by Neil Enock
So, this was it. This was what would save her country? Yet, even as she held it, she knew there was more to it. She turned slowly, and he was there.
He stood in the middle of the room, his black soldier’s cloak rustling in a wind that wasn’t there. Around him, wolves made of the rotting, black ice of spring crowded around his feet. The old man stared at her. Not accusing. Not eager. He simply waited. The wolves sat on their haunches, expectant.
She stood before the throne beneath the mountain and put the Horn to her lips.
And blew.
The sound boomed through the cavernous palace. Rang off the icicles in the passage beyond like a chiming band of the Moscow Concert Hall. The wolves sat up straighter. The rotting ice of their forms grew more solid. Clearer until they shone like the finest diamonds, the bared fangs quivering with eagerness. Anya drew back her lips, gasped, her throat raw with the cold like she’d swallowed razor blades.
She blew it again.
The sound boomed past the mountain and into the valley. She saw it reach out, swirling the snow and wind. She saw more men in thick gray coats and helmets fighting through the snows stop and listen. The wind picked up, rustling their thick winter garb, biting them with the bitterest cold. They screamed, shielding themselves, hunkering down as the buffeting winds ripped through them.
Anya gasped; her mouth hot with the bloody iron taste. She blew again.
The long note rang deep. The wolves of ice lifted their muzzles and howled with it. The old man touched his sword and drew it. He turned and left the space beneath the mountain. The wolves carried past him, running with the wind that raced out before them, carrying them beyond the frozen shapes of the men in gray, flesh blackened, frost crusting them, and arms raised like statues in torment. The wolves surged past, rising into the air. The wind in the valley churned with them, ripping the snow from the trees into a column of ice.
Anya took her lips from the horn. Breathed in.
And blew once more.
The Russian Winter surged from the valley, spreading across the country. Rivers cracked as they froze. Men and women hunched in their homes and huddled near stoves. She saw them all. Saw the stormy winter clouds race in every direction. North and south and east and west. The winds howled with the voice of wolves. And above them all came the thundering roar of the Horn.
Winter swept down, deepening. To the west it blanketed the landscapes in drifts of white. Aircrafts painted with the Iron Cross sputtered and struggled. Tanks creaked as they fought to advance, their engines freezing. Trucks ground to a halt. Trains screamed, ice encrusting them, streaming away in ribbons of steam as they struggled over tracks shining with frost. Men died huddled for warmth and were buried in the snow.
The winds swept through broken buildings, attacking men in red and gray without distinction. Freezing hands and feet and faces. The ground hardened like cement in the terrible cold. She could fairly hear the earth tighten in the grip of true winter. As if on a map, she saw the dark advance from the west stall and halt across her homeland. She saw the men who ordered the deaths of her family sit back and order preparations as the winter rattled the windows of their snug, brutal buildings. She saw forges billow smoke and factories rumble to life with the toils of industry, turning white snow black with ash and smog.
The note died. Her thoughts receded from the country and back into the valley, down the passage and into the palace beneath the earth. She lowered the Horn and touched her numb, blue lips. She exhaled, and the thin puff of warmth died in the air.
Slowly she sat down on the throne at the root of the mountain. She sighed, a sound that whispered through the room of ice and stone and crystal. She set the Horn in her lap and closed her eyes, and dreamed her winter dreams of palaces and czars, and a Russia that had once been.
—— « o » ——
Jason Lane
Jason Lane is an aspiring author from Whitehorse, Yukon. He was born, raised, and educated there with brief forays to the south where the weather is milder. He has a number of self published works and has been featured in numerous anthologies.
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About the Editor
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Details
Fantastic Trains
An Anthology of Phantasmagorical Engines and Rail Riders
edited by Neil Enock
Copyright © 2019 All individual contributions
copyright by their respective authors
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by
EDGE-Lite
An Imprint of
HADES PUBLICATIONS, INC.
P.O. Box 1714,
Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2L7,
Canada
The EDGE-Lite Team:
Producer: Brian Hades
Acquisitions Editor: Michelle Heumann
Edited by: Heather Manuel
Cover Design: 100covers
e-Book Design: Mark Steele
e-Book ISBN: 978-1-77053-200-7
* * * * *
All rights reserved. Under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-Book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
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EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing and Hades Publications, Inc. acknowledges the ongoing support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts.
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