The Ouroboros Cycle, Book Three: A Long-Awaited Treachery

by G. D. Falksen

Luka saw the attack even before Boris had lined up his shot. He dove forward to intercept, praying he would be in time, but knowing that he was too slow, too far away. For a moment, all he could see was Zawditu’s proud and noble countenance, the beautiful face that Luka had adored from afar as a youth of the valley.

  He did not see Movses—the Armenian boy from Ararat that had been recruited into the Order only ten years before—racing to intercept Boris from the opposite direction. A moment later, Boris pulled the trigger just as Movses threw himself in front of Zawditu. The cloud of buckshot hit Movses in the chest and head, and the boy fell, dead or soon to be.

  “No!” Luka shouted. “No!”

  He tried to leap upon Boris, bringing his sword down at the Muscovite’s head, but Boris easily deflected so clumsy a blow. Two of his soldiers rushed to their commander’s aid and drove Luka away with frantic thrusts and stabs that he was obliged to deflect and evade.

  Saved from Luka’s onslaught, Boris fired his shotgun once more, this time into the back of a hapless guardsman, and then drew his sword.

  “I am sorry for the loss,” he said to Zawditu. “He was a good boy.”

  Zawditu kept her sword pointed at Boris and made a few thrusts, testing him.

  “He was,” she agreed. “And you killed him.”

  Boris swung at Zawditu from the side and their swords clashed.

  “I was aiming for you,” he said.

  “I had noticed that,” Zawditu replied.

  “Surrender and convert,” Boris said, trying another cut from above. “No one else needs to die.”

  “I am quite pleased by my faith, thank you,” said Zawditu, deflecting again and lunging at Boris.

  Nearby, Luka managed to force one of his opponents away. Focusing on the other, he kicked the man’s leg out from under him. As the soldier fell, Luka raised his sword and thrust it point down into his throat where it was exposed at the top of his gorget.

  He struggled to remove the sword, but the dead soldier’s body slumped to the ground, almost pulling him along with it. His remaining opponent took advantage of the opening and came at him, a sword in one hand, an axe in the other. Luka sidestepped the first swing and was about to drop his sword and try his luck bare-handed when Seteney pushed her way in between them and parried the next attack.

  “Pistol!” Seteney shouted, drawing a revolver from a holster beneath her chokha and passing it blindly to Luka.

  Luka almost swore at having forgotten to bring his own backup weapon, but he was grateful for Seteney’s foresight.

  “Clever girl,” he said, taking the revolver.

  “Learned from the best, Sir,” Seteney answered, driving her opponent back and freeing Luka to move on to another target.

  A glance toward the table told Luka that the Council’s earlier hesitation at violence was ebbing. The Council members were now on their feet, struggling with one another, striking with the clumsy blows of untrained combatants that still managed, due to their inhuman prowess, to shatter bones and rend flesh. And while Caroline and Iese did not show the same level of martial skill as Margaret and Thoros, they were still clearly advantaged over the five loyalists who remained standing.

  “Luka!” Zawditu shouted. “Get the Council to safety!”

  “Yes, Strategos!” Luka replied, without really knowing how he was going to do so.

  Another of Boris’s soldiers came at him, and Luka shot her through the forehead. Grabbing her sword as she fell, he fought through the melee to the table and the Council. He saw Iese of Kartli holding down Reza of Samarkand by the throat, punching him soundly in the chest, clearly intending to carry on until Reza’s ribs finally shattered.

  Considering such behavior very bad form, Luka shot Iese five times in the face. For good measure, he struck Iese in the head with the empty revolver and shoved his limp body to the floor. Grabbing Reza by the arm, he helped the elder to stand.

  “My Lord, can you run?” Luka asked.

  Reza wheezed from the chest trauma, but he replied “yes” with a firm voice.

  “Then run,” Luka told him.

  As Luka turned to aid the next Council member—Lakshmi of Bengal—a blow struck him on the side of the head, sending him reeling to the floor. It felt like he had been kicked by a horse, an unpleasant experience he hoped never to repeat. Looking up, he saw Thoros standing over him. Thoros held the limp body of Rusudan of Tbilisi in one hand; his other hand flexed in and out of the fist that had just hit Luka.

  Luka grabbed for his sword, but Thoros simply took a step forward and pinned the blade with his foot. Smiling at Luka, he threw Rusudan’s body to the side, where it hit the wall and slid onto the ground next to Xasan, who was struggling violently with Caroline.

  “You should have converted,” Thoros said, reaching for Luka.

  A few feet away, Zawditu had acquired two more soldiers, who had rudely imposed themselves upon her duel with Boris. As she deflected a series of swings from all directions, she had occasion to look back and saw Luka. Luka tried to look impressive for her, but since he lay sprawled on the floor, it likely did not work.

  Zawditu gave him an irritated look, as if to say “Why aren’t you doing what I told you to do?”

  She stepped backward, away from another set of uncoordinated strikes, and spun in place. She lunged, extending her leg and arm to their fullest reach, and drove the blade of her sword through the side of Thoros’s throat, severing the artery; a moment later, she spun back, just in time to parry another set of blows and stab one of her assailants in the unarmored place just under his arm. Her sword, now tipped with Thoros’s Living blood, caused her target’s wound to boil with the toxin.

  Thoros grabbed at his throat as more blood spurted out. The Living were far more resilient than mortals, but their bodies were still human in structure, and those unused to severe physical trauma commonly reacted to it just as a mortal would. Thoros collapsed to his knees and clutched at his throat in an effort to stanch the flow of blood long enough for his flesh to heal.

  Luka started to get up, but he was still dizzy from the blow and he slipped in Iese’s blood—well someone’s blood—and fell again. He was thankful that the flesh of his body had not been cut in the fighting, or the coating of blood would have proved painful and dangerous. As it was, the abrasion on his temple where Thoros had punched him stung from what little exposure it had suffered.

  He looked up in time to see Zawditu dart back toward him a second time and slice Thoros’s throat cleanly open, removing any real hope of his taking further part in the fight.

  “Get up,” Zawditu ordered, grabbing Luka by the arm and pulling him to his feet.

  “Yes, Strategos,” Luka answered, managing to stand with Zawditu’s aid. He almost slipped again when she released him and returned to her fight with Boris.

  “Now get the Council members away from here!”

  Luka nodded, shook his head to clear it, and grabbed his sword.

  “Seteney!” he shouted, looking around for her. Spotting her, he motioned toward Rusudan, Lakshmi, and Xasan. “Get them away from here! If they can’t walk, carry them!”

  Sliding over the table, he reached the body of Philippa, who lay where she had fallen, alive but immobile. The blood from Thoros and Iese pooled about her and hissed where it mixed with her own, but none of it seemed to have entered her wound. Luka pulled the sword out of her so that her heart might begin to heal and heaved her over his shoulder. He turned toward the door and saw Margaret standing before him, her face inches from his. Luka almost cried out at the sudden sight of her and he drew up his sword.

  Margaret grabbed the weapon by the blade and pulled it from Luka’s hand.

  “You should run,” she said.

  Luka turned as Margaret circled him, but she did not attack. Instead, she walked to Shashava’s chair and gracefully sat, folding her hands be
fore her.

  “Boris!” Margaret called. “Let them go.”

  Boris looked up, surprised, and slowly backed away from Zawditu. He looked around at the carnage surrounding him, and for the first time since the battle had begun, Luka did as well. Of the soldiers that Boris had brought with him, only two remained, as did one of the guardsmen. The fighting had been a slaughter, and Margaret’s forces had not escaped it either. Across the room, Xasan limped away from Caroline, aided by Seteney and Lakshmi, while Marie of Toulouse dragged the body of Rusudan toward the door. Caroline—almost as bruised and bloody as her victims—did not have the vigor to follow.

  “Let them go,” Margaret repeated, smiling. She had still triumphed, and she knew it.

  “We have more soldiers throughout the castle!” Boris protested.

  “Yes,” Margaret agreed, “and no way to call them. They shall do as they have been instructed, I have no doubt.” She looked at Zawditu and her face grew cruel. “This is a reprieve, Strategos, nothing more. Time enough for you to reconsider your choice of allegiance.”

  Zawditu looked at the dead bodies of her troops—loyalist and traitor alike—and her mouth twisted into a snarl.

  “Conspiracy, treason, and usurpation,” she said. “And now, murder. Mark me, Margaret of the Hebrides, I will water the Caucasus with your ashes when this is done.”

  Margaret waved at her dismissively and said, “Go now, before I reconsider my generosity. It pleases me to know that you can no longer trust your soldiers.”

  “Some of them, no,” Zawditu agreed, glancing at Boris. Then she looked at Luka. “Others, yes.”

  “Mmm,” Margaret hummed, as she ran her blood-soaked fingers through her hair. “This will be an enjoyable game, I think. Just the diversion I require to pass the time.” She looked away from Zawditu, evidently done with the loyalists. Snapping her fingers, she addressed her fellow conspirators, “Caroline, come here. There were only the three of them. You must try harder next time. And as for you, Thoros, do get up. It is so unseemly lying about on the floor.”

  She looked back at Luka and Zawditu and smiled wickedly.

  “You have five minutes. You should be running.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  •

  Deep in the archives, Ekaterine and her fellows had no indication of the events transpiring above them. As chaos began to spread throughout the castle, the number of visitors to both the archives and the library above it slowed and finally stopped, but the librarians and the archivists carried on with their work in ignorance, merely pleased that they were no longer being bothered by scholars convinced that the lost manuscript they were seeking was of greater importance than all the others for which the archivists were searching.

  But presently it occurred to Ekaterine to wonder at how quiet things had become. “I haven’t seen any of the librarians in the past hour,” she remarked to Alda, the archivist shelving texts alongside her. “Have you?”

  “No,” the girl replied, smiling at the realization. “It’s marvelous.” She spoke as if agreeing with Ekaterine.

  “That’s not quite what I meant,” Ekaterine said. She frowned for a moment, torn between being pleased at the break in work and finding it intensely boring. “Would you finish shelving these books for me?” she asked Alda. “I’m just going to go upstairs and see if everyone has vanished into the woodwork suddenly.”

  “Brother Petre will be furious if he finds out,” Alda cautioned her, looking uneasy at the idea of such behavior. “The librarians come to us, not the other way.”

  Ekaterine leaned out into the nearby corridor of shelves and looked to where Petre—an aging Shashavani of the Shadow with a thick beard and spectacles—sat at a work table, retouching the lettering in one of the many ancient tomes in his charge. It was tedious work, but the old archivist seemed to find great satisfaction in it.

  “Brother Petre will not notice that I am gone,” Ekaterine said. “I’m merely going for a breath of air.”

  “You’re going to read,” Alda replied. “We don’t read books here: we preserve them.”

  Ekaterine grinned. “Which is why I am going upstairs to do it.”

  Before Alda could protest further, Ekaterine hurried up the stairs that led into the library above them. But as she reached the main floor, Ekaterine saw that something was amiss. The chamber should have been filled with scholars engrossed in reading and with librarians busy keeping the texts in order, but instead it was eerily still.

  But it was not silent. Instead of the dreaded “cacophony of books” that Varanus so hated, Ekaterine heard the sounds of low voices speaking and heavy boots tramping up and down the wooden walkways that circled and crisscrossed the library’s upper levels. An instinct of caution took her, and Ekaterine ducked behind the nearest shelf to conceal herself before she crept forward to investigate.

  She saw that the library’s occupants had all been herded together into a clump at the center of the room, as far from any hiding places or cover as could be managed. Surrounding them were about two-dozen armed men and women, clad in plated mail and armed with swords and muskets. Most were Shashavani of the Shadow, as near as Ekaterine could tell—members of the Army, no doubt—but they included the Living among their number as well.

  What was happening, Ekaterine wondered. These were Shashavani! The Order’s own soldiers, each one sworn to protect their brethren and to uphold the Law of Shashava! But here they were, threatening their friends and comrades and holding them at gunpoint.

  As Ekaterine watched, she saw a dozen more scholars marched down from the walkways by five more soldiers led by Jan the Hollander, formerly an adventurer of the Dutch East India Company and a man that Ekaterine had always counted as a friend. The sight of him shoving the captured scholars ahead of him like they were only so many cattle made Ekaterine’s stomach turn.

  As these last prisoners were made to join their fellows, Jan approached the leader of the soldiers, a woman with short-cut chestnut hair who held a Swiss halberd that rested against her shoulder. It took Ekaterine a few moments to place the woman, but she almost gasped at the realization that it was Lady Jane Fairfax, exiled Royalist, now Master-At-Arms for the Shashavani Order.

  Jan bowed to Fairfax and the woman replied with a nod.

  “Are these the last of them?”

  “Yes, Lady Fairfax,” Jan replied. “We have scoured the library, into each and every corner. These are the last.”

  “Good. And the upper levels?”

  “Secured,” Jan said, “and the doors all barred. There shall be neither entry nor escape except by this floor.”

  Fairfax nodded her approval. “Good.” She turned to the crowd of prisoners and asked, “Are there those among you who can tell me to whom you owe allegiance? Come forward and be recognized.”

  There was a pause as most of the prisoners looked at one another in confusion, but presently almost a quarter of their number pushed past the rest and stood before Fairfax. Ekaterine narrowed her eyes as she watched. The question had meant nothing to her, but it had clearly been not only significant but also anticipated by those few who understood it.

  “We serve the Winter King,” came the reply, spoken almost in unison.

  Fairfax studied the group for a moment before she nodded.

  “Arm them,” she said to Jan.

  The remaining prisoners stared in shock and murmured to one another as the dozen or so turncoats accepted weapons from the soldiers and joined their ranks. Finally, one of the senior librarians, Demir of Ankara, pushed his way forward and approached Fairfax, his face contorted in anger. The two soldiers flanking Fairfax crossed their swords to bar Demir’s way, but Fairfax raised a hand to call them off.

  “What is the meaning of this...this outrage?” Demir shouted. “How dare you treat us in such a way! You will be punished for this!”

  In the face of Demi
r’s anger, Fairfax merely smiled and placed a friendly hand on his shoulder. At her touch, Demir drew away, but this subtle acknowledgement of Fairfax’s power seemed to take some of the fire out of him.

  “Brother Demir, be at peace,” Fairfax said. “All will be explained soon. There is a change taking place in the House of Shashava, and it is for the better, I assure you.”

  “What change?” Demir demanded. “Why have you taken us captive in our own home? You do not have the authority—”

  “I bear the authority of our Queen,” Fairfax answered, interrupting Demir. “Our new Eristavi.”

  “New?”

  Rather than speak to Demir directly, Fairfax held out her hand to the prisoners and addressed all of them:

  “Brothers and sisters, Shashava is gone. Sophio is gone. We have been abandoned in an unkind world to the whims of politicians and their incompetent Council. It is time now not for a Vicar waiting for a homecoming that will never take place, but for a Prince to rule us with wisdom and with strength. For too long we have cowered in the shadows like monks, scribbling upon parchment by candlelight. Let us walk into the light and be known as kings.”

  “Blasphemy!” shouted Demir. “Heresy! You speak in violation of all of Shashava’s laws!”

  This cry was taken up by many among the prisoners, albeit only in murmurs and whispers. They were afraid, and unlike Demir, their anger had not overcome that fear.

  “Heresy?” Fairfax asked, sounding amused. “Shashava is gone. The Law of Shashava no longer has meaning. Why enforce a flawed doctrine?”

  “Do not speak so about the Law of Shashava!” Demir snapped. “The Law of Shashava is Wisdom and—”

  Demir took a step toward Fairfax again, seething with anger. This time Fairfax halted him with the flat side of her halberd, which she pressed against his shoulder. She shook her head at him.

  “You are trying my patience, Brother Demir,” she said. “Pray be silent.”

  Demir looked at the halberd and scoffed.

  “I am Living,” he said. “You still walk in the Shadow. You cannot threaten me.” He looked at the other prisoners. “We outnumber you four to one, Apostate. And we count more Living among our number.” He turned back to Fairfax and snarled at her. “Release us or you will die.”