The men started forward, a steady march, that quickly dissolved into a dash, boots kicking up dust.
The guard captain went goggle-eyed. “Oh–”
Vlad drew his sword and opened the man’s throat with one clean slice. “Thank you,” he told the toppling body, before he went to join his men. “But I’ll be taking back my father’s castle, now.”
~*~
Vlad carved a path through the defenders that threw themselves at him. He turned blades aside with his own as if they were feathers, hacked through limbs as if they belonged to training dummies. Men screamed, and fell, and blood ran thick down his sword, and across the stones of the courtyard.
From the first, the battle for the fortress had felt like a victory; there were men here, strong and well-trained, but there weren’t enough of them. Not as many as would have accompanied the sultan, had he deigned to come.
“Vlad!” Cicero called.
Vlad took a man’s hand, and spun as the Ottoman fell to his knees, screaming, clutching at the stump, seeking out his wolf. Cicero stood partway up a flight of stone steps that led to an upper gallery – and an entrance into the fortress’s royal apartments. Vlad had never been here, but his father had talked often of the place when he was a boy, and he knew where Cicero wanted to lead him.
He ducked a swing aimed at his head, caught the soldier just under the ribs with a vicious slice, and went to join Cicero.
Two Ottomans waited at the top of the stairs, the only ones guarding the entrance to the apartments, it seemed. The battle was chaos, enemies dressed as one another, nearly impossible to tell friend from foe. But these two at the top of the stairs had seen Vlad fighting, no doubt, and they paled and braced themselves, visibly, as Vlad urged Cicero aside and started up toward them.
They came at him together, swords slashing from opposite angles, clean bright steel flashing in the sunlight. He caught one with his own blade, and the other with his gloved hand. And then heshoved.
Bloodlust and adrenaline roared in his veins, the promise of victory, and they toppled backward to land on the stones. Vlad wrenched the sword in his hand free, and tossed it away. Stepped on that man’s throat, and crushed his windpipe with his boot. The other he disarmed with a deft flick of his own sword, and then drove the point through his eye.
The bodies stilled beneath him.
“You shouldn’t take such chances,” Cicero said, panting, as he joined him.
“It wasn’t a chance,” Vlad said, and kept moving.
The door to the apartment gave under one kick, and there he found a silk-dressed, sniveling official of some sort, attempting to hide beneath a couch.
Cicero took the lead this time, dragging him out by the collar with a vicious, wolfish snarl, and throwing him down on the rug at Vlad’s feet.
Vlad laid his bloodied sword against his throat. “Where’s your sultan?”
The man whimpered, and tried to shrink down into himself.
Vlad pressed harder with the sword, and reached with his free hand to pull the turban from his own head, dark hair spilling loose down his shoulders. There could be no mistaking who he was, now. “Where is he?”
“A-asia Minor, your grace,” the man stuttered, breathing through his mouth, tears streaking down his face. “He thought – forgive me, he said you’d be killed on the road. You weren’t supposed to…” He trailed off, his teeth chattering.
“He’s off on another campaign, then,” Vlad said, speaking more to Cicero than to this man. “I wasn’t ever supposed to enter the fortress alive, so what was the sense in him coming all this way?”
He slew the official with one efficient stroke.
Vlad nodded. “I think he’ll come now.”
~*~
“Yourbrother,” Mehmet hissed, and flecks of spit struck Val’s face. He’d burst into Val’s bedchamber a moment before, and, when Val had lifted his head from the book he’d been reading, taken him by the throat, dragged him off the bed, and pinned him up against the wall.
“Yes, I have a brother,” he said mildly, and swallowed against the press of Mehmet’s hand at his Adam’s apple.
Mehmet bared his teeth and growled.
Val sighed, and feigned boredom, though his belly clenched with excitement. “What’s he done now?” Whatever it was, if it made Mehmet this angry, Val was glad of it.
Mehmet snarled, but at least turned loose of him and stalked away – stumped away. His joints must have been hurting him especially tonight, because he lacked all grace.
