Excerpt from the novel Son of the Dragon by Victor T. Foia

     “I could hear the racket made by these kids a mile away,” Omar shouted above the din of crying voices. He was addressing Zekaï, who was feeding the prisoners, but his anger was directed at his other two brothers. “You should know better than to let this noise go unchecked. If I could hear it, so could anyone else passing by.”
     The Akincis’ campsite was in a gulch, with a trickle of water running at the bottom and scrubby bushes clinging to the banks.
     “Any passerby too nosy for his own good will end up like that one,” Sezaï said, pointing at what looked like a heap of rags tossed between two boulders. “An old man who got too curious. He was snooping around up there, on the lip of the ravine.”
     “I got him from down here, with the first shot,” Redjaï said, grinning proud. “By the time Sezaï loosed his arrow, the man was already tumbling down the slope. His head split like a watermelon on that rock.” He pointed at an outcrop halfway up the bank. The two brothers chuckled at the memory of the happy incident.
     Neither one of his middle brothers had much brains. Omar had tried to teach them to prevent problems, not just solve them. And now, here they sat in the middle of an open pen, letting the noise fly off in all directions.
     “You’re giving them too much food, Zekaï,” Omar said as he observed Zekaï ladling out gruel to one of the boys. Omar let a sack that lay draped over his thighs slide to the ground, and dismounted. “At this rate we’ll be out of supplies before we return to the Danube.”
     “But you said to keep the kids quiet at all costs, and I’ve been trying.” Zekaï pointed with the ladle at Sezaï and Redjaï. “Ask them. I’ve been yelling ‘Liniște, silence,’ all day long, like you taught me, but the kids won’t stop howling. They only quiet down when I fill their bellies with gruel. And even then, not for long.”
     “Take this one and chain him up with the rest,” Omar ordered Sezaï, kicking the bundle at his feet. “How many have we got so far?”
     “Twenty-nine,” Sezaï answered, untying the sack and dragging out a boy of about ten. The moment the child saw the other prisoners huddled on the ground and chained to each other, he started to wail.
     Twenty-nine was about right. Even if five were to die en route, they would still have twenty-four to sell in Edirne; that had always been Omar’s lucky number. “Good,” he said and grunted. “Then we’re done here. Tomorrow we start for home.”
     Is it true we’re going to dress like the Wallachian Giaours?” Zekaï said. “I don’t feel good not wearing my turban. It’s haraam, forbidden, accourding to the Qur’an, isn’t it?”
     “We’ve got to do it, since we’ll be traveling in the daytime,” Sezaï said. “We can’t make good time at night anymore, with the moon only a crescent now.”
     “If the wagon cover’s fastened tight on all sides, no one will know what we’re transporting,” Redjaï said. “And dressed like the Giaours, everybody’ll think we’re merchants, or something like that.”
     “But people will hear the children cry, and then they’ll know,” Zekaï said, plaintive. “How long before the Giaours get the nerve to attack us?”
     The youngest brother had so much more to learn yet. “You’re right, Zekaï,” Omar said. “If we left it up to them, the children would cry. And it’s not their fault. They’re hungry, tired, scared… and they miss their parents. It’s up to us to teach them to be quiet. But that won’t happen by stuffing them with food.”
     “Liniște,” Zekaï shouted at the children, but instead of quieting they only cried louder. “See, nothing works with these spawns of Shaytan.”
     Redjaï and Sezaï snickered like two mischievous children.
     “Should we show Zekaï how we teach the brats to stay quiet?” Redjaï said.
     Omar nodded, and then slumped onto a carpet spread out next to the wagon, weary, dirty, and hungry after riding all day in search of the last prisoner. His thoughts drifted to his favorite boyhood spot in Amasya. A hot marble slab… scalding water… steam… a fresh pomegranate… sleep. This moment, he would trade any one of those kids for a day in the hamam.
     Zekaï stowed his ladle and the gruel pail in the wagon, and then joined Omar on the carpet. As if suspecting something was about to happen, the children stopped crying and fastened their eyes on the Turks.
     “Come, Brother,” Redjaï said to Sezaï, “help me select our model student.” The two brothers stepped among the children and began inspecting them minutely. They checked their limbs, teeth, eyes, and ears, with a patience that made Omar forgive them their earlier transgressions.
     Sezaï gave out a cry of delight. “Here’s one that should do,” he said, grabbing a boy by the chin. He took a plier from his pocket and cut the wire link that secured the chain to the boy’s neck. The two brothers lifted the child by his underarms and brought him to Omar.
     About eight years old. Short and skinny, but well formed. He seemed healthy. “Why him?”
     Sezaï took hold of the child’s hair and pushed his face close to Omar’s.
“I see,” Omar said, proud of his brother’s sharpness. “Nothing escapes you, Sezaï. Now get on with your lesson, so we’ll be done in time for the Maghrib prayer.”
     “Cum te chiama, what’s your name?” Sezaï asked in Romanian, taking the child by the hand and leading him to the center of the encampment.
     The boy looked up at him, surprised, and whispered, “Petrica.”
     Redjaï stepped in front of the children, now silent in their curiosity, and began gesticulating, pointing at Petrica. Watch him, his gestures said, while Redjaï touched two fingers to his eyes, and then stretched his arm toward the child, again and again. As ordered, the children watched their colleague with expressions of fear and anticipation.
     Sezaï stepped behind the student, grabbed him by his armpits and tossed him in the air, the way a father would do to amuse his child. When he landed back in Sezaï’s arms, Petrica gave out a howl.
     “He pinched the boy,” Zekaï protested, attempting to rise.
     Omar pulled his brother down by his shirt. “It’s part of the lesson, Brother. Watch and learn.”
     Redjaï dropped to his knees in front of the children, his back to Sezaï. “Liniște Petrica,” he shouted over his shoulder, and pressed a finger to his lips. The children stared terrorized at Petrica, who was again sailing in the air, screaming in pain.
     As the boy’s shrieking got louder and louder with every new bounce, so did Redjaï’s calls for silence. Then, without warning, he yanked the bow off his shoulder and loosed an arrow that caught Petrica under his chin as he reached the zenith of his last flight. “What—why—?” Zekaï stammered, grabbing onto Omar’s arm, red in the face and teary-eyed. “What kind of lesson’s this?”
     “It works, Brother,” Sezaï said, holding Petrica’s limp body in his arms. The arrow had exited through the top of the boy’s skull and had flown onto the side of the ravine. “We’ve done this every year, and it never fails to teach the kids to keep quiet when they hear the word liniște.”
     “But—but,” Zekaï appeared unable to breathe.
     “You worry about the loss of one prisoner?” Redjaï said, joining the group. “We’ve got too many, as is. And this one was cross-eyed. Last time we tried to sell one such kid in Edirne, we got less for him than he cost us in food on the trip home.”

…

     After he saw the children released from their chains and fed, Vlad left the campsite and sat on a small rise just north of the opening. From there he could observe Omar digging his brothers’ graves. Their three corpses lay nearby, wrapped in shrouds improvised from strips cut from the wagon canopy. The sight of the lifeless bundles caused Vlad despondency and a painful emptiness in the pit of his stomach. He’d done the right thing, so why did he feel this way? What made it worse was this feeling had a dim resemblance to the one he’d experiencede moments after making love to Christina. Such different things could have nothing in common. One was linked to the origin of life, the other to its end.
     He wondered how Rostam felt after his first kill. But Shahnameh was silent on that account. All Vlad had gleaned was the pride King Zaal had shown at Rostam’s feat. That thought cheered him a little. Yes, this time Father would be proud of Vlad too. He wouldn’t be dwelling on the dangers of this adventure, since they were moot now. Nor would Father accuse Vlad of lack of judgment; the success of the ambush would belie such criticism. Father would have no choice but to admit that Vlad proved as skilled and courageous as any king could wish his son to be at age fourteen.
     Surely, Uncle Michael would chide Vlad for keeping him in the dark about his intentions. But how could Vlad have acted otherwise? To let Uncle Michael know would’ve meant making him responsible for this risky undertaking in front of Father. Oh well, Michael would get over it, knowing he was responsible for the fighter Vlad had proven to be.
     Marcus? His brother would be relieved at first that Vlad hadn’t been killed or taken into slavery. Then he’d be envious. Finally, he’d boast of his younger brother’s exploits to all the kitchen girls he hadn’t yet seduced.
     Vlad grinned, thinking of Lala Gunther’s reaction. The old monk would recite a quotation from Shahnameh, then ask for every little detail of the fight.
     “One of the boys wishes to apologize to you,” Gruya said, tearing Vlad from his reverie. He was holding a stocky boy with a plucky face by the tip of his ear.
     Vlad recognized the child as the leader of a group of three boys who earlier were chasing the other children around the valley, making them shriek in terror.
     “I beg your pardon, Prince Vlad,” the boy said, “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
     “You seem the oldest of the bunch,” Vlad said, forcing himself to sound severe. “What’s the idea of bullying the younger ones?”
     “He’s named one of his cohorts Lash,” Gruya said, smirking, “the other Gruya.”
     “We’re the Wallachians and the other kids are the Turks,” the boy said. “We don’t care how many they are, we’ll kill everyone—”
     “And what name have you taken for yourself?” Vlad said, amused.
     The boy glanced at Gruya, and blushed.
     “His name is Stan, but that’s not what he calls himself in battle,” Gruya said. “Come, boy, tell the prince who you are.”
     Stan stared at the ground, his ears crimson. “I’m you, my lord, I’m Dracula,” he said, almost inaudible.
     Knowing the peasants’ fondness for twisting old names into new, Vlad wasn’t surprised to see himself turned from “son of Dracul” into Dracula. What he did find intriguing was that this nickname, though much distorted from the German “Drache” of his father’s youth, still meant “Son of the Dragon.” Theodore’s prophecy wouldn’t be thwarted, it seemed.
     “Stan wanted to play you in the fight with the boys pretending to be the Turks,” Gruya said, and pulled Stan’s hair, making him wince, “but he thought ‘Vlad’ didn’t sound threatening enough.”
     “Let Stan be, Gruya,” Vlad said, all his earlier feelings of dejection now gone. “Who’s ever been afraid of someone called Vlad? But ‘Dracula‘? Now there’s a name with a ring to it.”