Chapter 29
The hour of ghosts (midnight)
The hour was late, the fog off the Carpathians was thickening, and Sergiu Botnari was tired. It had been a long, long day, and the days forthcoming would be just as long, just as tiresome. His war against the Jew’s army had just begun, and it would continue for however long Allah demanded. Yes, he served Vasile Lupu, but Allah was guiding him now, this night, against the horrors brought to Transylvania. He had tossed one horror into the Szamos River. Through a thicket of brambles and dense leaves, he stared at another.
Twelve men guarded the aircraft: three on its left side; three on its right; three in front; three in back. They formed a tight, defensive square around the wooden-and-canvas bird. They talked amongst themselves, laughing at idiotic Gentile jokes that Sergiu couldn’t, nor wouldn’t, care to understand. Their defensive position was lighted by two lanterns, both sitting on the ground near the plane. Their buff coats, hard leather boots, and gloves cast shadows on the object, rousing images in Sergiu’s mind of jinns, Ifrits, the kinds of monsters his mama used to speak of when she bothered to care for him. Their weapons were pistols, two per man holstered at their sides, and a sword on their backs. The same kind of pistol he had taken off one of the dead scouts; the same kind of sword as well.
The hypocrisy was not lost on him. Here he waited, alongside his men, carrying up-time weaponry with the intention of using them, while castigating similar weaponry sitting before his eyes. But a pistol in hand was different. A pistol, he understood. It might be a little more powerful, a little more efficient, in the attack, but it was one of many different kinds of pistols a soldier might find on a field of battle. Matchlocks, flintlocks, wheellocks…a veritable soup of firing mechanisms that, when all mixed together, hardly mattered when men fell and gaps were filled with fresh soldiers.
The weapon before him, being guarded so diligently by cavalrymen, had to be destroyed.
One of his men appeared through the thick foliage. He whispered, “There are no good approaches, Sergiu. Even through darkness, we’d be spotted in time for them to draw pistols and fire.”
Sergiu nodded. “I know. I’ve been looking at the same position you have been for the past hour. We’ve not got enough men to assault it.”
“Perhaps we should reconsider. Move into town and cause as much trouble as we can before morning.”
It was a good idea, perhaps even ideal. But what could they do now so close to the fight? Destroy a few more buildings? Kill a few more townsfolk? What good would it do now that armies were arrayed for battle? No. The key to it all was this plane. Sergiu was convinced of that. Perhaps there were other flying air machines coming, but every one destroyed counted. The answer to the prayers that he had lifted up to Allah was simple: destroy this up-time monstrosity, and do it now.
But his man was correct. They could not attack it outright. They had neither the numbers, nor the position. The only option left for them now was what they were good at doing anyway.
“Bring up Dorel with his bow,” Sergiu said, “and bring him now. Let’s cause a little chaos.”
The Dixie Chick
Colonel Renz had offered her more comfortable sleeping accommodations and for the Dvorak to be moved into the town itself, but Denise refused. Until the matter with this Moldavian army was resolved, she’d stay with the Dixie Chick on its landing strip and deal with less than comfortable accommodations. The cockpit chairs weren’t horribly uncomfortable, but they had not been designed for sleeping. Their backs were a little too rigid for her tastes; their cushions on the seats a little too thin. But such was life. Living in the seventeenth century had its plusses and minuses.
The biggest minus was lack of air-conditioning. Oh, how she longed to feel cool air on her sweaty skin. The air around her wasn’t too muggy, and a light breeze coming through the open doors was a relief. But it was different than AC. Nothing could beat AC, except perhaps ice cubes.
How she longed for those as well. Colonel Renz had been kind enough to send his aide-de-camp Major Schmidt to her with food and drink. She had accepted them both humbly, had her fill, and had given the rest to the fellows defending her and her Dvorak. The drink he had offered, however, some kind of heavily diluted wine, would have benefitted from a couple ice cubes. She couldn’t complain, she supposed. Well, she could, but who was listening?
She had trouble sleeping because her guards kept speaking in what seemed like a million different languages. She had been living down-time long enough now that she could recognize many of them, and understand several up to a point. Aside from English and Amideutsch, she was by now reasonably fluent in German, although she had a rather pronounced accent that many Germans found hard to comprehend.
Among her guards, she could detect Scandinavian words—she spoke some Swedish and Danish herself—as well as Polish and Spanish. She could even pick out a word or two of Hungarian.
What struck her the most, and not for the first time, was the way they all seemed to speak their own languages, and at least one other person within their ranks understood what someone else was saying. Then again, these were mercenaries. Denise had been told that a company of mercenary cavalry could, over its service to an army, take on new recruits from all different countries, all different walks of life. It made sense.
She dozed, trying to drown out the guards’ crude jokes and laughter. She had a good mind to lean out the cockpit and tell them to shut the hell up, I’m trying to sleep here, but she refrained. These men were serving her, defending her with their lives. Let them have their banter. It looked like the evening would pass quietly anyway. No reason to rock the boat.
She dozed, woke up, dozed again. On the third try, a flaming arrow struck the cockpit canvas.
She barely felt it, the canvas and light frame absorbing the shock. She heard it, however, like a mighty tear of paper. She heard the flame bursting on the canvas itself, spreading around the hole where the arrow had struck. It took her a moment to come out of sleep, to come to a clear understanding about what was happening: the Dixie Chick was being attacked.
The guards outside were just as shocked as she was, perhaps never imagining that an attack would come from such an antiquated weapon. In their minds, she supposed, arrows were medieval. But such an attack had come, and it struck again. This time, luckily, the arrow missed the plane and hit the road.
The guards began firing back toward the direction where the arrows had come. Denise’s only concern was the fire.
She raised out of her chair, grabbed her leather helmet, leaned out of the cockpit, and began slapping the puncture wound. Thank God the flames hadn’t spread too far; the kind of canvas that they had used on the Dvoraks weren’t flameproof, but they wouldn’t go up like paper either. She slapped the flames with her leather helmet while the guards continued to return fire.
Another arrow struck the ground beneath the Dixie Chick. Another struck the wing.
Denise screamed, “Goddamn, the wing!”
She tried jumping out of the cockpit to address the burning wing, but one of the guards pushed her back. “Nein! Bleib hier. Bleib sicher!”
“We can’t let that fire hit the tank!” she shouted, trying again to leave the cockpit, but the man was too strong. He held her down in the seat with one hand, while firing his pistol into the darkness.
Denise struggled to free herself, opened her mouth to bite the man’s hand, when he suddenly went stiff and fell from a wound that sprayed her face with his blood.
“Shit!”
She straightened in the seat, tried collecting her nerves, and reached for the ignition. Got to get away, got to get away…
Another arrow struck the cockpit right above her. The arrow sliced a huge gap in the canvas, but luckily the flame went out. She reached up, ripped the arrow free, tossed it aside, and tried starting the engine.
A hand reached in, grabbed her hair, and pulled. She screamed again, clawing, pushing, and punching at the arm, but he was too strong, whoever he was. No guard, for sure. Pistol fire still reported nearby. Men howled, screamed, fell, and here she was, getting her hair ripped out by some beast who wanted her dead, or worse.
My pistol!
She had forgotten it. She so rarely needed it. Had never needed it, in fact.
She struggled with one hand to keep the wolf at bay and reached underneath her seat with the other. She felt around and found the gun—but the man pulled so hard this time that he dragged her partially out the cockpit door. She gripped her weapon, an up-time Smith & Wesson 442, a small, blunt nose .38 caliber revolver with five rounds.
The man yanked her out of the plane and onto the ground. Denise raised her pistol to his chest and fired.
He fell dead immediately on top of her. He was heavy, sweaty, smelly. Denise almost vomited. She held her bile, pushed free from the lout, and sat there.
Several of her guards were down. Another flaming arrow struck the propeller and spanged off harmlessly. Before her, a man crawled up the ditch, saw her, paused, and tried to raise his pistol. Denise fired, missed her first shot, got him on the second.
Another man came up behind him and tried to be quicker on his draw. But his cumbersome down-time pistol couldn’t fire at the speed of her 442. She almost felt sorry for him as she put her penultimate round into his belly, and he fell dead beside his comrade.
There was a pause. Denise climbed up and got back into the cockpit. She was shaking so badly she almost dropped the pistol. But she managed to hold onto it, like it was a jewel or some favorite child’s toy.
A hand reached into the cockpit. Denise flinched away from it, turned, fired—and missed.
Now she was out of bullets, and the man stood there, grinning like a mad clown, staring at her like she was a joke. He was sweaty too, but his bald head was covered with a blue scarf, his thin white shirt disheveled, the scars of previous fights roped across his face like ugly white worms. The pistol he held toward her was no down-time weapon; it was the exact same pistol her guards carried.
Desperately, she flung herself out of the cockpit onto his feet and then rolled back under the plane’s fuselage. She heard him fire but wasn’t struck by a bullet. The son of a bitch had probably expected her to cower. Fat chance of that happening! Denise was more scared than she’d ever been in her life, but she reacted to fear with belligerence.
She kept rolling until she was no longer under the fuselage. Then, she rose in a crouch and ran off as fast as she could manage. She was surprised that he didn’t fire again. That might be because he wasn’t familiar with aircraft and didn’t realize that his bullets would pass right through the thin fabric of the fuselage.
If true, that meant—
She dodged to one side. An instant later she felt her leg struck by something. If it was a bullet, though, it had just been a grazing blow. The bastard was probably now crouched down and firing at her from underneath the fuselage.
If so—
She straightened up from her crouch and started doing her best to mimic the broken field running she’d seen football players do.
It worked! She heard two more shots fire but neither struck her—and then she reached the tree line and passed out of her enemy’s sight.
She paused just long enough to catch her breath and then penetrated still deeper into the woods. Walking quickly, not running. The last thing she needed was to trip over a root and break a leg or sprain an ankle.
She didn’t go very far, though, before the sound of galloping horses brought her out of her state of terror. That was cavalry coming. Whose, though?
✧ ✧ ✧
Sergiu heard the same rumbling—but he knew exactly whose cavalry was coming.
Not his, that was for sure. He uncocked his up-time pistol, tucked it behind his belt, and disappeared into the night. Trying to decide whether he was more furious with the girl for outwitting him or more impressed.
More impressed. Sergiu had been in far too many battles, large and small, not to appreciate a capable enemy. And a girl that young!
Next time he met her, if he ever did, he’d make sure to fire instantly.
✧ ✧ ✧
Once Denise was sure the cavalry that had arrived was on the side of the angels, she came back out of the woods.
Hobbling a little. That damn bastard had shot her, after all. The weirdest gunshot wound she’d ever heard of. The bullet hadn’t even broken the skin, just barely grazed the limb and gone off into the distance.
She might wind up with one hell of a bruise, though.
Colonel Renz’s headquarters, at dawn
“We’re lucky that her radio was on,” Christian said to Colonel Renz the next morning. “We heard the attack almost from the beginning. I don’t think she remembered that I had just used it, and I hadn’t turned it off.”
Colonel Renz nodded. “Her status?”
“She’s resting in my camp. After she was calm enough to taxi the plane into town, I didn’t give her an option. She’s fine physically, except for a small bruise on her left leg. Mentally, well, it’ll take a little while for the shock to wear off. But most girls her age—most boys, for that matter—would probably still be shaking.”
At that moment, Christian wished Isaac were here. He’d be the better judge of both Denise’s physical and mental condition.
“And the plane?” Colonel Renz asked.
Christian shrugged. “Not destroyed, thankfully. The canvas on the left wing is badly damaged, however. We managed to douse the fire before it ignited the gas tank. The cockpit itself is in pretty good condition. Some small burn damage, some tears. Otherwise, it’s fine. But Denise is grounded, sir. She and the Dixie Chick won’t be helping us today. We don’t have the kind of canvas they used to construct the wings, not in great abundance anyway. We could strip some of the wagon covers and use that cloth for the time being, but I don’t think there are many among us who could make such repairs efficiently, not without Denise’s guidance anyway, and I don’t think she’s up to that right now. Besides, and unfortunately, we have other matters to attend to this morning.”
Colonel Renz nodded. “And I wouldn’t think she’d be much help to us now anyway. The enemy will come, and men on the ground will engage it.”
Christian wanted to correct the colonel’s misguided notions. He wanted to tell him about what he had experienced being up there among the clouds, how valuable such visibility was to the overall understanding of how the battle was unfolding and how it might unfold in the hours to come. But he refrained. There was no time to argue the issue. No matter what Colonel Renz’s attitude was, he was right: the enemy was near and, sometime today, it would attack.
Captain Neuneck, out of breath, stepped into the room. He didn’t bother to salute. “They’re here, Colonel.”
“Who? Callenberk?”
“No, sir. The Moldavians.”