Vlad: The Last Confession (31 page)

He was obeyed. His men took more care and Thomas’s eyes were open as the wood was lifted high, though whether fresher air reached his nostrils, above the stake protruding from his mouth, only he could tell.

“And now,” said Dracula, turning slowly, “at last.”

Hamza had been better treated than the other prisoners. Vlad had commanded it and Ion had seen to it, visiting their former
agha
on occasion, staying to talk, bringing better food, clearer water. The robes he’d been taken in at Giurgiu were tattered but relatively clean; his beard was trimmed short, his pale blue eyes were clear. He looked around—at the Wallachians who stared back. At the thousands of dead who didn’t. At his fellow ambassador high above them all. Finally at his former pupil.

“Is it time, Vlad?”

A shocked whisper went down the lines of the watchers. The prince simply nodded. “It is time, Hamza
agha
.”

“And yet,” Hamza said, running a tongue around his lips, “I would not die today.” He looked up again at Thomas Catavolinos, then hastily away. “You know the way of these things. What use is this…example…if it is not reported? Let me return to my master. He listens to me. I can persuade him…perhaps to end this war? To leave you in peace? He listens to me,” he repeated, his voice weakening. “Please. Let me go to Mehmet.”

There was a silence. A breeze had sprung up, but there was no coolness in it. It ruffled clothes soaked in blood, lifted sodden hair. Finally, a raven broke it, settling on Thomas’s stake before letting out a harsh croak.

Vlad glanced up at the cry, stared for a moment. Then he looked back. “No, old friend,” he said, stepping away. “It is better that Mehmet comes to you.”

His men came forward, stripping, turning. As they threw him face down, Hamza cried out, “There, Prince! Folded into my belt! There!”

Vlad raised a hand and his men halted instantly. He stooped, felt through the discarded robes, then stood straight.

In his hand was a falconer’s glove.

“Do you remember when you made it for me?” Hamza said, craning around, trying to see Vlad’s eyes.

“Yes.” Vlad turned the gauntlet over in his hand. “I was good at my trade, was I not?”

“You were. And do you remember the verse?”

Vlad nodded. Softly, he read it aloud. “‘I am trapped. Held in this cage of flesh. And yet I claim to be a hawk flying free.’” Vlad smiled, then knelt beside the prone man. “Jalaluddin was our favorite, wasn’t he? The poet of mystics and falconers.”

“Like us.” The men had released Hamza enough so he could turn fully, could look up into the green eyes of his former pupil. “Spare me, Vlad,” he pleaded. When the prince did not move, did not blink, he went on in a whisper. “You said you loved me once.”

Vlad stared for just a moment longer. Before his eyes focused and he said, “I did. I do. Die well.”

Then, leaning back, he slipped the glove over the stake’s blunted end.

The Traitor

Ion wept as he rode. For his devastated country. For his prince, gone to hell. For himself.

Mostly, he wept for Ilona.

He was still weeping when the
akinci
found him. They were Tartars, mounted on their shaggy-coated, unshod ponies. They came from nowhere, surrounding him in a moment. They debated whether to roast him over their fire. They did roast his horse, having no use for the big destriers the Infidels rode. But it was ordered that all prisoners were to be brought alive to the Sultan’s camp. They might have disobeyed had they not so feared the All-Seeing Eye that Mehmet was said to have borrowed from a famous
djinn
. And were it not for the gold piece that was offered in exchange for the most valuable prisoners. Ion looked valuable, judging by the armor they stripped from him. They liked gold; it could be exchanged for good horses, unlike this one whose bones they sucked before they tied Ion’s thumbs to his toes with wet rawhide and threw him over the back of a donkey.

—

Ion lay staring at the woven beauty of an orchid in the Izmerian carpet. They’d cut the thongs from his thumbs so he had not lost the use of them. Still, he could not feel them, only the new bonds that yoked his wrists to his ankles behind him.

It was quiet in the Sultan’s tent. The men who had bought him from the Tartars did not think he spoke Turkish, or did not care, for they talked openly about how their master was out hawking, not so much for the sport as for his pot. Kaziklu
Bey
may have devastated the earth and water of Wallachia before the advancing enemy, leaving little for the cooking pots—including the Sultan’s—but not even the Devil’s Son could lay waste to the air, and Mehmet was setting all his sakers against grouse and pigeon.

Maybe Ion slept, maybe he didn’t, but he was looking at the orchid again and acclamation was growing steadily louder. Then there was horse harness jingling, laughter at the entrance, swiftly cut off, and he was surrounded by slippers, the cuffs of the
shalvari
above them covered in road dust. He closed his eyes.

“Do you know him, my heart?”

The sound of Mehmet’s voice was not one Ion would ever have forgotten, strangely high for such a big man, strangely gentle for such a cruel one. But Radu’s voice had gone from boy to man since last they met.

“His name is Ion Tremblac,” Radu said, “and he is the Impaler’s right hand.”

“He needs a whole one now, since you took one of his fingers,” Mehmet laughed. “That he has lost this, too…” He bent to study. “You know, I remember this one. He studied at the
enderun kolej
. He rode with you at
jereed
.”

“Just so, beloved.”

“Wait!” Mehmet knelt, pushed the hank of sweaty hair away from Ion’s forehead. “I thought he was the same! See how he still bears my
tugra
?” He let the hair fall again over the branding, stood, wiping his hand on his
shalvari
. “So what makes he here?”

Ion craned up to meet the Sultan’s gaze. “I come to offer myself to Dracula…” He faltered. “…To Radu Dracula. Will you free me so that I may kneel before him?”

A surprised grunt from Radu. Mehmet smiled. “My great-grandfather, Murad the First, may his memory always be blessed, was killed by a Serbian in his tent after the first battle of Kossovo. I am sure there are Wallachians who would do the same. Still, you were brought in by Tartars who would have stripped you of everything pointed.” He looked up. “Cut his leg bands.”

He was obeyed. After several attempts, Ion managed to roll up onto his knees. Mehmet was now sitting on an ornate purple couch. Radu stood beside it. With eyes lowered, Ion began.

“I offer you my everything, Prince Radu. I will guide your army through the marshes the Impaler has created in your path. I will show you the pits that have been dug for your horses to fall into. I will take you past all the poisoned wells, to the hidden ones where the water is sweet. I will bring you to the gates of Targoviste. He does not plan to defend it, nor the Princely Court within. Neither is built for a siege. But if they are even closed against you I will throw them open and lead you to the cellar where he has hidden the throne of your fathers so you can be crowned upon it.”

Radu regarded him for a long moment before he spoke. “And why will you do all this, Ion Tremblac? You, who have stood beside him while he committed the worst sins—”

“Who committed them at his side, joyfully.”

“Then why? Why now? Is it because he is beaten?”

Ion shook his head. “He is not. And if he were, I would have stood beside him as ever, guarded his back as ever, taken any death meant for him on myself.”

“Well now,” said Radu, coming forward, bending, “what ever could my brother have done to forfeit such loyalty?”

Finally, Ion raised his own eyes, looked into the ones before him.

“He has murdered the woman I love.”

—

The murdered woman groaned.

A face loomed over her, one from her nightmares. Bald, soundless, he clicked in his throat and was replaced by another horror—the Roma woman with the colorful scarf who had tended her when she had lost Vlad’s first child. She lifted Ilona by the neck, raised a bottle to her lips. The liquid spilled, as the carriage lurched over a pothole. Some went down her throat. She groaned and the gypsy, thinking she cried from pain, made her swallow more of the lulling liquid before laying her carefully down.

Yet it was not the pain, reduced to dullness by the elixir, that made her groan. Nor the bleeding, which had stopped not long after the cutting was over, for he had not scored the cross too deeply anywhere in her flesh.

No, her sorrow came from memory—of a teardrop and a word.

“Goodbye,” he had said, just before the teardrop fell, before the last thrust of his stiletto.

She moaned again. Through wet eyes she saw the mute, Stoica, tap the gypsy’s shoulder, appealing with his hands; saw the shrug in response. All they could do they had done. Dressed her wounds, spirited her from the city of death towards the unknown.

Her lover was gone. He had said goodbye, in a tear, in a word, in blood. And she wept now, not from pain, but because she knew she would never see him again.

They had seen the shape of the cross from the ridge. Its perimeter had been marked by torches spaced every dozen paces. But midnight darkness shrouded the rest until they were close to it.

The
akinci
scouts had reported back, told of a forest of the dead before the gates, a deserted city
beyond them, its gates swinging wide. But since, in such situations, they tended to speak in the language of myth, of demons and ghosts, they were hard to understand. Veteran officers of the household had ridden down and returned, white, trembling, struggling to distinguish facts from horror. Impatient as ever, Mehmet had waved away their mutterings, spurred his horse forward, Ion and Radu at his side,
solak
archers surrounding them.
Beyond the spill of torchlight, the advanced guard of the Sultan’s army, five thousand of his fiercest warriors surrounded the crucifix five rows deep. They faced outward, weapons drawn. Ever since the night attack, the shock of an enemy so close with a blade, Mehmet had found sleep hard, and surrounded himself with men who rarely slept themselves.

The ranks parted, just enough to admit the three of them, and one archer each side. They entered at the bottom of the cross. Its sides were made up of nothing but the dead, in three ranks. Most were impaled through the front and were now bent over, arms and legs hanging. Occasionally, for variety, someone had been pierced through the back, a reverse dangling of limbs.

The torches had been placed within the cross, so torchlight could reflect in dead eyes…those who still had them. Only the ravens moved and they did so slowly, bloated from the gorge. A few cawed as the horsemen passed, their protests as listless as their movements.

It was mainly Turks who hung there, and both Mehmet and Radu gave out several groans of recognition. But Wallachians hung there, too; traitors, thieves, the luckless, some women among the men.

After initial glances left and right, Mehmet kept his gaze fixed forward, to the middle of the cross and the greater illumination there. Ion looked, counted, gave up counting. If the press was as thick upon each side then at least five thousand had been impaled upon the Field of the Ravens.

The press was less thick at the center of the cross. It consisted of just three stakes, the middle one set at the uppermost. Ion recognized the man on the right as the
boyar
, the deserter, Gales. To his left, he saw the frayed finery of a Greek robe. Finally, he looked at the last stake, its occupant. Like those beside him, he had been impaled in the traditional way.

The chief falconer’s eyes were open, unpecked. They did not have the glazed look of the dead but seemed to be staring at what protruded from his mouth. Yet unlike the men beside him, it was not the familiar, blunted, bloodied piece of wood but a hand, five fingers stiff with blood, that jutted out there. As if someone had reached all the way through the Turk’s body and pushed out his guts.

Ion turned to the Sultan. He knew him to be a man used to cruelty, who had killed, often with his own hands. Yet now Ion saw something working within Mehmet’s usually calm face. And his voice, when it came, was as harsh as any raven’s.

“Hamza
pasha
,” Mehmet cried.

At the cry, the body twitched. All looked up, saw the slew of clotted blood that cascaded down the stake. Saw eyes that had been staring straight ahead, swivel down. No sound could come from that throat. None was needed.

“No!” Mehmet shrieked, spooking his horse, who danced towards the three stakes until the Sultan jerked the reins back. “No! I cannot…I will not…” He turned till he was facing Radu. “This is not just a blasphemy against your God,” he screamed. “This is a blasphemy against humanity. I cannot…will not…I will return to my palace, my
sarayi
, my gardens…” He was raging now. “…And if you want this terrible place so much, you can take it.”

“Beloved—”

“No!” Jabbing his heels into his horse’s flank, charging down the avenue of the dead, Mehmet was gone.

His archers followed, leaving the two Wallachians. They looked after Mehmet, then back at each other. Anywhere but up. Neither spoke. Finally, all Ion could do was raise a hand and gesture past the last three stakes, to the gates of Targoviste
beyond them, gaping wide.

As they rode from the flesh crucifix towards them, a raven screamed.