The Red Winter

  “You have begun your journey,” he said. “In time, this form will look as we do, for Luperca’s essence has entered you, as it did our ancestors long ago. The draught makes you a true Raszna, not a lesser vye such as those infected by the Magyarün. Connor Lynch is forever changed; he is not dead. He will always be your human shape. Try and you will see.”

  Nodding, Connor closed his eyes and diminished slightly. His features grew rounder and when he opened his eyes, he was the same old Connor they’d always known.

  “Say something,” urged Fenwulf gently. “You are Raszna now and have a right to be heard in this hall.”

  Max glanced at Lucia. She was crying, sobbing as Sarah comforted her. Both girls appeared in a state of disbelief. Clearing his throat, Connor wiped away his own tears and gazed out at the hushed and watchful crowd. He spoke in halting, uncertain Etruscan.

  “Forgive my accent,” he said. “And please forgive my mistakes. I know you will—you’re family now and you can’t get rid of me.”

  There was laughter in the hall and several vyes shouted, “Ruva!” Connor acknowledged them with a grateful smile.

  “Brother,” he repeated, taking a moment to exhale as the word’s meaning and significance registered fully. “I like that. I feel like your brother—I’ve felt welcomed ever since Lady Nico brought me before you a year ago. I’ve never been one for destiny or prophecies, but I believe with all my heart that this was meant to happen.”

  Connor paused, struggling with his emotions. He turned and looked at Max. “Moschiach,” he said. “I can’t call him that. I can’t even call him the Hound of Rowan. To me, he’s always been Max McDaniels—the first and best friend I made at Rowan. And I can’t speak to the Apocrypha or to Galia’s prophecies. Only you and Archon can decide if the Raszna should join with Rowan. But I will say that Max McDaniels and David Menlo can be trusted. I’m dead certain of that, and so was Även. They will honor the peace they have promised.”

  Thanking them, Connor bowed and stepped aside.

  “A new Raszna,” Fenwulf reflected proudly. “It has been almost a hundred years since we named a human ‘brother.’ And this is the first time we have shared Luperca’s essence with a former enemy. This is a day to mark with a white stone. But, as Üden said, the decision we face is one that will shape the lives of future generations. Üden has spoken for Rowan, but I think we must hear from them ourselves. Shall we invite the Hound to speak?”

  “Yes!” howled the wild, fierce crowd. Several cries of Moschiach echoed in the vast hall. Turning, Fenwulf gestured for Max to join him upon the dais. Max did so, intensifying his aura even more as he climbed the steps. The more attention he paid to his aura, the more he found he could control it. It was like turning the knob of a finely made lamp. With each tiny adjustment, the flame would brighten or dim. While he could do it quickly if he chose, at the moment he increased by smooth, steady increments.

  When he reached the top, he gazed out upon hundreds of anxious faces. Max took his time, surveying the audience in silence and letting them see him—truly see him for what he was. Max noticed that Sarah, Lucia, and Connor were gazing with the same expressions of frightened awe that marked the Raszna’s faces. They were not looking upon their friend; they were staring at a god.

  “There is no such thing as Fate,” said Max, and his voice rang with irresistible authority. “Our choices shape our destinies, choices we make of our own free will. Rowan has already chosen. We have chosen to rise up openly against a tyrant who would conquer every people and every kingdom. We ask the Raszna to join us in this fight, to combine our forces against a common enemy and establish a new order—one in which Rowan and the Raszna are joined as equals.”

  He paused, his eyes sweeping the hall and his enraptured audience. The air was still and hot. Sweat ran in a slow, steady trickle down his back.

  “Do not join with Rowan because you believe I am destined to deliver you. Join because you choose to have that power—the power to leave these halls and return to the world above. You have allies there. You have friends. Friends who will ride, fight, and die with you. I am but one of them.”

  His gaze settled upon the war chiefs, who stood at attention, their faces grim and fierce. Max knew the critical moment had come.

  “Fate has no power,” he declared. “The Atropos have written my name in their Grey Book. According to the Fates, I should be dead. But here I stand. Alive. Strong. Defiant. Will the Raszna stand with me?”

  Their answer was deafening. Amber Hall shook with the Raszna’s howls and its floor trembled with their stamping and the thud of great spears and halberds upon the ancient floor. There was a surge in the crowd, a parting as several war chiefs shouldered through the throng and took hold of the brazier’s base. Its keeper backed away, knocking over the lekythos, which spilled its oil in a vast, spreading pool that ignited as the brazier crashed to the floor. The crowd surged away as sheets of flame roared up, nearly licking the amber ceiling. Leaping clear, the Raszna war chiefs joined their brothers and sisters in a wild, exultant dance.

  “It seems our choice is made,” said Fenwulf, backing away from the flames and turning toward Max.

  “Are you with us, Archon?” Max asked.

  Nodding, the vye embraced him, thumping his back as the hall’s roars grew even louder. As Max disengaged, he looked again upon his friends. He was glad to see Connor and Lucia holding hands, but something in their expressions as they gazed at him triggered an unmistakable twinge of sorrow. He found the same change on Sarah’s face and knew something might have changed forever. He was no longer Max McDaniels, their old classmate from Rowan. That Max was gone. They looked at him now as though he were something infinitely grander and even frightening. Sad as it was, Max could not dwell upon it. There was no sense denying who he was or what he was becoming. He took comfort in Scathach, who was also gazing at him, but with love and pride, not awe. She had been immortal in the Sidh and lived in the company of gods. Scathach would always understand him in a way that others could not.

  Üden was coming up the steps, helped by Lady Isu and Lady Nico. The vye looked old and tired, but radiant—as though a great burden had been lifted from his broad shoulders. Giving Lady Isu his cane, he steadied himself before taking both Fenwulf and Max’s hands in his own.

  “I am proud of you,” he said to Fenwulf, his daughter translating for Max’s benefit. “You listened to the people.”

  Fenwulf bowed. “I am humbled by your faith in me.”

  With a grunt, Üden cupped Max’s face with both hands. “Moschiach,” he said affectionately.

  Max smiled. “I don’t believe in that.”

  The old vye fixed him with a shrewd look. “I do.”

  Releasing him, Üden reached into his robes and brought forth the gae bolga and returned it to its proper owner. The short sword hummed as Max’s fingers closed upon the warm handle. Max buckled the scabbard to his baldric, happy to have the weapon’s reassuring weight at his side.

  “I need my parchment,” Max said. “David Menlo will want to know we’ve reached an agreement.”

  Fenwulf nodded. “I’ll want to speak with your Director as soon as possible. It will take time to muster our forces and march upon Prusias. And we must discuss strategy. United, the Raszna and Rowan are formidable, but so is our common foe. Prusias controls the Workshop. His defenses are considerable.”

  “We have someone working on that,” said Max.

  “Who?”

  “A professional.”

  Over the course of his career, William Cooper had been many things: a spy, thief, soldier, saboteur, inquisitor, rescuer, and assassin. Many jobs. Many hats. But all of them executed by a man who took his work very seriously. For William Cooper was a professional who did whatever was required to complete his mission. At the moment, that meant killing a man.

  The engineer was no longer resisting. He stared at Cooper’s reflection in the gleaming boiler, stared with blank astonishment at the pale stran
ger who had suddenly appeared, clamped a strong arm about his throat, and brought his life to a swift and silent conclusion. When the eyes went dim, Cooper gently lowered the man’s body to the floor.

  “Is it over?”

  The voice was Hazel’s. She was huddled in the corner, her eyes averted from the scene.

  “It is.”

  Crouching, Cooper methodically stripped the man’s watch and security badge. The engineer was in his twenties, very fit, and possessed the blue-eyed, Eurasian features that were a common by-product of the Workshop’s eugenics programs. Removing a slim computer from the man’s breast pocket, Cooper pressed the engineer’s still-warm thumb against its biometric sensor. The dark screen illuminated.

  “What are you doing?” Toby whispered from behind Hazel.

  The smee had taken the form of a gray rat when the engineer entered the boiler room. The man’s unexpected appearance had startled Hazel, who’d knocked over a wrench that had been propped against a wall. It had clattered to the floor, causing the engineer to draw a sidearm and hurry along the boilers toward the dark corner where they’d been resting. Four steps later, the engineer was dead.

  Ignoring Toby’s questions, Cooper studied the computer screen as he scrolled through a series of menus. He soon found what he was looking for—a detailed map of the Verilius Depot, an underground train station near what used to be Frankfurt, Germany. A tiny blinking dot appeared in a mechanicals room in the station’s northwest quadrant.

  There we are. His eyes darted to a tiny grid of updating data. He checked the engineer’s watch and swiped past various screens to locate the latest train schedules.

  Cooper was anxious to get moving again. They had already violated one of his basic rules by staying in one place for more than twenty-four hours. And now someone had happened by. Killing the engineer had not solved their problem; it was simply a stopgap as they sought a way into the Workshop.

  Their problems had started with Max’s clones. The assassins had left Cooper badly injured—two broken wrists and a concussion that had him seeing double for a week. He had recovered at Shrope Hovel where Hazel had set his bones, accelerated their healing with spellwork, and Mum and Bob had cooked for him in their old, familiar way. The impatient haglings had not waited for him to mend. They had set out the morning after the Naming, clopping off in their little wagons to rescue their aunt Gertie from the Workshop museums, where she was on display. They’d taken the Spindlefingers goblin with them, for it was his clan that maintained the Workshop’s trains and could smuggle them inside the depot.

  That was over two months ago. By now, the haglings would have succeeded or failed in their quest. The latter was more likely, but Cooper nurtured a sliver of hope that somewhere a confused and disheveled Gertie was on her way back to Shrope Hovel. He didn’t dwell on it, however. He had his own operation to complete and he was well behind schedule. Every day Rowan’s forces were getting a little closer to Blys. Unless Cooper was able to activate the Workshop asset and infiltrate Prusias’s capital, Rowan would face a slew of advanced and mechanized defenses. If that happened, the odds of a successful siege dwindled considerably. He could not fail.

  He’d always worked best and quickest alone. Now he had partners. Given his injuries, Hazel had utterly refused to leave him while Toby tagged along, reluctant to remain with the hags. While his wife and the smee had talents that made them useful, they nevertheless slowed him down. Partners demanded explanations; partners wanted a voice in decisions; partners needed sleep.

  Sleep. Cooper had to admit he could use some. He hadn’t been dozing for more than ten minutes when the engineer stumbled upon their hiding place. The last rest he’d taken was over three days ago before they’d snuck aboard the freight chutes that brought them down here. He wasn’t in crisis yet—he could endure several more days before his capabilities would decline—but it was important to sleep when one could. And Hazel needed rest more than she ever had. He longed to send her back to Rowan.

  But there was no turning back now. Not for any of them. Weeks of cautious, stealthy spycraft had gotten them from Shrope Hovel across the Channel and then another four hundred miles until they reached the outskirts of Verilius and the depot two miles beneath it. They were nearing his operation’s first objective—activating an undercover asset that was stationed in the Workshop’s headquarters some twenty miles away. The remaining distance should have been trivial, for the Spindlefinger had sworn there were trains that shuttled regularly between their location and the Workshop. But apparently the goblin’s information was out of date.

  Cooper had spent the last day and a half sneaking about the depot and getting familiar with its operations. From what he could tell, it was used almost exclusively to store and transport raw materials. The station rumbled as sleek trains carrying coal and iron, grain and chemicals came screeching into the cavernous facility for equipment checks, maintenance, and repairs by the Spindlefingers. These trains were not bound for the Workshop headquarters, but for manufacturing or processing facilities located throughout Prusias’s kingdom. While there was a track connecting the Workshop to Prusias’s capital, it no longer seemed to be in use. Cooper had watched its tunnel for over twenty-four hours without seeing any trains or even work crews that might have been making repairs. By all appearances, Track 11 was not in use.

  The engineer’s computer, however, would confirm it. Locating the train schedules, Cooper saw that Track 11 had been grayed out.

  “All right,” he muttered, turning to the others. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to move and move quickly. No trains are running through here to the Workshop. We’ll have to go on foot.”

  Toby moaned.

  Cooper cut off the smee’s inevitable protest. “It’s not that far, just twenty-three miles. The Workshop’s deeper than this place, so it’ll be downhill. The real issue is what we’ll find when we reach the end. The tunnel could be sealed off.”

  “Is there an alternative?” asked Hazel, cleaning her glasses.

  “We could sneak aboard a train bound for another destination and try to connect to the Workshop from there.”

  “That sounds better,” said the rat. “Ride in comfort, I say.”

  “It would be on a cargo train,” Cooper reminded him.

  “Maybe someone’s shipping pillows,” mused the smee hopefully.

  “What do you think we should do?” asked Hazel.

  Cooper massaged his wrists, grimacing slightly at the pain. The bones had mended but were not fully healed. Discomfort was constant and could be excruciating when he exerted himself. He tamped the pain down to a place where it would not distract him.

  “The tunnel would be quickest,” he said. “If the grade isn’t too steep, I can run that far in ninety minutes to scout if it’s open. The return would be slower. Maybe six hours there and back.”

  “Be realistic. You haven’t slept in days.”

  Cooper waved off Hazel’s concern. “I’m fine. I’m more worried about you. You can’t run that kind of distance. Especially not in your condition.”

  Toby looked at her. “What condition is that, pray tell?”

  With an almost shy smile, Hazel patted her stomach. “I’m pregnant. Just a few months, but there’s no use keeping it a secret anymore.”

  The smee offered his hearty congratulations. “You know, I won’t be insulted if you name him Toby. Just a thought. Although as I’m currently a rat, I’m partial to cheese names. ‘Manchego’ has a certain flair.…”

  “Enough,” said Cooper. “We have to move quickly—that engineer might be implanted with sensors that track his whereabouts. His computer certainly is. Toby, do you think you could fly down the tunnel as a bird and see what’s at the far end?”

  “I suppose,” reflected the smee. “Although the ol’ latissimus nub won’t like it. What kind of bird?”

  “Something small with endurance,” Cooper answered. “You’ll have to fly over forty miles there and back as fast as you possibly ca
n.”

  “That might not be necessary,” remarked Hazel. “Mystics can solve our problem.”

  “Not shadow walking,” said Cooper flatly.

  “No,” said Hazel. “Nothing that risky. What I’m thinking of is a technique where my spirit leaves my body but remains in this world. The range isn’t limitless, of course, but I might be able to send it far enough. In any case, it’s worth a shot. I could be there and back in minutes while leaving Toby rested in case he has to carry me.”

  “What are the risks?” Cooper asked. Every drug had side effects; so did every spell. He used magic as sparingly as possible.

  “It’s rather tiring,” Hazel conceded. “And my spirit would be out in the open, vulnerable. If something happened to it …”

  “Yes?”

  She shrugged. “I could die.”

  Cooper shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  Hazel laid her hand over his. “Agent Cooper, it’s a good risk. In five or ten minutes we can learn whether that tunnel can get us into the Workshop proper. It’s only dangerous if there happens to be a malicious spirit lingering between here and there. The chances of that are slim. Agreed?”

  He nodded. It was not his nature to quibble with facts or truth, even when his emotions were involved. “What do you need from me?”

  “Keep watch on the door,” she said. “A disruption while my spirit is outside my body could create problems.”

  He did as she said, scooping up Toby and padding quietly to the door. The room was located at the end of a corridor and its door had a grating set in its lower half so that he could sit and see if anyone was coming. Seven minutes had elapsed since the engineer had entered the room and met his end. He doubted anyone would miss him so soon. He glanced down at the palm-sized computer and its blinking location signal.

  “When she’s finished, you’ll carry her,” he muttered to Toby, more bluntly than he’d intended.

  “Of course,” replied the smee. “A mule will be just the thing for a steep grade.”