by Scott W Cook
I turned back to the truck realizing that I’d been just standing over the ghouls and thinking for quite a while.
I went back and helped them pile up our booty along the shoreline. Just as the last box was removed from the truck, I saw the two sailboats hove into view and drop anchor about fifty yards off the beach. Within minutes, the two dinghies were motoring toward us and slid up onto the hard packed river sand minutes later.
Andrea rushed to wrap Andy in her arms and I did the same to Tara.
“You guys okay?” Tara asked me.
“We’re in one piece, how about you?” I replied.
“We’re okay, other than Tony,” Tara said, “He’s not doing great. I think he needs more attention and Andy does too.”
“Well, luckily we’ve had a good day in terms of our haul,” Andrea said, releasing her son, “It wasn’t a cake walk, though. We should get this shit over to the boats and get the hell out of here.”
“Agreed,” Andy said, “After today, I’m not so keen on staying near the land around here for long. I checked the weather sats and it looks pretty good out there.”
“Good news for once,” I said, “This will probably take several trips, so let’s get started.”
It took us another hour to ferry all of the supplies over to the two boats. We basically just threw it all on the upper decks as fast as possible. On the last trip back, I found a dense cops of trees and backed the truck into it, hiding it as well as I could. Andy and I filled four five gallon jerry jugs with the remaining diesel from the fuel tank and delivered them to the boats as well.
“We’ll stow this stuff as we head out to sea,” I told Andy as we motored back on Sorcerer’s dinghy.
“What’s our destination?” Andy asked.
“Key West,” I said, “But first I want to get past Anna Maria and Egmont and go out about twenty miles before turning south. Just in case we’re being watched from the Skyway.”
“Good idea,” Andy said, “I’ll handle Sorcerer. I think for now you should go aboard Sexual Heeling. I think Tony needs more medical attention.”
“My thought exactly,” I said, patting him on the shoulder, “You’ve been doing great, L T. I’m very proud of how you’ve handled all of this.”
“Thanks,” Andy said, a little embarrassed, “It’s just what needs to be done, is all.”
Tara leaned over the stern railing to take the dinghy’s painter from Andy,”So what is all this stuff, anyway?”
I grinned, “The motherlode, baby! Ammo, MRE’s, canned food, meds and surgical stuff, odds and ends, several weapons and even some MCUU’s.”
She frowned, “What’s an MCUU?”
“MCUU’s,” I explained, “You know, Marine Corps Utility Uniforms. Kind of the modern version of the battle dress utility or BDU. Same thing, just a different pattern. We got a bunch of them in a bunch of sizes so everybody could have something to wear that was light and strong.”
“Cool,” Tara said.
Once we hoisted the dinks aboard, we headed out of the river and into the Gulf of Mexico. By midnight, we were far enough out to sea that no one from the land, even from on the Skyway, could spot our masts.
In that time, I was able to improve on Andy’s handiwork with Tony. I got the entry wound stitched up, put him out with a shot of ketamine in the I.V. bag I’d hung over his bunk and then went to work extracting the bullet.
It wasn’t easy. I had to open a pretty good sized incision just at the base of his shoulder blade. Then I had to cut through several different muscles, being careful to follow the pattern of the different fibers. I then had Carl use a retractor to lift the bone up so that I could get in there with a set of Diva retractors and pull the mangled .38 bullet out. Although mashed and distorted, the round was intact.
I got the wound cleaned out and sewed Tony’s back up again. I then inserted a few cc’s of morphine into the bag along with anti-biotics and let him rest.
“Good thing you guys found all that medical gear,” Brenda said up on deck.
I shrugged, “Yeah. But Andy did well. Tony should be okay in a bit. He’ll just need rest and a nice leisurely sail to the Keys should help.”
“How far is Key West by boat?” Carl asked.
“A straight shot at seven knots or so would be about twenty-seven hours,” I explained, “But we aren’t going to motor. We’ll sail all the way, and that’ll probably mean some big tacks. So I’m figuring like two days, maybe a little more. It’s fine, we’re in no rush and I want to conserve fuel.”
With that, we set watches and steadied onto a southwest course. The wind had veered all the way from northeast to southeast – of course – so I set us all on a nice calm beam reach and we headed into the night at just over seven knots.
Chapter 24
Border of Walachia and Transylvania
Foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, December 1476 C.E.
He was a prince. Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime of fighting, prisons, torture – most of it his own – and even changing his religion, he was once again the legitimate Prince of Walachia.
Of course, as always seemed to be the case… he had to prove himself worthy of his station by fighting to the death for it. It was the price to be paid, especially from such a fickle king as his.
Already a Turkish army was making its way across the mountains. They were winding their way through the Borgo pass and would come pouring into the hills in a matter of a day, or perhaps less. It was and probably always would be the way of things. The followers of Ala and the followers of Christ would forever be at each other’s throats, it seemed.
From his earliest childhood the Prince, who in truth saw himself as much if not more as a soldier, had been embroiled in a holy war with the Moslem kingdom. In his view, the Turks were evil, pure and simple. Barbarians who lived only to slaughter Christians by the thousands. To take their lands, burn their villages, steal their goods, torture their men and rape their women. They were beneath contempt and must be wiped from the face of the Earth.
The soldier Prince enjoyed killing the Turk. Just the thought of them banked up the fires of his rage. Yet there were times when he’d shown them mercy. Times when he’d even tried diplomacy… and every time he’d been repaid in treachery and blood.
He and his brother, Radu, had been held as hostages in order to make their father do as the Sultan desired. As a boy just entering his teens, the Prince had learned firsthand the evil deeds of which the followers of Mohamed were capable.
They’d taken Radu away. He was treated well, seemingly. He was with the Sultan and was treated as a special child. As a prized possession, perhaps. The pre-teen boy traveled with the Turkish ruler, living in luxury and eating the finest foods… and yet something had changed the boy.
As time passed, gone was the bright eyed and playful brother that the Prince loved so dearly. Radu had changed so far that his loyalty had been with the Sultan. He’d betrayed the family and their father.
The young boy was beautiful. Called Radu the handsome as he’d grown into manhood. And that was his undoing. It was rumored that he shared the Sultan’s bed even as far back as the first few weeks of the brothers’ imprisonment.
And of the elder brother, who himself was considered very handsome. The elder brother who would one day become Prince of Walachia was tall, broad shouldered and possessed of a keen intellect. In addition, his heart blazed with a fierce sense of honor and loyalty to his people as well as both his heavenly and flesh and blood father. For this boy, things had been different in the “care” of the Islamic sovereign.
They’d done things to him… tested his bravery and the very fabric of his sanity… and to their astonishment, the teenage boy had not broken.
The more outlandish their trials, the more deadly he became. They threatened him with fire, torture, starvation and on one horrible day… impalement.
One morning, six Turkish guards stripped the boy naked and positioned him over a pole in the ground.
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The process was simple. A sturdy ash pole was set upright into the ground. It might be only a few feet high or ten or fifteen feet high, depending on the display that was required. In either case, the business end of the pole was tapered and sanded down to a smooth rounded end and inserted into the anus. Gravity did the rest. The victim’s own weight would force him or her down and the pole deeper into the body. It would punch through the colon, spear its way through the bowels and eventually emerge again from the throat or chest or even the belly depending on the angle of the body.
And this process could take hours or even days. A horrible tortuous death fit only for the worst criminals. Or for thieves.
The Prince hated a thief to a degree that was terrifying to anyone in his kingdom.
But he was no criminal or thief, and yet these six guards had positioned him over a short stake. They’d made sure the tip of the pole was just pressing against his rear opening. The boy stood on tiptoe, holding himself as erect as possible for as long as possible. The boy’s terror was complete, an all-encompassing reality where higher thought and reason could not live.
And yet…
And yet, as the hours passed and the trembling in his legs grew steadily worse, the young would-be Prince found that his fear began to vanish. He found that he was no longer afraid. Somehow, his powerful mind had discovered a way not just to master the fear, but to push beyond it. To set the fear aside so that it simply no longer existed.
After the end of the second hour, when his muscles were on the point of simply giving out, the boy began to laugh. He began to mock the guards, calling them cowards.
He was removed from the pole then. He realized at that moment that they didn’t intend to harm him at all. That these men, either on their own or at the behest of the Sultan were simply toying with him. Trying to break him down.
And they’d failed.
They tried other tactics. Such as putting him up against a wall and aiming weapons at him, tying him to a stake and lighting a fire beneath his feet and yet… the boy simply smiled at them, mocked them and maintained an almost super human composure.
And then they’d stopped. The threats simply stopped and within a very short time he was released.
Yet the boy never forgot the lessons he’d learned during that time and the man would spend the rest of his life making the Turks pay for their horrific and inhuman treatment of himself, his brother and his people.
The Prince had no love for the Turks, or even Radu, for that matter. The youngest of the brothers had turned on everyone and when the young soldier vowed to kill him, their father had stopped the young man.
“You must promise me, Vlad,” The father had said, “That you will never kill your brother, Radu. No matter what, you must swear an oath that you’ll never take his life.”
This had astounded young Vlad, but because of the duty and love he held for his father, he’d agreed. And that oath had caused him nothing but trouble.
What was worse, Radu knew of this oath and played on it at every possible opportunity.
Yet this aside, Vlad Dracula would grow into a legend. Like most legends, though, the deeds were in some ways diminished and in some ways exaggerated beyond all possible understanding.
His nickname of Tepes, or “The Impaler” was a moniker that he both used to his advantage and secretly loathed as well.
Yes, he’d had people impaled on several occasions. These were criminals of the worst possible degree and of course captured Turks. But the numbers weren’t in the thousands or even hundreds. Neither had he ever sat in his castle, listening to their screams as he dined on blood or any other such nonsense.
It was true, however, that when emissaries from the Turks had arrived to parlay with Vlad and had not doffed their turbans out of respect, he’d had them nailed to their skulls. He was making a point, after all.
The two men had arrived at Bran castle and had shown blatant disrespect and even disdain from the very beginning. Yet Vlad had tolerated them far more than others because at the time, a peace with the Turks was better than another war.
“Drakulya,” One of the men said, pronouncing the family name as it was intended. Not until much later would the phonetics be altered into the more familiar and more English sounding “Dracula, “We have come from his most holy highness the Sultan to discuss terms for a peace.”
Vlad had nodded, “Very good. Peace is something I and my king, his majesty Matthias, wish as well.”
“Yes,” The second man chimed in. His face held a sneer that was so blatantly disrespectful, even the first man had cocked an eyebrow at it, “It is better for you and your people to settle our disagreements this way.”
“Is it,” Vlad had said softly. He was not a man who shouted often out of rage. In fact, usually, the more enraged he became, the quieter he became. This wasn’t always the case, but generally so, “I should think that your leader would also wish to stop the bloodshed.”
“It is so, Lord Dracula,” The first man said with a thin smile.
“I would also think he’d send men who understood the value of respect,” Vlad had told them, “I am a noble. I am Prince of this region of Walachia. Do you intend to show me such disrespect as not even to doff your turbans in my presence?”
The two men exchanged a look that to Vlad seemed contemptuous. The second man smiled a greasy smile and said, “It is not meant as disrespect. We do not remove our turbans in the presence of non-believers.”
“Indeed,” Vlad had said simply.
He turned to one of his guards, “Joseph, these men refuse to take off their turbans to me. They say it is because of their beliefs. Let us respect them. Let us make certain that at no time will such an egregious offense ever be made to Ala. See to it that their turbans remain affixed.”
And so it had been done. Joseph and his men had nailed the cloth wraps to the men’s heads. Using nails only long enough to pierce the skull and leave them in terrible agony.
This act and others would cement the Prince of Walachia’s reputation in the eyes of the Turks and the rest of the world forever. If Vlad had really known how fantastic the legends would become, he may have done more to assuage them.
Little could he know that when a novel was written more than four centuries later bearing his anglicized name that this once Prince of a Romanian province would become one of the most famous figures in history. The novel would make famous the fictional Dracula, a blood sucking vampire who would star in more films, books and TV programs than any other character in history except for Sherlock Holmes. Ironically, the fictional Count Dracula would revive the legends of the flesh and blood Vlad Dracula as well.
Even more interestingly, the once character of pure fiction who hadn’t exactly been intended to be the living Dracula would once again blend with the Wallachian Prince. Count Dracula and Prince Dracula would become a unique blend of fact and fiction.
However, on this cold December morning at the dawn of the Renaissance, in the foothills of the craggy Carpathians, Vlad Dracula was not terrifying the Turks with thousands of their countrymen impaled along the pass. He was not flying through the night in bat form to visit a young girl and to taste of her life’s essence.
No, he was sitting at a small writing desk in his tent reviewing materials lists and creating battle plans for the clash that would come that day or the next. He was making notes and penning a report to Matheus Hunyadi, King of Hungary. Basically bogged down in mundane paperwork.
That’s why when the flap of his tent was parted and the sound of a man clearing his throat broke into Vlad’s concentration, he was actually grateful. The Prince turned to face his visitor.
It was in fact three visitors. One was Basarab, a fellow nobleman who was partnered with Dracula to fight against the Turks. Basarab was a youngish man, perhaps seven or eight years younger than Vlad, who was himself approaching his forty-sixth birthday. Basarab was a ruggedly built man who, while reputed to be a good soldier, had a sour disposition and the
looks to match.
Basarab shoved a disheveled soldier into the tent. The man was very young, not even out of his teens and still had the leanness of youth and was yet ripening into manhood. The youth had bruises on his face and blood running from his nose.
The third man was father Angelo Devotori. He was a young man, perhaps in his early thirties. He was strongly built and of medium tall height, perhaps a few inches shorter than Vlad, who was an inch or so over six feet. Vlad was considered quite tall, and the young priest seemed to him to be taller than he truly was.
The man was broad shouldered and had a handsome face framed by short black hair. There was an intensity in his eyes and the air of unbendable steel in his character. And yet there was kindness in his eyes as well.
Devotori had been sent by the Pope to not only assist in Vlad’s quest to defeat the Ottomans, Vlad knew very well that the priest had also been sent to keep an eye on the “savage” prince.
“What is it, Basarab?” Vlad asked as he rubbed his eyes wearily. The mundaneness of paperwork and logistics always bored him. He was a man of action, after all.
“This man was caught stealing bread,” Basarab stated, “I know how you despise a thief, so I thought you’d like to see him.”
Vlad frowned at that. It’s true that he hated a thief… but he was both the Prince of the land as well as the General of the Army. Having to take time out to speak to a hungry man who just wanted food was not something he’d normally bother with. It was, truth to tell, below him. He had important, if not boring, work to do.
Vlad eyed the man, who stood before him with tears in his eyes. It was hard to feel too much enmity for the man. The army was larger than its supply and many men were hungry due to the short rations. Snatching an extra loaf of bread wasn’t the worst tale of theft Vlad had heard.
“What do you have to say for yourself,” The Prince asked.
“I…” The man said shakily. He knew all too well of the Prince’s reputation and how he viewed theft.
Vlad narrowed his eyes. The man was sweating profusely and his eyes, although filling with tears seemed to be burning with redness. The man was sick, clearly. The man looked feverish, in fact. He was scantily dressed for a central European winter, especially in the mountains. A man wouldn’t sweat that way and wouldn’t have a pallid complexion with patches of red on his face without being extremely ill.
