Wren the Fox Witch es-6

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  Radu laughed, his face suddenly transformed from a dark scowl to a youthful smile. “You expect me to simply trust you? To trust that you will send away Koschei the Deathless, that he will never return to slaughter my men on the field of battle?”

  The Italian shrugged. “I’m merely here to suggest solutions that will make both parties happy, Highness. The sun is setting, and I would prefer to spend the night pleasantly, in my bed, preferably with a bottle of wine and a young female companion. I have no desire to collapse to the floor and scream until the dawn lifts the aether.”

  Radu’s smile faded and he sighed. “You’re being serious, aren’t you? This aether business, Yaga, all of it. You’re telling the truth, yes?”

  Salvator nodded.

  “Very well, then. Give me Yaga.”

  The Italian stared at him. “What?”

  “She misses her son, she grieves for his injuries. I understand this.” The prince held out his hands. “Surrender her to me and I swear no harm will come to her, as long as she does not attempt to harm me. She will be reunited with her son, and I will place the both of them in a very comfortable estate a few leagues to the south where they will be out of the way for the remainder of this war.”

  Salvator swallowed.

  Damn him. I didn’t expect that from him. It’s a shrewd play. It solves everyone’s problem, avoids violence, and leaves him with one more immortal prisoner. Who’s been schooling him in negotiations? The Sons of Osiris, I suppose.

  “A reasonable proposal,” Salvator said quietly. “Politically, it’s quite sound, and under any other conditions I would be almost eager to present your terms to the Duchess.”

  “But?”

  “But what you are proposing would require us to somehow bring you the woman in question, either by coercion or by violence, and quickly too. The sun will be setting very soon,” Salvator said. “I would have to return to the palace, mount an armed force, and somehow penetrate this storm of aether without being rendered insane, capture Baba Yaga, and drag her to your ship to be reunited with her son.”

  “I see your point,” Radu said. “Whereas, if I were to concede to your terms, I could have Koschei set free in a matter of minutes in plain sight of his mother, and all would be resolved.”

  “My thought exactly.”

  “It’s quite a trap you’ve set for me,” said the prince. “If I believe you, then I have only a few minutes to free my prisoner to prevent a storm of madness from crippling my people. But, if I don’t believe you, if I call your bluff, if I choose to go about my business, then perhaps nothing will happen at all, and that puff of wind over your city will simply blow away.”

  Salvator paused, wondering what else he might say.

  “Most holy prince,” Iruka said, again bowing his bare head. “If I may be so bold, I would advise you to accept what you see and what you have been told as truth. I have studied aether for many years, and I assure you that the storm over the palace is not a natural one, and if it does engulf Stamballa, as I believe it will, we will all suffer. The city will be defenseless for hours, perhaps even days.”

  “If that’s true, then Constantia was be just as weak,” Radu countered. “They could not attack us. Anyone who came near would fall victim to this storm. And besides, even if Baba Yaga is causing this, how do I know she is not simply performing to the tune of our Italian friend here? What if she isn’t mad with grief at all? Perhaps this is merely a threat to try to pry Koschei from my grasp. She will not attack the Hellans, or us. Fabris can call her off at any time.”

  “I assure you, I cannot,” Salvator said.

  “You assure me?” Radu stood up sharply and tugged his dress jacket down smartly over his chest. “Who are you to assure me? You are no councilor of mine, no trusted advisor to the imperial court. You serve my enemies!” He slammed his fist down on the corner of the desk as he circled it to stand beside the other men.

  Salvator frowned.

  This has gone on long enough.

  “Yes, I suppose I do serve your enemies, Highness.” Salvator’s hand shot out and ripped the seireiken from the green-robed monk’s sash. The scabbard flew off the blade and clattered against the wall as the sun-steel sword bathed the room in a warm golden light. Ripples of heat danced around the edges of the blade.

  The seireiken was heavier and shorter than his rapier, and the knowledge that even touching the flat of the blade was deadly did nothing to soothe Salvator’s peace of mind. But still, it was a weapon, and a terrifying one at that.

  Suddenly everyone in the room was quite still and silent, and every eye was fixed on the shining sword. Salvator swung the tip of the blade casually past Iruka’s face, passing just before his eyes, and then he pointed the bright sword at the sweating prince. “Highness, I could kill you and everyone in this room before you could cry out for your guards. I could imprison your souls in this hideous sword and leave you trapped in there for all eternity, and I could slaughter my way out of this palace and sail back to my beloved Rome, where I will live out my days, never giving any of you a second thought.”

  Radu wet his lips. “Fabris…”

  “But I’m not going to do that,” the Italian said. “With you dead, no one would free poor Koschei and his mother would drive everyone mad, but sooner or later your emperor would send someone else to command the siege and this war would go on, and on. And if I was very unlucky, I might even be caught in this aether storm of insanity myself.”

  “I see,” said the prince, his eyes never leaving the golden shimmer of the sword. “So when words fail, you resort to violence like any other man, Fabris?”

  Salvator smiled. “I didn’t become the Supreme Knight of the Order of Seven Hearts without a certain flair for violence, Highness.”

  “Very well, then. I accept your terms. Koschei goes free, immediately.”

  Salvator nodded and lowered the sword as he backed away toward the window. “Excellent. You won’t mind if I just oversee the orders and make sure all is in order before I return this little trinket of yours, would you?”

  The bullwhip crack of a pistol shot rang out.

  Salvator grimaced as the searing pain began to radiate out from his belly. He saw the trail of smoke rising from inside Iruka’s right sleeve. The monk’s hand glided out with a tiny Numidian gun clutched in his hairy fingers.

  “Damn you.” Salvator dropped the seireiken as he leaned heavily against the wall and pressed his hand to his stomach and felt the warm blood staining his shirt. He glanced down at his bloody hand and then looked up at the prince. “I despise guns.”

  And he fell to the floor.

  Chapter 12. Rescue

  Tycho sat on a cold, wet stone beneath the Galata Bridge and stared out across the dark waters of the Bosporus. On his right he could follow the outer walls of the Palace of Constantine out to the Seraglio Point, and from there it was a short distance to the three ironclad warships sitting in the middle of the Strait.

  A young man called Lycus clambered down from the upper road and crouched beside the major. “Sir, the sun’s down. It’s getting pretty dark out there. And it looks like the storm around the tower is getting bigger.”

  Tycho nodded and checked his revolver one last time. “All right then. It looks like Salvator didn’t get anywhere with the Turks after all, so it’s down to us.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. We’ll get through them just fine.” The youth grinned and ran his hand over his shaved head.

  All of the marines had recently shaved their heads, and at that moment Tycho couldn’t remember why.

  They were probably drunk.

  Nearly one hundred of the lightly clothed youths stood in the shadows under the bridge with their dozens of little boats bobbing in the shallows. They wore no uniforms, no boots, and no armor, but every last one them had two knives and a Mazigh revolver, and they knew how to use them.

  Tycho stood up. “Let’s get moving. You all have you orders.”

  The marines flashed c
ruel and eager grins as they headed down to the water, climbed into their boats, and slipped silently out into the river.

  Tycho sat in the bow of his dory and two young men rowed him out into the center of the channel where the Hellan destroyers sat at anchor, protecting the Galata Bridge. When the dory came alongside the Herakles, a sailor at the rail lowered a knotted rope. Tycho grabbed the line and was lifted up to the deck of the warship, and then he hurried to the bridge to tell the captain that it was time to begin.

  The shadows of the palace walls blanketed the channel, masking the rippling waters and the dozens of tiny boats quietly rowing down the river toward the Strait and the three Furies. The Herakles and two of its escorts rumbled to life and pale columns of steam rose from their engines. Tycho stood in the corner of the bridge, watching the sailors go about their business, shouting orders down to the engine room and pulling levers and spinning wheels. The Hellan destroyers shuddered as their screws bit into the cold waters and the ships crept forward.

  “Lights,” Tycho said.

  “Ensign, lights,” the captain said.

  “Lights, aye.” The young officer began flicking switches and a dozen huge electric lamps snapped and buzzed on the bow, throwing a hideous white glare out over the water, aimed upward away from the tiny dories and the marines rowing silently in the dark.

  Tycho paced quietly over to the chart table where the captain was frowning at the depth markings. “You don’t look very confident, captain.”

  “We need more ships for this,” the older man muttered.

  “I agree, but we don’t have more ships to risk.”

  “We shouldn’t be risking any ships like this, not for a single man.”

  Tycho nodded. “We’re not doing this for a single man. You really think I would risk my precious marines for Koschei? No. We’re doing this to save the entire city.”

  “You said that before. But from what exactly?”

  Tycho glanced out the dark windows, over the walls of the palace, to the slender spire wrapped in white storm winds. “From that.”

  The aether maelstrom had doubled since he last saw it, growing wider and taller, and now as he stared at it Tycho could see slender ribbons of white mist streaming out from the storm over the city and over the Strait.

  “We don’t have much time.”

  As the Hellan ships accelerated down the channel toward the Furies, Tycho lingered by the window and peered into the storm, searching for the outline of the Tower of Justice.

  That poor girl. All alone in there. I can’t believe I just left her there. I should have… done something. Gone back. Gotten her out.

  Something.

  Tycho turned back to the captain. “What hope do we have of actually damaging those warships?”

  The captain glanced up from the map table. “None.”

  “Don’t spare my feelings, sir, I can handle the truth.” Tycho forced a grin. “What if we angle the guns up at the command deck instead of down at the hull?”

  “We’ll kill a few officers while their guns shatter our hulls and destroy our engines.”

  Tycho sighed. “Ah, the soldier’s life for me.”

  The captain strode past him, saying, “You’re a sailor tonight, Xenakis.”

  The Herakles and her escorts bore down on the Furies, and now Tycho could see the lights shifting on the decks of the Eranian ironclads. The three warships were turning to meet their attackers, their electric lights flickering and blinking in the darkness as the Turks ran back and forth across the decks to their battle stations.

  “We’ll bear northeast and draw their fire in that direction,” the captain said. “With any luck, they won’t notice your boys coming up out of the water until it’s too late.”

  Tycho nodded.

  With any luck. If we had luck, we wouldn’t have needed Vlad, or Koschei, and we wouldn’t be sacrificing three ships and a thousand good men to stop a witch from driving us all insane. No, we won’t have any luck tonight.

  The Hellan destroyers swept to the northeast and the guns began to fire. A soft boom here, a distant crack there. And then a few more. And more, a little faster. As the enemy ships came together, they came within range of the enemy guns one by one, and one by one they opened fire.

  Shells exploded in the water, hurling tall white spouts of spray into the air.

  That one was damn close.

  Tycho moved away from the windows.

  I’m only in the way here. I shouldn’t be here at all. I should be in the palace, protecting the Duchess. I should be trying to help Wren…

  A shell struck the hull of the Herakles and the whole ship shuddered for a moment. Men were shouting and screaming outside. The captain calmly issued orders, and the bridge crew calmly obeyed them. Engines at one quarter, all guns fire at will, fire team to the armory, medics to the armory.

  Tycho watched the mechanical precision and stoic demeanor of the sailors around him, wondering if there had ever been a field of battle on dry land like this one.

  Rifles began crackling and popping as the men on deck fired at each other across the water. The Hellan ships were spread out in a long line, cruising slowly past the Eranians with their hissing electric flood lamps glaring up at the enemy decks.

  Directly ahead of the Herakles, the lead Hellan escort ship’s engines exploded in a rolling firestorm that flew up into the sky and painted the rippling waters in yellow and red. Bodies were thrown in every direction and the survivors dove over the railings into the freezing Bosporus.

  Tycho shoved a sweating hand back through his hair and tried to slow the pounding of his heart.

  You never see the shot that kills you. It just kills you, and that’s it.

  He swallowed and went to the rear door of the bridge, exchanged a grim nod with the captain, and headed below.

  Another shell struck the Herakles and Tycho clung to the handrails and walls to keep his balance at the ship groaned and shivered around him. A sailor scrambled past him and Tycho called out, “Where are the wounded?”

  “Aft!” and the sailor was gone.

  Frowning, Tycho headed aft, and down another deck, and aft again until he found the fire team throwing buckets of water on the smoldering decks and hacking at the smoking walls with their axes. One of the men pointed Tycho down the narrow corridor and he hurried to the far side of the ship where he found nine burned and bloodied men lying on the floor with two very young and very nervous medics trying to bandage them up.

  “Major Xenakis, sir!” One of the medics bolted up.

  Tycho waved him back to work. “Give me those bandages, and find some more blankets.” He knelt down beside one of the injured men.

  “Sir, is there something you need?” the medic asked.

  “No.” Tycho began wrapping up a bloody leg. “I just need to be busy right now.”

  They’re out there, right now. My marines. My boys. If not for me, they’d probably be sleeping in some barracks right now, safe and sound. But I had to open my big mouth, and well, here they are.

  The Herakles shook and from down the long corridors the voices of the sailors and the keening of the bulkheads echoed thunderously.

  I had to show off my damn gun. I had to be so smart.

  He recalled his tirade to Salvator, which had caught the Duchess’s attention from the far end of the Chamber of Petitions.

  Why fight a powerful ship when all you need is to disable the crew? Why pit man against man when a gun will kill the enemy at a distance? We don’t need to be strong, we need to be fast and silent and precise.

  One thing had led to another, and within three months he had founded a whole new force of young marines, all trained in gunplay and knife throwing, all trained to swarm a ship silently from fragile little dories wearing nothing more than rags.

  They must be on the Eranian ship by now.

  Tycho tried to focus on his bandaging.

  They’re dying right now. Some of them are dying. And it’s because I put them
there.

  He finished with his patient and moved on to the next one.

  It’s awfully quiet out there right now. Maybe they’re doing well. Maybe they’ve found Koschei. Maybe this stupid plan will work out after all.

  “Good God, sir, what’s that?!”

  Tycho looked up and saw a pale shape snaking its way along the deck. “Aether! It’s the aether, it’s here. Get the men up, get them out of here!” He jumped to his feet and began yanking at the injured man in front of him as the two medics grabbed the arms and legs of another man and fumbled him down the hall, heading farther aft.

  Tycho pulled and pulled, but he could only shift the wounded sailor a few steps and the curling, writhing tendril of white mist was flowing closer and closer to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he dropped the sailor. He stumbled backward the first few paces, keeping his eyes on the mist. Then he heard the screams.

  Men were screaming in the distance, their voices echoing across the waters and in the narrow steel canyons between the ships’ hulls. There were no words, no cries for help, no names, no pleas. Just wordless shrieks of pain and terror.

  Tycho turned and ran back down the hall. At the end of the corridor was a locked door and he pounded on it, yelling, “Let me in! Let me in!”

  But the door remained shut, and there was no sound of anyone on the other side.

  The entire hull of the Herakles shuddered and groaned as the ship began to list to starboard, and the growling and crackling sounds of fire echoed in the distance while yellow and red lights danced on the walls.

  And along the floor of the corridor, the thin fingers of the aether mist crept toward him.

  Tycho pulled out his revolver and glanced around at the walls, but there was only one target. He flattened himself against the inner bulkhead, aimed, and fired.

  The first bullet shattered the window, and the next four shots smashed away the bits of the frame and small chunks of the wall, splintering the wooden panels and revealing a few ragged glimpses of the black night outside.