Now I Rise
Page 65

“Oh,” Lada said, frowning.
The girl’s hands jerked instinctively in front of her pregnant belly. Then she deliberately moved them away. “Caught your man spying. Told him I would turn him in unless he brought me here.”
Lada raised her eyebrows at Stefan. He shrank farther into his cloak. No one ever noticed him. He drifted invisibly, a weary traveler no one wanted. That was his entire purpose.
“Well.” Lada turned her attention back to the girl. “Here you are. What do you want?”
“You are that woman, right? I thought you would be taller. And older. You are very young.”
Lada gave her a heavy look. “I assume there are many women in this country. You will have to be more specific.”
“I heard rumors. You are staying with Toma Basarab. Took in men for soldiers. Peasants talk.”
Lada shifted uneasily. Thanks to Toma’s men—both his trained soldiers and the farmers they had conscripted—her ranks had swelled to over one hundred men. The peasants were poorly trained and poorly fed, but they had a gritty eagerness that could not be undervalued. And they did not eat much, which was good.
The girl leaned forward, burning with intensity. “Are you going to do that in more places? Take men for fighting the prince?”
“Yes,” Lada said.
“Good.” The girl’s hands fisted over her stomach. “I want the Danesti dead.”
It was a dangerous sentiment to voice aloud. Lada wondered at her daring. “Does your husband want to join? He should have come himself.”
The girl let out a harsh laugh, a burst of bitterness more than humor. “I have no husband. Tell her what you saw, Stefan.”
To Lada’s surprise, he followed the girl’s order without question. “Lots of girls. In the fields. Most—” He paused, then nodded toward the girl’s stomach. “Most like her.”
“And between us not a single husband. A few years ago we had a nasty bout of plague. Killed most of the boys. There weren’t enough men to work the fields. None to marry daughters to. So our loving Danesti boyar decided he would take care of us himself.” The girl paused, as though waiting for something. When Lada did not respond, she spoke again. “No husbands.” The girl glared at Lada for her stupidity. “No husbands, but all our babies are bastard cousins.”
Clarity finally caught Lada in its horrible grasp. “Oh.”
“So you will not find many men here to swell your ranks. Our boyar worm Silviu will agree with whatever you want because he is a coward, but he will betray you to the prince at the first opportunity. And he has nothing to offer. You should kill him. If not, then leave. These lands are a waste of your time.”
Lada felt anger rising within. “Why?”
“I told you, we have no men.”
“No. Why did you let this happen? Why did all of you let this happen?”
The girl’s face purpled with rage. “Let it happen? What choice did we have? We give ourselves or our families starve. What choice is there in that?”
“Does Silviu work the land?”
“No, of course not.”
“Does he tend the animals?”
“No.”
“Does he do a single thing that directly feeds you or your families?”
The girl looked as though she very much wanted to hit Lada. “He owns it. He owns it all.”
Lada paused, weighing her options. Then she shrugged. She would negotiate her own way. “Not anymore.”
They marched straight through the fields, past more than a dozen girls in the same condition as Daciana. The girls stood watching as the men passed. No one said anything.
Daciana walked next to Stefan’s horse. Lada could tell the girl made him nervous, which she found perversely delightful. She had once seen Stefan slit a man’s throat without blinking. That this pregnant slip of a girl could unnerve him when that had not was odd. Daciana talked softly to him. No one noticed Stefan until it was too late. But this girl had seen him, and would not stop seeing him.
Lada liked her.
An older woman ran from the middle of a field and caught up to them. She grabbed Daciana’s hand and halted her. Daciana leaned close, whispering. Apparently satisfied with Daciana’s explanation, the woman fell into step.
Silviu’s manor was tucked into the side of a hill overlooking the farmland. Ten guards stood in front. Their helmets were slightly askew, swords and spears clutched so tightly they shook. Lada stopped her horse directly in front of them, well within striking distance. She remembered Hunyadi riding into an enemy city, broad-shouldered and armed with unassailable confidence. She wrapped the same around herself.
“I am here to see Silviu.”
The guards looked at each other, at a loss.
Lada had seventy men at her back. The guards knew as well as she did that what she wanted, she would get. “Tell him I will receive him here. And then you are welcome to join my men, or to flee. Any other course of action will not end well for you.”
The shortest man, broad-chested and of middle years, gave her an ugly sneer. “I do not take orders from women.”
“My men do not have a similar problem.” Lada lifted a hand. The man fell, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest.
A harelipped guard jumped away as though death were contagious. Which, in this case, it was. “I will go fetch him, Miss! Um, Madam. My lady. I— Right now!” Two of the guards turned and ran. The rest began edging toward Lada’s men, hands far from their weapons.
“Hello, Miron,” Daciana said. She stepped forward, blocking the path of one of the guards. There was something verminous about his face and his beady eyes that darted around. “You remember when we used to play together as children?”
He did not look at her. She held her hand out to the older woman next to her. “You remember when my mother gave you some of our milk because you were starving?”
His lip curled in a snarl, but still he did not respond.
“You remember when I screamed and screamed, and you stood outside the door and did nothing? You remember when he offered you—what did he call them, ‘seconds’? You remember what you did?”
The man had the gall to finally meet her gaze. He shrugged, face set in cruel indifference. He shoved his shoulder into her, to push her out of the way.
“I remember that, too,” her mother said as she brought her hand between them. Lada’s view was blocked by the soldier’s body. He made an odd noise, twitching. Then he stumbled backward, blood-soaked hands tugging ineffectually at the rough wooden handle of a knife protruding from his stomach. He sank down against the stone wall of the house. His ratlike eyes looked up in shock and pain at the girl and her mother.