Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(55)

Radu smelled it, too, but he could not account for it. He was with his men, riding in advance of the rest of the army. Their force was big enough to face any direct attack, and fast enough to get word back should something arise they were not prepared for.

Facing Lada, they could count on being unprepared.

In the distance Radu could just make out the dark smudge of the capital with a tree-lined road leading up to it. Aside from the skinny trees along the road, most of the forest around it had been cleared. It was smart—Lada had an unobstructed view of the land around the city—but it also meant she could hide nothing from them, either.

“Cautiously,” Radu said, gesturing for them to keep moving forward. They had not seen a soul yet, though the sky was splattered with dark birds like drops of ink. The last time Radu had seen so many carrion birds had been in Constantinople. He could not quite catch his breath, their cries pulled straight from his worst memories.

They rode closer, everyone gradually slowing their pace. A sense of wrongness grew as steadily and strongly as the stench. Behind him, Radu heard men gagging. Kiril leaned over and heaved.

Still they had seen no one. Not a single soldier. Not one trap or ambush. Radu undid his turban and wrapped it around his nose and mouth, though he could still taste the putrid rot through it.

Then at last, like a landscape of nightmares, Radu was close enough to see the odd, skinny trees lining the road.

They were not trees.

Evenly spaced and planted with all the care of an orchard, corpses were impaled on stakes. Some were newer, some so far decayed they had to be weeks dead. And all of them were Ottomans.

“Go tell the sultan,” Radu said. He wanted to turn away. He could not. He rode forward into hell, the faces of the damned marking his progress with hollow, rotted eyes.

They were spaced so evenly it was easy to keep count. Tens. Then hundreds. A thousand. At five thousand, he had reached the houses on the outskirts of the city. The buildings were all cold, abandoned. Every door was open. He knew he should send men in to check for soldiers hiding inside, waiting to ambush them.

He could not manage to do anything but keep moving forward. The sheer overwhelming wrongness gave everything a dreamlike haze. He could not feel his limbs, could only see. Could only smell.

At ten thousand, he was finally close enough to make out the gates to the inner city. They were open. The stakes there were so close together that he could not see between the bodies. It was a solid wall of rotting flesh on either side, only the sky above visible as he passed directly into the city.

No sounds but the harsh cries of the birds, and the quieter but far more piercing noises of beaks tearing flesh and sinew from bone.

Radu knew his horse was making noise, but he could not hear it. He did not know if any of his men were still with him. He could not stop, could not look to either side. He was compelled forward as though, by making it through this tunnel of horror, he could wake up on the other side back in a world that made sense. A world where the gate was locked, the walls were manned, and there was something concrete and understandable and human to fight against.

He reached the castle. Twenty thousand stakes, as near as he could tell. Had it been just this morning he resolved to never again view men in terms of numbers?

There, in front of the gaping castle gates and doors, on a stake above all the others, a final corpse.

Radu knew that cloak, knew those clothes.

He was still sitting on his horse when Mehmed reached him. There were new noises now—retching and curses and a few quiet sobs. Of course there were more men here. Mehmed would not have come alone. Radu did not know how long he had been here.

“Is that …?” Mehmed did not finish his sentence.

“Kumal,” Radu whispered. The man who had given him Islam as a balm and protection for Radu’s terrified young soul. The man who had become Radu’s brother in spirit and in law. The man who had come here in Radu’s place.

Kiril spoke. Radu had not seen him join them. He could not look away from where Kumal’s kind eyes had once been. Did they rot out, or had they been eaten? It seemed important to know, but Radu had no way of finding out.

“… all clear. There is no one here.”

“How can we fight against this?” Mehmed asked. “How can we take a country when she simply walks away from the capital? How can we ever defeat someone willing to do this”—his voice broke as he swept his arm outward—“just to send a message?”

“How could a woman do this?” Ali Bey’s voice was filled with equal parts wonder and disgust.

“She is not a woman,” a soldier near Radu said, spitting. Normally a soldier would not dare speak in the presence of the sultan. But there was nothing normal here. “She is a demon.”

“No.” Radu closed his eyes against the forest of corpses grown from the indomitable will of his sister. “She is a dragon.”





29





Outside Tirgoviste


IT HAD BEEN all Bogdan could do to persuade Lada not to dress as a Janissary and enter the city with Mehmed’s men.

She wanted to be there.

She wanted to see it.

To revel in their shock at an unguarded capital. To see the looks on their faces when they realized they could not fight her. To see their despair when they were confronted with how far she would go to protect what was hers. They could have the city with her blessing. After all, Tirgoviste was not Wallachia.