Vlad heeled Steel forward, and they crashed into the janissary line from behind. Shouts, and the crunch of armor collapsing, and the snap of bone. Enough chaos for Vlad to catch his mother’s eye, and motion for her to retreat.
Val, she mouthed, eyes darting to him.
Vlad shook his head.
She glared at him, long and hard, furious, but then she wheeled her horse and was away, Fenrir following her.
Malik joined him, and Cicero, and they pushed through the line, and then loose, pounding out of the camp, and into the dark of the forest.
~*~
They rendezvoused at the appointed place, a clearing on a rise a half-mile from the Ottoman camp. Vlad slid from the saddle and loosened his girth so Steel could catch his breath; let his reins out so the horse could drink from the trickling little creek that burbled to life amid the rocks here.
Eira left her horse in Helga’s care and stalked toward him, eyes fairly blazing. “You left him,” she accused, voice laced with a growl.
“So did you,” he said, stopping her with a hand on her shoulder. She trembled beneath his palm. “We had to leave him. Once we kill Mehmet, we’ll bring him back. Mother, I swear.”
She turned away from him. “When we kill Mehmet. You keep saying that.”
“We’ll do it.”
Cicero shifted back to his two-legged form, and pushed back the hood of his pelt. “They suffered losses tonight.” He sounded proud, still breathless from running.
“They did,” Vlad agreed. But he couldn’t smile. “But not enough.”
Because now they would retreat again. Every day, they fell back farther toward Tîrgovişte, and there, Vlad knew, would be the last stand.
~*~
A slave offered Timothée a cold, damp cloth, wetted from the creek, and the mage pressed it gingerly to his swollen eye with a hiss.
“What do you mean, you were attacked?” Mehmet demanded for the second time.
They were arranged on a patch of damp ground, a safe distance from the charred and smoking remains of the royal tent. Dawn streaked the sky with deep lavender and rich pink.
Val accepted the cup of water offered to him, and tried not to stare at the mage. The janissaries he’d attacked had kept quiet out of professionalism, and by virtue of being no more than servants. But Timothée had no such constraints, and no love for Val, either.
“I’m not sure,” Timothée said. “The wolf was leaping at me, but I had my fire directed at him…something crashed into me, and I blacked out. But there was so much chaos. Men and horses everywhere…” He shook his head, and then winced when it jostled his eye.
Mehmet turned to Val. “And where were you?”
“Trying not to get trampled, thank you very much,” Val said with his best haughty sniff.
Mehmet glared at him, but when Val only glared back, he turned away, calling for one of his viziers.
Val relaxed, sinking back against the tree trunk behind him, letting it hold his weight. His arms and shoulders ached pleasantly from the exercise of fighting, but he couldn’t revel in that soreness now, not while he was remembering his mother’s face, and that brief glimpse of Vlad, furious and bone-chilling atop his gray stallion, like a figure straight from Richard’s Crusade.
Had Vlad seen him? Did he still hate him?
Lost in his own wonderings, it took him a moment to realize Timothée was staring at him with his good eye. “What?”
“That was your mother, wasn’t it? And her wolf?”
His pulse leapt. He fought to keep his face slack. “Who are you talking about?”
Timothée’s lips compressed into a grim, flat smile. “I heard you. ‘Fen.’ And ‘Mother.’ She looks like you, though I didn’t expect her to be a warrior. I also find it surprising that she left you here, without any attempt at rescue.”
Val lunged to his feet, staggering a step when his tired knees tried to give out. He leaned down into the mage’s space, and caught him by the collar of his silk, European-style jacket. “Don’t you ever–” he started, snarling, and then bit back the rest of the words when Timothée laughed.
“Just as I suspected,” he said, unperturbed by Val’s grip on him, or the sight of his bared fangs. “You’re the son she doesn’t care about. The spare.”
“Shut up.”
“Or what? You’ll black my other eye? It’s time to admit it, Radu. Whatever you used to be to your family, you’re nothing now but the sultan’s whore. Perhaps it’s time to stop fighting that truth, and learn to embrace it.”
Rage boiled up, and Val knew what he wanted to do. Envisioned lunging, biting, sinking his fangs deep and draining this witch dry. Drinking in all his magic blood; would it taste like ashes? Would it burn his stomach? He wanted to claw at him, that same awful violent urge he’d felt the night he’d admitted that he was a dream-walker to Mehmet. That night had been this man’s doing. Val’s one escape, and it had been turned against him because of this creature.
But he remembered the spear butts, and the chains, and the brutality of Mehmet’s body against his own.
He released Timothée with a low roar and stalked away, shaking.
The mage laughed again, like he’d won something. “Just think: someday you’ll be prince.”
Val slumped against the tree and turned around, exhausted all over again, heart-weary. “Why do you care? You’re French. You have no reason to take a side in this war.”
He cocked his head, gaze going serious. “My dear fool. This here.” He gestured to the ruined camp. “Is not the war. Not the real one. The entire world is up for grabs. Some will lead, and others of us will align ourselves with the leaders with the best chance of winning. That’s what I’m doing here now.”
Val tried to digest that, but couldn’t. He had a dozen questions, none of which he trusted Timothée to answer truthfully.
He turned away.
Around them, the camp slowly began to right itself as the sun finally crested the horizon.
42
THE FOREST OF THE IMPALED
Vlad stood at the main gate of Tîrgovişte, staring down the road that led to the southeast, heat mirages shivering above the packed brown dirt. Late summer, and a dry spell. Sweat rolled unheeded down his temples, and down his torso, gluing his clothes to his skin. Though they’d harried, and sickened, and killed, and fought to the last, Vlad’s army was a ruin, and Mehmet was still coming.
Behind him, the city hunkered down and prepared for invasion. He heard common folk shouting to one another, fastening shutters, gathering children. A baby cried. Many were hitching carts and wagons to horses and mules, preparing to head deeper into the hills, to caves and monasteries, where they might seek shelter from the Ottoman monolith that couldn’t be stopped.
He couldn’t explain it, but Vlad still didn’t feel that he’d failed, even though something close to panic tightened his throat. Patience, he thought, and glanced down at the ring on his hand. His father’s. The sign of the Dragon Order.
Poor Father. He’d tried. He’d wanted to be a good prince, to protect his people, and his family.
No, a voice whispered in the back of Vlad’s mind, one fraught with rage and childhood pain. He didn’t try to get you back. He didn’t care about you.
Father had tried. But trying didn’t count for much when you were dead in the ground. When your heir was buried alive. When your enemy raped your youngest, your baby, and turned him into a sad puppet.
Trying would not slay a dragon.
Beside him, voice soft, hesitant, Cicero said, “What are you thinking?”
When Vlad turned his head to look at his wolf, he found Cicero staring levelly at him, with his good eye, full of faith, and affection, and unwavering loyalty.
“I’m thinking that no one has ever had such a loyal Familiar. Thank you, old friend, for everything.”
Cicero’s brows lifted, and his mouth opened on a sound of surprise. “Vlad.” Don’t say goodbye, his face silently pleaded. Don’t say we
’re finished.
“Go and see if you can find me some woodsmen,” Vlad said. “We need to fell some trees. A great many trees.”
~*~
Mehmet sent a Familiar, first.
A scout spotted a small party, only three. An old man, the boy said. With a beard, and strange clothes.
Fen had described him already, after the night raid; he’d carried the red flecks of burns across his cheeks and nose for days before they’d finally healed, and complained of blurry eyesight. Even his great red brows had been singed. “An unimpressive fellow. Gray-bearded and slight. I’d know him again in an instant.”
The boy described him as such, and when Vlad glanced over at Fenrir, he found his eyes big, and going glassy with the urge to shift.
“You think it’s him?”
“Yes.” More a growl than a word.
Vlad stood, and called for his armor.
He took Cicero, Fenrir, and Malik with him, though his troops, those still standing and mostly whole after these brutal months of campaign, asked to come. But no. He would not take a company to do a job he could do himself.
“Stay here. Guard the city.”
Cicero fretted. “Last time…” he said, face pained, remembering the mage that Romulus had sent during Vlad’s first, failed attempt at rulership. When the wolves had frozen, minds going blank, as the mage had forced her way into their minds, and tampered with their free will.
Vlad cupped the side of his neck. “I won’t make you come with me. But I will protect you from him. I promise.”
Cicero closed his eyes, ashamed, and whimpered softly in the back of his throat, an injured sound. “I’m the Familiar. I’m supposed to protect you.”
Vlad leaned in, and pressed their foreheads together. “We protect each other.”
Cicero tried to protest again.
“I’m not your master,” Vlad said. “We’re pack, and when one member stumbles, the others pick up the slack. I have you,” he swore. “I have you.”
They went out on horseback, all of them, and rode a quarter mile, through Vlad’s new forest, to meet the enemy. When they arrived, the mage and his party sat still in the saddle, horses reined up, their gazes affixed to the spectacle that Vlad had prepared for the sultan. The only sound was the caw and croak of ravens, and the occasional whimper, when the birds pecked at something that wasn’t quite dead yet.
Vlad knew the mage straight off; could smell him, the stink of char. He took immense satisfaction at the sight of the man – gray, and lined, and unimpressive as Fen had said, yes – with his head tipped back, his eyes wide, his mouth open.
Vlad halted his horse, and the others did so a half-pace behind him. They stayed mounted, though, when he swung down out of his saddle, and left Steel with a quick pat to the neck.
“Where’s your sultan?” Vlad called in Turkish.
The man blinked, and dropped his gaze, hastily trying to school his features. His smile fell short of blandly pleasant, though. “My Lord Dracula. It seems I have the advantage of you. My name is Timothée.” He executed a short bow from horseback.
“I didn’t ask what your name is. Where is Mehmet? What sort of sultan sends three men to face a foe?”
The mage chuckled, tightly. “Rest assured, he lies only ten miles or so behind me. He will come. But he’s sent me to make one last bid for peace.”
“Peace.”
Slowly, awkwardly, the man climbed down from the saddle. He was even less impressive on foot, short, and plump, and grandfatherly. If he hadn’t reeked of smoke and singed hair, nothing about him would have projected a threat.
But as it was, all of Vlad’s hackles were raised as Timothée walked toward him, and stopped only an arm’s length away, hands folded together in front of him. He smiled up at Vlad, truer this time, skin around his eyes crinkling. He projected confidence, now, unaccounted for. And Vlad felt a push. Gentle, exploratory; another mind trying to nudge against his own.
“My,” he murmured. “You really are savage, aren’t you? The stories have been impressive, but…” His gaze flicked up, over Vlad’s head, touching the tips of the spears that cast long shadows across the road. “Seeing it in person is an entirely different experience.” He focused on Vlad once more, their gazes locked, and pushed again, harder this time.
Vlad felt it like a chill rippling across his skin, but nothing more. “There’s nothing you can say that will foster a peace. Peace was never a consideration when I was a boy, and hit over the head; when I was stolen from my father. The chance for peace died with my brother’s virginity.”
Timothée flinched at the word.
“Go back to your master. Tell him to come back himself, and we can treat with steel.” He rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. “I have nothing else to discuss with you.” He started to turn.
Timothée conjured a palmful of fire. All pretense of a smile fell from his face. “Surrender to me, and it will be easier for you.” He sent another push – a shove – at Vlad’s mind, struggling, clawing to get inside it, to bend him.
Vlad’s grip tightened on his sword. “You shouldn’t have come.”
~*~
“We march,” Mehmet said, after three days had passed, and Timothée had not returned. “He was useless anyway.”
But Val saw the spark of fear in his eyes.
They broke camp, and horses were saddled. The force that readied was not the force that had struck at Belgrade at the outset of this campaign; more than half sick, a third dead, those still healthy only so in the loosest of terms. When he gazed across them, Val didn’t see crack troops in gleaming steel; he saw limping, dirty, exhausted soldiers worn nearly to the bone, their helms dented, their armor patched, their clothes tattered.
For his own part, he knew an excited nervousness that left him reeling, sick to his stomach. The last time he’d been on this road, he’d been astride his favorite pony, trying to keep up with Vlad and his leggy gelding, Father and Cicero riding at the head of their small party, bound for Gallipoli, and a doomed meeting with Sultan Murat. It had been so long ago…but he knew these trees, the scents of sap, and cold mountain water; knew the sigh of the wind in the branches, and the red of the dust on the road.
This was home.
And he rode back to it now wearing a silver collar on his throat, and the brand of ownership on his soul.
“With me, Radu.”
Val didn’t have to ask why. With Vlad childless, Val was technically his brother’s heir. What better statement than to ride into Wallachia as a conqueror, with the Wallachian heir by your side?
Caught between hope and despair, Val couldn’t keep relaxed in the saddle, and his mare fidgeted and danced the whole way.
Until…
Four miles out from Tîrgovişte, Val smelled them.
They rounded a slow bend in the road, passed a screen of trees, and then he saw them.
Tall, pointed-tipped wooden stakes lined the road ahead, two and three deep on either side, packed in close together, their shadows lying long across the ground. And on each spike: a body.
Their company halted a moment. Val heard Mehmet’s breath leave his lungs in a short, sharp gust beside him.
He held his own breath against the stench. The stink of putrid corpses rotting in the sun, bloating, and bursting, and spilling. Ravens dove and wheeled and cawed, feasting, a black cloud of them hovering above the grisly spikes.
Val’s stomach tightened, but he didn’t look away. “Vlad the Impaler,” he murmured.
Mehmet growled, and spurred his horse. “Keep going.” He smelled like sweat, and fear, though. And the horses didn’t like the gory spectacle any better than the humans.
Val’s mare balked, and he had to stroke her neck and whisper endearments until she calmed enough to heel forward.
Mehmet wrestled with his stallion, spurring him again and again, sawing at the reins when the beast tried to rear.
The army followed along as softly and silently as any army had ever
moved. Awed. Frightened. They’d been to war, and they’d seen unspeakable things – but no one living had ever seen a thing like this.
Val guessed the bodies had been hanging about a week, faces blackened, great chunks of flesh eaten away by the birds. Still, there were flies, heavy droning clouds of them. And the heat mirages shimmered up from the road, baking skin to leather, worsening the stink.
But as they rode, the corpses became fresher. Still mostly intact. One even had its eyes.
And, here, it was easier to tell, from clothes and faces, that these were Ottoman dead. Prisoners of war.
Mehmet pulled to a stop, suddenly, gasping, and Val followed his gaze.
Timothée the mage. Mouth open in a silent scream, blood still wet on his lips. A raven landed on his graying head and reached down to pluck out a beady eye with one quick peck.
Val searched the other faces. He recognized envoys and viziers sent to treat with Vlad. Generals, and janissary captains. Everyone who’d gone missing, everyone presumed dead, they were all here.
And they were still a mile from the city walls, and the impaled stretched on and on, unending.
Val’s breath rattled in lungs gone empty and reverent as a cathedral. He waited for the fear, for the revulsion – but it wouldn’t come.
And then…
Slowly, gaze haunted, Mehmet turned his horse around.
Val started in his saddle. “What are you doing?”
Mehmet stared off down the road, back the way they’d come, past the ravaged bodies of his own men. A heartbeat passed, and then another. Very quietly, the sultan said, “Retreating.”
Val looked toward Tîrgovişte.
Retreating.
Home.
Retreating.
He smiled. It took him a long moment, his face aching, to realize that’s what he was doing. Then he wheeled his mare and followed.
The order went down the line: turn back, fall in, we’re leaving. Soldiers complied with relieved sighs.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 59