Joseph Lewis - Wren the Fox Witch

“Omar Bakhoum,” he said calmly. “I’m a doctor. I was sent to Vlachia to investigate a plague.”

“What plague?”

Wren raised an eyebrow.

They don’t know about it. Is that because it’s too warm here for the walking dead, or just because it hasn’t reached this place yet?

She inhaled the night air, and saw a light flurry of snow just beginning to fall overhead.

It may be cold enough, after all.

“Nothing,” Omar said. “It wasn’t a plague at all. Just some superstitious farmers jumping at shadows and mist.”

The sailor nodded. “And where are you bound now?”

“Back to Alexandria.”

The sailor’s eyes shifted to Wren.

“With my new apprentice,” Omar continued. “She’s from Rus.”

The sailor gave Omar a wink and a shrug and started to leave, but as he moved on he reached out to flick the scarf from Wren’s head. She gasped and scrambled to pull it back over her hair and ears, but it had fallen all the way back to her shoulders and she needed a moment to grab it and flip it back into place. In that moment, the sailor stared at her head.

“What the devil…?”

Omar stepped smoothly in between them and rested his hand on his sword. “You have keen eyes, friend. Now prove that you have keen ears,” he whispered to the sailor. “I didn’t come here for some plague. I came to collect this girl, and now I’m taking her back to my masters to study her. But you saw nothing here except a doctor and his apprentice.”

The sailor narrowed his eyes and reached for the dirk on his belt.

Omar drew his seireiken, but only a hair, only far enough to expose a tiny sliver of the bright sun-steel blade. The light flashed on the sailor’s face, and then the light was gone. Omar said, “You saw nothing.”

The sailor stared down at the sheathed seireiken in wide-eyed astonishment. “You’re one of…”

“Yes.” Omar nodded. “And you. Saw. Nothing.”

“Nothing,” the man whispered, and he darted back to his own ship. The lines were loosed and the gunboat turned away to head back up the channel to the ironclads, and La Rosa continued west into the deepening gloom of the night.

Omar gripped the railing as he glared at the dark skyline of the southern shore. “That sailor recognized my seireiken.”

“I noticed that,” Wren said. “What does that mean?”

“It means that there are other members of my little brotherhood here, in Stamballa, most likely advising the Eranian army.”

“You mean the Sons of Osiris? But isn’t that a good thing? Can’t we just go meet with them? Won’t they help us get through the check points and get to Alexandria faster?”

Omar glanced at her. “Maybe. Maybe not. Ours is not a very brotherly brotherhood. It would all depend on who exactly the commander is. He might help us, or he might torture us, interrogate us, kill us, and take our sun-steel.”

“Oh.” Wren nodded. “Well, then, I suppose it won’t hurt us to just stay on board and wait a bit longer.”

As they stood side by side, listening to the creak of the ropes and the rustle of the canvas, a sudden roar of thunder burst from the southern shore as a hailstorm of fire leapt into the sky and soared across the narrow waist of the Strait. Wren jerked back from the railing, but the flaming arrows and shells flew high over La Rosa and fell like a hundred thunderbolts on the face of the water. A sparkling silver spray shimmered in the air as the missiles were quenched and hissed, steaming in the night. But some of the arrows and shells fell on a group of small boats near the north shore.

The Hellan sailors dove into the Strait, yelling orders and screaming in terror as the fire clung to their shirts. Their flapping sails roared with yellow flames in the cold wind, and were soon consumed, leaving the hulls crackling and dancing with red lights.

“I take it back,” Wren whispered. “It may hurt us after all.”

Major Tycho Xenakis strode into the war room as quickly as his short legs could carry him. His Spartan dagger clung silently to his left leg, but his white Mazigh revolver clinked in its holster on his right hip with every step, announcing his entrance. As he crossed the room, the Hellan officers and Vlachian warlords glanced up from their maps and reports to cast dark looks at him. Tycho felt their unease, contempt, and fear, but he didn’t waste his own gaze on any of them.

He arrived at the central table, which he could just barely see over, and he rapped his knuckles on the nearest leg. “Gentlemen, we have a problem.”

They looked down at the Spartan officer. On the left stood the Vlachian prince, Vlad the Fourth, the dragon of the Black Sea, grandson of the most feared butcher in the north, the Impaler. On the right he nodded to Lady Nerissa, the Duchess of Constantia, and to the aging Italian knight Salvator Fabris, who was standing just a bit too close to the lady for Tycho’s taste.

“Which problem might that be?” Salvator asked as he smoothed his oiled gray mustache. “The Eranian army across the Strait, the Eranian fleet in the Strait, or the Eranian artillery flying over the Strait?”

Tycho ignored the Italian and looked to his lady. “It’s the witch.”

Prince Vlad hissed as he straightened up and tugged at his black and red jacket. “Lady Yaga is the sainted mother of Rus. Show some respect, you malformed runt.”

“She’s only one man’s mother, and that’s the problem,” Tycho said. “Ever since Koschei was captured by the Turks, Lady Yaga has been haunting the walls, terrifying our men with her threats, or just depressing them her ideas of what awful things the Turks do to their prisoners. She’s ruining morale on the walls.”

“Are Hellan soldiers so fragile to be defeated by the heartbroken cries of one old woman?” Vlad asked. He grasped the short sword on his belt.

Tycho frowned.

We never should have gotten him that sword. Seireikens are for lunatics.

“Prince Vlad, my soldiers have held this city against Darius’s armies for their entire lives,” Lady Nerissa said. “They were born to the clamor of battle, they were raised in shattered homes and streets strewn with rubble, and from the moment they are able, they serve to protect Constantia against the south. And it is their sacrifice that keeps the north free, from Rus to Raska to your own precious Vlachia.”

The hawk-faced lord scowled and turned back to the maps on the table.

But the Duchess continued, “When you pledged the support of these so-called immortals, I was led to believe they would have more to contribute to the war than the average person. But Koschei, for all his martial gifts, was merely one soldier, and his mother has been nothing but a distraction.”

Vlad glowered up through his black brows. “I swore to defend this city against Darius and the infidels of the Mazdan Temple, and I will keep that vow. But I will not stand here and listen to you foul the names of the sainted mother and her valiant son.” He pushed away from the table and strode to the far end of the room to talk with his Vlachian commanders.

Tycho watched him go. “He’s become more and more emotional and irrational since we brought him that damned sword.”

“The sword isn’t the problem. He wanted proof of our commitment and we delivered it to him, as promised,” Lady Nerissa said lightly. “The real problem runs far deeper. Vlachia is a land of summer wars and sea battles. They aren’t accustomed to prolonged siege warfare. Win or lose, they want this war to end, and that may make the Vlachians a liability at some point.”

“As distasteful as I find them,” Salvator said, “I can’t imagine they would betray you.”