But the promise of the guilt he would carry if she died without his help clung to his skin like a shadow.

10

February

LADA TRACKED A group of fifty Janissaries. They were a long-range frontier group, used for enforcing the empire’s will in vassal states. Hunyadi had no particular reason to attack the Janissaries, but he demanded no reason to kill Turkish forces.

Up until now they had only fought more Bulgars, brief flashes of blood and screaming and swords breaking up monotonous riding, camping, sleeping outside.

Lada was proud of her men. They were as good as or better than any that Hunyadi rode with. And he noticed. After their canyon victory, Hunyadi frequently consulted with Lada and asked her advice.

She had studied his tactics, but only on paper and in theory. Watching him in the field was something else entirely. He always thought three days ahead—food, water, defensible locations. But he was not so set on plans that he could not respond with lightning-fast force to an unexpected threat or opportunity.

This Janissary group was one such opportunity. Lada looked uneasily at Nicolae next to her.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I think they could have been me.”

She looked back at the men they stalked. He was right. They were the same—boys stolen and turned into soldiers who served another land and another god.

“We let them go, then,” Lada said. She could not help imagining Nicolae on the other side of the meadow. Or Bogdan. Or Stefan, or Petru, or any of her men. She did not want to feel this companionship with the Janissaries, but it could not be avoided.

The Janissaries came to a sudden stop. Lada tensed, fearing they had discovered her ten men tracking them. Instead, they shifted direction and started heading straight for Hunyadi’s camp.

Lada gestured sharply. Her men ran, silent and low to the ground. She pantomimed drawing crossbows. Still running, they fixed their bolts. If the Janissaries did not already know the camp was there, they would in a few minutes. Hunyadi would be caught unaware. Lada gestured to her men to head back to the camp.

“Go warn them,” Lada whispered to Nicolae.

“What are you going to do?”

“Delay them, idiot. Now go!”

Nicolae disappeared into the woods. Lada stood. “The sultan is the son of a donkey!” she shouted in Turkish.

The Janissaries turned as one, arrows already nocked to bows and pointed in her direction. She had cover, but it would not take them long to find her. She darted to another tree. “I am sorry. I should not have said that about the sultan. It is an offense to donkeys, which are perfectly serviceable creatures.”

Lada peeked around the tree. Their weapons still at the ready, the Janissaries were searching the dense foliage for threats. Lada laughed loudly, the sound ringing through the trees. “Are you Janissaries? I have heard that Janissaries are not fit to lick the dust from spahi boots.”

“Who is there?” an angry voice shouted, while another cursed her. Their leader barked an order for them to be quiet. Then he called out, “Show yourself, woman!”

“Why do Bulgars make terrible farmers?” she answered.

There was silence. She peered from behind the trunk, amused to see the Janissaries trading confused looks. Most of them had lowered their bows when no attack came.

“What?” the commander shouted.

“I said, why do Bulgars make terrible farmers?”

One of the Janissaries in front sheathed his sword. “I do not know.”

The commander barked at him for silence, but the Janissary shrugged. “I want to know.”

“So do I,” another called. Most of them nodded, a few grinning at this odd forest interlude.

“Because they confuse the pigs for Bulgar women, and cannot bear to slaughter their wives.”

A chorus of snickering laughs broke out.

“Who are you?” one of the men called. “You should not be in these woods. It is not safe.”

A volley of arrows rained from the sky onto the men.

“I know,” Lada said, coming from behind the tree and letting her shaft join the others.

After, when the work of killing was done, Lada took no pleasure in the white-capped bodies on the ground. Stepping over the corpses, Hunyadi found her and clasped her hand in his. “How did you think to distract them like that?”

She lifted a shoulder as they walked back toward camp. “They are soldiers. They depend upon routine, and anything out of the ordinary will give them pause. And they are men. They hate to be insulted, but they love to hear others mocked. And they are fools, because they cannot imagine that a woman alone in the woods would be a threat.”

Later, around a campfire, Lada sat next to Hunyadi. Nicolae was on her other side. The men traded stories like coins, each trying to make his the most valuable, the brightest. Petru mimed being struck through the eye with an arrow so dramatically he nearly fell into the fire.

Lada remembered a time not so long ago when some of these same men had come back from fighting and she had been forced to listen to stories she feared she would never be part of. Now she was at the center, truly belonging.

“How did you find your men?” Hunyadi asked. He spoke Turkish around her men as a courtesy, since most of them did not speak Hungarian and his Wallachian was dreadful.

“We found her,” Nicolae said, beaming proudly. “Or I did, at least. It is a funny story. When Lada was this small …” He held his hand close to the ground, then squinted at her. “Well, she is still that small.”

Lada punched him in the shoulder. Hard.

He rubbed it, grimacing. “When Lada was not the towering giantess of a woman that she is today, she was in Amasya as the playmate of the little zealot. Back then no one knew he would be sultan. He was just a brat.”

Lada nodded, then quickly erased the wistful smile threatening to break through her expression.

“She was spying on us while we trained. We caught her. Then when she beat up poor Ivan—” Nicolae paused. “Whatever happened to Ivan?”

“I killed him,” Lada said without thinking.

“You—you killed him? I thought he was moved to a different city! Why did you kill him?”

Lada realized the low, steady hum of conversation around them had died. All eyes were on her. Most of her men had never known Ivan. She wished she had not, either. He had been stupid and cruel, had always hated her. In the end, he had tried to force himself on her as proof she was nothing but a girl. Something he could take. Something he could break.