Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(12)

“Within the hour.”

Nicolae had been gathering all her soldiers. When he arrived, it would be with over three thousand men. And the special supplies she had been stockpiling.

Lada squinted at the rising sun, let its brightness warm her face. “Three hundred. Very well. We will kill three thousand of them. Every Wallachian death will be answered tenfold.”

“We will have to go deep into Bulgaria to kill that many,” Bogdan said.

“Then we will go deep.” No one would be able to doubt her ferocity, her commitment to her people. And no one would attack Wallachia without thinking very carefully about the consequences from now on. It would be a lot of bodies, but she looked at them as an investment. Kill thousands to save thousands.



Two days later, the boyar who had failed his people clutched his chest with his torn and bleeding hands. The hole he had dug— one of hundreds since Stefan brought him to their camp—was ready. Two men took the stake and leveraged it into the hole, tipping it up. The body slumped at the top, a gruesome coat of arms for Lada’s push into Bulgaria.

Lada looked down the road lined with a forest of bloody reminders.

“How many is that?” she asked Bogdan, who rode next to her.

“Fifteen, sixteen hundred.”

They had broken through the border villages as swiftly as a river smashing through a dam. Everyone was swept up in their wake, no one spared. But it was not quite right. So few of them had been her actual enemies. She spared no love for Bulgars—they were too weak to break from Ottoman rule, and were thus as culpable as anyone—but they were not Turks. Her point that her borders were inviolable had been made. But … she wondered if she could make another point, too.

A point that the protection of the Ottomans was no protection at all.

A point that her way was better.

Nicolae eyed the stakes with weary distaste. “Only a handful of casualties among our men.”

“Good. And does word spread?”

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.”