Wren the Fox Witch (Europa #3: A Dark Fantasy) (30 page)

“And you.”

Nadira turned and started back up the steps. In her mind she tried to picture the world beyond the borders of the empire, beyond the peoples and the cities that she had known for two thousand years. She conjured up new cities, but they looked just like Damascus, and the people all looked like Persians, and they all fought with sabers.

She smiled.

Well, I’ll just have to see it when I get there. I wonder what Nippon is like.

She climbed to the top of the stairs and left the tower. Out in the courtyard, she paused to glance about, wondering which way led out of the palace grounds, when the droning of the airship engines suddenly grew louder and sharper. She looked up and saw the vast round nose of the first balloon come over the south wall of the palace, heading straight toward her.

The other two airships were a bit farther behind and looked to be farther out over the water, but this one was already over the wide green park and coming closer to the little white tower and the broad gravel courtyard with every passing moment.

Nadira sighed, turned toward the largest gate in sight, and started walking with her empty hands resting in the hidden pockets of her borrowed green dress. She was still walking when the bombs began to fall behind her, shaking the earth and hurling grass and gravel at her back. And she was still walking, with her hands in her pockets, when she heard the first building crumble and fall to the ground behind her.

But she didn’t look back.

Chapter 25. Slaughter

Omar jogged through the streets of Stamballa with one hand clutching his sheathed seireiken. Koschei pounded along behind him, his bare feet slapping on the cold cobblestones. Up ahead they could hear men yelling and rifles firing and swords clashing, and all of the sounds echoing and rolling over on themselves in the narrow corridors of the city streets.

Damn those idiots!

Omar turned the last corner and saw the battle raging all the way down the street to the edge of the water. Above them the roofs of nearly every house were burning brightly, the flames roared loudly, the smoke vomited upward in filthiest black, and the dying timbers cracked and collapsed left and right. Entire roofs gave way all at once and crashed into the homes, and some houses were beginning to lean downhill toward the sea.

“Stand down!” Omar yelled.

No one heard him.

Koschei barreled past with a mad bellow and leapt onto the backs of two Turks in blue. The Rus warrior sank his elbow through one man’s skull as he wrapped his other arm around a man’s neck and choked him into oblivion. Then Koschei picked up an Eranian saber in one hand and a brick in the other, and screamed.

Half the men on the street, even in the middle of swinging a blade or aiming a gun, looked up and saw the half-naked Rus barbarian roaring at them, his arm painted in blood from the elbow down.

A rifle fired and the bullet tore through Koschei’s shoulder, spraying a fine red mist into the air, but the warrior only screamed louder as he rushed down the street with his weapons raised. The saber hacked artlessly at necks and stabbed brutally at bellies while the brick smashed left and right through jawbones and eye sockets. Koschei chopped off hands and arms and ears and legs, and he crushed skulls and shattered ribs. And all the while he screamed with joy as the hot blood splashed across his face and the bodies fell to the earth in pieces all around him.

For a moment, the Turks converged on the invader, all their long Numidian rifles coming to bear on a single target. But the Hellans and Vlachian sprang on them from behind and chaos erupted in every quarter.

Within a few racing heartbeats, Omar saw the Turks plunging down the alleys and side streets, dashing away from the marines and away from the rampaging, blood-soaked monster called Koschei the Deathless. Men fell dead to the ground in pieces, dripping with blood and bile and urine and feces, and men fell writhing to the ground, shrieking like mad women and crying like frightened infants for mercy and death.

Dear God…

Omar stared. A moment ago there had been dozens of men struggling and running and grappling and shouting. Now there were piles of shredded flesh and shattered bones wrapped in blood-soaked rags. Terrified faces stared up at the sky, frozen in the instant of death. A river of human garbage trickled down the center of the street between the burning houses. And in the center of the carnage stood a bloody god of war, an ugly barbarian from the distant north who churned men into filth, and could never die.

A sharp metallic taste washed up from Omar’s stomach and burned at his teeth and tongue, and he hastily swallowed it back down.

Look on my works and despair, oh Lord, for I am thy humble servant, loyal and true, and I have made nothing but monsters and death in your name.

Forgive me.

The gunfire stopped. The yelling stopped. Only the fires went on growling and crackling as they consumed the houses and hurled bright cinders down on the men in the road.

A moment ago, these things were men, with thoughts and families and dreams and fears. And now they’re just red pieces of dirt.

Not because of humanity, or fate.

Not even because of Koschei.

Because of me.

Omar coughed on the smoke as he walked slowly and carefully down the street. His boot slipped on the blood and meat more than once, but he didn’t fall. He passed Koschei, who was busy dismembering one of the dead Turks for no apparent reason. He passed the grim-faced Vlachians and the weary young Hellans. And at the bottom of the road, just above the docks and the dark waters of the Bosporus, he found the two princes.

Radu lay on his back, his broken sword near his hand, his face still defiant and proud as he glared up at his older brother. Vlad towered over him, his burning seireiken hovering over his younger brother’s face, blinding him with its light, scorching him with its heat.

Omar ignored them both. He walked right past them to the edge of the dock, fell to his knees, and vomited into the water. His stomach churned and his throat burned and his mouth ran slick with acid and slime as his nostrils filled with the stench of it. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt the tears stinging him as they seeped out and ran down his cheeks.

Ysland. Vlachia. Constantia. Stamballa. And how many more that I never noticed?

How many thousands… millions more?

How many died in agony? How many live on in agony?

Four and a half thousand years… of this.

He wept and retched, and eventually he had nothing left to give to the water, and he collapsed onto his side, staring out over the Strait at the distant skyline of Constantia in silence. For a time he simply lay there on the ground, shaking, clutching his belly with one hand and his eyes with the other. But eventually the emotion receded, drawing back into whatever reservoir it had come from, leaving him empty and cold.

I am the stone cast upon still waters. See how the ripples grow as they churn life into blood and dust.

I am the stone that cast itself. I am worse than death. Death is a release. I am a plague, and they shall know me by the ruins in my wake.

Have I become the destroyer of nations? Am I a deceiver so powerful I have deceived myself into believing I am something noble?

What am I?

His mind awoke from the torment of his heart and he began to think again. He became aware of the fact that he was indeed lying on the ground and weeping in front of dozens of men, and the shame of it forced him to sit up, wipe his face, and spit away the last remnants of bile in his mouth. He got to his feet, straightened his shirt and coat, and rested his hand on his sword, all while still gazing out over the water.

He saw the two airships looming over the channel, drifting ever closer to where he stood on the shore, and he saw the third one in the distance dropping tiny black specks over the Seraglio Point, and he heard the soft thumping and crackling of the bombs bursting inside the Palace of Constantine.

Nadira… I’m so sorry.

When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw with some surprise that Radu was still alive and Vlad had stepped away and sheathed his sword. The younger brother still sat on the ground, unarmed, and both of them were staring at the Aegyptian.

Behind them, the Hellans and Vlachians had come down the street to stand just a short distance from the docks to watch him in silence. Farther up the road, Koschei alone stood in the street, hurling bits of the dead Turks up onto the burning roofs and laughing like a drunkard.

Omar drew out his seireiken and the soldiers stepped back from its searing light. The old sword felt heavier than it ever had before and he nearly dropped it before he could tighten his fingers around the shark skin grip.

God forgive me.

He started to move but a flash of gold caught his eye and he paused. It was something small, something hanging out from Radu’s shirt. A little golden heart.

Omar knelt beside the prince and poked the trinket with a single finger. He whispered, “Koschei’s?”

Radu nodded.

Omar held out his hand and the wide-eyed prince yanked the chain over his head and dropped the golden heart into his palm. Omar closed his hand around it, stood up, and began walking back up the street. The soldiers parted before him, dashed back to either side to let him pass. He climbed the slope of the road, feeling for the first time how truly steep it really was, and how sharply the houses seemed to lean in order to keep their walls true and plumb.

He stepped on things. Red things, black things, blue cloth. His mind still recoiled from it, but his blood and bones had no strength left for fear or pain or misery. His body was numb and empty. He walked over the dead bodies, up and up the hill, until he stood before Koschei the Deathless.

The Rus giant grinned at him. “Grigori! There you are!”

“Yes, here I am, and God forgive me for it.” He looked up into the barbarian’s shining black eyes, and shoved his seireiken into the man’s chest. The sun-steel blade slipped in as though drenched in oil, and the man’s flesh burst into flame at the touch of the white-hot blade.

Koschei reached for the blade, only to have it incinerate his fingers on contact, and he fell to the ground, his teeth clenched, and only a wordless grunting growl emanating from his throat. Omar stood over him, held out his fist, and then let the little golden heart fall. The trinket struck the blazing white sword and vanished with a soft hiss.

Instantly, Koschei fell still and silent. The flames quickly engulfed his body, which slumped down flat on the ground. The seireiken burned through the flesh in half a breath, and then toppled over onto the ground, where the cobblestones began to glow a dull red and the puddles of blood began to boil. Omar picked up the weapon slowly, and by the time he had raised it up to look at the blade, it was entirely clean, washed pure by its own divine fire. Omar exhaled slowly and slipped the sword away.

Then he walked back down the street to the bottom where the soldiers and marines and princes stood, still watching him in curious and wary silence. He looked over at one of the young Hellan marines, and said, “Take me back to the palace now, please. I’m ready to leave.”

Chapter 26. Wreckage

Wren stood very still in the half-light of the underground chamber. Two of their torches had gone out and no one had relit them. Everyone stood or sat in silence gazing up at the black ceiling, listening.

The bombs thumped and thudded, and tiny trickles of dust fell on the silent clerks and servants and soldiers.

Boom, boom-boom… boom.

Wren’s fox ears twitched with each reverberation as she tried to guess exactly where the bombs were falling.

They’re not falling on top of us, that’s for sure.

As the minutes passed, the detonations grew fainter by degrees until the floor stopped shuddering and the inkwells stopped clinking and even Wren herself had trouble hearing the deep vibrations in the earth.

“They’re moving away,” she said softly.

Tycho nodded. “But there are three of them out there. They might pass over the city one by one. The next one might be coming.”

“Unless Vlad’s plan worked,” Wren said. “What if they reached Stamballa and managed to distract the other two airships? Maybe only one of them is over Constantia.”

“I have little faith in the prince at this point,” Salvator said. He stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Still, it may be that the airships were ordered to attack different targets. One to bomb the palace. The others to attack the bridges or harbors.”

“Maybe.” The major turned away and caught the attention of a young soldier standing near one of the extinguished torches. “Corporal, I want you to run up and take a quick look around outside. Just get a glimpse of where the airships are and which way they’re going, and come back. Understood?”

The young man nodded and jogged out through the main doors.

“I should go too,” Wren said.

“Just wait a moment. Let’s see what the corporal finds,” Tycho said. “If there’s trouble out there, we could find ourselves down here for a very long time. And to be blunt, you’re the strongest weapon we have to protect the Duchess. So if you need aether to protect her, then I want to keep you down here near the aether.”

Wren pouted.

Well, he did say I’m the strongest one down here. I suppose I can’t be too upset with him.

It took several minutes for the corporal to cross back through the length of the Sunken Palace, climb the long stair to the surface, and scout the area, and then come back to report. When he did jog back in through the doors, he was sweating and breathing hard.

“All clear, sir,” he said breathlessly. “There’s only one airship on our side of the Strait, and it’s not dropping bombs anymore. It’s moving north along the waterfront at the moment. The other two airships are out over the water. One of the men upstairs thinks they might be there to bomb our ships, eventually.”