The Mark of Cain (27 page)

He was certain that the excitement stirring his own
blood was evident to the dying prince—he probably appeared to be a starved animal
himself.

“You are not
fit
to rule,” Cain finally said,
curling his lip as he ripped the prince’s ring from his thin finger, pulling
the twine free that had been twisted around it to make it fit the emaciated
boy. Sliding it onto his pinky, Cain said, “But I am.
I
will take care
of your beloved Wallachia.”

He watched as the prince took in his last breath,
wet with blood. Then, before dawn had even arrived, Cain packed up his things
and left the scant body for the animals to pick at.

It didn’t take him long to claim the throne using
the Ottoman forces who hadn’t met the real prince. Originally, he hadn’t
planned to use them, but he needed them to vouch for him in front of a group of
nobles who had alliances with the sultan. However, because the sultan, Mehmed
II, had meant for Vlad to rule only as a proxy, Cain had no power. Not really.
Yes, after being accepted to the throne, the Ottomans had left and he’d been
given a small contingent of Wallachians to keep up appearances, but only one of
the soldiers would he actually consider professional. His name was Seneslav,
and he was like Cain in many ways.

The first similarity was that they were both giants,
though Cain was defined, and Seneslav’s mountainous muscles were just that:
bulk meant to pulverize men’s skulls. Likewise, he enjoyed killing as much as
Cain did. He was a true warrior.

As is wont to the greatest of warriors, Seneslav
shaved his head bare to keep it from falling into his eyes in battle.
Everything about the warrior, from the dozen or so weapons he had on him at all
times, to the very type of leathers he wore, were all decided upon by what would
be best in battle. He was a dedicated soldier, which was why Cain liked him.
Meeting him was a fortuitous event in an otherwise dreadful situation, for he
had expected to shed the sultan and come to true power once he took the throne.
But he didn’t. “Vlad” didn’t even have access to the miniscule riches and
armies of Wallachia other than the few men who didn’t truly answer to him.
Instead, he was forced to think of
another
way to gain what he so
desired.

As only his man, Alberto, and the Turkish sultan knew,
Cain ruled the Turkish forces, though the sultan had never had the pleasure of
meeting his master. Maybe now was a good time for a visit. He could march in,
introduce himself, and leave with the forces he needed to take the worthless
Wallachian throne from Hungary’s proxy, even though they were owned by the
Mokolios as well. He owned all of Europa and more than a few other territories,
though secretly as well.

Why separate the two cultures? Alberto had asked
that question only once, and Cain had told him why. Because the Ottoman and
European cultures were so vastly different, they needed the illusion of
separation. Also, he felt that it kept things interesting: his men forever
dueling in wars and squabbles that they didn’t truly understand. Forever fighting
someone you believe to be your enemy when they are, in fact, your countryman.
When you live a long time, you need to find things to entertain yourself with.

But if he did that—if he told the sultan who was
posing as Vlad III Draculea—then the whole point of keeping the Ottomans
separate from the Mokolios would be lost. Yes, he’d own the heart of the world
under one known entity, but that defeated the whole point. He was here for a
challenge, as well as to find ways to defy God, and that hardly seemed the way
to do it. Besides, he liked making each of the countries that belonged to him
self-reliant, and forcing them into his pocket wouldn’t achieve that. People
just did better with their delusion of freedom. He’d learned that countless
times over the several millennia he’d lived.

Since that was out, another option he’d pondered was
to call upon the Mokolios to help him fight the Turks. But, again, this was a
problem. If he did this, it would cause his own troops to fight one against
another which, for any of his Mokolio forces that perished, would be a waste of
gold and resources for all the training they had undergone—as it was, he would
already be sacrificing his money and expendable men on the Ottoman side and
didn’t need to double the amount of his losses with the elite Mokolio army that
was made up of the best soldiers from all over the world.

On the other hand, he didn’t care if he sacrificed
his newly acquired Wallachian forces, as inadequate as they were, against his
own loyal, powerful ones that made up the Ottomans. Right then he wanted a
different life, a
challenging
life, so if he—the poor Wallachian
prince—had to go to war with his more powerful self, then he’d gladly do that
to show God how unscrupulous he indeed was. Besides, the Wallachian forces were
basically farmers with no skill in combat. They were men without merit and
completely expendable for his enjoyment.

As he warred with his own mind about what to do, he
used the belief of the people that he was in command to tout his “power” into building
up and training the professional “soldiers” he had been given, attempting to
make them as even a shadow of the Mokolios’ strength. However, before he could
accomplish this, the regent of Hungary—most likely on the Mokolios’ orders—invaded
Wallachia with a much larger force and took it over, putting
his
prince
back on the throne. Cain couldn’t be angry with him when he did so, for he
didn’t know that “Vlad” was really his ruler because they had never met either.

In response, as only a smart man would do when
unmatched, Cain fought his very nature and fled to Moldavia, which was
connected to the north of Wallachia and the east boundary of Transylvania.
There he stayed with the murdered Vlad’s uncle, Bogdan II, while plotting his
next move.

But Bogdan quickly became tiresome, so Cain killed
the old man with his own two hands, telling everyone else he’d been
assassinated. He should have waited to gain some power first, but he hadn’t
wanted the weak man to overthrow him before he could raise his own army. For,
although the man had been smart and had known Cain wasn’t his nephew, he hadn’t
known his true identity and just what he was capable of, and he needed to die
before he figured that out or moved against Cain himself. Besides, there was
another reason he had moved sooner than he should have; he had become tired of
hiding like a common outlaw. He was
strong
. He wasn’t a coward.

The man’s death activated phase one of Cain’s plan,
which was to manipulate the very same regent who had taken the fake throne from
him in the first place. Because of Cain’s knowledge of the Ottoman Empire, he
snaked his way into bed, so to speak, with the Hungarian regent, becoming the
regent’s advisor on all things Ottoman.

So, when the regent gave him large forces of his own
to use against the Ottomans while he himself marched his own men to Belgrade,
Cain feigned humility and piety, accepting the responsibility as though it was
an honor he had not thought would be bestowed upon him by The Order of the
Dragon to fight the “evil forces of Islam.” Honestly, he was so tired of
Christianity and Islam warring with each other that he had some serious
fantasies of just killing them all. Then he could live in peace.

Instead of doing what he
truly
desired
because it wouldn’t help him in the long run, he marched his newly-acquired men
to Wallachia, where he defeated the reigning prince—the one put on the throne
by the Hungarian regent—in hand to hand combat. The prince hadn’t been happy at
first to find out that the man who had given him the throne had sent Cain there
to take it from him, but he didn’t live long enough to have it bother him for
long.

Cain found things very different in Wallachia from
how he had left them when he’d run from the very prince he’d just killed. Yes,
he may have the crown, but Wallachia was in worse shape than ever before. The
constant warring had resulted in rampant crime, the agricultural production had
fallen to an all-time low, and any kind of trade had virtually disappeared. The
economy was a mess, as though a windstorm had come through and destroyed
everything in its path. Because he felt that a stable economy was essential to
resisting any external forces, he set to task to repair it, making that his
priority. Not only that, but he wasn’t going to bring such a crumbled country
into his fold to drain his resources without giving anything back.

He immediately began building new villages and
teaching farmers how to get the most from their crops. Once he had the economy
on its way to a recovery, he put out the call for mercenaries to hire as his
personal guard. Many answered, but the one who had him smiling was Seneslav,
loyal and ready as ever.

“What are your plans, sire,” he asked with a large
grin, his teeth rotting from lack of care.

“I realize where I went wrong the last time around,”
he told his servant.

“And where is that?”

“Before, the people didn’t
fear
me….”

***

And so that was the string of events that had
brought Cain to this very hillside in the midst of a raging storm. Fear.

As though to answer his very thoughts, a great
rumbling from the heavens shook the very ground beneath him; God’s own way of
showing his anger and distaste for Cain’s actions.

In answer, he laughed to the sky as though lunacy
had taken over.

“What?!” he yelled into the rain, doing his best to
control the frightened animal beneath him as he gestured as best he could
toward the fields of death. “You don’t like my gift for You?!”

Another shattering of thunder answered him as the
sky lit up the field below, where hundreds of corpses stood at attention like
witnesses at an important trial, the stakes forced through them holding them
so.

“Then You should never have cursed me! All I do,
every person I murder, their blood is on
Your
hands! For
You
made
me the man I am today!”

A smell of pure, unaltered heat invaded his nostrils
and his every hair stood on edge moments before an intense whitish-blue flash
hit a tree a few feet from him, a booming noise so much louder than anything he
had ever heard smashing around him along with it. The horse reared up and
darted off so quickly in response that not even an expert equestrian like
himself could stay mounted.

Pulling his aching face from the mud, he snarled at
the sky still thick with the smell of ozone.

“Oh, is that how we’re going to play it?” he said, a
threat in his tone that put force in his words though they were barely above a
whisper. “Fine then. Remember that I warned You.”

Fighting with the muck, he got to his feet and
lifted his hairless face to the dangerous sky so the large buckets of rain
would wash the grime from his skin. He then slogged through the sludge toward
the ruins of Poenari Castle built on the precipice of craggy rock, its profile
that of a bony spine ripped straight from a man’s skin, the nerves and clumps
of flesh still sticking to it in a deliciously grisly way.

Upon taking power this time around, he had
immediately rounded up the less influential members of the boyar political
group—nobles with alliances to the sultan—along with their families. With their
alliances, Wallachia technically belonged to the Mokolios, but they were a
burden, not an asset. That was why he was working so strongly to build up the
worthless country. He would build it up until its economy was as grand as this
castle had once been, and would be again.

Immediately upon rounding up the boyars, he had
sentenced the elderly and sick to death by impalement. It was a gruesome way to
die, having a well-oiled stake passed through the anus and up, out of the
mouth, but it was successful in making everyone fear, not only his wrath, but,
like the name of his sword Excalibur had once struck terror in the hearts of
men before the legend of Arthur had made it heroic, people would fear his very
name. Or, more accurately, the name of Vlad III Draculea, for not even Seneslav
knew his given name.

“What’s taking them so long?” he grumbled to the
muscular foreman upon arrival to the skeletal fortress. “I want my castle
rebuilt before I’m sixty. I should be inside with a blazing fire. Yet here I
am, soaked. I am unhappy. You know what happens to those who make me unhappy.”

He swore that the forty-something foreman defecated
himself at the thinly-veiled threat. Cain
liked
when people were that
afraid of him. That was something he had learned about himself back in the
early days of his campaign to own the world.

“They’re doing their best, sire,” he said, his
battered hands shaking as his eyes glanced in the direction of the nearest
field of rotting corpses. “They’re weak from lack of food.”

“Their best?” he asked, his chin high. “Look at
them. They’re a waste of air. A waste of my resources. And you,” he said,
turning to the foreman, “as the man in charge of their progress, are very close
to upsetting me.”

Cain didn’t bother to pay attention to the foreman’s
reaction. Instead, he watched what was left of the boyars and their families.

What once had been a group of humans obsessed with
power and finery, whatever the cost—including selling out their own people—now
consisted of worthless beasts. They still wore the clothes they’d been captured
in, so a piece of silk here, and a flash of elaborate broidery there, spoke of
where they had come from. Yet, the bits of slop and yards of tears in the fine
linens, and the brownish-red blood soaked into the shredded threads, spoke of
how far they’d fallen.