Excerpt: The Hussar and the Vampyre

The Hussar & The Vampyre

Summer, 1808

The reach of the alpine peak masked the moon and set the horse's path to deepest darkness. She walked, head down, as she had for many hours, picking her way up the winding roadway. Atop the grey steed, the uniformed rider rocked back and forth, half asleep. Despite the summer season, the soldier shivered and kept his hands beneath the cloak where they held leather reins with a practised light touch. The only noise in this seeming empty woodland was the regular sound of shoed hooves on hard packed dirt and the creak and clatter of the packs and packages secured to his squeaking saddle.

The forest about the horse and rider was as black as black could be. It was only by keeping his gaze skyward to watch the bending, winding stream of stars that the rider could be sure of keeping his mount upon the trail. To his right, the man knew, the drop away was sharp and should the mare misstep; he would need to be alert to aid her in recovering before they fell away. He had heard tell of avalanches being started by such things and he had no wish have the tall tales verified by his death. There is some truth to every legend, he believed.

The traveller would never learn to like the mountains nor even appreciate them. He was no Romantic to find spiritual exultation in their majesty. They were but land, tall land that had to be crossed. Since becoming a soldier for the Emperor, Henri Darlon had passed four times over the Alps between France and Piedmont but these Tyrolean peaks were unlike those. These just seemed to go on an on, higher and higher, deeper and deeper into unknown lands. This time he was with no army. He was utterly alone in a foreign, unknown land. Such is the price of peace. Such is the life of a soldier on leave.

That was why, Henri told himself, he was still on the road this late. The village of Pfunds had no Gasthof. He couldn't claim the right to shelter and besides, the locals had said, had lied it now seemed, Ippenhof was only a few kilometres up this trail. Surly, they had been at Pfunds, and suspicious. That comes, he knew, from living on the side of a mountain, isolated from the world, and only getting your news weeks and months after events had passed. He shook his head with sadness for the backwardness of these people.

Idiots!

It took less than a moment for his mind though to ask the obvious question: If they were the idiots, why was the fool riding cold and alone in the darkness. Henri laughed then and over a chuckle said to Rivoli, "This is not the first time, and it will not be the last time, that we find ourselves cold and alone on some desolate road."

It cheered him to speak and to laugh. This meandering steep corridor of black forest was somehow less hostile, less filled with unseen threats. It was less silent.

"Though it does no good to talk to oneself" he said to the silence. Did anyone hear him? Was anyone listening in?

And still Rivoli picked her way up and along.

It was not long after that Henri found himself singing verses of The Drum Major's Daughter. There are no enemy outposts to be alerted. No saboteurs. There is no war. He gave the song certain inflections as he found reflection in the lines to his own ribald adventures. He was a veteran Hussar, afterall.

The singer tried to improvise a verse, remembering a pair of seamstresses from Montreuil but it did not come off. As the forest began to thin and break out onto an angled meadow, he was trying a fifth time to get his rhymes for Marguerite.

When Rivoli suddenly stopped, and raised her twisting ears high, Henri quickly fell silent and spun about in the saddle alert and aware. An ambush? No! There was peace. Rivoli backed up, uncertain. Henri put a hand on the curved grip of his pistol where its holster hung high on the saddle.

No birds countered the heavy silence. No moon though had found a cloud and was reflecting the dimmest of grey lights now. There was something on the path. Something that had brought Rivoli to a halt. It might be just the sort of trick that an enemy might use. There was no enemy, he told himself and commences to unwrap himself from his cloak to manage a dismount. Rivoli seemed relieved when the soldier had swung himself to the ground but one hand kept a sure grip on the reins. He was not about to lose her to nervous skittering.

First then, in the faint light, he strove by peers to pierce the darkness at the edge of the forest but it remained silent and still. It surrendered no clues. If bandits or partisans lurked in there, they were patient. They were hid.

The wary soldier bent to see what obstacle lay across the narrow path. It was no felled tree.

It was a dead man.

Henri was late to another fellow's ambuscade. He swore a curse to bandits everywhere, fumbled to find the scruff of the corpse's collar and then dragged the obstacle off to the side of the path. He gave a stern look to Rivoli that must have penetrated the darkness (for she did not bolt), and then applied both hands to the labour. There was no point in pilfering the body. The bandits would have taken anything and if they hadn't, he had no wish to wander into the next Tyrolean village wearing the distinctive coat of their missing Burgermeister.

In these conditions, there were little clues to who this man might have been. Slightly portly with an overcoat, blood on the back of his head at least (for such blood was now on the back of Henri's hands) and good boots that were discovered as the soldier hauled the last of the dead man's legs off the trail. Very good boots. The bandits made an oversight and for an indecisive moment. Henri allowed his hands to fumble over the leather and soles, running a finger along the stitching. These were not the shoes of a man that did much marching. They might fit the Hussar.

The Hussar shook his head abruptly though and left the discarded man to remount Rivoli. First though he took time to wipe his hands on his horse's hindquarters. Blood or no, he would be rid of the death.

Behind, twigs snapped. He spun.

Someone… something was running in the darkness. He found his pistol and held it at the ready, muzzle pointed up, of course. How anyone could run in this black… somewhere through the trees. It was difficult to tell. Was it running toward or away? Away. Pursuit was no option. It kept on running. Why had they waited? Had they watched?

In his mind, Henri tried to map out the scenario. He and Rivoli could swing east around the tree line, on the high side of the trail, and look to find the fleeing man when he broke out onto the meadow. There would be more light. He could ride him down. The Hussar shook his head though. Stupid. He had no idea of the ground. One does not go off pursuing into darkness. He would be magnanimous and let the scared fellow escape tonight.

How far to Ippenhof now? It surely can't be far. It doesn't get any closer standing here.

Swinging back into the saddle, Henri gave a smile at the reassuring creak of leather. He always liked that particular sound. It made him feel at home.

As Rivoli and he broke from the trees, a cool glacial breeze blew from the east. The light was better now and wide expanse of meadow could be discerned beneath the hulking great peak that pushed up toward the heavens on his left. He could not entirely deny a twinge of the Romantic at that moment but he gave Rivoli's ribs a little kick and his tongue gave a little click.

"Let's get somewhere." he urged.

Within five minutes, the rider was delighted to come across a signpost, lonely at an intersection. 'Thoughtful locals', thought Henri as he traced out the chiselled grooves in the wood with his fingertips.

Up the mountainside they went then, up toward Ippenhof. Isolated farmhouses, dark and silent, were passed but not long after, above, Henri could discern the glow of a light from a pair of windows. There, despite the grey gloom of the moonlight, the clustered houses of this hamlet were easily seen, each of them painted so white while contrasted with dark supporting timbers.

Creaking, groaning down the path in the dark toward Henri then was a wagon. As surprised by this peculiarity as he was, the Hussar did not hesitate but took his horse off the path to make way. It was, he would like to think, only instinct that brought his hand once again to the handle of his pistol. The wagon rumbled past with the driver, seeming like nothing more than a bobbing lump of black canvas, making no recognition of the Hussar's presence. Even when Henri called out a 'Halloo', the drover make no acknowledgement, perhaps maybe even hunching himself up tighter into his coverings. Little more could be seen of the contents of that transport but that it was loaded and covered. With a shrug, Henri looked back up the hillside to the lights from whence the wagon had come. He hurried toward it, hoping to get there before the residents went to bed.

The Hussar reached the window before the lights were doused and, leaning from horseback to peer through the glass, saw a stout Tyrolean within administering to some bookkeeping. He gave the pane a loud rap with as cheerful a greeting as he could summon in the German tongue, "Good night, good sir!" Henri gave a wry and satisfied grin as the fellow jumped half out of his skin. Rivoli's ears might have twitched appreciably. "Do not be alarmed."

But the storekeeper, Gustav, could only be alarmed. Where did this strange moustached giant come from, pressed against his window in the middle of the night? That he was a soldier could be seen immediately by the sky-blue uniform that he wore but it gave no instant indicator as to threat or intent. His accent betrayed him as a foreigner.