by A D Seeley
“What would you like me to do with them?” Seneslav asked.
Cleaning himself with water and a rag his servants had finally brought him, he said, “Remove their heads. Send them to the sultan with this message: ‘I will never ally myself with you. Next time, it will be your head in a box. Do not send any more messengers or they will receive an even worse fate.’”
After the servants had removed the bodies to desecrate them, Seneslav turned to him, a frown all over his lined face. “Sire, we cannot win if we go to full-out war with the sultan.”
“I know,” he said with a grin. “Do you want out?”
Matching his feral grin—he was as crazy as Cain—Seneslav said, “No way in hell. I haven’t had so much fun in my life.”
Cain had succeeded in provoking the sultan with his deeds, for soon the sultan sent Turks across the Danube to recruit more soldiers set to depose him. But Mehmed II didn’t know who he was up against. Instead, Cain’s own forces easily captured the Turks. Some of them he kept in prison, but most of them he immediately impaled.
Finally, one day Cain received a message. The sultan wanted his chieftain to meet with Cain at Giurgiu; in essence a diplomatic meeting. However, Cain had sources inside the sultan’s palace that warned him that it was actually a trap to kidnap him and cart him off to Constantinople, which the Turks had overthrown a few years before, starting this whole war with Christianity in the process. Pretending as though he didn’t know the truth, Cain accepted the meeting. Then, as the chieftain and his troops a thousand strong walked into a narrow pass on his way to Giurgiu, Cain attacked with a dozen or so cannons. They were large and cumbersome to bring to the pass, but with them he killed most every enemy. The chieftain escaped, but Cain knew he would run back to the sultan with his tail between his legs, crying about how Vlad had used ancient gunpowder and cannons in a deadly way, which nobody had ever done before.
Using the uniforms from the men he’d killed, he marched back to where the chieftain would have gone had he captured Cain and demanded the men to open the gates for him. They did. Needless to say, Cain killed them all, taking the fortress as his own.
It was when his wife was with child that he chose to hurry things up. No longer could he go on the sultan’s timetable. That was when he crossed the frozen Danube himself. Again, he hoped to provoke the sultan with his actions by killing anyone in the area who would sympathize with the sultan. He ended up impaling over twenty-three thousand Muslim Bulgarians and Turks, not counting those he’d burned in their homes or hadn’t beheaded, giving him a body part to count.
It made him a hero to the pope and all Christendom. The irony made him smile. Also, it angered the sultan enough that he finally decided to come against “Vlad” himself. But Cain wasn’t afraid—he didn’t fear God, so why would he fear a mere mortal?
“Sire, the scouts report that Mehmed has an army of about a hundred thousand,” Seneslav told him early one blustery morning, finding Cain standing in a tent poring over a map of the land, hoping to find advantageous spots for battle.
Cain looked at his army of maybe thirty thousand men, women, and children over twelve. He had such a small army—about ten thousand mercenaries—so he had been forced to recruit everyone who could possibly carry a weapon. They may not be as well-trained as the Ottoman forces were, but the peasants were good for tiring the enemy before dying.
At Seneslav’s words, Cain threw a fist into the table, cursing Hungary, for, as though the emissary’s words had been a prophecy, Hungary would not join this fight. It was Cain against the Ottoman Empire. Cain could fight the grand vizier or other small units raised to defeat him, but against the whole of the sultan’s forces? He didn’t stand a chance without aid from the Hungarian regent cowering in opulence and gluttony in Transylvania.
Although he knew he couldn’t win, Cain fought as hard as he could, hoping that his superior intellect could help create a miracle. But they were too large. Too strong.
As he retreated, he did what he could to salvage his reputation by ordering the men to burn everything in their wake, leaving nothing for the Ottomans to use. Also, he created marshes to bar their way by diverting rivers and digging traps. He may not have the men the sultan had, but he had brains the sultan could never match. For who else but Cain would think to send his villagers sick with plague and leprosy to intermix with the massive armies of the enemy? In essence killing them from the inside out?
This sort of “retreat” lasted for seven days. He could see that the Ottomans were hungry and tired, vast amounts of them sick and dying. That’s when he struck again. He took his personal guard and began attacking and ambushing them. But the sultan slogged on until he was barely south of Târgovişte, the capital of Wallachia. Cain couldn’t lose that city. If he did, then he would most likely lose the war.
“What do you plan to do, sire?” Seneslav asked when Cain announced this very fact.
Cain brought every tactical advantage they had to the forefront of his mind, nixing each one the moment he did. At least, until he didn’t veto an idea….
“The last straw for the sultan was when we impaled the twenty-three thousand men, women, and children,” he said, looking at the same map on the same table in a much more makeshift camp in an easily defendable spot in the woods. “Was that not what your sources told you?”
“Yes, sire.”
“Do you remember that village?” he asked, changing the subject. “The one that had hidden the prince we were hunting?”
“The one we punished by impaling everyone, sire?”
“Yes.” Not a man, woman, or child had been left alive. Since then, not one person had dared to aid his enemies. “How many Turkish prisoners do we have?”
“Around twenty thousand, sire.”
“I will march the cavalry to fight the sultan. The rest of the troops should head toward Târgovişte with the prisoners and impale them all on the road here,” he said, pointing to the map. “That way, if my plan to assassinate him in his camp fails, then he’ll retreat until he comes upon twenty-thousand freshly impaled Muslims. They’ll be so fresh, in fact, that some will still be alive and struggling. If that doesn’t sow fear into his heart and the hearts of his men, then I don’t know what will. And if they’re afraid, then perhaps they’ll fully retreat.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then perhaps we’ll manage to minimize his army. I’m sure he’ll have deserters after they see what will happen to them if they continue on their mad quest. Good old-fashioned fear will do our job for us.”
Once everybody knew their jobs, Cain gathered together his cavalry made up of ten thousand hardened soldiers and hid them in the woods near the camp of the sultan.
“Seneslav,” he told his man. “You’re in charge while I’m gone. Stay here. We must stay hidden.”
Then, dressed as a Turk, he snuck into the camp. It was a bright summer’s day. A beautiful day. He walked through the tents, searching for the location of the sultan’s. He couldn’t kill him now, in broad daylight, but he did gather plenty of information. For one, he learned that the sultan had ordered the men to stay in their tents at night so, if there was an attack, there wouldn’t be the panic of thousands of men, as well as any attackers would be obvious.
Cain couldn’t help but smile. That was perfect. If he came in during the night, then the men wouldn’t see, for they would be blind inside their tents. And then Cain could sneak to the sultan’s own tent and assassinate him before the dawn could break on another glorious day. As quietly as he had snuck in, he snuck back out, heading back to his men.
Chapter Eighteen
***
The sun had set three hours before when Cain and his troops marched upon the sultan’s camp. It was a clear night through which crickets’ cheerful songs could be heard, their tunes dancing on the light breeze. Behind Cain, Seneslav and his troops were keyed up. He could feel their anxious hopes as though lightning was sizzling in their midst.
Himself
, Cain was in a joyful mood. It took all his self-control to not join in with nature’s song, whistling a triumphant melody.
After speaking with those on watch, Cain and his troops dressed like janissaries—Christians converted to Islam, pretty much by force—were allowed access into the camp. They didn’t strike right away. Instead, they got as far inside as they could before they were forced to stop, for the janissaries weren’t allowed as close to the sultan as Cain would like to be.
He’d planned to change into another uniform that would allow him to slip to the sultan’s tent unnoticed, but one of the real janissaries called from his tent, telling Cain’s man nearest to him that they weren’t allowed outside. Cain’s soldier didn’t answer, instead looking to Cain because he was the only one who spoke the language the janissary was using. But Cain was too far away to take care of the situation, and the enemy soldier realized what was going on.
The janissary took one look at the menacing group and called out, “Attack!”
Just like that, men began pouring from their tents. Without waiting for the first of them to strike at him, Cain pulled Excalibur from its hiding place under a blanket. Then, the blade flashing with a devious glint, he lopped off the nearest Turkish head, not pausing long enough to allow his artistic side to fully appreciate the consecutive eruption of titillating blood.
He turned this way and that, efficiently taking out all within reach, including any animals that could be used as a means to escape. Not one man came near enough to him to even cut the Turkish cloth hiding his Wallachian armor.
The battle raged on, his enemies’ faces becoming more visible as the fires his men had started lit the field. Every time he smote an enemy, he thought they would be the last man standing in his way. However, just as his army of Immortals had done when he’d lived by the alias of Xerxes the Great, when he killed one man, another would pop up in his place. They were like weeds. Nasty, annoying weeds that bred like rabbits and had very weak roots. Easily pulled from the ground and tossed aside, their roots screaming in silent agony as they were ripped from the source of their nutrients.
By the time the Turks had thinned somewhat, Cain could see that the sultan had left with the majority of his men, having retreated to go back to the relative safety of his soil. Still, Cain smiled. He may have lost today, but he knew he had shaken the sultan. The sultan was most likely feeling his own mortality. A feeling that would be exacerbated relatively soon, for his retreat would take him to the very road where Cain had sent the executioners.
Cain wanted to go after him, but a group of janissaries were gathering together to pursue him, and he knew he could not win.
“Come,” he commanded his bloodied men. “Let us ride ahead. We’ll suck them into the mountain pass and ambush them.”
The journey toward the mountain was rough, the sun not seeming to rise as thick clouds began swirling overhead. The men and horses were tired. Even Idimmu was languid under him. Then, as though God was doing all He could to slow their progress, a great storm shattered the sky.
“This way!” he commanded, steering his steed to higher ground through the forest thick with summer foliage, abandoning his initial plan. He knew how the weather could get here in Wallachia, and if God was angry, then it would get worse than possible with His wrath fueling it.
It was just as he thought this when he heard a loud cracking as a force rushed through the trees. He spared a glance toward the violent sound.
“Flood!” he yelled as a wall of solid water rushed at them, ancient trees falling as its dirty fingers punched their way through their trunks. The very hands of God clawed toward them at a relentless pace.
Behind him, one of the horses screamed, a frightening sound that had the rest of them frantic. Idimmu was foaming at the mouth, whites showing around his irises, and Cain knew the rest of the horses were having similar reactions.
Cain barely reached the high ground as the host of water barraged the ground beneath him. He looked down around him, where dirty rivers flowed like lava around his hill, carrying grown trees and other debris in their angry arms. It reminded him of the time of Noah, when God had flooded the numerous cities filled with people who had been corrupted by Cain generations before, taking things further than Cain ever would by becoming a truly perverse people. The scriptures told that the whole world had been flooded, but that wasn’t quite true. Basically, it had been the whole world as Noah knew it. But Cain hadn’t been on the ark, and he’d lived a relatively dry forty days, as had most of the world.
But now he wondered if there was another man of God on an ark somewhere, and if Wallachia would be the next place God would drown, ridding Himself of the people who thought of Cain as the Christ.
The floods trapped him there along with Seneslav and a handful of his soldiers. Those in the back had either been carried away or could be seen from where they had come, being slaughtered by the janissaries. Stuck there, he could only watch as the sultan’s forces butchered his men before escaping the bombardment of rain themselves.
It was two days before the rain calmed enough to start back for home.
Mist rose from the marshland that had been fields and meadows before the storm. The mist was so thick it hid the murky waters the horses waded through. Cain could feel objects hitting against his leather boots, like the dead in the river Styx, where the wrathful and sullen were punished by drowning in its muddy waters for eternity. When the haze finally lifted, he saw that he wasn’t far off, for as far as he could see, bodies were strewn, their armor or other debris anchoring a good portion of the men, women, and children to the meadow grass under a foot or so of water.
He looked down at one man’s swollen face, his eyes open and milky, his mouth open in a grimace. And he recognized him. Without even needing to look at the insignia on his armor, Cain knew that a large portion of his peasant forces had been caught in the storm, most likely on their way to him after staking their prisoners. He could only hope that the rest of his forces were alive and well, protecting Poenari Castle and his wife and infant son as ordered.
He was heading for that very castle when a messenger from Moldavia arrived with a call for aid. He wanted to ignore it as he had his own problems, but doing so would weaken Wallachia even further. So, instead of going back to his castle, he went to defend the town against the Turks. Despite the fact that he’d lost most of his army, he succeeded.
He fought and won another two major battles before he even got to think of home again. And then, it was only because he was making a quick stop there before going to the Hungarian regent to ask for money because he had run out of gold with which to pay his mercenaries, which were the only forces really worthy of being called his. So, exhausted, he once again made his way to Poenari Castle.
By the time he could see his castle’s outline on the horizon, he was tired and hungry, ready to eat a hearty stew and sleep in a plush bed. Possibly even get a rubdown from Nadia.
“Sire!” one man cried as he entered through the portcullis. “You’re alive!”
“Yes. And I’m hungry,” he grumbled.
“But sire,” the man called.
“I would like a thick stew.”
“But sire….”
“I’m going to rest. Bring it to my chambers. And tell my wife I’m waiting for her.”
“But sire….”
Cain turned to him, in no mood to argue with who he now realized was his head servant.
“Look, I’m tired, which is obvious by the way that I haven’t had you executed for arguing with me….”
“Sire, I have important news for you. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
He let out a grunt. “Can it wait?”
“No, sire.”
“Fine,” he said, squeezing the bridge of his nose to try to gain patience in case what the servant had to say was even a fraction as dire as he was making it out to be. “Tell me.”
The servant’s insistence turned to nervousness, and he began to knead his
calloused hands.
“The sultan left your brother and his army of janissaries in Wallachia, sire,” the servant said. “Your brother’s allied himself with the nobles, telling them it would be in their best interest to do so. They’re on their way here!”
“That was fast,” he grumped, for the first time noticing the hurried packing going on around him. Everybody was running around, doing all they could to pack provisions and valuables so Cain wouldn’t become destitute when abandoning the fortress. Still, he couldn’t believe that yet another force was using his time away to sneak up on him. That showed how tired he was that he had fallen for it. The other, feebler forces he’d fought and killed must have been distractions so the larger one could slip through unchallenged.
“How large is Radu’s army?” Radu the Handsome, the real Vlad’s younger brother, had been a gift to the sultan as well. However, over the years he had been molested by the sultan and now they were lovers…or so the rumors said. And by the favor Radu had in the sultan’s eyes, Cain believed it. Besides, that’s exactly why the sultan wanted tributes made out in boys. He had a thing for them, if you will. The younger, the better.
“Large, sire,” the servant answered.
“Fine,” he sighed, more in annoyance than anything else. “Continue readying the retreat. But pack lightly. If it can’t be carried on horseback, don’t pack it.”
“But your valuables, sire…” he protested.
“Are only valuables. They don’t help if you’re dead. Also, do you remember those shoes I made for the horses?” he asked, referring to shoes that would make the tracks they left look like a herd of cattle had gone that way, and not horses.
