Halcyon est-1

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  The soldiers did not move.

  “Today, gentlemen,” Salvator said.

  The soldiers still did not move.

  The major said, “It would seem you have much to learn about what it means to be a soldier, sir. Especially an Espani soldier.”

  “Any man who divides his loyalty between two masters is of no use to anyone.” Salvator strode to the far door by himself.

  “I disagree,” the major said. “But a man who has no loyalty to anyone is a danger to everyone. Take care, Senor Fabris. I will send my own report on this affair to your admiral, and my general, and perhaps to the minister of war, as well. Good day, sir.”

  The door slammed behind Salvator.

  Qhora released the breath she was holding. “Thank you, major. I cannot thank you enough. You’ve saved my life, and my husband’s, and his students’ as well. Thank you so much.”

  The major shrugged as he unlocked the cell door. “It was nothing, senora. I was merely doing my duty. My only regret is that I did not do so earlier. It is extremely rare that any officer has just cause to question an order, let alone a senior officer. I admit, I was not prepared to do so until this moment.”

  She saw how pale the older man had become, his forehead beaded with sweat, his veined hand shaking. When the cell door opened, she stepped out and took his hand. “I understand, and thank you again. I’ve said it before and I’m certain I will say it again, that the Espani are the most honorable people I have ever had the privilege to know. But now I need to go. My husband is still in danger.”

  “You mean to pursue this Italian? I would not advise it,” said the major.

  “No. I mean to put an end to this business entirely. But I will need you to look after Hector and Gaspar for me.”

  “Of course.” The major nodded. “But where are you going?”

  “Back to La Seo for my mount, and then to Valencia.”

  “I see. Well, I’ve heard that Lord Admiral Magellan is a passionate man, but a good officer and a true patriot. I’m certain he will hear you out and see that justice is served.”

  Qhora smiled. “I hope you’re right, major. Hector, Gaspar? Take care of each other and when you’re ready to travel again, I’ll see you back at home in Madrid.”

  They all said their farewells and Qhora hurried back through the narrow icy corridors of Zaragoza back to the great cathedral. It took over an hour for the monks to help her pack a single bag of clothing and food while readying Wayra to leave. Most of the brothers wanted to express their seemingly boundless regrets at the invasion of their sanctuary the night before and the harsh treatment Qhora and her companions had suffered while guests under their holy roof. But eventually she was ready and mounted on Wayra’s shoulders once more. The monstrous eagle quorked and hissed as she strutted out into the bright glare of the morning sun reflecting off the icy walls, icy river, and icy snow drifts that covered the city in a glistening shell.

  The hour was still early, but many people were already out in the streets on their way to work or already hard at it. The crowds forced Qhora to wind her way along side streets and back streets and any place that offered her a clearer path to the edge of city where she could escape the gasps and stares of the pedestrians and let her feathered hatun-anka run free across the frozen plains. It took nearly half an hour to do so, but when the vast rolling hills of Espana spread out before her she felt all her anxiety about controlling her mount melt away. There was no single road running straight from Zaragoza to Valencia, but Qhora glanced at the sun and noted the nearby mountain peaks and soon she had her bearings.

  A light snow began to fall and Qhora folded up the stiff collar of her Espani coat to shield her face. She pressed her tricorn hat tightly over her hair and shook the reins.

  “Sah!”

  Wayra lowered her head on her long feathered neck and set out at a blistering sprint, her vicious claws slicing and splitting the frozen dirt with every step. The falling snow whipped back into Qhora’s eyes and she felt the tails of her fur coat and Enzo’s old army coat flapping behind her in the wind.

  The huge eagle ran and ran. She dashed up and down hills, across roads, and over frozen streams. Time and again they startled some poor rabbit or fox crossing their path and the tiny white creature would bolt away into the half-dead remains of the underbrush to hide. And more than once Qhora cried out to some person ahead, “Pardon me!” just before the towering bird thundered past, leaving children screaming and adults stumbling back in the snow.

  At noon she stopped at a small pond, hoping that the ice would prove easy to break and that there would be no angry spirit to contend with, but the ice proved too hard even for Wayra’s iron beak and so they were forced to eat snow, though Lorenzo had often cautioned her not to. They ate sparingly from the rations that the monks had provided and rested on a dry, rocky spot above the pond.

  She was just about ready to coax Wayra back up to her feet when a familiar growl caught Qhora’s ear. Searching the northern trail they had been following, she saw a dark shape coming down the hill side. One part of her heart took wing with joy at the sight, while another part shriveled and quaked.

  What are you doing here?

  A few minutes later a very large saber-toothed cat was butting his head against her hands.

  “I’m happy to see you too, my big brave boy,” she said into his thick bristling fur. “But you shouldn’t be here. You should have followed Enzo north. You should be protecting him, not me.”

  Atoq merely purred his godlike purr, his entire skull vibrating with the sound.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “But we have a long way still to go, and I have no meat for you. You’ll have to hunt for yourself and try to keep up as best you can.”

  She stared into his huge golden eyes and tried to force him to understand her words by sheer willpower alone. He blinked and looked away, licking his fangs.

  “All right then.” She climbed up into Wayra’s little shoulder saddle and turned to the southeast. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 20. Syfax

  The long walk from Ciudad Real to Cordoba shrank by quite a few hours when a passing wine seller took pity on the two Mazighs and let them ride in the back of his cart. But it was an Espani cart, just a few wooden planks on a wooden axle with iron-rimmed wooden wheels, and the ancient contraption rattled and banged along the pitted road, rocking violently over every dip and bump. It rolled slowly and loudly, and it was completely exposed to the winter wind. And despite his best efforts, Syfax couldn’t sleep on it.

  But Kenan could. The young lieutenant slept through the day and night and when he finally woke up his cold was gone and there was almost a hint of the old grinning kid in him again, despite the biting cold and the miserable cart. His nose hadn’t been broken after all, just bloodied and bruised. The major wondered if the kid had ever been seriously hurt in his life.

  All the way to Cordoba, Syfax watched the horizon for soldiers on foot, soldiers on horseback, and military pigeons carrying death warrants across the gray skies, but he didn’t see any. It had taken most of an hour to lose the soldiers in Ciudad Real and then slip outside the city past the guards at the gate, but now it was almost as though the entire chase had never happened. No one out here seemed to know. No one seemed to care.

  Syfax sat on the rear lip of the cart, feet dangling just above the icy road, staring out across the bleak white hills and thinking of his one-eyed lover.

  What the hell sort of woman screws you, then calls the cops, and then helps you get away?

  They had nearly reached Cordoba when a rider appeared on a distant hilltop behind them. Syfax watched the rider grow and grow until the figure became a tall Italian woman riding along next to the cart.

  “Well, I’ll say this,” Nicola began. “At least this time I didn’t have any difficulty leaving the city to follow you. The soldiers were so busy looking for Mazighs that they didn’t care about me at all.”

  “Yeah, sorry about running off li
ke that,” Syfax drawled. “We ran into a little trouble first thing in the morning and had to get moving, and I sort of forgot about you. No hard feelings?”

  “Of course not,” she said, her face blank and unreadable. “The first rule of anything is survival. I understand that as well anyone.”

  When they reached Cordoba, Syfax almost thought they’d turned around in the night and returned to Ciudad Real. The cities looked so similar. Snow and ice on stone and brick, with too many bodies crammed into too narrow streets. Too many church spires loomed above the city like shepherds or sentinels, and too many soldiers loitered near the gates and intersections. After thanking the wine seller for the ride, Syfax led a very quiet Kenan through the main gates, passing within an arm’s length of three soldiers in blue. Nicola rode along in stately silence behind them. None of the men gave the towering Mazigh a second look.

  They don’t know yet. We must be ahead of the pigeons still, so we have a few hours. Maybe a day or so. When they were well inside the city in the press of bodies and away from the guards, he said, “We should find someone who knows the coast and can give us directions. Maybe there’s a book store with a map.”

  “I’m the map,” Kenan said, squinting into the bright light glinting off the icicles that hung from every eave and sign and withered tree. “Captain Ohana had me memorize them. All of Marrakesh and all the coasts of Espana, Numidia, and Italia. It seemed like a waste of time back then since I figured we would always have a map on the plane. I never figured on having to navigate without the plane.”

  “Yeah, you learn something new every day,” Syfax said. “So we’re in Cordoba. Where should we go next, mister map? Sevilla? Tartessos?”

  “No, no, you’re way off. That’s all west of here. We want the shortest way south to the coast, right? So we go south to Malaga, get a boat, sail along the coast to Gibraltar or so, and then cross the Strait to Tingis. Very easy. We’re halfway there already.”

  “You’re sure about all that?” Syfax glanced at the kid. After all, you got us into this mess in the first place by going off course to Valencia.

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Kenan peered into a shop window and looked back to see Syfax still staring at him. “What?”

  “Nothing. Just, you know. Valencia.”

  “I told you, and I told the captain, that wasn’t my fault. There was a crosswind. I did everything right to keep us on course, but without a coast line or other landmark, it’s impossible to verify a position using just a compass, a fuel gauge, and a watch.” He glared as he ran a gloved hand over his bare head.

  “If you say so, kid. Let’s get some lunch.”

  They ate as they walked through an open air market, and as they were leaving Syfax realized that the weather had improved enough in the last few days for there to be open air markets. Bins full of chilled fruits and berries sat in rows, and huge cuts of beef and pork and whole chickens hung in the stalls along the streets. Yet there was almost no smell of anything in the streets except for the occasional whiff of fresh horse droppings.

  As they left the city shortly after noon, Syfax struck up a friendly conversation with yet another wine merchant, this one driving a much larger cart that squeaked and bounced lightly over the holes in the road, and in no time at all the major and the lieutenant were invited to join the merchant on his spring-mounted seat to enjoy a luxurious ride to Malaga. Nicola followed a short distance behind, her horse plodding along with the considerable flow of pedestrians, carts, and wagons heading south to the coast.

  That afternoon they rumbled into Malaga, into the smell of brine and fish, of oil and pitch, of smoke and offal. The day’s sun had regained some of the strength that Syfax remembered it once having, and for the first time he seriously considered taking off his second coat. He didn’t take it off, but he considered it.

  They bid farewell to the wine merchant, a talkative man named Angelo who kept offering them a taste of his reds if they would only come with him to the shop and help him unload the casks. Only Nicola was tempted by the offer, though not much, so the threesome entered the town on foot. Here the mud and filth in the streets was only half frozen and fairly slippery, and the icicles dripped steadily from the roofs. The occasional stray dog or cat trotted across their path, sniffing out vermin to hunt. The occasional church bell rang in the distance, calling to absent school children and idle housewives and anyone else not working their fingers raw in the sharp ocean wind to put the boats out, or bring the boats in, or to clean the fish while arguing over weights and measures.

  Syfax led Kenan and Nicola led her horse down to the docks. The late afternoon sun gleamed red on the choppy waters of the Strait of Tarifa. Syfax watched a few fishermen sailing into the harbor. “All right. Looks like we’re still ahead of the pigeons. I say we wait until dark and then swipe a dory to row down the coast.”

  The pouting Italian lady nodded. “Certainly. But there seems to be a steady breeze from the east. Why not find something a bit larger and sail the whole way? It will be much easier.”

  Kenan glanced from one to the other. “Wait, why are we stealing anything? I’m not robbing some poor fisherman of his entire livelihood when we’ve got Miss Money-bags here. I’ve been listening to those reales jangle in her purse all the way from Cordoba. Why don’t we just pay someone? Then he can sail us down to Marrakesh and we don’t have to steal anything or do any work.”

  Nicola sighed. “How many fishermen do you suppose you might have to talk to before one of them agrees? And then how many fishermen are going to know about the Mazighs looking for passage across the Strait? And how many of them might tell the constables or the soldiers about us? No, no. One day, lieutenant, you will understand the harsh realities of the wider world and the hard choices that must be made if you want to survive, let alone succeed in life.”

  Syfax grinned. She’s only half right, but right enough. No risks. No chances. And certainly no trust in strangers when your own life is on the line.

  Kenan spat in the street. “The hell with that. You want to know about hard choices? How about choosing whether to get a doctor for one child or food for the other three? How about choosing to go back into the mines, day after day, even though your lungs are rotting in your chest and you’re coughing up bloody chunks of them when you think your children aren’t looking?”

  Syfax laid a heavy hand on the kid’s shoulder. “Hey, look, we all have our sob stories, kid. But today is today. We need to get home to tell the generals about that warship, and we can’t afford any screw-ups. We’re not talking about murdering anyone, just stealing a boat.”

  “Go to hell. I’m no thief.” And he turned and stomped away.

  Syfax lunged to grab his arm but Nicola caught the major’s sleeve and said, “No, let him go. An officer who can’t follow orders is a liability. Let him go and talk to whoever will listen to him. He’ll be arrested by sundown if the search for us has reached this town. And if it has, the soldiers will be so pleased with themselves that they’ll drink and celebrate, and possibly spend the evening beating the boy. No one will be watching the harbor. No one will see us rowing away.”

  Damn it, kid, I thought you were supposed to be smart. The major exhaled and nodded. “All right. We’ll find someplace warm to sit and wait for dark.”

  Nicola made a short detour to a stable where she sold her horse for half of what it was worth. Then they wandered into the center of town and though Syfax was looking for a tavern where he could rest his feet, he didn’t object when Nicola steered him into a large, empty church with an altar blazing with hundreds of candles. A scant handful of worshippers sat in the pews, most with their heads resting on the pews in front of them with their eyes closed. The rare cough or shuffle of feet echoed over and over through the high rafters. Syfax sat in a back corner where he could see the doors, and Nicola sat beside him, her hip just touching his. He grimaced.

  Two hours later, the waning light through the windows faded altogether and Syfax decided it was time to m
ove. He nudged the Italian lady awake, lifting her head roughly from his shoulder. Outside he found a sky painted deepest black and drenched with shining stars from one horizon to the other. There were no streetlights here, no haze of smoke and ash looming over the city, nothing at all conspiring to hide the stars from view. Syfax breathed the cold salty air, wondering if Port Chellah had ever been so clean and clear.

  They went down to the water and walked along the gravel strands and wooden docks, scanning the small boats for simple rigging, loose lines, and especially shadowed moorings. But there was always a shaft of light from a cottage or a passing man or a tricky looking knot, and so they walked on and on.

  “Here. This one.” Syfax jerked his chin at a fifteen-foot dinghy. He recognized the knot. He recognized the oars. And there was no one about to see or hear him shove it down the gravel slope to the water.

  “Surely something larger. A yacht. A single mast.” Nicola pointed out across the harbor. “Maybe one of those.”

  “Hey lady, we didn’t exactly cover sailing in soldier school. I know how to row and that’s it. All I know about sails is they need a hundred ropes and knots, and then the long arm swings around and hits you in the back of the head. No thanks. This here will do.” He knelt and whipped the single anchor line free of the ancient chunk of masonry in the sand serving as a mooring. Then he grabbed the raw and splintered wood of the dinghy’s bow and he pushed.

  The tiny boat scraped and groaned down the gravel slope. Syfax winced at the noise and glanced about the deserted beach. Then he shoved again. The hull growled and rattled, and a few pebbles tumbled free to clatter down the short slope and splash into the softly rolling waves. He shoved a third time and the dinghy screeched into the water, and the first incoming wave shoved the boat right back into the beach where it banged and crunched on the stones and sand.

  “Hey!”

  Syfax whirled to see a stocky, older man just a few yards away, silhouetted in the open doorway of a cottage just above the high water line.