He could not manage to do anything but keep moving forward. The sheer overwhelming wrongness gave everything a dreamlike haze. He could not feel his limbs, could only see. Could only smell.
At ten thousand, he was finally close enough to make out the gates to the inner city. They were open. The stakes there were so close together that he could not see between the bodies. It was a solid wall of rotting flesh on either side, only the sky above visible as he passed directly into the city.
No sounds but the harsh cries of the birds, and the quieter but far more piercing noises of beaks tearing flesh and sinew from bone.
Radu knew his horse was making noise, but he could not hear it. He did not know if any of his men were still with him. He could not stop, could not look to either side. He was compelled forward as though, by making it through this tunnel of horror, he could wake up on the other side back in a world that made sense. A world where the gate was locked, the walls were manned, and there was something concrete and understandable and human to fight against.
He reached the castle. Twenty thousand stakes, as near as he could tell. Had it been just this morning he resolved to never again view men in terms of numbers?
There, in front of the gaping castle gates and doors, on a stake above all the others, a final corpse.
Radu knew that cloak, knew those clothes.
He was still sitting on his horse when Mehmed reached him. There were new noises now—retching and curses and a few quiet sobs. Of course there were more men here. Mehmed would not have come alone. Radu did not know how long he had been here.
“Is that…?” Mehmed did not finish his sentence.
“Kumal,” Radu whispered. The man who had given him Islam as a balm and protection for Radu’s terrified young soul. The man who had become Radu’s brother in spirit and in law. The man who had come here in Radu’s place.
Kiril spoke. Radu had not seen him join them. He could not look away from where Kumal’s kind eyes had once been. Did they rot out, or had they been eaten? It seemed important to know, but Radu had no way of finding out.
“…all clear. There is no one here.”
“How can we fight against this?” Mehmed asked. “How can we take a country when she simply walks away from the capital? How can we ever defeat someone willing to do this”—his voice broke as he swept his arm outward—“just to send a message?”
“How could a woman do this?” Ali Bey’s voice was filled with equal parts wonder and disgust.
“She is not a woman,” a soldier near Radu said, spitting. Normally a soldier would not dare speak in the presence of the sultan. But there was nothing normal here. “She is a demon.”
“No.” Radu closed his eyes against the forest of corpses grown from the indomitable will of his sister. “She is a dragon.”
Outside Tirgoviste
IT HAD BEEN ALL Bogdan could do to persuade Lada not to dress as a Janissary and enter the city with Mehmed’s men.
She wanted to be there.
She wanted to see it.
To revel in their shock at an unguarded capital. To see the looks on their faces when they realized they could not fight her. To see their despair when they were confronted with how far she would go to protect what was hers. They could have the city with her blessing. After all, Tirgoviste was not Wallachia.
Lada was Wallachia.
Instead, she sat in the hills and watched from a distance, imagining it. Relishing it. And looking on in astonishment and delight as Mehmed’s army stopped, then turned around and headed back toward the Danube.
Finally Mehmed knew the truth. She would never be his. Her country would never be his. She had won. All it had taken was twenty thousand dead Ottomans on stakes.
And Mehmed thought she did not understand the power of poetic imagery.
Outside Tirgoviste
IT TOOK TWENTY THOUSAND stakes to make a single point:
Lada was not ever giving up.
Radu did not know which had shaken Mehmed more deeply: seeing so many of his men impaled in horrific defiance of Muslim burial traditions, or understanding that Lada truly had intended to kill him during the night attack.
Their retreat from the city had been necessary for both morale and health. At best, the tenor of the camp was one of unease. Radu heard a lot of rumblings about going home. They had to decide what to do before opinion shifted too far in one direction or the other and made the men unruly.
Mehmed had relocated to a far less ostentatious and more anonymous tent. They were there now, and had been for hours. Radu waited in silence next to Mehmed, who sat with his back straight, his eyes on the carpet. He picked mercilessly at the gold stitching on his robe.
“How can I fight this?” Mehmed finally asked. This was the first time since the night of Lada’s first visit that they had been alone. Mehmed seemed a different man. Radu, too, felt different. Far older, again. How many lifetimes could he age over the course of a few years?
“How can I fight this?” Mehmed repeated, but Radu did not think Mehmed was asking him. Radu suspected that, until the double blow of Lada’s true intentions and her horrific display, Mehmed had not actually taken any of this seriously. It had been more than a game to him, but far less than a war. He had faced Constantinople with religious determination. This had been all about getting Lada back.
And now Lada had made certain they could never forgive her. All hope Mehmed had held of reunion was as lifeless and rotten as the sentinels at Tirgoviste.
The camp had moved far enough away from the city that the smell was no longer making men sick. Radu had his own men—four thousand skilled and disciplined fighters—digging graves instead of riding into battle. But his men were not alone. Ali Bey, Ishak Pasha, Hamza Pasha, they had all spared as many as they could for the work of giving the Ottomans proper burials. Shifts were taken with solemn sadness. Some to dig, some to guard, and some to pray.
“We have Tirgoviste, but it does not matter.” Mehmed’s voice was as haunted as his eyes. “I do not know how to fight a war where tactics are useless, where numbers gain me no advantage, where gates are left open and cities are guarded only by the accusing dead of my people. Tell me how I can fight this.” He looked up, pleading.
“You cannot.” Radu knelt in front of Mehmed. His friend leaned forward, resting his head on Radu’s legs and curling in around himself. Radu put a hand on Mehmed’s turban. Radu’s fierce desire was gone, his passion dulled by the long, heavy wear of time and disappointment. But his tender affection and deep respect for his friend, for the sultan, would not leave him without a fight.
“If we stay,” Radu said, “we will have to chase her into the mountains. It will be months. Perhaps even years. She will wear down your men with time and starvation, sickness and frustration. We cannot fight on her terms and win.”
“What should I do, then?”
The eyeless face of Kumal rose unbidden in Radu’s mind. He closed his own eyes. It did not help.
Lada could not win this. Radu would not let her. “Go back to Constantinople. Burn the cities you pass, take whatever livestock is left, and, everywhere you can, exaggerate the numbers. Have Mara tell all her contacts what a great victory this was, how easily you restored Wallachia to its vassal status and put Aron on the throne.”
“But Lada won!”
“And who will tell that story? Her peasants? Her hordes of landless, nameless people? How will they travel to the pope, to the Italians, to the rest of Europe to tell of her victory? Rumors will spread, certainly, but all evidence will be in our favor. Our man on the throne in the capital. Our triumphant march home.”
“If we go, we leave Lada free to do it all again.”
“No.” Radu let out a heavy breath and smoothed the edge of Mehmed’s turban. “I said we could not fight on her terms. We fight on mine, instead. With your permission, I will keep my men and stay
behind to work. I can steal the country from my sister through the one thing she never could beat me at.”
“Archery?” Mehmed said, his dark attempt at humor acknowledged by both men with wry smiles that faded as soon as they appeared.
“Sheer likability. I will defeat her through manipulation. Politics. Saying the right thing at the right time to the right people.”
“She will fight you.”
“She can try, but she will fail. She tried to dismantle the foundation of a building she was still living in. She tried to be prince while taking apart the entire system that supported the prince. I will find every enemy, every boyar who has lost a son or cousin or brother, every noble who rightly fears for their place in her new world. I will use Transylvania and Hungary and Moldavia. I will steal every stone of support she has until she is standing alone in the ruins of the new Wallachia she tried to build.”
“And then?” Mehmed sat up, locking his eyes onto Radu’s. “She will never stop. She does not have it in her. And what foolish hopes I nurtured that she could return to us are gone.” Mehmed had been firmly against killing Lada. Radu saw that his position had changed. They had so much in common, his sister and his sultan. And now they hated with as much determination as ever they had loved.
The bodies were piling up because of it.
Radu knew he had faced this before, knew he had been too weak to make the right decision, knew he could not afford to do so again with so many lives at stake. It had been selfish of him, avoiding what had to be done. What Lada would do in his place. Radu could be strong for this one terrible task. It would destroy him, but he could no longer ask thousands to pay the price of his tender conscience. “Then I will do what must be done. I will finish it.”
Poenari Fortress
LADA LEANED OVER THE stone wall where it jutted past the edge of the cliff. The Arges River curled distant and silver beneath her. Her fortress was finally complete. It would be her refuge, her sanctuary, her rallying point. Breathing deeply of the cold air still wet with morning mist, Lada fortified herself with the same unassailable strength as her fortress.
There was work to do.
Her men and women were scattered through these mountains in groups of two hundred. It was easier that way, both logistically with camps and strategically with remaining hidden from enemies. Even if one camp was discovered, they would not decimate Lada’s reserves. She and her followers could hide here for months.
Not that she had plans to do that.
She turned to Bogdan and Grigore. She had promoted Grigore after his success in defending Bucharest, though he annoyed her. Everyone annoyed her for not being someone else she loved better. “Have word sent to the pope of our victory,” she said. “Make certain he knows what we did. Fifteen thousand of their men dead, and the entire army turning tail and running. Perhaps with these kinds of results, he will send us more than praise. Praise neither feeds men nor kills enemies. I want money and soldiers.”
Grigore shuffled his feet in obvious discomfort. “I cannot read. Or write.”
“Where is Doru?” Lada asked with a sigh. “He can write.”
Bogdan’s blocky features twisted in awkward confusion. “He died. During the night attack.”
Lada had not noticed. She waved, irritated with herself for not knowing and with Doru for dying. “Then you write it, or find someone who can. The pope must help us. I want real power behind us when we return to Tirgoviste. We have to plan for taking it back.” She knew the bodies had been removed and that a small force had been left behind. But surely they did not think a few thousand Ottomans could stop her. Not now.
Lada’s fingers tapped the sheathed sword at her side. “And I want all of the Basarab boyars’ men.” It had been the Basarabs, led by a man named Galesh—weak, faithless Galesh—who had held their forces back and cost her a true victory during the night attack. They were hiding somewhere in the mountains, too, using her same strategy. That would not work out as well for them. She had briefly considered killing them, but it was a waste of resources. She would just cut off the head and absorb the body. “I want all of the Basarabs’ men. Along with Galesh’s head. That is our first priority.”
“Clean your own house before helping the neighbors,” Oana said with a pleasant smile, passing Lada a steaming bowl of mush and a side of dried meat.
“Or, in our case, clean our own house before attacking the neighbors for trying to steal our things. We also need to retake Chilia from my cousin to teach Moldavia that our borders are inviolable.”
“Do you want to kill him?” Bogdan asked.
Lada frowned. She really was not certain. She could not blame King Stephen for his actions. She would have taken advantage of the same opportunity had their situations been reversed. There were several cities that passed between Moldavia and Wallachia every few decades that she would be happy to reclaim. And, in spite of his betrayal, she still liked her cousin. He reminded her of Nicolae.
She set down her bowl, her appetite gone. “We will deal with that when the time comes. Now, closer to home, do we have any allies in Transylvania?”
Grigore shifted, obviously uncomfortable with delivering bad news. “You are…not very popular there.”
“Still? Even after I sent the Turks weeping back to their own lands?”
“We can send some men and see.”
Lada nodded, then hesitated. “Perhaps do not send our best men. Pick some who are dispensable to go with you.” Her own record with responding to envoys was less than friendly. She did not want to gamble anyone who would be hard to replace.
Grigore’s eyes were wide and terrified. She could not understand why. “Oh,” Lada said, remembering her words. She picked her bowl back up and shoved it at him. “Not that you are dispensable. I am certain you will be fine. Eat something.”
She paced back and forth along the length of the wall overlooking the cliff’s edge. “Is there any chance of getting Skanderberg to join us?”
Bogdan shrugged. “I do not have any Albanian contacts.”
Lada waved a hand dismissively. Of course he did not. She wanted Stefan here. Where was he? Nicolae would—
She stopped pacing and rubbed the back of her neck. She needed her own Mara Brankovic. She even found herself missing Daciana. If Daciana had been raised with an education, she would be better than any of the men serving under Lada. It filled her with pulsing anger knowing how much potential was ignored among her people simply because of their sex. She tugged her hair off her neck and tied it back with a strip of leather. “Pick someone dependable and send him to Skanderberg. It is unlikely he can help—he is still fighting the Ottomans on his own land—but we may as well pursue every potential ally.”
“Speaking of allies, what of Matthias Corvinus?” Oana reached up to redo Lada’s hair, but Lada slapped her hands away.
“By his request, the men he sent were to be commanded only by Galesh Basarab. So I do not know whose cowardice and betrayal denied us our complete victory, that of the Basarab boyars alone, or Matthias’s, too?”
“What does Matthias have to gain from your loss?” Oana shoved Grigore’s untouched bowl back into Lada’s hands. Lada wrinkled her nose and forced down a few bites. Eating and sleeping were chores. She wished she could assign them to someone stupid like Grigore so she could continue her work all hours of the day.
She feared if she stopped moving, if she stopped plotting and planning, then…
She did not know. But the fear was constant and nagging, and the only way to outpace it was to never stop.
“What does Matthias gain? I do not know. A free Wallachia would only benefit him. It keeps his borders further buffered from Ottoman advance. But I cannot pretend to understand that man. If only his father were ruling.” Lada allowed herself a moment to imagine what it would have been like had Hunyadi been waiting in the hills. How tremendous their victory, how
complete the destruction of Mehmed’s armies.
Everyone would have remembered that night, and their names, forever.
But then again, had Hunyadi been fighting with her, doubtless all credit for winning would have gone to him. Only he would have been remembered.
The guards presented a panting boy covered in a light sheen of sweat. It was no small task climbing up the mountain to the fortress. Most of her prisoners had died hauling stones up.
The boy bowed low, holding out a leather satchel. “Letters, my prince.”
Lada took them. One, from Mara Brankovic, she tossed aside for later with a renewed surge of envy that she did not have her own Mara.
Radu. Radu would have been her Mara.
Her grip tightened, creasing various missives from people whose names she did not recognize. But at the bottom of the stack was a letter sealed with a coat of arms featuring a raven. Matthias. She sliced it open with her dagger.
Lada drew her eyebrows close, anticipating bad news. For once, she was surprised. “Matthias praises our victory. He claims to have been unaware of the Basarabs’ cowardice, and gives us the last known location of the men Galesh was leading!” Had he merely claimed not to know of the betrayal, Lada would have continued to suspect. But if the location proved accurate…Lada could kill the remaining boyars and take both their Wallachians and the Hungarians into her own ranks. “He is surprised by how quickly Mehmed ran.” Lada laughed. “Clearly Matthias does not know how deeply Mehmed cares about the cost of things. But Matthias is emboldened! He is willing to commit more men and money. He thinks we can retake the Danube, and deny Mehmed that passageway into Europe! With control of the Danube, we could damage his entire vassalage system….”
Lada lowered the letter, her mind spinning with possibilities. She had longed for Hunyadi at her side, but perhaps Matthias would prove the more useful of the two after all. He brought European connections. She brought ferocity and the ability to lead men against Mehmed. Together, they stood a real chance of freeing not just Wallachia but also the rest of the European countries that Mehmed held under his thumb.