The Ouroboros Cycle, Book Three: A Long-Awaited Treachery

by G. D. Falksen

  Varanus accepted Vaclav’s hand up and leaned against him while her knee began to pull itself together again.

  “My thanks for that,” Varanus said, kicking her leg a few times to be sure that the joint worked.

  “Hardly a call for thanks,” Vaclav replied. “It would seem that we are an effective pair.”

  Varanus looked down at the bodies and grinned slightly.

  “I noticed that as well.”

  “Are you able to walk?” Vaclav asked.

  Varanus tested her weight on the leg and nodded. “Well enough.”

  “Then we should hurry before they are missed,” said Vaclav.

  “Agreed.” Varanus frowned and asked, “Father Vaclav, do you believe that Ekaterine is still alive?”

  Vaclav was silent for a few moments before he answered, “I do not believe that a just God would permit two such fast friends to be parted for long.”

  “But would a just God permit this?” Varanus asked, motioning to the corpses on the floor.

  Vaclav sighed sadly. “That is the question we ask ourselves.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  •

  Ten Days Later

  It was morning and all the windows in the house had been left open, flooding the exterior passages with sunlight. It had been this way from dawn until dusk every day for the past week, evidently Margaret’s attempt to trap the young and the weak who might still be hiding. The guard had been doubled yet again, which Varanus hoped would eventually tax the enemy to the breaking point. There were only so many people Margaret could trust with weapons, and as their numbers dwindled, they might be forced to leave one of the gates unguarded, making an attempt at escape possible.

  Varanus paused at the entrance to a window-lined hall that looked out onto one of the courtyards. Ahead of her, two of Margaret’s soldiers walked through the sunlight as they went on patrol. Midway across, one of the soldiers glanced back to see that they were not being followed, but the shadows were enough to keep Varanus hidden. When the soldier resumed her walk, Varanus glanced at Vaclav and nodded.

  Keeping low, Varanus dashed across the hall, her arms outstretched, an axe in either hand. She had the plague doctor’s mask down over her face to protect herself from the sun. Through the tinted lenses of the mask’s eyes, she watched the two soldiers grow nearer and nearer. She ran silently, a trick she had learned over the preceding days made possible by the soft leather soles of her boots.

  She had measured her pace well. The hall could be observed from the gatehouse outside and also from a balcony that ran above it. She could not risk killing in so brightly lit a place, but still the soldiers would have to die all the same. She waited until they had passed from the sunlight into the shadows of the corridor beyond, and then she quickened her pace to meet them.

  A short distance from the soldiers where her footfalls might be heard, Varanus dropped to her knees and slid between them, striking each in the back of the leg with her axes. Taken by surprise, they cried out and fell to the ground, grabbing for their weapons. Varanus spun around and stood as Vaclav ran across the hall to join her, his larger build making it impossible for him to move silently. Varanus knocked one soldier aside with a sweeping blow and then brought one axe down upon the collar of the second. Vaclav reached her just as she finished killing the second soldier, and he drove his sword into the first.

  They stood there for a few moments and looked at one another. Vaclav wiped blood from his face with his sleeve. Varanus reached up and touched her own face, hidden by the mask. Her hand came away with blood as well.

  “It seems the mask was a good idea, liebchen,” Korbinian said, lounging against the wall. He turned and pointed down the corridor. “I say, who is that?”

  Varanus turned and looked where Korbinian indicated. She saw a scholar in robes standing a dozen feet away where the corridor intersected with another. The young man held a bundle of scrolls in his arms, and he stared at Varanus and Vaclav in wide-eyed silence. Vaclav slowly stood and stretched his empty hand out toward the scholar.

  “Wait...” he said.

  “He’s going to run,” Varanus said.

  “Wait...” Vaclav repeated, taking a step toward the scholar.

  The scholar turned and fled, his precious scrolls tumbling to the floor around him in his haste to escape.

  Vaclav sighed loudly and lowered his head. “That was unnecessary.”

  “Unsurprising,” Varanus corrected, lifting her mask. “You are rather tall and intimidating, Father Vaclav.”

  “ ‘Intimidating’?” Vaclav asked. “This said to me by the Plague Doctor?”

  Varanus chuckled at this. She looked back the way they had come to see if anyone else had seen them. The sunlit hall was still empty.

  “We should hurry,” she said. “The poor fellow will bring more soldiers.”

  “We are late to meet Djata and Joan,” Vaclav added. “God willing, they have reached the kitchens already.”

  “At this rate, they will have taken the food and left without us,” Varanus replied, her tone dry.

  Vaclav simply grinned.

  They continued on quickly, rushing from room to room, ducking into and out of antechambers and corridors as necessary to avoid detection. It was a practice that they refined over the course of their ordeal, and it served them well.

  “Soldiers,” Korbinian said, moments before Varanus saw them: four men and women in armor and bearing rifles, who had just entered the corridor ahead of them.

  “Quick!” Varanus hissed.

  She grabbed Vaclav’s arm and pulled him through the nearest doorway and into a small music room. She and Vaclav crouched behind a painted baroque harpsichord that some Shashavani must have had imported two centuries ago. They waited there as the soldiers marched past. It would not be long before the bodies were spotted or the hapless scholar alerted someone to their presence, so as soon as the soldiers had gone, Varanus and Vaclav hurried back into the corridor and down the nearest flight of stairs.

  Varanus could already smell the scents of cooking meat and bread wafting up from the kitchens three floors below them. She descended quickly, tucking her axes away and drawing her sword to leave one hand free. Like Vaclav, she also carried a firearm—in her case, the elephant gun taken from Luka’s chambers—but they both knew better than to use a loud weapon until there was no other choice.

  On the landing above the kitchens, they saw Joan the Breton waiting for them with Djata of Mali—the great mathematician from Timbuktu. Joan carried a pair of swords, and Djata had a heavy bow similar to the one that had been used by Thoros. The sight of it made Varanus shudder slightly from the memory.

  “All quiet below?” Vaclav asked softly.

  Djata nodded and replied, “There were some soldiers but we....”

  “In the closet,” Joan explained, nodding toward a small room that stood nearby. The door was closed, but blood was already beginning to seep out from beneath it.

  “Then let us be to business,” Varanus said.

  “To business,” Djata agreed.

  Varanus led the way down the final set of stairs and into the kitchen below. It was not the main kitchen, which sat near the Great Hall, but a smaller one intended to feed the scholars and servants of the east wing as they went about their business. It was a narrow room made entirely of stone, with a single great hearth over which sat a pot of boiling stew. A dozen cooks and their attendants were there in the midst of their work, and they froze at the sight of the blood-covered group that had just entered.

  “Is anyone armed?” Vaclav asked.

  “I see none,” Joan replied.

  “Nor I,” said Djata.

  “Then they live,” Varanus said, advancing into the room. She opened the sack she carried. “Let us get some food.”

  The threat of hunger had plagued them ever sinc
e the start of the coup, but as the days passed and injuries were suffered and healed, that hunger had grown. Varanus herself was famished, though she suspected that the others, being older, were less severely affected. Still, she pushed up her mask and quickly devoured a freshly baked loaf of bread while the others began shoving foodstuffs into their sacks.

  “P-please...” stammered the head cook, falling to his knees and holding up his hands. “Please don’t harm us. We have done nothing!”

  “Be at peace,” said Vaclav, showing his empty hand. “Unlike your new master, we mean you no harm. But we must take your food.”

  “But we will be punished for it!” the cook protested.

  “Not severely,” said Joan, tasting some of the stew. “Mmm, this is very good.” She held out the spoon to Djata. “Try it.”

  Djata took a sip and nodded with approval. “Very good. A pity we have nothing to carry it in.”

  Varanus, busy shoving bread and dried fruits into her bag, almost did not see Korbinian sitting upon the table until she reached for another loaf and found him in its place.

  “Liebchen,” Korbinian said, “I wonder something.”

  “And what is that?” Varanus asked absently.

  “There was a boy, was there not? Tending the fire?” Korbinian tapped his chin. “What ever has become of him?”

  Varanus looked over her shoulder and saw that Korbinian was right: the little boy who had, indeed, been tending the fire when they first arrived was suddenly gone. But where had he gone? He must have slipped out of the kitchen by one of the staircases.

  “Where is the boy?” she asked the cook.

  At this question, the cook’s face became pale and he drew back.

  “Please, you must understand,” he said. “We had no choice.”

  “The boy?” Djata echoed, looming over him.

  “The last time you took food from a kitchen, the cooks were made to repay in kind! Three of them, to death!” The cook backed away until he ran against a wall and could retreat no further. “They said it would only be a matter of time before you tried it again....”

  Varanus closed her eyes and swore “Merde.”

  “Check the stairs! Quickly!” Joan shouted.

  She ran for the main stairs while Djata checked the back staircase they had just used. He ducked around the corner and there was a gunshot. He turned back with a bullet hole in his chest and a frown upon his lips.

  “Soldiers,” he said. “More than a dozen.” And with that, he turned into the stairway again and began shooting at their attackers.

  “This way is clear!” Joan announced from the main staircase, before charging up the steps.

  Varanus hurried to follow Joan. Glancing back, she spotted Vaclav and Djata making a fighting retreat toward them.

  The main stairs emptied into a passage leading to the dining hall that served that wing of the house. At first the area seemed empty, but as Varanus turned, she saw a group of soldiers rushing at her and Joan from further along the passage. A moment later, two more came at them from the hall itself. Varanus stabbed one in the gut and threw up her hand to ward off another’s attack. His sword cut deeply into her palm, but it did not succeed in severing anything important.

  Roaring in pain and suddenly heady at the smell of blood, Varanus stabbed at her next attacker. Most of her blows were deflected by the soldier’s chainmail, but two hit home, forcing him back. Behind her, Joan threw one of her opponents to the ground with a heavy shoulder blow and killed him with the sword in her left hand, meanwhile deflecting the strikes of the other with her right. Varanus quickly turned back and stabbed Joan’s remaining opponent in the upper thigh before leaving Joan to finish him off.

  At that moment, Vaclav and Djata burst out of the staircase and into the passage. Vaclav threw himself at the nearest press of attackers, hacking at them with heavy overhand blows, while Djata drove away any who sought to flank him. Varanus and Joan quickly rushed forward to help them.

  As Djata reached for a new arrow, another soldier appeared at the top of the stairs. The ambush party on the other side had found them. Djata reversed the arrow in his hand and stabbed the new attacker through the throat before shooting his intended target.

  “We must withdraw!” Joan shouted, blood gushing from a deep gash that had been torn into her side. Vaclav and Djata were similarly injured from the sword blows and gunfire of the enemy. “Into the dinning hall!”

  Varanus joined them in a fighting withdrawal, only then realizing that she too was sorely injured. Despite the protection offered by her coat and smock, she had been cut to the flesh along her arms and ribs. In the hall, Varanus, Djata, and Joan held the doorway while Vaclav dragged one of the tables to them. Together, they upended the heavy object—designed to withstand the might of the Shashavani—and barricaded the doorway.

  Varanus quickly unslung her elephant gun and joined Djata in firing upon their attackers, who quickly withdrew. As the enemy fell back, Varanus felt herself shiver at the realization that only a few of them were dead. Even the gravely wounded were able to drag themselves to safety. This revelation chilled Varanus as much as it fascinated her. Unless they made certain of a kill, one of the enemy might be up again and hunting for them a few days later—or a few minutes later, if the enemy was among the Living. She had always appreciated the resilience of the Shashavani. What she had not appreciated was just what that meant for their situation. Their guerilla attacks had certainly cost Margaret some soldiers, but perhaps the death toll was not nearly as high as Varanus had hoped.

  “Focus on the now, liebchen,” Korbinian murmured. “Whether they live or die, you must live.”

  Varanus nodded quietly to herself. She glanced at Djata, who stood behind the table with an arrow strung, waiting for an enemy to appear again. Varanus quickly stood and shouldered her firearm.

  Behind them, Vaclav and Joan were busy checking the doors of the hall. Each one, it seemed, was locked and barred from the other side, which Varanus ascertained from their conversation.

  “A trap!” Joan exclaimed, before swearing several times in a variety of languages. “What ignominy!”

  “It could be worse,” Vaclav said, as he slammed his shoulder into the next door, testing how securely it stood.

  “Quite so,” Joan agreed. “They could have marksmen on the balcony above us.” She pointed upward.

  Vaclav looked up and frowned. “Kindly don’t invite the Devil with good ideas.” He slammed his shoulder into the door again. “I think this one is weakest.”

  “How can you not break down a simple door?” Joan chided, even as she threw her own shoulder into it.

  “This whole castle was built with the Shashavani in mind,” said Vaclav. “I suspect even the Eristavi would require a few minutes’ work to get this open.”

  Varanus was about to listen further, but she suddenly saw a fresh group of soldiers rush into the passage and advance in their direction. They carried rifles, muskets, and bows in addition to their swords, and their fire quickly drove Varanus and Djata into hiding again.

  “There’s no need to rush, Father Vaclav!” Varanus called. “They’re merely attacking again!”

  She felt slightly wicked saying it, but it was what she thought.

  In between volleys, she and Djata popped above the barrier to shoot again. This time, Varanus did her damnedest to inflict fatal wounds to the head or the heart. Let Margaret’s troops try to stand again after she was finished with them!

  Suddenly, the crowd of enemy soldiers parted, and a large man dressed in plate armor stepped into view. Varanus vaguely recognized him as Alexios of...well, of someplace. Anatolia perhaps. They had passed a few words over the years, but their interests had never really converged. And now it seemed their interests were quite different. She wished to be alive, and Alexios clearly did not agree. He carried one of the new Maxim guns, which
was supported by a leather cord looped over one shoulder.

  Varanus felt very displeased at the thought that a weapon she had purchased was going to be fired at her.

  A moment later, Alexios began shooting, raking the barricade with bullets, a number of which even punched through the heavy reinforced wood. Varanus felt a sting in her belly where two rounds had struck her and passed through. She tasted blood in her mouth, but it was nothing she could not handle. She sprang to her feet and fired both barrels of the elephant gun at Alexios, but one shot was intercepted—likely an accident—by two of the soldiers, who fell to the ground in a bloody heap. The other bullet tore a chunk out of Alexios’s arm, but he simply switched hands and kept shooting.

  That pause was long enough to give Djata an opening. He rose up and shot three arrows in rapid succession. Each hit Alexios in the chest. Two were deflected by the heavy armor, but one penetrated deeply—all the way through the flesh if Alexios’s sudden expression of pain was any indication. But again, it did little good. Alexios was Living. He kept coming, and his next burst of fire tore more holes in the table and ripped Djata’s left side to pieces.

  Djata fell to the ground beside Varanus, who dropped flat to avoid being torn asunder as well. She still felt one bullet graze her head, cutting a path through her flesh and even biting into the side of her skull. She quickly felt the wound, but realized with relief that it had not penetrated her brain. She was not yet old enough to take a bullet in the brain without some repercussions. Thankfully the blood that covered her gloves was only from those still in the Shadow, and touching the wound did not hurt. But she realized how foolish she had been all the same.

  Beside her, Djata sat up, grunting with pain. His arm and part of his leg had been torn apart even to the bone, and he would not be using his limbs for some time to come—not without fresh blood or plenty of food to stimulate healing. But he was still in the fight, and he held out his hand to Varanus.