves from behind him.

The carriage horses and several others came running past, chased by some enormous doglike creatures, gray and terrible. Vlad turned to see what was happening, not knowing quite what to do. The dwarf turned also, startlement writ on his ugly face. As they did so, a dark-haired man in bright ragged clothes stepped out from around the corner.

He raised a pipe to his lips and began to play.

The dwarf rushed at him with an incoherent cry of rage. The piper merely stuck out a foot, and sidestepped. The dwarf landed headlong in the mud. The piper bowed slightly to Vlad, without stopping his playing. Then he turned and put his boot on the middle of the dwarf's back, pushing him back down into the mud. Face down in the mud the large-headed little man scrabbled for his dagger.

The dwarf succeeded in drawing it, but the piper casually kicked it out of his hand, sending it several feet off into a puddle. Then the piper stopped playing and gestured to Vlad, signaling him to come closer.

Vlad was painfully aware that he did not have as much as a knife, let alone a sword. He stepped forward to help Ficzko. "Let him up."

The piper shook his head. "It is you I have come to help, Drac. This one is an enemy. He would stop us if he could." He spoke, not in Hungarian, but in a language that Vlad knew, but was rusty with disuse. A language that Vlad had not heard spoken in more than ten years.

Vlad stopped, eyes wide. Drac? He remembered the term. Some people had called his father that. The peasants and the tradesmen in the small villages.

"No time to explain now. We need to get away."

"Who are you?" asked Vlad warily. This made no sense. He should run back to the countess now. Yet… the music called to him. Told him he was right to trust this odd man. It felt right, in a way that his flight had not.

"A friend." The piper grinned. "You might say we share some of the same blood." He laughed. It was a strangely infectious laugh. "And now we must flee."

Vlad wavered, torn between the appeal of the man and his native language, and caution. His instincts said to trust the man, in a way they had not with his angelic-looking rescuer, even if logic said otherwise. The piping had unleashed something strange in him. Something deep and powerful.

"Is there danger?" he asked. "And what about the countess? Should we not try and rescue her too?"

For an answer the piper raised the pipe to his lips again and played a brief trill. "It is you they want, Drac. They will chase you. She is safe."

His Vlachs must be more rusty than he had been realized. The man must be referring to the enormous creatures that had driven off the horses.

Well, if he could act as a decoy and draw the pursuit away from his rescuer, that was plainly his duty. It was only the dwarf, and the way that the stranger had treated him, that gave him pause. He still had his boot planted on the dwarf's back, holding him down in the mud.

He stepped uneasily forward. Ficzko kicked out viciously-at Vlad. "I'll kill you!" he yelled, and he was definitely yelling at Vlad rather than at the man who might a gypsy. Vlad was confused. The dwarf must be a traitor!

"Clearly one of your enemies, Drac. We will leave our little foe here," said the stranger, putting the pipe into one of his many pockets. He leaned down, took the dwarf by the scruff of his doublet and deposited him into an empty horse trough. He flung him quite hard. Ficzko lay there and groaned.

The gypsy took Vlad by the elbow, and led him around the corner. Two horses were tethered there.

"You don't think that we should rather go back and rescue the countess?" asked Vlad.

The gypsy shook his head. "Trust me, Drac." He looked very earnest. "I swear by the blood of the old one, if you do not flee with me now, you will be kept a prisoner and die, probably very slowly. And your people need you. Your land needs you. But we must ride now. We will never have this chance again. You will be much more closely guarded, if we fail."

Out of his distant past, Vlad plucked a memory of his mother protesting to his father about the gypsies camping at the foot of the cliff below Poeinari. And his father saying that they might be thieves and rogues but the sons of the Dragon could trust them, even when they could trust no one else.