He imagined the ways in which he would kill Vladislav. Personal, painful. He would drag it out and make it hurt; he would know the fear in his eyes before his soul left his body.
Every dream, every blink, visions of death played out behind his eyelids.
If he allowed himself to analyze this, he would be appalled.
“…Vlad.”
“Hm? What?” He lifted his gaze from the fire – the flames had branded his vision, a flickering white afterglow lingering – and found Malik staring at him, the beginnings of a frown notching his brows together. The firelight shadowed his scar so it looked deeper, almost sinister in the dark.
“I asked about your father,” Malik said.
Vlad clenched his hand into a fist; the piece of jerky in it snapped in half and fell to the underbrush.
“You think of him often.” It wasn’t a question.
“He was killed violently, and we march now to avenge that death. Of course I do.”
Malik was unphased. “Many men hate their fathers. Or at least resent them. You could march to avenge him, and still not think of him at all.”
Vlad tilted his head in bare acknowledgement. “Alright. I’ll grant you that.”
“What sort of man was he?”
He hadn’t expected this. Hadn’t expected this emotionless, methodical cavalryman, sent to war at his sultan and emperor’s whim, to care what sort of Romanian whose land he was sent to help retrieve.
Malik Bey, Vlad was beginning to think, was no ordinary cavalryman.
“Do you truly wish to know?” Vlad asked. “Or are you toying with me?”
Vlad’s tone, his glare, paired with his position of command, would have cowed most. But Malik, smooth-faced and unperturbed, said, “I truly wish to know.”
Vlad sighed. He wasn’t used to putting such things into words. In his seven years of captivity, he’d rarely had a chance to express himself with any meaning.
“Father is…” He caught himself. “Was.” Though a part of him wouldn’t believe it until he’d touched the cold, rotting body with his own hands. “A kind man. Far kinder than me. More like Va…my brother. Radu.” He’d almost slipped; almost spoken Val’s real name. A name didn’t mean anything, in the grand scheme of the world, but Val was a pawn and a whore. If his true name was all that he still held as his own, then Vlad would help him keep it secret.
“You think yourself cruel?”
“I know I’m cruel.”
Malik looked like he almost smiled. It could have been a trick of the firelight. “You are honest.”
“What point is there in being otherwise?”
Quiet a beat. And then Malik said, “May I tell you what I think?”
“You’re awfully talkative tonight.” When the man’s expression didn’t change, Vlad rolled his eyes. “But, yes, you may tell me. Though I don’t have any idea what you find so important you’ve finally deigned to speak to me as a man.”
He ignored the jab. “I think,” he said, “that the cruel man is the one who takes pleasure in the pain of others. Vengeance isn’t cruelty. Not by itself. Not when it’s justified.”
Vlad studied him a long moment, searching for a lie. He found none, though he conceded that he didn’t know the man well. Not at all, really.
“And what if I do enjoy violence?”
Malik shrugged with one shoulder and dropped his gaze to the fire, reflective. “We all learn to, at some point. Tenderness will drive you mad if you let it, and some joy, even that kind of joy…it helps.”
Vlad nibbled on his flatbread. “You make an excellent point, Malik Bey.” And, strangely, he felt lighter for a time, as they sat by the fire. He’d been carrying his burdens for so long, and alone, that he’d forgotten the relief of a spare set of shoulders.
~*~
Tîrgovişte was not the sort of sprawling metropolis in which a man could hide an invading army – even one so small as Vlad’s. The second they left the cover the of the trees, they’d be made, and then they’d be fighting Vladislav’s people in the streets. A dangerous, bloody, foolish plan if ever there had been one.
Vlad left his infantry under cover of forest. “I’ll send a messenger for you, and when I do, come double time, understood?”
“Yes, your grace.”
His foot soldiers were loyal first to the empire, and second to Mustafa, but the long march, and Vlad’s unfailing straightness in the saddle, his mastery of their language, and his brusque manner had gone a long way toward winning them over.
His cavalry he split into twos and threes, and had them enter the city from different angles, at different times. Their armor he had them pack away in their saddle bags, or cover with dull cloaks they’d bought off a passing merchant three days back. Duck your heads, he told them, and round your shoulders. Look like merchants, or weary travelers, and keep your swords hidden.
It was a thin ruse, but it was the best he could concoct on short notice.
“A smart plan, your grace,” Malik said placidly beside him, as they rode side-by-side down a narrow, twisting roadway between high, tile-roofed houses.
“It’ll be smart if it works,” Vlad said. “Keep a sharp eye. He could have spies in those upper apartments.”
His tone was sharp, but inwardly, it wasn’t fear making his heart pound against his ribs.
He was home.
The palace alone at Edirne was finer and busier than the entirety of the city. But it was Romanian being spoken by the two women hanging wash out on a line strung between second-story windows. And these narrow streets brought back a hundred memories of boyhood; of lessons finished early, and of traveling singers and trapeze artists, of piping hot street food that burned his fingers, of his friends’ laughter, and Val’s little hand clutching at his sleeve.
He hadn’t felt this way in an age, and it took him long minutes of peering at Tîrgovişte from beneath the hood of his cloak to name the sensation: happiness.
But as it so often was, happiness was fleeting.
He smelled rot just before they reached the city square, and he knew what he would find there before they rounded the corner.
Father had been a lenient prince, all things considered, but public hangings had been carried out to demonstrate the cost of lawlessness. The gibbet stood where it always had, in the bank yard that abutted the garrison house. And it was occupied.
Three weather-blackened corpses dangled from the ends of fraying ropes. They’d been dead a long time, had long since swelled, and burst, and then dried out to husks. Featureless now, their clothes tattered streamers that played in the wind. A few flies buzzed, but there wasn’t much left for them. The crows, Vlad well knew, had gotten the lion’s share of the meat.
“They’re up there for treason,” a voice said, down and to his left, and he turned his head to find a bent old crone wrapped in a scarf, the ends clutched tight in one gnarled hand just beneath her throat. She’d spoken in Romanian, and the sound of it from an unfamiliar throat – from anyone who wasn’t Val – nearly startled a delighted laugh from him.
He composed himself and replied in the same language. “What do you mean, treason?”
She squinted up at him. He had the impression that, had he been standing on foot beside her, she might have thwacked him on the arm for his stupidity. “For being loyal to the old prince.”
A sensation like a band around his chest, squeezing tight. Happiness had long fled; his old friend rage was back to stay. “The old prince? Vlad Dracul, you mean?”
She nodded. “Him, yes. Most of the boyars and the rich ones went over to the new prince.” Her tone told him what she thought of him. “But there were a few who were saying they didn’t want Vladislav, that it wasn’t right, what he did.”
Vlad fought to keep his voice even and disinterested. “What happened there?” When she peered up at him, he said, “I’ve been away for a time. I’ve only heard bits and pieces of the story, and who’s to know if any of it’s true.” What did the peasants th
ink, he wondered.
She nodded again, seeming satisfied. “Well, there was a great scene up at the palace, I heard. I didn’t see it, mind, but my grandson did. He’s in the garrison,” she said proudly. “He said it was a great tangle of people there, spilling out of the gate and across the moat – the bridge was down, you see. He reckons someone from the inside was working with the Dâneşti.” This she whispered. “It was them, and the palace guard, and a great heap of boyars and their household guards, all fighting. And dogs, too. Great big ones that looked like wolves.
“The old prince, Dracul, got away somehow. But the Dâneşti and the boyars got hold of the son. The heir. The garrison and the palace guard, you could tell they were trying to get him free, but there were too many. And so many were injured, or dead by that point. They buried that poor boy alive, they say.” She spat on the ground, wrinkled face screwed up with disgust. “The devil take Vladislav, and I don’t care if he knows I said it.”
“What would he do if he knew you had?” Vlad asked.
She paled. “Sir, I–”
He waved her silent. “Your sentiment is safe with me. I feel the same. But tell me, Mother. Vladislav has wanted Wallachia for a time. Why move now? Who helped him?”
She looked carefully side to side, searching for eavesdroppers. Then she stepped in close, a hand braced on the shoulder of Vlad’s horse, and whispered, “I heard it was that John Hunyadi from Hungary. Vladislav is only his puppet, you see.” She mimed operating a marionette with her free hand. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“No, ma’am, of course not.” He flipped her a coin from the pouch at his belt: a Turkish coin that she peered at closely. She turned a gaping look up at him afterward.
He brought a finger to his lips. “I’ll keep your secrets if you’ll keep mine.”
“Oh. Oh, yes, sir.”
“Rumor has it the old prince had another heir, yes?”
A slow, sly grin transformed her face. She’d been pretty as a girl, he could tell. “Yes, sir,” she said, surer now. “Rumor also has it that Vladislav is away right now, seeing to business to the north.”
Vlad felt his brows jump. “He’s not at the palace?”
“No, sir.” She bobbed a curtsy and moved on, quick for her age.
When Vlad turned back to Malik, the janissary looked at him with something that might have been mistaken for admiration. “That was cleverly done.”
“Do things cleverly, or don’t do them at all. Come on. We need to find the others.”
It took longer than Vlad would have liked – now that he knew Vladislav was away, that they stood a chance, he wanted to move right away – to find the rest of the cavalry unit, but find them they did. Slow and methodical, he passed the message along. Be at the palace gates at midday. Vlad would make sure the bridge was down.
Then he took Malik, and they headed out of the city and up the hill, toward the home he hadn’t seen in seven years.
~*~
“Will your father’s guards have turned against you?” Malik asked as they neared the gate. It was, unsurprisingly, shut, the bridge pulled up. A man in helm and mail, a spear propped on his shoulder, left the guard tower and signaled them.
They pulled their horses up to a halt. “Anyone still loyal to my father is either dead, or rotting in chains in the dungeon. These at the gate – they’ll belong wholly to Vladislav.”
The guard walked closer, face set in a scowl.
“What do you mean to do?”
“Just listen. And play along.”
“Ho!” the guard hailed, raising a gloved hand. As if they hadn’t already halted. “State your names and your business.” His accent was Transylvanian; not even one of Vladislav’s then, but Hunyadi’s.
Vlad left his hood in place, shielding his features from full view, but he reached for the clasp of his cloak. “Easy,” he said, when the guard twitched and took his spear in both hands. Vlad affected a Turkish accent, made his Romanian clumsy and thick. “I am Iskander Bey, and this is Malik Bey.” He opened his cloak to allow a glimpse of his clothes, the plain, but very fine kaftan and sash over his riding leathers. He wore the ornamental dagger with the rubies in the hilt. He knew he looked a foreigner, down to the curved toes of his boots in the stirrups. “We are cavalry captains in the Janissary Corps of the Ottoman Empire, sent as envoys from His Imperial Majesty Mehmet, son of Murat.”
The man frowned. “Janissary Corps?” He hedged backward a step, though. He knew what the Corps was. Everyone all the way to England did.
Malik opened his own cloak, showing the crimson cape beneath, and the unmistakable cavalry uniform of his office. He pushed his hood back as well, and there’d be no mistaking him for a rival Romanian lord. “We are a small host, only the two of us, and didn’t wish to attract undue attention on the road,” he explained in his own halting Romanian. That part, at least, was no act.
“Word reached Adrianople that there is a new prince in power here,” Vlad said. “One who has not agreed to proper peace terms with His Majesty yet. We bring the sultan’s demands.” From his saddlebag he produced a scroll, sealed with a blob of red wax and Murat’s personal seal. The missive inside was written in Slavic, in a scribe’s elegant hand, but it did not offer peace terms. Instead, it was a message to Vladislav from Murat himself, informing him that, effective immediately, Vlad Dracula was the prince of Wallachia, and that Vladislav was a pretender, and fugitive.
The guard reached to take the scroll, and Vlad pulled it out of reach. “We have orders to hand it to the prince himself. Or his second in command. Not to a gate crew.”
The man made a face, but withdrew, chin lifted to an imperious angle. “Wait here.” He headed back for the gatehouse, where two of his comrades were now peering out the door at the riders.
“I’m not sure this will work,” Malik said quietly.
Vlad tipped a covert glance toward the sky. It was midday, or only a hair shy of it. “It doesn’t have to work for very long. Only until the gate’s open.”
“Hmm.”
Let him doubt. Vlad’s first approach was trickery – if that failed, he’d bash his way into the gatehouse, kill all the guards, and open the damn gate himself.
The first guard returned with two of his fellows in tow. It was one of the new ones who spoke, his hand extended. “If you’ll let us look at the missive–”
“What part,” Vlad said, slowly, forcefully, “of ‘only the prince or his second in command’ did your idiot friend not understand? This isn’t a birthday congratulations. It’s an official treaty document from the sultan. It is not going to touch your hands, underling. Now open the gate and let us speak to your master. Or have you forgotten who owns Wallachia?”
All three men glared savagely at him, grinding their teeth, no doubt wanting to pull him down off his horse.
But, finally, the speaker gave a jerky nod and turned back toward the gatehouse, hand half-cupped around his mouth. “Lower the bridge!”
Careful to keep his expression haughty and shuttered, he darted a glance toward Malik, whose gaze was likewise surprised, his face carefully blank.
Groaning, creaking, rattling, the gate lifted, and the bridge began to lower. Straining to hear over these sounds, Vlad could detect hoofbeats, many sets, moving at a steady trot up the hill.
He gathered his reins and tried to make the motion look casual. “Be ready,” he muttered.
The moment the first row of riders crested the last hill, the guards would know something was wrong. Vlad needed to be on the other side of that bridge when that happened, whether or not he had backup.
It lowered, lowered, lowered…
He tightened his calves, and his mount danced.
The hoofbeats drew closer; a vibration he could feel through his own horse, through the ground.
The bridge landed with a thump and a puff of dust.
The riders crested the hill.
“Go!” Vlad put his heels in his horse and the gelding lung
ed forward. He dropped the reins, and reached back beneath his cloak to pull free his bow, already strung, ready, a curved little short bow perfect for the task. With his other hand he drew an arrow from the quiver hidden between his shoulders.
The guards ran for the gatehouse, shouting, waving their arms, as the Turkish cavalry unit arrived in a great swirl of dust and three sharp blasts of a horn.
Vlad’s mount crossed the bridge, and he turned in the saddle to take the shot. He got off two – two of the guards fell face-down in the dirt.
And then he was across.
He dropped his bow and drew his sword – his father’s sword, the finely-crafted Toledo blade from the emperor.
He took the arm off of one guard. The head from another.
“Close the–” an interior guard shouted, and Vlad cut him down with a vicious strike across his throat, blood spraying.
“Keep the gate open!” he bellowed. “If you value your life, keep it open, damn you!”
He looked over his shoulder and saw Malik strike down another guard.
Those left threw down their spears and fled for the stable.
The cavalry arrived at the edge of the bridge, and began to thunder across unchecked, dust swirling.
They were in.
~*~
Pandemonium erupted in the main yard, the kind that reverberated through the stable, the training yard, and the gardens…but the kind of a people who knew they’d been conquered. Vlad’s cavalry poured in, and immediately he appointed riders to secure the gatehouses and apprehend what guards they could. Doubtless some had slunk off to bolt holes, and he’d have to execute them later. But for now, he had a palace to retake.
Vlad dismounted and handed his reins to one of his men. He sent a rider back to their camp to summon the foot soldiers. “Malik, with me.”
Sword in hand, he made his way toward the palace.
~*~
There was something almost therapeutic in the way his father’s old blade could cut a man into pieces. Not just any men, either, but Vladislav’s lackeys. Every scream, every slice – he imagined it as some tiny vindication for Father. For Mircea, face-down in a hole somewhere.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 32
