Europa (61 page)

“Major Xenakis, sir!” One of the medics bolted up.

Tycho waved him back to work. “Give me those bandages, and find some more blankets.” He knelt down beside one of the injured men.

“Sir, is there something you need?” the medic asked.

“No.” Tycho began wrapping up a bloody leg. “I just need to be busy right now.”

They’re out there, right now. My marines. My boys. If not for me, they’d probably be sleeping in some barracks right now, safe and sound. But I had to open my big mouth, and well, here they are.

The
Herakles
shook and from down the long corridors the voices of the sailors and the keening of the bulkheads echoed thunderously.

I had to show off my damn gun. I had to be so smart.

He recalled his tirade to Salvator, which had caught the Duchess’s attention from the far end of the Chamber of Petitions.

Why fight a powerful ship when all you need is to disable the crew? Why pit man against man when a gun will kill the enemy at a distance? We don’t need to be strong, we need to be fast and silent and precise.

One thing had led to another, and within three months he had founded a whole new force of young marines, all trained in gunplay and knife throwing, all trained to swarm a ship silently from fragile little dories wearing nothing more than rags.

They must be on the Eranian ship by now.

Tycho tried to focus on his bandaging.

They’re dying right now. Some of them are dying. And it’s because I put them there.

He finished with his patient and moved on to the next one.

It’s awfully quiet out there right now. Maybe they’re doing well. Maybe they’ve found Koschei. Maybe this stupid plan will work out after all.

“Good God, sir, what’s that?!”

Tycho looked up and saw a pale shape snaking its way along the deck. “Aether! It’s the aether, it’s here. Get the men up, get them out of here!” He jumped to his feet and began yanking at the injured man in front of him as the two medics grabbed the arms and legs of another man and fumbled him down the hall, heading farther aft.

Tycho pulled and pulled, but he could only shift the wounded sailor a few steps and the curling, writhing tendril of white mist was flowing closer and closer to him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he dropped the sailor. He stumbled backward the first few paces, keeping his eyes on the mist. Then he heard the screams.

Men were screaming in the distance, their voices echoing across the waters and in the narrow steel canyons between the ships’ hulls. There were no words, no cries for help, no names, no pleas. Just wordless shrieks of pain and terror.

Tycho turned and ran back down the hall. At the end of the corridor was a locked door and he pounded on it, yelling, “Let me in! Let me in!”

But the door remained shut, and there was no sound of anyone on the other side.

The entire hull of the
Herakles
shuddered and groaned as the ship began to list to starboard, and the growling and crackling sounds of fire echoed in the distance while yellow and red lights danced on the walls.

And along the floor of the corridor, the thin fingers of the aether mist crept toward him.

Tycho pulled out his revolver and glanced around at the walls, but there was only one target. He flattened himself against the inner bulkhead, aimed, and fired.

The first bullet shattered the window, and the next four shots smashed away the bits of the frame and small chunks of the wall, splintering the wooden panels and revealing a few ragged glimpses of the black night outside.

Tycho holstered his gun with one bullet still in the chamber, climbed up onto the handrail, and began kicking at the window frame. It creaked and cracked, and then suddenly burst apart and a piece of the wall disappeared out into the darkness. The resulting hole was not large, barely larger than the window had been, but it would do.

The small major scrambled up into the jagged gap, stabbing and cutting his hands on the broken boards. For a moment his jacket snagged, and he was caught half in and half out of the ship, dangling high above the black waves. He stared down into the darkness, gasping for breath.

I am an idiot.

The wood crackled and snapped and the man tumbled out of the ship just as the aether clouds slithered over his boots. He spun sideways and smashed down into the water shoulder first. The freezing Bosporus stabbed him in the ear and shocked his heart and clawed at his warm skin. He opened his mouth to gasp and choked on the cold brine rushing into his mouth and nose.

Everything was dark and icy and churning with bubbles and surging with liquid force, tumbling him head over heels. Tycho kicked and pulled and swept his arms back and forth, squinting into the dark for some hint of where to go. He glimpsed a flash of fire and swam toward it, and his head broke the surface. The night air felt warm in his mouth, but the breeze slashed through his wet hair and skin like an icicle.

“Help!” Another mouthful of water stung his tongue and he gurgled and spat as he struggled to breathe. “Help! Anyone!”

“Sir?”

Tycho twisted around and saw two of the little dories just a stone’s throw away, each with a handful of young marines aboard. “Lycus?”

“Major!”

One of the boats paddled near and several hands reached down and hauled Tycho up and out of the water. He slumped down to the bottom of the dory clutching his chest. The cold had cut him deeply, well under the skin and into the muscle and had begun to scratch at his bones.

Another minute in that water and I’d be dead.

“Sir, what do we do?”

Tycho sat up, shivering, and looked at the three scared young faces leaning over him. The other boat was coming alongside them now with four more marines, some clutching bleeding or burnt wounds. Out across the water, the
Herakles
was leaning dangerously to starboard and most of it was blanketed in white mist. What few parts of the ship remained dry were on fire, and from somewhere within her hull there were voices screaming.

Farther out, Tycho could see the remains of the lead Hellan ship smoking as it sank beneath the waves. The three Furies remained intact, all three still at anchor and none on fire, but none of the Turks were firing now. Their guns were silent and their lights pointed out at every angle at nothing in particular, illuminating empty patches of the Strait or burning flotsam.

“They’re not shooting at us,” Lycus said softly. “Why aren’t they shooting?”

“Listen.” Tycho nodded at the Furies.

And over the roar of the flames and the growl of the engines and the slosh of the waves, they heard the distant screams of the Turks.

“We have to get away from this mist.” Tycho pointed the marines to the oars, and they began turning the dories. “Get to the north side of the channel, fast as you can. And don’t worry about making any noise. I don’t think anyone is listening for us anymore.”

The young men set to rowing and the burning ships began to recede into the darkness as the aether continued to billow out from the palace, swallowing up the city and the waters a bit more with each passing moment.

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.”

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.”