The Dragon’sSon

When his father died in the carnage at Piperdean in the autumn of 1436, Edmund Tait was but a freckled boy with fire-red hair inherited from his mother’s Scottish roots. He was not old enough to have been at the battle as a squire’s page, learning the arts of war and how to conduct himself. That was in any case not what his father wanted for him; instead, he was at home and engaged in a different kind of study, though study does not really describe what he was doing: daydreaming would be a closer word. Around his neck was a wolf amulet his father had made and given to him just before he left. No-one now ever saw Edmund without it. His hand was normally on it; it was on it now. He could never forget the feeling when his father pressed it into his hands. Nor could he forget the earnestness on his father’s face when he gave what would turn out to be his last instructions. “Until I return, you are the man of the house. Look after your mother. Keep your brothers out of harm’s way. And work, Edmund: study hard so that one day you can lead a quieter life than mine. The world will not always be the way we know it. Those who learn will have better lives than those who do not.”

And so a parchment was in front of him, though it was not getting the attention his father would have wished. And the daydreaming ended when his teacher, a severe looking monk by the name of Brother Mungo, struck his hands with a switch.

He swallowed the pain whole, which was the only thing Brother Mungo’s lessons had taught him to do quickly. There were other boys in the room, sons of local families, and he could feel their relief; so long as the monk’s attention was on him it was not on them.

“Nihil agendo, male agere discimus,” Brother Mungo said. “By doing nothing, we learn to do ill.” He let the silence stretch. “Read, boy. Now.”

Edmund pressed his stinging hands flat against the desk and hunted for his place among the swimming letters. When he found it, his voice came out hoarse but clear. “Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.”

“And do you understand what that means?”

He knew the words one by one. The meaning behind them kept its distance. He risked a glance up. The monk sighed through his nose, and something in his voice eased very slightly. “It means, child, that fate leads the willing, and drags the unwilling.” He tapped the switch once against the desk, lightly. “And which are you?”

Edmund’s knuckles burned. His face burned worse. But the phrase had gone into him and settled somewhere deep in his chest, the way a stone settles into a riverbed, and there was no doubt at all in him about the answer. He sat up straighter, one hand closing on the amulet. “I am of the willing. All I want is to be like my father.”

“How can you dishonor your own father by wanting to disobey his wishes for you?” The monk’s voice sharpened again. “Your father is soldiering through mud and pain in faraway lands to keep the family afloat so that you can someday be a better man. A learned man, perhaps a secretary or a diplomat for the Warden. Or maybe even a clergyman like me if you stop dreaming and keep learning.”

Edmund could imagine nothing worse than becoming like Brother Mungo. He would never have given voice to that thought, but the expression on his face meant he didn’t need to. Brother Mungo’s anger at that expression might have shown itself in a beating; but the lesson was interrupted by the sound of a galloping horse. In the Borders, a single horse ridden hard was never good news for somebody. The rider went straight in to see Bernice and it wasn’t long before one of Edmund’s brothers had been sent to collect him. When he reached the house, his father’s sword was there. His father was not. There was only one possible reason for that. Edmund stared first at his mother, then at the sword, and then again at his mother. He struggled to get even a single word out. “Father?”

Bernice’s face was a mask of grief. “He is gone.”

❧

You fight when your lord commands you. His father had said it the way other men said grace, without heat, a fact of the world like weather. Henry Tait was English and Bernice was Scottish, and Edmund was a child of the line between where families had married and raided and burned one another’s crops and drunk one another’s ale for as long as anyone could count. Edinburgh says Scottish Borderlands. London says English Borderlands. The people who live there? It’s a border. No man’s land. The Mitfords in their Redesdale stronghold terrorized everyone they regarded as beneath their notice and fawned over those whose power exceeded their own. A marauding Armstrong group, finding the laird of another clan on his own, cut him up and packed the pieces into his saddlebags to be discovered by his kin when his horse found its way home. Everyday borderland social intercourse.

But Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was Warden of the East March, and joined George Dunbar, Earl of March, to reclaim Dunbar Castle from the Scots. He told Henry Tait to gather as many men as he could and join him. Fifteen hundred Englishmen died at the Battle of Piperdean. Henry Tait was one of them. The Taits had been impoverished before Piperdean. Now they were destitute.

Edmund’s mother’s mourning was not to be allowed to get in the way of those who considered themselves her betters. News of her husband’s death was less than a day old when a messenger came from the Warden to demand her presence. The Warden’s castle could seem forbidding at the best of times; when she arrived with her three sons the blunt stone walls seemed intent on intimidation. She did her best for the sake of the boys to look unconcerned, but Edmund was not fooled.

When they entered the room they were shepherded into, one glance at the Warden told him there would be no mercy here. The man sat behind a heavy oak table, draped in thick furs despite the hearth’s roaring fire and listened to his mother pleading their cause. His expression suggested he had scarcely listened to her words. He took a long, deliberate sip from a silver goblet, then tore a chunk of roasted meat from the platter before him, dropping it to the massive hound at his feet. “My Lady, I would forfeit your debt in recognition of the loss you have suffered if I could, but I cannot. Our coffers are empty and the Scots are right here.” He stroked the dog’s head as it devoured the morsel. “I give you a week to repay your debt and a penalty in gold coin. If you cannot do so in the time, I will have to repay it myself by confiscating your holding.”

❧

Brother Mungo brought his brother Fergus to meet Bernice. The monk said, “My lady, my brother is here with a proposal.” Then, because he knew Fergus to be as black a rogue as ever lived, had little doubt what the proposal was and wanted nothing to do with it, he left.

Fergus was shorter than his brother and broader, with a face that had taken its share of blows. His coat was good wool, well-cut, though one cuff was torn and there was an old dark stain across the front that had long since set. He stood with his hands at his sides and looked at Bernice. He said, “I will give you the money to pay your debts.”

Edmund’s’ mother was no slouch in judging what men were made of.

“And in return?” she said.

“You will continue to live on the holding and you will administer it.”

“And in return?” she said again.

“You will administer the estate, but it will be mine and all of its incomes. And when I need shelter given to men in my band, you will provide it.”

What choice did she have? She said, “I accept your offer.”

“I have not finished. One of your children goes with me as my hostage for your good behavior.”

Bernice turned away. Edmund saw her fists close so tightly the nails must be grinding into her palms. He understood that, if no-one spoke now, his mother would have to. He stepped forward. Fergus looked at the red hair first, then at the boy under it.

“We accept,” Edmund said.

Lady Tait’s hands were raised in protest and the two younger boys were weeping but Edmund’s eyes had moved from sorrow to steely resolve. His hand rose to his chest by instinct, and for a moment he stood there gripping the amulet as though it were nailed to him, breath shallow, before he wrenched it free with a sharp tug that left his neck burning. He paused only to hand his amulet to the elder of the two brothers, whispering, “Take care of this. You’re the man in this house now.”

He was about to walk out of the room when his mother stopped him. “Edmund. You take the sword.”

Edmund had looked at that sword many times. A piece of steel with a worn leather grip, a hand-and-a-half war sword made for a man and not a bairn. A soldier’s tool and a nobleman’s mark, worth two cows, and many a man in the Borders was killed for two cows. His mother said, “You go as a soldier. A soldier must have a sword.” She fixed Fergus with a long, steady gaze as she pressed the sword into her son’s hand. Edmund nodded and took the sword, though he struggled to hold it up. He noticed the smoothness of the leather grip, worn by his father’s sweat. Then, to save himself further grief, he walked out of the room. Where was he going? Wherever fate led. Beggars can’t be choosers.

The messenger came to her chamber before the hunting party returned. That was how she knew it was not ordinary news. Alexandru Aldea had died in the field. A boar hunt, in the foothills south of the city, in the second month of the year. The healers called it apoplexy. He had been standing, and then he had not been standing. By the time his men reached him he was already gone.

The year was 1436, she was eighteen years old and she had been in Wallachia for less than two of them. She sat with the news for a moment, then called for her woman to bring her outer robe.

The first thing she needed to know was her status. There was no child. She had understood from the beginning that this would matter. The alliance between Moldavia and Wallachia had been bought with her, and the marriage had produced nothing to bind the two courts together beyond the fact of her presence here. Her brother Bogdan had written to her twice in the past year, short letters in his own hand with very little flourish. He wrote the way he ran his mountain estate: briefly, with attention to what was necessary. She had always understood him. The last letter had asked after her health and the health of any child. She had told him there was no child.

Now Aldea was dead and she was a widow at eighteen with no heir and no obvious claim on anything in this court. She thought about it plainly. She could go back to Moldavia. Bogdan would not refuse her. He was not unkind. But she knew what return meant: she would become available again, to be placed somewhere useful, and she had already been placed once. The second placement would likely be less favorable than the first. Or there was the nunnery. Women of her rank had gone that way before. It was not disgrace, but it was a door that closed behind you.

Neither answer suited her.

The boyars would be meeting within the day to discuss succession. She was not invited. She was not Wallachian, and she had produced no heir, and her standing in that room was effectively nothing. She understood this. It did not mean she had no choices.

She finished dressing. Then she went to find out who was coming.

❧

He came with a retinue of forty men and a letter from the Emperor. Vlad, called the Dragon, younger brother of the man who had just been buried. He arrived in the second week after the death, before the boyars had concluded anything.

Merchants out of Făgăraș had been coming into Târgoviște for two years and more, and they carried his goods and asked their questions and went back north again. He held Făgăraș and Amlaș. He minted his own coin at Sighișoara. He had kept the passes for the old Emperor, and gone as envoy to Byzantium and to the Sultan both. He had been schooled at Sigismund’s court, and Sigismund had hung the dragon on him. A knight of the highest imperial order.

She placed these facts in order and considered them.

He came through the gate of the palace in the late afternoon and she watched from the gallery. He did not move like his brother. Aldea had moved through a space as though he already owned it. This one moved as though he was gathering information about the room. He stopped twice crossing the courtyard, both times to speak to someone in his retinue, and both times the conversation was short and the man he spoke to nodded and went. He was in his forties, broad through the shoulders, gray at the temples. He did not look worn. He looked careful. He looked up once before he entered the hall. She did not step back from the gallery rail. She did not know if he had seen her.

The boyars met that evening. She was not permitted to attend. She sat in her chamber and waited, which she had become good at in Aldea’s court. Waiting was not passive if you were paying attention while you did it.

Albul, the Warden of Târgoviște, was the one who raised the difficulty. She heard it secondhand through her woman, who had heard it in the corridor outside the hall. *Let the Griffin branch make their case before we decide.* He was not wrong to say it. The law of voivode-bone meant any man of the right blood could stand for election. The Dragon had the Emperor behind him, but the Emperor was old, and what that backing would be worth in a year was a question no one in that room could answer.

The meeting went late.

She sent word that she wished to speak.

They brought her in near midnight. A single lamp at the end of the table. Ten boyars and the Dragon seated to one side, not at the head. He had not presumed that yet. Albul sat across from him, his face giving nothing away.

She stood where she was and spoke without preamble. “I was sent here to make firm the alliance between Wallachian and Moldavia. Now the husband I took is dead and the alliance comes into question. If he will have me, I will take the Dragon as my husband, and the alliance with Moldavia will hold.” She looked at Vlad once while she said it. He looked back at her the way a man looks at something he had not expected to find.

Albul turned his cup once on the table. He did not turn it again.

The vote went to the Dragon. He accepted it without ceremony. He said what needed to be said about the defense of the realm, thanked the boyars, and withdrew. She heard later he had gone straight to the stables to speak with his captain. She thought that was might be sensible or it might be telling and it was possibly both.

They were married before spring.

The Dragon was a widower, but not alone. Behind him came three young boys, his sons born in Transylvania. Mircea, tall and serious at eight; Vlad, dark and impish at five; and little Radu, barely steady on his feet. And when the youngest—golden-haired Radu, whose name meant “joy”—looked up at her and said, “Mami,” her heart gave way. The word stuck in her chest like sweet oak resin, and soon Mircea and Vlad used it too. With no children of her own, she became their mother in every sense that mattered.

❧

The six years that followed were not easy, but they were his. Power was not something to be taken for granted in Wallachia just because one was crowned Voivode. The Dragon took time to hear people’s complaints and disputes. He might not have been as patient as people would have liked, but he heard them and he handed down decisions. Cloaked in the red mantle of the Order of the Dragon he rode the length of the land, collecting tribute and dispensing justice. Often he was accompanied by Mircea, already being shaped as heir, and at times by Vlad, soon called Dracula, the Dragon’s son.

Across the Danube the Turks kept their side of the bargain. Salt, timber, honey and cattle moved south; spices and silk came north. Trade is a kind of peace, even when it isn’t.

❧

It was early spring of 1442, although that year spring was but a slow retreat of a longer winter than usual, when from the south came three riders, the foremost bearing a long leather tube bound with red cord: the Sultan’s mark of safe passage. At sight of the Wallachian watchtower, they slowed, raising their empty hands to show they bore letters, not blades. At the gate the guards let them pass with no more than a gesture and sent a boy running for the Voivode’s steward.

The court assembled in the Hall of Banners, which was neither the largest nor the most impressive chamber of the palace but the one that still smelled of linden wood and home. From the blackened rafters, every banner Wallachia had ever captured or inherited hung in stiff, faded splendor: the eagle, the bull, the cross, the crescent. The boyars stood to one side, in various degrees of martial finery, fidgeting with their belts or making small, contemptuous jokes at the visitor’s expense. The smell of wet hounds that had followed them in from the hunt mingled with the stale hearth smoke clinging to their beards and the unmistakable musk of unwashed bodies beneath layers of brocade and fur.

On the dais, flanked by his wife and eldest son, sat Vlad the Dragon. He wore the red velvet of the Dragon Order and a silver chain set with rubies, and if there was fatigue in his face it was masked by the iron of his posture.

When the envoy entered, he stopped three paces inside the hall and bowed, right hand to heart, to lips, then to brow. He did not lower himself further. He waited until the Voivode acknowledged him. Only then did he step forward. From his belt he removed a leather case and held it at chest height with both hands. “I bring tidings from Ali Bey, Subași of Giurgiu,” he said evenly. “I bring also a letter from the Padishah.”

Before opening it, he turned the parchment outward so the Sultan’s tughra could be seen, inclining his head briefly toward the imperial cipher. Only then did he break the cord and begin to read.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

From Murad Khan, Padishah of the Horizons, Shadow of God upon Earth, Sultan of Rumelia and Anatolia, to the Voivode of Wallachia: Peace be upon him who follows the straight path.

Let it be known that the Almighty exalts and humbles whom He wills. The Frankish Emperor who once raised his banner against Us has departed this world, and with him the confusion of his realm. Now that the lands beyond the river stand leaderless and uncertain, Our victorious armies advance toward the northern marches to secure the Faith and preserve the tranquility of Our dominions.

From the Exalted Threshold of Our Imperial Court comes this command: that the road through your lands be opened, and that provisions and guides be furnished according to custom.

Those who remain loyal beneath Our shadow shall enjoy Our protection. Those who resist the will of the Padishah shall know the weight of the Sultan’s justice and the force of his arms.

Written at Edirne, beneath Our Imperial Seal, in the year eight-hundred-and-forty-five of the Hijra.

Then the messenger added that the Sultan expected his answer within a day, since his armies were already on the move.

After a moment of shock, the boyars erupted. The Dragon lifted a hand and the room stilled. Then he turned to the envoy. “I must talk to my council in private. I shall have food, drink and rest provided to you and your escort.”

When the three Turks had gone, the Voivode rose from the dais, fingertips brushing the velvet armrest. His voice, quiet but steel-edged, carried through the hall. He said, simply, “Well?”

Albul, the castellan of Târgoviște, slammed his fist onto a nearby bench. Banners fluttered with the impact. His eyes blazed. “Well? We bleed at their raids already. Now the pagans want us to join them against our faith. And you ask, Well? We must stand our ground.”

A slim shaft of sunlight cut across the flagstones as Old Captain Neacșu, a barrel of a man whose mustache covered all expression, stepped forward, silver hair catching the glow. He folded his arms over a broad chest. “Bravery without calculation is slaughter,” he rumbled. “Have you ever seen the Danube flooding? No woods, no walls, no hills can hold such torrent. Our army can hold for a while in woods and marshes, but the Ottomans are just too many. They will pass nevertheless, but not before burning down Târgoviște and taking our people into slavery.”

Albul said, “And if we do nothing, we dishonor the Dragon’s oath, sworn before God, to stand against the infidel. Better to fight in the swamps and forests until Transylvania answers. Hunyadi will not abandon us.”

“Hunyadi...,” said the Dragon. “He cares for Wallachia only while we stand between him and the Turk.” He let his gaze sweep the hall. “He would have us be a shield. But shields are meant to be struck.”

Anastasia, entering a conversation most of those present regarded as for men only, said, “What if there is a third way? Why not offer more than passage? You could meet the Sultan’s army personally, with the best and fastest horses, and be their guide through our lands. This will keep them to the route of our careful choosing. We would say it was the fastest, but it would be mountainous, uninhabited, so the Turks would be starving. As we cross into Transylvania, we can let Hunyadi know. He can then strike where and when he chooses—with our help.”

Albul sniffed. “Well, when women rule the army…”

The Dragon cut him off. “That could work, but Hunyadi must be in this from the first step, else he will count it treachery. This will take more than an envoy.”

“I will go,” said Anastasia. “My presence would be guarantee enough.”

The Dragon paused. His own wife? And yet, what better way to keep Hunyadi sweet? He took a long hard look at her. If she had any qualms, they did not show. She raised an eyebrow. “Let it be so,” he said.

After the council dissolved, the Dragon retreated to his own room. He had not been there long before Anastasia joined him. She was not going to criticize her husband directly, but he knew what she was thinking. He said, “You think I want to throw open our gates and kneel before the Turk?”

“You always said the forests are our walls. That a Voivode who knows his land can turn a foreign army into bones for the wolves.”

“I believed it. I still believe it. But Neacșu is not wrong. Fifty thousand men make their own road.”

The silence between them was not uncomfortable. It was the silence of two people who had learned to think alongside each other. “Hunyadi,” he said finally. “You understand the danger. If he decides this is treachery rather than alliance...”

She brushed that aside. “The boys.”

“Mircea rides with me. He is fourteen now, old enough to be seen.” He moved to the table, poured water and set the cup down without drinking. “Vlad and Radu should stay in the city.”

“Târgoviște, in Albul’s watch? No, he has his own ideas about succession. The monastery we built should now earn its keep.”

That night, the Dragon walked the palace battlements alone. The air smelled of cold mud and the hint of snow, and somewhere in the woods beyond the ramparts, wolves howled. From this height, he could see the three Turks tending to their horses, talking proudly and walking straight, as if the ground beneath them would soon belong to their master.

Fear would not rule him. The Dragon rested his hands on the cold stone and stood on the wall until the last torch went out.

❧

Next day in Târgoviște, a servant of the Voivode handed the Turkish envoy a scroll sealed with red wax marked with the insignia of Vlad the Dragon and reminded him of Vlad’s instructions. “For the Sultan’s hand only.”

Before the sound of hooves faded, the same servant signaled to a group of mounted couriers. They waited only for his barked command, the one word, “Go”, and kicked their horses hard down the ridge. Each bore a message sealed in black wax, each had a different destination. They rode low over their horses’ necks, eyes narrowed to slits, winter wind peeling tears from their cheeks, bound for every corner of the realm.

The message was a fire that swept the land. Three thousand Wallachian horse archers abandoned their fields and their hearths to gather at Târgoviște’s mustering grounds. These were the Voivode’s elite host. Sons of great and lesser boyars, of the village *cnezi*, and the Voivode’s *viteji*, his own sworn retainers. Not numerous, but chosen. They rode sturdy mountain horses, small but tireless, bred for broken ground and long marches. Pride showed in their saddles, in the elaborate horn bows, in the crests and colors that marked their houses. Albul’s rode under a white horse on green, and they rode together and apart from the rest, as they always had.

Their armor was light: mail shirts, leather jerkins, fur-lined coats against the wind. They trusted not in heavy plate but in speed. Silence in the forests, sudden flight from the marsh, arrows loosed at full gallop, these were their arts. Yet when pressed, they closed without hesitation, fighting with sword, axe, mace, or spear.

Within forty-eight hours, the fields outside the Wallachian capital trembled under the stamping of hooves and the ululating curses of men, veterans hardened by border raids and boyar feuds, long resigned to the same grim trade of war—against their own blood, the Turk or the Tatar.

At the heart of the gathering, beneath the patched red and black banner of the Order of the Dragon, the Voivode watched the arrivals. He was armored for war. A shirt of mail lay beneath a dark brigandine studded with iron plates; over it fell a crimson mantle lined with sable, the dragon stitched in black across his chest. His sword hung heavy at his hip, its pommel worn smooth by years of use, and a broad mace rested against the saddle of the tall warhorse behind him. The beast stamped and snorted, armored at the chest, foam flecking its bit. He wore no crown. The iron cap upon his head, rimmed in fur, was crown enough. His face was masklike; his eyes, deep-set and unfriendly, flickered only when one of the veterans saluted with genuine respect. He spoke little, but when he did, the men drew closer, as if warmth might pass from his words into their bones. “They say the Sultan sends fifty thousand,” said one of the boyars, a bald man with arms like fence posts.

“They say the Sultan can piss ice water and not feel it,” answered another. “But he can bleed like the rest.”

The Dragon listened, arms crossed. “They do not come to fight us,” he said evenly. “They come to pass through.” He let his eyes settle on the men before him. “We ride ahead of them. We keep them to the road agreed. No more.” His hand rested briefly on the pommel of his sword. “At sunrise, we move.”

Only a handful knew the true design. The others shifted where they stood, relieved, resentful, uneasy, each man wondering what the Dragon had left unsaid.

❧

The old Roman road that threaded north from Wallachia to Hunyadi’s castle in Transylvania wound through a wilderness of shattered trees and mist. In early spring the Carpathians hunched their shoulders against the world, slopes were mottled with the black and ochre of beech trees that had not yet woken from their winter sleep, and the wind came down the passes with nothing to break it. For this journey, Anastasia and her escort traveled light: only ten horsemen, all in the battered surcoats of the Dragon, and Captain Neacșu whose left arm had never fully mended after taking a Turkish blade above the wrist.

She had left Târgoviște eight days prior with twice the riders and the younger boys. At Govora she had left them in the custody of Father Nicodim, a man whose discretion she had tested over ten years of oblique requests and kept confidences, and she had left the bulk of her escort with him. Govora had no walls worth besieging and no name to draw a hungry boyar’s eye; Târgoviște had Albul, and the mind of this boyar she had not been able to read to her comfort. The boys were safer where Albul could not count them.

The Jiu Valley was their first true obstacle. Here the road narrowed to a ribbon between towering limestone and the river, white with foam and biting cold. Neacșu rode ahead, scanning the cliff tops for movement, then slowed and gestured to the Lady. “See here?” he said, pointing at the vertical face above a scree of bone and gravel. “A few men with boulders could hold an army for hours. Or bring it down on our heads, if they wished.”

Anastasia considered the heights, her eyes moving in quick sweeps. She rode side-saddle, the heavy folds of her traveling dress not quite concealing the small axe strapped beneath her right boot. The wind battered her cloak and tore at her hair, but she sat straight, the tilt of her chin giving her a height she did not possess. “And if you were the Sultan’s man?”

Neacșu grunted, spitting over the edge. “I’d torch the woods above, let the fire drive defenders into the open, then rain arrows while my janissaries swam the river and flanked them from below. But I am not the Sultan’s man.”

She smiled, just barely. “Neither am I, though I suspect we are both expected to act as if we were.” The smile vanished as she looked past him, to the twists of the valley ahead. “We ride through before dusk. If we’re to be ambushed, let them do it in daylight.”

The captain bowed slightly in his saddle, then spurred his horse onward. Behind them, the remaining guards checked their weapons, faces drawn and nervous. They had all survived too many wars to believe in easy passage.

Beyond the Jiu, the road widened again, and with it the world seemed to breathe. Frost glittered in the hollows. A haze of wood smoke betrayed the presence of peasants, some bowing to the muddy ground, their faces weathered into deep creases by the mountain winds, their bodies protected by heavy straps of sheep skin. Others lurked in shadow with axes or sickles at the ready, mud-caked fingers making the sign of the cross, their loyalties uncertain. None challenged the procession.

On the third morning since Govora the mist thinned and it was there. Squared towers, no ornament. The Hunyadi crest, a raven with a gold ring in his beak on blue. The sight drew a low whistle from Neacșu.

“Never seen it?” Anastasia asked.

“Not since he raised the new walls. Twelve feet thick, they say. The higher he stands, the more eyes turn on him.”

The bridge to the main gate was a marvel: chained logs suspended above a chasm, the planks iced over but freshly swept. On the far side, armored men-at-arms lined the path, halberds glinting, boots planted in perfect discipline.

A man in fur-trimmed black stepped forward. His helmet was off, showing iron-gray hair cut blunt. He looked up at her and went still for a moment. Then he bowed from the waist, the movement deliberate, and when he straightened his eyes had settled. She had seen men do that. It was worth something and it was worth less than they imagined. “Lady Anastasia,” he said. “Your presence honors us.”

“Lord Szilágyi,” Anastasia said. She let it be seen that she needed no introduction. “I bring word to Lord Iancu and his Lady.”

The man smiled thinly, then signaled for his guards to stand down. “Lord Iancu Hunyadi and his Lady Elisabeth await you in the high hall. We have prepared quarters.”

Inside, the castle was all stone and shadow, the windows mere arrow slits, the air scented with damp limestone and boiled meat. Two maids appeared as if conjured, brushing mud from Anastasia’s boots and fixing her hair with swift, expert hands. She allowed it, but only so much as protocol required.

The high hall was stern rather than splendid. The stone floor was strewn with fresh rushes, and torches burned in iron brackets along the walls. Shields and captured blades hung between narrow windows, and once-bright tapestry, its blue and gold dulled by years of hearth smoke, broke the cold of the northern wall. At the far end of the long table, beneath a window that admitted more wind than light, sat Iancu Hunyadi and his wife, Elisabeth.

He was broad-shouldered and thick through the chest, his hands planted on the wood as though claiming it by force. His nose had been broken more than once. He had the wine poured and did not touch it, and she watched him not touch it. The thick black mustache that dominated his face twitched slightly as he inclined his head, a warrior’s courtesy that did nothing to soften the calculation behind his gaze. Anastasia felt the weight of his scrutiny but kept her shoulders square and her chin level. Lady Elisabeth was younger and pale. Anastasia noticed her hand involuntarily touching her belly then moving away. Pregnant perhaps?

Anastasia made the prescribed bows, but ignored the seat offered her, choosing to remain standing, her eyes locked on Lord Iancu. “My husband sends greetings,” she said. “And a warning. The Sultan’s host is on the move toward Transylvania.”

The hall went silent but for the crackle of torches. Hunyadi drummed his fingers once, twice. At last he said, “And what does the Dragon propose?”

“He will march the Turks through the Jiu Valley, ostensibly leading them toward your castle. The passes are narrow, the cliffs high. There, where horse cannot turn and banner cannot spread, you may fall upon them. Together.”

Lady Elisabeth spoke then, and she spoke in Romanian. Someone in this house had thought it worth the trouble. “And what pledge does the Dragon give that this is not deceit?”

“I am here.” Anastasia held her gaze, letting the words linger.

Elisabeth’s eyes widened, then she laughed, a sound like water over gravel. “You Wallachians have style, I grant you.”

Hunyadi let the silence reign for a moment, then took one sip of the wine and set his cup down. His voice hardened. “Agreed, but not as you propose. We must exhaust the pagans first. Let the Dragon guide them through to the Saxon lands unmolested. Let them besiege walled towns and plunder villages until they strain under the weight of their loot. When they grow rash and weary, when they dream only of home, he will tempt them with whispers of Sibiu’s wealth. We will speak of crumbling walls and frightened burghers. And there…” He slammed his fist upon the table, making the wine cups tremble. “There I shall spring my trap.”

Anastasia turned to Captain Neacșu. “You know what to do.” He saluted, fists to chest, then withdrew to the corridor, boots echoing down the stone. Hunyadi leaned over the table, close enough that Anastasia could smell the wine on his breath. “Do you trust your Dragon, Lady?”

She met his gaze. “With my life.”

He grinned below his moustache. “And if he does not deserve it?”

Lady Elisabeth shifted in her seat, touching her belly again. “My Lord Iancu is fond of games. But do not mistake him for a man who takes risks lightly. Even when taken with a pretty head. Heads come off all the same.”

Anastasia bowed her head. “That is all we can ask.”

The next morning, from the battlements, she watched as Captain Neacșu took the first bend of the road south, already a speck against the snow on the Carpathian peaks. Hunedoara’s banners snapped in the wind, sending the ravens wheeling above the courtyard. Somewhere beyond the mountains, the Dragon and his three thousand horsemen waited for news.