Vlad snorted. “The ‘Ottoman cause.’ He wants only to rape, and pillage, and cast his shadow over everything.”
“Yes.” Val smiled tightly and humorlessly. “He’s very ambitious.”
“So am I. Run tell your master that I will be ready for him, when he’s done licking his wounds. I mean to be the last thing he sees before he departs this earth forever.”
Val bowed, deep, grave, and mocking. “Very well.” His face twitched, and nearly broke. “Give my love to Mother.” He vanished with a small curl of white smoke.
It was silent a moment.
“What?” Vlad growled. “I can tell you want to say something.”
“No, your grace,” Cicero said. “But come. Feed and rest.”
Tired now in spirit, as well as body, Vlad let himself be led from the room.
~*~
Vlad was twenty-five-years-old, and a great falling light had been seen in the sky, burning orange and trailing tails of fire. A good sign, because he had slain his enemy, and a small council of boyars had come together – grudgingly, he thought – to elect him officially. His official title, adopted in the vein of the princes who’d come before him, was Prince Vlad, son of Vlad the Great, sovereign and ruler of Ungro-Wallachia and of the duchies of Amīaş and Făgăraş.
John Hunyadi died that month, carried away by the plague that swept all of Eastern Europe. His son Matthias took up the mantle of governor of Belgrade, and leader of Transylvania in his stead, and it was to him that Vlad reached out, as well as the mayors of Brasov and Sibiu. It was important to establish correspondence, Eira told him; she stood at his side in the study, his constant advisor in those early days. Politicking was not his strong suit, but it was a necessary part of princedom. He built alliances, and tried to foment a revolt amongst the receptive boyars along the Moldavian border, to aid Stephen’s cause there against the man who’d slain his father. They traded letters as often as they could, the two of them, bound by their youth spent together in the schoolroom and training grounds, and by the bitter loss of sons made princes too early, thanks to murdered fathers.
Val’s warning about Mehmet haunted him. He felt something like guilt every time he remembered that scene in the study, the look on his brother’s face when he’d called him Radu. That had been a cruelty, even for him.
But mostly, he fretted over the Ottomans.
And come they did, though not with spears and swords. Shortly after Stephen was confirmed in Moldavia, a delegation arrived, prim and proper, led into the great hall in front of Vlad by Malik, formerly Bey, who Vlad could see received more than one shocked look.
The head delegate, a thin, reedy man clothed in burgundy and white, his black turban small and tightly wrapped, stepped forward with a bow. “Vlad Dracula,” he said, in flawless Slavic. “Congratulations from my sultan, Mehmet, on retaking your ancestral seat.”
“Please give him my thanks,” Vlad answered in Turkish, and thought the man looked caught between pleased and surprised when he straightened.
“I shall also be happy to convey your agreement to terms of peace,” the man said glibly. “There is a customary treaty already in place between the Empire and Wallachia. The sultan expects that you shall assent to it as graciously as your father did before you.”
Vlad pushed a humorless smile across his face. Whatever it looked like, it caused the delegate to take a half-step back. “Two-thousand gold ducats and free passage through Wallachia?”
“As well as a pilgrimage to the capital to pay homage.”
Vlad snorted. “He can have his gold and access.” He motioned, and two of his men stepped forward, lugging the chest between them. It held newly minted coins, his own face on one side, and the falling star of his summer of ascension on the other, for luck. “But I won’t be making any pilgrimage. Not even if I currently lack sons to be kidnapped and taken as hostage.”
The man regarded him a long, cool moment, then finally nodded. “Yes. Fine. You will need to sign this.” He produced a parchment, and Vlad’s scribe hurried forward with portable writing table, ink, and quill.
It pained him in every sense to sign the treaty, but he was no fool. Right now, he lacked the manpower to halt a true invasion. Patience, he heard Iskander Bey say in the back of his mind, an old mantra from an old friend. You must be patient.
So he signed, and set about the business of ruling his small country.
Vladislav was dead, but Vlad wasn’t content. An eye for an eye. But there were others who had wronged him. Others who’d helped in the murder of his family.
Within days of his installation, the boyars began to come to pay their respects; they brought gifts of wine, and jeweled belts, and ornamental daggers. They bowed, and curtsied, and smiled painfully at him; poured forth effusive praise, and promises of loyalty, and wishes for his good health and long reign. And all of it was a farce. These were the people who’d chased Father through the forest like hounds after a fox.
But he waited, patient.
His most immediate concern was fortifying his lands. He wanted walls, as high, and smooth, and foreboding as those at the palace in Edirne. Tîrgovişte was the beating heart of Wallachia, its center of commerce, and culture, and politics, but the rest of his lands’ keeps and castles were either sad timber lodgings, or crumbling to dust, left too long in disrepair. If he was to stand against Mehmet, he would need multiple fortresses, places where he and his men could overnight safely as he traveled about, defending and inspecting his kingdom.
He started in Bucharest, taking the sleepy necklace of modest pastoral residences and walling it; building it up. He wanted it to rival Tîrgovişte in every sense.
He rode with his builders and architects, Malik and Cicero, and often his mother, alongside him, into the mountains, and drew up plans for towers and keeps, impenetrable holdfasts that he would staff with troops when he wasn’t in residence, places that could serve as stumbling blocks to invaders, and places from which messengers could bear news of attack to wherever Vlad was staying at the moment.
It was at one of these mountain fortresses that an epiphany struck.
It was an old castle, tumbled down to rubble, perched near the Hungarian border. Vlad’s steward, a dour but efficient little man named Florin, speculated that it had been built a century ago, by one of the Basarab princes, and had served as an observation outpost for Castle Bran, just across the way in Transylvania. An ideal location, strategically, in the foothills of the Făgăraş range, near Curtea-de-Argeş.
Here, he thought, was an opportunity.
For the most part, the boyars still loyal to Vladislav – and, to a lesser degree, their Ottoman vassal lords – had bowed and scraped and pretended loyalty to Vlad. But there had been one, early, right after he was crowned, who’d styled himself Albu the Great, one of Vlad Dracul’s old opponents. He’d attempted to organize a revolt, one that Cicero had brought him word of, while spying on four legs. Vlad had personally led the ambush against the man, his wolves, and Malik, and a few trusted household guards at his side.
~*~
Vlad paced the length of the Turkish carpet in the central room of Albu’s sumptuous house. The fire crackled in the grate, but not loudly enough to drown out the sounds of frightened, frantic breathing. Albu and his entire family knelt on the carpet, heads bowed, shaking with terror. They’d all watched Cicero shift back to his two-legged form, and Fen, still a wolf, sat on his haunches, smiling at them with all his gleaming ivory teeth.
Vlad glanced at Eira, just to take her measure in this moment; her expression surprised him, though maybe it shouldn’t have. It was closed off, her face smooth, her mouth colorless and immobile. Her eyes, though, burned with a kind of focused, cold hatred that Vlad had only ever seen in the mirror.
He’d wondered, occasionally, where his great capacity for anger came from, because his father had been a gentle soul, all things told. He’d worried that it was a trait he shared with his uncle Romulus. But he saw now, with startling clar
ity, that his rage was his mother’s. She’d given it to Vlad, and given Val her beauty, and sweetness, and creativity. It wasn’t an even parceling of gifts, but Vlad would take it; he needed all the rage he could get.
He knew, then, what he needed to do here. What he had to.
He halted and turned to face his captives, hands loose at his sides. Calmness descended. “Albu,” he said, “if you’re brave enough to raise a revolt against me, then you can be brave enough to look me in the eye.”
Albu lifted his head, shaking, his eyes wide. He met Vlad’s gaze, though his shoulders slumped another fraction.
“Why do you want to overthrow me?” Vlad asked.
The boyar hesitated. He licked his lips, and glanced toward Cicero, who had moved to stand beside Vlad, the hood of his pelt pushed back, but no less wild for it. There were twigs caught in his hair.
“I would have an honest answer,” Vlad prompted.
“Because – because you are not a man. You are not a natural, mortal, Christian man. You are–” He looked to Cicero again, to Fen, and back to Vlad, miserable and terrified. “Life is good. Vladislav brought us peace with the Ottomans. Life is good, and you will ruin that. Your grace,” he tacked on at the end, ducking his head once more.
“Peace,” Vlad echoed. “Peace for people like you, you mean. For rich boyars, who do not need to give their sons and daughters over to Mehmet’s lust and soldiery.”
Albu lifted his head once more.
“Peace always has a price,” Vlad said. “Vladislav’s was other people’s children. Mine will be the blood of traitors like you.”
Vlad impaled his first man that night. Albu and his family.
“Let them see,” he said to Cicero. “Let Wallachia see what the sultan will do to them.”
“Right now, it’s what you are doing,” his wolf said, evenly, staring steadily at him.
“What I’m doing to my enemies. An eye for an eye, Cicero. A scar for a scar. A knife for a knife. That’s how I mean to rule this land.”
And that was how he did.
~*~
It was Easter, and boyars unfurled blankets, and unpacked portable feasts on the shaggy, wildflower-studded fields that lay just below the ruins of the old castle in the foothills of the Făgăraş. They had been invited, by the prince himself, to enjoy the warm weather. All the boyars who feigned loyalty. Who’d gladly helped to kill the prince’s father, Dracul. They brought their wives, and children, their heirs, these nobles who had wanted to join in with Albu.
They stood when Vlad strode into their midst, all in crimson and sable and fine, dyed-red leather.
“Happy Easter,” he called, and the wind carried his voice through the field, loud, but not merry. “Welcome to the site of what will someday soon be one of my great fortresses.”
There were cheers. A smattering of applause.
Someone, a wife, turning to look for her wayward child, finally saw the soldiers moving into place. She touched her husband’s arm, and pointed, and then others looked. And then they all noticed. Wallachian foot soldiers in full armor, spears braced on their shoulders, swords belted at their hips.
The happy chattering shifted in tone; grew distressed, worried.
“My men have brought stone, and mortar, and timbers,” Vlad continued. “And you, my loyal boyars, will be the manpower.”
They all turned to him, wearing faces of shock, and horror. Disbelief.
“Roll up your sleeves, ladies and gentlemen. You’re going to build me a castle. And after, if you can still stand, you may fall on your knees and beg me to spare your miserable, traitorous lives.”
~*~
None survived that Easter of forced labor. The boyars who’d killed his family were dead; the few who didn’t collapse were impaled.
An eye for an eye.
After, Castle Dracula stood proudly silhouetted against the clear spring sky, a testament to the patience of Vlad Dracula.
Of Vlad Tepes. The Impaler.
38
THE CONQUEROR
Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire
(formerly Constantinople)
1461
Mehmet had a new favored scribe, a fair-faced boy whose name Val refused to learn; he would have no more intimacies with slaves or servants, he’d decided, and also, he could tell by scent that Mehmet was fucking this boy, and he didn’t really want anything to do with that. Every night Mehmet went to someone else’s bed, it gave Val a chance to catch a few hours of actual sleep.
The scribe sat today at the sultan’s big war table, as Mehmet and Timothée the mage paced unhurriedly around the wide, marble-floored chamber, plotting a course for invasion.
“It will require toppling the pillars of European civilization,” Timothée cautioned. “Rome is the real prize; take the Vatican, seize the pope, and then France, Germany, and Britain will wish to negotiate.”
“I don’t want to negotiate.”
“Yes, but that’s how it begins. And then you can topple them one-by-one.”
“Yes, yes,” Mehmet mused, rubbing at his beard. He stood staring down at his largest map, other hand kneading at his lower back. He’d gone from thick to almost fat by this point; he huffed when he rode or walked long distances, and he groaned when he stood, complained always of aching joints and a sore back.
Gout, Val kept saying, just to needle him. But he’d gotten a taste of his blood during a vigorous night’s fucking, and he’d nearly vomited from the taste. This wasn’t gout. Whatever it was, something was wrong. Something about the vampire blood was breaking down, going rancid. He’d never heard of such a thing – a foul turning. He laid awake some nights, worrying that it was a family curse, wondering if maybe poor Arslan was out there somewhere, going through the same thing.
“But first we must get through the east,” Mehmet said, motioning to the map. “Hungary, Romania, Serbia.” He frowned.
Timothée flapped a dismissive gesture. “That won’t be difficult.”
Val barely restrained a snort.
That he didn’t like the mage was a given. That Mehmet actually respected and listened to the man was a shock. Then again, Timothée appealed to Mehmet’s vanity at every turn.
Val had found him unlikely. In his mind, he’d imagined mages to be tall, rail-thin fellows with long, pointed beards and stormy eyes. There might have been black cloaks, and long fingernails, and rolling trails of smoke involved, too. Childish wonderings. The reality was far more ordinary. Timothée, no surname to speak of, was French, and short, and a bit round in the middle. He had thinning salt-and-pepper hair, kept short, and a matching beard. Small eyes that looked like glass beads, and a ready laugh, and a face lined from smiling. He looked like someone’s grandfather, which didn’t make much sense to Val, since mages were immortals. Where was the ageless, smooth, sophisticated enchanter he’d expected?
He did stink like a campfire, though. And could conjure modest balls of flames in his hands. And talked often of the wife and son he’d left behind in France. Val was sick of hearing about “little Philippe.”
Mehmet lifted an unimpressed look. “Have you forgotten what I told you of Belgrade?”
Val’s stomach tightened with remembered excitement, just like it did every time Mehmet was forced to mention the disaster at Belgrade.
“John Hunyadi is dead, is he not? You shall take more men the next time, and be better prepared.”
“Hmph.”
Timothée stepped in closer to the table, voice lowering, growing serious. “Your Majesty, we stand now in the Palace at Blachernae. In a city that you took from the Romans. You conquered Constantinople. What is Belgrade in comparison to that?”
Mehmet pursed his lips, not considering – he’d considered all of this before, at length, rambling about it to Val as he took him angrily from behind. But he was flattered. He had always been so easy to flatter.
Val was an expert at it, by now. And save the times he’d pushed Mehmet to the point of rape and brutali
ty, he knew when he could flex his contrariness. Not that he had to, but because it was one small thing he could control.
“Forgive me,” he drawled, “but you’re both forgetting one very important factor in all of this.” He made a lazy gesture toward the map, leaned back in his chair, one leg kicked up over the arm.
Mehmet shot him a glare.
Timothée turned to him with his usual pleasantly bland smile, his eyes hard and bright as polished stone. Val knew the mage hated him, though he hadn’t figured out why yet. He didn’t think, though, that it was for any of the reasons the rest of the court did.
“And what is that?” he asked, hands folded together primly before him.
Val lifted a finger. “My brother.”
Mehmet’s jaw clenched, muscle leaping in his cheek.
Timothée’s bland smile tightened a fraction. “That would be Vlad Dracula, yes? The Prince of Wallachia?”
“That’s him, yes.” Val couldn’t keep a hint of proud smugness from his voice.
He realized his mistake when he saw bright malice flare to life in the mage’s eyes. “His kingdom is small,” Timothée said, “and he is a violent, ill-tempered ruler. Purported to have a taste for the blood of his subjects.”
Val let his feet fall to the floor, and sat up straight in his chair. “Vlad doesn’t feed from humans.”
The mage cocked his head. “Then why does he kill so many of them?”
It would take hours to properly explain Vlad, and his regimented sense of justice and revenge, his intense, long-burning anger, hot and relentless as dragon fire. And to explain that it was a patient, calculated, controlled rage. He didn’t kill in fits of temper, like Mehmet was prone to do. He weighed the morality of everything, and once set on a course, could not be swayed from it.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 56
