The Dracula Chronicles: For Whom The Bell Tolls Read online

  Basarab awoke, terrified, from a troubled sleep. Boom! Boom! Boom! It rang out in his ears. He covered his head with a pillow, but could not escape it. Mihail Basarab heard it too. It startled everyone in his camp. They sat up and listened. Boom! Boom! Boom!

  To the educated ear, the call was obvious. The Vlach were going to war.

  WALLACHIA. THE CAMP OF VLAD DRACUL TO THE EAST OF BUCHAREST.

  DECEMBER 11, 1447.

  Dracul’s men struggled to meet their wake up call. Few of them managed a decent period of sleep. The Vlach drums had beaten long into the night. Neither Dracul nor Rodrigul slept much either, but they felt encouraged and upbeat in spite of the disturbance.

  The captain chuckled to Dracul. “Those wretched Vlachs. They love to keep the whole world awake any time they are happy.”

  “Yes, but it is better to hear that sound as an ally than as an enemy.”

  “Indeed. I wager Basarab suffered with loose bowels for much of the night.”

  Dracul laughed at he thought.

  “He should know that if the Vlach are going to war, it is against him.”

  “Let him tremble in his boots,” Dracul scowled, his mood changing again. “It should make the moment all the more sweet when I crush his skull!”

  “My Lord!” a rider called out as he rode into the camp. It was one of the scouts Dracul sent out every morning whether he was at home or on the road.

  “What is it?” Dracul asked, once the rider drew up alongside him.

  “There is an army marching towards the camp!”

  “Do you know from where this army comes?”

  “It is confusing, my Lord. The banner is a Turkish one. I cannot be certain.”

  “It is your job to know these things! Stay mobile and keep me informed if you discover anything new.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  The rider saluted him and raced out of the camp.

  Dracul turned to his friend. “Even if Murad was aware of the attack on Tirgoviste he could never have sent a force so quickly to my aid.”

  “We should exercise caution, my Lord. It could be a Danesti trick.”

  “Yes, I believe so too. To lure us into thinking it is a Turkish force.”

  “With our guard down, they might crush us where we stand.”

  The two men walked through the camp shouting their orders. In a short time, they had their men armed and ready to meet any attack. The distant sound of horses met their ears. Dracul sent out two men to make contact with the approaching force.

  They came within sight of the small army soon after. The young man leading the group drew his mount to a halt when he saw them stop further up the road. He, too, was wary of a possible trap. It occurred to him to send a rider of his own to meet them. Then he realised no one in his ranks spoke his native tongue.

  He decided he would have to meet with them himself. With his three best men at his side he prodded his mount into a slow walk.

  The riders watched him approach. To a man they each shared the same thought. The one before them resembled a younger version of their voivode.

  His schooling had taught him in such a situation to expect the unexpected. It was better to be cautious than dead. Yet he was sure the camp he was approaching was that of the great Dracul.

  “Identify yourself, sir!” one of the riders called out.

  He stopped when he was only twenty yards away. The two parties stared at each other for a few moments until he resumed walking his horse forward. “You identify yourself,” he said, a strong touch of arrogance in his voice.

  “You speak our native tongue?” one of the riders said.

  “I do,” the young lord said. “Being that I am a native it would follow that I speak like one too.”

  The rider felt irritated at the way the younger man still avoided his question. “I need to know if you are friend or foe. If not, I would have to view you as hostile.”

  In a second, the meeting had taken on a serious edge. The time for playing games was over.

  “I fly the banner of the Sultan Murad, for you to see,” he said. “You should know if this banner is a friend to your master or not. I cannot read your mind.”

  The rider looked him over and then the large number of cavalry to his rear. The group all sported uniforms of the Ottoman cavalry. “My master would look on you as a friend,” the rider said. “You may approach, but at a slow pace.”

  The young lord turned to his men. He signalled to them with a wave of his arm to follow. As requested, his unit neared the camp at a walk. When they came in view of Dracul’s men he saw as many as fifty bows pointed his way.

  Rodrigul mounted his horse and rode towards the unit. To come this far his men must have seen them as no threat. They had not raised the alarm.

  “Identify yourself, sir,” he asked the head of the group. The man he addressed had lowered his face so as to obscure it from his view. He rode a little closer.

  It was then the other man showed himself. “That is no way to address your godson,” he said, unable to hide a smile.

  Rodrigul thought he was seeing things. “Vlad? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Alin. It is I.”

  “Dear God,” he gasped, suddenly overcome with emotion.

  They dismounted in the same moment and threw their arms around each other in the embrace of long-lost friends.

  “I thought I would never see you again,” he said, almost in a sob. “Dear God, look at you. A fine specimen of a man.”

  Dracul watched on curiously as he still had not seen his son’s face. “What is happening here?” he called, walking up behind his captain.

  “Go and say hello to your father,” Rodrigul whispered, as he let Vlad go.

  Vlad came face to face with Dracul. “Hello, Papa,” he said, with a broad grin.

  Dracul stopped dead in his tracks. He looked as though he had seen a ghost. “Is that you, Vlad? My son?”

  They ran into each other’s arms. Dracul held his son so tight that Vlad found it hard to breathe.

  “Let me look at you,” he said at last, eyeing his boy up and down. “It is a fine man you have become.”

  “The same as you, Papa.”

  “Yes,” Dracul agreed, with a broad smile. “The same as I.”

  The order sounded out for a major hunt to commence. Dracul wanted a feast to commemorate the homecoming of his son. The Turkish cavalry tended to their horses. They then settled down for some much-needed rest.

  “Are you hungry?” Dracul asked his son.

  “Yes, Papa.” His stomach growled at the very idea of eating. He looked to the new fires the men stoked and imagined a boar turning on the spit. “We have ridden hard for twelve days with little food to spare. My men are hungry too.”

  “Then we shall feed them. But for the now, let us sit and talk.”

  They sat around a fire that had burned since first light. Vlad rubbed his hands and extended them to savour the warmth. “Come and sit with us, Alin. You are my family too.”

  “Are you well, my son?” Dracul asked.

  “Yes, Papa. I am fine.”

  “How have they treated you?”

  “When I behaved myself, they treated me well enough.”

  “And when you did not?” Rodrigul wondered, with a fair idea as to what the answer would be.

  “I received the whip,” Vlad told him, looking up from the fire.

  “The whip?”

  “Yes. The worst time came after Varna. Murad delivered that one with his own hand.”

  Dracul gritted his teeth. “The swine,” he cursed. “I would cut his throat if I could see him.” He turned to his son. “Was it because of me?”

  Vlad did not want to make him feel any worse than he already did. “No, Papa. I brought much of it on myself.”

  “I know it was my fault,” he said, with his usual deep sigh. “And I am sorry, my son. I resisted the pressure from Hunyadi to take part in the conflict. I sent Mircea in my place. He fought nobly and brought muc
h honour to the family.”

  “How is my big brother?”

  Dracul went quiet, a lump in his throat. Rodrigul put a hand on Vlad’s arm. “He is gone, my boy.”

  Vlad did not realise at once what he meant. “Gone where?” Then it dawned on him from the pain he could see on their faces. “You mean, he is dead? What happened? Why is my brother gone?”

  “He was murdered in Tirgoviste before they sacked it.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Hunyadi, Florescu, Craiovescu. They all had a hand in it.”

  Vlad took it all in, his face reddening. “What did they do to him?”

  Rodrigul found it hard to answer. Vlad looked him straight in the eye. “Tell me, Alin. I want to know what they did to him.”

  Vlad could see how much it pained him to say it. The answer he had to give was not something he wanted Vlad to know.

  Rodrigul lowered his head before he spoke. “He was badly beaten,” he began, before pausing again.

  “Look at me, Alin, and tell me. I must know.”

  “He was forced to watch your mother’s execution. Then they blinded him and buried him alive.”

  Vlad had to bite into his hand to contain his rage. “My mother too?”

  “Yes. I am sorry.”

  Vlad got to his feet and walked over to the trees. He had to lean against one of them to stop from falling. It was hard enough to lose his brother, but the added news of his mother devastated him. He did not ask what had happened to her. To know the truth about that would rip his heart out.

  He was gone for a while. His happiest memories of his mother filled his mind. There were only good ones of her, although fleeting. With Mircea, he thought mostly of the games they used to play. And of how hard they trained to better each other. He whispered a quiet “thank you” to him. It was only the rivalry they shared that had made him excel into the fighting machine he had become.

  When he returned, he saw the men skinning the first stags and wild boars from the hunt. He joined his father and Rodrigul by the fire.

  “Are you well, my son?”

  “Yes, Papa. Are you? You must feel their loss even deeper than I do.”

  “There is nothing more painful than losing those you love. How is my other boy, Radu?”

  Vlad hesitated for a moment. He did not want his father to know the truth. “He is well, Papa, and growing so tall.”

  Dracul smiled to know his youngest was well, but thought again of Mircea. “I hoped to have passed over before any of my sons. And my bride. A woman should always outlive her man.”

  “At least I know who my enemies are,” Vlad asserted, slanting his eyes. The depth of his hatred was such that they almost turned black when thinking about the men Rodrigul had mentioned. “It has given me a few more names on my list of people to kill. And I shall kill them.”

  “If I do not succeed first then yes, I hope you would do that for me.”

  “If it takes me ten or twenty years, they shall feel my justice,” Vlad vowed. “I swear that in my mother’s name.”

  “I am sorry, my son, that you had to come home to this.”

  “It is not for you to apologise, Papa. What could you do?”

  “I am sorry to say that this path I walk shall be yours also. It is the path to decay.”

  “Why do you say that, Papa? What do you mean?”

  “The path chosen for those of us who hold a throne, any throne. It brings only misery to the one who holds that power, and to all they love.”

  “Is that how it has been for you, Papa?”

  “I daresay it has. The throne was my father’s before me and all I ever wanted was to follow him, and rule like him. When all the time I had everything a man could want, with a loving wife and three fine sons.”

  “Do not be so hard on yourself, Papa. We have had good lives. There are many who would stand in my place if they could.”

  “Five years held a hostage? That is no life for anyone, least of all a son of mine. You deserved so much better, as did Radu and my darling boy, Mircea. He is lost to us because he followed my path. Your mother is gone because she loved me and bore me my heirs. Even to call it the path to decay is too fine a term. There is no romance in this destiny we choose. I want better for you, my boy.”

  “I have only ever wanted to be like you, Papa. It is why I train and study all day, every day.”

  “Think hard, dearest Vlad, before you choose this life. I would have no issue with it if you chose a simple life away from all of this. I would never be disappointed. I could never be with anything that you do.”

  “Let us talk of happier things,” Rodrigul said, hoping to lift the gloom. “Tell us what you did in Adrianople, Vlad.”

  “I studied the Turks.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am my father’s heir and proud to be,” he proclaimed. “I have used my time there to prepare, and to know my enemy.”

  Dracul listened and smiled. It made him feel so proud to hear such things, even if Vlad were to never want the throne.

  “I studied them. The way they think; the tactics they employ in war; their language and customs. All there is to know about them, I know it.”

  “That is good.”

  “If I have learned one thing,” Vlad said boldly, “it is that Wallachia is alone. He who rules Her must stand alone to do it.”

  Dracul nodded in agreement. “You are so right. That is a lesson I took most of my life to learn. Though she did not agree with me, I told your mother this throne was a poisoned chalice. There is an enemy to the north and to the south. It seems all who see it, covet our throne.”

  “She has no friends, Papa.”

  Rodrigul did not agree with them. “None?”

  “None,” Vlad said, his tone firm and strong. “If Wallachia has friends, where are they? My father is alone. With the exception of Moldavia I would not want any of my neighbours as a friend. I would be happy to go to war against any of them.”

  “You cannot fight them all, Vlad.”

  “Perhaps I can, and perhaps I cannot,” he said, a little annoyed by Rodrigul’s tone. “I intend to make our country able to defend itself against them all.”

  “It is sound logic, my son.”

  “But it is the Turks I loathe most of all,” he continued, his voice taking on an air of real grit. “I shall use them for as long as I hold their favour.” He stopped and clenched his fist. “The day shall come when I heap misery on them. My name should be etched in their minds for ten generations when I am done.”

  He had grand ideas. But to both men listening they sounded either unrealistic or unattainable. Neither of them wished to take issue with it though.

  “If you manage that, then you would be long remembered.”

  “I shall not allow the toils of my father to be wasted,” Vlad promised for him to hear. “Nor shall I allow my mother and brother to have died in vain.”

  “You stand to be a great ruler, my son. Still, I am proud of you as you are.”

  Vlad decided to change the subject. “Those drums I heard this last night. I thought you were honouring my birthing day, Papa.”

  Dracul chuckled. “No, my son, it never even occurred to me in all this madness. But I am glad you are here for it. You have come of age at last.”

  “I wish I was sixteen once more,” Rodrigul mumbled.

  “It is something we all wish for,” Dracul assured him.

  “So the Vlach have joined our side?” Vlad asked.

  “You know the Vlach war drums?” Rodrigul seemed surprised.

  “Of course I do. I heard them as a child in Sighisoara.”

  “It is a good memory that you have, Vlad.”

  “Yes, I forget nothing. Our enemies had best watch their backs.”

  “Yes,” his father said. “The Vlach have joined the fight.”

  “The omens are good then, Papa?”

  “You can be sure of that. The Vlach have not yet known defeat.”

  “Do
not place a hex on us, Alin. Yes with the Vlach, and Vlad at my side, the omens are good indeed.”

  “There is one great thing about leading a Turkish army,” Vlad said. “It gives you access to the best scouts and spies in the Balkans.”

  “Do not let the Vlach hear you saying that. They think they hold that honour.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Up high I would imagine. By the sound of those drums.”

  “The Vlach never reveal the whereabouts of their camp,” Rodrigul told him. “It is a tradition of theirs.”

  “It is to beat the spies and back stabbers,” Dracul said, a growl in his voice.

  “Yes. A sound policy too.”

  “Litovoi said they camped about two hours’ ride west. I expect they shall move closer today.”

  “You were telling us about your scouts, Vlad?”

  “Yes. They collect a lot of good information. I must remember to use them when I rule in the future.”

  “Do you have any to share with us?” his father asked him.

  “Yes I do, Papa. They tell me that Basarab has arrived at Oltenita. He has about two hundred men there and a further three hundred in Bucharest.”

  “So where are the rest of them? Hunyadi marched into Wallachia with over a thousand.”

  “I do not know where he is,” Vlad said, feeling a little deflated.

  “He would have returned home,” Rodrigul said. “He does not like to fight in the winter. I doubt he has changed that habit. Not this late in his life.”

  Vlad nodded. “That is a shame. I would have liked a chance to fight him. But I do know the main body of his army is with Mihail Basarab about thirty miles east of here.”

  “Mihail is leading the army?”

  “Thirty miles away?” Dracul added in the same breath.

  “Yes, if my source is correct.”

  “I am sure it is. Alin, why do you seem so surprised?”

  “I thought he and his brother were at odds with each other.”

  “Perhaps he thinks if I am out of the way, removing his brother would be only a slight obstacle.”

  “He would not need you gone to do that.”

  “To take the throne he would.”

  “I hear he does not care too much for the throne, Papa,” Vlad put in.