The Mark of Cain (29 page)

“Gentlemen,” he said, deciding to tell them the
truth since he’d be killing them soon anyway. “You’re right. I am not the same
Vlad who was a prisoner of your sultan. However, I am the prince now.”

“I don’t understand,” the lighter one said, his
voice surprisingly deep, like the roar of wind tearing through a cave.

“When your sultan released the prince to be his
proxy on the throne, I murdered him. He was weak; pathetic; not fit to rule.
But I was, so I took his place.”

The two men eyed each other, as though having a
conversation about him with their eyes. It was as if they now had the answer to
a question nobody had figured out. The unspoken question probably had to do
with how the meek prince the sultan had known could have turned out to be so
brilliant when it came to strategy, as well as so merciless.

Hesitant, the light one spoke again. “So who do we
have the pleasure of speaking to?”

He leaned forward in his great throne made from the
numerous alpines found in Wallachia, its elaborate decorations consisting of
demons and skeletons. He had carved it himself when the boyars had finished the
castle.

“You would know me as Qābīl,” he said with
a leer.

Their dark eyes opened, the whites showing all
around.

“Yes,” he said, falling back into a comfortable
position. “And now that you can accept that I am truly the prince, shall we
move on? Please, remove your turbans and bow. Show me the respect I deserve.”

“Sire, if you are truly Qābīl, then
certainly you know our customs,” the dark one choked out, using the highest
title one could be given. “We may not remove our turbans.”

The light one looked pale as he divided his
attention between his countryman and the demon on the throne.

His fingers making a steeple, Cain relaxed even farther
back so that his head rested on the throne where his back usually did, plots
running through his mind as he pictured each one coming to fruition, deciding
on which punishment would be the most fun. His heart pounding with excitement
as though he was a wolf gaining on his prey, he made up his mind.

“Seneslav,” he commanded, sitting back up to
attention.

The hound finally getting the go-ahead, Seneslav
jumped forward to have instructions whispered into his ear. With a smile full
of spaces and black teeth that did nothing to make his grin lose its luster,
Seneslav walked past the two men. As though afraid he would attack them, they
jumped out of his way.

As he walked past them without paying them much
attention, they relaxed, letting out deep breaths.

“You’re right,” Cain said, pausing until he had
their complete attention. “I do know your customs, for I was there when they
first began.” He then gave a welcoming gesture and added, “Please, you are my
guests. What message do you have for me?”

Another collective breath from the two men.

“The sultan wishes to make a treaty,” the light one
said.

Pretending to consider it, he said, “Hmm. What kind
of treaty?”

“You may keep the throne, uncontested, if you once
again begin paying your tributes. He says that the pope’s gold, which is
funding this war, will run out before the sultan’s. And the Hungarian regent,
who is your ally, will soon tire as well and pull his troops. That will leave
you and your small army against the full power of the Ottoman Empire.”

“And I’m guessing that, other than my annual ‘gift,’
the sultan would wish me to turn against Hungary?”

The dark one smiled. “You are very wise, o’ prince.”

“Yes,” he said with a sneer.

“He’s your enemy as well, sire,” the light one
reminded him, his eyes shining like a merchant’s. It was obvious that he
honestly believed that Cain would side with them. “You only allied yourself
with him for the resources to take power. You now have power, but you need
us
to keep it.”

“Well, the enemy of your enemy
is
your
friend,” he replied, their smiles wavering momentarily, as though they couldn’t
tell if that was a yes or a no.

A clap of thunder rattled the high windows a moment
before all hell broke loose outside, heavy sleet bashing into the glass like
winged demons fighting tooth and nail to get in. The fires in the numerous
great stone hearths warming the chamber all began thrashing wildly, as though
heretics had been thrown into them to dance and wail from excruciating torture.
The emissaries both shivered, and he doubted that it was from the chill
creeping over the room.

As though the chill had been a carpet rolled out to
welcome him back, the doors opened and Seneslav and a slew of soldiers marched
in. They immediately grabbed hold of the two men.

“Why are you doing this?” the light one cried as
they forced him to kneel.

Cain got up and walked toward them, saying, “I just
wanted to help strengthen your customs.” He then took a large metal spike and
hammer from Seneslav. “Also, I believe it will send a strong message to your
sultan. I will
not
be his proxy.”

With that, he lifted the first spike to the lighter
one’s skull and, with all his strength, he brought the hammer down. The spike
slid into his skull and gushing brains with a delightfully wet crunch, redness
seeping into the fabric and marring the pureness of it. It was as if Cain had
smitten God Himself.

He turned to the darker one, whose tears were
thicker than the rain outside.

“Allah doesn’t care,” Cain told him. “Otherwise, you
would never have been born.” He then brought the hammer up again as the
messenger howled so loudly that it drowned out the storm.

Once finished, Cain licked the succulent coppery
liquid from his lips, wiping his blood-soaked hands and face on a corner of the
lighter emissary’s caftan, doing his best to remove the bits of brain and skull
that clung to him like he clung to hate. It hadn’t been too messy at first
since all the large bits of anything had stayed in the turbans, but he’d made
the mistake of pulling a spike loose. He’d thought it would just bleed a bit,
but it was like an explosion outwards, the pressure was so great. Quickly, to
stop any messes, he’d put it back, but the damage had been done. And now he was
a bloody mess.

“What would you like me to do with them?” Seneslav
asked.

Cleaning himself with water and a rag his servants
had
finally
brought him, he said, “Remove their heads. Send them to the
sultan with this message: ‘I will never ally myself with you. Next time, it
will be
your
head in a box. Do not send any more messengers or they will
receive an even worse fate.’”

After the servants had removed the bodies to
desecrate them, Seneslav turned to him, a frown all over his lined face. “Sire,
we cannot win if we go to full-out war with the sultan.”

“I know,” he said with a grin. “Do you want out?”

Matching his feral grin—he was as crazy as
Cain—Seneslav said, “No way in hell. I haven’t had so much fun in my life.”

Cain had succeeded in provoking the sultan with his
deeds, for soon the sultan sent Turks across the Danube to recruit more
soldiers set to depose him. But Mehmed II didn’t know who he was up against.
Instead, Cain’s own forces easily captured the Turks. Some of them he kept in
prison, but most of them he immediately impaled.

Finally, one day Cain received a message. The sultan
wanted his chieftain to meet with Cain at Giurgiu; in essence a diplomatic
meeting. However, Cain had sources inside the sultan’s palace that warned him
that it was actually a trap to kidnap him and cart him off to Constantinople,
which the Turks had overthrown a few years before, starting this whole war with
Christianity in the process. Pretending as though he didn’t know the truth,
Cain accepted the meeting. Then, as the chieftain and his troops a thousand strong
walked into a narrow pass on his way to Giurgiu, Cain attacked with a dozen or
so cannons. They were large and cumbersome to bring to the pass, but with them
he killed most every enemy. The chieftain escaped, but Cain knew he would run
back to the sultan with his tail between his legs, crying about how Vlad had
used ancient gunpowder and cannons in a deadly way, which nobody had ever done
before.

Using the uniforms from the men he’d killed, he
marched back to where the chieftain would have gone had he captured Cain and
demanded the men to open the gates for him. They did. Needless to say, Cain killed
them all, taking the fortress as his own.

It was when his wife was with child that he chose to
hurry things up. No longer could he go on the sultan’s timetable. That was when
he crossed the frozen Danube himself. Again, he hoped to provoke the sultan
with his actions by killing anyone in the area who would sympathize with the
sultan. He ended up impaling over twenty-three thousand Muslim Bulgarians and
Turks, not counting those he’d burned in their homes or hadn’t beheaded, giving
him a body part to count.

It made him a hero to the pope and all Christendom.
The irony made him smile. Also, it angered the sultan enough that he finally
decided to come against “Vlad” himself. But Cain wasn’t afraid—he didn’t fear
God, so why would he fear a mere mortal?

“Sire, the scouts report that Mehmed has an army of
about a hundred thousand,” Seneslav told him early one blustery morning,
finding Cain standing in a tent poring over a map of the land, hoping to find
advantageous spots for battle.

Cain looked at his army of maybe thirty thousand
men, women, and children over twelve. He had such a small army—about ten
thousand mercenaries—so he had been forced to recruit everyone who could
possibly carry a weapon. They may not be as well-trained as the Ottoman forces
were, but the peasants were good for tiring the enemy before dying.

At Seneslav’s words, Cain threw a fist into the
table, cursing Hungary, for, as though the emissary’s words had been a
prophecy, Hungary would not join this fight. It was Cain against the Ottoman
Empire. Cain could fight the grand vizier or other small units raised to defeat
him, but against the whole of the sultan’s forces? He didn’t stand a chance without
aid from the Hungarian regent cowering in opulence and gluttony in
Transylvania.

Although he knew he couldn’t win, Cain fought as
hard as he could, hoping that his superior intellect could help create a
miracle. But they were too large. Too strong.

As he retreated, he did what he could to salvage his
reputation by ordering the men to burn everything in their wake, leaving
nothing for the Ottomans to use. Also, he created marshes to bar their way by
diverting rivers and digging traps. He may not have the men the sultan had, but
he had brains the sultan could never match. For who else but Cain would think
to send his villagers sick with plague and leprosy to intermix with the massive
armies of the enemy? In essence killing them from the inside out?

This sort of “retreat” lasted for seven days. He
could see that the Ottomans were hungry and tired, vast amounts of them sick
and dying. That’s when he struck again. He took his personal guard and began
attacking and ambushing them. But the sultan slogged on until he was barely
south of Târgovişte, the capital of Wallachia. Cain couldn’t lose that
city. If he did, then he would most likely lose the war.

“What do you plan to do, sire?” Seneslav asked when
Cain announced this very fact.

Cain brought every tactical advantage they had to
the forefront of his mind, nixing each one the moment he did. At least, until
he
didn’t
veto an idea….

“The last straw for the sultan was when we impaled
the twenty-three thousand men, women, and children,” he said, looking at the
same map on the same table in a much more makeshift camp in an easily
defendable spot in the woods. “Was that not what your sources told you?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Do you remember that village?” he asked, changing
the subject. “The one that had hidden the prince we were hunting?”

“The one we punished by impaling everyone, sire?”

“Yes.” Not a man, woman, or child had been left
alive. Since then, not one person had dared to aid his enemies. “How many
Turkish prisoners do we have?”

“Around twenty thousand, sire.”

“I will march the cavalry to fight the sultan. The
rest of the troops should head toward Târgovişte with the prisoners and
impale them all on the road here,” he said, pointing to the map. “That way, if
my plan to assassinate him in his camp fails, then he’ll retreat until he comes
upon twenty-thousand freshly impaled Muslims. They’ll be so fresh, in fact,
that some will still be alive and struggling. If that doesn’t sow fear into his
heart and the hearts of his men, then I don’t know what will. And if they’re
afraid, then perhaps they’ll fully retreat.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then perhaps we’ll manage to minimize his army. I’m
sure he’ll have deserters after they see what will happen to them if they
continue on their mad quest. Good old-fashioned fear will do our job for us.”

Once everybody knew their jobs, Cain gathered
together his cavalry made up of ten thousand hardened soldiers and hid them in
the woods near the camp of the sultan.