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.
She lifted her chin. “That is none of your concern.”
Hunyadi laughed. “Spoken like a true leader,” he said in Hungarian.
She met his gaze and he gave her a slight nod, something fierce and proud in his eyes. She saw how he sat straight, even while relaxing with his men. He was still in charge, still slightly apart. She mimicked his posture. She was their leader. She did not owe them explanations. Especially not for traumas of the past.
“Wait,” Petru said, concern pulling down his features and making him look like a puppy. “Did you kill Bogdan, too? Is that why he is gone?”
Lada sighed in exasperation. “No, I did not kill Bogdan. But I might kill you if you act out that stupid arrow-through-the-eye death one more time.”
Bogdan found them.
How he tracked them down Lada did not know. But the next week he walked into camp with a grin so giddy she could not understand how his blocky features managed it. Lada ran to him.
Her first impulse was to throw her arms around him. Her second was to hit him for taking so long. Instead, she stood in front of him, glaring at his beloved stupid face and his beloved stupid ears and his beloved stupid self. “Where have you been?”
“I brought something you need.”
“More men?” She looked behind Bogdan, but only one person followed him. And that person was not a man. She walked with solid assurance. Her long hair trailed down her back in a braid, showing off two ears sticking out like jug handles.
“Lada!” her old nurse said, rushing forward and embracing her. Lada’s arms were pinned to her sides by the woman’s hug. How Bogdan had found his mother, Lada could not begin to fathom. But he was Bogdan. He stayed loyal to the women in his life.
Lada looked at him. “Why did you bring her?”
“To help,” he said, shrugging. “You needed someone who could help you with … girl things.” He paused, blushing. “Woman things.”
Lada clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth together. “I do not need anyone’s help with anything.”
“Where is your brother?” the nurse asked. “He should be here. I thought you would take better care of him.”
Anger flared. Who was this woman to tell Lada how to take care of Radu? The nurse had not been there in Edirne. She had not seen what they had gone through, what Lada had had to do to survive. “He is coming,” Lada said through still-gritted teeth. She extricated herself from her nurse’s arms.
“Let me brush your hair,” the nurse said, reaching for Lada’s snarls.
The sensation made Lada feel like a child again. She stumbled back, flinging her hands up to deflect the woman’s touch. “I do not need a nurse!”
“You said the same when you were five. But at least your hair was presentable then.”
“Take yourself to the devil,” Lada snapped.
Bogdan looked hurt, but her nurse just laughed. The woman’s eyes shone with something. Mirth or affection, neither of which were tolerable to Lada. Worst of all, Hunyadi was sitting nearby, watching the whole encounter.
“Where is my cloak?” she snapped, yanking clothes out of her saddlebag.
“Let your nurse help you find it,” Nicolae teased. He and Petru were sitting at the campfire. Had no one missed this spectacle? What had Bogdan been thinking?
“She is not my nurse!”
Petru shrugged. “You are lucky. I wish I had someone to take care of me. Maybe I should find a wife.”
“Maybe you could marry the nurse,” Lada spat out.
Giving up on the cloak, she threw herself onto her horse and left camp. They had moved from the location of the slaughtered Janissaries and were working their way toward the capital. The increasingly frequent sections of frosted farmland made Hunyadi’s hands twitch. When asked where they were going, he would merely shrug. “The castle.” It sounded like a foreign word when he said it.
Today, though, they were in a heavily forested section of the countryside. They had not seen another soul all day, but that did not mean they were alone. Lada scanned the trees as a matter of habit, one hand always on her sword.
The trees were as bare and cold as the air. The sun was overhead, but all it did was blind her. How could something be so bright and give so little warmth? After so long in the temperate climate of Amasya, she had forgotten what winter felt like.
Right now, she wanted nothing more than to be back there. No! she screamed at her traitorous heart. She did not mean back in the empire. She meant back at camp. Around a fire, with her men.
The nurse would be there, lingering, hovering, much like a fly that buzzed incessantly, but at least a fly Lada could swat. She did not need another woman. She did not need to be taken care of. That woman was not her mother. Her own mother had fled to her home country of Moldavia when Lada was four. That was what mothers did. Nurses, apparently, were more dependable. And embarrassing.