Nadira pouted. “Maybe. I’ll have to think about it, I guess.”
“Think all you like,” Yaga said. “You have all the time in the world.”
Nadira nodded, and after a moment she stood up. “I think I’ll get going. It’s a big world out there. I’ve got a lot of walking to do.”
“There are faster ways to go than walking.”
“Faster, but not better.” Nadira paused at the bottom of the steps and looked back at the white-haired crone. “We probably won’t meet again. Take care of yourself.”
“And you.”
Nadira turned and started back up the steps. In her mind she tried to picture the world beyond the borders of the empire, beyond the peoples and the cities that she had known for two thousand years. She conjured up new cities, but they looked just like Damascus, and the people all looked like Persians, and they all fought with sabers.
She smiled.
Well, I’ll just have to see it when I get there. I wonder what Nippon is like.
She climbed to the top of the stairs and left the tower. Out in the courtyard, she paused to glance about, wondering which way led out of the palace grounds, when the droning of the airship engines suddenly grew louder and sharper. She looked up and saw the vast round nose of the first balloon come over the south wall of the palace, heading straight toward her.
The other two airships were a bit farther behind and looked to be farther out over the water, but this one was already over the wide green park and coming closer to the little white tower and the broad gravel courtyard with every passing moment.
Nadira sighed, turned toward the largest gate in sight, and started walking with her empty hands resting in the hidden pockets of her borrowed green dress. She was still walking when the bombs began to fall behind her, shaking the earth and hurling grass and gravel at her back. And she was still walking, with her hands in her pockets, when she heard the first building crumble and fall to the ground behind her.
But she didn’t look back.
Chapter 25. Slaughter
Omar jogged through the streets of Stamballa with one hand clutching his sheathed seireiken. Koschei pounded along behind him, his bare feet slapping on the cold cobblestones. Up ahead they could hear men yelling and rifles firing and swords clashing, and all of the sounds echoing and rolling over on themselves in the narrow corridors of the city streets.
Damn those idiots!
Omar turned the last corner and saw the battle raging all the way down the street to the edge of the water. Above them the roofs of nearly every house were burning brightly, the flames roared loudly, the smoke vomited upward in filthiest black, and the dying timbers cracked and collapsed left and right. Entire roofs gave way all at once and crashed into the homes, and some houses were beginning to lean downhill toward the sea.
“Stand down!” Omar yelled.
No one heard him.
Koschei barreled past with a mad bellow and leapt onto the backs of two Turks in blue. The Rus warrior sank his elbow through one man’s skull as he wrapped his other arm around a man’s neck and choked him into oblivion. Then Koschei picked up an Eranian saber in one hand and a brick in the other, and screamed.
Half the men on the street, even in the middle of swinging a blade or aiming a gun, looked up and saw the half-naked Rus barbarian roaring at them, his arm painted in blood from the elbow down.
A rifle fired and the bullet tore through Koschei’s shoulder, spraying a fine red mist into the air, but the warrior only screamed louder as he rushed down the street with his weapons raised. The saber hacked artlessly at necks and stabbed brutally at bellies while the brick smashed left and right through jawbones and eye sockets. Koschei chopped off hands and arms and ears and legs, and he crushed skulls and shattered ribs. And all the while he screamed with joy as the hot blood splashed across his face and the bodies fell to the earth in pieces all around him.
For a moment, the Turks converged on the invader, all their long Numidian rifles coming to bear on a single target. But the Hellans and Vlachian sprang on them from behind and chaos erupted in every quarter.
Within a few racing heartbeats, Omar saw the Turks plunging down the alleys and side streets, dashing away from the marines and away from the rampaging, blood-soaked monster called Koschei the Deathless. Men fell dead to the ground in pieces, dripping with blood and bile and urine and feces, and men fell writhing to the ground, shrieking like mad women and crying like frightened infants for mercy and death.
Dear God…
Omar stared. A moment ago there had been dozens of men struggling and running and grappling and shouting. Now there were piles of shredded flesh and shattered bones wrapped in blood-soaked rags. Terrified faces stared up at the sky, frozen in the instant of death. A river of human garbage trickled down the center of the street between the burning houses. And in the center of the carnage stood a bloody god of war, an ugly barbarian from the distant north who churned men into filth, and could never die.
A sharp metallic taste washed up from Omar’s stomach and burned at his teeth and tongue, and he hastily swallowed it back down.
Look on my works and despair, oh Lord, for I am thy humble servant, loyal and true, and I have made nothing but monsters and death in your name.
Forgive me.
The gunfire stopped. The yelling stopped. Only the fires went on growling and crackling as they consumed the houses and hurled bright cinders down on the men in the road.
A moment ago, these things were men, with thoughts and families and dreams and fears. And now they’re just red pieces of dirt.
Not because of humanity, or fate.
Not even because of Koschei.
Because of me.
Omar coughed on the smoke as he walked slowly and carefully down the street. His boot slipped on the blood and meat more than once, but he didn’t fall. He passed Koschei, who was busy dismembering one of the dead Turks for no apparent reason. He passed the grim-faced Vlachians and the weary young Hellans. And at the bottom of the road, just above the docks and the dark waters of the Bosporus, he found the two princes.
Radu lay on his back, his broken sword near his hand, his face still defiant and proud as he glared up at his older brother. Vlad towered over him, his burning seireiken hovering over his younger brother’s face, blinding him with its light, scorching him with its heat.
Omar ignored them both. He walked right past them to the edge of the dock, fell to his knees, and vomited into the water. His stomach churned and his throat burned and his mouth ran slick with acid and slime as his nostrils filled with the stench of it. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt the tears stinging him as they seeped out and ran down his cheeks.
Ysland. Vlachia. Constantia. Stamballa. And how many more that I never noticed?
How many thousands… millions more?
How many died in agony? How many live on in agony?
Four and a half thousand years… of this.
He wept and retched, and eventually he had nothing left to give to the water, and he collapsed onto his side, staring out over the Strait at the distant skyline of Constantia in silence. For a time he simply lay there on the ground, shaking, clutching his belly with one hand and his eyes with the other. But eventually the emotion receded, drawing back into whatever reservoir it had come from, leaving him empty and cold.
I am the stone cast upon still waters. See how the ripples grow as they churn life into blood and dust.
I am the stone that cast itself. I am worse than death. Death is a release. I am a plague, and they shall know me by the ruins in my wake.
Have I become the destroyer of nations? Am I a deceiver so powerful I have deceived myself into believing I am something noble?