Vlad by C.C. Humphreys Page B

against him.”
    Murad stepped back to his forge and began to don the gloves he had removed. “He seems to have forgotten what the word ‘hostage’ means…in any language. He must learn the consequences of that.” As he spoke, he lifted the heated tongs from the coals.
    “Father!” Mehmet called excitedly. “May I—”
    “Your skill is with plants not metals, my son,” Murad said sharply, “and when I can teach you how to turn a seed into a cucumber, you may come and work my forge.” Pulling the tongs close, he studied the glowing metal at their end. “And while I do not desire to punish, do not the commandments of Moses, honored among prophets, speak of the sins of fathers and their consequences for sons?” He stepped back towards Vlad, metal glowing before him. “Dracul must be sent a message. A clear one.”
    Behind the door, Ion quivered. He had a dagger at his belt. Should he not leap forward now, stab Murad, save his friend’s eyes? He would surely die, but die a hero if Murad did, too. Yet his hand never reached to his belt. Nothing moved, apart from a tear down his cheek, as the Sultan bent, bringing his own face close enough to Vlad’s for the molten glow to light them both.
    “So I say this to you, Dragon’s sons. Both of you. Your lessons here are ended. Others begin. You will be taken to the fortress of Tokat. You will have different agha s there, learn different subjects. Less refined. Equally edifying. And your father will learn through your suffering the consequences of betrayal.” He lifted the tongs away, stood straight. “Take them,” he said.
    The men who held Vlad jerked him to his feet. Manacles were produced, clamped to his wrists. The men who held the still weeping Radu turned him towards the door.
    But then Mehmet stepped before them, raising a hand to halt the guard. “A boon, father,” he cried.
    Murad turned back. “Ask it.”
    “Are there not different ways to send the same message?” He looked across at Vlad, smiled. “I can think of nothing more beneficial than the lessons that await him at Tokat. But this one…” He reached out, laid a finger on Radu’s chestnut curls, moved it down, tracing the nose, leaving it lie upon the lips. “Is there not more than one way to bend a Dragon to one’s desires?”
    Until that moment, Vlad had felt as if some djinn had him in a binding spell. It was not the men that held him but his own will, frozen. This was his fate, to be blinded by a Sultan. There was nothing he could do to save himself. Then his fate changed, and again, he could do nothing but accept it. But when someone else was threatened—his brother, his blood—the spell was shattered.
    With a roar, he bent and wrenched his manacled hands from the grip of the man on his left, straightening suddenly to drive the top of his head into the jaw of the other, who fell back. The first man reached for him again, but Vlad brought the metal manacles sweeping up and across, smashing them into his face. He collapsed and Vlad was free, moving towards Mehmet, aware of every little sound now as he had been aware of none before—his brother’s weeping, every man’s cry, the creak of bowstring pulled hard back by men in the shadows.
    “Wait!” Murad cried, arm lifted in command.
    The arrows were not needed. Vlad was stocky, shaped like a bull. But even he could not charge through the half-dozen men who leapt forward, punching, kicking and finally hurling him to the ground, an arm’s length from his target.
    But Mehmet had stepped back, readying himself. And though he still had a hand on Radu, he was no longer holding him tight. Certainly not tightly enough to stop the younger Dracula from grabbing the jewelled handle of the knife in Mehmet’s belt.
    “Leave me be,” Radu shrieked, drawing it, slashing the blade across the reaching hand.
    Mehmet screamed. More guards rushed in. Radu was disarmed, grappled to the floor.
    “Are you badly hurt, my son?” said Murad, coming