Joseph Lewis - Wren the Fox Witch

“Yes.” The Turk nodded many times.

“Were you sent to observe our troops?” Tycho asked.

“No.” He shook his head violently.

“Were you sent to meet with someone?” the Italian asked.

“No, no, no.” More head shaking.

“All right, all right, settle down.” Tycho paused. “All we want to know is why you were on the north shore. Where did you go? Who did you speak to? And what were you going to tell your people when you got back to Stamballa?”

For a moment, the man’s lips shook in silence. Then he said, “I saw them. I was told to look for them and I did, I saw them, a lot of them.”

“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.