Witchy Kingdom

by D. J. Butler

  The barrage had another silent observer: the crucified Parlett who held the shade of Oliver Cromwell stalked along behind the firing guns, observing keenly. Where the child-Lazar trod, the gun crews shrank away, but Sayle rode up and down the line with his riding crop in hand, and didn’t hesitate to crack it as encouragement for his gunners.

  Behind Oliver Cromwell shuffled Dadgayadoh. Whatever the poor Haudenosaunee had become didn’t have the wit of a Lazar, or of Cromwell, if Cromwell were something different. Like the other Imperial dead, like the Cahokian beastkind killed during their herald-launching sortie, Dadgayadoh was a moaning, shuffling thing, He was strong, he was sleepless, and he was slowly falling apart.

  Something is wrong here.

  Hooke appeared at Schmidt’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” Schmidt said. “I favor forcing the issue quickly over a siege. A siege wastes life and everyone’s time. If Cahokia will just surrender, we can quickly get back to business as usual.”

  But it was true: she didn’t want Sayle to get the credit. She’d rather have it herself.

  Is that what thou wantest, Director? Business as usual?

  “Madam Director, if you want the technical right of it. Yes. War is a waste. Trade is life. I want to get this little war over with, and get back to living.”

  Hooke seemed not to be listening. Instead, he stared at Cahokia, through the sheet of black flame he himself had erected. Something is happening in there.

  “I’d be disappointed to learn nothing was happening. Killing all the Cahokians can’t be the goal.”

  Can it not? Hooke grinned.

  A shadow suddenly appeared high over the Twelve Apostles, moving fast.

  “Watch out—” Schmidt tried to warn the gun crew of the Thomas, but something glinting and metallic bowled out of the sky and struck the crew. They scattered in all directions.

  It’s an attack! Hooke strode toward the Thomas.

  The metallic projectile unfolded and stood, revealing itself as a warrior in plate armor. Hooke picked up his pace, but the warrior ignored him. Instead, he calmly walked to the butt of the Thomas, held something against the gun, and then with a mallet at his belt, hammered the object into the gun.

  Into the vent. The object, Schmidt realized, was a handspike.

  She had little experience with big guns herself, but enough to know that a handspike pounded in through the cannon’s vent would put the gun out of commission, at least temporarily.

  The crew recovering, they charged the man in plate. He calmly pulled a sword and dispatched two of them. When the others fell back, he charged toward the next nearest gun.

  “The Apostles!” Schmidt fired her pistol into the air, but it was indistinguishable against the firing of the cannons. “The big guns are under attack!”

  The man in plate mail ignored the crew of the second gun entirely, and simply ran forward, slamming his handspike into the gun’s vent, and then hammering it home.

  General Sayle, several guns down the line, saw the commotion and rode toward Schmidt, cracking his whip. “Stop that man!”

  Schmidt reloaded her pistol.

  The interruption of the guns meant that less din was being made than before, rather than more. Some of the traders were beginning to notice. More fires were being lit.

  Another armored figure jumped up from the shadows. Was it a woman? She, or he, wore scale mail, and vaulted from the top of a barrel of powder right into the general. She dragged the general and his mount over, dropping them to the ground.

  Startled, the gun crews scattered, and the man in plate mail escaped and ran on to the next gun.

  Kill him! Hooke screamed.

  The general’s horse rose screaming in protest onto all fours again, but now its rider was the woman in scale mail. “Podebradas!” she screamed, galloping directly at Robert Hooke.

  Hooke raised his hand defensively and the woman slashed, shattering the long nails of the Sorcerer’s hand. Hooke stumbled aside and the woman—an Unborn Daughter of Podebradas, apparently—swept past the gun crew, forcing them to scatter.

  The man in plate mail spiked a third gun.

  Sayle lay still. Was he dead?

  Schmidt rushed toward him, loaded pistol ready.

  The mounted woman rode back at Hooke again. Over the horse’s protests, she forced the animal to trample the Sorcerer several times.

  Cries of dismay from near the other Apostles suggested that they, too, were under attack.

  Schmidt reached Sayle. The man was breathing, but unconscious, and bleeding from a deep gash in his forehead. She stuck her pistol in her belt, knelt, and shoveled the general onto her shoulders to carry him away.

  She stood. The ground was wet and cold, but she forced herself to take a single step. Then a second.

  She fixed her eye on her destination, her own tent. There were blankets and brandy there, and she could have a surgeon sent.

  She heard a fierce neigh before she saw anything, and suddenly Sayle’s horse was looming over her, the rider slashing at her with a long scimitar. Schmidt felt steel bite into her shoulder—had Sayle also been cut again? She sank to one knee and fumbled, trying to get her gun back out.

  The horse reared and kicked forward with its hooves. Schmidt fell back, rolling with Sayle in cold mud.

  Suddenly men stood over her with torches and guns. The horse neighed another objection, several shots were fired, and then the horse galloped away.

  Two men stooped to pick her up. One was Captain Mohuntubby. The other was her trader, Schäfer.

  “Mohuntubby,” she gasped. “The Parletts.”

  “All my men are still at the Parletts’ tent,” Mohuntubby said. “And once you’re out of the fighting, I’ll go back there again, myself.”

  “I can walk,” she said. “Sayle needs help.”

  Mohuntubby handed his rifle to Schäfer and easily slung the wounded general onto his back. As Schäfer dragged her away, Schmidt watched the rest of the raid play out.

  The man in plate armor died when three gunners from a crew ambushed him, one man holding him at bay with the ramrod while the other two crept up behind and shot him with carbines.

  Another armored raider, a man, after spiking one of the Apostles, turned and made a run back toward the Treewall. He was sprinting past the Imperial trench when arms reached from the ditch and dragged him into it. Schmidt saw cadaverous, bloated beastkind, animated corpses like Dadgayadoh, but with the jaws of wolves and the tails of scorpions, tear the man’s armor from his body and rend his flesh.

  A third raider—she only saw four in total, which was a pitifully small force, given what they accomplished—was tackled by two gun crews together and dragged toward the fire. They were intercepted by Robert Hooke. The Sorcerer stood awkwardly, shoulders hunched, one arm at his side, one leg dragging. But he stood.

  Whatever the Sorcerer said to them made the gun crews shrink in fear. The raider—a woman—stared calmly at Hooke, and then spat in his face.

  He slashed a knife through her throat, and then he and the Parlett boy and Dadgayadoh fell on her together. Her legs kicked and trembled for a full minute before they finally stopped.

  The fourth raider was the woman with Sayle’s horse. She was the last to spike a gun, leaping to the earth just long enough to pound in a spike, and then driving away the objecting crew with her scimitar before leaping onto the horse again.

  She raced at the Sorcerer and the Necromancer again. Dadgayadoh rose to defend them, and for his troubles the poor former trader lost his head to a ferocious sweep of the scimitar, powered by the muscles of General Sayle’s horse.

  Then the raider galloped away. She rode through the Imperials’ camp rather than toward the besieged city, but she was quickly beyond the center of the commotion and crashing through quiet parts of camp where no one challenged her.

  Angling toward the river like that, would she turn and reenter Cahokia? Perhaps, but Notwithstanding Schmidt didn’t see it. Mohuntubby and Sch
äfer brought her into her tent, and Schäfer stayed with her while Captain Mohuntubby left to check on his command and the two living Parletts.

  Schmidt discovered that she had a high-pitched ringing in her ears. She took several swallows of brandy, which lessened the noise only the slightest amount. She could hear the ringing because the guns had fallen silent.

  “The Twelve Apostles?” she croaked.

  Schäfer shook his head. “As far as I know, they got them all.”

  * * *

  Bill watched through a spyglass as Yedera and three other Podebradans sprang down from the Treewall into the open space before the Empire’s cannons. Gramarye was obviously at work. Maltres Korinn whispered into his ear that they had been rendered invisible to the enemy with the same magic, but that Cahokia’s wizards expected their spell to fall when the Podebradans crossed the black-fire curtain.

  Which is why the Podebradans had leaped across that curtain with great final synchronized jumps that carried them twenty feet into the air and threw them sixty feet forward. The black fire would make the raiders reappear, but it wouldn’t pluck them out of the air or claw them down.

  Each of the four carried six spikes. Bill’s best hope was that they might spike half the guns, and give his people an easier day or two. The Podebradans exceeded his expectations by far, silencing every one of the Twelve Apostles.

  The cost was high, though. Bill watched them fall, one by one.

  Except Yedera, who ended up on an officer’s horse. After a circuitous loop around to the north, half an hour after the raid ended, she was being hauled up the Treewall with a rope.

  Bill was at the top to greet her, along with Alzbieta Torias.

  Yedera’s face was shockingly calm as she came over the wall. The priestess pulled her bodyguard to safety and embraced her.

  “The others gave their lives.” Yedera frowned, slightly.

  “We saw,” Bill said. “I saw. Your courage was extraordinary.”

  Yedera shook his head. “I do not matter. I fulfilled my oath. But the Daughters who died must be buried.”

  “Maltres Korinn will perform a ceremony,” Alzbieta said. “He insists it should be him. If we do it soon, we can perform a memorial without the accompaniment of cannon music.”

  “Just before dawn,” Yedera said. “And Sherem and the other followers of St. Jock?”

  It was Bill’s turn to frown. “Who is St. Jock? Sherem was a follower of St. Reginald Pole.”

  “He was,” Yedera agreed. “But he, and others, chose to give their lives tonight. Sherem lost his ability to cast spells when he resisted Queen Sarah. Tonight, he gave his life to fuel the spells that sent us over the enemy line and silenced their cannons.”

  Bill rocked back onto his heels, suddenly short of breath.

  Alzbieta broke into tears.

  “You bear no blame, Holiness,” Yedera said.

  “She’s right,” Bill added.

  Alzbieta said nothing.

  Scant hours later, Bill sat in a wooden chair on a low wooden stand beside Yedera, Alzbieta, Maltres, Cathy, Yedera, and Gazelem. Following his vindication—or rather, following the discovery that the city’s traitor was Voldrich—the Zoman prince had pressed to be included in Sarah’s inner ring.

  There remained one empty seat with them on the stand. The vacant space before them, in which a temporary wooden marker had been raised—a signboard with a cannon painted on it, looking for all the world as if it had been stolen from an inn—had no special significance. The field had not previously been a burial ground.

  That was its attraction.

  A large crowd had gathered. When did these people sleep?

  The bodies of Sherem and his fellow Jockites, or Jockians—both terrible names, but no one had yet had time to formulate a good one—were dressed in white linen and laid in graves. Each also wore a gold and green apron.

  A line of men in similar garb stood at the edge of the field, and a second line at a right angle to the first.

  This was not the goddess’s method of burial; nor was it what Zadok Tarami would have wanted.

  It was the compromise.

  Maltres stepped to the edge of the platform.

  He left his staff of office behind. In his hands he held a scroll.

  As if this were his cue, the Metropolitan of Cahokia shuffled forward from the crowd. His step was slow and his shoulders bowed, but he engaged in none of the theatrics Bill had seen from the man previously: ashes on the face, or crawling on hands and knees.

  He looked truly grief-stricken.

  Another man tried to follow Zadok from the crowd, but he was held back, Bill couldn’t see by whom. He stood at the edge of the burial ground, standing on tiptoe and staring at the proceedings.

  Maltres held his tongue while the Metropolitan walked around the graves and joined the Vizier on the stand. Despite his short height and sleight frame, Zadok Tarami settled into the last empty seat with the creaking of a heavy man.

  Then Maltres spoke.

  “Brethren and friends. It has ever been the custom of the Ohio Rite, from the days when Onandagos himself presided as Grand Riverine Master, at the request of a departed Brother or his family, to assemble and, with the solemn formalities of the Craft, to offer up before the world a final tribute.”

  A murmur of uncertain agreement rippled through the crowd.

  He continued. “Today, we bury dead whose bodies we have, and we honor dead who fell on the field and whose bodies we may never see. In life, not all of these dead were brothers. Pursuant to the rules of the Rite and a duly-ordered vote, every one of them has been made a brother in death. And we will remember them all accordingly.”

  More of the crowd was nodding. They couldn’t all be Freemasons, could they? But they could approve of Maltres’s tone of reconciliation and inclusion.

  “Our brothers have reached the terminus of their earthly suffering. The end came for our brothers not by illness or age, but as the sacrifices demanded by war with a merciless enemy. Our brothers have entered the forgotten lands ahead of us, and they have done it for our sake. The dust has returned to the earth as it was, and the spirit has returned whence it came.”

  Bill had no idea whether Maltres was following a specific liturgy, but he noticed that the words chosen didn’t antagonize either Alzbieta Torias and her priestesses or the follows of Zadok Tarami.

  Tarami looked thoughtful and sad.

  The two connected lines of men in Masonic garb broke into singing. It was a dirge consisting of two modal threads stitched at strange intervals to each other, with the occasional third note thrown in to create a chord.

  Either it was wordless, or Bill couldn’t hear the words.

  Maltres opened the scroll in his hands and began to read. “Brother Sherem Tauridas, Hierophant Minor of the Humble Order of St. Reginald Pole, a Master Mason. Member of the Royal Onandagos Lodge, number one. Entered into rest today, the nineteenth of March, in the Year of our Lord eighteen-sixteen, age thirty-eight years, six months, and two days.”

  Bill had never known Sherem’s family name, and now he felt embarrassed by the fact.

  Tears streamed down Zadok Tarami’s cheeks.

  Maltres kept reading. “Sister Iyara Zulodem, a Master Mason.” A gasp burst from the crowd, and Bill himself sucked cold early morning air through his teeth. Masons were men. Always, as far as Bill knew, even in the Ohio. The crowd stared at Maltres, and some of the men in the line of singers shifted from foot to foot nervously. “Master Mason,” Maltres repeated firmly. “Member of the Royal Onandagos Lodge, number one. Entered into rest today, the nineteenth of March, in the Year of our Lord eighteen-sixteen, age forty-five years and fourteen days.”

  He continued on with the names. Maltres was so hell-bent on recognizing and including everyone that he was flouting Masonic tradition to do it. He seemed to be a high-ranking member of the Royal Onandagos Lodge; would it be enough to protect him?

  Or will there be consequences?

&n
bsp; Bill almost laughed at himself. He was besieged in a city of wooden walls by an army that grew larger every day, with food supplies running out, and he was worried about whether Maltres Korinn might offend some masons.

  No doubt Korinn had made a similar calculus.

  Maltres Korinn had reached the end of the list of names. “Almighty Heaven!” He cried. “Into Your hands we commend the souls of our beloved Sisters and Brothers.”

  By the artifice of clever timing, and perhaps with a certain amount of luck, the sun chose that exact moment to crack its orange face over the horizon. In minutes, it would disappear again behind the sheet of clouds overhead, but for a brief space, it seemed to be smiling on the proceedings of Maltres Korinn.

  “Heaven, in its infinite wisdom, removed our Sisters and Brothers from the cares and troubles of this earthly life. Let we who survive be yet more strongly cemented by the ties of love, to one another, to our Sisters and Brothers in the forgotten lands, and to our Sisters and Brothers who have not yet come to us from eternal Eden.”

  Zadok Tarami looked as if he might vomit. He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.

  “Let us not forget,” Maltres said, “that we, too, are mortal; and that our spirits, too, must return to the great land from which they came. ‘Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.’

  “Seeing then, my sisters and brothers, that mortal life is so uncertain, and Heaven knows that our lives in particular lie within the mailed fist of a hostile oppressor, let us no longer postpone the all-important concern of preparing for that life which is forever. Let us embrace this moment, because it is the only moment we have, and because it is every moment. These trials will pass, but in the Eden we will make for ourselves, there is comfort. Acting well, we shall be prepared to enter into our definitive judgment, in which all the secrets of our hearts shall be known; and on the great day of reckoning we shall be ready to give a good account of our stewardship while here on earth.”