Wren the Fox Witch (Europa #3: A Dark Fantasy)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  They’re dying right now. Some of them are dying. And it’s because I put them there.

  He finished with his patient and moved on to the next one.

  It’s awfully quiet out there right now. Maybe they’re doing well. Maybe they’ve found Koschei. Maybe this stupid plan will work out after all.

  “Good God, sir, what’s that?!”

  Tycho looked up and saw a pale shape snaking its way along the deck. “Aether! It’s the aether, it’s here. Get the men up, get them out of here!” He jumped to his feet and began yanking at the injured man in front of him as the two medics grabbed the arms and legs of another man and fumbled him down the hall, heading farther aft.

  Tycho pulled and pulled, but he could only shift the wounded sailor a few steps and the curling, writhing tendril of white mist was flowing closer and closer to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he dropped the sailor. He stumbled backward the first few paces, keeping his eyes on the mist. Then he heard the screams.

  Men were screaming in the distance, their voices echoing across the waters and in the narrow steel canyons between the ships’ hulls. There were no words, no cries for help, no names, no pleas. Just wordless shrieks of pain and terror.

  Tycho turned and ran back down the hall. At the end of the corridor was a locked door and he pounded on it, yelling, “Let me in! Let me in!”

  But the door remained shut, and there was no sound of anyone on the other side.

  The entire hull of the Herakles shuddered and groaned as the ship began to list to starboard, and the growling and crackling sounds of fire echoed in the distance while yellow and red lights danced on the walls.

  And along the floor of the corridor, the thin fingers of the aether mist crept toward him.

  Tycho pulled out his revolver and glanced around at the walls, but there was only one target. He flattened himself against the inner bulkhead, aimed, and fired.

  The first bullet shattered the window, and the next four shots smashed away the bits of the frame and small chunks of the wall, splintering the wooden panels and revealing a few ragged glimpses of the black night outside.

  Tycho holstered his gun with one bullet still in the chamber, climbed up onto the handrail, and began kicking at the window frame. It creaked and cracked, and then suddenly burst apart and a piece of the wall disappeared out into the darkness. The resulting hole was not large, barely larger than the window had been, but it would do.

  The small major scrambled up into the jagged gap, stabbing and cutting his hands on the broken boards. For a moment his jacket snagged, and he was caught half in and half out of the ship, dangling high above the black waves. He stared down into the darkness, gasping for breath.

  I am an idiot.

  The wood crackled and snapped and the man tumbled out of the ship just as the aether clouds slithered over his boots. He spun sideways and smashed down into the water shoulder first. The freezing Bosporus stabbed him in the ear and shocked his heart and clawed at his warm skin. He opened his mouth to gasp and choked on the cold brine rushing into his mouth and nose.

  Everything was dark and icy and churning with bubbles and surging with liquid force, tumbling him head over heels. Tycho kicked and pulled and swept his arms back and forth, squinting into the dark for some hint of where to go. He glimpsed a flash of fire and swam toward it, and his head broke the surface. The night air felt warm in his mouth, but the breeze slashed through his wet hair and skin like an icicle.

  “Help!” Another mouthful of water stung his tongue and he gurgled and spat as he struggled to breathe. “Help! Anyone!”

  “Sir?”

  Tycho twisted around and saw two of the little dories just a stone’s throw away, each with a handful of young marines aboard. “Lycus?”

  “Major!”

  One of the boats paddled near and several hands reached down and hauled Tycho up and out of the water. He slumped down to the bottom of the dory clutching his chest. The cold had cut him deeply, well under the skin and into the muscle and had begun to scratch at his bones.

  Another minute in that water and I’d be dead.

  “Sir, what do we do?”

  Tycho sat up, shivering, and looked at the three scared young faces leaning over him. The other boat was coming alongside them now with four more marines, some clutching bleeding or burnt wounds. Out across the water, the Herakles was leaning dangerously to starboard and most of it was blanketed in white mist. What few parts of the ship remained dry were on fire, and from somewhere within her hull there were voices screaming.

  Farther out, Tycho could see the remains of the lead Hellan ship smoking as it sank beneath the waves. The three Furies remained intact, all three still at anchor and none on fire, but none of the Turks were firing now. Their guns were silent and their lights pointed out at every angle at nothing in particular, illuminating empty patches of the Strait or burning flotsam.

  “They’re not shooting at us,” Lycus said softly. “Why aren’t they shooting?”

  “Listen.” Tycho nodded at the Furies.

  And over the roar of the flames and the growl of the engines and the slosh of the waves, they heard the distant screams of the Turks.

  “We have to get away from this mist.” Tycho pointed the marines to the oars, and they began turning the dories. “Get to the north side of the channel, fast as you can. And don’t worry about making any noise. I don’t think anyone is listening for us anymore.”

  The young men set to rowing and the burning ships began to recede into the darkness as the aether continued to billow out from the palace, swallowing up the city and the waters a bit more with each passing moment.

  It’s happening just like Omar said it would. The old witch has all the aether in a hundred leagues at her command now and she’s going to drive us all insane, all for her precious Koschei.

  Tycho turned his back to the ships and faced the dark shore ahead. And then he turned to his right and gazed out over the Strait to the twinkling lights of Stamballa.

  Salvator never came back. Poor bastard. Radu has never liked either of us, but I always thought he disliked Salvator a little less. I guess that Italian charm didn’t go as far as he thought it would. I wonder if he’s in a cell right now. Or just dead.

  “We’ll go back to the barracks by the bridge,” he said quietly.

  Lycus nodded. “We all need more ammunition, and we can meet up with—”

  “No, we’re not regrouping,” Tycho said. “We’re retreating. We’ll lock ourselves inside and wait out the storm in there. We can go down into the cellars. If we’re lucky, the aether won’t reach us there. We’ll keep our heads down and wait for morning.”

  “And what happens in the morning, sir?”

  Tycho shrugged. “With any luck, the sun will come up and we’ll still be alive to see it.”

  Chapter 13. Battlefield

  Omar Bakhoum raced through the streets of Constantia on the back of a massive Hellan warhorse. The beast snorted with every breath and its hooves thundered on the old stone roads of the city. Just ahead of him rode Prince Vlad and just behind him rode several hundred Vlachian archers, all clad in heavy leathers and worn furs, all bearing wickedly curved short bows and thick-bladed swords.

  Faces filled the windows and doorways of the houses and shops and inns, all staring out at the riders in grim silence. Men stood smoking and drinking by the doors, saluting the soldiers as they passed. The children peered down from their bedrooms, some waving little flags or toys at the archers.

  The company charged through the shadows of the city, plunging down long straight avenues, and clattering ever farther away from the Palace of Constantine. Somewhere behind them, the Tower of Justice was still wrapped in its aether cyclone and hundreds of soldiers and servants were still lying on the ground, the veins in their necks bulging, their eyes straining in their sockets, as they screamed in unending terror.

  Lady Nerissa had sent the Italian to bargain with Radu for Koschei’s
life, knowing that it would do no good, but the attempt had to be made. She had also sent the dwarf to coordinate a hastily designed rescue plan that also had no hope of success, but again the attempt had to be made. As the screams had filled the palace, no suggestion was dismissed and no option left unused.

  But as the hour drew late and the sun dipped below the horizon, Vlad had seized command. A company of Hellans had escorted the Duchess out of the palace toward another fortress at the western end of the city where she might be safe from the aether. As the palace was evacuated, Vlad had prepared to move his own men to other forts and barracks until a messenger stumbled into the war room, his face pale and drenched in cold sweat. The man had staggered forward, clutched the sleeve of the Vlachian prince, and said, “The deathless ones are at the north gate.”

  And now they raced to the north gate, every soldier they could find in or near the palace, most mounted but many left running along behind the company on foot.

  Omar frowned at the dark road ahead.

  They’re not a deathless army. They’re a mob of half-frozen bodies stumbling through the night, half-crazed, trapped between the truth of their deaths and the fantasy that they might still be alive.

  A few bonfires and a bit of patience is all that’s needed to turn them back, to melt the frozen aether in their blood, and to free their poor souls.

  So how is it that they’re defeating armed men and attacking cities?

  They reached the gate and found it in chaos. Hellan and Vlachian soldiers already swarmed across the walls above, firing burning arrows out into the darkness and screaming for more shafts, more pitch, and more flint. On the ground the men dashed back and forth in search of beams and stones to pile up against the gate itself and already a small mountain of debris obscured the armored doors and steel portcullis.

  Vlad dropped from his saddle, drew his bright shining seireiken, and started barking orders at the archers. The Vlachians leapt from their horses and charged up the stone stairs to the top of the wall where they shouldered their way in and among the Hellans and let loose a fresh torrent of arrows.

  Omar watched Vlad waving his gleaming sword about for a minute, and then the Aegyptian slipped into the shadows and headed down the dark road along the wall. It took him several minutes to get away from the chaos of the gate houses, away from the soldiers, but he found a quiet stretch of road and a small iron stair that spiraled up to the top of the wall. The stair was locked behind a rusty steel door, but a sharp blow from his seireiken shattered the lock and Omar jogged up the creaking steps.

  At the top of the wall, he could see for miles over the dark hills of Thrace where the snow lay in thin icy sheets and the half-dead olive arbors shivered like naked skeletons in the winter wind. And all the way down the long dark road from the distant hills to the north gate of Constantia marched the army of the dead.

  The pale bodies, clothed in rags and dirt and ice, strode down the highway on stiff legs clutching broken sticks and jagged rocks in their cold blue hands. And here and there, Omar saw the flash of steel as the starlight played on the swords that the deathless ones had taken from the fallen soldiers at Saray.

  My God. There really are hundreds of them. Thousands of them.

  The Vlachian arrows rained down on the walking corpses, but precious few of the dead actually fell to the ground. Most of them just staggered on, bristling with arrow shafts. A thick knot of the frozen bodies was already pressed up against the gate, and it was growing thicker with each passing moment.

  It’s hard to imagine how these creatures could possibly breach a defended wall like this, but still, better safe than sorry.

  Omar shuffled along the top of the wall, picking through the discarded tools and weapons on the narrow walkway. Under a tarp he found a coil of rope, one frayed and stiff with frost. He pulled it out and tied the end around the railing of the iron stairs, and threw the coil over the wall.

  “There are easier ways to die, old man,” a woman said.

  Omar smiled, but didn’t look up. “For people like us, there are no easy ways to die.”

  Boots clacked softly on the wall to his right. He turned and saw Nadira lean out over the wall to look at the army of the dead. “I could take your head.”

  Omar made a sour face. “There’s no guarantee that would kill me. I know from personal experience that whole limbs can grow back in less than a day. I’d hate to find out how long it takes to grow a new head.”

  Nadira jerked her chin at the pale corpses below. “What are they so worked up about?”

  “Who knows? Their tongues are all frozen,” Omar said. “And frankly I don’t care. I just don’t want to see this lovely city overrun with filthy dead people.”

  “Such a romantic.”

  “You’re one to talk. How does a nun become a soldier, by the way?”

  She peered at him from her perch down the wall. “You stop being a nun in small steps, bit by bit, as your faith wanes and your heart turns to wood. But you become a soldier all at once, in a moment of steel and blood.”

  Omar grunted. “You’ll have to tell me more about that some time.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Yes, well, either way, I need to go down there and make some sense of all this. Care to join me?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I’d rather kill these things here in Hellas than wait until they cross the Strait and start moving south toward Damascus.”

  Omar smiled. “Ah, Damascus, home of the fabled Damascena. You see? You’re a sentimental old fool, too.”

  She didn’t answer.

  With a weary sigh, Omar climbed up onto the wall, grabbed hold of the rough rope, and began climbing down toward the ground. It was farther than it looked, and the shadows made it hard to guess where the ground actually was, so when he finally reached the bottom it was both a relief and a surprise.

  “Took you long enough.”

  He frowned at her as she stepped out of the shadow of the wall. “You just jumped, didn’t you?”

  “Why not? A broken leg, a broken neck? It only hurts for a moment. Come on, old timer, let’s see if you’ve learned how to use that shiny knife of yours yet.” Nadira strode past him, her boots crunching through the icy snow toward the road and the shambling press of cold bodies full of arrows.

  Omar followed in no particular hurry. He took the moment to look at her more closely. Nothing about her face had changed except the dirt, and the short hair. He leaned his head to one side.

  Funny that we can cut our hair without it instantly growing back to the same length. Perhaps it’s because hair isn’t truly alive anymore.

  She wore ancient Damascus armor, pitted and dented and missing strips and chunks of steel here and there. Beneath it was a much newer Eranian uniform, blue and white, though thoroughly stained with old blood and new filth. She drew her saber and let the slender curving blade rest on her shoulder as she stomped over the broken ground and through the dead grasses toward the road. Her blade was common steel, but expertly forged by the masters in Damascus and stamped with the telltale veins and marbling and etching that proclaimed the excellence of the weapon.

  My seireiken could reduce it to melted slag simply by touching it. All of that skill, all of that work, all of that beauty reduced to hideous waste without any effort at all.

  The story of my life.

  He followed her and his attention drifted away from the woman’s armored backside to the thousands of corpses groaning and gasping as they shuffled down the road toward the gate. The arrows still flew fast and thick, pelting the half-frozen bodies and the road, thumping with a murderous rhythm.

  This is the strangest battlefield I have ever seen. No shouting, no waving weapons, no flags or standards, no trumpets, no leaders. Just a mob of peasants who are already dead but can’t quite slip free of their frozen flesh.

  Omar wrapped his fingers around the grip of his seireiken. The woven shark sk
in of the handle was cold and smooth, worn by centuries of use. Instantly, as he touched his weapon, a sea of faces appeared around him floating in the darkness, the faces of the dead, the faces of the souls who rested inside the blade of the seireiken.

  It took some small effort of will to keep the thousands of ghosts at arm’s length. They were all so hungry for attention, so eager to be spoken to, to have their knowledge valued once again as it had been in life. But Omar had spoken with them all, and while many still had some wisdom to offer, many of them were simply too old and too primitive to be of much use anymore.

  The dim shade of Ito Daisuke appeared at Omar’s side, walking silently over the icy snow. “More demons?” the samurai asked.

  “Corpses,” Omar answered quietly so that Nadira would not hear him talking to himself. “Dead bodies with souls still clinging to them, driving them across the land.”

  “Why here?” Daisuke glanced up at the dark walls of Constantia. “Why would the dead all want to come here?”

  “I don’t know. Most of them are just farmers and laborers from Thrace and Vlachia and Raska, I suppose. There’s no reason for them to all come south. Most of them would never have come here in life. And the warmer air during the day would only threaten to melt the aether in their blood and let their souls slip free.”

  “Maybe that’s it then. They seek the warmth that will set them free.”

  “Maybe.” Omar frowned. “But if they only wanted warmth, they could find that at any simple farmer’s hearth. There’s no need to march across the country. And why attack people? Why slaughter soldiers?”

  “I cannot say. The demons of Nippon may be foul and hideous, but they are often of noble blood with noble goals. I haven’t seen such mindless creatures as these before.” Daisuke sighed. “The moon has risen. So beautiful, so serene. A white blade in the sea of stars. Silent. Simple. Perfect.”

  Omar nodded. “I’m going to need your help here in a moment. Can you slaughter an army for me?”

  “Of course,” the dead warrior said. “There may be no honor in the combat itself, but there is honor in defending a beautiful city and the thousands of innocents who dwell there.”