Winter War Awakening (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 3)

by Rosalyn Eves

  Bahadır’s grip tightened. “Mátyás, look at me.”

  I tried to, but I had trouble focusing on his face. His dark eyes seemed to swim. I kept marching, my legs moving somehow independent of my body.

  “You’re going into shock,” he said. “You need to lie down.”

  At that I laughed—a pure, silvered bubble of delight. It seemed so perfectly ridiculous. Of course I should lie down in the middle of a retreat. Why not ask for a down pillow and a glass of wine while I was at it?

  I tried to object, but the words must have faded somewhere between my tongue and the air, because Bahadır did not appear to understand. Instead, he guided me back toward the base of the slope, where he settled me in the shade beneath an oak tree. He pulled out a canteen and wetted the handkerchief he carried, dabbing it across my face.

  Initially, the coolness was welcoming: but moments later I was shivering, my entire body convulsing.

  Bahadır eased me out of the shadows into the weak sunlight, then shrugged out of his own coat and draped it across me.

  “You should go,” I said, trying to gesture at the retreating soldiers. Bahadır ignored me. “I’ll be fi—” I broke off, my attention caught by a wavering spot perhaps a hundred feet from us, like a heat haze somehow concentrated in a single location. The shimmer grew denser and darkened, and then a narrow hole opened above the grass.

  A Lucifera-made portal.

  Austrian soldiers poured through the opening in strict precision, heading toward our unwitting soldiers. A lumbering mechanized flying creature the size of a small boat followed them out of the glimmering slit, all jagged edges—some misbegotten cross between a wolf and a raven, rendered in metal. Our soldiers would never cross the river before the Austrians cut them off. Hadúr was too far away to warn; any outcry would only draw attention to our suddenly vulnerable position. Bahadır dragged me back behind the tree, and I tried to swallow air but only gagged at the sudden thickness in my throat.

  Bahadır clapped his hand across my mouth. “Hush.”

  I couldn’t breathe. I clawed at his hand with my good fingers, and he released me at once. I had to draw Hadúr’s attention. I thought first of my crows: they were uncommonly smart, with an uncanny ability to recognize and remember human faces. I’d known a woman near Eszterháza who had found herself constantly bombarded by crows when she dared pass by the local church for having once had the temerity to throw a rock at a roosting crow.

  Still, I hesitated to call them. I remembered the carpeting of bees and wasps that had met my call for aid against Vasilisa. I did not want to add crow carcasses to those already strewn across the field.

  A murder of crows.

  Heh. (Sometimes my amusement was wholly inappropriate to time and place.)

  An idea sparked, and I reached out to the vultures already circling the field. Obedient to my nudge, a handful swooped low over the field, drawing tightening circles around Hadúr until he swung around, irritated, to swat them away…and saw the army closing on his soldiers.

  Hadúr sprang over the heads of his troops, his sword sweeping through the air before he landed with a thunderous boom. The soldiers around him tumbled in widening ripples, like grain mowed down by a scythe. I’d never truly seen Hadúr fight. He was in his element, light glinting off his copper armor like some unholy blood-infused halo. But there was no magic to his movements, only a grace and strength born of millennia of training: an exquisite, violent dance.

  The Austrians stopped marching and turned the force of their military on Hadúr’s single figure, a copper flame in the field. The mechanical monster that had followed the soldiers out of the portal fired a steady volley of shots at Hadúr. The thing’s aim was off, but it was only a matter of time before it got lucky or whoever had control of the mech adjusted it.

  I caught one of the circling vultures again, urging it to come near enough for me to shift it. I thought of my disastrous shifting of the owls and opted for a griffin this time. With an odd, muffled squawk, the bird ballooned outward, listing wildly as it struggled to adjust to its new form. I sent the griffin toward the mech, drawing its fire away from Hadúr.

  The vulture-turned-griffin was only meant to tear the mech with its claws, but instead, it collided with the metal monster, and both mech and griffin tumbled to the ground. The mech exploded, knocking surrounding Austrian soldiers down like a house of cards. The griffin didn’t rise, and the smell of burnt flesh wafted across the field. Damnation. I should have chosen a dragon again.

  Hadúr fought on, and belatedly his own troops stopped watching open-mouthed and went to his assistance. Worn from the shifting and its failure, I let my attention slip, my burning arm fracturing the reality before me.

  Time slowed, an oddly luxurious slowness where everything imprinted itself on my memory. Then it raced, so fast I could hardly grasp my own movements, let alone other details. Always, I could see Hadúr at the limits of my vision, dancing like fire across dry grass. Bahadır disappeared at some point, when he was certain I would not move. I may have slept for a while.

  Here lies Eszterházy Mátyás: He died as he lived, asleep when it counted.

  By the time I could walk again, it was late afternoon, sun streaking across the field in low, thick bursts. The battle still ground on. Bahadır returned and forced me to eat some bread and wilting cheese.

  “We’ve got to get you out of here,” he said. “The only way out is through.”

  With Bahadır’s help, I staggered toward the field, skirting the worst of the fighting.

  We hadn’t gone far when a grey-green fog began creeping across the meadow, a curiously heavy miasma. “Cover your face,” Bahadır said, pulling a handkerchief up to his nose just as the fog reached our feet.

  I put my kerchief over my nose, but not before I caught the odd, almost floral note of the mist. At once, a weight seemed to drop onto me, and I sagged to my knees, only Bahadır’s arm around me keeping me upright.

  We could never hope to win this war. Better to lay down our weapons now and escape with some honor.

  I was reaching for the gun holstered at my side when Bahadır interrupted me. “It’s a spell, Mátyás.”

  I blinked. In the shifting mist, the battlefield looked less like a charnel house and more like a scene from a fairy story, a fight of words and distant, hazy wounds, their edges worn away by time. A spell to set us all doubting. Coremancer work.

  But the mist was insidious: even knowing that my doubts were (mostly) magic-driven, they still settled heavily on me, echoing my true uncertainties. Around me, I could see soldiers faltering, some falling to their knees, others throwing their weapons away.

  I watched a boy, barely old enough for the fuzzy mustache he sported on his lip, drop his bayonet at his feet only to stare, a moment later, at the saber piercing his middle, blood blooming across his linen shirt.

  We had to get rid of the mist. I sent my táltos sense out, reaching farther than usual, as the battle had driven most of the avians away. But they responded within moments: slowly at first, in ones and twos, then in a growing wave.

  The birds soared over the battlefield, blocking out the intermittent sunshine: cormorants and cranes, egrets and herons, goshawks, osprey, harriers and owls, even a handful of swans. All the great birds of the northern plains and mountains, swooping low over the battlefield, the flapping of thousands of wings churning up a wind that stirred the miasma and then, slowly, sluggishly, began to disperse it.

  The birds were not immune to cannon and rifle fire, and I saw several plummet from the sky, my heart snagging with each fall. But enough lived to drive away the mist before I sent them wheeling back to their homes, the gratitude in my heart a tiny spark I clung to as the battle resumed.

  * * *

  The battle near Kerecsend ground to a halt at nightfall, each side licking its wounds.

  Thanks
in part to Hadúr’s ferocity and the dispersal of the mists, the Hungarian armies were able to cross the Tarna River before the Austrians cut off their retreat. After dark, bobbing Lumen lights moved across the field: volunteers looking for survivors among the dead.

  The raging inferno of pain in my arm made me dizzy, but I was still standing, which was more than I could say for some. The pain was matched only by the twisting in my gut, the aftereffects of too much magic and too lean a larder.

  When Bahadır finally dragged me to a makeshift field hospital, I almost wished he had failed: the smell of blood and offal surrounding the small, crowded tent overwhelmed me. The hospital was full to overflowing; overworked doctors, nurses, and volunteers struggled to stanch the worst of the wounds. My burns seemed insignificant in comparison. I was about to give up when we ran into Gábor among the volunteers.

  He led us away from the tent to a less crowded spot on the field outside, though we couldn’t escape the cries and groans of the wounded. He unwrapped my bandage with surprising gentleness, then hissed at the red and raw skin below. “You should have had this seen to earlier.”

  “It was on my list,” I said. “Right after ‘Don’t die.’ ”

  Gábor gave me a level look that said my weak attempt at humor was not appreciated, then took a damp cloth and pressed it gently against my skin. He lifted my burnt hand in his and closed his eyes, and the round stone in his ring began to glow. The white tips of my fingers turned black, then angry red, and I found I could feel them again.

  It was not an improvement. I sucked in a breath.

  Gábor released my hand to wind another bandage around it and my forearm. “You’ll not lose the fingers, and so long as infection does not set in, I think you’ll live. Make sure the bandages are changed frequently.”

  “Thank you. It hurts like the devil, but I am grateful.”

  “I wish I still had some of Guyon’s brandy for you. You ought to sleep if you can.”

  Something cold touched my nose, featherlight. I held out my left hand, and a pair of snowflakes landed on my wool sleeve, perched in pristine perfection for a moment before melting.

  Bahadır and I found a patch of grass near a banked fire—no pitched tents tonight—and curled close to each other for warmth. My body ached with exhaustion, but the pinching cold and the abominable throbbing in my arm kept me awake. I reflected, ruefully, that this might be the first time in my life that my sleeping superpower failed me.

  Sometime after midnight, I gave up. Bahadır was asleep, twitching uneasily at some dream. The flurries earlier had dissipated, and the clouds overhead had broken apart to reveal stars. I stood up, wrapping my dolman closer about me and blowing on my fingers to warm them. In the distance, I could still hear the low moans of the wounded.

  “Mátyás.”

  I whirled around to find Hadúr stumping toward me, a bandage wrapped around his shin.

  “Good battle?” I asked.

  His lips twisted. “A fool’s battle. Dembiński may be a hardy soldier, but if all his battles are fought thus, the Austrians will need little to destroy our armies.” He shifted, rubbing the back of his neck. “Come with me. There is something I must show you.”

  Curious, I followed, and my breath formed a cloud in the crisp night air. We walked past sleeping men; others, restless as I had been, sat talking softly around fires or sharing bottles of something that offered more warmth than the dying flames.

  Hadúr led me back across the river to the field where the Austrians had surprised us with a portal. He kindled a small light, for which I was grateful, as I did not relish the idea of stumbling over dead bodies in the dark. What did he mean to show me?

  In the distance, I could see pricks of light from the Austrian encampment.

  At length, Hadúr stopped. The field immediately around us was unnaturally quiet, the tumbled bodies still. “As táltos, another of your gifts is speaking to the spirits of the dead. It can be a useful gift, particularly in wartime, when you can glean information about enemy movements.”

  I glanced around at the bodies with fresh alarm, feeling a wash of relief when no ghosts materialized. “You want me to—what? Interrogate the newly dead?” It seemed sacrilegious.

  “Most spirits linger in our world for only a short time after their death, from a few minutes to a few hours. You do not need to interrogate any newly dead tonight—but see if you can speak with them.”

  I was not sure which part of his speech was most alarming: that most spirits did not linger or that I did not need to interrogate them tonight.

  “To talk with them, you’ll need to put yourself into a trance: you cannot see them with your physical eyes, only your spirit ones. I’ll watch your body, see to it that no one buries you or robs your body.”

  Was that flattening of his lips meant to be a smile? He stood, waiting expectantly, so I sighed and lay down upon the ground, taking care to find a spot that was not already occupied or covered in blood. I tried not to think too hard about what I was doing.

  I settled into the trance, my spirit self lifting away from my body as casually as I might peel away my shirt at the end of the day. My spirit looked around the battlefield, trying not to notice quite how much my body looked like the other corpses.

  A flicker of movement caught my attention, a faintly glowing outline of a young man, hovering over a body nearby. By the uniform, an Austrian. His mouth was moving, but I could not make out the words.

  I drew closer, and the words resolved themselves into the familiar cadences of the Lord’s Prayer: “Führe uns nicht in Versuchung, sondern erlöse uns von dem Bösen.”

  Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

  What did he make of this battleground, his bloody body unmoving before him?

  “Excuse me,” I said in German, and the boy startled, making the sign of the cross. But then I hesitated. What did one say to the dead? “I’m sorry for your loss” might be taken as mockery.

  “Who are you?” he asked, relieving me of my crisis. “A ghost?”

  I winced a little. Did he not realize he was himself a ghost? “A spirit,” I answered. “But not dead.” Wait. That wasn’t quite right. Dead…but not dead? Reborn? I kept the clarification to myself. Best not frighten the boy further.

  “This was not supposed to happen,” he said. “I was supposed to go home. My Dorothea waits for me. My Mutti. My brothers. Is this hell? It is not heaven.”

  “A battlefield,” I said. “Near Kápolna.”

  “Can you bring me back?” he asked, drifting closer. His eyes were wide, unblinking. He reached for me, but I danced away from his grasp.

  “That isn’t in my gift,” I said. At least, I did not think it was. I should have to ask Hadúr about the old stories.

  The boy abandoned his attempts to reach me and lay down on his body, his spirit sinking into the flesh. “Try,” he said, but it was only the spirit that spoke. The corpse’s lips remained twisted into a grimace.

  My spirit self knelt beside the body, curious. (My damned curiosity.) I thrust out that inner energy I used for shifting, for animal persuasion. “Live,” I whispered. “Be whole.”

  Then I rocked back, expecting the spirit to pop back out of the body. Only demigods like the Lady had power to bring back the dead.

  The boy reared upright, gasping, his lungs making a horrible gurgling noise. I saw then what I had not seen before, that gunshot had ripped a huge hole through his chest. His eyes opened wide, and he reached one hand toward me.

  But of course, he could not see me now, not without my body. His face clenched in a paroxysm of pain, and he drew a few more grating breaths.

  St. Cajetan and all the holy saints. The boy was dying again—I had put him back in his body, but I could not undo the damage he’d sustained.

  I reached out, grasping a gossamer bit
of something that might be spirit, and yanked. The ghost flew out of the body. At once, he began weeping.

  “I lived. I lived. Why did you kill me?”

  “You were dying and in pain. You would not have lived much longer in any case. Would you rather suffer so?”

  “I lived,” he repeated. “What are you? Demon? Devil? I lived.”

  He returned to muttering the Lord’s Prayer, interspersed with sobs of “I lived.”

  I retreated to my own body, the boy’s murmured cries pinching my spirit ears until, mercifully, I woke, gasping. I looked at Hadúr. “I’ll be damned if I ever do that again.”

  The battle near Kápolna staggered on, each day a prolonged repetition of the one that preceded it: soldiers battering one another with swords, rifles, cannons, and magic. I fought where I could, but more judiciously than I had that first day, saving my magic for things that could help: a pair of dive-bombing crows to distract a cannoneer at the crucial moment of aiming his weapon; bees to sting the lips and tongues of magicians so they could not speak their spells; lines of cavalry horses that would not stand their ground.

  The Austrians slowly tightened their noose around us, but they seemed in no hurry to strike the killing blow. Perhaps they still hoped to drive us to surrender. Hadúr grumbled about military mismanagement: “Dembiński is a fool, trying to bludgeon his way through the surrounding armies.”

  Then came word that Dembiński was injured and had retired to a neighboring inn to recover. He summoned the nearby commanders and their adjutants to attend on him: General Görgey, General Guyon, Colonel Klapka.

  When Hadúr caught wind of the meeting, he found me and Bahadır. “Come. We’re going.”

  Bahadır said, doubtfully, “I don’t believe we’ve been invited.”

  “Invitation be damned. This has gone on long enough.”

  Hadúr had no trouble locating the inn. He had a little more difficulty persuading the guards at the door of the taproom they’d commandeered to allow us entrance, but he marshalled the voice that had made troops fall in line in the field, and it seemed to work just as well. The guards let us in.