by A D Seeley
“You did?”
“Yes. I know much about The Order of the Dragon.”
Most people believed that The Order of the Dragon had been created to unite the Christians against Ottoman rule. But that wasn’t the truth. The truth was that they were a sect created with the mission to destroy Noseriatif Tremokolio. They wanted to purge the Earth of anyone against Christianity and God, and Cain was God’s most powerful enemy.
“How is it that you came to escape from the sultan?” he asked the boy, feigning concern as he pulled a juicy leg off the rabbit. “He doesn’t strike me as someone to let a prince go.”
The boy licked his dry, bleeding lips as he watched Cain ready their dinner. “I’m on my way to take over the throne of Wallachia on the sultan’s orders.”
Glancing up with his eyebrows arched, Cain asked, “Then why are you alone? If the sultan was putting you on the throne, then surely he would have sent you with an army to help you?”
He handed a leg to the boy, who immediately began tearing into it like a starved cub.
“The Ottoman soldiers escorting me were slain,” the boy answered, his mouth full of the meager rabbit. “Only I survived.”
Inside, Cain was revolted. If the prince had been the only one to survive, then it was because he had been a scared little mouse. He had obviously hidden from the attackers instead of standing up to them, as a prince should do. A prince should be at the head of the army, the first to draw blood in battle. Not the one running away from it as though his life was more important than those of his men.
He wanted to punish the lad, but Cain had to keep up appearances for now, so he could not let his revulsion and anger show on the outside.
Attempting to ascertain the situation—to figure out why the sultan would let the prince go—he asked, “So now you’re on your way to become ruler, not on your own, but under the command of the sultan?”
With a nod that threw his greasy dark hair into his puffy eyes, the prince replied, “Yes. There are more Ottoman forces. I’m on my way to find them so they can help me take the throne from the Hungarian regent’s chosen prince.”
At this, things began to make sense. Vlad’s father had been the Wallachian prince for, more or less, the past eleven years only because of the sultan’s support of him that was bought with the selling of this boy and his younger brother. But with Vlad II and Mircea II both dead, there was an empty throne that needed filling. Hungary was most likely attempting to put their choice prince from the rival house of Dăneşti on it as their vassal, basically giving them the country. And the sultan had only the option of the three living sons of Dracul to put on it to represent his empire. Three pathetic choices. But the other two were said to be quite weak and impressionable, so this boy here must be the best of three evils.
It almost seemed like a lot of effort just to own the destitute country, but upon greater thought Cain realized that it wasn’t really about Wallachia at all. It spoke of much greater things, for whoever had their prince on the throne—Christianity or Islam—may finally win the larger battle raging on that had been going for centuries.
Cain listened to Vlad’s story for hours before saying, “I will see you safely to your destination.” Then, with a small bow, he added, “It is a matter of honor for a fellow noble.”
“Thank you,” the boy said with a large smile, licking the remnants of the rabbit fat from his filthy fingers as though each drop of grease would fill his stomach that much more—Cain had made him eat it slowly so that it wouldn’t make him ill. It was well-known that if you were starved and then ate too quickly when you had access to food, most often you would throw it up, and he didn’t want the prince to taint his camp with vomit.
Cain smiled back, though his wasn’t sincere. He had known the prince would not refuse a man the size of Cain. He was worth more than a hundred trained soldiers.
Once the mangy prince had fallen asleep on the long meadow grass, Cain took out his sword, Excalibur, and stabbed it through the prince near his heart—not through it because he didn’t want the boy to die too quickly. As he pulled the blade free, he felt a great spray of warm blood hit his thickly-bearded face.
“Why?” the dying boy asked, his voice a strangled whisper as one of his lungs filled with blood.
Cain put a hand to his own brow to wipe the trickles of blood to keep them from falling into his eyes. Then, with a feral snarl, he licked away the blood that was dripping onto his lips. The coppery taste was delicious and exhilarated him so—it had been far too long since he’d lived a life full of bloodshed and war, and that was just what he wanted at the moment.
He was certain that the excitement stirring his own blood was evident to the dying prince—he probably appeared to be a starved animal himself.
“You are not fit to rule,” Cain finally said, curling his lip as he ripped the prince’s ring from his thin finger, pulling the twine free that had been twisted around it to make it fit the emaciated boy. Sliding it onto his pinky, Cain said, “But I am. I will take care of your beloved Wallachia.”
He watched as the prince took in his last breath, wet with blood. Then, before dawn had even arrived, Cain packed up his things and left the scant body for the animals to pick at.
It didn’t take him long to claim the throne using the Ottoman forces who hadn’t met the real prince. Originally, he hadn’t planned to use them, but he needed them to vouch for him in front of a group of nobles who had alliances with the sultan. However, because the sultan, Mehmed II, had meant for Vlad to rule only as a proxy, Cain had no power. Not really. Yes, after being accepted to the throne, the Ottomans had left and he’d been given a small contingent of Wallachians to keep up appearances, but only one of the soldiers would he actually consider professional. His name was Seneslav, and he was like Cain in many ways.
The first similarity was that they were both giants, though Cain was defined, and Seneslav’s mountainous muscles were just that: bulk meant to pulverize men’s skulls. Likewise, he enjoyed killing as much as Cain did. He was a true warrior.
As is wont to the greatest of warriors, Seneslav shaved his head bare to keep it from falling into his eyes in battle. Everything about the warrior, from the dozen or so weapons he had on him at all times, to the very type of leathers he wore, were all decided upon by what would be best in battle. He was a dedicated soldier, which was why Cain liked him. Meeting him was a fortuitous event in an otherwise dreadful situation, for he had expected to shed the sultan and come to true power once he took the throne. But he didn’t. “Vlad” didn’t even have access to the miniscule riches and armies of Wallachia other than the few men who didn’t truly answer to him. Instead, he was forced to think of another way to gain what he so desired.
As only his man, Alberto, and the Turkish sultan knew, Cain ruled the Turkish forces, though the sultan had never had the pleasure of meeting his master. Maybe now was a good time for a visit. He could march in, introduce himself, and leave with the forces he needed to take the worthless Wallachian throne from Hungary’s proxy, even though they were owned by the Mokolios as well. He owned all of Europa and more than a few other territories, though secretly as well.
Why separate the two cultures? Alberto had asked that question only once, and Cain had told him why. Because the Ottoman and European cultures were so vastly different, they needed the illusion of separation. Also, he felt that it kept things interesting: his men forever dueling in wars and squabbles that they didn’t truly understand. Forever fighting someone you believe to be your enemy when they are, in fact, your countryman. When you live a long time, you need to find things to entertain yourself with.
But if he did that—if he told the sultan who was posing as Vlad III Draculea—then the whole point of keeping the Ottomans separate from the Mokolios would be lost. Yes, he’d own the heart of the world under one known entity, but that defeated the whole point. He was here for a challenge, as well as to find ways to defy God, and that hardly seemed the way to do it. Besides, h
e liked making each of the countries that belonged to him self-reliant, and forcing them into his pocket wouldn’t achieve that. People just did better with their delusion of freedom. He’d learned that countless times over the several millennia he’d lived.
Since that was out, another option he’d pondered was to call upon the Mokolios to help him fight the Turks. But, again, this was a problem. If he did this, it would cause his own troops to fight one against another which, for any of his Mokolio forces that perished, would be a waste of gold and resources for all the training they had undergone—as it was, he would already be sacrificing his money and expendable men on the Ottoman side and didn’t need to double the amount of his losses with the elite Mokolio army that was made up of the best soldiers from all over the world.
On the other hand, he didn’t care if he sacrificed his newly acquired Wallachian forces, as inadequate as they were, against his own loyal, powerful ones that made up the Ottomans. Right then he wanted a different life, a challenging life, so if he—the poor Wallachian prince—had to go to war with his more powerful self, then he’d gladly do that to show God how unscrupulous he indeed was. Besides, the Wallachian forces were basically farmers with no skill in combat. They were men without merit and completely expendable for his enjoyment.
As he warred with his own mind about what to do, he used the belief of the people that he was in command to tout his “power” into building up and training the professional “soldiers” he had been given, attempting to make them as even a shadow of the Mokolios’ strength. However, before he could accomplish this, the regent of Hungary—most likely on the Mokolios’ orders—invaded Wallachia with a much larger force and took it over, putting his prince back on the throne. Cain couldn’t be angry with him when he did so, for he didn’t know that “Vlad” was really his ruler because they had never met either.
In response, as only a smart man would do when unmatched, Cain fought his very nature and fled to Moldavia, which was connected to the north of Wallachia and the east boundary of Transylvania. There he stayed with the murdered Vlad’s uncle, Bogdan II, while plotting his next move.
But Bogdan quickly became tiresome, so Cain killed the old man with his own two hands, telling everyone else he’d been assassinated. He should have waited to gain some power first, but he hadn’t wanted the weak man to overthrow him before he could raise his own army. For, although the man had been smart and had known Cain wasn’t his nephew, he hadn’t known his true identity and just what he was capable of, and he needed to die before he figured that out or moved against Cain himself. Besides, there was another reason he had moved sooner than he should have; he had become tired of hiding like a common outlaw. He was strong. He wasn’t a coward.
The man’s death activated phase one of Cain’s plan, which was to manipulate the very same regent who had taken the fake throne from him in the first place. Because of Cain’s knowledge of the Ottoman Empire, he snaked his way into bed, so to speak, with the Hungarian regent, becoming the regent’s advisor on all things Ottoman.
So, when the regent gave him large forces of his own to use against the Ottomans while he himself marched his own men to Belgrade, Cain feigned humility and piety, accepting the responsibility as though it was an honor he had not thought would be bestowed upon him by The Order of the Dragon to fight the “evil forces of Islam.” Honestly, he was so tired of Christianity and Islam warring with each other that he had some serious fantasies of just killing them all. Then he could live in peace.
Instead of doing what he truly desired because it wouldn’t help him in the long run, he marched his newly-acquired men to Wallachia, where he defeated the reigning prince—the one put on the throne by the Hungarian regent—in hand to hand combat. The prince hadn’t been happy at first to find out that the man who had given him the throne had sent Cain there to take it from him, but he didn’t live long enough to have it bother him for long.
Cain found things very different in Wallachia from how he had left them when he’d run from the very prince he’d just killed. Yes, he may have the crown, but Wallachia was in worse shape than ever before. The constant warring had resulted in rampant crime, the agricultural production had fallen to an all-time low, and any kind of trade had virtually disappeared. The economy was a mess, as though a windstorm had come through and destroyed everything in its path. Because he felt that a stable economy was essential to resisting any external forces, he set to task to repair it, making that his priority. Not only that, but he wasn’t going to bring such a crumbled country into his fold to drain his resources without giving anything back.
He immediately began building new villages and teaching farmers how to get the most from their crops. Once he had the economy on its way to a recovery, he put out the call for mercenaries to hire as his personal guard. Many answered, but the one who had him smiling was Seneslav, loyal and ready as ever.
“What are your plans, sire,” he asked with a large grin, his teeth rotting from lack of care.
“I realize where I went wrong the last time around,” he told his servant.
“And where is that?”
“Before, the people didn’t fear me….”
Chapter Seventeen
***
And so that was the string of events that had brought Cain to this very hillside in the midst of a raging storm. Fear.
As though to answer his very thoughts, a great rumbling from the heavens shook the very ground beneath him; God’s own way of showing his anger and distaste for Cain’s actions.
In answer, he laughed to the sky as though lunacy had taken over.
“What?!” he yelled into the rain, doing his best to control the frightened animal beneath him as he gestured as best he could toward the fields of death. “You don’t like my gift for You?!”
Another shattering of thunder answered him as the sky lit up the field below, where hundreds of corpses stood at attention like witnesses at an important trial, the stakes forced through them holding them so.
“Then You should never have cursed me! All I do, every person I murder, their blood is on Your hands! For You made me the man I am today!”
A smell of pure, unaltered heat invaded his nostrils and his every hair stood on edge moments before an intense whitish-blue flash hit a tree a few feet from him, a booming noise so much louder than anything he had ever heard smashing around him along with it. The horse reared up and darted off so quickly in response that not even an expert equestrian like himself could stay mounted.
Pulling his aching face from the mud, he snarled at the sky still thick with the smell of ozone.
“Oh, is that how we’re going to play it?” he said, a threat in his tone that put force in his words though they were barely above a whisper. “Fine then. Remember that I warned You.”
Fighting with the muck, he got to his feet and lifted his hairless face to the dangerous sky so the large buckets of rain would wash the grime from his skin. He then slogged through the sludge toward the ruins of Poenari Castle built on the precipice of craggy rock, its profile that of a bony spine ripped straight from a man’s skin, the nerves and clumps of flesh still sticking to it in a deliciously grisly way.
Upon taking power this time around, he had immediately rounded up the less influential members of the boyar political group—nobles with alliances to the sultan—along with their families. With their alliances, Wallachia technically belonged to the Mokolios, but they were a burden, not an asset. That was why he was working so strongly to build up the worthless country. He would build it up until its economy was as grand as this castle had once been, and would be again.
Immediately upon rounding up the boyars, he had sentenced the elderly and sick to death by impalement. It was a gruesome way to die, having a well-oiled stake passed through the anus and up, out of the mouth, but it was successful in making everyone fear, not only his wrath, but, like the name of his sword Excalibur had once struck terror in the hearts of men before the legend of Arthur had made it
heroic, people would fear his very name. Or, more accurately, the name of Vlad III Draculea, for not even Seneslav knew his given name.
“What’s taking them so long?” he grumbled to the muscular foreman upon arrival to the skeletal fortress. “I want my castle rebuilt before I’m sixty. I should be inside with a blazing fire. Yet here I am, soaked. I am unhappy. You know what happens to those who make me unhappy.”
He swore that the forty-something foreman defecated himself at the thinly-veiled threat. Cain liked when people were that afraid of him. That was something he had learned about himself back in the early days of his campaign to own the world.
“They’re doing their best, sire,” he said, his battered hands shaking as his eyes glanced in the direction of the nearest field of rotting corpses. “They’re weak from lack of food.”
“Their best?” he asked, his chin high. “Look at them. They’re a waste of air. A waste of my resources. And you,” he said, turning to the foreman, “as the man in charge of their progress, are very close to upsetting me.”
Cain didn’t bother to pay attention to the foreman’s reaction. Instead, he watched what was left of the boyars and their families.
What once had been a group of humans obsessed with power and finery, whatever the cost—including selling out their own people—now consisted of worthless beasts. They still wore the clothes they’d been captured in, so a piece of silk here, and a flash of elaborate broidery there, spoke of where they had come from. Yet, the bits of slop and yards of tears in the fine linens, and the brownish-red blood soaked into the shredded threads, spoke of how far they’d fallen.
Some had fallen farther than the others and had no clothes at all, the cloth long ago having come apart and disintegrating to show their flesh, which in turn was ragged and blistered and covered in filth. Those few only had their own goose bumps and shivers to protect them from this relentless rain.