A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

or twenty-six years old. He was darkly bearded, a tall man for his time, very powerfully built, and much matured from the seventeen-year-old who had accompanied his lethal little sister to what they must have thought was my final resting place.

      He was sitting before a folding table, inside a tent, when I saw him for the first time. He turned his dark and piercing eyes on me, and I thought at first my image struck a spark of recognition in them somewhere. But all he said was: “Ladislao of Hungary? I am pleased to meet you, but alas, I have never heard of you before.”

      “Sir, I was formerly married to a sister of King Matthias. I have fought the Turks and other enemies of the Holy Father—I will serve you capably as a bodyguard, or in many discreet ways.”       I might have said that in my own land I had commanded armies, but I might not have been believed, and in any case that was not the job for which I was applying.

      The man who was standing beside the Duke stirred when I mentioned my capabilities as bodyguard. This infamous henchman was informally known to most people at the time as Michelotto—his real name was Miguel da Corella, meaning that he came from Corella, in the then half-independent kingdom of Navarre.

      “Who sent you?” he demanded of me harshly.

      I looked him in the eye and decided to speak him fairly, though I made my tone only a little softer than his own. “No one sent me, sir. I make this application on my own decision.”

      Corella shook his head. “I don’t like the look of you.”

      Cesare was watching us in amused silence; obviously, as I thought, testing my mettle.

      I said to Michelotto: “Nor do I care a great deal for your appearance, if it comes to that.” He was indeed a swarthy, ugly wretch. “But I will try to put up with you, provided you are good at your job.”

      The Duke was laughing now, almost silently but with evidence of real enjoyment. I did not know it at the time—nor would I have cared particularly if I had known —but it would have been hard to find another man in Italy, excepting the Pope’s son himself, who would speak to Michelotto in such a way.

      Things might well have come to violence between us on the spot, giving me a chance to demonstrate the skills of which I had just boasted, and at the same time creating an opening on Duke Valentino’s staff. But, somewhat to my disappointment, Cesare, laughing, spoke to us both in soothing words.

      “Michelotto, good friend—do me a favor and leave me alone with this hot-tempered visitor. I shall be quite safe, I promise you.”

      “My lord duke—!”

      “Leave us.” And on hearing the tone of that command, and seeing with what alacrity it was obeyed, I knew that this Pope’s son might indeed one day accomplish all the marvels that others were predicting for him.

      In another moment he and I were alone—though Corella had favored me with his foulest look before departing, and I felt certain, even if I could not hear his breathing, that he was watching the tent protectively from outside.

      Borgia glanced at me, fearlessly, and then away. He stretched out a powerful hand—it was said that he could straighten horseshoes in his grip—and smoothed down the sketch of fortifications that was spread out on the table. “I think I know you after all,” he said. “Though not by the name you gave just now. And I shall be happy to take you into my service.”

      His eyes came back to mine, and he must have read my surprise at this quick acceptance.

      “Why am I so quick to hire you?” he added. “Because I need good men, men who can get things done.” He lowered his voice a notch. “And most particularly I have need of a vampire.”

Chapter Twelve

      As the wood shattered around the lock on the bedroom door, Angie shrank back as far as she could, cowering behind the old man’s bed. Knowing what the sheer drop was like outside the window, she couldn’t even think of trying to follow him that way. In the next moment the door burst open inward—a final blow had torn it from its lock and hinges alike—and monsters appeared.

      The pair of them looked like men, dressed in ordinary casual clothing, men who might pass by on the street at any time. But Angie knew them for monsters nonetheless. Their actions, and the way they smiled at her, betrayed the fact. Both, judging by appearance, were in their thirties. One was tall, one short, the tall one black, the short one white. Neither, in a written description, would show any resemblance to Valentine Kaiser or Matthew Maule. But there was something, an attitude, a presence, an essence, that all four men had in common.

      The two invaders advanced slowly, silently, warily into the room, looking around them at every step.

      Despite her drugged state Angie was completely terrified, too much afraid to make a noise. Now, following the first two men, another couple of the enemy, this pair a man and a woman, stepped cautiously into the doorway of Uncle Matthew’s bedroom. Angie felt sure, somehow, with her first look at them, that these two were breathers.

      The first of the enemy to reach Angie was the taller, black vampire. Hands of incredible power seized her and secured her, binding her hand and foot with strips quickly torn from the old man’s rumpled sheets and expensive coverlet.

      “Don’t make no noise,” her captor said, and threw her carelessly on the bed But still she had no more than a small part of his attention, or his partner’s. It was the hidden corners of the closet and the bathroom, and the space under the bed, that drew their primary interest.

      Plainly they were looking for the old man. The plastic bags of earth, and the spilled earth on the carpet, were important finds.

      The vampires talked between themselves.