He shook his head. “No one is left to send out warnings. My scouts report no mobilization of the Turkish forces at any of the nearby fortresses.”
Lada rubbed her eyes. They were irritated from the smoke of burning cottages and fields. “This is all the protection their loyalty to the sultan buys them. How can they not see it? How can they not see that all their bowing and scraping to Mehmed benefits them nothing?”
“Onto the next village?” Bogdan asked.
Lada shook her head. “Where are the Turkish troops?”
“There is a stronghold two hours’ ride from here. Perhaps a thousand men are stationed there for easy deployment around the region. Another one, with five hundred men, is half a day’s ride from there.”
Lada nodded, turning her horse from the corpse-lined road. “No more Bulgar deaths. I want the rest of my stakes baptized in the blood of Mehmed’s men.”
Taking their first fortress was easier than Lada had expected. The Ottoman troops here were lazy, unused to resistance or fighting. She had sent her Janissary-trained men on ahead. By the time they reached the fortress, the guards at the gate had been slaughtered and everything was wide open, waiting for them.
She lost one hundred and twenty-seven men, and added their deaths to the count required in vengeance.
Before they impaled the Ottoman troops, they stripped them. The guards at the next fortress opened their gates without question when they saw the uniforms of their fellow Ottoman soldiers coming toward them in the night. Lada rode at the front and killed both gate guards herself. Most of the Ottomans were sleeping, slaughtered in the chaos and tangle of their sheets. Those who were awake fought well.
Her men fought better.
The next day they reached a small city. It was made almost entirely of wooden structures, with a high fence encircling them. Two gates, one at the front and one at the back, let people in and out.
Word had preceded them. Hundreds of Bulgars were outside the city gates, prostrate. “Please,” a man said as Lada rode up. He did not look up at her. “Please, do not kill us.”
“Who protects you?” she asked, looking from side to side with her arms extended, palms up. “I thought this country was under the protection of the sultan.”
The man trembled. “No one protects us.”
Lada dismounted. She gestured impatiently for him to stand. He did, shoulders stooped, balding head respectfully lowered. “Are you Christians?”
He nodded.
“Would you like protection?”
He nodded again, shivering though the day was warm enough to hint at spring.
Lada lifted her voice. “Any Christians this close to Wallachia are close enough to be my people. I have farms and land and safety for any who go back with me. Which is more than the sultan can offer you.”
“But our city … our homes.”
“Your city and homes were sold by your prince to the sultan. Just as your lives were.” Again Lada looked around. “I see neither your prince nor your sultan here. There is only me.”
The man nodded rapidly. “Yes. Yes. Come in with me, for food and wine, and I will—”
A woman nearby stood up. She was gaunt but had a strong face, and a stronger spirit than the man, indicated by the lift of her chin and unflinching gaze. “Do not go into the city,” she said. “Infidel soldiers are waiting to ambush you. I saw them on my way out.”
The bald man let out a low moan of despair. The air suddenly smelled of piss.
Lada smiled at the strong woman. “Thank you. I will see to it that you have home, land, and animals to start your new life as a Wallachian.”
The woman smiled grimly, bobbing her head in a bow.
Lada examined the wall. There was no one watching that she could see. They were probably all hiding. The city did not have a tower where she could be observed. “Nicolae, secure the back gate. Quietly.”
He rode away with several hundred men to circle the city. Lada raised her voice. “The offer remains for those who wish to take it.”
The Bulgars pushed themselves up off the ground. Many carried children. Eyeing Lada’s men warily, they walked past them and onto the road toward Wallachia. She could be generous, too, and word of that would spread. Not as quickly as word of her violence, but both had merit.
Lada turned back to the man. “Go inside.”
“I—I am sorry, I—”
“Go back to your city.”
He let out a quick, terrified sob, then turned and walked slowly back through the gate. “Close it behind you,” Lada called.
He did as he was asked, a flash of his eyes, wide with terror, the last thing she saw before the gate shut. Lada gestured toward it. “Let us help them keep it secure.” A dozen of her men hurried forward with hammers, nails, and a few solid planks. Nicolae would be doing the same at the other gate.
“Send them a warm greeting.”
As the burning arrows arced overhead into the wooden city, Lada turned to watch the peasants making their long walk toward a new home. One she had given them.
“How many dead?” Lada asked Bogdan five nights later, after hitting every major Turkish stronghold along the Wallachian border. Around her campfire sat Nicolae, Stefan, Bogdan, Iskra—the woman from the wooden city who had warned them and been taken on as a regional advisor—and some of her higher-ranked men.
Bogdan shrugged. “Two thousand Bulgars. A thousand Ottomans from the first fortress. Five hundred at the second. Anyone’s guess how many were in the city we burned. We shot at least a thousand as they tried to climb the walls to escape.”
Iskra grunted. “They came from all the garrisons around the city. Probably two thousand, two thousand five hundred.”
Bogdan nodded, ticking cities off on his fingers. “So in addition to that, we have hit Oblucitza and Novoselo, Rahova, Samovit, and Ghighen. The entire region around Chilia. All told, twenty-five thousand dead? Mostly Turks, though many Bulgars as well.”
Lada laughed in surprise. Such a number was unfathomable. At least to leaders like Matthias of Hungary, who wanted to play politics, to rule behind walls, to fight with letters instead of weapons. But she had known what she could accomplish with a few thousand men.
The Ottoman forces were scattered and lazy. Too used to being unchallenged. If the Ottomans had been prepared, Lada’s forces would have been slaughtered. But it had been easy enough to quickly cut their way up and down the border between Wallachia and Bulgaria. She had been lucky.
No. She had been smart. She knew she would not face such easy odds again, but she would be smarter than her enemy. Do the unexpected at every turn. This had worked once; it would not work again.
“Is it enough?” Bogdan asked, fingers still extended in calculating the volume of terror they had accomplished.
It would never be enough.
It was enough for now.
“Yes.” She heard Nicolae sigh in relief.
He dropped his head from shoulder to shoulder, rubbing his neck. “Do you want me to leave men behind?” he asked. “Are we expanding?”
“No, we are deterring. I have no interest in conquering. Only in letting others know the borders of Wallachia are inviolable. No one will attack my villages again. Not unless they want war.”
Nicolae grinned wearily. “I think that message has been sent.”
“Good. I have new messages to send now.” Lada stared into the fire, watching it devour the darkness around it.
6
Constantinople
RADU STILL FOUND peace in prayer. During the siege, he had missed mosques, missed praying in unison with his brothers all around him. It was a comfort returning to that routine.