Page 221 of Dragon Slayer

“Vlad,” Cicero said quietly.

Fenrir blinked and ducked his head over his dinner, firelight making his face as red as his beard.

“My brother is a traitor,” Vlad said with finality. “My mother loves him, and she will talk of him, but I don’t want to hear a word about him from the rest of you.”

Nods all around.

Cicero stared at him glumly, expression putting a twist in Vlad’s belly.

He swallowed down the last of his small meal and stood. “I’m turning in.” He didn’t want to, but he knew he needed to try and snatch at least a few hours’ sleep before tomorrow. He retreated to the shadows, where a squire had already laid out his bedroll. He lied down on the hard ground, using a saddle bag for a makeshift pillow, and forced himself to close his eyes.

His thoughts raced. They’d laid out the plan methodically, and gone over it a dozen times, moving little wooden figures across maps on a table. But he kept running scenarios in his head, playing it out. Especially the moment he finally got to cross swords with Vladislav. That might not happen, Mother had cautioned; Vladislav was a coward, and likely would send his men, waiting until he had no choice but to surrender himself.

But that’s what Vlad wanted most. Man-to-man combat. A chance to slay the pretender who’d killed his father. A familiar fantasy, one he’d enacted in dreams – waking and sleeping – a hundred times by now. And for the moment – the possibility of it, at least – to be so close…his palms tingled, and his lungs ached, and he reached to rub the spot between his brows, where a furrow of tension had developed.

A few minutes later, he heard the soft padding of pawed feet, and Cicero, in wolf form, curled up against his back with a gentlewhuffof warm breath.Go to sleep, you dumb boy,that breath plainly said.

Vlad unclenched his muscles, breathed in the scent of his wolf, and eventually drifted off.

~*~

The hour before dawn saw a low, thick mist rolling across the ground; strangely, it made the landscape brighter, though visibility was painfully low.

Eira left first, on horseback, in armor, hair in braids, looking every inch the shieldmaiden she was. The three wolves, in four-legged form, stood ready beside her mount, bristling with energy and intent.

“Don’t forget–” Vlad started.

Eira stepped in close, and took his face in both her hands, smiling up at him. “I won’t forget. Stop fretting, dear. This will work.” She tugged him down so she could kiss his forehead, a forceful smack of lips, and then went to her horse.

Cicero looked at him, and whined.

“Look after Mother,” Vlad admonished.

The wolf nodded, and followed the others as they departed into the dark and the gloom.

An hour later saw Vlad seated on his own bay charger, armor plates and mail weighing pleasantly on his body. Malik rode beside him, and a mounted messenger, should he have need of one. The rest of his force was on foot, well-equipped, despite the rag-tag nature of their assemblage.

Vlad led them down out of the foothills and they reached the last crest of the road above Tîrgoviste just as dawn broke silver over the mountaintops. The city would just be coming awake, its butchers, bakers, and field workers heading to their day’s work. The height of summer, and the windows would be open, the lines strung up and ready for the wash; children would come scampering out barefoot soon, shooed away by mothers intent on scrubbing floors and mending clothes in their gossip circles.

“I want to be very clear about something,” Vlad said, addressing his men. “The common people of this city are not to be harmed. Defend yourselves, and our cause, should they take up arms against us in the traitor’s name, but we are here to fight Vladislav’s forces, make no mistake. As for the prince-killer, he is mine. Any man who cuts him down before I can get to him will be executed. Understood?”

“Yes, your grace!” they chorused. The thrill of battle-to-come glinted in their eyes, a feverish excitement.

“You know the plan,” he said, and wheeled his horse. “We fall to it now.”

The messenger trotted ahead, Malik beside him, dry dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves. Then the men, and in their center, Vlad, tall in the saddle, charger prancing every other step.

When they reached the edges of town, a group of farmers with picks and hoes propped on their shoulders came to a halt, mouths falling open in shock.

At the head of the line, Malik called out in Romanian: “Prince Vlad Dracula rides forth! Back to claim his father’s lands! To free his people from the tyranny of the pretender Vladislav! Make way for Vlad!”

Heads turned. Whispers started up, a low susurrus like rain on a tiled rooftop.

“Your deliverer! Vlad is returned!”

They cheered him.

Vlad didn’t delude himself; he saw clean faces, and mended clothes, and round-cheeked children. It was summer, and the harvest had been good, and Vladislav had not starved these people like the villain of a story designed to frighten little ones. These people cheered because they remembered his father, and the horrible fate visited upon him by usurpers, and because the world loved stories of sons come to avenge their fathers.

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