And then it was time to bid them farewell.
A lump rose in Val’s throat. He choked it down, but his voice cracked.
Arslan looped arms around his neck, and a moment later Nestor crowded in on the other side, an arm around each of them.
Val closed his eyes, and breathed them in. They’d been the only sort of pack he’d had these past years, alone, without family or ally. Bright spots in the bleak gray of his existence.
“I will miss you so,” he said, “but you must do this. For me.”
Arslan cried some more, and Val’s own vision blurred.
He ensured they were well-stocked and well-dressed, and put them out the window. Watched as they jumped down to the balcony below, and then found handholds in the ancient stone edifice of the palace. Watched until they were slipping over the garden wall.
Arslan lifted one last wave.
Val waved back, imagining he could smell their sadness from where he stood at the window.
And then they went over, never spotted by the guards, and they were gone.
And Val was alone, in more ways than one.
37
PRINCE OF WALLACHIA
Vlad III, known as Vlad Dracula, second son to Prince Vlad II Dracul of Wallachia, knelt on the cold flagstones of a Hungarian cathedral and opened his mouth to receive his first communion. The priest set the wafer carefully on his tongue, but showed no signs of recoiling from the tips of Vlad’s fangs, which he felt were visible now, in this moment of conversion, as his heart beat just a hair too quickly against his ribs. On his right hand, he felt the weight and coolness of his new signet ring – his father’s before him, saved from the old prince’s body before he was cremated and interred. The seal was of the ouroboros dragon and the cross, the mark of the Order of the Dragon.
The priest dipped his thumb into a golden bowl of lamb’s blood, and drew the red cross of St. George on Vlad’s upturned forehead. In Latin, he asked, “Do you Vlad, son of Vlad Dracul, so swear your allegiance to the Crusader cause, as your father did before you?”
Vlad answered in Latin as well, “I do.”
Today, Vlad became a Catholic, just as his father had, but it was no normal conversion. Not merely a matter of prayer and confession and kneeling in front of the right kind of holy man. No, this was a commitment to the hushed and sacred Order of the Dragon, an exclusive order established in 1408. Dedicated to the resistance – and the defeat – of the Ottoman threat to Eastern Europe.
An Order that hadn’t accomplished much of anything in the last fifty years. His own father, a member as well as an ancient vampire of legend, had caved, and quibbled, and now occupied a box as nothing more than ashes. Beginning with its founder, Sigismund of Hungary, the Order had been an exclusive club, one full of brave warriors, without question. But ineffectual ones, ultimately.
Vlad meant to change that.
Word had come in June, only a week after the fall, borne by a runner on a half-dead horse: Mehmet had taken Constantinople. Mehmet the Conqueror, the spreaders of the story were calling him. With the aid of massive bronze guns, an inexhaustible supply of troops, and a dozen ingenious schemes, he’d broken through the Theodosian land walls and laid waste to the last defenders of the Roman Empire. The tales of cruelty, of rape, of the burning of holy relics, of the castration, slaughter, and enslavement of the Roman people…they didn’t just turn Vlad’s stomach. They enraged him.
His rage never really went away, though. It lived dormant in his veins, waiting for the next provocation. He felt it now, like fire under his skin, a sustainable, banked blaze that fueled every thought, and every goal.
In the months that followed, word came steadily from the rag-wrapped refugees who filtered into the Romanian provinces, Greeks and Romans fleeing the city, and the destruction wrought by the Ottomans. With them they brought tales of killings, cuttings, and impalements, each story more sordid than the last. Vlad had known of Mehmet’s proclivities, had watched his own baby brother become a plaything, but the stories of lords’ sons being taken as concubines angered him the most.
“Rise, Vlad Dracula,” the priest said, “as a Crusader of the realm.”
Vlad got to his feet, hands curling into fists, signet ring biting into his skin. He bowed his head in thanks to the priest.
“Go forth, my son,” he said in Romanian, speaking the language of Vlad’s birth. “Go forth and save us.”
“I will.” But he needed a throne, first. Hunyadi had promised him one, and the rest of Romania had long-since grown wary of Vladislav’s friendliness with the Turks in Wallachia.
It was time to go home.
~*~
Vlad recaptured his father’s seat, the princely palace in Tîrgovişte, for himself in the summer of 1456. A summer in which a strange light appeared in the sky, a falling golden star that streaked across the underbelly of the heavens, drawing word of sightings from every corner of the world. A portent some said. A sign of good fortune…or maybe a curse.
Vlad didn’t believe in such foolishness. He believed in blood, and force, and the lessons of Machiavelli that he’d learned during his studies in Moldavia: an eye for an eye.
The boyars of his homeland had helped the Ottomans slay his father and brother, and he would have an eye as payment.
His ascension had begun in January.
On the thirteenth, Hunyadi, wrapped in furs to keep the chill out of his old joints, gathered a council of such Eastern lords as were willing to fight. They gathered at Hunedoara: Vlad, Hunyadi’s sons, Pope Calixtus III’s ligate, Juan Cardinal de Carvajal, and John of Capistrano. The last was an anomaly. Seventy years of age, and a Minorite Franciscan monk besides, St. John of Capistrano looked every inch a skeletal old invalid, with sunken eyes, and deep-set wrinkles, and tremulous hands. His voice wavered when he spoke – but that was only age, and not fear, because he was all of conviction. “God wills it that we chase the Turks out of Europe,” he’d said, and had offered a force of peasant crusaders.
Vlad had bitten back a dark laugh; what could this man and his rabble offer to their cause? But he was passionate, and passion wasn’t something to laugh at.
The meeting was held because of Belgrade. Word had come down in fits and snatches, through secret channels, from deserters, and Ottoman court insiders, the way that all information did, that Sultan Mehmet intended to sack Belgrade, and from there proceed to claim Serbia, Hungary, and the Romanian territories for his own. No longer vassal states, but truly absorbed lands of his empire. He was insatiable.
Each man in attendance was given a task. Vlad had the responsibility of staying in Sibiu, where he’d been living since brokering a peace with Hunyadi, and from there guard the Transylvanian passes from invasion. He also had orders to retake his father’s throne when the time was ripe. “Kill Vladislav, and install yourself,” Hunyadi instructed. “But only once the mountain passes are secure.”
Stephen, Vlad’s ersatz cousin and constant companion, had similar orders. He was to stop any potential march by the enemy into his homeland of Moldavia. And, once that was accomplished, slay the usurper Petru III Aaron and reclaim his father’s seat as Prince of Moldavia.
Mehmet’s forces began assembling in June. Ships docking at the river delta; gunsmiths beginning work in Kruševac on more of Mehmet’s bloodthirsty cannons, the same kind that had broken Constantinople.
Movement came later in the month.
Hunyadi sent requests to the West, to the pope, to Italy, and the rest of the continent, asking for aid.
No response came. It never did. Europe had long since abandoned its own east.
The Conqueror came up the Danube. The scourge of Rome, the breaker of walls…the taker of brothers. He came.
Hold fast, Hunyadi’s letter to Vlad read, when he opened it on horseback, mountain wind threatening to tear the paper from his hand, Cicero on one side, and Malik on the other. Whatever happens, hold fast, and if I can’t break him, then by God, it’s up to you.
�
��He only has Capistrano’s peasant soldiers,” Cicero said grimly.
“He has his own men,” Vlad said, folding the parchment, tucking it into his belt. “His professionals. And he has motive, besides.”
It turned out that motive was a hell of a thing, when the forces clashed at Belgrade.
~*~
Val watched from the deck of the sultan’s private ship, anchored out in deep water, well away from the fighting. He shaded his eyes with his hand, and he watched, breathless with excitement, as, on the shore, a bloodied Mehmet was put into a boat and rowed back out.
He’d failed.
He’d failed.
Up on the hill, the fortress of Belgrade sat unmolested, Hungarian flag snapping in the breeze, and, below it, the flag of House Hunyadi.
The governor of Transylvania had turned back the Conqueror.
Val had watched as Ottomans swarmed the shore, steel glinting bright in the sunlight. Had watched, stomach heavy with dread, as they’d pierced the city’s walls and entered its streets. He’d stared fixedly up at the fortress, waiting to watch it fall, to watch its banners struck. But that hadn’t happened. No, in fact, Ottomans had begun to fall back, bit by bit.
The guns were mounted on the ships in the river, and they’d been engaged by Hungarian vessels. Two cannons exploded, in the way they were always wont to, and the ships had gone up in bright orange flames, men screaming and leaping overboard. And without the guns on the ground, there was no way to pierce the fortress walls.
Impatient, face going red with rage, Mehmet had ordered himself rowed to shore. “I’ll show them how it’s done,” he averred.
But now here he came, back again. Even more furious than before, and smelling of fresh blood – his own.
It took three men to get him up over the rail and onto the deck; partly because it was awkward hauling dead weight up on ropes, but also because Mehmet was far from lean these days.
“Put me down, I can stand!” he bellowed at his attendants.
They pulled their hands back, slowly, and Mehmet collapsed and went to his knees.
“Ah! Damn it!”
The wound was in his thigh, Val saw, deep, and bleeding freely. Val frowned; it should have begun to repair itself by now.
Mehmet lifted his gaze and found Val. Save the spots of hectic color on his cheeks, the flush of fury, the rest of his face was bloodless and pale. Sweat gleamed on his brow, and he squinted from the pain. “What are you staring at?” he snapped. “Hoping I’ll bleed to death?”
Yes, Val thought. “Gentlemen,” he said smoothly to the poor attendants. “Run ahead of us and prepare the sultan’s cabin, and tell the captain to make ready for a departure. I can only assume that, not having taken the city, we’ll be leaving shortly?”
Mehmet growled – a true vampire growl – but didn’t argue, which meant that, yes, they were done here.
“Send the signal to the other ships,” Val said, going to the sultan’s side and bending down to pull one of his arms over his shoulders. “Have the ground troops fall back. Pull anchor and let’s be done with this.”
“Yes, your grace,” the men chorused with a bow, and went to follow orders.
“Come along,” Val said, towing Mehmet forward.
He grumbled, but allowed Val to help him, which proved the seriousness of his wound.
Belowdecks, a pair of slaves hovered in the doorway of the cabin, bearing clean linen; a pitcher of steaming water waited on the small, bolted-in desk. “Leave us, please,” Val said, and they gladly fled, leaving the linen on the berth.
“Fuck you,” Mehmet said without any real meaning as Val eased him down onto the edge of the berth. “Get me some wine.”
“It will only make the bleeding worse,” Val said, picking up the linen and bowl of water, and kneeling down to better inspect the wound.
Janissaries and soldiers wore şalvar of a heavy weave into battle, but the sultan’s were fine silk. Thin, easily penetrated. Val pulled apart the fabric, and it split the rest of the way, revealing a meaty thigh that had been cut clear to the bone, blood still pumping with each beat of Mehmet’s heart.
“This is deep,” Val murmured, pressing the cloth to the wound to staunch the flow.
“Of course it is. I was stabbed!”
“It shouldn’t still be bleeding.”
Mehmet paused a moment; blood soaked through the white linen, bright crimson. “Don’t just sit there,” he finally blustered, fear sharpening his voice. “Do something.”
“I am.” Val kept pressure, and slowly, the bleeding slowed; became a gentle seep.
Pity, he thought. But he went to fetch a salve, and some herbs for disinfecting. He wouldn’t have to stitch the gash, but he could hasten its healing.
“What do you mean ‘it shouldn’t still be bleeding’?” Mehmet asked, when his back was turned. Note of fear in his voice.
Val was careful; kept picking through packets of herbs, movements slow. Kept his voice light. “Only that the artery was missed. Vampires begin to heal rapidly; the wound should have clotted by now.”
Mehmet was silent a moment, and then snorted. “What do you know?”
“Nothing much,” Val said lightly, and returned to him, supplies in hand.
It had been three years since Val turned his young slave and helped him escape with Nestor-Iskander. It had filled his heart with gladness to know that he’d removed them from Mehmet’s grasp, that they were, hopefully, living quietly in Siberia now, safe from harm, free of another man’s ownership.
But Mehmet’s wrath had been terrible. First had come a flogging, and then, when his back was raw and bleeding, he’d been pressed down onto it, and ravished. Like all of Mehmet’s tempers, it had only lasted a night, and he’d been sweet the next morning, hand-feeding Val breakfast, telling him of the new suit of armor he was having commissioned for him. His most beautiful possession; his lovely prince.
He’d cupped Val’s chin in his hand, rings warm from his skin against Val’s jaw. “Why do you insist on testing me? Is it fun for you?”
The only fun Val had had in years had been today, watching Mehmet’s men fall back. Knowing that somewhere beyond the defiant flags flying above the unconquered fortress, across mountains and green hills, Vlad waited. And someday, perhaps, they might even see one another again.
~*~
News of victory at Belgrade arrived to Vlad via runner the night before his own forces moved on Tîrgovişte.
“Very good,” he said, humming with satisfaction. He dashed out a reply personally and handed it back to the boy. “Send your lord my congratulations. Head over to the cookfires and get some supper. You can sleep here, and depart at first light. We’re making our move, then.”
“Yes, your grace.” The boy was exhausted, and streaked with road dirt, but he bowed deeply, and flashed a true smile.
Vlad settled back down on his makeshift seat of a felled log, leaning into the shoulder that Cicero pressed to his.
“It’s miraculous,” the wolf said, voice colored with awe. “How did they manage?”
“The fortress at Belgrade has sturdy walls. And they couldn’t get the guns on land, Hunyadi wrote,” Vlad said, accepting the bit of roasted hare that Fenrir extended toward him across the fire on a stick.
“What of Val?” Fen asked, hopeful. “Do you think he was with Mehmet?”
Vlad snorted as he bit into the meat, and spoke around a mouthful, grease running down his chin. “He’s the bastard’s favorite paramour. Of course he was.”
Fen made a face. “Vlad, you can’t think–”
“I think my brother is a whore, and a traitor. He’s a vampire; he can dream-walk. Why has he not come to us?” He gestured to the forest around them, its edges bathed in flickering firelight. “He does not care. He’s in league with my enemy, and he doesn’t care.”
Fen’s frown deepened. “I don’t think that’s fair.”
Fenrir had been Eira’s bound Familiar for centuries, him and Helga both,
and by the time Vlad was old enough to be aware of his surroundings, Fen’s scent had been ingrained in his consciousness. There was Mother, and Father, and then the wolves. Fenrir had never, admittedly, been his favorite, but his boisterous laugh and his constant smiles had been a comfort. His presence like a warm quilt on a cold night.
But right then, in that moment, Vlad wanted to leap across the fire and strike him.
He swallowed the urge, but he met the wolf’s stare levelly. Challenging. His voice came out low, half a growl. “We sit here in a rough camp, ready to take a throne that should have been mine years ago – that shouldn’t be mine at all, because Father should still be alive – and you want to talk of fairness?”
“Vlad,” Cicero said quietly.
Fenrir blinked and ducked his head over his dinner, firelight making his face as red as his beard.
“My brother is a traitor,” Vlad said with finality. “My mother loves him, and she will talk of him, but I don’t want to hear a word about him from the rest of you.”
Nods all around.
Cicero stared at him glumly, expression putting a twist in Vlad’s belly.
He swallowed down the last of his small meal and stood. “I’m turning in.” He didn’t want to, but he knew he needed to try and snatch at least a few hours’ sleep before tomorrow. He retreated to the shadows, where a squire had already laid out his bedroll. He lied down on the hard ground, using a saddle bag for a makeshift pillow, and forced himself to close his eyes.
His thoughts raced. They’d laid out the plan methodically, and gone over it a dozen times, moving little wooden figures across maps on a table. But he kept running scenarios in his head, playing it out. Especially the moment he finally got to cross swords with Vladislav. That might not happen, Mother had cautioned; Vladislav was a coward, and likely would send his men, waiting until he had no choice but to surrender himself.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 54
