“The second boat. The one that floated downstream. They must have made it to this shore and worked their way back up to us. Damn. Damn, damn, damn.” That meant there were at least one hundred Janissaries, assuming half of them had been killed before their escape. Lada knew better than to question their skills. They were far deadlier than the bulk of her newly trained forces. One hundred Janissaries on the attack could easily wipe out her four hundred scattered men.
“We should pull back to the second line,” Bogdan said.
“We will lose the cannons. We cannot afford that.” Lada whistled sharply. “To the guns!” she shouted. “Protect the cannons!”
“She’s over here!” a man shouted in Turkish. “Take her alive!”
The men around her hesitated. “They are here for you,” Bogdan said.
“But the cannons!”
“Better the cannons than you.” He drew his sword, then shouted the next commands. “Protect the prince! Form around us and spread word down the line to hold off pursuit. We get the prince to the second line! Abandon the cannons!”
Lada stood rooted to the ground, staring at the taunting river. They had come so close to victory, so close to winning without ever having to fight. So close to humiliating Mehmed as he had humiliated her. It was not fair. If she had half the resources Mehmed did—a quarter, a tenth, even—she would have beaten him here. All she had was Wallachia. And as much as she loved it, she was seized with a sudden fear that it would not be enough. It never had been. Who was she to defy all of history, which taught her that her country had never and could never be free?
“We can lose today and still win,” Bogdan said, buzzing with urgency. “But if we lose you, we lose everything.”
Who was she? She was the dragon. Her country had teeth and claws and fire, and she would use every last bit of them. Lada drew her own sword. “To the second line!” she shouted, each word causing her more pain than the crossbow bolt would have. As they cut their way through the Janissaries appearing in the dark to bar their path, all Lada’s thoughts were on what they were leaving behind.
Mehmed. Radu. And a clear crossing for their journey into Wallachia.
She had failed at her first task. But she would make certain to send a strong welcome message.
Southern Border of Wallachia
RADU STOOD OUTSIDE WITH the other leaders, watching as their men set up a massive, neatly organized c
amp for the night. With this many men, they had to stop marching for the day by midafternoon to have everything settled before nightfall. It was a tremendous undertaking, and one they had to do every single day.
“We lost over three hundred Janissaries,” Ali Bey said with a concerned frown. “And as far as we know, they lost only a few dozen men in the retreat. I do not like those numbers. If they continue…”
Mahmoud Pasha squinted at the forbidding clouds in the distance. It was not monsoon season, but spring brought heavy rains that would swell the rivers and muddy the roads, making their jobs more difficult. There was a reason attacks took place at the end of spring instead of at the beginning. Lada had pushed them too soon. “The numbers will not continue. We took all their cannons. She is running scared.”
“My sister does not do anything scared.” Radu looked ahead toward Wallachia with a heavy heart and heavier worries. He was fairly certain they would face no attack here. Lada knew what her strengths were, and direct combat with the stronger Ottoman forces was not something she would risk. But she was out there, somewhere. Waiting.
Waving off further discussion, Radu entered Mehmed’s tent. His had gone up first, in an easily defensible position, while the rest of the camp was staged. Radu expected to find his friend angry. Instead, he found Mehmed sitting on a pillow, staring up at the ceiling of the tent with a bemused smile.
“I think she missed us,” he said.
Radu lowered himself to the carpeted floor, biting back a bitter reply. Mehmed’s amusement neglected to take into account that men had died between them. But Mehmed probably needed a few moments to be a person instead of the sultan. All recent conversations about Lada had revolved around tactics, viewing her as a prince and a military leader. She was just Lada in this tent. Radu ignored the ghosts of the dead to speak with Mehmed on the level Mehmed wanted. “She is angry with us. And as fearsome as that was when she was young, facing it now that she is grown, armed, and surrounded by soldiers? I find myself longing for a stable to hide in until she finds another object to direct her ire toward.”
Mehmed laughed. “Do you remember when we used to have footraces through the hills in Amasya?”
Radu cringed. He did his best imitation of Lada’s voice, adding a slight growl to his own even as he projected it higher. “Are you proud of yourself for being able to run faster than me? It does not matter, because I will always catch you in the end. You may run faster, but I still hit harder.” Radu rubbed his shoulder at the phantom pain. Most of his memories of Lada included that sensation.
Mehmed laughed even harder, laying back on the floor cushions. “Do you remember when she memorized more verses of the Koran than I did, just to prove she was better than I was at everything?”
“I remember all this. And it is making me question our judgment in chasing her. Do we really want to catch her? And what will we do once we have her?”
The easy happiness in Mehmed’s face was replaced with familiar tension. “You know why I have to. You have not changed your mind.”
“No. I agree that we cannot let her actions stand without a response. She threatens the stability of all our European borders. But I cannot help worrying where this ends. How it ends.”
“I worry about that as well. I just want her back home, with us.”
Radu spoke as gently as he could. “She is home, Mehmed.”
Mehmed scowled, waving Radu’s words away. “She cannot sustain this. We both know it. If she keeps fighting the whole world, eventually she will lose.” He sat up, earnest and intense. “She needs to lose to us, Radu. Not because I hate her, or because I am angry with her. She needs to lose to us because we love her. Because we understand her.”