by Dan Davis
He looked us over again, still not trusting my word.
“We come straight from the battlefield,” I explained. “Hence our appearance.”
“There has been a battle?”
“Not much of one. We have defeated Radu Dracula and have taken him prisoner.”
“I see. I am sure that his brother is pleased. But what does this have to do with us?”
I hesitated for a moment and then gestured for the prisoner to be brought forward. Walt and Rob picked him up from the bottom of the boat and carried him up to me. Dressed in a commoner’s undershirt and hose, he was bound with rope around the wrists and had a leather bag over his head. I nodded and Walt pulled the bag off to reveal Radu Dracula’s face, swollen and covered with dried blood from his broken nose.
“Abbot Ioánnis, I am pleased to introduce Radu Dracula.”
The abbot recoiled and the monks behind cursed and muttered until the abbot silenced them with a glare.
“Why bring him here?”
“The new Voivode of Wallachia will be a man named Basarab. He is a Danesti and he will have Radu killed. Basarab was placed on the throne by King Stephen of Moldavia, who will also have Radu killed. We preferred that he live. And so we left a defaced body in Radu’s armour on the battlefield and brought him here in the hopes that you would keep him safe.”
The abbot stared at me. “Why in the name of God would we do that? We survive here in peace precisely because we stay out of the dynastic wars of the Wallachians. If we are discovered harbouring a former prince, we shall not survive here much longer.”
“No one will know. It is a secret known only to my men and yours.”
The abbot was amused. “Secrets always come out, Richard.”
A disturbance behind him made us turn and I saw the old librarian, Theodore, coming down to the dockside with a hand outstretched on the shoulder of a young monk walking before him. He walked with the aid of a long stick, his unseeing eyes staring into nothingness.
“Did I hear Richard Ashbury?” the old man said, his voice raspy from his aged throat but still deep from his barrel chest.
“You did, Father Theodore,” I called. “How delighted I am to see that you are still alive.”
The abbot bristled but Theodore chuckled as he came to a stop beside him and his guide sidled away. “And did I hear you say you have Radu Dracula as your prisoner, here?”
“You have good ears, father,” I said. “He is here beside me. Angry beyond words.”
“Free me,” Radu said, his voice thick from his wounded face. “Free me, brothers, and it will rain gold on your house, I swear by—”
I punched him in the stomach, knocking the words from his mouth. Walt and Rob held him aloft, else he would have collapsed.
“He can offer you nothing because he has nothing to offer. He has lost his kingdom. But I would very much like to speak with him and I hoped you could find space in your house and in your hearts for a poor wounded soldier.”
The abbot scowled. “It would not be an act of charity to put my brothers here in mortal danger.”
I sensed it was not going well so I decided on a final throw of the dice. “Would it change your mind overly much if I told you that Radu here was a strigoi?”
The abbot and all the monks stirred and looked to each other, disturbed indeed.
“Even if that is true,” the abbot said, his voice almost a growl. “Why should that concern us?”
Theodore placed a massive hand on the abbot’s shoulder. “We would be glad to welcome Prince Radu into our house. I think we have a spare cell, do we not, Ioánnis?”
The abbot dismissed his brothers and led us through the monastery down into a corridor with a row of four cells, one of which he led us into. There was a bed, a low table with a lamp on it, and a high, narrow window at the top of the far wall. I pushed Radu into it, forcing him down to his knees, and was followed in by the abbot and Theodore. My men and a handful of monks crowded outside.
“Periods of solitary contemplation are required for all of us,” the abbot said. “Especially for novices. You will be comfortable here, Radu.”
“There is something I must make clear,” I said. “Being that Radu is a strigoi, he will require regular cups of human blood for consumption.”
Radu snarled at me from his knees. “Your men are all strigoi also, Englishman. And you are worse. You are the father to them all! But you will be defeated. My master will come for you, traitor, he will come and he will—”
I kicked him in the guts and he fell forward and curled into a ball.
“We will have no violence here,” the abbot said and moved to help Radu onto the bed.
Theodore had a smile on his face.
Neither of them asked me about Radu’s accusations nor questioned the need for him to drink blood.
“I must return to my men. King Stephen will be looking for me. Before I go, I must question my prisoner.”
“If he is in my care,” the abbot said, “he is not your prisoner but my ward. And I refuse to allow you to harm this man, whatever he may or may not be.”
“I must question him,” I said, staring at the abbot. “And I will question him.”
“You will leave, sir,” he replied.
Theodore cleared his throat. “I must say that I am most curious to hear what the strigoi has to say. You can question our new brother here but only if I am present to hear what is said.”
I shrugged. “Fine with me, father. I will try to avoid spilling too much of his blood.”
The ancient monk smiled. “That will not bother me.”
Abbot Ioánnis straightened up. “Yes, do what you will and then go. But I will have no part in it.”
“Do not mind him,” Theodore said. “He is young and is burdened by responsibility for the safety of his brothers.”
“He is a good man,” I said.
“Indeed he is. I wonder, Richard, are you?”
“I try to be. Although, I cannot deny that I have also done much evil.”
“Haven’t we all,” Theodore said as he closed the door and latched it. He stood before it like a sentinel. “You may begin.”
I nodded and turned to Radu who was now sitting on the bed, his bound hands before him. “Hold out your hands,” I commanded him and proceeded to saw through and unpick his bindings until his hands were free.
“William always said you were foolhardy. And I see it is true,” Radu said, rubbing his wrists. “For I am now free to kill you.”
I smiled. “You are free to try.”
“Perhaps I will bash the old man’s head in before you can stop me. Do you think the monks would let me stay after that?”
I looked at Theodore. “I expect that old man knows a trick or two. Besides, you are not a killer, Radu.”
He scoffed, outraged. “I have killed a hundred men.”
“Perhaps you have but the fact remains, you are not a killer. I know a vicious, murdering bastard when I see one and you are not it. Your brother, now. Vlad Dracula is a killer through and through, down to his marrow. He can kill women and children without flinching. Even I could never compare with such a monster.”
“Even you,” he said, sneering. “Even you, with your three centuries and thousands of deaths at your hands? I doubt there is any who can compare to your evil.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps there is only one who has surpassed me. Your master.”
Radu spat on the floor at me feet. “Your brother.”
“Where is he?” I asked. “Why did he not come to help you keep your throne?”
Radu said nothing but looked up at the narrow window high on the wall.
“I shall tell you,” I continued. “William is in the east with his brother in arms, Sultan Mehmed. His truest friend in all the world. I hear that they lie together like man and wife. Tenderly, so it is said, and with great passion.”
“They hate each other!” Radu snapped. “They are at war with each other. It is not love. It was never lov
e.”
I shrugged. “Not what my agents tell me.”
“Your agents are wrong. William holds Mehmed in contempt and Mehmed has grown tired of William.”
“But William has won him all Thrace up to Hungary, or near enough.”
Radu scoffed. “Mehmed is sick of Europe. His armies are ground into dust here.”
I smiled. “Because of me. I am the one who has ground his armies into dust. I smashed his armies at Varna, at Kosovo. I killed thousands even at Constantinople. I defeated him at Belgrade, smashing his army into nothing. I killed fifty thousand of his soldiers when he invaded Wallachia. All because of me. And now he despairs.” I laughed.
“William could have defeated you a dozen times!” Radu said. “But Mehmed would never let him lead. He was ever jealous and held William back. But no longer.” Radu smiled. “Soon, you will feel his wrath unleashed.”
“Mehmed will unleash William?” I said. “How?”
Radu shrugged and looked away, a smug smile on his bloody lips.
“Listen, Radu,” I said, crouching down across the room from him so that I was level with him. “Look at me, Radu.” He turned his eyes to mine, smirking. “You mean to say that Mehmed is going to give William an army of his own? But I thought they now mistrusted one another, so why would he give William an army? You are lying.”
Radu shook his head. “It is a chance to prove himself. To finish the conquest once and for all.”
“And if he should fail, what then?”
He laughed. “He will not fail.”
“Where will he lead it?” I watched Radu closely. “To Moldavia?”
Radu’s mouth twitched. “He knows where you have been hiding. You and your pathetic little immortal company. He knows and he is coming for you and for Moldavia. You will not stop him. If you had any sense, you would run. But William knows you too well. He knows that you will stand and fight and that will be your downfall.”
“Yes, William is the one who runs. I have defeated him before and each time he has fled like the coward he is.”
“He could have killed you,” he said. “A dozen times, William could have killed you but he did not because you are his brother and he loves you and he wants you to live.”
I smiled, genuinely amused. “He has lied to you about that just as he has lied about everything else. He lies. It is what he does. He lies to all the poor fools who he subjugates and forces to do his bidding.”
“Not me,” Radu said. “He will come for me. He will find me and he will come for me here and he will kill all these monks and then he will kill you.”
I glanced at Theodore who stared into nothingness.
“He will never know you are here. No one does. William will hear that you died in a grubby little ambush in the woods and he will believe it because he will know that you make for a pitiful soldier. And he will not mourn you. He will not give you a moment’s thought.”
His face was twisted in anguish. “Kill me, then! Why keep me?”
“I am sorry, Radu. You may prove useful one day. And I think that your brother would rather you live.”
Radu sneered. “That bastard will have me killed the moment you tell him where I am. He cares nothing for me, nothing at all.”
“You would be surprised. He feels guilty for abandoning you when you went over to William. Perhaps he would like to make amends.”
“Nonsense,” Radu said but quietly.
“I may be gone for a good while,” I said, standing and looking down at him. “I suggest you make the most of your time in solitary contemplation.”
His head snapped up. “I will kill you one day, Richard Ashbury.”
“I told you, Radu. You are not a killer.”
He sat slumped on the bed and I called my men in. We trussed him up again, this time tying him to the bed post by a length of rope. He gave us no resistance and did not look up when I said farewell.
Outside, Theodore turned to me with a smile on his face. “A most illuminating conversation.”
“I must hurry to King Stephen and from there prepare Moldavia for an invasion.” I pointed at Radu’s cell door. “He will require a cup of blood every two or three days to stop him falling into illness and madness.”
“I think we can manage that.”
I peered at him. “You do not appear surprised or disturbed by any of this. You or the abbot. Are you not afraid of him? I said he was not a killer but I fear he may harm you, all of you, in an attempt to flee this place.”
“We may be monks but we all answered this calling from a question we heard out there in the world. I am not the only former soldier amongst us and between you and me, Richard, we have a couple of ruffians here who would make even this William knock his knees in terror.”
I smiled. “I doubt that. Remember, he has the strength of ten men.”
Theodore leaned in. “But we, Richard, we have the power of God.”
16. The Battle of Vaslui
1475
The Sultan had long been on campaign in the east and north of Anatolia against the forces of the powerful warlord Uzan Hasan. By all accounts the eastern nomadic horsemen were numerous and ferocious but they were not enough to overcome the discipline and sheer firepower of Mehmed’s army.
There was now nothing to stop the Turks in the east and they ranged around the Black Sea to threaten the flanks of the lands of the Golden Horde and the Genoese outposts around the coast.
But the core of Mehmed’s forces came back to Europe and William began his move to crush Moldavia. The Sultan even ended his siege against the Albanian city of Shkoder in the north in order to free up more soldiers for William’s great horde. Those soldiers were not in a fit state, so our agents said, and we knew that it would take at least a month to march them to Moldavia. But Mehmed expected his soldiers to do extraordinary things and they usually managed what he demanded.
“I did not wish to tell you until I was certain,” Eva said. “But now one of Stephen’s men, that Genoese merchant with the nose, has confirmed it.”
“Confirmed what?” I asked them.
We had a very large, very old house in the Moldavian city of Suceava that served as our residence and headquarters for the sluji. Our hall was almost large enough for every soldier to squeeze inside for meetings and ceremonies but that morning it echoed to the voices of the Order of the White Dagger only.
“Confirmed that the Turkish army assembled at Sofia and now marching here is being led by Zaganos Pasha.”
I nodded. “So Radu was not wrong. William commands the army personally? And where is Sultan Mehmed?”
Stephen shrugged. “Possibly Constantinople. Possibly Edirne. But not at the head of this army, certainly. And it means that William walks into our arms once more. If he joins his men in battle, which he no doubt will, he is in danger. This benefits us.”
“It means more than that,” Eva said. “This perhaps confirms Radu’s claims that William and Mehmed are indeed now in conflict about the direction of the empire. If Mehmed has given William one final chance to complete the conquest and if we defeat it, then William may have to find a new master.”
Walt grunted. “Or kill his current one and take over.”
“The Turks would not follow him,” Stephen said. “They hate him enough as an advisor. If he attempted to rule directly, the empire would collapse.”
Walt opened his arms. “Even better.”
“Let us not get ahead of ourselves,” I said. “We have to defeat this army first. Do we know how big it is?”
Stephen glanced at Eva. “The precise number is not yet known,” he said, “as more are coming in to support the campaign but from the amount of grain they have requested, it cannot be less than a hundred thousand fighting men.”
“Likely more,” Eva said. “A hundred and twenty thousand, probably.”
I whistled. “He has winkled out the biggest army the Turks have ever fielded, has he not? What soldiers does he have?”
Stephen unrolle
d a long piece of parchment and peered at it. “By meticulously calculating the cartloads of straw my Bulgarian merchant has been commanded to transport through Rumelia, it is like that—”
Eva spoke over him. “Thirty thousand sipahis for the core cavalry. But also Bulgarian, Serbian, and Tatar cavalry in support.”
“Infantry?” I asked. “The Janissaries are the Sultan’s personal troops so presumably we do not have to contend with them.”
Eva and Stephen shook their heads in unison. “Janissaries for the core,” Stephen said. “Thousands but we do not know how many. They are supported by an enormous number of azabs.”
“Guns?”
“Many in number,” Eva said. “Every size of field gun that can be transported has been assembled. More than Moldavia has in the entire kingdom, certainly.”
“This is a conquering army,” I said. “With William in command, it is one to be feared. How long before they reach our southern border?”
“They have dragged in thousands of Bulgarian peasants who are at work clearing forests and shovelling snow. They are building bridges across the marshlands in the south.”
“Bridges across the marshes? Remember when they attacked Wallachia, their cannons were bogged down and they could not move. So, William has learned his lesson. They will move swiftly, for all the great number of the host. Do we really believe he will attack in winter and not spring?”
“He’s coming now,” Stephen said. “Perhaps he means to catch us unprepared. Perhaps crossing the marshes is easier when they are frozen. Perhaps the Sultan has given William a deadline that he must meet. But they are coming now. No chance he maintains a force that size for months of winter while they sit and do nothing.”
“We will have to share all of this with King Stephen,” I told them. “He will not like it.”
They looked at each other, throwing meaningful looks. I knew they were each urging the other to speak.
“For the love of God,” I snapped. “Spit it out.”
“King Stephen will like this even less,” Eva said. “It seems also that Basarab III Laiot has welcomed a large detachment of Turks across the Danube and has himself committed seventeen thousand Wallachian soldiers to the army.”