Bright We Burn

by Kiersten White

  She stopped just short of him, giving Radu a look that made him feel like the child he had been, crying himself to sleep at night and never measuring up. “I thought not,” she said. Then she darted out of the tent and into the night.

  Radu dropped to his knees, hanging his head. He had a sword to her daggers. He could have won. Again, he had had a chance to end things. Again, he had not made the choice Lada or Mehmed would have in his place. How many lives would pay the price this time?

  Struggling to his feet, he followed Lada into the burning night.

  One Day South of Tirgoviste

  LADA KNEW IT WOULD be impossible to find Mehmed in the dark and the chaos. Though there was significantly less chaos than she had been counting on. Nearly all Mehmed’s men were staying in their tents rather than rushing out into the fight. It made things harder. She should have known better than to count on a lack of discipline in Mehmed’s men, though. He always controlled everything. Why would his men be any different?

  The gunpowder stores had already been attacked—the explosion was good timing, too, as it allowed her to escape. She knew she would find a large group of her men attacking the pack animals and wagons. There were five thousand already here or on their way, every soul she could muster streaming out of the hills and attacking from the darkness. She heard their shouts, their music playing, using the Janissary’s own tactics against them. As soon as there was enough chaos in camp, Lada would send up the signal for the rest of her troops in the hills to attack. Five thousand more. It was only ten thousand against fifty thousand, but it could work. If everything fell into place, Wallachia could defeat the most powerful army in the world.

  She could beat Mehmed.

  Of course, things were already off schedule. The biggest tipping point into mayhem and despair was supposed to be the death of their sultan and leader. She had not accomplished that. She ground her teeth in frustration. Radu had beaten her.

  Then again…

  “The sultan is dead!” Lada grabbed a torch and set the nearest tent on fire. “The sultan has been murdered!” She continued thus, running through camp screaming about the death of the sultan while ensuring as many men as possible could not stay in their tents.

  There was more activity around her—more and more men entered the mayhem. “Hey!” one shouted, grabbing her arm. She stabbed him in the side and kept on toward the animal pens.

  Toward the back of the camp, the fighting was happening in earnest. She had hoped to draw the bulk of Mehmed’s men here with her initial five thousand, mire them in fighting, and then hit them from behind with the reserve. From her vantage point, it looked like the Ottomans had several thousand engaged in combat. Not enough yet. Crossbow bolts, fired by her men in the hills, sang through the air, claiming Ottomans running around her. She risked being claimed by one herself if she did not hurry.

  Women screamed as they ran through the main section of tents. Seeing them, Lada wanted to laugh. They were not Ottoman camp women, but Wallachian women, armed to the teeth, pretending to flee while cutting down as many Janissaries as they could. When they reached the far end of camp, they would circle back and meet up with the forces coming down from the hills.

  Everywhere was confusion. Chaos. Blood and fire.

  For once in her life, Lada longed to join the women. They were doing exactly what she wanted to. But she was needed elsewhere. She was not here as a soldier, but as a prince.

  She skirted the tents, then ran into the hills, where she found her rendezvous point with Bogdan and her other leaders. They were waiting, anxiously watching the progress of the assault.

  Lada shouted as she ran up, “Anyone with a Janissary uniform, go into camp to take up the cry that the sultan has been murdered!” Several dozen men took off. Bogdan raised his eyebrows hopefully.

  Lada hated to admit defeat. She shook her head. “They were waiting.”

  He looked concerned, but he nodded and moved on. “Are we ready, then?”

  Lada bit her lip. She wanted more time for order in Mehmed’s troops to break down, but she also knew if they waited much longer they risked the opposite. The Ottomans could organize and form ranks. The fighting had intensified on the supply end of camp. It was a full battle now, one her men would not be able to sustain for long.

  “Do it,” she said.

  Bogdan gestured to the trumpeters. The notes were brassy and clear over the tumult of noise in the camp. Lada watched the hills, waiting. Runners stood beside her, ready to take commands at a moment’s notice. From here, she would direct everything. From here, she would watch Mehmed’s army fall.

  Something was wrong, though.

  “Do it again,” she said.

  Again, the signal sounded. Lada’s heart sank within her. The camp burned, but not bright or fast enough. Her men at the wagons fought, but not enough Ottomans had been committed there. Where were her boyars with the rest of her men? With the Hungarians Matthias had sent?

  As the trumpets gave one final, trembling plea, Lada remembered Radu’s response when she said he had no idea what she had planned.

  He had.

  He had known all along.

  Her eyes desperately combed the hills for some hint, some sign she was wrong. That they were coming. That they could end it all tonight. If they had but trusted her, if they had followed her plan. The faithlessness of men, to take whatever false advantage Radu offered instead of choosing the valiant course. The course of blood and victory, the course of struggle and triumph for Wallachia.

  No one ever chose Wallachia.

  Lada dropped to her knees, throwing her head back to the smoke-choked stars. She screamed her rage and despair. Then she stood and drew her sword. If no one would help her, she would do it herself.

  She took two steps forward when someone grabbed her around the waist.

  “Let me go!” she shrieked.

  “Sound the retreat,” Bogdan said, his voice soft.

  Lada twisted, snarling like a feral thing. Bogdan held tight, talking in an even, soothing voice. “They are forming ranks. No help is coming. But I count nearly fifteen thousand of theirs dead, countless pack animals slaughtered, their gunpowder stores destroyed. Now we run.” He paused, then spoke again. “If we escape, we win.”

  “We did not win!” Lada kicked once more, then went limp, only Bogdan’s arms holding her up. “We could have destroyed it all. We should have.”

  “Sound the retreat!” Bogdan shouted over his shoulder. He lifted Lada onto a horse and got on behind her, squeezing her leg in clumsy reassurance. “Your welcome awaits them at the capital. We run and fight again.”

  Lada heard in those words her entire future stretching out before her. She would never be able to stop fighting. Even victories that should be hers would be taken from her by faithless men. They would forever choose each other instead of her—choose treaties and tradition over a genuine chance for change.

  It would always be a fight. Hunyadi had told her as much. Her dreams of decisive triumph drifted up like sparks, only to go dark and cold as ash.

  Outside Tirgoviste

  HAMZA PASHA SLAMMED HIS fist down on the table. “If the forces in the hills had followed her plan, we might have lost. She had women fighting! Women! I lost spahis because they were too shocked to raise a blade!”

  Radu dreamed of lighting the table on fire, throwing it into the smoldering mess of their supply train. He loathed this table, and the map on it, and increasingly the people around it.

  Ali Bey’s smile was as pointed as the tip of a sword. “That is a failure on their part, then. My Janissaries overcame their shock quickly enough.”

  “Do not pretend your men turned the tide. We only triumphed because of Radu’s deal with her allies,” said Ishak Pasha, the most measured of the three.

  Hamza Pasha blew air out between his lips with a dismissive noise, as though Radu’s e
fforts in persuading the Basarab boyars to hold back was more of a lucky accident than a battle-winning triumph. “He cannot use the same trick at Tirgoviste. We cannot count on anyone else betraying her. The commoners worship her.”

  Radu glanced at the tent’s door flap. Mehmed was not here. Radu had not seen him since the attack the night before. No one had, other than his guards. Kiril had reported back to Radu that Mehmed was unharmed and, apparently, perfectly capable of going right to sleep.

  Radu rubbed his forehead. It ached from exhaustion and too much inhaled smoke. “We have the advantage with a siege.”

  “The advantage is always with the defenders! At Kruje—”

  “I was at Kruje,” Radu said, cutting Hamza Pasha off. He was tired of being dismissed by the old man. “Outside the walls. And I was at Constantinople, inside the walls. I am no stranger to sieges.” He offered no smile to offset the harshness of his words. He knew what so many of these men still thought of him—that he only led his horsemen because of his beautiful face and favor with the sultan. But favor with the sultan was how any of them led. And Radu realized that despite his eighteen years, he truly did have as much experience as any man could be asked for.

  He felt it thick and dark and choking in his dreams, a constant heaviness in his mind both awake and asleep.

  Yes, he had far more experience than any man could be asked for.

  Radu took a deep breath and spoke in a more measured tone. “Tirgoviste has none of the natural advantages of Kruje, and certainly none of the defenses of Constantinople. It is smaller than both. The walls are hardly formidable. They will be able to see us coming, but that is no secret. And as was clearly demonstrated last night, Lada does not have the loyalty of nobles or European support that Skanderberg or Constantine did. No one will come to her aid. She lost half her forces when the Basarabs abandoned her. We killed three thousand, which as far as we can tell leaves her with only a couple of thousand to command.”

  Hamza Pasha scowled. “We have lost fifteen thousand! And supplies and animals!”

  “We can afford fifteen thousand with greater ease than she can fifteen hundred.” Radu cringed at the callousness of treating men’s lives as simple calculations. War made monsters of them all. “When we take Tirgoviste—and we will, no matter what she has planned—that will be the end of it. We will have the capital. We can install Aron and Andrei in their places and Wallachia will return to its vassal status.”

  Ishak Pasha tapped a finger against the table. “But the boyars and their men are not entirely off the map. If they were swayed to us so easily, they can be swayed back. They may already be behind the walls in Tirgoviste. What if she—”

  “Her strength is not walls. It never has been. Doubtless she will have some plans, but she cannot fight the way she has up to now. This is where our training and skills matter. This is where she realizes she cannot keep the city in the face of the might of the Ottoman army. No matter how many men she can pull together.”

  The tent flap opened. Radu was shocked to see Mara Brankovic enter with a swish of layered skirts. “I had thought,” she said, “to be catching up to a triumphant army already in control of the country.” She pursed her lips in disapproval. “If I had known I would have to join the camp, I would have delayed my trip.”

  Radu pulled a chair over for her. She sat down primly, glancing over their plans. “Hungarian forces are here?”

  “Yes, but they have not been in play. Yet.” Radu had to admit Ishak Pasha was right. They could still decide to support Lada. In the end, the Basarab boyars who had led them were not in charge. The Hungarian king was, and if he sent word, they would do what he asked.

  “Send Corvinus a gift,” Mara said, opening her lace fan with a snap of her wrist.

  “What?” Radu asked.

  “Matthias Corvinus. Send him something. Luxurious. Beautiful. Oh, I know! Send him a jeweled velvet pillow for his crown. He will understand the meaning.”

  Ishak Pasha scowled, shifting his weight angrily from foot to foot. He had several old wounds that made travel painful and difficult. But such was his loyalty to the empire, he refused to let Mehmed campaign without him. “Why would we take time from war planning to send an enemy king a fancy gift?”

  Mara leaned conspiratorially toward Radu. “I have just heard the most wonderful rumor. King Matthias was sent a rather large amount of gold from the pope to aid your sister in crusading. And, by a shocking coincidence, he somehow came into the funds to buy his crown back from Poland.” Mara grew serious once again. “By using that gold for himself, he has stolen from the pope. It will not go over well among his European allies. We should make certain his loyalties remain firmly divided.”

  Radu toyed with a heavy ring. “And it would not hurt to include a note about how much we look forward to a long and peaceful relationship with Hungary’s rightful king, whose crown we acknowledge and celebrate and whose borders we recognize and respect.”

  “With just the right amount of threat implied should he set foot over those borders into conflicts that do not concern him.” Mara beamed. “I love playing this game with you, Radu. With one gift and one letter, we can take Matthias Corvinus off this map.”

  Hamza Pasha stood, stabbing a finger toward her. “This is not some game to play at like courtesans!”

  Mara demurely covered her face with her fan. “It seems to me that whatever way you are playing it has not served you particularly well up to now.”

  Hamza Pasha stormed from the tent, followed by a less angry Ishak Pasha.

  “Pay Hamza no mind,” Mara said. “He is still sore that I rejected his offer of marriage.”

  “He wanted to marry you?” Radu asked, surprised. The other men around the table were leaving to begin the enormous task of repairing what could be salvaged and getting the camp on the road to Tirgoviste. Lada had done a tremendous amount of damage. They would limp all the rest of the way, but they would get there.

  “Oh yes. Dear Hamza was madly in love with me.” Mara paused. “Sorry. I mean, he was madly in love with my position as a favorite of the sultan.” She smiled wickedly, touching her powdered hair as though there were ever a strand out of place. “It is my most attractive feature.”

  Radu held out a hand to help her stand. “I am quite certain your most attractive feature is your remarkable mind.”

  “If I ever found a man who wanted to marry me for that, I might just break my vow to never wed again.”

  “Really?”

  She laughed. “No. But speaking of wives, I know a very pretty one who is only two days behind me. You should send word to delay her. This is no place for women.”

  Radu put a hand to his forehead in exasperation. In the madness of the campaign thus far, he had not even thought to warn Nazira to delay her journey. They had counted on being well settled in Tirgoviste by now.

  Radu pulled out a sheet of parchment and cleared a place at the table to write his letter before something else demanded his attention. “Thank you, I will. If this is no place for women, though…”

  “Never fear on my behalf. I volunteer to take Matthias Corvinus his gift in person. This country is simply awful, Radu. I do not understand how it produced you.”

  Radu finished his hasty note. “It also produced Lada.”

  “That makes far more sense.”

  As Radu offered his elbow to walk Mara out of the tent, his thoughts returned sickeningly to the callous way he had referred to his brothers who had lost their lives. He treated them as numbers. After all he had seen, after all the lives he had watched depart this world, he could not afford to think like that. Because once he started, how would he stop?

  * * *

  “God above.” Kiril lifted one arm to cover his mouth and nose. “What is that smell?”

  Radu smelled it, too, but he could not account for it. He was with his men, riding in advance of
the rest of the army. Their force was big enough to face any direct attack, and fast enough to get word back should something arise they were not prepared for.

  Facing Lada, they could count on being unprepared.

  In the distance Radu could just make out the dark smudge of the capital with a tree-lined road leading up to it. Aside from the skinny trees along the road, most of the forest around it had been cleared. It was smart—Lada had an unobstructed view of the land around the city—but it also meant she could hide nothing from them, either.

  “Cautiously,” Radu said, gesturing for them to keep moving forward. They had not seen a soul yet, though the sky was splattered with dark birds like drops of ink. The last time Radu had seen so many carrion birds had been in Constantinople. He could not quite catch his breath, their cries pulled straight from his worst memories.

  They rode closer, everyone gradually slowing their pace. A sense of wrongness grew as steadily and strongly as the stench. Behind him, Radu heard men gagging. Kiril leaned over and heaved.

  Still they had seen no one. Not a single soldier. Not one trap or ambush. Radu undid his turban and wrapped it around his nose and mouth, though he could still taste the putrid rot through it.

  Then at last, like a landscape of nightmares, Radu was close enough to see the odd, skinny trees lining the road.

  They were not trees.

  Evenly spaced and planted with all the care of an orchard, corpses were impaled on stakes. Some were newer, some so far decayed they had to be weeks dead. And all of them were Ottomans.

  “Go tell the sultan,” Radu said. He wanted to turn away. He could not. He rode forward into hell, the faces of the damned marking his progress with hollow, rotted eyes.

  They were spaced so evenly it was easy to keep count. Tens. Then hundreds. A thousand. At five thousand, he had reached the houses on the outskirts of the city. The buildings were all cold, abandoned. Every door was open. He knew he should send men in to check for soldiers hiding inside, waiting to ambush them.