18
Southern Border of Wallachia
RADU STOOD OUTSIDE with the other leaders, watching as their men set up a massive, neatly organized camp 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.”
“But losing Wallachia might break her.”
“Better broken than dead.”
Radu was not certain that he agreed with Mehmed. Not after what he had been through and seen himself. He was still healing, and was uncertain he would ever fully heal. And the things that meant the most to him—Nazira, his faith, protecting those most innocent—had not even been taken from him. If they had …
He was also uncomfortably uncertain whether the claim that they both loved Lada was true. Certainly their actions over the past year said otherwise.
“I know what Wallachia is to her,” Mehmed continued. “I am not blind to her devotion to it. She has made it clear she will always choose it over me.” There was a pause, then bitter longing in Mehmed’s tone. “But we will take that choice away from her before it destroys her.”
Radu looked up at the elegant silk ceiling of the tent. A gold chandelier hung from it, lit even though it was day. Only Mehmed could make taking an army against his sister sound like an act of love and friendship.
“Today we will reach the Arges,” Aron Danesti said, riding beside Radu and Mehmed. Aron was shorter than both of them—Mehmed and Radu were tall and lean, though Mehmed was growing broader now that he had finally stopped growing taller—and it did not help that Aron’s horse was smaller than theirs. He constantly adjusted in his saddle, trying to sit up straighter, but he still had to crane his neck to look up at them. “There is a good bridge we can use. And the land across is a fertile area. We should find early crops and livestock. We can rest there.”
Mehmed did not respond. More and more often he chose not to speak to those around him unless he was correcting them.
Aron cleared his throat self-consciously, then continued. “We should not leave Bucharest open behind us. It will cost several days, but it is worth it to take the fortress rather than leaving us exposed to a potential attack from the rear.”
Ali Bey, on the other side of Radu and Mehmed, grunted. “I do not like it. We had to send men to retake Giurgiu as well. But it is a necessity. We will cross the Arges, and then send a force to take Bucharest.”
Radu wanted it all to be over with. He wanted Tirgoviste taken, Lada in custody, this entire country and his history with it behind him. But he knew even after they took Tirgoviste it would not be simple.
They crested a hill and found the scouts waiting, all facing the same direction.
Where they had anticipated a bridge bordered by a large town, complete with livestock, supplies, and crops—not to mention people—lay only a smoldering ruin. Radu had a sudden flashback to his time in Albania fighting the Ottoman rebel Skanderberg. Radu had been at Murad’s side then in an endless siege. It was his first taste of war, and he had never managed to cleanse his palate of the burning rot it had left behind. Skanderberg’s men had waged the same type of campaign, destroying their own crops to prevent the Ottomans from getting to them.
Had Radu told Lada about that strategy? He could not remember. They had not been close anymore, not at that point. She had taken Mehmed, and he had joined Murad in an effort to prove himself the more useful sibling through political maneuvering. Surely he had not told her about it. This was not his fault. She could have learned it from her time with Hunyadi, though it did not seem like the old Hungarian military leader’s style.
It was probably his sister’s natural inclinations coming out. If she could not have it, no one could.