Page 92 of Dragon Slayer

19

OATH

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The bay mare was small-boned but quick, fleet-footed as a mountain goat. She flew across the grass, despite his weight. When he looked at his reflection in the mirror – lithe, ropey with muscle, sharp-faced and snakelike – Vlad didn’t think he looked heavy. But muscle counted more than fat; he tweaked the left rein with a flick of his fingers and the mare ducked that way. He could feel her tiring, but she was determined; maybe as determined as him. She was a hunter’s mount, and the hunt was not yet finished.

Overhead, his falcon wheeled, still searching.

And then she dove.

Vlad rode to the edge of the tree line, slowing his mare to a canter, then a trot, and finally halting her right at the edge. He listened for the sounds a human could never have heard: the rustle of wings, the shifting of leaves. He lifted his gauntleted arm and the falcon came winging out between branches, hare clutched in her talons. She dropped onto his arm and let him take the rabbit from her, and feed her a bit of meat from the pouch at his belt.

“There’s a pretty girl,” he murmured, and swore the bird preened.

Someone whistled for him, and he turned to see a rider cantering toward him across the field. In the distance, the palace walls rose in an unbroken white line, monolithic and impenetrable.

The rider was George, nearly as winded as his blowing horse.

“What?” The falcon shifted nervously on his arm, and he tightened his fist around her jesses.

George reined up alongside him, expression guarded in that careful way that meant he had news. “The sultan–” He hesitated, frowning. “The sultan has sent for you. I intercepted the slave on his way to get you. You have a formal audience.”

Vlad felt his features tighten. He tamped down on a growl, lest it spook his animals. “Why? What news from the north?”

George shook his head. “I don’t know. But there is…something else. You should talk to him. And you should hurry.”

~*~

He handed his horse off to a groom and washed hastily in the fountain of the stable yard. Pushed his damp hair off his face and followed the nervously waiting slave with water dripping down into his collar and off his cuffs.

Sultan Murat awaited him in a far corner of the shady part of the garden. A vine-choked pergola shielded a bench beside a chuckling fountain, and that was where the sultan sat, clothed all in white to combat the heat, gazing serenely into the tumbling water. Two guards and a vizier stood at attention a short distance away.

The vizier leaned forward as Vlad approached, and hissed, “Watch yourself, boy. This is an honor beyond imagining. If you so much as raise a finger toward him…”

Vlad gave him a flat look. Stared at him until the fussy little man turned away with a disgruntled sniff…and a slight tremor in his hand.

Then he ducked beneath the fragrant vines and faced the sultan. “Your Majesty,” he said. It wasn’t a respectful tone.

The sultan noticed. He lifted his head, expressionless save the raising of his brows. “Not Your Majesty any longer,” he said in Turkish, and Vlad understood every word, because he was fluent now.

Vlad didn’t ask what he meant. He waited.

“I’ve abdicated,” Murat said, finally, his gaze steady. “Mehmet is the sultan now, and he readies to leave Edirne.”

Vlad was shocked. He hoped it didn’t show on his face, and thought he succeeded in masking all emotion.

The sultan’s – former sultan’s – brows lifted a fraction higher. “You have nothing to say? Your rival will no longer be in the schoolroom with you; do you have no feelings on that?”

“No, sir. None.”

A subdued smile tugged at one corner of the man’s mouth. Or maybe it was just a tic. “I also wished to inform you that your father has been released back to Wallachia.”

Oh.

“He’s signed a new treaty with us. He swore an oath, on the Bible and the Quran, to be faithful. He paid a tribute of ten-thousand gold ducats, and has agreed to send us five-hundred boys for the Janissary Corps. Do those sound like agreeable terms to you?”

“It is not my place to have an opinion on the matter, sir.”

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