Karen Chance - Hunt the Moon

“These weren’t slaves in the American sense. The Janissaries were among the elite of Ottoman society, respected and feared, even by free men. They had known nothing but military service their whole lives. They ate and drank it. At that time, they didn’t even marry, for fear it would distract them from their work. They threw all of their passion into warfare, and these were the soldiers against whom Hunyadi was taking a paltry force under an untested king!”

“Didn’t he know this?”

“Of course he knew. But he was a pompous, arrogant ass, and worse, a zealot. A cardinal, Cessarini, was traveling with the army, a papal appointment to see to it that God was on the battlefield.” Mircea lips twisted, but not in a smile. “If he was, he was fighting for the other side.”

“They lost?”

“We lost. Or, to be more precise, we were obliterated.” His hand stilled on my arm.

“We? You mean you were there?”

“Yes. Leading four thousand cavalry from Walachia.”

“But if your father knew it was a lost cause—”

Mircea sighed. “That was precisely my argument. But my father was in a difficult position. He owed his position to King Sigismund, his old mentor, who had loaned him the army he had used to seize the throne. Sigismund was dead by this time, but Ladislas had succeeded him, and he reminded my father of his obligation. There was also the fact that my father was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a Catholic military organization started for the express purpose of combating the Turkish threat.”

“So it was a religious thing?”

“It was a political thing. My mother was the devout one in the family; my father put his faith in a strong arm and a good sword, and he had need of one. There were many competitors for his throne who would have liked to do to him what he had done to the cousin he dethroned. If he gave the surrounding Catholic leaders a reason to distrust him, they might lend one of them an army, as Sigismund had done for him.”

“Then why didn’t he lead the forces himself? Why send you to do it?”

“He would have preferred to go himself, if one of us must. But he had signed a treaty with the Turks forbidding it.”

“But . . . I thought they were the enemy.”

“They were. But they also had an army far larger than our tiny force. Had it come to invasion, we would have fought bravely, but we would have lost. As it was, after the Turks made a raid, we would find whole villages nailed to crosses or impaled, or find pyramids made out of the bleached skulls of the dead.”

“Why would they do that? Why not just plunder and leave?”

“Because they wanted to be bought off, and they made sure my father had little choice. In the end, he had to sign a treaty agreeing to pay them ten thousand gold ducats a year and to refuse to lift his hand against them in battle. And to guarantee his good behavior, he had to give two of his sons as hostages.”

“That’s how your brothers ended up in a Turkish dungeon.” I’d known that Vlad, the brother better known to the world as Dracula, had gone insane in a Turkish prison. But I hadn’t known the details of how he got there.

Mircea nodded. “My father went for the treaty discussion under a flag of truce, taking my two younger brothers with him. They were supposed to be safe, but they were seized and put in chains as soon as they arrived. Vlad and Radu were carried away before the treaty was given him to sign. He knew if he failed to do so, their lives would most certainly be forfeit.”

“So he signed.”

“Yes, and was therefore put in an impossible position when Ladislas demanded his loyalty as a member of the Order, to fight alongside him on his damn fool crusade. My father couldn’t refuse without risking his throne, but agreeing would likely mean the death of his sons. He therefore agreed to send the smallest acceptable force with Ladislas, but chose me to command it, thereby keeping the letter of the treaty, if not the spirit.”

“By not lifting a hand against the Turks himself.”

“Yes.”

“I assume it didn’t work?” I really didn’t have to ask. I could read that much from Mircea’s expression.

“Nothing worked. At the battle, we were outnumbered three to one, and then that foolish, foolish king decided to make a dash for glory along with five hundred cavalry—and predictably ended with his head on a pike. The Turks paraded him around like the trophy he was. And as soon as his army saw it, they broke and ran. My forces stayed together and managed an organized retreat, which is probably why most of us survived. Virtually everyone else left their bones bleaching on the battlefield—including the cardinal, who was stripped naked by the victors and left for the carrion birds. Hunyadi, of course, escaped, as such men always do.”

“And your brothers?” I asked softly.

Mircea lay back against the bed, his hair spread out around him. I combed my fingers through it, fanning in out on the pale blanket, because it was beautiful. But also because I couldn’t do anything else to erase the sadness from his face. It had all happened so long ago, but it looked like I had been wrong. At least for one vampire, the past hadn’t faded at all.

“Before the defeat at Varna, they had been hostages, yes,” he told me. “But very well-treated ones. They were kept at Adrianople, the capital, were given food and clothing worthy of their station, were well educated and even received a good bit of freedom within the city itself. After the debacle, they were imprisoned in a filthy dungeon, beaten on a daily basis and half starved. It is a wonder they survived.”

“And your father couldn’t do anything? Pay a ransom or—”

“No. The Turks weren’t interested in money, not after Varna left all of Eastern Europe open to conquest—or so it looked at the time. They groomed Radu, who had proven to be the most malleable, to be a puppet prince for when they annexed Walachia. Vlad, who fought them at any and all opportunities, they mistreated terribly, but kept alive because his hatred for them paled in comparison to his loathing for their mutual enemy, Hunyadi.”

“Because he’d caused him to be imprisoned?”

“No.” Mircea got up abruptly. “Because Hunyadi murdered his entire family.”

I sat there blinking while Mircea disappeared onto the balcony. I wrapped the comforter around me and followed, a little hesitantly, because I wasn’t sure I was wanted. I found him lighting up a cigarette, one of the small, dark, spicy ones he preferred, which wasn’t a great sign. Mircea only smoked when he wanted to settle his nerves, or to give himself something to do with his hands besides wrapping them around someone’s neck.

But I guess that someone wasn’t me, because he pulled me back against him, adding his warmth to the comforter’s, making the otherwise frigid balcony almost cozy. It looked like this hotel was connected to a train station, because there were a ton of people coming and going far below, all looking like extras out of Dickens. Maybe A Christmas Carol , because a bunch were singing on the sidewalk in the middle of the mad rush. The songs drifted up to us in snippets, blown around on the breeze.

For a long time, Mircea smoked and I just enjoyed the feeling of those arms around me. I didn’t get it very often these days, with negotiations and Senate duties and the damned coronation taking up so much of his time. I laid my head back against his shoulder; it was always a surprise how good he felt.

“My father was livid with Hunyadi,” he finally told me, letting out a breath of sweet-scented smoke that drifted up, ghostly pale against the blackness. “He had warned the man, had almost begged him not to go, and now fifteen thousand good men were dead, his sons were imperiled and nothing had been gained. If anything, the crusade had only served to show the Ottomans our weakness, and he knew them well enough to know they wouldn’t hesitate to exploit it.”