ALSO BY OLIVER PÖTZSCH
The Ludwig Conspiracy
The Castle of Kings
The Hangman’s Daughter series
The Hangman’s Daughter
The Dark Monk
The Beggar King
The Poisoned Pilgrim
The Werewolf of Bamberg
Adventures Beyond Dragon Mountain series
Knight Kyle and the Magic Silver Lance
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Oliver Pötzsch
Translation copyright © 2016 Lee Chadeayne
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as Die Schwarzen Musketiere—Das Buch der Nacht by bloomoon in Germany in 2015. Translated from German by Lee Chadeayne. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2016.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503938427
ISBN-10: 1503938425
Cover design by Edward Bettison
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
PROLOGUE
November Eighth in the Year of Our Lord 1620, outside Prague in Bohemia
There was a crash as the door to the church flew open, and the old nun knew that death had come to take her.
The noise of battle could be heard through the shattered windows, the deafening sounds of muskets and cannons, the neighing of frightened horses, the cries of dying men.
Of many dying men.
The Battle of Weißenberg had been raging now for more than an hour. The army of Bohemian rebels had dug in atop the supposedly impregnable hill, but the imperial soldiers had been attacking furiously, and their battle cry “¡Santa Maria!” could be heard in nearby Prague. The legendary General Tilly was at the head of nearly thirty thousand soldiers attacking the rebels who had turned against the German Kaiser and elected their own king. With pikes, lances, and swords, they defended themselves bravely, but nonetheless the rebels were being slaughtered one by one.
The old nun could tell that the soldier was a Spaniard in the service of the Kaiser’s army. His breastplate was battered, and his helmet sat askew atop his head, hanging down over his unshaven face. With murder in his eyes, he grinned as he approached her, making a swishing sound with his sword as he almost playfully swung it through the air.
“Where is it?” he hissed, suddenly raising the weapon and pointing it toward her, bringing it closer and closer until it nearly touched the old woman’s throat.
“Where is what?” the nun replied in a calm voice.
As the abbess of the oldest cloister in all of Bohemia, the venerable Mother Agatha was just as wise as she was brave. She understood, of course, what the man wanted from her. He had tried again and again to wrest the powerful object from her control, but until now the Saint George Cloister adjacent to the Prague Castle had always been a place too safe, too well watched for any theft. Unfortunately, those times were now past—now that chaos and war were raging in Bohemia—and one of the most evil monsters in the war, a broad-shouldered mercenary more than six feet tall, was standing before Mother Agatha with raised sword. He would stop at nothing to get his hands on the abbess’s most valuable secret.
A demon incarnate with a huge, bulging scar across his right cheek.
“¡Dámelo!” the man demanded in Spanish and came a step closer, but Mother Agatha didn’t budge. If she gave up now, then all her efforts would have been in vain. She had to remain strong to the bitter end. This was the final task God had given her—she had to protect the secret.
As it became increasingly clear that the Bohemian rebels would lose the war against the Kaiser, the abbess had decided to have the mighty object removed from the city. Along with her most loyal servants, she had escaped through a small, secret gate into the neighboring forest. Nevertheless, someone had noticed, and mercenaries had appeared from all sides and chased them like animals. Here in the church it seemed that Mother Agatha’s attempted escape had come to an end, and without taking her eyes off the soldier, she prepared herself for her imminent death.
“I don’t know what you are speaking of,” she said, her voice still calm and firm.
“You know very well, old woman,” the Spaniard growled, reverting to broken German. “We have been watching you for a long time. Did you think you could escape us?” The point of his sword was now pressed directly against her throat. “So, where is it? Out with it! And where is the young nun who was with you until just recently?”
Mother Agatha smiled as she gestured with her withered hands toward the destroyed interior of the church. “Did you really think I would be so dumb as to run into this trap if I didn’t have a plan? Blinded by hate, you followed me, you and your bloodhounds. Ha! The girl is long gone.” She briefly pressed her lips together. “The girl, and also what you have been pursuing so relentlessly. You can tell your master he will never get his hands on it. Never will he be able to use it to bring misery to mankind. It is well hidden.”
“You . . . devil woman! ¡Bruja!”
Without further ado, the mercenary ran her through with his sword, and with a moan the old abbess fell to the floor.
“Your master is the devil . . . not I,” she struggled to say. “You . . . have failed.”
Her eyes glazed over, and a peaceful smile spread over her face.
“¡Maldito!” The Spaniard kicked the lifeless body with the tip of his boot, then turned away. He knew he’d made a mistake. He should have forced the old woman to tell him where the other nun was. Perhaps now he’d never find what he was sent to get.
His master would be very, very angry.
The soldier stepped out into the November fog that still hung over the abandoned church like a cloud of gunpowder. Outside, his comrades-in-arms were sitting on their weary horses, watching him with curious eyes and waiting.
“Go look for this young woman!” he ordered them. “She must be somewhere nearby. And be sure you bring her to me alive, damn it! She’s the only one left who can tell us where to look.” He spat on the ground and stuck his bloody sword back in its sheath.
Suddenly, there was an infernal commotion somewhere in the fog. The flashing of the cannons up on the mountain looked like distant lightning, and the noise, mixing with the screams of the soldiers, sounded like the howling of a thousand-headed monster.
“¡Santa Maria!”
The imperial forces had won the battle.
I
Eleven Years Later . . .
September 25 in the Year of Our Lord 1631, at Lohenfels Castle near Heidelberg in the Palatinate
The blow caught Lukas on the side, on his temple. He staggered,
fell back a few steps until he was relieved to feel the solid trunk of an oak tree behind him. Moments later, he pulled himself together and went on the attack. His blows were precise—feint, attack, parry, high cut, quick retreat, a second lunge, and then a sudden thrust forward, causing his opponent to stumble and almost fall backward.
Lukas was preparing a final blow when his opponent’s weapon struck him on his sword hand. With a cry of surprise, Lukas dropped his stick as tears of pain welled up in his eyes.
“You . . . cheated, Father!” he gasped. “You just pretended you were falling back.”
With a laugh, Friedrich von Lohenfels tossed his carved wooden weapon into the bushes and patted Lukas on the shoulder.
“In a battle, nothing is ever fair,” he finally said with a grin. “That’s one thing you still have to learn. It’s only about who wins.”
“But we are knights!” Lukas protested.
“You, a knight?” His father roared with laughter. “I’m afraid before you become a knight, you’ll have to eat a few more haunches of venison. At present, all I see before me is a skinny twelve-year-old kid.”
Lukas clenched his lips. He hated it when his father teased him because of his small stature. Among boys his age, he was in fact usually the smallest, but the most adept at wielding the stick and the dull foil. It had been a long time since any of his friends had dared to call him a kid. Lukas’s hot temper was well-known, as was his skill. Whenever his father had time, he practiced with Lukas in the courtyard of their castle or in the nearby forest, just like today—his birthday.
“I’m thirteen today,” he said, turning angrily to his father. “Have you forgotten?”
Friedrich von Lohenfels raised his hand apologetically and then bowed dramatically. “Excuse me. You’re right. Well then, noble knight Lukas von Lohenfels, may I invite you after this mock battle to my humble castle for a cup of apple cider?”
Lukas laughed as his father took a few comical bows. His anger had passed. The two had been walking in the forest all day. First they had hunted deer, with some of his father’s servants, but then Friedrich led the boy to a lonely clearing, where he taught him a few more sword-fighting tricks. For over two hours, they had practiced attacks and defense; like two dancers, they’d collide into each other again and again, and then spring back, until sweat ran down Lukas’s face and every muscle in his body ached.
It had been his finest birthday present.
His father didn’t often have an entire day to devote to him. Usually, Friedrich was busy with administrative duties on behalf of the Kaiser in the castle, which lay in a rather isolated region known as the Odenwald Mountains, a day’s ride from Heidelberg. Or he was far away, fighting for General Tilly and his Catholic League against the accursed Protestants.
As long as Lukas could remember, wars had been raging somewhere or other in the German Empire. It had all started long ago in distant Bohemia, where the Protestants revolted against the Catholic Kaiser and threw his representative from a window of the Prague Castle. Afterward, the Protestants had been slaughtered in the Battle of Weißenberg, and ever since then, war had spread like wildfire through the German Empire. Lukas’s mother once told him that the war was every bit as old as he was himself, and sometimes it seemed to Lukas that the conflict would never cease. For as long as he lived!
“You’ve really made good progress in sword fighting,” his father said as they walked together through the forest. It was early fall, and the leaves on the beech trees and oaks shone in many colors. “Especially feinting, but also your low cut is much improved. Now I can tell you that I actually stumbled briefly.” Friedrich von Lohenfels shook his head. “But don’t tell anyone. If word gets around that my own thirteen-year-old son outwitted me, Tilly won’t take me on any more expeditions.”
“So much the better, then you’ll stay in the castle with us,” Lukas replied with a grin. “With me, Mother, and Elsa, and you can teach me more tricks.”
His father sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, lad. Now that the Swedes have attacked the Reich, I’ll probably have to head out to war again soon.”
“Then take me along!” Lukas begged excitedly. He straightened up so he would look bigger. “You said yourself I’m a good swordsman, even a very good one. I . . . could fight in the Black Musketeers, just as you used to. I can start out as a simple baggage servant, and then—”
“Enough of this nonsense!” his father interrupted brusquely. “War is no children’s game. Be happy that until now you’ve been spared. You may be a good fighter with the stick and the foil, but real fighting is something entirely different. Real blood flows, and I don’t want it to be the blood of my son. And now no more of that!”
As they trudged silently through the dense forest, listening to the singing of many birds, Lukas thought about all the tales he’d overheard when grown-ups talked about war. Lukas had long ago stopped trying to understand who were really the bad ones and the good ones in this eternal conflict. Catholics fought against Protestants; some German electors—the princes entitled to take part in choosing the Kaiser—actually fought against the Kaiser; and foreign powers such as the Danes, Spaniards, and, recently, the Swedes were in search of the spoils of war in the Reich. The Palatinate, where Lukas and his parents lived, was for now in the hands of the Bavarian elector, but the soldiers had so far spared Friedrich von Lohenfels because he stood on the side of the Kaiser, and thus the Bavarian Catholics.
For many citizens of the Palatinate, Lukas’s father was therefore a traitor. Lukas had often been in fights with boys his age and older who secretly cursed and mocked his father. All of them had come to regret their words later.
“If I can’t go off to war with you, then at least tell me about the Black Musketeers,” Lukas grumbled after a while, as their home appeared from behind the trees. Lohenfels Castle was a gloomy-looking building with high walls perched on a rocky promontory above the Neckar River. Around the castle were a few fields and simple farmhouses, and far below, the roaring of the wild river could be heard.
“Very well,” his father grumbled back, “just so you’ll stop pestering me, even if you’ve heard the story a thousand times before.” His voice was deep and calm, reminding Lukas of the many times his father had told him bedtime stories. “The Black Musketeers were the best fighters in the Reich,” he began, “trained in the use of all sorts of weapons and feared by everyone. They served as bodyguards to the Imperial General Wallenstein—”
“Under whom you served in the war against the Danes,” Lukas interrupted. “You were one of them, weren’t you?”
“Who’s telling this story? You or me?” His father pressed his lips together grimly before continuing. “Yes, I was one. We fought and shot like the devil, with swords, pikes, daggers, muskets, and pistols, and drove the Danes and their allies back across the Elbe River. God knows, I never saw better fighters than these old-timers all dressed in black, like shadows in the night and phantoms by day. But the Kaiser dismissed Wallenstein, and the Black Musketeers were scattered to the winds. They don’t exist anymore. They belong to the past.” Abruptly, he clapped his hands to indicate the discussion was over. “Now let’s go and see if the servants have finished roasting the wild boar on the spit. I’m dying of hunger. You should eat something, too,” he said, winking at Lukas. “If you want to become a warrior someday that everyone fears just as much as they did the Black Musketeers, you’ve got to put a little meat on your bones.”
As his father disappeared into the kitchen, Lukas climbed a worn stone staircase to the second floor of the living quarters. There in the so-called knights’ hall—the only large, heated room in the castle—his little sister, Elsa, came toward him. Her eyes were flashing with excitement.
Unlike the dark coloring that Lukas had inherited from his father, Elsa had freckles and flaxen hair that always looked a bit tousled. She was also an impudent whirlwind who sometimes got on Lukas’s nerves. He often wished he had a brother with whom he could p
ractice stick fighting or slip away to the nearby river to go fishing.
“Mother said I can go hunting with you and Father tomorrow,” she announced triumphantly. “And I can try shooting the crossbow.”
“You want to shoot?” Lukas responded with a laugh. “When you tramp through the forest, you’ll scare the animals all the way to Heidelberg. It would be better for you to stay home and stick your nose in a book, or knit something.”
“Wouldn’t that suit you just fine! I’m supposed to sit here like a good girl while you and Father go out and have all the fun? Just wait till I tell Mother.”
Tears of anger glittered in her eyes, and Lukas sighed. Father had promised to take him along tomorrow on the great hunt, and the thought that Elsa would be clinging to his shirtsleeve the whole time noticeably dampened his spirits.
“Suppose instead I read you a good story tonight,” he suggested in a conciliatory tone.
“You can’t even read,” Elsa sneered. “You always just pretend. I watched very closely the last time.”
Lukas blushed. In fact, he was far better in stick and sword fighting than in Latin, grammar, and penmanship—in stark contrast with his sister, who, even though she was just nine years old, could flawlessly recite the work of the Roman poet Ovid.
“Even if you’re right,” he grumbled, “you’re not coming on the hunt. It’s just for men.”
“I had no idea you were already a man,” said a soft voice behind him. Lukas turned around and discovered his mother standing in the doorway. She was smiling. “Have you perhaps already found a woman you would like to take for a wife?”
“I saw him in the barn with the tavern keeper’s daughter,” Elsa crowed. “They kissed!”
“That’s not true!”
Lukas jumped at her, and soon they were scuffling under the big table in the middle of the hall.
“Stop right now, you two!” their mother cried, pulling Lukas gently to her. “It’s surely not asking too much to let Elsa go along just once on a hunt, so do be a bit understanding.”
Lukas slipped out of her embrace. “You’re always on her side,” he whispered between clenched teeth. “Even on my birthday.”