Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(85)

She had to focus. She ran to the other side of the fortress and climbed a ladder up the wall, peering down over the gate at the path that wound treacherously down.

“You!” She grabbed a man—Grigore—as he huddled next to the wall and whatever protection it offered. “I am sending you for help. They are not on this side of the mountain yet.”

Lada threw a rope over the wall. She tied it off, then gestured to it.

“But—” He looked desperately around, hesitating.

“Would you rather be out there with them, or in here with me after disobeying my order?”

Grigore threw himself over the wall, scrambling down the rope. He was nearly to the bottom when a crossbow bolt sank into his belly and he dropped, screaming.

“Burn the bridge!” Lada shouted, ducking. The fortress was built on a jutting slab of peak, and a wooden bridge spanned the ravine between the peak and the rest of the mountain. It was another natural defense. For all the good it would do them under this barrage.

Lada climbed back down to the fortress floor as men dumped pitch over the wall onto the bridge, then lit arrows and fired them.

For all she knew, there was only a single Janissary on her mountain. If they all ran for it, they could possibly overwhelm whoever was out there. Many of them might make it. But Radu had more resources than she did. He could have ten thousand men waiting in the trees.

He could not bring down the entire fortress in one day. He could pick away at it, but it would be at least a week before the small cannons he could have hauled that far up the mountain would do enough damage to bring the whole thing down. He had been lucky with the shot taking out her gunpowder stores. The rest of the process would be slower.

Generously, Lada estimated they had one defensible week. They could fight their way down the mountain, but there was no way to do it in secret. So even if Radu did not have many men waiting, he would see them fleeing and have enough time to move his men to the bottom and wait.

If Lada waited out the slow cannon death of the fortress, the villagers would eventually notice. But they would have no idea who to go to for help. And she had not yet sent out any instructions to her men. As far as her soldiers hiding throughout these mountains knew, they were doing precisely what they were supposed to: waiting.

Thousands of willing fighters, and no one to help.

Bogdan was dead. Lada kept remembering that anew. But this time she felt a wash of relief that Oana had been abandoned. That she had not seen this. It had been a mercy, after all, leaving her behind. One good thing to come of Lada’s betrayal.

She stood in the tiny courtyard, listening to men shouting, watching them running around her.

Seeing Bogdan fall, again, and again, and again.

She was alone. For the first time she could remember, she was well and truly alone. She had thought herself strong and apart, but that had been a lie.

As a child, she had had her nurse. Her Bogdan. Her worship of her father. And Radu.

Then she had had Radu and Mehmed.

Then she had had Nicolae and her men, and in her mind she had still had Radu and Mehmed, though she knew now that it was a lie and always had been.

She had even gotten her Bogdan and her nurse back, and built a small army of people around her. But one by one they had left, or been taken from her.

The fluttering sensation in her lower abdomen came back, and she could not catch her breath, could not stop her racing heart. She was not alone.

She was alone.

“Fire everything we have left, and then abandon the fortress!” she shouted. The men stopped, disbelief freezing them. And then, as they followed her orders, their actions became frenzied.

She walked, numb and heedless of the surrounding chaos, to the nearest door. Inside the room was an old well covered with planks of wood that they had built around. Lada picked up a length of rope against the wall and tied it to a metal loop fixed into the stones. Then she pushed aside the planks, dropped the rope inside, and climbed into the well.

The rope burned her hands and her arms trembled, weak from her time in prison. She went as slowly as she could, sliding down the last few feet and only just catching her toes on the footholds that led to the bottom of the well.

Last year she had found the cave at the bottom of the peak. During construction of the fortress, she discovered the well when bats flew out of it. It had to be the upper exit of the mountain’s secret passage. But she had no idea if the handholds and footholds continued all the way to the bottom, or if time had worn them away.

If only they had found the well that summer they discovered the peak. She would have explored it. She would have forced Bogdan down. Or more likely Radu. Then she would know for certain whether it was possible to descend all the way to the secret passage. Her youthful exploration had failed her, as had everything from her childhood. Her mother. Her father. Bogdan. Radu. What use were memories if they could not save her now?

She was tormented by thoughts of Bogdan, of Radu. By the time the three of them had spent here. A summer of laughter and scraped knees, soaked in sunshine, the memory mocking her now that she was clinging blindly to cold, wet stone.

Radu had taken Bogdan from her.

Radu.

Who did she have now? Where was the strength and assurance that had sustained her? She should put her trust in her true mother, Wallachia, but she kept seeing Bogdan falling. Bouncing off her mountain. How could this, too, be taken from her?

The rocks were slick with moisture, portions caked with layers of bat droppings or moldy growths. She felt them beneath her fingernails, was glad she could not see their blackness clinging to her. It was completely dark now, the opening above her so far she could no longer see its light. Beneath her, her goal too far to even see a glimmer of hope.