Wren the Fox Witch es-6

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Wren stumbled back as the aether struck her flesh, and she instinctively threw up her own hands to shield her face, and the aether fell away, melting into the darkness. Slowly, she lowered her hands and looked at the woman, and felt the cool air tickling her tall furry ears.

  Damn. The aether couldn’t move my scarf. I must have knocked it back myself. Stupid, clumsy…

  “Lady Yaga, if you please!” Tycho said loudly from behind Wren. “We have something very important to discuss with you. And I’ve brought this young woman to meet you. She’s from Rus, too.”

  “Ysland, actually,” Wren corrected him quietly.

  “Right, Ysland.” Tycho nodded. “This is Wren Olgasdottir.”

  “What the devil is wrong with your ears, girl?” the woman asked.

  “I’ve, uh, I have an extra-”

  “An extra soul, a portion of an animal, something thrust into you.” The witch rose to her feet. “Come here. Let me look at you.”

  Wren swallowed and came forward.

  “A fox soul,” the witch said, peering at Wren’s head. “But just a portion of it. A tiny scrap. And something else, as well. Something to keep the animal at bay, trapped in your silly ears and those pretty eyes of yours. What is it?”

  Wren nodded. “That something else, the thing that keeps the fox under control, is another soul, a bit of a man’s soul.”

  Don’t ask anymore. Not yet. Don’t make me say his name to you yet.

  “Hm.” The witch turned away with a weary sigh. “Is that why you’re here? You want me to fix you? You want me to get it out of you?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Good, because I can’t. It can’t be done.”

  “I know,” Wren said. “I know how it works. I know about soul-breaking and aether-craft.”

  “Do you now?” The witch sat down on her pelts. “Then why are you here?”

  Wren knelt at the edge of the rugs. “I’m here because I need your help. The city needs your help. There’s something coming, and I need your help to stop it.”

  “We have reports, my lady, of an army marching on Constantia,” Tycho said. “An army of walking corpses. The undead. The deathless ones.”

  The witch stared into Wren’s eyes. “You don’t say.”

  “You don’t seem surprised,” Wren said. “Has this happened before?”

  “In Rus, the dead often have a mind of their own,” said the witch. “That’s why the people burn their dead. At least, they do when they can.”

  “And when they can’t?”

  The witch smiled. “Then they call for me and my son to set things right.”

  Wren nodded. “I see. But why does it happen at all? Is it because the aether freezes in the blood, and the ghost stays there, confused, thinking they might still be alive? And then they just drag their dead bodies around by the aether like puppets on strings?”

  The older woman narrowed her eyes. “That’s exactly right. Although, the ghost in a frozen body is no more likely to rise from the grave than the ghost in a rotting body. The real question is, why are so many ghosts rising now?” The witch picked up an empty cup and considered the wine stain on the bottom for a moment. “Who has been teaching you about these things?”

  “I’ve had several teachers,” Wren said, glancing away. “Why do you think the ghosts are rising now?”

  “I don’t know.” The white-haired woman tossed her goblet aside. “Why does it matter?”

  “It matters, my lady, because these corpses are attacking every person they come near,” Tycho said. “They’ve devastated entire towns, entire provinces, judging from the reports. Thousands are dead, and thousands more have fled. Some refugees are coming to the city, but most are fleeing into the hills. The farmers seem to think the deathless ones are drawn to cities, to people. And the more they kill, the more dead rise beside them.”

  “Then destroy them, and be done with it,” the witch snapped. “Give them the sword, and give them fire. There’s no mystery in this. Cut their bodies to pieces. Take their heads. Burn their flesh. Once broken they cannot be healed, and once the aether melts, the ghost cannot cling to the flesh.”

  “We tried that,” Tycho said. “I sent mounted archers to Saray. Many died, and many fled. And the ranks of the dead continue to swell. If they strike Constantia from the west while we are besieged by the Turks to the east, the city will fall.”

  “Then the city will fall!” The witch glared at him.

  Tycho frowned. “You swore to defend Constantia, before Lady Nerissa and Prince Vlad.”

  “That was before those dogs took my son!”

  Wren motioned Tycho to take a step back and she said, “Mistress, I swear to you I will do everything in my power to help you find your son. But I can’t do that if this city is overrun by the risen dead. We have to stop them first.”

  “ You will help me?” The witch laughed. “What can you possibly offer, except for fleas and a slightly sharper sense of hearing?”

  Wren glanced at Tycho and then back again. “I’ve studied aether-craft as well. Quite a bit, actually.” She slowly raised her right hand, drawing the aether in to herself, bundling the mists beneath her, and ever so gently, she lifted herself up from the pelts on the floor and floated in the air. And then, just as gently, she lowered herself back down and let the aether drift away. “What do you say now, Mistress?”

  She could feel Tycho staring at her, but she kept her gaze on the old woman, and the old woman gazed back at her. The witch nodded. “Very well. We will try. And you may call me Baba Yaga, little sister.”

  Chapter 9. Torture

  Tycho climbed the stairs, straining to hear what was happening in the cellar behind him, but the women’s voices were too soft and distorted. So he emerged from the Tower of Justice into a cool afternoon in the Second Courtyard of the palace and paused to look at the men and women bustling about the paths and roads and stairs in front of him.

  She floated. She floated in the air. She said she wasn’t a witch, she said that anyone could learn what she knew, but… she’s a witch.

  He turned to his left, intending to return to the Chamber of Petitions, but he saw Salvator pacing along the portico at the entrance to the Third Courtyard toward the stables, and he angled aside to intercept his colleague.

  “When I was a boy, I believed in magic,” he said abruptly as he caught up to the Italian. “In church, I always like the stories about miracles and portents. And at home, I always pestered Philo to tell me the old stories about the Olympians and the heroes of ancient Hellas. But somewhere along the way, I suppose I stopped believing. Fighting the Eranians, seeing ships in the sky, cannons, ironclad frigates, seireiken swords… It seemed like there wasn’t room left in the world for magic. Of course there were still wonders everywhere, but not miraculous ones. But this girl.” He shook his head.

  “I saw you staring at her,” Salvator said. “You like those ears of hears, don’t you?”

  “Don’t be perverse. She’s a pretty girl. The ears are just… weird.” Tycho drummed his fingers on the grip of his gun. “But just now, I saw her do something. She floated in the air right in front of me. Just lifted off the floor as light as a cloud for a moment.”

  “Mazigh airships can float off the floor for longer than a moment, and they’re much larger than some girl with funny ears. There’s no magic in that. Just another sort of science.”

  Tycho nodded. “You’re probably right. So, why are you out here?”

  “The duchess and the prince want to be alone with their new best friend, Omar. They seem quite taken with him. I suppose it’s quite a coup, really, finding yet another immortal. Not that I trust him, of course.”

  “We don’t know that he really is immortal. He’s only said he was. He could be lying.”

  “He wasn’t. After you left, Vlad demanded a demonstration,” Salvator said. “Omar slit open his hand and we watched it heal itself almost as quickly as he cut it. Just like Koschei did, only less macabre.”


  “Oh.” Tycho paused at the entrance to the stables. “So, what shall we do with the rest of our day? Have another chat with the Turk in the cistern?”

  “I don’t see the point.” Salvator sniffed and grimaced at the horses. “Even if he knew something worthwhile, he’s half-mad from whatever he saw at Saray.”

  “Do you really think it’s that bad? Half the Vlachians deserted when they saw this army of the dead, and the Vlachians aren’t afraid of anything,” Tycho said. “What will happen when the dead reach Constantia? Will we all go mad?”

  Salvator shrugged. “Well, I won’t. You might.”

  They continued around the rear of the stables and looked out across the frosted lawns. On their right stood the Church of Saint Irene, its golden dome gleaming in the sunlight, and on their left stood the ancient sea walls that protected the Seraglio Point and the palace itself from invaders in the Strait and the Sea of Marmara.

  “What worries me is-”

  A horn blew three blasts, and the two men looked up at the watch tower overlooking the Seraglio Point. Tycho frowned. “Come on.”

  They commandeered one of the little carriages in the courtyard and rode across the length of the palace grounds to the tower on the point, and then shouldered through the stream of Hellan soldiers heading up to the wall. When they finally emerged into the cool sea breeze at the top, Tycho looked down at the mouth of the Bosporus and saw three Eranian ironclads in the channel.

  He frowned. “Oh good, the Furies are back.”

  They had no idea what the three ships were called in Eranian, so the Hellan lookouts had simply taken to calling them the three Furies. Each one carried a hundred heavy cannons and the sailors on deck could be seen carrying pistols and rifles. Huge steam engines sat puffing and chuffing amidships on all three, and the massive screws beneath their armored hulls were known to drive the ships above fifteen knots, faster than any other steamer in the area. From time to time, the Furies would range out across the Sea of Marmara, terrorizing the shipping lanes or protecting Eranian convoys, but they always returned to the Bosporus sooner or later.

  Salvator leaned on the wall, peering at the ships. “They’re a bit close today. You don’t suppose they’re actually going to take a shot at us, do you?”

  Tycho looked again, his keen eyes gauging the distance. “You’re right, they are closer than usual.” And then a flurry of movement on the deck of the center ship drew his attention there. “Good God, what are they doing?”

  He beckoned for the watchman to hand over his spyglass, and Tycho studied the ship’s deck again through the narrow view of the glass. The sailors had formed ranks around a central stage on the deck where two large men where forcing a third man down onto his knees with his arms held straight at out to his sides. The kneeling man had a long, scraggly tangle of black hair hanging over his face, but his massive chest and arms were quite bare and Tycho could see the thin gray tattoos on his skin. “It’s Koschei. They’ve got Koschei on the center Fury.”

  Salvator grimaced. “What are they doing with him?”

  “Stretching him out like a lamb for slaughter,” Tycho said. “Kneeling. Arms out. Head down. There’s a man with an axe. Shit. I think they’re going to behead him.”

  “Hm.” The Italian nodded. “Interesting. Do you suppose that will actually kill him?”

  “If it does, there’ll be hell to pay with his mother. And if it doesn’t kill him…” Tycho trailed off as he tried to imagine a headless Koschei. The man was demon enough on the battlefield with his skull intact. He couldn’t fathom a Koschei with even less self-control.

  He continued to watch through the glass. “Do we have any ships nearby? I don’t see any.”

  “Not close enough,” Salvator said. “We have five cruisers protecting the Galata Bridge, and several more patrolling the southern shore of the Horn, but none of them could reach Koschei in time to help him.”

  Damn it. God only knows what Yaga will do if her son dies.

  “I have to give Radu credit,” Salvator said. “This is probably the best thing he could do with Koschei. A public execution like this will do more than upset his mother. It’ll demoralize our entire army when they learn their immortal champion is dead. And we can hardly hope to keep this quiet. Everyone is going to see it.”

  Tycho slammed his fist on the wall. The Furies were only a quarter mile from shore, but there was no way to reach them, not even with a bullet or arrow. Through the spyglass, he saw the axe man circle around behind the kneeling Koschei. An Eranian officer postured and gestured, no doubt making a grand speech about how they boldly captured this mighty warrior, and were now doing God’s work in executing him as well. The officer signaled the executioner, and the man raised the axe, and then the axe fell.

  When the blade sliced through Koschei’s left shoulder, the two men holding him down both stumbled back as the arm and body separated and a river of dark blood spilled across the deck. And a moment later, Tycho heard a thin scream echo across the water. But he kept his spyglass on the deck and watched as the Eranians wrestled their prisoner back into position, raised his right arm, and hacked it off at the shoulder as well. This time there was no scream. Koschei collapsed facedown and did not move as a cheer rose from the ranks of Turkish sailors across the deck.

  At the same time, a low groan and sigh and gasp rippled across the sea wall as the Hellans saw or heard their immortal champion fall.

  Still, Tycho watched the deck of the ironclad ship. He watched as the sailors gathered up the severed arms, and he watched as they dragged Koschei to a flagpole, tied his ankles, and lifted his body upside-down over the deck, his gory shoulders still dripping.

  Then the sailors began to disperse back to their posts and duties, all except two young men with mops and buckets who set about scrubbing away the blood.

  “Well, that’s that,” Salvator said. “I suppose they’ll be sending us the arms at some point, just to be certain that we got the message.”

  Tycho nodded. “Not that it matters. Everyone saw it. The duchess and prince will know in a matter of minutes. And then, one way or another, Yaga will hear of it too. That’s when things go completely to hell.”

  He was about to turn away and head back to the stairs when a distant keening caught his ear. It sounded almost like the cry Koschei made when they struck off his first arm, and Tycho lifted the spyglass again. “My God. He’s still alive.”

  “He won’t be for long,” Salvator said. “He may have only passed out from the shock, but he’ll die from loss of blood in a minute.”

  “I guess. Although, it looks like he’s stopped bleeding already. In fact… my God.” Tycho handed the spyglass to Salvator and closed his eyes, and rubbed his forehead.

  The Italian gazed out at the ship for a moment, then put the glass down and shook his head. “That’s inhuman.”

  As he dangled from his ankles over the deck of the Eranian warship, Koschei screamed and screamed and screamed as his shoulders slowly knit themselves together and new bones began to thrust out from his wounds. Exposed muscles and nerves snaked out, bit by bit, wrapping around the bones, and milk-white skin appeared in ragged patches over the new flesh. Tycho walked slowly back to the watch tower, descended the steep stone stairs, and entered his waiting carriage. The distant screams still warbled across the Strait. When Salvator sat down beside him, Tycho looked up and muttered, “At that rate, it’s going to take all day and half the night before they grow back, won’t it?”

  The Italian knight nodded.

  “He’ll scream through every minute of it.” Tycho thumped on the roof and the carriage began to roll. “Our men will have to listen to every minute of it.”

  “And there’s nothing to stop Radu from doing that to him every single day, over and over again.”

  Tycho stared out the window at the snow-dusted lawns of the park rising above the sea walls to the palace. “This is the fourth one.”

  “Fourth what?”

 
“My fourth siege. The fourth time that Eran has tried to take Constantia in my life time. But this time…” The major shook his head. “We’ve never had so little support from Athens. We’ve never had to go to Vlachia for help before. And now we have immortal people on every side, and an army of corpses attacking our rear, and huge ironclad steamers in the Strait, and a man being tortured to death right in front of our troops. It’s never been like this before. I’ve never heard of anything like this before.”

  Salvator pressed his lips together for a moment. “The unique and hideous gravity of the situation has not escaped me. And under the circumstances, I don’t think a man would be faulted for thinking a bit more of his own welfare than that of his fellows. I have friends here, you know. I can leave whenever I want. Slip past the blockade. I could be in Rome in less than three days.”

  Tycho nodded. “Maybe you should leave. There’s no sense in you dying here, too.”

  “You little fool, I’d take you with me. I meant that both of us could escape. There’s no reason for you to die here, either.”

  Tycho looked at the older man. “Growing fond of me, are you?”

  Salvator stared back with eyes of cold steel. “Terrible things are going to happen here, Tycho. As you say, the dead are marching, immortals are screaming, war machines are churning, and the Sons of Osiris are out there as well. Constantia is going to fall, and I see little hope for anyone here when that happens. As for you, well, you’re clever and useful, and I trust you. If you came back to Rome with me, we could do great things for Italia. None of this insanity here, none of these monsters. In Rome, it’s all just lies and duels, clever insults and stabbings. Clean and simple.”

  Tycho waved the suggestion away. “I can’t leave. My father died to prepare for this war. I have to see it through.”

  The Italian frowned and looked out the opposite window. The carriage rolled into the Second Courtyard near the stables and carriage houses, and the two men stepped out.

  Tycho nodded at the doors of the Chamber of Petitions. “You should report what we’ve seen to the duchess and prince. I’m going to check on the girl, and make sure the witch hasn’t eaten her or something.”