“Ilie,” Vlad called.
His standard-bearer rode out from the ranks. The Dragon streamed behind him. When he reached level ground he reined in and brought his horse up onto its hind legs. “A-Dracula!” he cried, before ramming the shaft into the earth.
“Strutter,” laughed Gregor.
On the higher ground to the left, two trumpeters now stepped out and blew a loud refrain. The laughter and carousing ceased as, between the trumpeters, stepped another man. He too bore a flag, folded around a pole, and as he swirled it out all could see it bore no boyar’s arms but was all black.
“To the death!” came the mutter from thousands of throats.
As Ilie rode up, smiling, Ion said, “What other weapon do you take, Prince?”
Vlad gestured to what Stoica already held. “The Dragon’s Talon. My father’s sword to reclaim my father’s crown.” The weapon was passed over, slid into the sheath across his back. He mounted.
Gregor passed him a lance. “Your kebab, master,” he said. “Just needs some Wallachian mutton on it.”
Vlad looked at Ion. “Any last advice, old friend?”
“Yes,” came the grunted reply, “don’t get killed.”
“I will try not to.”
A bray of trumpets. On the opposite slope, a silver shape began to descend it. At a touch, Kalafat moved, too.
“Go with God, Prince,” Ion shouted, stepping forward. “But fight like your father—the Devil!”
Silence held as the two horsemen descended. The only sounds Vlad could hear were the sharp cries of swallows as they dived, the whispering of water in the stream, the snap of banners in the breeze. But when he was level with the pole and its Dragon, voices did come, shouting and repeating two names.
“Dan. Dan. Dan.”
“Dracula. Dracula. Dracula.”
Then, as if by some accord, the voices ceased as one. Vlad looked at the man a scant hundred paces away. The Voivode of Wallachia. His cousin. His enemy. The setting sun encased him, turning armor to fire.
Vlad glanced back, up, to the east. “He can have the sun,” he muttered, “for I ride the comet.”
A shout turned him back. Vladislav had spurred his horse, stolen ground. Couching his lance, Vlad put heels to Kalafat’s flanks.
A fast man could have run it in ten seconds. The horses, trained to the instant gallop, met in two. Sunlight flashed off steel armor, off steel lance-tip. Dazzled, Vlad sought a target, tensed for the strike.
He had never been hit so hard. The sound of it was loud, sudden, a shriek as metal point smashed into metalled shield; followed by silence and redness, and everything moving so slowly within it. His own shield smashing back against him then snatched from his grip, gouging finger-flesh through the glove because he was grasping it so hard; his feet leaving the stirrups; his back on Kalafat’s haunches, then off them; his feet hitting the ground first so it almost looked like he would stand up; falling, hard, face into the dry earth; toppling slowly onto his side. His eyes never closed, he could see faces on the hill, mouths wide in some shout he could not hear. But he saw them as if through a red, silken veil. Saw the black flag, lifted straight out by a breeze; not flapping, so slowly did it move.
The earth was moving. He felt it, the vibration, as sound partially returned—distant shouting, a horse’s closer snort. A shadow came between him and the sun, something sparkled and he rolled, so was able to watch the lance-tip plunge into the earth where he’d just been. The point gouged turf then was lifted, gone. He felt the vibration of hooves; a clod of mud hit him in the face and somehow that cleared his sight of the redness, brought back the sounds.
“Dan! Dan! Dan!”
No one was calling “Dracula” now. It brought him onto his knees. He looked at the brightness moving away from him, saw it resolve into man and horse, pausing now beneath the Eagle banner. There the man signalled, and a squire came running down the hill, carrying something, passing it up. Then the man—his cousin—let the something fall and Vlad saw what it was: an iron ball, studded with sharp spurs, an arm’s length of chain connecting it to the staff that Vladislav held.
“Ball mace,” Vlad said, aloud. And saying the name of one weapon made him remember another. As his cousin wheeled his horse and began to trot towards him, Vlad reached up and drew his sword from its back sheath; saw, gratefully, that it had not been bent or broken in his fall.
He was still kneeling. Couldn’t rise yet, could only hold the sword angled up before him. Vladislav was forced to bend low to strike, swinging the great ball round and round, finally sweeping his arm over in a great downward smash. Vlad could do nothing but slip to the side, sword angled down to avoid the full force that might break it and to guide the blow away from him. The ball drove into the left quillon, bending the hand guard, but not snapping it.
Then Vladislav broke off the attack, circled wide, giving himself room for the charge. He spurred his horse into it…but he had also given Vlad a moment. One to get to his feet, plant them solidly underneath him, shake the last of the mist from his eyes and, when the horseman drove at him again, swinging the ball in a great arc, to step in and not away, sword going square above him, tip dropping into his other, gauntleted hand. It was the chain that met it, not the ball that would have snapped the blade; the chain that, because of the force of swing and charge and the weight of the ball, swung round and around the sword. The moment it stopped, Vlad wrenched hard, threw his whole weight down, and jerked the horseman from his saddle.
In the fall, the strap that had held mace to wrist slipped, and the weapon dropped as the man landed. Vladislav was somehow still on his feet, stumbling forward, hand going to his sword. It was halfway from the scabbard when Vlad remembered that he still held his own sword in two hands; and then recalled, from the days of training with a Swabian fight master, one particular stroke. It had been one of the German’s favorites. It had a German name.
Mortschlag.
Taking his right hand from the grip, he put it to the blade, just below the wrap of chain. Then, bringing the weapon over in a high arc, he smashed the point of the unbent, right-hand guard into the top of Vladislav’s helmet.
A moment of stillness, neither moving. The only thing that did was the chain, unravelling at last from the blade, the ball falling to thud dully into the ground. And only when it had did Vladislav fall also, as if he would sit, his hand still gripping a sword just halfway out of its scabbard.
Vlad’s quillon was still embedded in the helmet. Straining, he twisted and finally jerked metal from crumpled metal. Then he reversed the weapon, took the grip again into his hand. The man before him did not move, head lolling forward. Leaning in, Vlad carefully placed the tip of his blade under the man’s visor and flicked.
The visor rose. His cousin’s eyes were open and Vlad could see that they were almost the same green as his own. He could also see that life was leaving them; and, even as he looked, a gush of blood flowed down the forehead and pooled in the sockets, reddening the green.
At last, the body fell sideways. Vlad knelt, putting the sword-tip into the earth so he could hang from the quillons, one bent, one straight. Only then did he become aware of the chanting, of a name. His name.
“Dracula. Dracula Dracula.”
He looked around. All seemed to be chanting it. His army. His cousins. He looked up. Swallows still swooped through the sky between him and the comet, careless of man.
Then Ion was there. “Vlad,” he whispered. “Vlad!”
Vlad let himself be lifted up. Others came, his close companions. Ilie hoisted the Dragon banner and waved it joyously. Gregor held Kalafat’s reins. Stoica handed him a wine skin and he drank deep. When he was ready, he nodded and the group marched up the hill between the two, now silent, armies, to the place where the black banner stood.
Vlad hadn’t noticed it before, because it was so small. But hanging over the flag pole’s tip was a slim circlet of gold, unadorned save for an emerald the size of a gull’s egg in its c
enter.
“Your father’s crown…Prince.” Albu cel Mare came forward, spoke in a different tone. The disdain was gone from his eyes. “Of course, it means nothing until the Metropolitan places it on your head and you are anointed in the cathedral of Targoviste.”
“It means…everything,” replied Vlad, reaching, grasping. He lifted the circle of gold high and cried out, “I claim my father’s throne. I claim his title, Voivode of Wallachia.”
Acclamation came, from all around. From both armies; even from the boyars, Albu in their center—at least, from those that remained, for Vlad could see that some had gone when Vladislav died, to offer their allegiance to the next pretender. But he was scarcely aware of the noise. Turning suddenly he buried his face in Ion’s chest.
Few could see. They were surrounded by large men. The cheering went on. In all their time together Ion had never seen him weep. So he just held him, glaring above his head at Albu cel Mare and the boyars and, through his own tears, dared any of them to mock.
– TWENTY-THREE –
Preparations
The Princely Court, Targoviste,
Easter Sunday 1457, nine months later
“Is all prepared?”
“All, my prince. All that I can do without knowing everything.”
“You do not need to know everything, Ion. And I only know a little more than you. For most is in God’s hands, and thus unknowable, is it not?”
Vlad grinned, looking again through the grille he’d lifted from the center of the door. Standing beside him, Ilona looked away from the view onto the Great Hall below, seen through this meshed window and up at him. “You are merry tonight,” she said.
“Why would I not be?” Vlad replied. “Has not the Metropolitan of our realm, Supreme Head of the Orthodox Church, crowned me ‘the Sovereign ruler of Ungro-Wallachia and the duchies of Amlas and Fagaras?’” Vlad pronounced the titles in a perfect imitation of the Metropolitan’s nasal squeak, making Ilona laugh. He turned to her. “And does not the belly of the woman I love swell with my first boy child?”
“You can’t know that,” she said, clutching at herself, feeling a kick. “And you’ve had only girls so far.”
“Ah, Ion, just because she’s lived in a nunnery for eight years she feels I should have lived like a monk.”
She struck his arm. But she didn’t care what he had done in their years apart. He had come back to her, something no one would have believed. He was hers again and their time apart felt like a day.
He winced, smiling still, looked through the grille again. “And here are my friends, the noblest men of my realm, gathered to rejoice with me. In my happiness. In Christ’s Resurrection.”
“Friends?”
“Of course. For do not friends help to achieve one’s desires? They are gathered here to do so.” Ilona clutched herself again and Vlad instantly guided her into a chair. “Rest, my Star. Let Ion stand there and count my friends.”
Ion took Ilona’s place, joined Vlad to peer through the spying hole. It was another thing that Vlad had borrowed from the Turk, for it was said that Mehmet spied thus upon his council, the Divan. And below, in the Great Hall of the Princely Court, were gathered the members of the Wallachian equivalent, the Sfatul Domnesc, their wives beside them, some with their eldest sons. If they had ever cared that Vlad might be watching them, that time had long past in two hours of feasting, while the Voivode dealt with affairs of state. Their cups were never empty, no matter how often they were drained. Jugglers and acrobats performed. Musicians played ceaselessly, brought from the Draculesti estates of the Arges valley, playing the peasant music of that region on tilinca flutes, the strings of the cobza, the deeper tones of the taragot trumpet. The boyars largely ignored them, preferring their own braying conversations, their loudly declared opinions—when their mouths were not stuffed with food. Platter after platter arrived—songbirds on skewers, whole pike stuffed with parsleyed bulgar wheat; most especially pig in all its forms. Blood sausages, ears shredded in vinegar, snouts filled with sweetbreads, roasts glistening with crisped fat. If ever there was a lull, any hungry boyar or mate could go and take a slice of cheek from the boar’s head mounted on a stake in the middle of the room.
The noise had grown from subdued murmurs to ceaseless bellowing. Nobles grabbed at serving girls, ignored by their wives who were busy dodging the flying food.
“Friends?” snorted Ion. “I see none. Only a few who are less your enemies, perhaps.”
“How very cynical you are, Ion. One would think you’d had a hard life.”
Vlad ran a finger up the long scar on Ion’s cheek. The finger tipped under Ion’s thick hank of hair, slid into the groove of the brand there, before Ion jerked his head away. “Voivode,” he said, stepping back, smoothing down his hair. He hated it when his prince was playful. It usually meant something was about to happen. Something he would have to react to.
An especially loud shout drew them back to the grille. A man, noticeable for his huge girth and thick neck, had somehow managed to climb upon the table at which he sat, one at the center of the feast and raised a little higher than the others. He was attempting some steps, for the musicians were playing a peasant dance, the mocaneasca. They could hear the wood creak beneath him, even above the roars and laughter.
“Careful, Albu.” Vlad frowned, his face only easing when the huge man, to a cheer, bowed and descended. “The Great One is enjoying himself.”
“Why would he not? He is better off under your favor than he was under the usurper. When all thought you would kill him, you made him richer.”
“Of course. Albu cel Mare is a power in the land, second only to myself. Such men must be…” He broke off, turned. “How do I look, Ilona?”
Her love was dressed in a doublet so dark most would think it black. But when he turned into the reed torchlight, its flames showed red in the quilted velvet. The garment, fitted loosely to conceal shoulders and chest grown huge from the ceaseless wielding of weapons, reached to mid-thigh, overlapping the hose striped in alternating crimson and black that gave his legs some length. The only adornment was beneath the left shoulder, where a dragon, no bigger than his palm, was worked in silver thread, its scaly tail curling up to wrap around its neck, the cross of St. Gheorghe in red along its spine.
The face itself had shed all its boyish softness in the fugitive years, and his hair fell in thick waves over his shoulders and halfway down his back. On either side of the long nose, his eyes were bright emeralds…almost dimming the one he lifted now that sat in the center of a golden star, itself set into a band of exactly three hundred river pearls—which she knew because she had sewn each one to the brim. The cap, made from the same velvet as the doublet, was crested with an ostrich feather plume.
Her eyes returned to his, to the question still in them. “Every inch a prince,” she said, starting to rise.
He forestalled her by kneeling. “You know I’d marry you if I could.”
She laughed. “Me? A tanner’s daughter? You can’t. Marriage is another weapon for you, to use against them.” She tipped her head towards the hall below. “Rather you should marry the lady who waits for me outside, whom you have cursed me with.”
“The Lady Elisabeta? If I am to marry a horse, I’d rather it was my Kalafat.” They both laughed. “But a prince’s mistress must have a lady from the court to ward her when…” He spread a hand over her belly.
“So it is true. Mistress or not, if we are to have a boy child…”
“We are.”
“Then he is able to inherit?”
“It is the law of Wallachia. Countless bastards have ruled here.”
The smile was only in his eyes. She laughed for both of them, sighed. “Then I will have to put up with my…horse.”
Vlad looked up. “Ion would marry you yet. Wouldn’t you, my friend?”
Ion nodded. “I asked her only yesterday. She refused me for the fortieth time.”
“See,” Vlad said. “You will
still have someone when I am dead.”
Her smile vanished. “Saint Teresa! Do not say that. Even in jest.” She groaned, gripped her belly.
Vlad turned to Ion. “Summon her woman.”
He made to lift her; she resisted him. “No, lord. Let me rest here till you have done all you must do here.” She glanced towards the Great Hall, and looked back in time to see the darkness in his eyes. And something else, close to his expression when they came together in love. A different kind of hunger.
“No,” he said, “I want you safe at your house. By God’s good grace, I will join you there tomorrow.”
“Amen,” she said, troubled. It was the first time he’d expressed any doubt about that.
The Lady Elisabeta came in, unable, as ever, to quite keep the disdain from her equine face. “My prince summoned me?”
“Yes,” Vlad said, rising, helping Ilona to stand. “Take my lady back to her house.”
“Prince.” She barely curtseyed, then stepped forward.
But Ilona clung to him, leaned close. “Be careful,” she whispered.
“Always.”
Elisabeta came, took Ilona’s arm, moved with her to the door. At it, Ilona paused, looked back. Her love was settling before the other door, adjusting a short, blue-black cape he had donned. Finished, he turned to Ion. “Open the door,” he said, “then go to your post. Wait for my signal.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Then Ion bowed. “My prince.”
Vlad stared at the door before him. Then he nodded, and Ion pulled the three bolts. They were greased and slid open soundlessly. The door opened, admitting a roar of noise, a forge-blast of warmth. Vlad stepped through. Ion shut the door behind him, leaving it unbolted, turned and walked to Ilona. “I would accompany you to your home…”
“To your post, Ion,” she replied, controlling the spasms that were starting to shake her body. “And I will to mine.”
He bowed, then left.
Elisabeta kept the door open, but Ilona did not pass through it. “Leave me here,” she said.
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