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

to me—save for a handful of frightened camp followers, unwilling to do anything but watch—had already been drawn away, by deliberately falsified reports. And three traitorous officers, reinforced by a handful of men-at-arms they had suborned to their cause, had caught me alone, away from my Moldavian bodyguard. With drawn swords those three had surrounded me and set upon me.

      At the last moment I was not completely taken by surprise. More than one of the attackers felt the bite of my own blade before I was disabled, and at least one of my chief opponents—his name was Ronay—was rather seriously hurt. Oh, I was good with the sword, yes, but not that good. Much of the credit for my prolonged survival against such odds was due to the reluctance of the common soldiers to attack me. Those men were still almost too much afraid of me to be of any use to traitors.

      Alas, at three to one the odds were still too great. Let me name the foul three here: they were Ronay, Basarab, and Bogdan, the last-named the chief instigator and leader of the plot. In my capacity as Prince of Wallachia I had trusted all three of these vile men, had treated them as my comrades on the field of battle. All had been loaded with honors and with material rewards.

      Nay, I will go further. Almost, my attitude had been that of a father or an uncle toward them. The traitorous trio were all young, and I was well over forty. But when they came to kill me, they had no easy time of it, for all that.

      Even as I fought, grunting and gasping for breath, my feet slipping in snow and mud, I made a silent, mighty vow—nay, it was more than a vow—that I would never die until I had avenged myself upon these three for their treachery.

      …and now, more than five hundred years later, trying to tell my story, trying to grapple with my own beginnings, I relive as in a dream that struggle to the death upon that field of fading light. Peering toward those distant figures through the haze of centuries, nay, through the fog of death itself, I am no longer able to say with certainty which of that day’s far-off events I observed with my own eyes, and which I have come to know of only through the words of other witnesses.

      The first serious wound I suffered on that day was made by Basarab’s sword, when his point came into my left side, under my cuirass.

      From that moment on the three of them were certain that they had me. Ronay could afford to retreat, nursing his own hurt. Bogdan and Basarab began to play with me, making sure to keep me between them—though at first it was a cautious game they played, knowing me to be still deadly dangerous.

      I fought on, though weakening, ignoring their jibes and insults, saving what breath I had for fighting. But I could not face two skilled opponents at once. One of them would stab me, from behind, and then the other. I suffered at least half a dozen additional wounds before I was no longer capable of resistance.

      Bah, I have no wish to dwell upon the grisly scene of my own butchery. Yet still it must be told.

      When I fell for the last time, going to my knees, unable to rise again, unable any longer even to raise my weapon in defense, someone struck me with a sword hilt from behind and sent me sprawling. Then someone else’s boot kicked at my sword, until it had been knocked out of the reach of my weakening fingers.

      More kicks and shoves, with booted feet, turned my bleeding body over so that I lay face upward. I was trying to reach the dagger at my belt, but my knife too was yanked away. Then a sharp blade came stabbing into my unprotected groin; the muscles of my lower body spasmed uncontrollably. Pain fashioned a sound, that I suppose must have been almost inhuman, and drove it upward from my throat.

      The body on the ground continued to gasp for breath.

      “Hold his head still.” This was the voice of Bogdan, still panting, issuing an order. I could perceive his face, fierce and triumphant, looming over me.

      In a moment someone—I thought it was Ronay, come back to savor my last moments—was crouching just behind me, knees vising my head in place. My arms no longer moved; my muscles and my strength were gone; all I had left was nerves and blood.

      The point of Bogdan’s sword loomed close to my face, approaching my eyes. Elsewhere I have related how my whole life’s allotment of fear came to be used up before I was old enough to have a beard. So here, let me say simply that it must have been without fear, with hatred only—say rather hatred glowing with a helpless rage—that I gazed up at him. Perhaps I would not have turned my head had I been able.

      “I will not die—” I told him, choking on my fury, and my own blood, and could not find the breath to say the rest.

      “Oh, no?” The swordpoint feinted even closer to my eyes, then moved a small handsbreadth away. “Not yet you won’t, good Prince Drakulya. Not this moment. But soon. Very soon.”

      I understood that Bogdan had spared my sight because he wished me to continue to see what was happening. Perhaps he craved also to see in my eyes at last some expression of yielding, of despair, at least of fear. In that hope, at least, he continued to be disappointed.

      In the next moment I could feel the cold steel of Bogdan’s blade slide inside my left cheek, the sensation transforming itself into the heat of fresh pain as the blade ripped its way out.

      “What words of defiance now, Drakulya?”

      I would have given him some, had I not been choking, more seriously than before, on my own blood.

      “The end of your triumphant