Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  It’s happening just like Omar said it would. The old witch has all the aether in a hundred leagues at her command now and she’s going to drive us all insane, all for her precious Koschei.

  Tycho turned his back to the ships and faced the dark shore ahead. And then he turned to his right and gazed out over the Strait to the twinkling lights of Stamballa.

  Salvator never came back. Poor bastard. Radu has never liked either of us, but I always thought he disliked Salvator a little less. I guess that Italian charm didn’t go as far as he thought it would. I wonder if he’s in a cell right now. Or just dead.

  “We’ll go back to the barracks by the bridge,” he said quietly.

  Lycus nodded. “We all need more ammunition, and we can meet up with—”

  “No, we’re not regrouping,” Tycho said. “We’re retreating. We’ll lock ourselves inside and wait out the storm in there. We can go down into the cellars. If we’re lucky, the aether won’t reach us there. We’ll keep our heads down and wait for morning.”

  “And what happens in the morning, sir?”

  Tycho shrugged. “With any luck, the sun will come up and we’ll still be alive to see it.”

  Chapter 13

  Omar Bakhoum raced through the streets of Constantia on the back of a massive Hellan warhorse. The beast snorted with every breath and its hooves thundered on the old stone roads of the city. Just ahead of him rode Prince Vlad and just behind him rode several hundred Vlachian archers, all clad in heavy leathers and worn furs, all bearing wickedly curved short bows and thick-bladed swords.

  Faces filled the windows and doorways of the houses and shops and inns, all staring out at the riders in grim silence. Men stood smoking and drinking by the doors, saluting the soldiers as they passed. The children peered down from their bedrooms, some waving little flags or toys at the archers.

  The company charged through the shadows of the city, plunging down long straight avenues, and clattering ever farther away from the Palace of Constantine. Somewhere behind them, the Tower of Justice was still wrapped in its aether cyclone and hundreds of soldiers and servants were still lying on the ground, the veins in their necks bulging, their eyes straining in their sockets, as they screamed in unending terror.

  Lady Nerissa had sent the Italian to bargain with Radu for Koschei’s life, knowing that it would do no good, but the attempt had to be made. She had also sent the dwarf to coordinate a hastily designed rescue plan that also had no hope of success, but again the attempt had to be made. As the screams had filled the palace, no suggestion was dismissed and no option left unused.

  But as the hour drew late and the sun dipped below the horizon, Vlad had seized command. A company of Hellans had escorted the Duchess out of the palace toward another fortress at the western end of the city where she might be safe from the aether. As the palace was evacuated, Vlad had prepared to move his own men to other forts and barracks until a messenger stumbled into the war room, his face pale and drenched in cold sweat. The man had staggered forward, clutched the sleeve of the Vlachian prince, and said, “The deathless ones are at the north gate.”

  And now they raced to the north gate, every soldier they could find in or near the palace, most mounted but many left running along behind the company on foot.

  Omar frowned at the dark road ahead.

  They’re not a deathless army. They’re a mob of half-frozen bodies stumbling through the night, half-crazed, trapped between the truth of their deaths and the fantasy that they might still be alive.

  A few bonfires and a bit of patience is all that’s needed to turn them back, to melt the frozen aether in their blood, and to free their poor souls.

  So how is it that they’re defeating armed men and attacking cities?

  They reached the gate and found it in chaos. Hellan and Vlachian soldiers already swarmed across the walls above, firing burning arrows out into the darkness and screaming for more shafts, more pitch, and more flint. On the ground the men dashed back and forth in search of beams and stones to pile up against the gate itself and already a small mountain of debris obscured the armored doors and steel portcullis.

  Vlad dropped from his saddle, drew his bright shining seireiken, and started barking orders at the archers. The Vlachians leapt from their horses and charged up the stone stairs to the top of the wall where they shouldered their way in and among the Hellans and let loose a fresh torrent of arrows.

  Omar watched Vlad waving his gleaming sword about for a minute, and then the Aegyptian slipped into the shadows and headed down the dark road along the wall. It took him several minutes to get away from the chaos of the gate houses, away from the soldiers, but he found a quiet stretch of road and a small iron stair that spiraled up to the top of the wall. The stair was locked behind a rusty steel door, but a sharp blow from his seireiken shattered the lock and Omar jogged up the creaking steps.

  At the top of the wall, he could see for miles over the dark hills of Thrace where the snow lay in thin icy sheets and the half-dead olive arbors shivered like naked skeletons in the winter wind. And all the way down the long dark road from the distant hills to the north gate of Constantia marched the army of the dead.

  The pale bodies, clothed in rags and dirt and ice, strode down the highway on stiff legs clutching broken sticks and jagged rocks in their cold blue hands. And here and there, Omar saw the flash of steel as the starlight played on the swords that the deathless ones had taken from the fallen soldiers at Saray.

  My God. There really are hundreds of them. Thousands of them.

  The Vlachian arrows rained down on the walking corpses, but precious few of the dead actually fell to the ground. Most of them just staggered on, bristling with arrow shafts. A thick knot of the frozen bodies was already pressed up against the gate, and it was growing thicker with each passing moment.

  It’s hard to imagine how these creatures could possibly breach a defended wall like this, but still, better safe than sorry.

  Omar shuffled along the top of the wall, picking through the discarded tools and weapons on the narrow walkway. Under a tarp he found a coil of rope, one frayed and stiff with frost. He pulled it out and tied the end around the railing of the iron stairs, and threw the coil over the wall.

  “There are easier ways to die, old man,” a woman said.

  Omar smiled, but didn’t look up. “For people like us, there are no easy ways to die.”

  Boots clacked softly on the wall to his right. He turned and saw Nadira lean out over the wall to look at the army of the dead. “I could take your head.”

  Omar made a sour face. “There’s no guarantee that would kill me. I know from personal experience that whole limbs can grow back in less than a day. I’d hate to find out how long it takes to grow a new head.”

  Nadira jerked her chin at the pale corpses below. “What are they so worked up about?”

  “Who knows? Their tongues are all frozen,” Omar said. “And frankly I don’t care. I just don’t want to see this lovely city overrun with filthy dead people.”

  “Such a romantic.”

  “You’re one to talk. How does a nun become a soldier, by the way?”

  She peered at him from her perch down the wall. “You stop being a nun in small steps, bit by bit, as your faith wanes and your heart turns to wood. But you become a soldier all at once, in a moment of steel and blood.”

  Omar grunted. “You’ll have to tell me more about that some time.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Yes, well, either way, I need to go down there and make some sense of all this. Care to join me?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I’d rather kill these things here in Hellas than wait until they cross the Strait and start moving south toward Damascus.”

  Omar smiled. “Ah, Damascus, home of the fabled Damascena. You see? You’re a sentimental old fool, too.”

  She didn’t answer.

  With a weary sigh, Omar
climbed up onto the wall, grabbed hold of the rough rope, and began climbing down toward the ground. It was farther than it looked, and the shadows made it hard to guess where the ground actually was, so when he finally reached the bottom it was both a relief and a surprise.

  “Took you long enough.”

  He frowned at her as she stepped out of the shadow of the wall. “You just jumped, didn’t you?”

  “Why not? A broken leg, a broken neck? It only hurts for a moment. Come on, old timer, let’s see if you’ve learned how to use that shiny knife of yours yet.” Nadira strode past him, her boots crunching through the icy snow toward the road and the shambling press of cold bodies full of arrows.

  Omar followed in no particular hurry. He took the moment to look at her more closely. Nothing about her face had changed except the dirt, and the short hair. He leaned his head to one side.

  Funny that we can cut our hair without it instantly growing back to the same length. Perhaps it’s because hair isn’t truly alive anymore.

  She wore ancient Damascus armor, pitted and dented and missing strips and chunks of steel here and there. Beneath it was a much newer Eranian uniform, blue and white, though thoroughly stained with old blood and new filth. She drew her saber and let the slender curving blade rest on her shoulder as she stomped over the broken ground and through the dead grasses toward the road. Her blade was common steel, but expertly forged by the masters in Damascus and stamped with the telltale veins and marbling and etching that proclaimed the excellence of the weapon.

  My seireiken could reduce it to melted slag simply by touching it. All of that skill, all of that work, all of that beauty reduced to hideous waste without any effort at all.

  The story of my life.

  He followed her and his attention drifted away from the woman’s armored backside to the thousands of corpses groaning and gasping as they shuffled down the road toward the gate. The arrows still flew fast and thick, pelting the half-frozen bodies and the road, thumping with a murderous rhythm.

  This is the strangest battlefield I have ever seen. No shouting, no waving weapons, no flags or standards, no trumpets, no leaders. Just a mob of peasants who are already dead but can’t quite slip free of their frozen flesh.

  Omar wrapped his fingers around the grip of his seireiken. The woven shark skin of the handle was cold and smooth, worn by centuries of use. Instantly, as he touched his weapon, a sea of faces appeared around him floating in the darkness, the faces of the dead, the faces of the souls who rested inside the blade of the seireiken.

  It took some small effort of will to keep the thousands of ghosts at arm’s length. They were all so hungry for attention, so eager to be spoken to, to have their knowledge valued once again as it had been in life. But Omar had spoken with them all, and while many still had some wisdom to offer, many of them were simply too old and too primitive to be of much use anymore.

  The dim shade of Ito Daisuke appeared at Omar’s side, walking silently over the icy snow. “More demons?” the samurai asked.

  “Corpses,” Omar answered quietly so that Nadira would not hear him talking to himself. “Dead bodies with souls still clinging to them, driving them across the land.”

  “Why here?” Daisuke glanced up at the dark walls of Constantia. “Why would the dead all want to come here?”

  “I don’t know. Most of them are just farmers and laborers from Thrace and Vlachia and Raska, I suppose. There’s no reason for them to all come south. Most of them would never have come here in life. And the warmer air during the day would only threaten to melt the aether in their blood and let their souls slip free.”

  “Maybe that’s it then. They seek the warmth that will set them free.”

  “Maybe.” Omar frowned. “But if they only wanted warmth, they could find that at any simple farmer’s hearth. There’s no need to march across the country. And why attack people? Why slaughter soldiers?”

  “I cannot say. The demons of Nippon may be foul and hideous, but they are often of noble blood with noble goals. I haven’t seen such mindless creatures as these before.” Daisuke sighed. “The moon has risen. So beautiful, so serene. A white blade in the sea of stars. Silent. Simple. Perfect.”

  Omar nodded. “I’m going to need your help here in a moment. Can you slaughter an army for me?”

  “Of course,” the dead warrior said. “There may be no honor in the combat itself, but there is honor in defending a beautiful city and the thousands of innocents who dwell there.”

  “I’m glad we agree. You’ll need to focus on the necks and shoulders and hips. Decapitations and dismemberments.”

  “As you wish.”

  Ahead, Nadira had stopped at the crest of a small rise to look down on the road and the shuffling mass of dead flesh flowing toward the city. “Are you ready, old timer?”

  “I am.” Omar drew his seireiken and the light of its blade illuminated the entire road all the way to the gate. Hundreds of the walking dead all flinched and recoiled from the light, stumbling sideways away from his side of the road. But then they looked up and saw the two living warriors standing just above them. “Remind me why we’re doing this?”

  “Because it will be easier to fight them here than inside the city when they’re tearing apart the women and the children with their dead, frozen fingers,” Nadira said as she took her silvery sword off her shoulder and spat on the ground. She wiped her sleeve across her nose and sniffed.

  Omar glanced at her with a despairing look. “You were so demure, once.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re starting to sound like Gideon.” And she dashed down the slope to the road.

  “Gideon? Have you spoken with Gideon lately?” he called after her. “Damn it.”

  Omar charged down the slope after her with his bright seireiken held low and as he plunged into the press of dead bodies, his sword’s light rippled over the faces and hands of the angry corpses. Hissing electric arcs raced up and down the razor-sharp blade, and when he reached the center of the road, he raised his sword.

  In that moment, he was no longer Omar Bakhoum. He allowed the spirit of Ito Daisuke to flow over his body, washing over his skin like a cold wind and gently taking control of his hands and feet.

  And the dead samurai whispered, “Begin.”

  Omar exploded into motion, his blade flying in blazing white arcs high and low on every side as the roaring army of the dead closed in upon him. The burning white blade of the seireiken seared through the necks and shoulders and knees of the mob as Omar lunged left and right, attacking on every side at once, driving back the tide of blue faces again and again.

  Severed heads and limbs fell to the ground with rhythmic precision, and the bodies fell a moment later, quickly piling up into rounded walls of flesh and cloth and dirt. Omar tried to relax as much as he could, allowing the motions of Daisuke’s ghost to guide his body, but his body was still very much flesh and bone, and within the first few moments of the battle Omar could feel his arms and back beginning to ache.

  But the samurai raged on, butchering the dead with relentless skill and artistry. Every cut was perfect and every flourish brought one more corpse to its knees as the blinding seireiken flashed again and again and again.

  The island of motionless bodies around him grew wider with each passing moment, and Omar found himself dashing and lunging around the edge of his abattoir, spiraling slowly outward until the entire width of the road was nothing but dark lumps and mounds from one side to the other.

  “Arrows,” the samurai whispered.

  “What?” Omar spun around and Daisuke slashed a pair of arrows out of the air before they could pierce the Aegyptian’s back. He blinked. “Oh.”

  They returned to the fray but found that the marching dead to the north of him were no longer marching down the road. The stiff-legged corpses were stumbling out into the fields to the east and west, shuffling clumsily through the tall dead grass and the thick snow covered in ice.

  Omar cut dow
n his last blue-faced man and turned to look back toward the city. The moaning mass of the dead still pounded on the gate, pressing against the armored doors as the Vlachian arrows poured down from the top of the wall.

  “Nadira!” He jogged toward the wall, scanning the crowd. “Nadira!”

  “What?”

  He looked to his left and saw her sitting on a small stack of pale blue bodies at the side of the road in the shadows of a tree. Omar grinned. “Tired?”

  “A little bit.” She nodded at the gate. “Is there any chance you can get your friends up there to stop shooting at us while we’re cleaning up this mess?”

  “Probably not.” He slipped his seireiken back into its clay-lined scabbard, instantly plunging the road back into utter darkness. “You mentioned Gideon a moment ago.”

  “Did I?” She shrugged. “I run into him every few hundred years. He’s still carrying a torch for me.”

  “But you don’t feel the same way?”

  She flashed a brief, cold smile. “No, I don’t feel the same way.”

  Omar glanced out at the road again, seeing the small hills and ridges of dead bodies as though for the first time. “Good God. And this is what you do now? Haunt the battlefields, year after year, slaughtering men, filling up graveyards? I had such high hopes for you. Noble ambitions. We were going to save mankind, you and me, and Gideon, and the others. We were going to meet God. We were going to find all the answers, the meaning of it all. Life and death, and the immortal soul…”

  He gestured helplessly at the dark road full of dismembered corpses. “And look at us now. We’re little more than animals. Killers. We’re destroying the world, not saving it.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.” Nadira stood up and rested her saber on her shoulder. “Tonight we’re saving lives, the lives of the innocents living in this city, and the lives of the soldiers who would be out here dying for their lovely duchess if not for us. And when I haunt my battlefields, I’m saving the lives of my people.”