Page 147 of Dragon Slayer

“The vice governor. Nicolae Ocna, your grace.”

“Where is the governor?”

The boy began to tremble, but his gaze stayed fixed. “I don’t know, your grace. No one knows.”

Vlad frowned. “He disappeared?”

“Yes, your grace.”

“When? Under what circumstances?”

“He’d marched north, to meet the enemy. I don’t know everything; my master didn’t tell me. But I heard it said between the governors that it was expected to be a small skirmish. But his grace did not return, nor none of his men, and no message has been sent. That was a month ago.”

Vlad lifted his brows, surprised. “And Nicolae thinksI’vedone something to Hunyadi?”

“He believes so, yes.”

Vlad found himself smirking. “And why is that?”

“He said…” And here the boy hesitated.

“Speak.”

“He said – he said you were possessed of a rare evil. Beg pardon, your grace. He said you’d been tainted by the Turks, and that you were cunning and ruthless, like them. And that you’d want petty revenge.”

Vlad linked his hands together in his lap, elbows still braced on the chair arms. “That’s what he said, eh?”

“Yes, your grace.”

Vlad gestured. “Take him away.”

Malik asked a question with his brows, and Vlad shook his head. No, he wouldn’t have the boy killed; better to reuse him than to waste one of his own men on the errand back to Transylvania.

Malik took the boy back to the door, handed him off to the soldier, but stayed in the room. Vlad decided to allow it.

“This is fortuitous,” Vlad said. “Without his puppet master at the helm, Vladislav should be easily routed.”

“But where did Hunyadigo?” Cicero wondered aloud. “An army can’t simply vanish into thin air.”

“Ha,” Fenrir said. “Perhapsastriga got them. There’s monsters in these mountains, you know.” He winked and laughed at his own joke.

“It wasn’t the Ottomans,” Vlad said. “There would have been much celebration in Edirne, and a message would have been sent here.” He looked to Malik, and the janissary nodded in agreement.

“The question then becomes,” Eira said, “who hates him more thanyou, Vlad?”

~*~

Their answer came a week later, in the form of a letter signed by the Serbian prince George Brankovic.

“His sons were at court,” Vlad said, tone mild with surprise. Stepan and Gregor; he remembered them clinging to Val’s sleeves, shuffling along slowly, white strips of linen bound around their heads to hide the ugly scars. “Just before Val and I arrived, they tried to send word to their father. The slave told on them, and Murat had their eyes burned out with hot pokers.”

Cicero growled quietly.

Vlad folded the letter and tucked it into his belt. The messenger had arrived while he was inspecting the palace grounds, his Familiar at his side, and he’d read it as they strolled between the barracks and the stable, headed back for the study to inform the others.

Fall had descended in earnest and it was a cold day, with clouds building up over the peaks, pushed along by a sharp wind. It would rain by nightfall.

Vlad found the weather bracing. The heat made men languid and slow; the cold kept them sharp and alert. And right now, Vlad needed every one of his too-few men to be at his best.

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