Halcyon est-1

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Shifrah glared at the dark gray clouds. She had been daydreaming of desert oases and hot sandy beaches for the last three days. She sighed, the exhaled vapor frosting in the chill air. “So where did they go?”

  “South. And north.” Salvator grimaced at the tracks. He rode a few yards one way and then a few the other, staring at the tracks in the fading light.

  “Well, which is it?” Shifrah demanded. “I’m freezing. What the hell is wrong with you people, living in the cold like this?”

  “I can’t be certain who went where. They may have split up. There’s more than half a dozen people heading both ways.” He sounded, as always, perfectly calm and focused. There was no excitement, no frustration, no fatigue. It was infuriating.

  Shifrah shivered. “Well, can’t we assume the Mazighs would go south to get back home?”

  “The Mazighs could have gone south from their original crash site straight to Villa Real or Albaset. But they went north to Madrid instead, on foot. They asked for a Don Lorenzo on the road. And at that same time, our dearly departed Rui was stealing a journal also written by a man named Lorenzo. What if it’s the same Lorenzo? Clearly, this Lorenzo is an important person. I can’t be certain how or why, but I believe he may be the key to a much larger puzzle.”

  “Well, I don’t care about your Lorenzos. I only care about the Mazighs because that’s who Magellan wants, remember?” Shifrah pulled her hood tighter around her head. “Come on. We’re going south.”

  “No, wait just a moment. Consider the possibility that they aren’t trying to return home at all.” Salvator peered into the northern gloom where the long shadows of the hills and trees were already masking the contours of the land. “Maybe they meant to go north all along. They might be continuing their mission as planned, but on foot instead of in the air.”

  “What mission? What the hell are you talking about? And why would a bunch of stupid Mazighs be coming to see this Lorenzo person?” Her face was tight and pinched, eyes narrowed to slits, mouth compressed into a long thin line.

  Salvator looked up at her. “Wasn’t it you who mentioned that name to me about two weeks ago? A Lorenzo?”

  “Did I?” She paused, then smirked as the conversation came to mind. “Oh, yes, I remember. I overheard Faleiro talking to another officer about going to meet with a Lorenzo. It must have been this Lorenzo, this meeting.”

  “Did Faleiro say why he was going to meet this Lorenzo?”

  She grinned a little wider. “To hire him.”

  “To do what?”

  Shifrah turned her smile on him. “To replace you, of course. I told you they didn’t like you. I told you they were unhappy with your progress teaching the sailors to fence. But as I recall, you said it was nothing to worry about.”

  “Replace me? He must be a diestro, then. A diestro named Lorenzo.” Salvator leaned back and studied the skies again with wider eyes. “Ah! Don Lorenzo Quesada. Yes, I’ve heard of the man. A religious idiot, I think.”

  Shifrah looked at him sharply. The swordsman in Marrakesh! The duel on the road, and the chase at the train station. “Quesada? I know that name. That’s the bastard who sliced up my hand on the road to Arafez! Didn’t I tell you? He wanted me to run away with him.”

  Salvator raised an eyebrow. “Run away with him?”

  Her grin returned. “To a nunnery.”

  “Oh, yes. That sounds like him. He’s a zealot, from what I hear. Spends too much time in church talking to the dead, and he won’t kill a man for any reason. I suppose he wants to keep his soul nice and clean for Judgment Day.” Salvator scowled. “And you saw him in Marrakesh. He must be working with the Mazighs.”

  “On what?”

  Salvator shrugged. “I have no idea. But when I bring Magellan a platter of Mazigh heads and Quesada’s skull for a centerpiece, I don’t think I’ll need to worry about my job for quite some time. And then I can return to business of sinking his precious warship.”

  Shifrah shivered. “So we’re going north then?”

  “Don’t you want to catch him?” He studied her for a moment. “Or are you afraid Quesada will lock you away in a nunnery after all?”

  “The fencer doesn’t scare me. He was good, but he didn’t beat me. If I hadn’t been outnumbered both times, I would have stuck him like I stuck his ugly friend.” Her voice was low and husky, and a bit congested. “It’s the Mazighs I’m worried about. They fight dirty. Guns. Bombs. They’re crazy.”

  “This is about the eye, isn’t it?” he asked. “You lost it in Marrakesh, but never said how, exactly.”

  She nudged her horse gently over to his, and when they were sitting side by side, she slapped him. “It’s not about my eye. And I am not afraid of anyone. But there are plenty of tracks going south, so I am going south. You can go north and kill whoever you like. I hope you enjoy your cold, empty bed.”

  He shrugged. “As you wish. Track them down, whoever they are. If you find any Mazighs, do be so kind as to bring back their heads for me.”

  She rolled her eye. “Really? Heads? You’re serious about that? I’m an assassin, not a butcher. How am I supposed to cut off a man’s head with one of these?” She whipped out one of her slender stilettos, twirled the blade across her fingers, and slipped it back into her coat.

  “Don’t over-think it and I’m sure you’ll do just fine. Good hunting, my dear.” Without so much as a smile, he turned his mare to the north road and trotted away through the thick snow, quickly plunging into the shadowed lanes between the other large country houses and the rows of small pines that lined the road.

  Shifrah glared at his back for a moment, then turned her own horse to the south and hunched down under her coats, praying that there would be a warm inn with a warm fire and warm food and a warm bed just over the next hill. She knew there wouldn’t be, so she prayed a bit harder.

  Lewis, Joseph Robert

  Halcyon (The Complete Trilogy)

  Day Four

  Chapter 10. Syfax

  They got back on the road heading south first thing in the morning. One of the students named Diego led the way, followed by seven other boys and the hidalgo’s cook, maid, and footman. Kenan and the major brought up the rear. It was freezing cold, a light sleet was falling, and the sky was three shades of iron partly veiled by threatening clouds. Over night the snow had piled up to knee height and a thin glaze of ice glistened on it in the early sunlight. Every footstep was painful work, plunging through the ice and dragging through the snow. The freezing wind stung every patch of exposed skin and the day promised to be very long and twice as miserable.

  Syfax grinned. A perfect day.

  Last night’s quick march from the hidalgo’s house to the inn in Parla had been bracing for everyone, and they slept soundly enough. Shortly after leaving Parla the maid left them, veering off to the east toward her mother’s house. The cook and the footman left at midmorning, off to stay with their own families in some town around to the west of Madrid. Soon it was just Syfax, the lieutenant, and the eight pale-faced boys trudging down the highway to Toledo.

  The countryside marched by slowly, one white hill after another, each landscape as bleak and colorless as the last. A stand of pine trees weighed down with fresh snow. A circle of identical stone houses around a well. Wooden fences and stone walls. And the frozen mud ruts of the road itself.

  There were plenty of other people on the road and none seemed at all concerned with the cold or the threatening clouds. Children leading cows. Women leading mules laden with sacks. Men driving wagons behind horses and oxen. They were never completely alone on the road, always within sight of the next traveler or the last one, and every few moments a voice would rise across the snow. Children playing. Mothers shouting at the children. Men shouting at each other. Voices cracked and echoed across the great white plains and hills and iron skies.

  They found Toledo just after noon, but long after the first boy had begun grumbling about his empty belly. Syfax slapped the boy on the back,
remembering what it was to be sixteen and forever hungry, forever looking ahead to the next meal, and then greedily eyeing the table for seconds and thirds.

  The best years of my life. Nothing but eating, sleeping, and working myself to death every day.

  The town in front of them looked very much like the one they had left the evening before. The Espani seemed quite expert at dragging gray stones together to create what they called towns, but looked more like small, lumpy hills on the plains. Thatched rooflines formed ridges beneath their blankets of snow, and icicles hung from every eave like an armory of glistening spears. Nothing was clean, nothing was smooth or straight. Toledo was a city of soft curves and broken edges, of rough stone and frozen water. As the men entered the first gully between two tall houses, with muddy slush crunching underfoot and vicious winds whipping down the lanes, Syfax felt the first pang of unease.

  Back home in Marrakesh, in any city, he could stand in the middle of the road and look for a hundred yards in every direction, seeing all the people, seeing the doorways and alleys, the vehicles and animals, the solid walls and fragile windows. In a Mazigh city he knew the terrain, its assets and liabilities, where to hide in a firefight, who to protect first, and which way to run. But here he couldn’t see more than a dozen yards before the street curved aside, or uphill or downhill, and the snow hid everything. Every step and gutter, if these people even have gutters. Every movement sounded exactly the same, like crunching snow. There was no distinguishing a child from a woman from a man, or even from a dog or a horse. And sometimes a block of snow or a wall of ice would simply break free of a roof and tumble into the road of its own accord.

  He couldn’t trust his ears and his eyes were nearly useless, hemmed in by the crooked walls and snow drifts. Syfax began looking back over his shoulder and checking to either side more and more as he trusted his peripheral vision less and less.

  There was no way to know if the Espani were really looking for them yet, but this was their fourth day in the country. If they weren’t hunting the Mazighs yet, they would be soon, or not at all. And he was betting on soon.

  He grabbed Kenan’s arm. “Hey kid, we might want to think about splitting up or spreading out. I don’t like how bunched up we are in these streets. It’s too crowded. No exits. If things go sideways while we’re in town, we’d be screwed before we even saw the first soldier.”

  Kenan gently tugged his arm free and nodded with a slight grimace tightening his face. “Yeah, I guess so, sir. What do you want to do?”

  “Right now, nothing. We’re just getting lunch and moving on. But we might need to shed some of our little convoy sooner rather than later. Ask around. Find out if any of these kids are going all the way to the coast. If they are, we can just take them and try to make better time. If they aren’t, we might want to leave them all behind and go it alone. It’ll be a lot faster.”

  “Faster? How much faster do you want to go?” An unmistakable whine twisted Kenan’s words.

  Syfax glared at the lieutenant. Not this again, not now. There is no way in hell I’m letting you get my ass killed. He grabbed the sulking youth’s coat and shoved him back against an icy wall, ignoring the surprised looks from the people around them. He leaned in close to whisper, “You know, Ziri keeps going on about how smart you are. She seems to think you’re officer material for some reason. So why don’t you shelve the attitude and try using some of those brains. Get this through your head. We are behind enemy lines. Eventually, the guys who shot us out of the sky are going to come looking for us. And we’re not armed. And we’ve got no backup. We’re alone out here Kenan. It’s just you and me and a very long road. And you know what’s at stake if we don’t get home and tell the brass about that warship. You may not have any family in Tingis, but that ship will work its way down to Port Chellah eventually and set your precious momma on fire, I promise. So get your head in the game and do your damned job.” He let go of Kenan’s coat and stomped away after the eight young fencers, leaving the lieutenant to make whatever faces and mutter whatever curses he needed to get out of his system.

  By the time Diego brought them to an inn where they could eat, Syfax was completely lost. Toledo was all curving roads and cramped market squares, and everything looked the same. The gray clouds continued to obscure the sun, making it impossible to even guess which way was south. Still, Diego’s inn was a bright warm place filled with quiet, middle-aged men who seemed more interested in napping in their chairs than paying any attention to the small crowd filing in through the door. And that gave the major a little hope that they would be safe here, for a while.

  There was little enough fare to choose from. Salted pork or salted beef, cabbage, and bread all clumsily arranged into a pile that the innkeeper called a sandwich. It wasn’t good, in fact just chewing the thing was as laborious as walking through the knee-deep snow, but it was filling and the crackling fires in the two hearths at each end of the room were all the comfort Syfax needed. Sitting on a wooden chair that had probably been serving the inn for several decades, he scanned the doors and windows, and then the people quietly eating or snoring at the other tables. No drinking, no laughing, no yelling. His first instinct was to call it a dead place for old people, but as he sat massaging the cramp in his leg and the knot in his shoulder, he began to rethink what he meant by “old.” Quite a few of the hairs on his knuckles weren’t dark anymore.

  The soft stillness of the room and the heat of the fires were as comforting as his own bed, and Syfax leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them again when he heard the door squeak, and he saw two men in matching blue coats stamping their feet on the mat. The long barrels of their rifles swayed against the backs of their shoulders.

  Aw, crap.

  In the stillness of the inn, there was no way to move without drawing attention to himself. Still, Syfax tried to shift and casually slump over his empty plate as though about to join the other patrons in a siesta, trying to hide his face. Kenan followed suit. They were both three shades darker than any other men in the room, and for the first time in his life Syfax wished that wasn’t the case.

  The two soldiers shuffled inside and sat at a table just a few feet away. They hung their rifles by the straps over the backs of their chairs and waved to the serving girl. Syfax decided to wait until the pair in blue started eating before he tried to walk out. They weren’t paying any attention to the Mazighs now and he doubted they would bother looking up from their food.

  The girl had just given them their sandwiches when Syfax signaled to his companions that it was time to quietly stampede out the door. They were about to stand up when one of the soldiers turned around and said, “Diego? Diego Gonzalez? From Gadir?”

  The young diestro named Diego blinked wide at Syfax and then turned to talk to the soldier. “Uh, yes, and you are?”

  The soldier introduced himself as a Jorge something or other, apparently from the same town and possibly a distant cousin. The faster they talked, the less the major understood as his public school Espani quickly proved inadequate to the animated and informal conversation. Still, Diego seemed to be keeping Jorge’s attention and the food was keeping his companion’s attention, so Syfax decided to risk standing up and walking out. He made a small show of tapping the arms of the students on either side of himself, and then they stood up together and started for the door, leaving the other half of the young men at the table. Syfax half-hoped they would figure it out and come along and half-hoped he could just ditch them here and now.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  Syfax froze except for his right hand, which began slowly sliding up toward the knife on his belt. He looked at the soldier who had spoken, the quiet one who had been focused on his lunch. Not-Jorge. Syfax shrugged. “Who, me?”

  “Yeah.” Not-Jorge wiped his mouth and stood up. “Have you come from Marrakesh recently? You and your friend?” He nodded at Kenan.

  “Nah, we’ve been down in Cordoba for about two years now. That’s
my brother’s kid,” Syfax said, jerking his thumb at Kenan. “He’s been helping me out at work lately.”

  “I see. And what is it that you do?” The soldier took a few steps closer to them, a few steps farther from his rifle.

  “Cabinetry.” Syfax turned slightly to tower directly over the man in uniform. “I make cabinets. And other cabinet-type things. Like shelves.”

  “Shelves.” Not-Jorge nodded and turned back to his table, but then paused. “Who is the governor of Cordoba now? Is it still Don Marco? I heard he was in poor health.”

  Syfax clenched his jaw, pausing ever so slightly in the hope that Kenan might actually know the right answer and pipe up, but the kid was silent and he couldn’t risk pausing more than a second. “Yeah, it’s still Don Marco.”

  Jorge looked over with a frown. Not-Jorge sniffed and said, “No, it’s not. The only Marco around here is me.”

  Syfax grinned. “Well, I had a fifty-fifty chance.”

  For a moment, nothing happened. The young diestros, both seated and standing, remained frozen with only their eyes darting about, each of them no doubt wondering whether their obligation was to their military or to their companions. In the absence of Don Lorenzo, Syfax knew better than to rely on them.

  Everyone moved at once.

  Both of the soldiers snatched up their rifles and swung them to bear on the two Mazigh men. The diestros at the table leapt to their feet, hands flying to sword hilts, but not a single blade was drawn as the young men stumbled back from the drawn firearms. Out of the corner of his eye, Syfax saw Kenan grab the nearby diestros and shove them back toward the bar. Score one for the kid, the major thought as he drew his knife and lurched toward the soldiers.

  He caught the barrel of Marco’s rifle, yanked the smaller man forward off balance, and knocked his gun to the floor. Syfax spun Marco around, pinned the man’s arms in a crushing bear hug, and brought his knife up under the soldier’s chin where Jorge would be sure to see it.