by D. J. Butler
Jake nodded. “But outside, begripped? Understood? You don’t have to be especially loud, but you moet whistle it outside.” He whistled the three tones again, and again, and then a third time but finally slipped into some improvised melody to disguise what he’d been doing, just as the beers arrived.
Cal took his small beer, handed the other to Jake, and turned to see that Uris had joined them.
“I don’t know that melody,” the counselor said.
“I moet be doing it wrong,” Jake answered. “It’s a folk song I knew as a boy in New Amsterdam, only I haven’t heard it in many years.”
The Dutchman was a pretty smooth liar, and Cal was impressed.
“You’ve been long in Sarah Penn’s service?”
Cal flinched at the name Sarah Penn.
Jake sipped his beer. “No, I have joined Queen Sarah’s retinue only in recent days. With the beastkind, you know. They needed somebody to keep the animals in line, and I have been a drover and a merchant and many other things. But Calvin here has long been her man, hey?”
Calvin managed not to hug the Dutchman, and took another sip of his beer to hide the grin he felt spreading across his face.
“She’s a surprise to me, your Queen Sarah,” Uris said. “I think she’ll surprise many in Cahokia.”
“You ain’t yet seen the half of her surprises.”
* * *
Bill liked towns, and indeed cities, just fine. He especially liked inns—a good tavern meant a steady supply of whisky, and though he now drank strictly when drinking with Mrs. Filmer, to keep his consumption down, a steady supply was a good thing.
But having acquired a troop of warriors—however uncouth and barbaric—he was loath not to be surrounded by them. Was he truly worried about threats to his queen, or did he merely feel he’d been stripped of his command again?
Bill growled low in his throat, warning himself away from maudlin feelings.
The Cahokians were noble enough. And Queen Sarah and Her Holiness, Alzbieta Torias, seemed to have reached an accommodation, uneasy though it might be. The war leader, Uris, now sat below Bill at a table in the common room and drowsed over a half-finished stein of beer, hood of his cloak down over his face. The red-robed Polite, after scratching at his mistress’s door—whether hexing it or as the ongoing effect of the mental blow Sarah had dealt him, Bill couldn’t tell—had laid himself out on the corner of the common room floor like a plank and gone catatonic. Seven of the eight bearers had marched with the palanquin, predictably enough, to the stables, the eighth remaining with the priestess, perhaps to carry her to the outhouse, should the need arise. Calvin lay on a straw pallet beside the hearth. Jacob Hop was outside, and scheduled to sleep next; Bill would take his turn to take a few hours’ rest before dawn.
Sarah must have worked her own defensive magic on the room where she and Cathy slept. Why did Bill feel uneasy?
Perhaps he just missed Mrs. Filmer. Though he had not slept with her, as the carnal euphemism went, he had been sleeping quite near her for several nights, and had grown accustomed to it. Her breathing was regular and deep and she didn’t seem to come awake repeatedly in the night as Bill did. He attributed that to her easier conscience, or to the natural grace that made her float when she moved.
Perhaps Bill felt uneasy about the very fact that he loved Mrs. Filmer. He might be, after all, still married.
“Stop reflecting so much, you morose son of a bitch,” he grumbled to himself. “Serve your queen and be patient.”
Bill stood on the wide walkway in front of Sarah’s door. He’d told the innkeeper, a pear-shaped man named Waldrick Dixie who wore an orange tunic over leather leggings, that he would do so, and that it was to protect Sarah, who was his niece. Dixie had accepted this obvious fabrication with good grace, so either he was used to significant persons traveling incognito, or Calvin had correctly judged how much the man needed to be paid.
Bill carried four pistols, loaded and primed: two long horse pistols in the much-darned pockets of his old red coat, and two smaller guns in his belt. He let the coat hang mostly shut, to try not to broadcast to other patrons of the inn that he was heavily armed and ready to fight, though his position and stance should make it clear to any observer at all that he was standing watch.
He’d briefly considered taking a less-worn coat from the loot they’d acquired from the dragoons and the chevalier’s men, as the others all had, but only briefly; blue and gold were definitely not his colors now.
As soon as Sarah declared her livery, he’d have a new coat made.
Two drunks staggered in the front door, laughing. Roused from his sleep, the old man Uris shushed them fiercely, then slumped back. The drunk men giggled, shushed each other more quietly, and staggered toward the stairs.
Bill assessed the two men. They were underdressed for the autumn chill gripping the town outside, in shirtsleeves and trousers. One of them appeared to have misplaced his shoes and the other had a tattered slouch cap clinging to his head.
“You’ve got the key, Ed,” the shoeless man said to his comrade as they reached the top of the stairs and bumped into his other.
“I have not.” Ed belched. “Did you bet and lose the key, Jim?”
This was so hilarious that Jim collapsed into giggles against the wall. Ed helped him up and the two of them tottered toward Bill. Bill smelled cheap rum on them, and urine. He growled, stepped closer to Sarah’s door, and let his coat part to show the pistols in his belt.
“Oh look,” Jim said, “there’s a Dago here who wants to shoot me. A big Dago with a Dago mustache. Don’t shoot me, señor!”
Ed pulled off his cap and peered inside.
“I am no Dago, suh. Indeed, I—”
Ed threw a fistful of chalk into Bill’s face.
Bill was immediately blinded. He was afraid to shoot and accidentally hit Cathy or Sarah, so he reached forward and grabbed his attackers. He got one of them by the throat and the other by the shirt front.
“Cal!” he tried to yell, but as he opened his mouth he inhaled chalk dust, and his voice came out in a dry croak.
“Stab the bastard!” Jim hissed. He didn’t sound drunk anymore.
Bill felt a sharp pain in his side. One of the men had stuck him with a knife. He needed to wake up Calvin and get these two away from Sarah’s door, so he did the logical thing.
Gripping Jim and Ed more tightly, he dragged them with him over the railing and fell.
Bill hit a tabletop and two of the table’s legs collapsed, turning it into a ramp. He and his attackers bounced off the ramp and onto the floor, and the fall, the two impacts, and the flow of his own tears cleared one of Bill’s eyes, at least enough to see.
He staggered to his feet, yanking the two men with him. He felt another stabbing pain in his side—it was Jim stabbing him, because Ed was the one Bill could see, and Ed’s neck was kinked at such an improbable angle that he must be dead.
“Bill!” Calvin cried, unseen. “The door!”
Bill spun toward the tavern’s door, hurling Ed. Ed struck the first of a wave of dirty men armed with clubs. From the back of the crowd surging into the inn, Bill thought he smelled tar. For good measure, he picked up Jim and hurled him into the onrushing crowd. Men at the front of the assault tripped and fell.
Bill heard running footsteps behind him. He gripped his horse pistols and turned, only to see Uris charging him, spear lowered—
and then Calvin Calhoun’s rawhide lariat settled around the Firstborn’s neck. His feet flew forward, his head stayed in his place, his eyes bulged, and then the old man crashed hard to the floor.
“Drop the guns!” Waldrick Dixie yelled. Blinking back tears, Bill saw that the innkeeper held a scattergun aimed at him.
Outside the inn, he heard a queer little three-note tune whistled, over and over.
“Of course, suh,” Bill said.
Then he and the innkeeper fired at the same time.
Bill felts the nails and other metal scr
aps strike him in the thigh. That was bad, the thigh housed a large vein and a man could bleed to death quickly if wounded in just the wrong part of the thigh. But he had the satisfaction of seeing Waldrick Dixie take one bullet to the forehead and a second to the sternum. The innkeeper fell backward into a shelf full of bottles of cheap liquor.
Bill heard guttural chanting and spun about, grabbing for a pistol in his belt with his left hand and pulling the long horse pistol from his pocket with his right. It was fired, but he could still swing it like a club.
The Polite Sherem, looking not at all dazed, held a paper cartridge over his head. Just as Bill turned to see him, the wizard hurled the cartridge—
bang!
A second shot hit Bill, this time in his other thigh. He buckled and fell backward, catching himself on the bar with his elbows. Before he could shoot, though, Calvin Calhoun swung his tomahawk down at the wizard’s head.
Deliberately, no doubt, the Christian Appalachee had the head of his war axe turned. The blade would have split the sorcerer’s skull like a ripe pumpkin, but even the side of the weapon knocked him to the floor and left him still.
“Sarah!” Cal shouted, and staggered toward the stairs.
Four men slammed into Bill. He fired the pistol in his left hand, hitting one in the center of his kneecap. The man fell screaming. Bill swung his horse pistol horizontally and felt a second assailant’s windpipe crumple.
He saw the Cahokian Uris on the ground, choking and clawing at the leather lariat around his neck.
He heard the odd whistles again.
Two men threw Bill onto his back on the table. One held a long triangular blade to Bill’s neck.
“We just want the witch!” the other barked. He stank of rotting fish.
Bill answered by kicking the knife-wielder in his crotch as hard as he could. The three fell together as this table also collapsed. In falling, Bill got an upside-down glance at Calvin, racing up the stairs with his tomahawk in his hand. At Sarah’s door stood the woman warrior, still in her scale mail and with her scimitar held high, ready to slash downward at the young Appalachee.
Something hit Bill on the top of his head. Glass broke, he smelled rum, and the vision in his one working eye wobbled.
Then, to his surprise, he heard the barking of a dog.
* * *
Jacob Hop led Chikaak and twelve hand-selected beastkind warriors through the front of the Wallenstein like an ocean wave through a sandcastle. In light of the possibility that the fighting might be at close quarters, the twelve Jake had chosen were not necessarily those who had trigger fingers or had eyes in the right place so they could shoot; they were the biggest, smelliest, most terrifying warriors in Queen Sarah’s company.
The hired Hansards didn’t expect a charge of bison, sloths, coyotes, and mustangs at their rear, and they broke immediately. Some rushed out the back of the inn, others crashed through windows. Some threw themselves behind the bar looking for shelter, and a few lay still and played dead.
A Hansard stood over Bill, holding a triangular short sword to the Cavalier’s eye. “I’ll kill him,” the Hansard warned.
Rohoakk, a fighter with bison shoulders and legs, though his face was that of a man, barreled the threatening swordsman aside with his shoulder and then trampled him to death before Jake could draw a pistol.
Bill was in bad shape. He bled from both legs, dark blood and lots of it, and he was covered in white powder. Jake checked his pulse—weak and thready, but still beating. He needed Cathy’s help, or Sarah’s, but Jake didn’t see either woman. Hopefully they were still behind the closed door in their room and safe, though Jake couldn’t be certain they hadn’t also been attacked through the windows.
On the walkway outside Sarah’s door, the Unborn and Calvin swung at each other. His axe bit a chunk out of the railing when he missed, and then her sword gouged the wall. Ferpa stood on the stairs behind Cal, ready to charge but unable to intervene until Cal was struck down, due to the narrowness of the passage.
“Sarah!” Jake shouted.
He knelt, tearing strips from his own shirt. He didn’t have the art to save Bill, but he could at least slow the bleeding. Jake quickly knotted a tourniquet around each of Bill’s legs, shoving a club dropped by a fleeing Hansard underneath each and then turning the clubs to tighten the bands. Too long, and Bill would lose his legs. But if Bill lost too much blood, he’d simply die.
“Sarah!” he called again. “Cathy!”
He heard a choking sound and saw the Cahokian Uris, gasping around a leather lariat tightened about his neck. “Take this!” Jake called to Chikaak, and the beastman took over the tourniquets, holding them steady.
Jake kicked a chair out of the way, flipped Uris over onto his back, and loosened the lariat. As he pulled the Cahokian to his feet, he thrust a pistol into the man’s nose. “You did this!”
“I serve my queen,” the taller man said.
“Ik ook.” Jake grabbed the Cahokian by the hair and spun him around to face the Podebradan, pressing his pistol now to the man’s temple. “Drop your sword, Ophidian!” he yelled.
In answer, Yedera lunged at Calvin again, pressing her attack with a ferocious series of sweeping blows that backed the Appalachee almost into the arms of the beastwife Ferpa.
“Sarah!” Jake yelled.
“Stop!”
A door opened on the walkway, but not Sarah’s. In Alzbieta Torias’s open doorway stood her bearer, stooping, with the priestess in his arms.
“Stop, Yedera!” the priestess cried again. “Lay down your sword.” She looked at Jake, meeting his gaze across the common room that now stank of blood. “We’ve failed.”
* * *
Sarah dreamed of faces and hands, and far away and beyond her reach, a lost father.
Her arm burned, and she came to wakefulness, finding Cathy pressing a small silver blade—a letter opener, the gift of Chigozie Ukwu, the good son of the Bishop of New Orleans—to her forearm.
Cathy’s hair was disheveled from sleep, but her eyes were alert and calm. “Your Majesty, you and I have been ensorcelled. I suspect that bitch Torias.”
“Sarah,” Calvin said. He stood in the doorway, bloodied and bruised, and he held his tomahawk in one hand. “Your Majesty. Bill needs you now.”
Sarah had gone to sleep with her satchel tucked between her side and her elbow; she was relieved to find it still there. She stood quickly, slinging the bag over her shoulder, and pushed her way past Calvin.
She left the bandage on the bed.
“What happened here?” she asked him.
Looking down at the common room, she saw still bodies on the floor and all the windows shattered. Jacob Hop held guns on the Podebradan and Uris the counselor. Yedera stood with her arms crossed, staring hatred at Sarah; Uris knelt over William Lee, holding tight what appeared to be tourniquets.
“Treachery,” Cal said. “Jake figured it out and pulled us out of the tar. But Bill’s a-bleedin’ out iffen you don’t save him.”
Cathy pushed past Calvin and the two women rushed down the stairs together. “There are arteries in the leg,” Cathy said. “He’s bleeding out of one of them. See how much blood there is on his left leg? Can you close that wound?”
Sarah nodded grimly. Returning Yedera’s look with a hostile glare of her own, she removed the Orb of Eyles and held it in her cupped right hand, placing her left on Bill’s leg. She might not need the energy of this Mississippi ley, and using it would hurt her, but she would take no chances with Bill’s life.
“St. William Harvey,” Cathy whispered, “guide now this woman’s art. As I have faith and seek to follow thee, restore thou health to this suffering child of Adam. Amen.”
“Venam restauro,” Sarah murmured. She chose the bandage on the leg, already soaked in Sir William’s blood, as a conduit, and she willed energy through her own left arm and that bandage. She envisioned in her mind’s eye the torn artery, and looked at the leg. She saw Sir William’s large vei
n there as a thicker thread of white light pulsing within the general glow of his aura, but lying beside it were gray specks. “Pallottolas extraho. Venam restauro. Vitam do.”
With her cupped right hand, she reached through the Orb and into the deep burning flow of the Mississippi River. Her skin burned, but she drew that power up through one arm and sent it down the other.
Her breath came shallow.
A shard of metal popped from Sir William’s leg and fell to the floor. Then a second. He breathed deeply and cried without a word. Then a third shard.
Then Sarah felt the artery close.
She staggered back, shutting off the flow of the ley and sucking in cold night air. Cathy leaped into her place with bandages, needle, and a bottle of whisky. Calvin, who had treated more injured cattle than children of Adam, knelt to help her.
“You said you didn’t have the regalia. You lied.”
Sarah took in the room again. The accusation came from Alzbieta Torias, who was cradled in the arms of one of her bearers. Sarah hadn’t seen her before because the Eldritch priestess was beneath the walkway. The beastman Chikaak stood beside her, pointing two loaded pistols at her.
“May I shoot her?” Chikaak’s tongue lolled out of his mouth and he hopped up and down like an excited child. It might have been a grin. “Or her beast of burden? It might be amusing to see what happens when she touches the floor.”
Sarah shook her head at both of them. “I never said I didn’t have the regalia.”
Outside the Wallenstein’s shattered windows, she saw the backs of her warriors. Some of her soldiers pointed carbines, some pikes, and some teeth, but they all faced out at the blue-cloaked Eldritch troops of Alzbieta Torias in the darkness beyond. A cold wind groaned through the shattered windows.
“You betrayed me, Alzbieta,” she said.
“I did it,” Uris said immediately. “I am the one who contacted the Hansa, and paid them to intervene.”
“Was I to be killed?” Sarah asked.
“Yes,” Uris said. His voice was gravelly, his face solemn. He had a bright red weal on his neck, as if he’d survived a hanging. “It’s the best outcome for my mistress.”
