Europa (52 page)

“Who?” Tycho leaned forward. “The Hellans? The Vlachians?”

“The dead. The dead people. I saw the dead people… walking.”

Tycho leaned back and looked at Salvator.

The Italian sighed and stroked his mustache. “The dead. This again. It must be the fifth time this month. What the hell are these people talking about? Walking corpses. Bodies crawling out of their graves. First it was the farmers, then the Vlachians, and now even the Eranians are saying it.”

“Well, they sure as hell saw something.” Tycho grimaced and leaned forward again and caught the Turk’s eyes. “All right, Tahir. Now, tell us, exactly how many of these dead people did you see?”

“Dozens. Hundreds.”

Salvator shook his head and muttered, “It can’t have been that many. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Whoever these
dead
people are, if there were hundreds of them out there, we would have had official reports of them by now. What do you think? Rus mercenaries? Or raiders from Jochi?”

“Maybe.” Tycho cleared his throat. “Tahir. Where did you see the dead people?”

“S… Saray.”

Tycho’s fist closed around the grip of his revolver and he gritted his teeth.

No! That’s impossible.

Salvator paused. “What is that, a fort? I’ve never heard of it. Where is Saray?”

“It’s in the province of Thrace.” Tycho turned to look into the cynical eyes of the Italian knight. “It’s less than eighty miles from here.”

For the next half hour, Tycho and Salvator battered the Turk with questions but the shaking prisoner did not have much else to offer. He had left Stamballa less than ten days ago, crossed the Strait under cover of night, and then simply walked northwest along the main highway, apparently under orders to look for the so-called
deathless army
. And after he found them in Saray, he had turned right around and run all the way back to Constantia where a poorly transacted bribe with a Hellan fisherman had delivered him into the hands of the Constantian army. The last thing Salvator was about to wring from Tahir was that the officer who gave him the order wore a green uniform.

“Well, clearly he’s lying. The Turks wear blue, not green,” the Italian said. “Lying, or colorblind, or insane. Take your pick.”

But Tycho frowned. “No. You and I have seen green uniforms in the empire before, in Alexandria.”

Salvator raised an eyebrow. “The Osirians? Now that is an interesting thought.”

Satisfied that they would get no further details from the prisoner, Tycho and Salvator left the cells and told the guards not to let anyone speak to the Turk without Lady Nerissa’s approval. Then they crossed back through the dark, echoing chasms of the cisterns and began the long, slow climb up to the surface of the city.

“In ancient times, the Persians had an army called the Immortals,” Tycho said. “Maybe this deathless army is something similar.”

“But from where?”

“Probably not from Jochi. They still call their armies the Hordes.” Tycho huffed as he worked his way up the stairs as quickly as he could. “In Rus, I hear they sometimes call Koschei
the Deathless
. Perhaps it’s a Rus army.”

“But Koschei actually is immortal. You and I both saw his little demonstration. It took days to get the blood out of the carpets,” Salvator said. “Are you suggesting there is an entire army of Koscheis marching down the peninsula toward us?”

“If there is, they might be coming to support Koschei himself. Perhaps they heard about his capture, and they’ve come to save him.”

“Maybe. I don’t like it, either way.” The Italian quickened his step. “There’s far too much strangeness in the world these days for my taste. In Italia, there are no cults or immortals or secret armies. Just lies and murder and conspiracy and court intrigue. King versus pope, as it should be. Clean and simple. One wins, one loses, and the rest of us drink and wench the night away, to prepare to do it all again the next day.”

Tycho chewed his lip. “I admit, there’s a certain appeal in that. The politics in your country may be vicious, but at least they’re straightforward. Greed. Lust. Fear. But here, every time I turn around there’s some damn ritual or custom or law that makes everything grind to a halt. Festivals, feast days, mourning days, supplications. Every day, the church complains, the guilds complain, the nobles complain. We have drunken Vlachians and Rus and Raskans brawling in the streets. I can’t understand how Lady Nerissa manages it all.”

They reached the top of the stair and Tycho signed the log book again before they stepped out into the brisk night air.

“Where to now?” the Italian asked.

“Well, we have a thousand Vlachian mounted archers just loitering about the north gate,” Tycho said, rubbing the stitch in his side. “They could be in Saray by dawn. And a messenger could be back here again by noon tomorrow.”

“And then we would know what’s really going on out there.”

“Precisely.” Tycho climbed into the waiting carriage and told the driver to take them to the north gate. Then he leaned back into the padded seat and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Dreaming of raven tresses and long white legs?” Salvator asked.

“Dreaming of bed,” Tycho said.

“Hm. Whatever happened to that girl, anyway?”

Tycho sighed. “She went back to Athens months ago.”

“Oh, I see. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Tycho said. “She left before I could make a fool of myself.”

Salvator laughed. “You’re hopeless.”

Tycho stared out the window at the dark streets of Constantia rattling past. He saw narrow brick row houses huddled shoulder to shoulder, and several shops with huge glass display windows, and a stable full of sleeping draft horses. They passed a small band of men with rifles slung over their shoulders, but they wore no uniforms. Tycho rubbed his eyes and said, “She told me that very same thing herself.”

Wren sat up in her hammock with a sharp gnawing hunger in her belly. The Espani caravel rocked gently at anchor in the Strait and a sickly gray light fell through the cracks in the deck overhead. Boots paced lazily above her, and in the distance she could hear the wooden creaking of other ships nearby. Wren frowned as her fox ears twitched.

“Omar? Are you awake?”

The old man snorted loudly in his hammock and mumbled, “No.”

“I hear something. A ship.”

“We’re in a ship,” he muttered.

“No. Out there. Another ship. It’s coming this way.” She slipped down to the floor and crept along the curving wall toward the stairs that led up to the main deck. The watery rippling sound grew louder, a steady rushing like the distant roar of a waterfall undercut with the heavy thrumming of an inhuman heart beat.

A steam engine!

“Omar? I think you should get up.” She jogged up the steps and emerged into the foggy gloom of a cold morning mist. Beyond the dark brown rails of
La Rosa
floated an endless white cloud that hid the water and the shore. Only the sharp tips of the neighboring ships’ masts could be seen swaying in the fog, and beyond them the blunt walls of Stamballa stood still and silent in the distance.

Dammit Woden, why did it have to be fog? Not aether, just fog. Here I am, thousands of leagues from your holy Ysland, lost in a strange land, the lone voice a reason in a mad world of walking corpses and metal ships, and you have to give me fog? What sort of god does this to his most loyal daughter?

Beside her, a handful of the Espani sailors lingered by the starboard rail, peering into the mist and whispering to each other. Up on the quarter deck, Captain Ortiz gave the heavy brass bell beside the wheel a single clang. A moment later, Omar trudged up the steps and stood beside her. He yawned.

“Something’s coming,” Wren said. “And I think it’s big.”

“Impossible to tell,” Omar said. “Sound bounces around in a fog like this. It carries over the water, it echoes off the walls. I’ll bet you a million darics it’s just a little fishing boat puttering past the anchorage.”

A huge dark shadow formed in the fog, and Wren backed away from the railing. “A million darics?”

The mist parted and the iron-bound prow of a Turkish gunboat slammed into the side of
La Rosa
. The deck shook beneath her feet and Wren stumbled to her knees, but she scrambled up and away from the starboard rail and grabbed hold of a rope lashed to the mast in the center of the deck. To her right she saw Omar running back toward the captain at the wheel, and to her left she saw the Espani sailors pouring up from their bunks below decks with clubs and knives clenched in their fists.

The starboard rail of the caravel cracked and splintered as the gunboat turned hard against it, and the Turkish ironclad swept around and crashed its side against
La Rosa
‘s. Wren peered into the fog, at the dark figures running along the gunwales of the other ship, and suddenly there were men leaping from the gunboat onto the caravel with wide-mouthed pistols and single-edge swords.

The blood thundered in her ears as the Espani sailors crashed into their attackers, and Wren dashed across the deck to the port rail and then back to the quarter deck where Omar and Ortiz stood shouting orders at the crew. As she pounded up the steps, she heard a woman’s voice echoing through the mist and she turned to stare at the deck of the Turkish gunboat.

A woman stood on the iron-bound deck with one foot planted on the back of the small cannon there. She wore a pale blue tunic under a dented breastplate that looked as though it hadn’t been polished in a century. There was no helmet on her head, and a short crop of black hair fluttered over her forehead. Wren almost mistook her for a man, but the woman called out again in Eranian as she pointed her long silvery saber at the Espani ship. Wren grimaced, trying to remember her lessons in the southern tongue, but the woman spoke too quickly for Wren to understand.

What does she want? We passed their check point. This ship doesn’t even have any guns!

Wren bolted to Omar’s side and when she saw that neither he nor the captain was holding the wheel, she grabbed it with one hand as she said, “What’s going on? Who is that woman? What does she want?”

Ortiz muttered something in Espani and then jogged to the steps to fend off one of the invading sailors.

Omar glanced back at Wren. “That woman… She…”

“What? Can you tell what she said? What does she want?”

Omar’s expression hardened. “She wants me.” He gripped his seireiken tightly, but did not draw it out.

“You? Why? Do you know her?”

Omar nodded. “That’s Nadira.”

Who the devil is Nadira, you old fool? Can’t you ever just answer a question without making me ask another one?

But Omar was already jogging away to help Ortiz. Wren frowned at the wooden steering wheel before her and then gazed out over the deck of
La Rosa
where a dozen Espani sailors were grappling and stabbing a dozen Turkish sailors. Above the fray she peered into the mist, seeing nothing but knowing that somewhere out there was the southern shore of the Strait and the walls of Stamballa.

Well, my good lord Woden, if the Turks aren’t going to play nice, then there’s no reason to give them what they want, is there?

Wren spun the steering wheel to the left and felt the caravel lean gently to port as the combined force of the wind in the reefed sail and the momentum of the gunboat slowly spun
La Rosa
around her mooring. Watching the tips of the masts of the nearby ships and the walls of Stamballa, she waited for the pair of battle-locked ships to come about until they were both pointed out into the Strait and the northern shore of Constantia, and then she straightened up the wheel. For a moment the ship seemed to come to a full stop, but then she felt a ragged tremble in the deck and they began to move forward again.

Yes! We’re dragging the anchor and moving away from the Turkish shore! Now they’ll have to get back on their own ship unless they want to be dragged all the way to Constantia!

Wren looked down at the ship again and her satisfaction evaporated. On her left, a Turk shot one of the Espani in the belly and then charged up onto the quarter deck. Wren let go of the wheel and reached out for the Turk with her right hand, willing the frail aether in the fog to rise up against the man. A swirl of white rippled up from the deck and slapped the man sideways, sending him tumbling over the rail and into the water.

A second Turk in blue jogged up the steps right behind his fallen comrade, and Wren felt a cold hollowness in her arm. The aether was too thin now, too scattered. She’d barely managed to push the first man overboard. So she shook her right hand, unwinding the sling around her wrist, and yanked a stone out of the pouch on her belt as the second Turk charged across the deck with his cutlass raised to strike her down. She’d only just managed to get the stone in place when the man slashed at her.

Wren dodged back, keeping the huge wooden steering wheel between her and her attacker. She hurled her stone at him through the spokes of the wheel, only to have it glance harmlessly off the man’s armguard. “Omar? I could use some help here!”

The Turk dashed around the wheel and she dashed back toward the stairs down to the main deck, where she saw yet another man in blue waiting for her. She shouted, “Nine hells!” and threw up her right hand. The aether answered, rolling up against the man and sending him reeling back several steps. And while he kept his footing and he kept his weapon, the momentary distraction was time enough for Wren to wrap the leather strap of her sling around the man’s neck and yank him off balance and wheel him about to use as a shield against the swordsman charging down from the quarter deck behind her.

The swordsman lunged, Wren shoved her hostage into the attack, and blood spattered the deck. As her prisoner went limp in her hands and the swordsman raised his blade again, the armored woman on the gunboat shouted “Bas-ast!” and the swordsman stepped back and lowered his weapon.

I know that word. Stop? Enough?