“Are you … well?”
Lada shook her head. Sixty thousand! No one could have guessed Mehmed would bring that many. Not even she had guessed. She knew it was wrong, but something warm and pleasant licked to life deep inside her. It really was a tremendous show of respect on his part.
And a deeply inconvenient one. This was a fine time for someone to take her seriously at last.
“Well, sixty thousand or six hundred thousand, if he cannot ferry them across the water, he will either have to tack weeks onto the plans to find another passage or give up. And given how much he loves frugality for everything other than his wardrobe and personal tent, I am counting on the latter option.”
Stefan nodded. “Where do you want me?”
“Back near the capital. When we know the outcome here, we will be able to determine our next best move. I want you out of harm’s way, and as close to Hungary as possible.”
Without another word, Stefan slipped into the darkness where he was most at home.
“Sixty thousand,” Lada whispered to herself, giggling. Mehmed might as well have sent her another love letter.
It was two nights until the Ottoman crossing was attempted.
A broad, flat skiff launched, maneuvered with poles across the narrowest part of the river. A thick rope trailed behind it. Lada and her men watched as the skiff hit their side of the river. They waited as the Janissaries disembarked, then trudged through the mud and reeds up to the point directly across from where they had launched. The Ottomans had built a dock on their side, and several much larger skiffs were waiting to ferry men and wagons across.
Metal on metal rang through the night as huge spikes were driven into the soft ground and the rope was tied off for the skiffs to be pulled back and forth across the river.
Still, Lada and her men watched. They waited until the work was finished. They waited while the first three skiffs—packed shoulder to shoulder with two hundred men each, all Janissaries with their stupid white-flapped caps glowing like surrender in the moonlight—were filled to capacity and began the slow pull across the river.
When at long last they were halfway, Lada stood, stretching her agonized muscles. Then she fired her crossbow. All the crossbows around her went off, the bolts singing dark through the night. Men fell, the river accepting Lada’s offerings with hungry splashes.
The skiff in back reversed direction, heading for the dock. The men in the first skiff pulled faster, evidently thinking reaching the closer shore was the best course of action. And the middle skiff simply let go, drifting aimlessly down the river as Lada’s men decorated it with death.
Lada whistled sharply. Her cannons fired. Three of the shots went wide, but two found their mark on the skiff closest to Mehmed’s shore. The skiff capsized, dumping all the men still onboard into the swift, unforgiving water. Their armor would be their end.
The skiff heading for Lada’s bank slowed, and then stopped. There were no longer enough men to pull it. It drifted, one last Janissary heroically keeping hold of the rope until Lada planted a bolt in his back. Then the skiff joined its brother on a scenic trip down the Danube and away from Lada’s land forever.
Mehmed’s men had finally recovered their senses. Cannons wheeled into place to answer Lada’s. But a few parting shots from hers made quick work of the temporary dock, and then Lada and her men slipped back down to the ground, giving Mehmed nothing to aim for.
Lada, elated, knew exactly what she was aiming for. She would not miss.
“If only we had more cannons,” Lada said with a sigh, patting the heavy, cold metal side of one, “we could have bombarded his whole camp.”
Nicolae’s voice whispered in her ear: Stop calling it his camp. You are not fighting Mehmed, you are fighting the Ottomans.
Lada rested her cheek against the cannon. Her heart squeezed painfully. What she would not give for Nicolae to actually be here, making her angry with his always-too-insightful observations. Or Petru, eager and excited for whatever came next. She would never hear the two of them again, never listen to Nicolae mock Petru, and Petru threaten to kill him for doing so.
She wanted them back.
She wanted everything she had ever lost back. Her childhood. Her brother. Even her love and respect for her father. The Ottomans had taken them all.
A gentle hand came down on her shoulder. “Are you well?” Bogdan asked.
“Why does everyone ask me that? I am always well!” Lada stood straight, shaking off her feelings and, inadvertently, Bogdan’s hand. He flinched, his face falling.
Lada reached out and took his hand. She had not lost him. She had not lost Wallachia. She would yet regain some of what she had lost, but she would give nothing else without a fight.
Bogdan’s face lit up with quiet joy. He held perfectly still, as though afraid of spooking her. “What next?”
“We need to move the cannons. Fire them and then move them again. We will keep doing that, keep them guessing and pinned down and unable to attempt another crossing. Tell—”
A bolt bounced off the cannon, spinning in the air before coming to rest at Lada’s feet. She frowned down at it. Bogdan tackled her, his body on top of hers as more bolts flew around them.
“Janissaries!” someone screamed.
Lada rolled out from under Bogdan—he was unhurt, she noticed with trembling relief, a flash of Nicolae’s bloodied back rising unbidden—and drew her sword. Because they had chosen deep tree cover, it meant they could not form a line. They were not expecting hand-to-hand combat, not now.
“Where did they come from?” Bogdan whispered as they crawled away from the cannon and met up with a reserve of men that had been resting. They were not resting now.
“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.