Up until now they had only fought more Bulgars, brief flashes of blood and screaming and swords breaking up monotonous riding, camping, sleeping outside.
Lada was proud of her men. They were as good as or better than any that Hunyadi rode with. And he noticed. After their canyon victory, Hunyadi frequently consulted with Lada and asked her advice.
She had studied his tactics, but only on paper and in theory. Watching him in the field was something else entirely. He always thought three days ahead—food, water, defensible locations. But he was not so set on plans that he could not respond with lightning-fast force to an unexpected threat or opportunity.
This Janissary group was one such opportunity. Lada looked uneasily at Nicolae next to her.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I think they could have been me.”
She looked back at the men they stalked. He was right. They were the same—boys stolen and turned into soldiers who served another land and another god.
“We let them go, then,” Lada said. She could not help imagining Nicolae on the other side of the meadow. Or Bogdan. Or Stefan, or Petru, or any of her men. She did not want to feel this companionship with the Janissaries, but it could not be avoided.
The Janissaries came to a sudden stop. Lada tensed, fearing they had discovered her ten men tracking them. Instead, they shifted direction and started heading straight for Hunyadi’s camp.
Lada gestured sharply. Her men ran, silent and low to the ground. She pantomimed drawing crossbows. Still running, they fixed their bolts. If the Janissaries did not already know the camp was there, they would in a few minutes. Hunyadi would be caught unaware. Lada gestured to her men to head back to the camp.
“Go warn them,” Lada whispered to Nicolae.
“What are you going to do?”
“Delay them, idiot. Now go!”
Nicolae disappeared into the woods. Lada stood. “The sultan is the son of a donkey!” she shouted in Turkish.
The Janissaries turned as one, arrows already nocked to bows and pointed in her direction. She had cover, but it would not take them long to find her. She darted to another tree. “I am sorry. I should not have said that about the sultan. It is an offense to donkeys, which are perfectly serviceable creatures.”
Lada peeked around the tree. Their weapons still at the ready, the Janissaries were searching the dense foliage for threats. Lada laughed loudly, the sound ringing through the trees. “Are you Janissaries? I have heard that Janissaries are not fit to lick the dust from spahi boots.”
“Who is there?” an angry voice shouted, while another cursed her. Their leader barked an order for them to be quiet. Then he called out, “Show yourself, woman!”
“Why do Bulgars make terrible farmers?” she answered.
There was silence. She peered from behind the trunk, amused to see the Janissaries trading confused looks. Most of them had lowered their bows when no attack came.
“What?” the commander shouted.
“I said, why do Bulgars make terrible farmers?”
One of the Janissaries in front sheathed his sword. “I do not know.”
The commander barked at him for silence, but the Janissary shrugged. “I want to know.”
“So do I,” another called. Most of them nodded, a few grinning at this odd forest interlude.
“Because they confuse the pigs for Bulgar women, and cannot bear to slaughter their wives.”
A chorus of snickering laughs broke out.
“Who are you?” one of the men called. “You should not be in these woods. It is not safe.”
A volley of arrows rained from the sky onto the men.
“I know,” Lada said, coming from behind the tree and letting her shaft join the others.
After, when the work of killing was done, Lada took no pleasure in the white-capped bodies on the ground. Stepping over the corpses, Hunyadi found her and clasped her hand in his. “How did you think to distract them like that?”
She lifted a shoulder as they walked back toward camp. “They are soldiers. They depend upon routine, and anything out of the ordinary will give them pause. And they are men. They hate to be insulted, but they love to hear others mocked. And they are fools, because they cannot imagine that a woman alone in the woods would be a threat.”
Later, around a campfire, Lada sat next to Hunyadi. Nicolae was on her other side. The men traded stories like coins, each trying to make his the most valuable, the brightest. Petru mimed being struck through the eye with an arrow so dramatically he nearly fell into the fire.
Lada remembered a time not so long ago when some of these same men had come back from fighting and she had been forced to listen to stories she feared she would never be part of. Now she was at the center, truly belonging.
“How did you find your men?” Hunyadi asked. He spoke Turkish around her men as a courtesy, since most of them did not speak Hungarian and his Wallachian was dreadful.
“We found her,” Nicolae said, beaming proudly. “Or I did, at least. It is a funny story. When Lada was this small…” He held his hand close to the ground, then squinted at her. “Well, she is still that small.”
Lada punched him in the shoulder. Hard.
He rubbed it, grimacing. “When Lada was not the towering giantess of a woman that she is today, she was in Amasya as the playmate of the little zealot. Back then no one knew he would be sultan. He was just a brat.”
Lada nodded, then quickly erased the wistful smile threatening to break through her expression.
“She was spying on us while we trained. We caught her. Then when she beat up poor Ivan—” Nicolae paused. “Whatever happened to Ivan?”
“I killed him,” Lada said without thinking.
“You—you killed him? I thought he was moved to a different city! Why did you kill him?”
Lada realized the low, steady hum of conversation around them had died. All eyes were on her. Most of her men had never known Ivan. She wished she had not, either. He had been stupid and cruel, had always hated her. In the end, he had tried to force himself on her as proof she was nothing but a girl. Something he could take. Something he could break.
She lifted her chin. “That is none of your concern.”
Hunyadi laughed. “Spoken like a true leader,” he said in Hungarian.
She met his gaze and he gave her a slight nod, something fierce and proud in his eyes. She saw how he sat straight, even while relaxing with his men. He was still in charge, still slightly apart. She mimicked his posture. She was their leader. She did not owe them explanations. Especially not for traumas of the past.
“Wait,” Petru said, concern pulling down his features and making him look like a puppy. “Did you kill Bogdan, too? Is that why he is gone?”
Lada sighed in exasperation. “No, I did not kill Bogdan. But I might kill you if you act out that stupid arrow-through-the-eye death one more time.”
Bogdan found them.
How he tracked them down Lada did not know. But the next week he walked into camp with a grin so giddy she could not understand how his blocky features managed it. Lada ran to him.
Her first impulse was to throw her arms around him. Her second was to hit him for taking so long. Instead, she stood in front of him, glaring at his beloved stupid face and his beloved stupid ears and his beloved stupid self. “Where have you been?”
“I brought something you need.”
“More men?” She looked behind Bogdan, but only one person followed him. And that person was not a man. She walked with solid assurance. Her long hair trailed down her back in a braid, showing off two ears sticking out like jug handles.
“Lada!” her old nurse said, rushing forward and embracing her. Lada’s arms were pinned to her sides by the woman’s hug. How Bogdan had found his mother, Lada could not begin to fathom. But he was Bogdan. He stayed loyal to the women in his life.
Lada looked at him. “Why did you bring her?”
“To help,” he said, sh
rugging. “You needed someone who could help you with…girl things.” He paused, blushing. “Woman things.”
Lada clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth together. “I do not need anyone’s help with anything.”
“Where is your brother?” the nurse asked. “He should be here. I thought you would take better care of him.”
Anger flared. Who was this woman to tell Lada how to take care of Radu? The nurse had not been there in Edirne. She had not seen what they had gone through, what Lada had had to do to survive. “He is coming,” Lada said through still-gritted teeth. She extricated herself from her nurse’s arms.
“Let me brush your hair,” the nurse said, reaching for Lada’s snarls.
The sensation made Lada feel like a child again. She stumbled back, flinging her hands up to deflect the woman’s touch. “I do not need a nurse!”
“You said the same when you were five. But at least your hair was presentable then.”
“Take yourself to the devil,” Lada snapped.
Bogdan looked hurt, but her nurse just laughed. The woman’s eyes shone with something. Mirth or affection, neither of which were tolerable to Lada. Worst of all, Hunyadi was sitting nearby, watching the whole encounter.
“Where is my cloak?” she snapped, yanking clothes out of her saddlebag.
“Let your nurse help you find it,” Nicolae teased. He and Petru were sitting at the campfire. Had no one missed this spectacle? What had Bogdan been thinking?
“She is not my nurse!”
Petru shrugged. “You are lucky. I wish I had someone to take care of me. Maybe I should find a wife.”
“Maybe you could marry the nurse,” Lada spat out.
Giving up on the cloak, she threw herself onto her horse and left camp. They had moved from the location of the slaughtered Janissaries and were working their way toward the capital. The increasingly frequent sections of frosted farmland made Hunyadi’s hands twitch. When asked where they were going, he would merely shrug. “The castle.” It sounded like a foreign word when he said it.
Today, though, they were in a heavily forested section of the countryside. They had not seen another soul all day, but that did not mean they were alone. Lada scanned the trees as a matter of habit, one hand always on her sword.
The trees were as bare and cold as the air. The sun was overhead, but all it did was blind her. How could something be so bright and give so little warmth? After so long in the temperate climate of Amasya, she had forgotten what winter felt like.
Right now, she wanted nothing more than to be back there. No! she screamed at her traitorous heart. She did not mean back in the empire. She meant back at camp. Around a fire, with her men.
The nurse would be there, lingering, hovering, much like a fly that buzzed incessantly, but at least a fly Lada could swat. She did not need another woman. She did not need to be taken care of. That woman was not her mother. Her own mother had fled to her home country of Moldavia when Lada was four. That was what mothers did. Nurses, apparently, were more dependable. And embarrassing.
Hunyadi pulled his horse alongside hers. “It might be good to have someone to help.”
“I do not see your nursemaid following you around, combing your hair.”
Hunyadi ran his fingers through his thick auburn locks. “I would not object!” His tone softened. “All leaders need help. Let someone do the mundane tasks so you can focus on the bigger ones. Surely Mehmed does not do anything himself.”
Lada rolled her eyes. “He has a man whose only role is to follow after him carrying a stool.”
“Does he even clean his own ass, I wonder?”
Lada grimaced. “Why would you put such an image in my mind?”
Hunyadi laughed loudly. Then he settled more deeply into his saddle, sighing happily. “This is a beautiful part of my country.”
“It reminds me of the forests outside Tirgoviste. I used to make our tutor take us out there to study. The castle was an oven in the summer and an icebox in the winter. I always suspected the architect was a cook.”
“Do you miss it?”
Lada frowned as she followed the trail of a dark bird across the pale blue sky. “Miss what?”
“Tirgoviste.”
“I never cared for Tirgoviste. I prefer the mountains.”
“But you still want the throne.”
“I want Wallachia.”
Hunyadi huffed a laugh. “Is that all?”
“It is far less than what Mehmed—” She stopped, biting off the rest of the sentence. How dare he slip out of her mouth uninvited.
Hunyadi leaned closer to Lada, his horse following the movement and nearly brushing its flanks against her legs. “So he does mean to go for Constantinople, then.”
Lada had avoided talking about Mehmed’s plans. It felt disloyal, which made her angry. He had shown no loyalty to her by entertaining the usurper Danesti prince.
Hunyadi pressed on. “The general opinion is that he is young and easily swayed. More interested in lavish parties and well-stocked harems than expansion.”
If Lada flinched at the mention of the harem, Hunyadi pretended not to notice. He continued. “Everyone has solidified advantageous treaties with him. No one fears him. Murad’s death was seen as the end of Ottoman expansion. But I wonder. I think the sultan is settling us all down so his way to Constantinople is clear.”
The word harem still rang in Lada’s ears. Obviously Mehmed was not loyal to her. He spied on her. He supported her rivals. She owed him nothing, and would cut this traitorous impulse to protect him out of her heart. “Constantinople is his only desire. Everything he does, however innocent seeming or counterintuitive, is to achieve that goal and that goal only. He will not stop until it is his capital, until he is both sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caesar of Rome.”
Hunyadi breathed out heavily, slumping in his saddle. “Do you think he can do it?”
“If any man can, he will.”
“I feared as much.” He rubbed his face, tugging on the ends of his graying mustache. “When do you think he will move?”
“As soon as possible. This spring or next.”
“That changes everything. We will head to Hunedoara tonight. I have letters to write and a crusade to plan.”
“You would defend Constantinople?”
“Of course.”
“But it is not your city, not your people. And it is no closer to Hungary’s borders than the Ottomans already are, so there is no increased military threat.”
Hunyadi smiled. “I am Christian, Lada. It is my duty to rally to Constantinople’s cause. It is the last we have of the mighty Roman empire. I will be damned if I let the Turks take it.” He pulled his horse to a stop, then paused before turning. “I would be honored if you were at my side. I think together we could hold off the very forces of hell.”
Lada was glad he was not facing her. The warm flush of pride at his words was something she wanted to keep private.
“WHEN WILL IT BE ready?” Radu demanded, the air shimmering with heat.
“When it is ready!” Urbana wiped sweat from her forehead as she used giant bellows to adjust the temperature of the flames in the nearest furnace.
“I need it now!”
She laughed, a sound like a hammer ringing against an anvil. “You need it now? I have needed it my whole life! The Basilica is my legacy, my genius. I will not risk blowing us all up with a faulty cannon so your schedule can be maintained!”
Radu wiped the sweat that was dripping into his eyes. “Can you at least show me? We have both invested so much in it.”
Huffing, Urbana led him to the back of the sweltering building. She pointed to a pit of sand that stretched more than four times longer than Radu was tall. “There it is.”
“When will it be cool enough?”
“Two days.” Urbana leaned against the wall, staring at the sand as though she could succeed by sheer force of will. “If there are no cracks or fissures—if, God willing, it actually worked thi
s time—we can demonstrate it for your precious sultan in two days.” She patted a six-hundred-pound stone cannonball with the tender affection of a mother.
“It will work,” Radu said. It had to. It would prove, once and for all, that he was the better Dracul sibling. The more valuable. The more deserving of love. And it would prove to himself that he had made the right choice in staying.
The ambassadors from Constantinople arrived the next day. Radu no longer stood next to Mehmed in the receiving hall, but near the back and off to the side.
Normally, Radu would have liked to see the ambassadors squirming. Mehmed was still acting the silly, spoiled sultan. But it was all so tiresome. He was ready for this interminable waiting period to be over. Constantinople needed to fall. When they marched, then everything would be better. Everything would be revealed. Radu would reclaim his place next to Mehmed. They would take the walls together.
And Lada would be nowhere near, either physically or in Mehmed’s thoughts. When Constantinople fell, Mehmed would have what he wanted most. He would forget the girl who had left them behind. He would know who had been with him, helping him every step of the way.
He would finally see Radu’s whole worth.
Radu refocused on what was being said. Though the ambassadors kept trying to steer the conversation back to the fortress Mehmed had built on their side of the strait, Mehmed could not be trapped.
“We should have a feast! A party.” He smiled distractedly, leaning over to whisper to a man taking notes, “Fish. No, lamb. No, fish. Both!”
The lead ambassador cleared his throat. “But we must discuss the matter of the land. You killed citizens from a nearby village.”
Mehmed waved dismissively. “Our men defended themselves against attack. It is nothing. Tell me, do you like dancing? What style of dance do they favor in Constantinople now?”
The lead ambassador, who wore a blue coat that was open to reveal a bright red vest, shifted from foot to foot. “At the very least, we must demand payment for the land you took.” The other five ambassadors remained perfectly still.