They ceased struggling, striving. Held the position, the look. And then Hamza managed to push up, just a little. Just enough to lay his lips upon Vlad’s.
“No.” Vlad released the limbs he held, sat up quickly. But he couldn’t find the strength to move away, nor to stop Hamza slipping in behind him, hands sliding around his chest, holding him there. “You are so alone, Vlad,” Hamza whispered. “Always. You have been through so much. Here. At Tokat.”
Suddenly, Vlad was sobbing. “I saw…terrible things. I did…”
Words, memories, tears choked him. “I know,” came the voice, Hamza’s voice, yet not. His hand, not his hand, reaching down.
“No,” said Vlad again, trying to halt the sliding hand. But he didn’t have the strength, the will, to do more than say it.
“An end to aloneness, Prince,” said Hamza, and bent Vlad over the cushions.
It was not quite the oblivion he’d been promised. It was dark, the place he slipped into, but he could still feel, a little hurt; later, a little pleasure. And hear too, the voice that said he loved, that asked for love in return. Hear the voice that replied—his own, not his own—saying, “Yes. Yes, I do. Now. Forever. I do.”
– SIXTEEN –
Abode of War
They rode at first light—Hamza, Vlad and three of the guards. The camp would be struck behind them, follow at its own pace. The Sultan’s summons were urgent. If they rode fast, slept little, and horses were ready at caravanserai along the way, they would be in Edirne in five days.
They rode fast, pushing their mounts to the limit, never beyond it. The speed of their passing prevented conversation and, during their roadside respites, Vlad prevented it again.
“My young man,” said Hamza, stretching out a hand as they lay upon their blankets at the first sunset.
Vlad, wordless, wrapped himself tight and rolled away, offering nothing but his back.
They rode through a land on the cusp of spring and preparing for war. Like the streams that flowed down from snow-headed mountains to join the rivers, their small party was a trickle that soon merged into a flood of men and beasts. The Sultan’s “tug,” his standard of six horsetails, had been raised before his war tent at Edirne and many nation’s warriors were surging towards it. Beneath the tails, silver bells chimed. It was said their soft music could be heard from the furthest islands in the Aegean to the pyramids of Egypt. From the mountains of Tartary to the oases of the Sinai desert. It was a summons to the dar ul harb—the Abode of War—and it echoed through the passes of Transylvania, down the stone corridors of Carpathian castles, through the courts of kings and the palaces of bishops. The Grand Turk is coming, the tiny bells warned. Know it and despair.
Hamza may not have been able to get Vlad to raise his eyes. But he lifted them at his own bidding, to take in the wonders and begin the tally of his enemies, to know them as his father the Dragon had bid him. Everywhere he looked there were horses—tall, lean mounts from the plains of Anatolia; small, shaggy beasts from the mountains. The former were ridden by sipahis, Turkish knights, men of higher rank who would ride into battle in mailcoats and iron helms but here wore the robes and turbans of their homes. They would ignore anyone beneath a Sultan who passed them on the road. The latter were ridden by tribal men, often Tartars, wild with slanted eyes who would consider being overtaken a challenge and would gallop past their party again and again, claiming triumph in shrill ululations, clashing swords on shields, or signalling with a flight of arrows that would pass uncomfortably close.
Stream became river became flood, and progress ever harder. When, at noon on the third day, they were halted at the bridge of Ilgaz, the only way over the River Gokirmak, blocked by a thousand milling, cursing horsemen, Hamza called a halt until nightfall. When the moon rose they resumed, riding all night and well past dawn, repeating the plan at the equally swollen crossing of the Sakarya.
At each halt, Hamza tried to talk. Not of what had happened between them. It was obvious Vlad would not discuss it. But words on hawks, on war, on weaponry all elicited the same response—silence. Only when they were standing on the banks of the Bosporus, on a cliff above the little port of Uskudar, did Vlad speak. One word.
“Constantinople,” he murmured.
Hamza followed his eye-line downstream. The city was a hazy vision of towers and walls in the dusk light. “Do you dream of visiting it one day, my young man?”
He expected his question to be ignored as ever. He was surprised. Twice.
“I dream of praying…there”—he pointed—“before the altar of Santa Sophia.”
“Indeed?” Though he himself prayed the required five times a day, he had never once seen his companion bend his knee. “And what will you pray for there, Vlad?”
The younger man turned. For the first time in three days, those green eyes fixed upon his elder’s. “Salvation,” he replied.
Disconcerted, Hamza looked away, back to the dome of the great church, glowing in evening light. “You know it is the dream of Sultans to turn Santa Sophia into a mosque,” he said. “And with the Greeks getting weaker by the year, losing their territories, abandoned by allies, betrayed by their own…”
But Vlad was already moving away, leading his horse down the steep path to the dock and the waiting ferryboat. Hamza glanced back once at shimmering Constantinople, sighed, and followed.
—
Two mornings later, they crested the last hill before Edirne, expecting to see the city…and saw another city before it. The river of Islam’s warriors, rallying to the horsetail standard, flowed here into the turbulent sea of the war camp. It looked like chaos. The outer areas were a jumble of small tents and horse-lines where the gazis camped, as wild-eyed and shaggy as their mounts, fired with faith, fermented asses’ milk and the paradise that awaited them either in life or death. The neighing of war steeds was not the only animal cry, for vast lines of camels coughed, spat and trumpeted, donkeys brayed their complaints, and mange-ridden dogs howled and fought.
At first, there was order only on the roadway they descended, one of four that separated the sections of the camp and had to be kept clear for the Sultan’s messengers riding in from every corner of his and his enemies’ realms. But after a long ride through the multitudes, they came at last to a barrier. It was made of red silk and at it their written summons were examined by a heavily-armed officer. They were waved through.
The silk palisade separated chaos from order. Beyond it, the tent city was laid out in precise, concentric circles. At first the tents were smaller, plainer towards the outside but as they rode deeper in, these became larger, more opulent pavilions, spread with rich and colorful hangings that could sleep a hundred men but, Vlad knew, mostly only slept one—the belerbey, the provincial governor, around whose tent his sipahis gathered in their more modest ones. Each pavilion had the governor’s standard before it, the number of horsetails upon it rising as they swept down the avenue. When they saw one with five upon it, they were halted again, this time by a huge officer in a tall, conical hat surmounted by the heron-plume headdress, the kalafat after which Vlad’s jereed horse was named. From the back of the hat dangled the red sleeve that denoted the man a member of the Bektashi order of Dervish. He and six soldiers searched Hamza and Vlad thoroughly, hands roughly probing under their garments, removing their boots and confiscating their daggers. Finally, they were allowed to pass.
“Janissaries,” commented Hamza. Unnecessarily, for Vlad knew the Sultan’s elite soldiers well, had trained with them as hard in matters of blade and blow, bow and horse as ever he had studied Latin and the Holy Qur’an in the enderun kolej.
The janissary tents were lower, two-man cones of hide, spreading around their own commander’s pavilions. These were big enough…but nothing to what Hamza and Vlad approached now at the very end of the road; of all roads, for the four spokes of the wheel ended here—at Murad’s otak. It was a vast and gorgeous palace, held up by three huge poles, enormous silken sheets concealing
every scrap of canvas, each depicting an array of trees and flowers like the most luxuriant of gardens.
And there, before its entrance, stood Murad’s tug, his war standard. Beneath its six horsetails dangled banks of silver bells, giving out the sweet chimes that had rallied the hordes of Islam to their chieftain and made their enemies quake.
Murad was going to war. And lying on the ground beside Hamza, reverencing the tug, Vlad wondered two things.
Who this power was to be directed against?
And how any force on earth could stop it?
– SEVENTEEN –
The Offer
They sat, cross-legged on the ground, and watched the shadow of the tug move across the ground. It shortened across the west, vanished at noon, reappeared soon after, slipped towards the east, while beys, soldiers and slaves strode, marched or scuttled in and out of Murad’s otak. They were not forgotten; water was brought at noon, a skewer of meat and bread. But they were not summoned until the shadow had almost touched the eastern-most tent ropes.
A servant appeared, beckoned. Groaning at the stiffness of his limbs, Hamza rose, brushing dirt from his clothing. Vlad squatted for a moment longer, breathed deep, then rose, too.
It was hard to tell the Sultan at first, such was the throng. Sipahi horsemen in boots and riding robes, janissary captains in breastplate and mail, the atecibari, chief cook of the army, with his symbols of office, spoons and bowls, swinging from his girdle, indicating to all that their father, the Sultan, would feed the whole army on the campaign. The chief cook’s presence was as vital here as any illustrious warrior’s.
And then Vlad saw Murad, conspicuous because he was, as ever, so inconspicuous in a simple, dark blue tunic that fell to his knees. He stood at a table of charts and lists, at the center of a throng of officers. To his left, a goldfinch to his father’s sparrow, stood Mehmet.
The man who was Sultan, and the man who had been and would, Allah willing, be again both looked up as Vlad and Hamza entered. Mehmet immediately looked down again but Murad held Vlad’s gaze until he knelt and pressed his forehead into the carpeted floor.
“Enough for now.” Murad’s voice came softly to the prone men. “All may leave.”
“Father—”
“All, my son. But you may return…with this man’s brother.”
“He does not wish—”
“I care not for his wishes. I want him here. Now.”
The voice had not lifted in volume. But all could hear the strength in it and reacted. Gaudy slippers came into Vlad’s lowered sight, pausing. He caught the faintest whiff of ginger and sandalwood, then Mehmet was gone.
Another pair of slippers. Plain leather. “Nephew.”
“Eye of the Storm,” replied the falconer, reaching forward to kiss the slipper.
“Prince Dracula.”
He had been readying himself to kiss in his turn. But Murad’s use of a title he had never used before made him hesitate. Then he leaned forward, kissed, more fervently than he had planned.
The slippers moved away. “Rise. You’ll both take some wine?” Murad returned to the table, waving away a servant who came forward, lifting the pitcher himself. Behind him two archers, with an audible creak, eased the grip on their bowstrings. “Ah, not you, Hamza. Your obedience to the word of the Most Merciful is a rebuke to us sinners. Alas!” He turned to Vlad. “But you will not shame me further by making me drink alone?”
“I will not.”
“Good.” While a servant brought Hamza a mug of sherbet, Murad poured two goblets then brought both forward. “Drink deep, Prince,” he said, handing one across.
Vlad sipped. The wine was as good as he expected it would be; a nectar after six months of denial.
Murad drank, watching him. “Drink deeper. I think you will need to, to hear the news I must tell you.”
The goblet was halfway to Vlad’s mouth. He halted it. “What news, Sultanim?”
Murad looked at Hamza. “You have not told him?”
“As you wished, enishte. And even if I had chosen to disobey…” He glanced across at Vlad. “…No time seemed appropriate.”
“Indeed.” Murad raised an eyebrow, catching something in the falconer’s tone. He looked again at Vlad. “Well then. It is my misfortune to be the bearer of sad tidings. I hope you will forgive the messenger.” On Vlad’s silence he sighed, and continued. “There are two things I must tell you, Prince. The first is that your father is dead.”
Vlad only moved a leg, shifting it forward to brace himself. “How did he die?” he asked softly.
“He was beheaded.”
Vlad, braced, raised the goblet, drank deep, then spoke. “How?”
All knew he was not enquiring after mechanics. “Hunyadi ordered it.” He waited for a reaction. None came. “Hunyadi,” he repeated, “the Hungarian White Knight they call him, which, considering the blackness of his heart, his cruelty, his treachery…” He broke off. “But you were raised to consider him a crusader hero, were you not? The Scourging Flame of Christendom?”
Still Vlad did not react. Murad glanced at Hamza again then went on. “But it matters not what you thought of him before. Nor do you need to accept my opinion of my enemy. You need only learn why you should hate him yourself. And learn it from one of your own.”
He gestured. There was movement at the entrance. Vlad did not turn, just kept staring at a point above Murad’s head, at a poppy curling in silk there. Only when a man came into the edge of his vision, a man he had not seen for many years, did he turn.
The newcomer was dressed, in contrast to the robes of the Turks, in a heavy, quilted doublet. Sweat shone on the high dome of his forehead, running into the white hair that circled the temples like a ruffled fringe.
“Do you remember…I am sorry, titles in your tongue confuse me. You call your noblemen boyars, yes? But he is a…jupan? Is that correct? Yes? Good. Cazan jupan. You may not know that he has lately been your father’s chancellor.”
The man bowed. “Prince Vlad.”
The fact that this man also addressed him as prince added to Vlad’s confusion. There was something else here, beyond a father’s murder. But before he could think what, Cazan was kneeling before him, unrolling the large misshapen bolt of red cloth he held, speaking again. “Vlad, Dracul’s son, from your unhappy land I bring you the prayers of its citizens and this hope for all our futures.”
Satin gave way to steel. Lying in the cloth was a State seal and a sword. Both bore the same symbol, cut into the metal. The Dragon, its tongue thrust out, its scaly tail curled up and around its neck, the cross of Christ resting on its back. And it was seeing the mark of his family that made Vlad realize what was amiss.
“You have brought these to the wrong Dracula, Cazan,” Vlad said, keeping his voice low and even. “You should present them to my elder brother, Mircea.”
The jupan swallowed, hesitated, looked up at Murad. “And that is the second thing I must tell you,” the Sultan said. “Your brother—Mircea—is also dead.”
“Beheaded?” Vlad tried to keep his voice even but it cracked slightly.
“Alas, no.” Murad nodded to the other man. “Tell him, jupan. Drink this wine and tell him.”
The goblet was brought over by a servant. Cazan gulped, spilling liquid down his doublet. Wiping his mouth, he turned back to Vlad. “It was…before your father was caught, Prince,” he said. “Mircea was alone in the palace at Targoviste. All knew that Hunyadi was coming with the man he wanted upon the Wallachian throne—your cousin Vladislav, of the Danesti clan. So the boyars…” He swallowed. “…Some boyars killed the few guards left, dragged Mircea from his bed and…”
He looked up at Murad who nodded. “Yes. He needs to hear it all.”
“They blinded him first,” Cazan went on in a rush. “Red-hot pokers in the eyes. And then they…” He broke off, coughing.
“And then they buried him. Apparently, he was still alive when they did.” Murad shook his head. “Barbarians.”<
br />
Cazan wiped his eyes, then bent to the objects before him. “And so I bring you your father’s seal and his sword. Offer them to you, last hope of the Draculesti.”
In a movement as sudden as all his others had been slow, Vlad bent and seized the sword. It was heavy, long, a hand-and-a-half, and when he put his second hand upon it and lifted it high it felt as though a missing limb had been suddenly restored. He remembered now that his father had called it the Dragon’s Talon.
“Wait!”
Murad’s command halted the arrows that would have killed the man who raised a weapon near the Sultan. In the silence that followed the shout all that could be heard in the tent was the creak of tent rope and bow-string.
Then Murad spoke, softly. “This is your father’s sword, Prince. Yours now. I knew him, a little. We made war upon each other. We made war side by side. For a while we made peace, to both our benefits and our peoples’ rejoicing. He was, as much as any in these dog days, a man of his word. He was trying to keep that word when Hunyadi, the black-hearted White Knight, cut off his head and buried your brother alive.” He began to move slowly forward. “The sword you raise now Dracul would not have raised against me but against his real foes—the men who have usurped his throne. Your throne now, if you will take it.”
He reached Vlad, his hand still raised to hold off the arrows. “I cannot crown you Prince of Wallachia. That can only be done in your own land, by your own people. But I can give you an army to command. And while I go into Serbia to confront that hated White Knight, you can go to your homeland and use your father’s sword to claim what is yours. The throne. The heads of murderers and traitors.”