Blood to Blood Read Free Page B

only sensed how terrified she was of him. Joanna, incorporeal, laughed at his fear and her own—a titter soft as the skittering of ground squirrels or field mice, barely noticed by the one who should have been her prey.
    Later, while he dozed at his post, she fed on one of the horses. She was too frightened to drink her fill and kill the beast. Instead she let it live, then picked one of the others for her own, leading it away from the herd, daring to mount it only when she was well away from the encampment.
    When she reached the castle, she led the shivering beast inside the gates, hung a bag of silver pieces on the outside of the doors, then closed and barred them. If the men returned to the castle, they would know the bloodline of the one who had done this. Perhaps they would respect her name and leave her in peace. Perhaps not.
    She'd had no definite reason for stealing the horse. But as she stood at the top of the wall, looking down at the valley, it occurred to her that she had too many enemies in this country and that they knew her weaknesses far too well.
    It was time to move on. Tomorrow evening she would force herself to think rationally, to plan.
    The heavy pull of dawn was already on her when she willed herself outside the walls again, returning with fresh grass for her mount. The well still held brackish water. She left that for the horse as well. The beast looked at her more calmly now, even standing still, letting her stroke its head.
    "We'll be all right, you and I. The wolves won't trouble us here." She released another peal of nervous laughter into the lightening sky.
    Later, lying on the earth floor of her bare chamber, she found sleep elusive. Instead the ancient stones of the walls and vaulted ceiling reminded her too much of the centuries that had passed, often without a single worthwhile memory to them; and of her youth, still so vivid that it would never die.
     
    Joanna was born eight years after her half brother Vlad, a fact that like so many others, she learned much later in life.
    Her mother had been a princess in her own land, given as a hostage of Vlad Dracul in Tirgoviste, to assure that Dracu' sons, Vlad and Radu, would come to no harm in Turkish hands.
    From everything Joanna could later learn, it took only a few months before the lonely child her mother had been fell deeply in love with her captor.
    For years Joanna believed that the feeling had been mutual. Perhaps it had been, but fewer than three years after she was born, mother and child were abruptly sent back to Turkey.
    Joanna's earliest memories were of that journey. Throughout her life the smell of lathered horses would bring back the memory of the sudden, swift departure, the hard ride, and her mother holding her so tightly that she could scarcely breathe.
    "What do you think her father would have done with her when she returned with the child of his enemy?" Vlad asked her years later.
    Joanna couldn't answer because she would never know. The first night of the journey, as they were camped in one of the high mountain passes, her mother picked her up and carried her away from the horses and wagons, stopping at the edge of a high cliff.
    In the years that followed, Joanna often wished her mother had given in to her first instinct and killed them both. Perhaps she had feared for her soul if she killed her daughter. Perhaps she thought the Fates should decide if Joanna lived or died, and there was a good chance that wolves would find her long before Dracul's soldiers did.
    They almost did. She glimpsed the beasts padding silently through the scrubby mountain trees. One came so close to her that she could have reached out and touched it. She started to, but before she did, its attention was drawn to a snarl farther down the slope. It whirled and left her, bounding off as silently as it came.
    "It smelled your mother's blood and that drew it away," Vlad told her so many years later. "When the soldiers found her, there was little left but