Vlad: The Last Confession (32 page)

Last Stand

“Does Corvinus come?”

It was the question he had first asked in June on the banks of the Danube as he watched the huge Turkish army afloat and seeking a landing place. He had asked it again many times as he retreated across his country, slowing the enemy any way he could—with fire, plague, starvation, thirst, gunpowder, arrows and blades. With terror. The Turk had paid for every mile of scorched Wallachian soil, and each mile held was ten more that the Hungarian army could gain, marching to the succor of their fellow crusaders.

Now Vlad asked it again, at the end of August, in the main hall of his fortress, atop the mountain called Poenari, on the far side of his realm. From the castle he could look back at his land down the valley of the River Arges. He could also see, to the north, the Fagaras mountains.
Beyond them lay another province—Transylvania, land of his birth.

Vlad looked down the long table, at the twenty men who sat at it, the debris of a simple meal before them. When he’d first asked the question he’d commanded twenty thousand men. Now he had these twenty, some of whom still wore a last few pieces of black armor. These, and thirty more soldiers above patrolling the walls, were all that remained. He’d built Poenari Castle so it could be held by fifty men. Now he was going to prove it.

If Corvinus was coming.

Every face Vlad studied was a mirror for his own. If he had scarcely slept in months, his
vitesji
had not slept much more. It showed in eyes sunk into holes, in flesh that was gray beneath the burn of a still-fierce summer sun. Yet he knew they would go on fighting for him, as long as he could give them a little hope. It was why he asked the question aloud that he usually only asked himself. It was not advice he sought. It was not truly a question any more. But these men, these last few at the extremity of their country and their strength, had to be roused for a last stand. Had to be asked to believe one last time.

He had built Poenari to be held by fifty men. But they had to fight.

The question, which was not one, hung there like smoke from the cooking fire. Now Vlad leaned down, resting his fists on the table. “He does. He must. He raised the banner of crusade as we did, and would be dishonored if he folded it again without striking blows. My last report placed the King at Szeged three weeks ago. Still in his own realm, yes. But my messengers would have told him of our peril. If he has acted on their word, an advance of horse could be through Transylvania and approaching the Fagaras now. He could be here within the week.”

Silence for a moment. Then a question came. “And will he, Voivode?”

Vlad was staring now at the table-top, as if through it down into the depths of the mountain. Another silence came, grew. Men began to shift in their seats, to look at each other. They had all seen their prince stare like this, for minutes at a time. Sometimes more.

“Voivode?”

“Yes, Ion?”

The big, dark man looked around uneasily. “It is Ilie, my prince. Ion’s…gone.”

Vlad’s eyes focused on the man before him. “Yes, Ilie. Corvinus will come.”

—

“Here’s to the Crow, Corvinus,” Turcul bellowed, “and his clipped wings.”

A cheer, a dozen hoisted goblets. Ion drank with the rest, laughed with the rest, carefully.

“Where was he, Voivode, at your last report?” Turcul resumed.

All looked to Radu, Prince of Wallachia, who sat at the head of the table. He smiled. “He squats on the border of Hungary yet,
jupan
. His side of it.”

“So if he ever intended to fight, he’s left it too late?”

“He never intended it,” Ion said, and all men stared. “He will use the Pope’s gold, not for crusade, but to buy back the crown of St. Stephen from the Emperor and secure himself upon the throne of Hungary.”

“So what will he do now, Ion Tremblac?” Radu asked.

“He will cross into Transylvania. It is his fiefdom and he will reinforce it in case we decide to push north. If we do not, he will go home to Buda and tell of how Vlad failed both him and God.”

Radu leaned forward. “How do you know he will do that?”

“Wouldn’t you, my prince? Isn’t that what all men do when a cause is lost? Distance themselves from the loser?”

“As you have?” Radu smiled as Ion colored, before going on. “And what will the Crow do then, do you think?”

“Make peace with the victor. With you, Voivode. Just as soon as you return the army the Sultan lent you to conquer your country.”

Radu frowned. “My army is Wallachian, too, Spatar.”

Ion nodded, stayed silent.

Another man spoke—Mihailoglu Ali Bey, the Turkish commander. “And Mehmet Fatih, blessed be the name of the Conqueror, only keeps us here to do God’s work. To rid our brothers’ suffering land of the beast.”

Turcul banged his goblet upon the table. “And what will we do if we take that beast alive?” he said, his eyes afire.

“His head must go to the Sultan,” said the Turk.

“Of course,” replied the
jupan
, grinning, “but it does not have to be separated from the body immediately.”

“That must go on a stake!” yelled another
boyar
.

There was universal assent to this, with further refinements added, suggestions shouted out. As each was expanded upon, Ion studied the face of the other Dracula. Its beauty revealed nothing. Radu listened to every mutilation to be visited upon his brother’s living body or ravaged corpse, and he didn’t even blink.

At last, he ended the discussion with a raised hand. “It still remains for us to capture him,” Radu said, “And it is now time to reveal how we will begin to do that, even on the morrow.”

“Surely our allies will just run at the walls and build a bridge with their bodies, as they did at Constantinople,” Turcul guffawed. “Do they not all seek a martyr’s death?”

“Yes,” said Mihailoglu Ali Bey, rising, “but not a fool’s one.” He reached across the table, picked up Turcul’s cup and tipped the contents onto the table, splashing his doublet. “And you have drunk too much if you think you can mock us and our faith.”

Turcul went white, gaped, looking up the table at Radu. “My prince, I…I object…”

“Be quiet, Turcul, before you confirm the Bey’s opinion of you.” As the
jupan
sank back, Radu continued. “And there is no need for martyrdom when we have betrayal.” He glanced at Ion, who looked away. “When my brother chose Poenari, he chose well, built well. The slopes are too steep, the walls too high to take by simple storm. But there is one weakness, knowledge he shared with one man. Tell us, Ion Tremblac, what that weakness is.”

This was part of the punishment for his betrayal—a public acknowledgement of it. Ion accepted it, spoke. “There is only one hilltop adjacent to Poenari that might command it. There is but one path up to it, its entrance concealed by thorn bushes. The path is so steep that only goats ascend there; so thickly wooded that it would take an army to widen it into a trail.” He sighed. “But where a goat can go, a man can follow. And if enough men go there, and you don’t mind losing a few, they can drag cannon. If an army cuts a path first.”

And then, as if by command, there came the distinct sound of a single axe biting into wood. Another came, then another, until it was clear that there
was
an army out there, wielding axes.

“We are working by torchlight, burning some trees down, hewing others,” Radu said. “We will have cleared a trail by dawn, and a field of fire by noon. The bombardment will begin then. The walls are tall and thick, but they are, after all, just brick over spill. Only the donjon is granite, and once the outer walls are down, well…”

He broke off, smiling. It was Mihailoglu Ali Bey who finished for him. “With so much firewood chopped, we will pile it around the donjon walls and roast the Impaler alive.” The Turk stood, lifting his goblet. “By this time tomorrow night we will be looking at his charred body or hoisting him onto a stake. Perhaps both.”

Men rose, goblets in hand, cheering. Ion was one of them, though he could not find a voice, so thick was his throat. He looked across, at Radu, smiling broadly now. Raising his cup, Ion toasted him, even smiled before closing his eyes.

The cheers, the laughter, the toasts went on, the men moving away from the table, bunching into a crowd. Ion cheered with them, laughed. But something was working in his stomach,
beyond the surfeit of wine he’d drunk to convince himself that he was where he should be, doing what was right, beside the right Dracula. When he was sure no one in the drunken, boisterous crowd would notice, he slipped from the tent.

He made for the riverbank, stepped onto the sand, doubled over, vomited, a series of retches that went on till his stomach was empty and his mouth filled with bile. It was bitter—the very taste of his treason, it seemed—so he let it sit on his lips and did not wipe it away.

He hated Vlad. Hated him with a totality only possible in one who had once loved. And hate had replaced love in an instant, in that one moment when he lay on the flagstones of the Bisierica Domnesc, and heard Ilona’s death scream, the whispered horror of what was happening
beyond the screen. It did not matter that she had never been his, would never be his. He had loved her. If Vlad stood before him now he would stab him in a heartbeat, with joy.

And yet…these fat-faced traitors, these all-conquering Turks, that beautiful brother, all preparing to torture his prince to death? His Vlad, whose life he had saved in alleys and on battlefields, who had saved him in return and had the scars to prove it. They had fought each for the other, countless times.

He looked up. The forest and the folds of mountain hid the peak from the river. But Vlad was up there, with the rest of Ion’s former comrades.

Ion wiped the bile at last from his mouth. He hated the man who waited up there. He would be the first over the wall to kill him if he could. But he could not stand by and watch him be torn apart by jackals.

He went to his tent, wrote. Then he grabbed his Turkish bow and set out to climb the mountain.

Arrow in the Night

It was a normal sound, an axe driven into wood. An army needed timber, for fuel, for defense, especially if they were building siege lines. It was less customary to chop at night. Then, when there were two axes, ten, fifty, countless, he went to the arrow slit, stared out, tried to gauge where they were falling, and why.

He must have dozed. A moan woke him and he turned sharply, hand on dagger hilt. But it was only the woman on the bed, and one of her nightmares. He stared at her for a moment, then turned back to Turkish axes on a mountainside.

A knock turned him again. He went to the door. “Who’s there?”

“Ilie.”

Vlad lifted the heavy beam, set it aside, drew his dagger, stepped back. “Come.”

The door creaked open. Ilie stood there. Vlad was about to say that he had heard the axes, that there was nothing to fear, when he noticed shadows behind his man. “Who is with you?” he said, holding the weapon before him.

“Men,” Ilie replied. “Villagers from Arefu.”

“How did they…?” Vlad began, stopped. The people of Arefu were
his
people, the closest he had to supporters. They had loved the Dragon. They loved his son. It was one of the reasons he had built the castle where he had. So there was no need to ask how they had come here through a besieging army. This was their mountain.

“They have been searched?” A nod. “Then bring them in. And stand here beside me, with your sword drawn.”

Three men were shoved in. The first two were undoubtedly brothers, probably twins. Shepherds, a life spent in toil, they could have been any age from thirty to seventy.

Behind them, a shadow in the shadows, stood another figure. He was dressed in a monk’s plain, brown robe, the hood drooping over his face. Yet as Dracula stared, the hood suddenly lifted…and the prince’s knees gave. He cried out, staggered back into Ilie,the big man steadying him.

Dracula’s breaths came fast. Eyes shut, he tried to steady them. When he was ready, he looked again; but now the cowl was lowered, the face hidden. Still, he knew what he had seen—his father’s eyes, just like his own, the same Draculesti green.

He had seen his father sometimes, in the sleepless nights of constant war, in the pain of his wounds and the potions taken to try and relieve it. Had even talked with him, just as he had done in the cell at Tokat. But he had never seen the Dragon when others were around. Until now.

Ilie still had a hand on him. He murmured something and Dracula looked across at the shepherds, their startled faces. Breathing deeply, making sure he looked only at them, not their shadow, he spoke. “Greetings, fathers,” he said, “what do you wish of me?”

The two men came forward, knelt, kissed the Dragon ring, touched their foreheads to Vlad’s slippered feet. The figure in the cowl did not move. “We come not to ask but to offer, Prince Vlad,” said one of the men, in the guttural accent of the region. “To offer you salvation.”

“I have a confessor for that,” Vlad replied, “though I seem to have mislaid him somewhere along the way.”

“It is not your soul we seek to save, Voivode, but your body,” said the second brother in an identical voice. “We can take you out of the castle the same way we came in. There is a path, known only to us. It runs from a cave below your walls to the river below.”

Vlad swallowed. He tried to look only at the shepherds before him, not the silent figure
beyond. “I know this mountain well. There is no path.”

The second man licked his lips, looked at the first. “Forgive me, lord, my sin of contradicting you. But…there is. You may trust us on that. Trust also that we will see you down it and that we have a dozen horses waiting with other guides to take you over the Fagaras to safety.”

“I am safe here.”

“Perhaps not for long.”

“I will not need long. Corvinus comes…” He saw the look that passed between them. “Do you know anything?”

“Nothing…ce-ce-certain, Prince,” stammered the first man, “we just heard his coming is in doubt.”

“Well, it is not,” Vlad said, loudly enough for listening ears
beyond the room.

“God grant it so, lord,” said the second man, more calmly. “But what
is
certain is that we can get you out, tonight. After tonight…” He shrugged, glancing out the arrow slit.

Vlad stared at them for a moment. “It is dangerous for you to offer this. Why would you?”

“We have ever loved your family, Prince. And…”

“And?”

“And your family has loved us. Your father granted us the rights to ten mountain tops around about, sheepfolds for our summer flocks. He…died before he could authorize the grant. And now Turcul
jupan
claims they were never promised. If you were to…”—he glanced at the Dragon seal ring upon Vlad’s hand—“…then we…”

He left the promise in the air. Vlad looked around—out of the arrow slit to the Turkish firelight and the sound of axes; to the beams above. Back to the men. At last, when he was sure he was ready,
beyond them. Then, drawing his dagger, he crossed the room in three strides, seized the robed figure, flung back the hood, and raised the knife to strike…

Elisabeta on the bed shrieked. Both shepherds took a step forward—but Ilie hissed at them, sword lifted, and they stopped. All just stared at Dracula…and a young man bent before him, whimpering beneath the raised blade.

And then both Ilie and Elisabeta gasped.

“Who are you?” Vlad whispered.

One of the elders took a half-step forward, remembered Ilie, halted. “Prince, this…this is your son.”

Another cry from the bed. Elisabeta raised herself to stare. The boy, whose eyes were shut against the blow he thought was coming, opened them at the softness in Dracula’s voice.

“Who was his mother?”

“Her name was Maria Stanctu. She died when he was born.”

“I do not remember her.”

“No, my prince.”

Slowly, Dracula lowered his weapon, sheathed it, reached down, took the boy’s chin, gently tilted it up. The face was a youth’s not a man’s, with a youth’s softness; but it was also almost a mirror—and a return to his past. The same cheekbones, the same high forehead, the same long nose, the same black hair and eyebrows. Only the eyes were different, the shape of them not so deep-set, though just as green; and, seeing them, Vlad nodded.

“I remember her now,” he said, and did. He’d come here during his first, brief reign in 1448, fourteen years before, to visit the Dragon’s people, and the donjon his grandfather had built. A pretty shepherdess, a lonely young man, one night. “What is your name?” he asked, still holding the chin.

“My mother asked that I was christened Nicolae, after her father,” the youth said, his voice warring between boy and man. Then something came into his eyes and the voice deepened. “But
I
have always called myself Vlad. After mine.”

Silence in the room. All became aware again of the fall of axes, the shouts of laborers. And then a different sound. Sharp, sudden and ending in a scream.

An arrow had passed through the slit window and stuck in the headboard of the bed, a hand’s span from Elisabeta’s face.

—

Ion rubbed his eyes and lowered the bow. He had always been good with it, nearly as good as Vlad. There was no wind. But this was a night shot, at two hundred paces, hilltop to hilltop, and he was aiming at candle flicker within an arrow slit. He had missed the first two times, he knew; and he’d only written the note three times, the number of the Holy Trinity, of salvation.

One for God, one for Man…and one for the Devil, he thought as he raised the bow again, for the last time, and sighted. Thought of this last shaft with the paper wound round it, carrying Dracula’s fate. He breathed out, loosed…and a woman’s shriek came almost immediately. He had found a target. Fate had chosen which one.

No more cries came, for which he was grateful. They would remind him of another’s, and he had already forgotten how to sleep.

—

Vlad knew the hand. He and Ion had learned to write together when they were seven.

“What does it say?” whispered Elisabeta, her voice quavering.

“Read it,” he said, handing it to her. “Aloud.”

She did. “‘The Crow sits on his nest. Axes clear a meadow to be sowed with cannon and they will bloom with the sun. They are blunting a stake for you. If you can, go.’” She looked up. “What will you do?”

They all stared at him. He looked back at each in turn—the shepherds, Ilie, his son. He didn’t look again at his princess. “I will go.”

Ilie had taken the note. “Voivode, this is the
vornic
’s hand.”

“Yes.”

“Then…” The big man hesitated. All the remaining
vitesji
knew better than to speak of Ion and his treason. Yet…“Might not this be a trick?” He looked at the shepherds. “All part of the same trap?”

Dracula thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Ion Tremblac would cut out my heart if he could. And perhaps he will try to, one day. But he would not stand around and watch others do it. That I know.” He crossed to the old men. “A dozen horses, you say?” On their nod he turned to Ilie. “I will take you, Stoica and eight others. Let the rest of the
vitesji
draw lots.” He turned. “And I will take my son.”

The boy gasped.

Ilie nodded. “And the rest?”

“They must man the walls till we are well clear, then take their chances with the Turk.”

“And I?” Elisabeta came forward, her voice shrill. “Must I take my chances with them, too?”

Vlad gestured for everyone to go. His son lingered last but Ilie pushed him out of the door. When all were gone, Vlad slipped the heavy bar onto its brackets and began gathering what was essential, speaking without looking up. “Your father is out there, lady, waiting to glory in my fall. My men will wait a while and then try to flee, or surrender. If you are lucky and the enemy grants terms, I am sure the
jupan
will be happy to have you back. For as we both know, your virginity is still for sale.”

“If I am lucky…” She echoed him, wonder in her tone. “Do you hate me that much that you would risk seeing me raped to death by Infidels?”

Still Vlad did not look up. “Hate you? I have not thought of you enough to hate you.”

“You truly are the Devil,” she cried. And then she ran for the stairs that led to the turret, ran up them. Vlad continued packing…until the screaming began. Then he took the stairs two at a time.

“Father!” she screamed. “Turcul
jupan
! Help me!” The axes ceased falling. In the silence that followed her voice rang clear. “Father. The Devil seeks to flee. Help me! Help—”

A hand went round her mouth. “Silence, lady. My escape will be hard enough without…”

He could not stifle the yelp of agony. She had grabbed his other hand, jerked it. It only had three fingers and was never without pain. Gasping, he released her.

She broke clear, circled to the other side of the turret. In the faint light that penetrated under the wooden roof, a blade now glittered. “You know,” she said, her voice all bitterness, “I think that is the first time you ever touched me.”

She was on the far side of the turret now so she began to scream past him, towards the Turkish lights. “Help me, Father. He comes tonight. Dracula flies…”

He lunged at her and she threw herself back, fast, too fast, her feet catching in her long gown, tripping her, plunging her into the gap between two stone buttresses, her force carrying her through them.

He grabbed an edge of her dress…but three fingers and a thumb could not hold her. She fell. The donjon was the height of six men but it was built against the edge of the sheerest precipice of the mountain and she did not hit rock, or cease screaming, till she was halfway down it.

Vlad stared down into the darkness in the long moment between the wail’s ending, and the axes beginning to fall again. Then he turned and went swiftly down the stairs.

The packing took but moments. He remembered how little a fugitive needed and took it, kept all that truly mattered on his body—the Dragon’s Talon slung across his back; the Dragon’s Ring upon the one little finger left to him. Below, in his saddle-pack, Ilie would already have the Dragon’s banner folded.

A postern gate gave onto the north-facing side of the mountain, a slope so sheer no tower had been built to cover it. Hand over hand, a man might climb up. Or down. Far below the River Arges curled, a sliver of silver in the moonlight.

Vlad looked down, then up to the battlements. Those who were not coming peered over them. They obeyed him entirely—for fear, for love, for all the reasons in between. They understood why only the ten who stood around him now could go. And Vlad knew that their oath of allegiance ended when the fugitives reached the valley floor; that they would make their own arrangements. Some, perhaps most, would live. The Turk prized slaves and tended them well, like their flocks—though Vlad was not sure if that would be true of the Wallachians who also waited
beyond, hungry for vengeance.