Joseph Lewis - Wren the Fox Witch

“Guards! Get over here!” Tycho grabbed Wren’s hand and pointed his gun at the door.

I have six bullets. I can kill six of them, at most. Six, and then we’re all dead.

He squeezed Wren’s hand and grimaced.

Palermo is sounding very nice right about now.

Omar stood on the banks of the Bosporus and gazed up at the beautiful towers of the Mazdan temples beyond the tiled roofs of the ancient villas and mansions and princely estates of Stamballa. It was late in the morning, nearly noon, and the droning of the approaching airships reverberated across the pale winter sky.

“We’re certain the entire district is empty?” Omar asked.

I can’t believe I’m about to be a party to this.

“My scouts have been to the top of the hill,” Vlad said. “Half a league or so from the water. The houses are all empty.”

Omar nodded grimly. “Then I suppose we should get started. Those airships will be overhead in just a few minutes.” He paced up the cobblestone lane to the first house and plunged his seireiken into the joint between the top of the wall and the bottom of the roof. The stones began to glow a dull red and the old timbers of the house burst into flame.

As he stood there, making certain the house was well and truly on fire, Omar noticed the dim shade of Ito Daisuke standing beside him. “Yes?”

“This is your side of the border, isn’t it? Imperial soil?”

Omar sighed. “Yes.”

“And you’re setting fire to this city to save that other city?”

Omar stifled a glare. “Yes.”

“Ah.” The dead samurai paced along the front of the house, looking up at the burning roof.

Omar pulled his seireiken free, walked to the next house, and plunged the blade up into the roof. A second fire crackled to life.

“I know you said you would help the Hellans with their little witch problem, with the walking dead and such,” Daisuke said. “And I respect that. But that task appears to be complete. Koschei is free, Yaga is under control, and the army of corpses was defeated.”

“So?”

“So why are you now helping the Hellans to fight the Turks?” The samurai gestured to the street around them as the Constantian marines and Vlachian archers strode by, tossing torches onto roofs and kicking in doors to ransack the abandoned houses. “This has nothing to do with you, or your promise. This is barely even warfare. This is simple barbarism, and you appear to be on the wrong side of it.”

“If the airships bomb Constantia, thousands of innocent people will die. But if they bomb us here, only a few soldiers will be in danger.” Omar moved on up the street.

“This is about saving lives?” The samurai frowned. “You’ve spent the last forty-five centuries searching for arcane knowledge to overcome death, to transcend humanity, and to meet the Divine face to face.”

“Your point?”

“Your confrontation with the witches and the corpses might have advanced your knowledge, and helped your search for truth. It didn’t, but it might have. But this little enterprise?” Daisuke paused. “It profits you nothing.”

Omar pulled his sword free and continued up the lane. The burning roofs behind him crackled merrily as the flames danced higher, and the beams inside began to snap and buckle. “I suppose not. But it’ll make the world a slightly better place. Less dying, and so on.”

“Perhaps.” Daisuke nodded. “Except for the people who live in this neighborhood. They’ll be homeless.”

Omar sighed. “Except for them, I suppose.” He continued up the lane, occasionally cutting through alleyways parallel to the water, and always poking his blazing seireiken up into the eaves of the little fishermen’s houses, setting fire to the district and hoping the smoke would catch the eyes of the airship pilots and bombardiers.

The ghost of Ito Daisuke appeared again, and behind him ten thousand other dead faces hovered in the distance. Omar sighed. “What?”

“When this is over and you finally returned to Alexandria, what then?” Daisuke paced along the street, his shadowy wooden geta sandals clacking silently on the cobblestones.

“I don’t know.” Omar smiled. “I really don’t.”

A sudden outbreak of men shouting and boots pounding drew Omar’s gaze up the hill where he saw the marines and Vlachians running across an intersection.

“Hm.” He sheathed his bright sun-steel blade and jogged up the road, and cut across two lanes to find the Hellans arrayed in a loose formation across a narrow street with Vlad at their center. Above and beyond them, Omar saw another company of men forming, this one dressed in blue uniforms and light armor, with Numidian rifles in their hands.

Damn. Just what we wanted to avoid.

Prince Vlad held his own seireiken high over his head and shouted, “Radu! Where are you, Radu?”

Omar sagged and slouched and wished Wren was there to share an exasperated look with him.

What the hell is that fool thinking?

“Radu!” the prince cried.

The Eranian troops continued to trickle into the street and the long rifles in their hands were leveled at the ragged band of Hellans and Vlachians with their varied assortment of knives, pistols, swords, and bows.

Omar faded back against the wall of a house.

This is not going to end well.

He slipped around the corner onto a side street, out of the field of fire, took several backward paces to be sure no one had noticed him leaving, and then turned and nearly ran face-first into a very broad and hairy chest. Koschei looked down at him, confused.

“Grigori! What is happening?”

Omar glanced over his shoulder. “I think Vlad is about to have a pissing contest with his little brother, and lose.”

“Ha! This should be fun. We watch them fight and we get to kill all these stupid little Turks too, eh? Oh, so sorry, Grigori. I forget sometimes that these are your people. You don’t have to help me kill them, I can do this alone.” The hulking Rus warrior frowned at the crowd of soldiers at the end of the street, wavering as though uncertain whether he wanted to join them. Then he looked back down and said, “But I think they’ll have to do without us for now. Vlad is a man, and he can die like one if he likes. There is other business for you and me.”

“What business?”

Koschei turned and strode away.

Omar ran after him. “What business?”

Koschei didn’t answer. He continued down the deserted street past the burning houses. The sounds of fire woofed and roared and crackled all around them as the bright yellow cinders fluttered down from the black pillars of smoke creeping up into the sky.

They turned several corners, moving up higher away from the water, and finally Koschei pointed across the road to a gated estate. Omar gave it a quick glance and was about to ask his question for a third time when he looked back sharply at the gate. A slender figure shuffled out from the shadows and walked smack into the gate, knocking it halfway open on its creaking hinges.

“Some sort of graveyard,” Koschei said, waving at the gate. “The soldiers tell me, back in the boats, that the dead are rising, yes? Is no problem. I see this all the time in Rus, just not so many. So I get you to help me.”

“How many?” Omar glanced up at the sky. The sun was shining and the breeze blowing through the street was almost warm as it carried the heat of the burning houses through the winter air.

How can they still be rising? The aether should be melting, and Wren took Yaga’s bracelets! Damn it!

He drew his sword and the blade’s light fell on the black and blue face of the corpse in the gateway. “Can’t we just lock the gate and keep them in there?”