by D. J. Butler
Aanik charged on all fours, shoulders down and lampreylike head raised and hissing. Chigozie’s club felt very tiny in his hands. “God of my father—” was all he had time for, and then Aanik was bearing down, all his teeth glistening moist and evil and the muscles beneath his pelt bunching and stretching as inexorably as a watermill.
Chigozie raised his club to swing it—
and the cow-headed beastwife jumped straight toward the lamprey-cat, knocking them both to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs.
She dropped her club.
Chigozie stepped in and swung, landing a single feeble blow on Aanik’s shoulder before the tussling creatures crashed out of his reach.
He looked up and saw Kort. The bison-headed leader of the beastkind leaned on his own club and stared, snuffling and growling but not interfering.
Kort wasn’t going to see the light and suddenly become Christian.
What insane challenge had Chigozie gotten himself into?
Aanik rose and fell again, diving against the cow-headed warrior to bite her ear and her forearm.
The beastkind howled and snarled, but they said no words.
Chigozie wasn’t fighting to convert now, if he ever had been. He had been granted a miracle, in the form of this beastwife who had already saved his life twice, but now he was fighting simply for his life.
He ran forward and attacked again, bashing Aanik in the back of his long, sinewy neck.
Aanik’s neck twisted back around and snapped, but in doing so, he exposed his neck to the cow. She rolled right, pulling Aanik left at the same time—
and rammed one horn deep into Aanik’s throat.
Hot blood gushed from the wound, spattering the bovine fighter in the face and sending up thin columns of steam in the crisp air.
Aanik’s body convulsed, arms and legs flailing. The claws of all four limbs scratched at the beastwife, further tearing in the flesh of her belly and her thighs. She rolled over twice to one side, struggling to get both hands around Aanik’s neck, but his blood made it more slippery, and her hands slid, failing to find purchase.
Then suddenly, made slick by his own blood, Aanik escaped. He staggered to his own feet and charged Chigozie. Blood from his wound spattered a wide swathe of snow, shockingly red against the virginal white, but also boiled back into his own throat, and his scream came at Chigozie with an obscene gargling edge to it and a fine mist of red that sprayed forth like a basilisk’s venom.
The beastwife tumbled onto all fours and chased after Aanik.
“God of my father!” Chigozie shouted.
Aanik roared and leaped—
the beastwife gripped him by his heel with both hands—
Aanik’s lamprey mouth opened wide and his neck extended, snapping and biting, but not quite far enough to reach Chigozie—
and Chigozie shoved his club down Aanik’s open mouth.
Aanik tried to scream, but had no air. He scooted backward, trying to escape, and locked himself more tightly into the beastwife’s grip. She wrapped powerful arms around Aanik’s upper limbs and leaned on him with her body, trapping his hind legs so he couldn’t further scratch her.
Aanik swiveled his serpentine head this way and that looking for escape, and couldn’t find it. Chigozie kept his grip on his club, his arms nearly pulling from their sockets with each new twist of the beastman’s head, and he leaned forward, putting his weight onto the weapon.
Slowly, an inch at a time, Chigozie forced his club deeper down the lamprey-cat’s unnatural throat.
He was grateful Aanik had no visible eyes. It meant he couldn’t look into them and imagine a plea for compassion. Instead, killing the beastman was like killing a snake he’d found in the woodpile—it was simply the necessary thing to do so.
One minute, Chigozie was leaning and sweating, and the beastwife strained to hold Aanik in place.
The next, Aanik was still.
Bloody foam bubbled up at the corners of the lamprey mouth, around the wood of Chigozie’s club. Chigozie stepped back to catch his breath, but the beastwife didn’t. She rose to her feet still clutching Aanik tightly in both arms, raised him over her head—
and brought him down swiftly, driving his back against her raised knee with a loud crack!
Aanik spasmed a final time, and the beastwife tossed him aside.
“Mercy,” Kort said.
“I was attacked,” Chigozie pointed out.
Kort shrugged. “Two on one is no miracle.”
Chigozie’s heart sank, despite the adrenalin still coursing through his veins at having faced and survived death. “The miracle is that help arrived.”
“Miracle,” Kort grunted. “Or coincidence.”
“I’m Ferpa,” the cow-headed warrior said. “My arrival here is no coincidence.”
“No?” Kort’s bison face expressed an impressive amount of disdain and skepticism. “Were you sent here by his god, then?”
Ferpa reached slowly for the neckline of her makeshift tunic, gripped it with bloodied fingers, and pulled it down.
Burned into her breast, just below incisions left by Aanik’s savage teeth, was a cross.
Chigozie heard his own breathing, suddenly loud in the dead air. Far away, beasts in the shallows of the Mississippi howled and collided in rage.
“That is…that is…” Kort glared. He snorted.
Finally, he turned his muzzle toward the river and loped away, his pack following.
Chigozie found himself alone with Ferpa. Standing beside her, he felt tiny and frail. She was eight feet tall, heels to horns, and her body from the neck down was that of a voluptuous and dark-skinned woman, with one addition—she had a long black cow’s tail, ending in a flourish of long hairs twisted together like a paintbrush. Her scent was not quite that of a person, though he wouldn’t have called it bovine—she smelled musky, strong, animal. And from the neck up, she was a black and white, long-horned cow. Her eyes were liquid, long-lashed, and shy.
Aanik’s blood painted one of her horns.
“Thank you,” Chigozie said.
“I’ve heard that you preach a new god to the beastkind.” Her tail switched.
“Not a new god.” Chigozie nodded. “But perhaps a god that is new to some of them.”
“And the scar I bear. It’s in the shape of this new god’s symbol.”
“Yes,” Chigozie said. “It is the shape of the instrument on which He sacrificed himself for others. Out of love.”
“This is mercy?” Ferpa asked.
Chigozie nodded. “Mercy is to spare others. It is to act out of love. It is to risk and sacrifice self.”
“I want to receive mercy,” Ferpa said slowly.
“So do I.”
“And also…I wish to give mercy.”
Chigozie found his own cheeks wet with tears. Inexplicably, he was thinking of his brother. “So do I.”
* * *
“Our situation makes a mockery of all good maxims of military strategy, ma’am. Our enemies outnumber us. They have access to more materiel—bullets and arrows, and so forth. Our larder is virtually empty, while theirs, practically speaking, is infinitely stocked.”
“That does indeed sound dire, Sir William. Might we perhaps console ourselves with the fact that our men may take cover behind walls of solid wood and clay?”
Bill and Cathy lay beside Chikaak on their backs on the roof of Alzbieta Torias’s city home. Bill had affixed a lady’s toilet mirror to a long stick and held it up, angling it left and right to get an aerial view of the numbers and positioning of the soldiers who surrounded them. So far, none of them had noticed the mirror, or if they’d seen it, they had the discipline to avoid wasting bullets by firing at it.
Or arrows. So many of these damned Ophidians were armed with medieval weapons. Like the Spanish, only without horses.
Bill found he had a sudden strong desire for a drink. After a moment’s impotent rage, he was grateful he was on the rooftop, and not in the wine cellar.
He had been awoken early in the morning by Chikaak, who had seen Uris and Alzbieta leave together with her palanquin, well before first light. Agreeing that this was suspicious behavior, Bill had awoken all the men with whistled commands—the same notes he would have blown on the Heron King’s horn, only much softer—and within moments they were positioned at all the windows and doors of the building.
The beastkind, at least. The Firstborn were simply gone, soldier and civilian, free and slave alike. Bill wasn’t sure, but he thought he spotted some of their faces on the men laying siege to the palace now.
Only later had he realized that Calvin and Sarah had also disappeared.
At dawn, a warrior bearing no weapons and carrying a white flag over his shoulder had come to the front door. There he had twice recited a short message in a loud voice, then turned and rejoined his comrades.
“By order of the Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne, Maltres Korinn, you’re detained in this house. None of you is to leave or attempt to leave until further notice. You’re outnumbered and surrounded.”
Thinking of the ease and beauty of the thirty-odd commands he could now give his beastkind soldiers by sheer tone reminded Bill of Jacob Hop. Not for the first time in recent weeks, he wondered how far the little Dutchman had got. As recently as two days earlier, Sarah had consulted her hexed slate and announced that he lived and was high in the hills of Appalachee, bound for Johnsland.
Johnsland…and Bill’s wife and son.
He shook away the thought.
“Our cover is an advantage if they charge our position, ma’am. It is worthless if we charge theirs, and therefore useful only in buying us time. Sooner or later, if we do nothing, our food will run out. We must therefore do something, losing our advantage of cover. They know that, and therefore they will waste no lives charging our positions. They will wait for us to assault theirs, and then they will mow us down like spring hay.”
“Why, Sir William, you have become poetic.”
“I have become old,” he said, “and rather wistful of my long-since-discarded career path of becoming a farmer.”
Chikaak laughed. “No, Captain, a farmer doesn’t need your instinct for the kill.”
“I am a gunfighter,” Bill complained. “Even I do not need instinct for the kill. I merely point and shoot, and so long as I am lucky enough that the other fellow takes it worse than I do, I can continue.”
“You do not mean that,” Cathy said. “I have heard you speak often of honor, and loyalty. Now you speak of your life as if you made shoes for a living.”
“Honor in defense of innocence.” Bill really wanted a drink, and he sighed. “I don’t mean it, Cathy. And I am discouraged but for a moment; in your presence, such gloom cannot long persist.”
“That’s better,” she said. “Now how are we going to shoot those sons of bitches across the street without getting shot ourselves?”
“There you have it,” Bill said. “That is the essence of every strategy discussion. Let us consider possibilities. I would give an arm and a leg for a secret passage that led from this house to a place of strength behind our attackers.”
Cathy shook her head. “If there is such a passage, we don’t know it.”
“Well then, I would be pleased to have a flanking force that could attack our foes from the rear.”
Cathy shook her head.
“The gift of flight? Superior firepower, positioned here on the roof?”
“Were Sarah here, we might have either of those, I think.”
“Agreed. And she isn’t. But I am not inclined to wait for her return to solve our problem. I would be pleased if we could get a large quantity of liquor into the hands of our enemies. Bored soldiers have often been their own ruin.”
“The food has mostly been eaten by refugees, but Alzbieta has wine in her pantry.”
“Yes, hmm.” Bill considered. “But if we simply offer it to them, it will arouse their suspicions. Perhaps we could arrange for them to have false but terrifying news.”
“Such as a plague,” Cathy suggested. “Sudden death to thousands of their comrades by a mysterious falling sickness.”
“That is quite Biblical of you. I was thinking about the approach of a greater force, coming to our aid.”
“Do you have the means to get them either piece of false information?”
“I do not,” Bill admitted. “Perhaps our best recourse is to lie still and see what develops, at least for the time being.”
“And what would you expect that to be?” Cathy asked.
“If we are detained,” Bill drawled, “it means Sarah is detained. Why would that be? Well, she came her to reclaim her father’s crown and throne, and we’ve known all along she wouldn’t be unopposed. Then again, I cannot regard it as coincidental that Alzbieta and Uris have also vanished.”
“You don’t think they might be accompanying Sarah?”
“Not as friends. I cannot believe that we are only politely being asked to wait a short while, after which we should expect to rejoin our companions. No, something is afoot, and I do not like being in a cage.”
“Fire,” Chikaak suggested, bouncing on all fours. “We could make firebombs of spirits or powder, and throw them over our enemies’ heads.”
“Then charge while they are distracted.” Bill nodded grimly. “I like your train of thought, Sergeant. I doubt mere wine would be sufficiently flammable.” He hesitated. “It’s worth inspecting the pantry, though, to see whether Alzbieta might have something stronger.”
Chikaak nodded. “If only there were beehives.”
It struck Bill as a strange thought, but then finally amused him. “Yes. I’d give a great deal just now to be able to lob flaming beehives at the enemy.”
A clattering of hooves brought Bill’s attention back to the enemy. He resisted an urge to raise his head and look, and instead shifted the mirror. At the same time, he grabbed the Heron King’s horn with his left hand, preparing to give orders if the moment seemed opportune.
New forces arrived, pouring in behind the Cahokians from multiple points. They were irregulars, wearing no uniform, and the large quantity of knives and pistols that hung from their belts and shoulder straps made them look more like pirates than like militiamen. They moved like skirmishers, jumping quickly upon the Firstborn soldiers and taking them by surprise. Wicked long knives and pistols pointed at the faces and bellies of the Ophidians put an instant end to resistance.
Should he blow a call to attack?
But even as Bill hesitated, the struggle was over.
A woman strode into view. Seeing her through a mirror and from across the street distorted what Bill saw, but she looked to be perhaps fifty years old, despite hair that was still dark. She was heavy, but her cheekbones were strong, marked with a single large mole that probably prevented her ever from being the belle of the county. She planted her feet shoulder-width apart with her hands behind her back, and called to the Ophidians with the voice of a drill-sergeant.
“I’m Director Schmidt of the Imperial Ohio Company. You may call me Madam Director. If you’re asking yourself, isn’t that the same person who has been buying up grain in the countryside and raising all our tolls and taxes, inflicting a miserable winter upon us even as the beastkind of the Missouri rampage as they have not done in a century?, the answer is: I am she.
“But I’m not your enemy. I’m here to capture a party of rebels, many of whom now lie inside the palace before you. They serve a pretender queen, who has been disallowed from the Serpent Throne by your own regent, and who also claims to have a right to the Penn land fortune.
“At my request, the Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne has directed you to detain these rebels. You were told this morning to await further orders. I’m here to give you those.”
“I cannot see the woman bellowing,” Cathy murmured, “but I believe I would happily shoot her in the face.”
Chikaak grinned. “I would hold her down for you.”
“Before I issue you orders, though,” Director Schmidt continued, “you would like some token that what I say is true, and here it is. You become as of this moment Imperial militia, acting as part of the Pacification to bring peace to the Ohio. Here, then, is your first day’s pay.”
Man after man, the skirmishers reached into belts and purses to produce a single gold coin each, which they immediately handed to the Ophidian nearest them.
“Hell’s Bells,” Bill whispered to Cathy and the coyote-headed beastman.
They rolled over onto all fours and the three of them scurried toward the rooftop trapdoor by which they’d come up. Bill brought the Heron King’s horn to his lips and blew three notes that meant defensive position.
“Immediately?” Chikaak asked.
“I think so,” Bill said.
The beastman bounded ahead, fast as an actual coyote, and threw himself down the trapdoor and into the palace.
“What comes immediately?” Cathy panted for breath.
“Attack!” Director Schmidt roared.
* * *
The crowd was large despite the late hour, and growing larger by the minute. Monsieur Bondí hadn’t summoned them, nor had Onyinye or Eoin, but they had come. Without knowing why, Etienne guessed, each simply feeling the pull of the Brides.
The faces of the men glowed with anticipation.
The faces of the women shone with appetite.
Etienne wore his full episcopal dress, mitre and chasuble and all. Armand would have led the way and made the crowd part like the Red Sea before the Israelites, but Armand was dead. The chevalier’s men had killed him—eyewitnesses watching from the common room of the tavern outside which Armand had died all told the same tale, that the killers were the foreigners with headscarves and pourpoints who had been seen around the Vieux Carré in recent weeks.
The chevalier’s mamelukes.
Poor Armand.
What had killed him? The former customs man had always been quick to desire vengeance and violence—had that been his downfall?