House of War

by Victor Foia

  “Do you know any of the conspirators?”

  “What we’ve gleaned so far is that KC has managed to recruit adherents from among both the military class and the ulema. What unites them is their belonging to the Bektashi Order. That Sufi brotherhood has always been opposed to peace.”

  “I’d suspect Zaganos Pasha of being a member of KC,” Vlad said. “Last year he was hell-bent on having the sultan wage jihād on Wallachia.”

  “He’s is a vocal advocate for jihād, indeed,” Tirendaz said. “But that doesn’t make him the sultan’s enemy. Many senior officials favor war, but will obey His Majesty’s wishes.” He scratched his beard and pushed his lower lip out, pensive. “Besides, whatever suspicions against him we might’ve had, your testimony has laid to rest.”

  If I didn’t think Zaganos would find a way to retaliate, I’d prove it he’s responsible for the war with Karaman. “How does KC intend to achieve its goal?”

  Tirendaz reflected for a few moments. “By doing all it can to ensure the crusade takes place. That way His Majesty can’t avoid jihād.”

  “That makes KC and the Christians bedfellows, doesn’t it?” Vlad said.

  Tirendaz showed his distaste for that obvious reality with a grimace. “If the sultan wins a resounding victory over the crusaders, KC intends to seize the initiative and take the jihād all the way to Rome. They believe His Majesty would be unable to restrain a victorious army officered by jihadists.”

  From what Vlad had learned about the Ottomans’ organizational prowess, he had no doubt the crusade was in for a sound defeat, Murad’s peace leanings notwithstanding.

  “KC calls this strategy ‘Beyazid’s Covenant,’” Tirendaz continued. “The notion harkens back to 1396, when at Nicopolis Beyazid crushed the greatest crusading army assembled in two hundred years.”

  “I’ve heard he took a vow on that occasion to turn Saint Peter’s Basilica into a mosque,” Vlad said.

  “It’s the same vow KC members take upon initiation into their secret society.”

  “And if the crusade doesn’t happen?” Vlad said. “Would KC go so far as to depose the sultan and enthrone one of their own?”

  “That’s what the anonymous note claims,” Tirendaz said. “We doubt someone not of royal blood would be acceptable to the ulema, but we can’t take chances. Now you see the reason His Majesty’s taken refuge here, pending my investigation of the conspiracy?”

  “How credible is that anonymous note? The informant might be a madman or a liar. I’d be looking for additional signs of trouble before I took him at his word.”

  “In fact, the sultan has received another sign in a dream.” Tirendaz leaned toward Vlad and said in a near whisper, “More than a dream—a vision—a black ram being sacrificed on the first day of Eid al-Adha.”

  “Thousands of animals are being killed that day throughout Dar al-Islam,” Vlad said.

  “Ah, but this ram was like no other. It had a white crescent-shaped blaze on the bridge of its nose—the crescent of House Osman. And when the ram’s throat was cut, no blood poured forth.” Tirendaz raised a finger to impart a special meaning to that last detail.

  Vlad glanced involuntarily at his empty cup. “You think the dream foretells death by poison?”

  “For now all the sultan’s meals and beverages are being prepared here under my strict supervision. Only when I’ll have arrested the leaders of the conspiracy will His Majesty be free to eat again amidst his subjects.”

  “What about the war he’s just declared on Karaman?” Vlad said. “With such restrictions on his movements, who’s going to lead the army?”

  Tirendaz’s gaze lost its intensity, as if the subject had changed to a matter of little concern.

  “Oh, Aladdin’s going to teach İbrahim a quick lesson, then return to Bursa in time to celebrate Eid al-Adha with his sons, Mehmed, and the sultan.”

  Eid al-Adha fell on April 10. If Aladdin managed to end the war by that date, there was ample time for the news to reach Buda and cause the crusade to be aborted. Zaganos’s dirty work would come to naught.

  Vlad felt a surge of optimism and was puzzled to see that Tirendaz remained preoccupied. “With Karaman pacified, the crusade abandoned, and the sultan protected against an overthrow, isn’t KC about to be rendered powerless?”

  “The jihadists have one more option: manipulate King Dracul into ending his neutrality.”

  “Assuming they could accomplish that, how would it help KC’s cause?”

  “Wallachia would give the crusaders access to three hundred miles of the Danube’s north bank. With that, the Christian armies could cross into the empire in dozens of places, impossible for us to anticipate and defend. That tactical advantage would persuade Hungary and the Vatican to undertake the crusade even without a second front in Anatolia.”

  “And how does KC propose to manipulate my father?” Vlad cried. “You must know he’s immune to bribes.”

  Tirendaz squinted and kneaded his hands. Finally, he said, “By killing you.”

  This unexpected twist shocked Vlad to the core. “So I’m suddenly the lowest-hanging fruit for KC?”

  “Regretfully, it seems so.”

  If Zaganos was a member of KC, that explained his interest in Vlad’s demise. Only Mehmed’s influence prevented the vizier from acting on that sentiment. But KC was more than Zaganos. This invisible, anonymous, hostile force is something from which Mehmed can’t defend me, he thought seething with impotent rage. “I suppose staying on in Bursa is now out of the question for me.”

  “You’re going to a safer place.”

  “Amasya?”

  Tirendaz nodded. “But not locked up in the fortress and not under Zaganos’s jurisdiction. You’ll be attached to Aladdin’s bodyguard.”

  Vlad’s status as Mehmed’s musahib had lasted barely a month, to be replaced now by that of an exile. Another three hundred miles farther from home. He swallowed hard and tried to hide his disappointment. “May I take my men with me?”

  Tirendaz patted Vlad’s knee with sympathy. “Lash and Gruya are waiting for you in Aladdin’s camp.”

  40

  TERROR ON ORDU ALAN

  April 1443, Bursa, Ottoman Empire

  “You want me to stand still while others are fighting all around us?” Gruya said, incredulous. “When will I ever again have the chance of killing one kind of Turk and be praised by another?”

  Vlad had just informed him the two of them would be accompanying Aladdin to the front, but wouldn’t engage in the fighting.

  “The sultan thinks I’m too valuable to expose me to the risks of battle,” Vlad said. “But he wants you and me to watch over Aladdin’s safety while he’s back in his camp. And that we ought to do gladly. Aladdin’s our lifeline”

  He then explained the predicament they found themselves in as a result of the KC conspiracy.

  “I’m supposed to protect Aladdin’s life,” Gruya said, unconvinced, “so he can drag us to the butthole of the empire when he’s done with the war?”

  Aladdin’s tent, with its two-horsetail tuğ fluttering in the front, had been transformed into a tactical headquarters. Although this was the prince’s first war, he displayed the calm detachment of a tested general. The space around him buzzed with the comings and goings of officers, messengers, quartermaster’s assistants, and pages, everything pointing to an imminent departure of the Anatolian army. Aladdin listened in good humor, gave orders, laughed, chided, and generally behaved as if he were born to be commander in chief.

  From a corner of the tent, where he was engaged in conversation with two elderly men, Hızır Pasha cast Aladdin frequent glances that reflected the pride of a tutor for the pupil on the threshold of greatness.

  “You’ve finally arrived,” Aladdin cried when he spotted Vlad and Gruya standing in the tent’s vestibule. He dashed toward them with outstretched arms. “I was afraid I’d have to leave without you.”

  “Your father’s made sure I wouldn’t take a detour
on my way here,” Vlad said, lighthearted. Aladdin’s buoyant disposition was already rubbing off on him. “He had Skanderbeg deliver me to your camp practically bound and gagged.”

  Aladdin threw his head back and gave a happy laugh.

  “I’m grateful to the general, though I’m sure Mehmed won’t speak to me anymore, now that he’s lost you as his musahib.”

  “Please tell him I came under protest and only because of threats to my life,” Vlad said, “or I’ll have him for a lifelong enemy.”

  Aladdin laughed again. “Father told me he’s worried about your safety. Since he had a dream about a dead ram he sees assassins behind every door.”

  “If you’re planning to reach İbrahim’s camp before daylight, Aladdin,” Hızır Pasha said, “it’s time to put your sons to bed and take off.” He’d cleared the tent of all personnel, except two white eunuchs, each holding one of Aladdin’s sons in his arms.

  For the next few minutes Aladdin played with Ahmed, tossing him in the air, and swinging him by his arms. The tent resounded with the child’s shrieks of happy fright and Hızır’s admonitions against his pupil’s recklessness.

  “Now that you’ve got the boy thoroughly excited,” Hızır said, stern, “how do you expect he’ll go to sleep?”

  “Papa will be back in time for Eid,” Aladdin said to Ahmed, “and we’ll have a Feast of the Sacrifice you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Insha’Allāh.”

  He tried to play the tossing game with baby Mehmed as well, but Hızır wouldn’t let him do more than coo over the infant. Then both children were taken to Aladdin’s private quarters.

  “If I had my way,” Aladdin said, “there would never be another war. I hate to be away, slaughtering people instead of playing with my children and building houses.”

  If Aladdin hated war, he didn’t allow his feelings to interfere with prosecuting it in earnest. He drove his army on a grueling all-night forced march, the riders leading their horses by their reins; then before daybreak, awoke the unsuspecting Karamanids with the booming sound of his kös drums. Both parties waited for the adhān, then performed their Fajr prayer.

  When the two armies finally assumed battle formations, a shudder passed through Vlad and an intense heat pervaded his body. The event about to unfold in front of him had little in common with the war games he’d often engaged in back home. There, the most a participant was likely to suffer was a broken bone, or a black eye; here he was apt to receive a mortal blow. Of this multitude of riders fidgeting in their saddles, adjusting chinstraps, testing the sharpness of their swords, thousands would be bleeding to death within the next few hours.

  Against all reason, Vlad longed to take Aladdin’s place at the head of his restless troops and unleash their lethal force upon an adversary he had no reason to hate.

  Within an hour of clashing with them, Aladdin’s well-equipped Sipahis had cut a wide swath through İbrahim’s swarm of lightly armored riders.

  This war will be over in one day, Vlad thought, rueful.

  “You’ve caught the killing fever, boy,” Uncle Michael would say, if he knew of Vlad’s inner firestorm. His old tutor spoke often of the lust for killing that gatherings of armed men stirred in young souls. “You’ll be a good commander,” he told Vlad once, “only when killing is the last thing you want to do.”

  “The Karamanids are running away and Aladdin’s not chasing them,” Gruya exclaimed in wonderment.

  Indeed, instead of fanning out to mow down their fleeing enemy, Aladdin’s men closed ranks and left the battlefield.

  “It’s the first day of Dhu al-Hijjah, and war’s ḥarām this month” Hızır explained. Like Vlad and Gruya, he’d been ordered off the battlefield by Aladdin. “Yet, it’s halāl to defend ourselves. Nonetheless, the law says we must do the enemy no more harm than needed to keep him subdued.”

  The Sipahis formed a defensive square and deployed their bivouacs, while slaves were dispatched to collect the bodies of the fallen.

  “After marching all night, then fighting like lions, my men need sleep,” Aladdin said when they were back in his campaign tent. “And so do I.”

  Aladdin’s clothes were thoroughly bloodied, and he was red in the face from his exertions. Yet, despite fatigue, his disposition was as cheerful as if he’d just finished one of his construction projects. Where others would’ve have boasted about their victory, he made no comment about the battle, the first he’d led and won in his life.

  Aladdin washed and performed his noon prayers with pious ardor. When a page brought him food, he dismissed the boy with a kind smile. “The Prophet, Allah’s peace be upon him, used to fast the first nine days of Dhu al-Hijjah,” he told Vlad. “All he took as sustenance every day was three dates and a sip of water. I shall do the same and beg al-Fattāḥ, the Victory Giver, to help me prevail upon İbrahim Bey.”

  After nibbling the dates and taking a mouthful of water, Aladdin wrapped himself in a blanket and laid his head on Hızır’s lap. A few moments later he was asleep.

  “My Aladdin will make the greatest Ottoman sultan one day,” Hızır whispered, mostly to himself.

  An hour later, Aladdin awoke to attend the burial of his fallen soldiers. Then he surprised everyone by ordering a retreat of a few miles in the direction of Bursa.

  Unjustifiably emboldened by Aladdin’s apparent timidity, İbrahim attacked the Ottomans the next morning with the zest of one confident of his superiority. Aladdin put the disorganized Karamanids on the run. And again, he ordered restraint, so İbrahim suffered only modest losses.

  Then, just like the previous night, Aladdin pulled his army back, a few more miles closer to Bursa.

  The prince’s whimsical moves intrigued Vlad, but he refrained from asking for an explanation. However, when the third day Aladdin repeated his nonsensical retreat, Vlad couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer.

  “For one who professes war isn’t to his liking,” he said, “you’re surely doing all you can to prolong it. Why not finish İbrahim off in one encounter?”

  Aladdin indulged in a cryptic smile. “‘And verily We gave unto Moses nine tokens, clear proofs of Allah’s sovereignty.’”

  Vlad puzzled awhile over this quotation from the Qur’an, but found no allusion to war tactics in it. Then he recalled Mehmed’s verdict on his brother, and everything became clear. Aladdin’s as vain as a peacock.

  “Nine tokens—nine days of Dhu al-Hijjah—nine needless retreats,” Vlad said. “You’re drawing İbrahim Bey, a few miles at a time, closer and closer to Bursa. Are you planning to deliver him the final blow under the city walls?”

  Aladdin grinned and gave Vlad the look of a child caught pulling a harmless prank.

  “This army belongs to my father,” he said. “Had he not been threatened by the rumored conspiracy, he’d be here to see how I make use of it on his behalf. As things stand, I must bring the show to him.”

  “You’re taking a great risk by allowing the enemy to get so near to Bursa,” Vlad said. “At least have your sons removed to a safer place, until you subdue İbrahim.”

  Aladdin bristled. “That would be a sign I lack self-confidence.”

  The ninth day of Dhu al-Hijjah was ushered in by the adhān of the Bursa muezzins, cascading from dozens of mosques onto Ordu Alan. While the two armies confronting each other praised Allah’s greatness and prayed for martyrdom, a brilliant sun rose and bathed the city walls in a pink haze. A mehterân band arrived shortly after the dawn prayer at Aladdin’s camp, and launched into a series of spirited marches that invigorated his soldiers.

  “Look up there,” Aladdin said when he emerged from his tent to review the troops. “Father’s watching us.” He pointed to the top of the town’s wall.

  Murad’s tuğ had been repositioned above the parapet behind the palace. On both sides of this imperial standard, thousands of onlookers crowded the wall-walk.

  For a commander who liked to show off, there couldn’t be a better stage than the one Aladdin ha
d set.

  Unlike the previous eight days, this morning Aladdin didn’t lead his army. Instead, he planted his tuğ half a mile to the east of the camp and made that spot his command post. Only Hızır Pasha, Vlad, Gruya, and six mounted pages were permitted to accompany him.

  “Father wants to see how I can direct my forces from the rear to pursue a predetermined battle plan,” Aladdin said, anticipating Vlad’s question. “He believes the days of the sultan exposing himself in the front line are over. ‘Strategy over bravery,’ he likes to say.”

  “This thinking hasn’t stopped you from fighting like an ordinary Sipahi for the past eight days,” Vlad said.

  Aladdin grinned. “I’m not sultan yet, and Father wasn’t there to stop me from having a bit of fun,” he said. “Besides, most of my Sipahis are old school and they needed to see I don’t lack the courage to fight alongside them.”

  With no risk of an attack on his camp or baggage train, Aladdin had sent his reserves the night before on a roundabout way to İbrahim’s rear. This time the outcome of the battle would be decisive.

  “I miss the sound of the fight,” Aladdin said, when dust began to rise about two miles east of their position where the clash between the Ottomans and the Karamanids was taking place. “The snorting of horses, the clash of shields—”

  Vlad lost the rest of the sentence in a din of musical instruments blown and struck with ferocious determination. The mehterân band had repositioned itself near Aladdin’s post and was fulfilling its role of morale booster with admirable zest.

  With each trumpet blast Samur would shiver, and with each roll of the kös kettledrums she’d rear as if she’d come across a viper. Gruya’s horse behaved in the same manner, but not Hızır’s or Aladdin’s.

  “Ottoman war horses are trained from a young age to tolerate the mehterân music,” Aladdin shouted into Vlad’s ear. “That way we can spook the enemies’ horses with the noise we make in battle. They hear the boom of the kös from miles away and sometimes stampede before we get to them.” He laughed with childish pride.