Page 64 of Dragon Slayer

15

HONORED GUESTS

Adrianople, called Edirne by the Ottomans

Capital of the Ottoman Empire

1441

Their captors knew they were vampires. That was the panic-inducing thought that continued to cycle through Vlad’s brain.

He’d come to the first night in a tent, chained to a stake, and in the light of a brazier had seen that his cuffs were of a heavy, solid silver, and that Val still lay unconscious beside him. Who bound a ten-year-old boy with silver? Someone who knew he was a vampire.

The men who had entered the tent wore the garb of Ottoman foot soldiers. Some looked Turkish, others seemed to be Mongols. One was blond, his nose aquiline, his eyes blue: a Western convert. They had brought him food, but they had not spoken to him. Vlad had roused his brother, though Val whimpered and tried to curl in on himself; he’d been struck in the ribs first, Vlad remembered, and the silver was slowing his healing.

The Ottomans talked in low voices, in Turkish, and Vlad had understood only the occasional word. All that time he’d spent studying Greek, but they weren’t headed for Byzantium now, were they?

The trip took days, and when they were on the horses, rough sacks were put over their heads so they couldn’t see the paths they took, could only sway in the saddle as their party climbed steep slopes and splashed across mountain streams.

The brothers were forced to share a horse. Vlad sat in front, Val behind him, Val’s arms around his waist and cuffed together in front of Vlad’s stomach. Vlad was cuffed too, and unable to hold the reins. Their cuffs were chained together. Ropes had been run loosely beneath the horse’s belly, connecting their feet, ensuring that Vlad couldn’t tip them off the side and onto the trail and make a break for it. Nor, should the rope break, could he run with his brother hugging him like this.

It was a thorough, well thought out containment. All he could so was sit, breath stiflingly hot inside the hood, and try to map their route in his head, trying to remember turns, counting strides, for all the good it would do. He had to trysomething. Make some sort of plan. When they stopped to rest, he tried to wriggle his hands loose from the cuffs. At mealtimes, he eyed their captors, searching their belts for knives, wondering if he could just get close enough…

But they were careful, and they gave him no openings.

Neither he nor Val had the power to compel, not that Val was any use, alternating between crying and sleeping.

“You have to stop,” Vlad hissed at him one night. “Eat your food.Shut up.”

Val looked up at him with huge, betrayed blue eyes.

“We’re escaping,” Vlad whispered. “But you have to stop being such a baby and help me.”

Val’s lip quivered, and his eyes filled with fresh tears, but he nodded and wiped his face on his filthy sleeve. When he pushed his hair back, he revealed ugly purple bruises at his hairline, one on his forehead, one just behind his ear.

Vlad saw red.

Vampire or not, his brother was just a tiny thing, with slender wrists and a skinny neck, and skin that bruised like overripe fruit. He could be subdued with a word. With alook. And someone had struck him, again and again.

Vlad would figure out which one of these men had done that, and make him pay.

But first he had to have a plan. And he couldn’t form a plan if Val keptcrying. His brother’s distress triggered something ugly and primal, a side of him that was all fangs and claws, violence and knee-jerk reactions. A plan required rational thought.

Val made a valiant effort to stop crying, but try as he might, Vlad couldn’t figure out a way to escape.

One night, the blond one brought their dinner, and Vlad spoke to him in Slavic: “Where are you taking us?”

The man’s gaze flicked up; he’d understood. In the same language, he answered, “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Vlad bit back a curse and forced his expression to smooth. He couldn’t snarl, or show his fangs, not now. That wouldn’t help the plan. “What happened to our father?”

The man shrugged and retreated to the other side of the tent, where his comrades were watching the boys with a mixture of curiosity and amusement.

Vlad did growl then, just a little, before he clamped it down tight. He wished Mircea were here; he was the diplomatic one.

Days passed, until his body was ungodly sore from being strapped to a saddle, and he spent so much time under a hood that the sun became too bright. They rode, and they ate their meager rations – when Val tried to starve himself, Vlad reminded him that they couldn’t escape if they were too weak to stand – and finally, they arrived somewhere loud and bustling that stank of humanity.

The horses’ hooves clattered over cobblestones, and they climbed one last hill. Shouts hailed their arrival: staccato, rote greetings from guards, the same as when he reentered the palace grounds after a day spent in Tîrgoviste.

---