Murad stepped back to his forge and began to don the gloves he had removed. “He seems to have forgotten what the word ‘hostage’ means…in any language. He must learn the consequences of that.” As he spoke, he lifted the heated tongs from the coals.
“Father!” Mehmet called excitedly. “May I—”
“Your skill is with plants not metals, my son,” Murad said sharply, “and when I can teach you how to turn a seed into a cucumber, you may come and work my forge.” Pulling the tongs close, he studied the glowing metal at their end. “And while I do not desire to punish, do not the commandments of Moses, honored among prophets, speak of the sins of fathers and their consequences for sons?” He stepped back towards Vlad, metal glowing before him. “Dracul must be sent a message. A clear one.”
Behind the door, Ion quivered. He had a dagger at his belt. Should he not leap forward now, stab Murad, save his friend’s eyes? He would surely die, but die a hero if Murad did, too. Yet his hand never reached to his belt. Nothing moved, apart from a tear down his cheek, as the Sultan bent, bringing his own face close enough to Vlad’s for the molten glow to light them both.
“So I say this to you, Dragon’s sons. Both of you. Your lessons here are ended. Others begin. You will be taken to the fortress of Tokat. You will have different aghas there, learn different subjects. Less refined. Equally edifying. And your father will learn through your suffering the consequences of betrayal.” He lifted the tongs away, stood straight. “Take them,” he said.
The men who held Vlad jerked him to his feet. Manacles were produced, clamped to his wrists. The men who held the still weeping Radu turned him towards the door.
But then Mehmet stepped before them, raising a hand to halt the guard. “A boon, father,” he cried.
Murad turned back. “Ask it.”
“Are there not different ways to send the same message?” He looked across at Vlad, smiled. “I can think of nothing more beneficial than the lessons that await him at Tokat. But this one…” He reached out, laid a finger on Radu’s chestnut curls, moved it down, tracing the nose, leaving it lie upon the lips. “Is there not more than one way to bend a Dragon to one’s desires?”
Until that moment, Vlad had felt as if some djinn had him in a binding spell. It was not the men that held him but his own will, frozen. This was his fate, to be blinded by a Sultan. There was nothing he could do to save himself. Then his fate changed, and again, he could do nothing but accept it. But when someone else was threatened—his brother, his blood—the spell was shattered.
With a roar, he bent and wrenched his manacled hands from the grip of the man on his left, straightening suddenly to drive the top of his head into the jaw of the other, who fell back. The first man reached for him again, but Vlad brought the metal manacles sweeping up and across, smashing them into his face. He collapsed and Vlad was free, moving towards Mehmet, aware of every little sound now as he had been aware of none before—his brother’s weeping, every man’s cry, the creak of bowstring pulled hard back by men in the shadows.
“Wait!” Murad cried, arm lifted in command.
The arrows were not needed. Vlad was stocky, shaped like a bull. But even he could not charge through the half-dozen men who leapt forward, punching, kicking and finally hurling him to the ground, an arm’s length from his target.
But Mehmet had stepped back, readying himself. And though he still had a hand on Radu, he was no longer holding him tight. Certainly not tightly enough to stop the younger Dracula from grabbing the jewelled handle of the knife in Mehmet’s belt.
“Leave me be,” Radu shrieked, drawing it, slashing the blade across the reaching hand.
Mehmet screamed. More guards rushed in. Radu was disarmed, grappled to the floor.
“Are you badly hurt, my son?” said Murad, coming forward again.
“Badly enough,” Mehmet whined, showing the slash across his palm.
Murad reached, closing his son’s hand, holding it. “You will live. And we have learned: even the youngest Dragons have teeth.” He smiled. “Do you still want him?”
Mehmet nodded, a gleam in his eyes. “More than ever.”
“Then you shall have him.” Murad raised his voice. “Take him to my son’s saray. The other to the wagons. He will leave immediately. The rest of you will go. Only Mehmet will stay.”
“Vlad!” Radu cried.
On the floor, his brother’s cry came to him through the fog where blows had sent him. He tried to surge up through it, to fight again. But the Sultan was instantly obeyed, as ever. Men lifted both boys and rushed them from the room.
In a moment, all were gone. All save the Sultan and his son; the two shadows releasing, just, the tension in their bowstrings. And Ion, still frozen behind the door.
For a moment, silence. Ion was sure they would hear his breathing, the fall of his tears. Then footsteps came, soft on the dirt floor. A man entered with a goshawk on one fist.
“Well, Hamza agha,” said Murad, “is my bold Zeki ready to fly?”
“He is ready. To fly for you. To kill for you, enishte.”
He calls him enishte, “uncle,” Ion thought. Then he remembered how Hamza was only recently appointed a falconer. Before that, the handsome tanner’s son from Laz had been Murad’s cupbearer. And more, it was said.
The Sultan pulled a piece of raw meat from the pouch at Hamza’s waist, luring the bird from his falconer’s glove to his own, the jesses effortlessly transferred. With the bird settled, Murad looked up. “And this other hawk, the Wallachian. Can you make him as biddable? Will he, one day, kill for me, too?”
“I…think so, enishte. I have some ideas.”
Murad chuckled. “Oh, I am sure you do. You were always the cleverest of my boys, nephew.” He glanced to the side, and affection left his face. “I have often urged my son to study you.” While Mehmet colored, his father looked back. “These ideas? Would you like to share them?”
“It is as you say, lord. Dracula is a hawk. There are many ways to train one. Some with harshness. Some with love. Some with one after the other. As in this case.” He sighed. “I believe we can leave the aghas of Tokat to deal with the first.”
“I wish I could see that,” murmured Mehmet.
Murad frowned slightly, though not, it seemed, at the interruption. “It disturbs you, Hamza? You regret the lessons that the hostage is to learn?”
Hamza shrugged. “Sometimes, with a proud bird, the only way to break it is to soak it with water, then sit out the entire, freezing night with it. I regret that, too, though I sometimes recognize the need.”
Murad leaned forward, lifting Hamza’s gloved hand to the fire glow. “‘I am trapped,’” he read aloud. “‘Held in this cage of flesh. And yet I claim to be a hawk flying free.’” He looked up. “This is what he sewed for you?”
“Yes.”
Murad read again, silently. “Jalaluddin. He has taken some liberties with the verse.”
“I told him so, enishte.”
Murad let the hand drop. “He has a schoolboy’s love for you, does he not?”
Hamza shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“And you for him?”
Hamza said nothing.
Murad smiled. “Well, you spoke of how some birds need love after harshness.”
The two men had turned towards the forge so that the Sultan could read. Mehmet, striving not to be excluded, had come closer. Ion saw that the three were almost a screen to the archers in the shadows. So he edged around the door.
Eyes followed him. Not human. The goshawk was no doubt a gift from some vassal-prince to the north, for it flew in the same beech forests from which Ion came. He moved, praying silently for a countryman’s silence.
It was not kept. “Kree-ak, kree-ak,” came the hunting call.
He leapt. And his knees, weakened by shaking, gave…and saved his life, for an arrow flew a finger’s width above his head and shuddered into the door.
“Hold!” Murad’s shout was to the second archer, w
ho had cleared the screen of bodies and was about to shoot. “Guards!” he called, and five men rushed in, to seize the fallen Wallachian.
“You,” said Murad, turning to the first archer, “are banished from my service for your miss. And you…” he continued, turning back to Ion, “come here.”
As the disgraced archer left, Ion was dragged forward, pressed to the floor. Murad bent, lifted him by the hair. “A youth,” he said, “and dressed like a student. Do you know him, nephew?”
“Yes, enishte. His name is Ion Tremblac. A boyar’s son from Wallachia, sent to be Vlad’s companion.”
“Indeed.” Murad studied him for a moment. “And now he is turned spy.”
Ion looked up into the Sultan’s gray eyes. He knew his death was in them. Strangely, it made him less frightened, now that it was certain. “No spy, Murad Han. Only a loyal servant to my lord, my friend, Vlad Dracula.”
The words were defiantly spoken, perhaps harsher than he intended. All tensed, waiting for retribution. But Murad’s voice was soft when it came. “The boy has courage, Hamza. Is he as gifted as the one he serves?”
“No. Not close. But then, few are.”
Mehmet stepped forward. “He was one of those who conspired to hurt me upon the jereed field, father. And a spy must be silenced. Give him to me…”
A raised hand halted the words. As if he hadn’t heard them, Murad continued, “It would seem a pity to extinguish such a spark. And he may be useful to us.”
“How so, enishte?”
“Does he know what they do at Tokat?”
Hamza nodded. “All know. At night, at the enderun kolej, they frighten each other to sleep with tales from those dungeons.”
“Good.” Murad smiled. “Our message to the Dragon will be better delivered by one of his own people. This boy can tell him what is happening to his sons. He will guess what Mehmet intends for Radu. He will know what lessons the elder will learn at Tokat. He will tell of our restraint in punishing them…for now.”
The Sultan reached again into the pouch at Hamza’s waist. Pulling out more meat, he fed it to the bird still resting calmly on his fist. “Mehmet, see that everything is provided to our messenger for his journey. It is time Hamza and I tested the mettle of this bird. To the hunt!”
He moved to the doorway. Guards enfolded him on each side, the one archer joining from the shadows, arrow ever notched on bowstring. At the entrance, Murad paused, looked back at his son who had taken a step towards the prone Ion. “Remember, Mehmet. The messenger I send must be alive to speak.”
With that, he was gone, Hamza and most of the guards with him. Leaving just the two who held Ion. And Mehmet.
Ion stared up into Mehmet’s brown eyes. The shape was the same as his father’s. But in Mehmet’s there was not a trace of humor or compassion. He raised a hand now as if to strike, then slowly lowered it, finally grasping Ion’s hair, moving it gently away from his face.
“Your life is spared, dog. So you can bark your message to your master.” He smiled. “But that does not mean the message must only be in words.” He looked everywhere around the forge. Finally, his gaze settled on the burning coals. “Hold him tight. By the head,” he snapped.
He was obeyed. As the men pulled a struggling Ion forward, Mehmet went and searched among a rack of iron rods. Then, with a cry of joy, he pulled one out, shoved it into the fire. Donning a pair of gloves, he spoke. “You know, dog, that each Sultan has his tugra—a unique symbol to affix to documents, like the seals of your princes. Well, sometimes we need to burn our mark on our property—our sheep, our camels, our horses. I thought that when my father took back the throne from me, he got rid of my brand.” He turned the iron in the glowing coals, then lifted it, blew on its end, which glowed a deeper red. “It appears that he did not.”
There was nothing Ion could do. The hands’ grip was unbreakable. He could only close his eyes, pray that the fate of Brankovic’s blinded sons was not now to be his own. Murad had said that he must be able to speak. But to see?
It was the relief of a moment when the heat came to his face, when he heard and smelled the crisping hair. Only that one moment though before the agony came as Mehmet scorched his tugra into Ion’s flesh.
– ELEVEN –
Tokat
In a world forever dark, Vlad had no way to mark the passing of time. The enclosed wagon that had brought him to Tokat had admitted some light. He’d seen seven dawns through its slats. But they had blindfolded him when they’d taken him out, carried him along stone corridors, down endless flights of stairs. And there was not the slightest chink in the walls of his cell. He knew it only by touch, an exploration that had taken mere moments. It was a sloping cylinder of rock, twice his height deep. Halfway up it, a shelf of sorts jutted out on which he could perch, just able to lie upon it to sleep if he curled his knees up to his chin. But if he did sleep, sooner or later he’d fall off, wake to the scraping of his flesh on rough stone, feet or hands plunging into the filthy straw that lined the stone floor and held all his excrement.
There was no way to count the days by his feeding. It could have arrived at the same time every morning or only twice a week. It did not vary. The thinnest of cold barley soup, strings of what could have been meat floating in it; a piece of stone-flattened bread on which he could smell the mould. He ate it all anyway, drank the mug of rank water that came with it. It was too little but he had to keep as strong as possible for whatever lay ahead. He knew the stories of Tokat, of the torture cells. Starving would not help him survive.
He never saw who brought the food or even heard footsteps, just the circular trapdoor opening fast, the food banging against the walls as it was lowered in a net, the door slamming shut. He’d shout, plead, threaten. There was never a response. He’d sink upon his shelf and shiver. He still wore only what he’d slept in at the enderun kolej, and the cold was the dark’s constant companion.
The only thing he’d sometimes hear, in the brief moments the trapdoor was open, were distant screams.
Once, in his fury, he scooped a handful of his own shit from the floor, waited, more patiently than he’d ever waited for the most elusive of quarry. When the door opened, he hurled it with a great shout. The cry it provoked was as gratifying as the cry Mehmet had given when Vlad’s jereed took him in the back. But the net was snapped up, the door replaced. And he was able to mark the time in one way at least—by the ravenous hunger that grew and grew.
In the perfect darkness, light only came in dreams indistinguishable from wakefulness. Then, one day or night, voices began to emerge from the harsh brightness, speaking a language he didn’t understand, like the twittering of starlings. He squinted against the glare, tried to make out faces through his tears. He never could.
Until, one day or night, into his dream came the shuffle of a chain, the scrape of wood on stone. Light, dull real light, not vision light, the shape of a head before it. A word spoken, one he understood.
“Come.”
Hands reached, hauling him up. He crouched, the two men on either side supporting him because he’d been unable to stand straight in the time he’d been below the ground. He squinted up at them, eyes half-closed against the glare of reed torches. He was dragged, toes scraping the uneven flagstones, trying to push off against them, to get some feeling into his feet. He did not know what awaited him down these dank corridors. But he wanted to stand and face it.
Yet the first thing he faced was water. His guards—thin-faced, turbaned, with fingers of bent steel—flung him into a cell. At its center was a stone trough. The silent men stood back, arms folded, waiting.
Vlad stumbled forward, dipped a hand. The water was barely warm, but it felt to him like the hottest of hamams after the frigid world he’d inhabited. There were kese mitts, too, of rough woven cloth and not of the first use or cleanliness, but when pressed against his skin…ah! Peeling off the rags his shalvari and shirt had become, Vlad began to wash. The water turned brown from his shit, pink from the
blood that came from the scores of scabbed-over flea bites. But the blood reassured him. It meant he was alive, which he’d often doubted in his cell. And being clean meant he was a man again. Sometimes he’d doubted that, too.
When he was done, a thick wool gomlek was thrown at him, the knee-length tunic joyously warm after his summer rags. Sandals, too, which he slipped onto his tattered feet. Then, like the teeth of a millwheel turning, he jerked his body up piece by piece until he stood straight for the first time in an age of darkness. As soon as he did, the silent men were on him, gripping his arms, pulling him down the corridor to another low doorway. Bending, they flung him into the room. His weakened legs made him stumble, fall to his knees. It was darker there too, airless, almost like his cell. But there was light and his gaze went to it. To the red glow of a brazier.
When his eyes had adjusted, he looked around, saw that he was in a windowless vault, large enough so that the ceiling was lost to shadow…though not what dangled from it: pulleys, chains, nooses. More things were piled against walls—metal rods, tongs, a rack of knives. There was what looked like the frame of a divan, tipped up on its legs. Beside it stood the skeleton of a suit of armor.
His gaze went back to the brazier. Two shapes had appeared behind it, one large, one smaller; or perhaps they’d been there all the time. As he looked, the larger shape moved, thrusting a metal bar into the coals. It caused an eruption of sparks, a sudden increase in light, and Vlad saw that the two shapes were men.
One stepped forward. “Welcome, princeling. Welcome to Tokat.”
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