Witchy Winter

by D. J. Butler

  Sarah nodded.

  She climbed the stairs. The rest—Cathy, Uris, and Alzbieta—followed.

  Sarah wouldn’t show weakness. This was her kingdom, and she would own it. Slipping a hand into her shoulder bag, she touched the Orb of Etyles. She didn’t want her companions to see her casting a spell, so she merely willed strength and breath into her legs and lungs, and into the legs and lungs of her companions.

  They marched to the peak without a stop.

  The top of the mound was a platform. It was paved with the round stones, barely visible through a light skiff of snow, and dominated by a rectangular building, tall, narrow, and long, with a roofless porch. The building must be the Temple of the Sun, and black birds—ravens—squatted in a vast conspiracy atop it. The land around it appeared to be plowed and planted, though leafless in the winter’s cold.

  A warm breeze blew from the river. Sarah ignored the building, and instead turned to survey her land.

  Cahokia sat in a bend of the Mississippi River. Though she and her friends had ridden several days through Tawa and Cahokia, she saw now that Cahokia sprawled at the base of a broad fan of fertile land. It guarded the riverine approach from the south to what must be a giant flood plain. The land was flat, and where it wasn’t forested with the tall groves of nut and fruit trees of ancient and contested origins, it was farmed.

  If the Mississippi flooded, what would happen to the land?

  And what defenses were there against such a flood?

  None that she could see.

  West of the river was the Missouri, a tangled, river-fed land choked with the fringes of the Great Green Wood and hacked into patches by small farmers and petty barons. Somewhere just north of where she stood, the Missouri river must flow into the Mississippi. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from dozens of farmsteads in Sarah’s sight. The Missouri rose in slow hills away from the river; somewhere out there in the dense forest was the Heron King’s palace, where Sarah had rebuffed his advances but given him the sword he sought, the sword with which he now intended to run riot over the children of Adam. Beginning, no doubt, with the people of the Missouri.

  As she looked, she realized that not all the tendrils came from chimneys.

  Many of the farms burned.

  And as she watched, a burning ship drifted down the river. Most of the wood above the waterline was already consumed, and as Sarah looked at it, the ship began to sink. Fore and aft, carved wooden dragon’s heads slowly succumbed to the brown waters. “Is that a keelboat?” she asked.

  “It’s a German funeral ship,” Uris said. “The nobility who follow the All-Father are buried thus.”

  “Some princeling of Chicago has died,” Alzbieta said. “To judge by the flag.”

  They watched the ship sink in respectful silence.

  “The people of the Missouri looked to my father for protection,” Sarah said. “I will gather them under my cloak. If necessary, I will ride for them as the Lioness of Missouri. And if Chicago desires alliance with me against the same threats, I will grant it.”

  Uris knelt in the snow before her.

  “I serve Her Majesty’s interests,” he said.

  “Go on.”

  “I beg Her Majesty to remember she isn’t queen yet. There are others who seek the throne.”

  “Not I,” Alzbieta said.

  “Others,” Uris continued. “I would beg Her Majesty to be deliberate and thoughtful in her speech.”

  “Her Majesty is being quite deliberate,” Cathy Filmer said. “And quite thoughtful.”

  “Indeed.”

  Uris opened his mouth as if he had more to add, but at that moment a tall Ophidian, clad from head to toe in black, swept to the top of the mound. He leaned on a black staff with a dull gray iron horse’s head sculpted at its tip, and his cheeks were pocked with the scars of some childhood disease.

  The newcomer looked around at the party atop the mound before meeting Sarah’s gaze. “You’re the Elytharian pretender.”

  “The hell you say.”

  He paused, mouth open. Then he smiled. “I mean claimant.”

  “The hell with that, too. I’m Sarah Elytharias Penn, and I’ve come to sit on my father’s throne.”

  “I’m Maltres Korinn.” The tall man stood upright and looked Sarah up and down critically. “I’m Duke of Na’avu and Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne, and my sovereign is the Queen or King of Cahokia.”

  “Queen,” Alzbieta Torias muttered.

  “You don’t bow to your sovereign,” Sarah said.

  “If I bowed to every child of Wisdom who said he was my liege lord, my head would long since have fallen off from the effort. So far, Wisdom Herself has not deigned to agree with any of the…claimants.”

  “I look forward to seeing the top of your head, Regent-Minister. When the goddess has chosen me, I may find use for you at my court.”

  Maltres Korinn laughed. “I could be persuaded that you’re an Elytharias,” he said. “You have the confidence. But you would convince me to stay at court with difficulty. I would much rather prune my cherry trees and dung my blackberry brambles, so I wish the goddess would choose you, and end my regency.”

  “Why wouldn’t She?” Sarah asked. “I’m my father’s daughter. She chose him, and our mothers and fathers before him.”

  “She will choose whom She will,” Maltres Korinn said. “But Her grace hasn’t descended your family tree in a straight line. Your father, for instance, was the younger prince, and something of a hellion, who was not expected to succeed. Perhaps now She will choose some cousin of yours. Perhaps Alzbieta Torias.” He looked sidelong at the priestess. “She is, after all, slated to stand in the Presentation.”

  “I’ve accompanied Her Majesty for the purpose of demurring in her favor,” Alzbieta said. She bowed in Sarah’s direction. “Her Majesty may take my slot.”

  “Under the terms of my agreement with all the candidates, I decide who stands in the Presentation,” Maltres said.

  “Be very careful.” Sarah willed ice into her voice.

  “No, Sarah Elytharias,” Maltres said, “if that is your name. You be careful. This city and kingdom are under my government until the goddess decides otherwise. Your bear-headed spearmen are ferocious to look at, but I think they would crumple before the might of the kingdom…especially with the Imperials also fighting against you. How much blood are you willing to spill?”

  “I wouldn’t spill any blood for my own sake,” Sarah said. “For the sake of my kingdom, and my family, there is no blood I wouldn’t shed.”

  The Regent-Minister of the Serpent Throne nodded. “As it happens, my discretion is irrelevant. The Presentation is full and withdrawal is not permitted. Seven candidates, including the Handmaid of Lady Wisdom Alzbieta Torias, will stand on the Great Mound on the shortest day of the year. If the goddess chooses one of them as her Beloved, we’ll have a new queen or king, so long as she or he can keep what has been given from the hands of the Imperials and their bloody Pacification. And if she doesn’t, then we face another year under the bumbling administration of our poor regent, who would rather make cherry wine and listen to the humming of the summer bees.”

  “You’ve performed this Presentation every year since my father died, and the goddess hasn’t yet chosen a monarch?”

  Korinn sighed. “Much of what you see around you is ancient, but the Presentation isn’t one of those things. We’ve performed this rite only for six years. Before that, we had nearly a decade of assassinations, ambushes, and poisonings, encouraged by the Imperial diplomats and the Ohio Company traders alike. Eventually, the death toll became conspicuous enough that the various claimants came together and agreed on this process.”

  “The Presentation isn’t part of the ancient kingly lore,” Sarah said.

  Alzbieta nodded, confirming against what she’d already told Sarah in the empty palace of life in Irra-Zostim.

  “But there must be many alive who were adults when my father became king,” Sar
ah said. “Don’t they remember how it happened?”

  “There came a dawn,” Korinn said, “a winter solstice. Every child of Wisdom within the walls who awoke that day knew that Kyres Elytharias was the goddess’s Beloved, and that he was to be their king. I was one of them.”

  “And so you’ve constructed a rite of new vintage, and you hope the goddess will participate,” Sarah said. “Couldn’t you have cast the Tarocks instead?”

  “Believe me,” Maltres Korinn said, “you’re not the first to have asked the question. And we hope that, this being the seventh year, our goddess will take pity on us and give us a king who can fight the Pacification.” He looked westward, at the lingering smoke over the Missouri. “And a king to save the Missouri.”

  “Or a queen,” Sarah said.

  * * *

  Chigozie didn’t know why he still lived. Every time he heard the rumble of a stomach, he expected to be torn to shreds. He became so accustomed to living with the specter of his own impending death that he began to ignore it, and even to ignore the beastkind.

  They defecated and rutted in his presence, and he prayed in theirs.

  They came across evidence of armed resistance. Tangled with the corpses of men who wore lacquered wooden breastplates and carried short rifles, Chigozie saw a tattered red banner. The image on it was torn, but might once have been that of a bird, wearing a crown.

  One night he awoke to find Lamprey-Cat, whose name was Aanik, crouching over him. Chigozie stretched out in full on his back and clasped his cross in both hands, interlacing his fingers, and looked over Aanik’s shoulders at the twins, Castor and Pollux.

  And what had come of his brother, the new bishop tainted with ancient corruption?

  “If this is the purpose for which you have created me, God,” he prayed aloud, “may I fill the belly of my brother Aanik well.”

  Aanik shifted from side to side, curling felinoid paws into long-taloned fists.

  Chigozie heard a snort.

  He and Aanik both looked to the source and saw Bison Head, whose name was Kort. Kort lay on his side as if sleeping, but his eyes were wide open and he looked at Aanik and Chigozie.

  Hissing, Lamprey-Cat retreated into the shadows of the trees.

  Bison Head blinked. “Son of Adam.”

  “We are all sons of Adam,” Chigozie said.

  “So you say. I believe I’m the son of a different god.”

  “Adam is not a god. I am Chigozie.”

  Bison Head snorted. “What do you think is the measure of your creation, son of Adam?”

  Chigozie’s heart pounded. “I do not know. I am trying to find it. But I believe my god has put me on your path for a reason.”

  “Perhaps to be my food.”

  “Perhaps.” Chigozie took deep breaths. If it be thy will.

  “But not to be food for Aanik.”

  “No.”

  “Adam doesn’t will it. I don’t will it. If you’re to be eaten, you’ll go into my belly. Understood?”

  Chigozie said nothing. Bison Head closed his eyes again and soon made rumbling sounds that resembled snoring.

  A week later, the beastkind band fell on a farmhouse.

  Chigozie had little idea where they were. He’d staggered for days in Kort’s wake, always through forest. Kort seemed to have a sense of direction, and they marched generally in a straight line. Chigozie had seen the great plains of the Free Horse Peoples, briefly. He’d seen an enormous river from time to time, which might be the Mississippi or the Missouri. He’d seen small baronial palaces, and walled towns, some on fire and some defended by bristling muskets, but always closely choked around by the forest.

  During the day, constant movement kept Chigozie from getting too chilled. At night, he lay by Kort’s side and slept in the beastman’s warmth, reconciled to the possibility that his captor-patron might roll over and crush him to death.

  He ate nuts when he found them, and killed a bird with a luckily thrown stone. He hadn’t seen his own face in weeks, but his forearms were gaunt.

  The farmhouse appeared suddenly in a flurry of snow, a constellation of yellow lights in the gray evening. With no planning, and not even any warning, Kort charged. He roared, and Aanik and the others followed him: Iiilit, who was a fish with legs; Brooft, the octopus; Yetch, whose upper body was a stag’s and who ran faster than any of the rest; and Fsift, who looked like a completely normal son of Eve, but for his rabbit’s head, which never stopped smiling and never made a sound.

  The farmers never had a chance. A big-bellied man appeared in the door with a musket and a pistol; before he could even fire, Kort trampled him and smashed through the door, taking some of the frame and the surrounding wall with him.

  The other beastmen hurled themselves through windows, or into the paddock full of cattle.

  The screams of men began immediately and ended within seconds. So did the barking of the dogs.

  The screaming of the women began and didn’t end.

  Chigozie raised his arms to heaven. “Great God in heaven,” he began, but then he choked.

  He couldn’t pray above the screams. “God,” he tried again, wanting to pray for the women’s deaths, and faltered.

  It wasn’t the sound that stopped him. It was guilt.

  Could he pray to heaven for mercy for the victims, if he would do nothing himself first?

  He staggered toward the farmhouse, ears ringing with the shrieks and sobs. In the doorway, he stopped at the crushed body of the farmer and picked up both his firearms, tucking the pistol into his belt. He was no expert, but he knew basically how the weapons worked.

  The inside of the cabin was a single room, with a loft overhead. Hand-tied rag rugs lay directly on a packed dirt floor, now soiled and wet with the blood of two men, a pig, and some number of dogs Chigozie couldn’t count, for the fact that they had been torn limb from limb.

  Kort and Aanik were in the cabin. Chigozie’s eyes filled with tears, blinding him; each of the beastmen hunched over a live and screaming woman, and the violence with which the beasts were ravaging the Missouri women shattered Chigozie’s heart.

  He was ready to die.

  Cocking the musket first, he approached Kort and aimed the gun—not at Kort, but at his victim.

  “Please!” the woman screamed, locking eyes with Chigozie. She was young, barely an adult, perhaps the daughter of this farming family. “Kill me!”

  Kort snuffled and roared in a rutting frenzy, not even noticing.

  The woman was doomed. The beastkind would rape her and kill her and eventually eat her. All Chigozie could do was shorten her suffering.

  Bang!

  She fell back, her struggles suddenly stilled. His nose full of the stench of blood and lust, Chigozie couldn’t even smell the gunpowder.

  Kort hesitated, stared at the red hole welling with blood in the woman’s forehead. Then he turned rage-filled eyes toward Chigozie.

  Chigozie dropped the gun, expecting instant annihilation. Out of reflex, he raised his cross in his free hand. Warding off evil? Proclaiming his intent?

  Kort snarled, but held still.

  Drawing and cocking the pistol, Chigozie crossed the cabin to Aanik. Lamprey-Cat mounted a woman who should have been in mid-life. Her shoulders, breasts, and face were torn in bloody circular streaks by Aanik’s teeth. Her eyes were already gone, and Aanik’s lamprey mouth now settled onto her neck. She wasn’t dead yet; with fingerless hands, she thumped against Aanik’s shoulders, to no avail.

  Aanik continued to bite and rut.

  Chigozie almost shot Aanik.

  But no. He wasn’t killing from rage. He wasn’t seeking revenge, or even justice. He couldn’t save the woman from the wounds she’d already suffered, and he doubted he could kill Aanik in a single shot.

  Chigozie killed as an act of mercy.

  Bang!

  The woman’s arms straightened out, groping for the sky, and then fell to her sides.

  Chigozie dropped the pistol. His
arms, too, fell to his sides, and he faced Aanik.

  Lamprey-Cat sprang back from the nude corpse, spraying blood across Chigozie’s face and the cabin. He hissed, spraying more blood from his deep, fang-filled throat. He crouched, large feline legs gathering up energy—

  Aanik sprang forward—

  Kort slammed into Lamprey-Cat from the side. The great bison-headed beastman slammed into his fellow’s throat with his own forehead, bowling Chigozie’s attacker across the floor.

  “Now you die!” Aanik rose, talons extended.

  “Down!” Kort bellowed.

  Aanik hissed. The long sides of his lamprey neck throbbed, and he opened his and closed his fists, his talons snicking along each other.

  “Down,” Kort rumbled slowly, “or I’ll kill you.”

  Aanik lowered his head, then slunk toward the corpse of the woman he’d been assaulting.

  “Leave the daughter of Adam,” Kort growled.

  “I’m needy,” Aanik whined.

  “I don’t care.”

  Chigozie raised his cross again.

  One last time, Aanik rose slightly on his hind legs, as if considering an attack, but then he dropped to all fours and loped out the door.

  Kort pivoted and stared down at Chigozie. He smelled of blood and aroused animal and he towered over the priest.

  I am going to die. If this was my purpose, Lord, I thank thee for the small mercy I was able to give these women.

  “Tell me why.” Kort’s nostrils flared.

  “Mercy,” Chigozie said. “Those women suffered. Did you not hear their screams?”

  “You ended their suffering.”

  Chigozie almost choked on the smell of blood, and tears flowed down his cheeks.

  “It was a small thing.”

  “And do you think I’ll show you such mercy?”

  Chigozie shrugged. He was going to die. “I have filled the measure of my creation, whether you show me mercy or not.”

  A long silence.

  “I leave the bodies of the children of Adam to you.” Bison Head turned toward the door. “Do you feel you must show mercy to the cattle as well?”

  Chigozie shook his head. “You are a child of Adam, too, Kort. I am more convinced of it than ever.”