“Stop,” Lada said. “I can take out an entire army with two explosions.”
Tohin let out an exasperated breath. “You soldiers always overestimate the damage. There is not enough gunpowder, and you would be killed if you stayed close enough to light it under an approaching army.”
“Not under.” The sun dazzled Lada’s eyes as it shone down on her through a break in the rocks above. “Over.”
Tohin and Lada sat together on the jumble of rocks that had come down, blocking the entire bottom of the canyon.
In an actual battle, it would have been much more difficult. The timing would have to be perfect. They would need to wait long enough for the opposing army to be fully into the canyon. Stealth would be paramount—a single shot taking out either of the soldiers who were left to light the charges would ruin the whole thing.
But it had worked. Using the gunpowder to trigger an avalanche on two ends of the valley blocked the way forward and the way back. With steep sides and no cover, a force as scant as Lada’s could have killed hundreds of trapped men, picking them off one by one.
“You have a very good mind,” Tohin said. The rest of Lada’s Janissaries were already starting the long, backbreaking process of lugging the cannon they had never bothered using over the mountain and to the fortress on the other side.
“The conditions would have to be specific for that to be effective.”
“Still. Using the land around yourself as a weapon—that does not occur to most people. You heard that little idiot, the one with a head thicker than this rock. All he could think of was a weapon he could hold in his hand.”
“And yet, for all my brilliance, I am fighting imaginary foes in a canyon behind a fortress no one would ever try to storm.”
“Would you rather be on the field at Kruje? Throwing men at a wall that does not budge? Watching them die of rotting sickness?”
Lada felt a twinge of panic. They had had almost no word from the siege. She assumed that meant things were going well. “There is sickness?”
“A camp that large? There is always sickness.”
“Have you heard from them?”
Tohin nodded. “My husband and one of my sons have written. There has been no progress. And disease is ravaging camp much faster than they expected it to.”
“What about—” Lada stopped herself. She could not stop picturing Mehmed, lying on a cot, wasting away and sinking into himself. All this time she had imagined him with a sword in his hand, commanding men, accomplishing great things and never once wanting—or needing—her by his side. But disease was not a foe she had anticipated.
Lada cleared her throat, trying to ease the tightness that had taken root there. “What other news?”
“Nothing. They will push at the wall until it breaks or winter comes, and then they will return home. Whether they win or lose, the result is the same. The men come home, and I have less work to do but more mouths to feed.”
“Why do they bother? What difference does Kruje make? Does it really hold so much value for the empire that it is worth this risk?” Lada stood, pacing. She let the fear she felt for Mehmed act as a fuse to light her anger. “Damnable fools!”
“It is not about Kruje,” Tohin said.
“Of course not. It is about Murad’s pride! He cannot stand that his protégé betrayed him, and so he risks Mehmed—” Lada paused, taking a deep breath. “He risks thousands of men to take revenge against one.”
“It is not about Skanderberg, either.” Tohin raised a hand, cutting off the argument brimming on Lada’s tongue. “Yes, he wants to make an example of Skanderberg, punish him. But what do you think would happen in the other border cities if Murad did not address this?”
“They would return to their rightful rulers! He overreaches. He has no business there.”
“And what if he allowed Kruje to leave? If he allowed all the vassal states their freedom, if he withdrew to the borders of the Ottoman Empire as they were before we began eating into Europe, what then?”
“I do not understand the question.”
“Where would it stop? Should we leave all the cities, go back to the deserts in the east? Roam on horses?”
“Of course not.”
“So we stay here. You would allow us the first territories of our conquest—how generous of you. Do you think Hunyadi would be satisfied? Do you think Byzantium would thank us and happily live on their sliver of land? Do you think the pope would stop calling for crusades?”
“I do not think—”
“When do borders ever stay as they are? Our own people were driven from the east, fleeing from destruction. They saw cities and walls, and they wanted that. So they took them. If they had not taken them, they would have died. And someone else would have come and taken the cities instead.”