The Mark of Cain (26 page)

“Is that name supposed to mean something to me?” he
asked, not even glancing up from his papers.

“He’s the one being raised to the papal chair.”

Arturo finally looked up from his work, annoyed.
Usually Alberto didn’t beat around the bush so much.

He looked to his servant’s eyes, expecting them to
tell him what Alberto was hesitant to say, but just then Alberto’s eyes, which
had begun to take on a milky sheen as he aged, were busy staring down at his
liver-spotted hands, a sign that his man was nervous. Alberto didn’t get
nervous easily. He’d been Cain’s man for anything he needed, whether that be
for information or executions, since the man had been an urchin living on the
streets. His withered old hands were a testament to them having been used as
much as they had.

“Alberto,” he warned. “You know I don’t like to be
kept waiting.”

His servant let out a ragged breath.

“He is the boy, sir,” he finally said.

“Am I supposed to know which boy you’re referring
to?”

As though afraid that Arturo would kill the
messenger—which he very likely might do—he answered, “The one you saved.”

The words brought him back to a scene he’d come
across many years before. He’d been traveling the countryside and had ridden
upon a grisly picture. Four or five men—gypsies—had been beating a young boy.
Like a hero from a story, Cain had ridden in, chopped the men to pieces, and
then picked up the small lad, rushing him to the nearest village. Once settled
into a bed in the physician’s home, and being reassured that the boy would
live, Cain had gone on his way, never having learned the child’s name.

“You’re sure?” he asked his servant.

“Yes, sir. He never spoke of it, but when I went
through his personal belongings, I came across a scroll where he told of the
painted giant who had saved him,” he said, nodding toward the tattoo hidden
under Arturo’s luxurious tunic.

“So he is the boy, then,” Arturo snarled.

He slammed his knuckles against his solid marble
desk, holding them there as he pushed down with all his might until they turned
white. If what his servant had said was true, then he was responsible for all
the good the boy had done that had brought him the papacy. Because he’d been
kind, God had won an important battle.

“It would seem that no good deed goes unpunished,”
Arturo hissed through his teeth.

He felt anger deep in his chest, rising like a
tsunami after an earthquake until it swallowed him whole, demolishing every
living thing. He had tried to be a decent person, and look where that had
gotten him.

His entire body shaking with fury, he stormed from
the room, every pounding of his feet echoing throughout the gigantic space.

When his livid feet took him to the stable, he
demanded of the stable boy, “Saddle my horse!”

Arturo then stalked into the kitchen and ordered
bags to be filled with provisions. Once done barking orders, he himself went to
grab his sword and other such things he’d need to survive in the wilderness
while he cooled off.

Once his massive obsidian steed was saddled, bags
attached with provisions as well as the sword he’d made for himself centuries
ago, Arturo galloped through the city and took to the country.

He didn’t know how long he rode, but it was numerous
months. With each day that he’d ridden through the mountains, fields, and
forests, with every slam of his horse’s giant hooves on the packed dirt roads,
his rage had only heightened until he was a tenebrous pit of hate. God most
likely now believed him to be weak. And if he was weak, then God would no
longer take him seriously. One little act of kindness and thousands of years worth
of work was undone.

But Cain knew the truth about himself, even if God
didn’t. His kindness had been a fluke. He was still planning to undermine God
any chance he got, which he would show God by doing anything necessary to prove
that He had been wrong in allowing Cain to live. It was with such thoughts that
he consciously let the animal that had overtaken him when he’d answered to
Aemuth strike his mind, tearing away anything good in him with its razor sharp
claws until any emotions that had separated him from the wild beasts were
bloody shreds of pulp.

When the sky began darkening one evening, the
eastern horizon a darker blue than the western horizon, he set up camp between
a stream and a field—the perfect place to catch his dinner as well as giving
him direct access to water. He’d just begun cooking the rabbit he’d slain on a
spit when he heard the crackling of a dry twig; the sound of someone walking
toward him.

He stood up and grabbed his unusually wide,
oversized sword that he’d fashioned to be as long as a large child, readying
himself for a fight. Not one other man on Earth could use this sword, because
not one other man on Earth had his unique fighting style mixed up of styles
from all over the world. Also, it was balanced for his height and weight
perfectly, as well as for how his muscles were distributed.

“Who goes there?!” he hollered, aware that he would
strike as an impressive figure in the firelight.

“Please! I mean you no harm!” a weak voice called
out in Church Slavonic. From the dialect, he must be in Wallachia; perhaps even
Transylvania.

Cain wasn’t able to contain his wry grin; Wallachia
and Transylvania were both God-forsaken places. Maybe he should stay here for a
few years. Alberto would have made up a story of “Arturo’s” death, as well as
would take care of the Mokolios until he returned to take them back, so he was free
to do as he pleased. And if all hell broke loose while he was gone, then he
really didn’t care. It broke loose all the time. What
was
important was
that Cain could always find a way to use the chaos to further his own devices.

“What do you want?” he called back to the
malnourished figure that materialized from the darkness as it entered the small
circle of orange light the fire gave off.

“I wish to share your fire,” the scrawny boy of no
more than eighteen said. “Please?”

Cain scowled, lifting a lip in disdain. “You’re a
peasant.” He refused to share a fire with someone of low class who was of no
worth to him.

“No. I’m a prince.”

“A prince wouldn’t look as though he hadn’t eaten in
years,” he spat. “And where is your horse? And your guard?”

“I’ve been a prisoner for many years. But I assure
you, I am a prince. My name is Vlad III Draculea. My father was Vlad II Dracul
of Wallachia, exiled to Transylvania.”

Cain had heard of Vlad II Dracul even before that
fateful evening. Years before, the Wallachian prince had given his two youngest
sons, Vlad III and Radu, to the Ottoman sultan as payment of a vow he had made
to be the sultan’s vassal. Cain had heard word since leaving his life of Arturo
behind that the elder Vlad had been assassinated, and the eldest of his four
legitimate sons, Mircea II, had been blinded by hot pokers and then buried
alive around that same time. Such were the things that happened to Wallachian
princes.

Their other brother, Vlad—princes were never very
creative with the naming of their sons, which was why Vlad II had not one, but
two
sons who shared his name—had been left alone as far as Cain knew. But it was
only because he was spineless and timid, and nobody would have seen him as a
threat to their reign. And if he wasn’t a threat, then he wasn’t worth their
energy.

“Do you have proof of this claim?” Cain asked,
though he was beginning to believe he was being told the truth. If so, then
this boy was the heir for the House of Drăculeşti and, therefore, had
claim to the throne.

The thin boy reached out a bony hand to show him a
crudely made silver ring on his finger; the crest of the dragon with a cross
behind it that belonged to the Dracul family.

“So you are Draculea.” The son of Dracul was
standing before him, wasting away.

The boy’s eyes turned toward the meat cooking over
Cain’s fire, his mouth salivating at the sight. Gesturing toward the meat, Cain
said, “Please, sit. I’m afraid I only have one small rabbit.” He hadn’t invited
the prince to dinner to be nice, but more to see whether or not he could use
Vlad for personal gain.

“My name is Arturo,” he told the boy, using the last
name he’d gone by, though it no longer fit him, as he turned the rabbit over to
cook the other side. He pulled his own long black hair behind him, tying it with
a strap of leather so that he would no longer resemble the animal Aemuth, but
the noble he had been so as to gain the boy’s trust. “I’ve heard of you, Vlad.
I knew of your father.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I know much about The Order of the Dragon.”

Most people believed that The Order of the Dragon
had been created to unite the Christians against Ottoman rule. But that wasn’t
the truth. The truth was that they were a sect created with the mission to
destroy Noseriatif Tremokolio. They wanted to purge the Earth of anyone against
Christianity and God, and Cain was God’s most powerful enemy.

“How is it that you came to escape from the sultan?”
he asked the boy, feigning concern as he pulled a juicy leg off the rabbit. “He
doesn’t strike me as someone to let a prince go.”

The boy licked his dry, bleeding lips as he watched
Cain ready their dinner. “I’m on my way to take over the throne of Wallachia on
the sultan’s orders.”

Glancing up with his eyebrows arched, Cain asked,
“Then why are you alone? If the sultan was putting you on the throne, then surely
he would have sent you with an army to help you?”

He handed a leg to the boy, who immediately began
tearing into it like a starved cub.

“The Ottoman soldiers escorting me were slain,” the
boy answered, his mouth full of the meager rabbit. “Only I survived.”

Inside, Cain was revolted. If the prince had been
the only one to survive, then it was because he had been a scared little mouse.
He had obviously hidden from the attackers instead of standing up to them, as a
prince should do. A prince should be at the head of the army, the first to draw
blood in battle. Not the one running away from it as though his life was more
important than those of his men.

He wanted to punish the lad, but Cain had to keep up
appearances for now, so he could not let his revulsion and anger show on the
outside.

Attempting to ascertain the situation—to figure out
why the sultan would let the prince go—he asked, “So now you’re on your way to
become ruler, not on your own, but under the command of the sultan?”

With a nod that threw his greasy dark hair into his
puffy eyes, the prince replied, “Yes. There are more Ottoman forces. I’m on my
way to find them so they can help me take the throne from the Hungarian
regent’s chosen prince.”

At this, things began to make sense. Vlad’s father
had been the Wallachian prince for, more or less, the past eleven years only
because of the sultan’s support of him that was bought with the selling of this
boy and his younger brother. But with Vlad II and Mircea II both dead, there
was an empty throne that needed filling. Hungary was most likely attempting to
put their choice prince from the rival house of Dăneşti on it as
their vassal, basically giving them the country. And the sultan had only the
option of the three living sons of Dracul to put on it to represent his empire.
Three pathetic choices. But the other two were said to be quite weak and
impressionable, so this boy here must be the best of three evils.

It almost seemed like a lot of effort just to own
the destitute country, but upon greater thought Cain realized that it wasn’t
really about Wallachia at all. It spoke of much greater things, for whoever had
their
prince on the throne—Christianity or Islam—may finally win the
larger battle raging on that had been going for centuries.

Cain listened to Vlad’s story for hours before
saying, “I will see you safely to your destination.” Then, with a small bow, he
added, “It is a matter of honor for a fellow noble.”

“Thank you,” the boy said with a large smile,
licking the remnants of the rabbit fat from his filthy fingers as though each
drop of grease would fill his stomach that much more—Cain had made him eat it
slowly so that it wouldn’t make him ill. It was well-known that if you were
starved and then ate too quickly when you had access to food, most often you
would throw it up, and he didn’t want the prince to taint his camp with vomit.

Cain smiled back, though his wasn’t sincere. He had
known the prince would not refuse a man the size of Cain. He was worth more
than a hundred trained soldiers.

Once the mangy prince had fallen asleep on the long
meadow grass, Cain took out his sword, Excalibur, and stabbed it through the
prince near his heart—not
through
it because he didn’t want the boy to
die too quickly. As he pulled the blade free, he felt a great spray of warm
blood hit his thickly-bearded face.

“Why?” the dying boy asked, his voice a strangled
whisper as one of his lungs filled with blood.

Cain put a hand to his own brow to wipe the trickles
of blood to keep them from falling into his eyes. Then, with a feral snarl, he
licked away the blood that was dripping onto his lips. The coppery taste was
delicious and exhilarated him so—it had been far too long since he’d lived a
life full of bloodshed and war, and that was just what he wanted at the moment.