Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (33 page)

    
The little marine was dead.  At least she had died a rich women, the only one ever to outsmart the Confluni on their own soil.  But she had not outsmarted the Cheyak.

    
“You’re sure she’s dead?” Thorn asked.  I had never wanted to hit him more.

    
“She wasn’t breathing, no pulse,” I answered.

    
Ancenon shook his head.  Drekk examined the handful of needles I had brought back, wrapped in a cutting from Genna’s leathers. I also had a few of her daggers on me, more for a memory of her than to protect me.

    
Nantar rested a hand on my shoulder, not looking at me.  It bothered me that I couldn’t share his grief, but in my heart I didn’t.

    
“You aren’t to blame, Lupus,” Nantar told me.  “Finding a trap like that would have been near impossible.”

    
“Not if you had come back,” D’gattis argued.   He had been the most severe in his questioning when I had finally returned alone.  Now he just seemed pissed off.  “That same series of wards protects the royal Trenboni treasury.  The disabling mechanism is right – “

    
“D’gattis,” Ancenon warned.  I almost wanted to smile.  A royal to the end, Ancenon passed no state secrets.

    
“Well,” D’gattis said, in covering, “it would have been bypassed by either of us.”

    
Drekk dropped the needles down our makeshift drain.  “Well, it’s a contact poison, that much is sure,” he said.  “Lupus was wise to keep these in a cloth.  If they had touched his skin, he would have joined Genna.  As it is, I couldn’t neutralize it.  Lupus,” he continued, looking at me directly, “she died before she hit the ground.  You couldn’t have done anything.”

    
“Can you find this place again?” Thorn asked. 

    
I nodded.  I wanted to resent the question, but it was a legitimate one.  I found my way back relatively easily and I knew I could go there again.  Now that I had been fourteen days in Outpost X, I could find my way from and to almost anywhere we had been.

    
“And a way out for the horses?” Arath pressed.  He had been silent during all of this.  I knew of no connection between him and Genna, but now I assumed there might have been one.

    
“The same way they came in,” I said.  “There may someday be another, but right now, unless you want to spend another week tunneling, the horses go out the way they came in.”

    
That was a legitimate concern, as well.  The close quarters, the stale air and the dry food were not sitting well with our mounts.  Even Blizzard had been affected – perhaps more than the rest, being a plains animal rather than city bred.  We would rely heavily on our horses to get out of Conflu. They needed to be well.

    
Arath shook his head.  “The Confluni patrols have lessened, but are still more than when we first got here.  Without Genna’s skills, I am very much afraid that we will be meeting more of them than we care to.  Weighted down with gold our speed will be lessened, we will have no advantage.”

    
Ancenon nodded and looked at D’gattis.   Ambiguous eyes met and held, as if they shared thoughts.  Ancenon shrugged and the younger Uman-Chi shook his head; both turned back to the rest of us.

    
“We are too much mass, even as we are,” said D’gattis, “for me to move us more than a few yards through rock and earth, and no farther through air.  We will have to haul back with us what gold we can carry and put on the pack animals, then leave from here as we came in – at some time when patrols are either dead or just past.”

    
“That means,” Ancenon followed, “a mad flight through Conflu to Tren Bay.  Perhaps only two days in the woods, one if we can march through the night, although with the horses laden down and no one to blaze the trail, I doubt it.”

    
“Why not just have our ship pick us up in the Sea of Xyr?” I asked.  I knew there had to be a reason, but I wanted to hear it.

    
Nantar shook his head.  “The mouth to the Sea of Xyr is closely guarded.  The north-side installation has four heavy catapults and a team that is supposed to be so well trained that they can keep one missile in the air constantly for over an hour.  An armada couldn’t pass it with the catapults intact, and our one merchant ship would be no match.”

    
“Even if it were, Trenbon would be embarrassed before the Fovean High Council, perhaps indicted in an international incident,” added Ancenon, as ever a champion of Trenbon.  “That price, I cannot pay.”

    
“Can I assume that you have some means to be in contact with your ship?” Nantar said.

    
Ancenon nodded.  All were curious now.

    
“And regardless, we are all getting an equal share of the wealth from the treasury?” I continued.

    
D’gattis bristled.  “That wealth is Uman-Chi -”

    
“Cheyak,” Thorn interrupted.

    
“Don’t you even try -” Drekk warned.

    
“-can kill you where you stand,” said Nantar.  Ancenon took a surprised step back, and Arath had his hand on his sword.

    
“This was never discussed,” Ancenon said.

    
“But fairly assumed,” Arath said.  “We get our fair share, or we take all of it, and leave you here for dead.”

    
I shook my head.  Wealth and Power: one a passion and, on this world, one a god.  My world was no different, if you thought of it.  Men would kill for either just the same – and held no friendship closer to the heart.

    
“All immaterial if we have to fight our way back to the shore,” D’gattis argued.  “I believe that it should be agreed that the survivors split evenly what they can escape with.”

    
“Knowing full well that you will be back with Trenboni guardsmen for your second trip, to take it all,” Thorn argued.  “What needs to be agreed is that it is all
ours
, D’gattis.  This group found it, and this group will maintain it, for so long as we are alive.”

    
“That is more wealth than any one Man could spend in ten lifetimes,” Ancenon said.  I would have said “condescendingly” except for his growing angrier.

    
“I am willing to try,” said Nantar.

    
“As am I,” said Arath, his hand still on his sword.

    
We spent the remainder of that day drawing up a grand design of what we wanted to do with the wealth that remained.  I still had Genna in my head, and listened peripherally.  It bothered me that this woman, whom I really cared for, meant so little to me now that she was dead.  I didn’t even think that I would miss the sex.  I could conjure up her image but, in fact, I knew in my heart that there would be others.

    
Just as I knew in my heart that I would survive this disaster.  In fact, as these men wrangled and connived among themselves, I had already made my plans.

Chapter Sixteen

The Free Legion

    
Arath, Drekk, D’gattis, Ancenon, Nantar, Thorn and I put our hands out as we stood in a circle, and clasped each other’s wrists.  Seven of us, to vow to never rob the others of this gold, to work together to spend it for our own common good, to never raise a sword against the others, and to support our mutual cause.

    
We called ourselves a Free Legion, and Ancenon sealed our pact right there in the sight of Adriam.  This ritual to a foreign god made the gorge rise in my throat and my brain sear with pain – I knew my god, given a choice, would have none of it.  Yet I saw no other way.  No one of us would be able to escape with the gold we had found, and no one of us trusted the others well enough to just leave here without some guarantee.

    
When Ancenon said the last word of the oath and as we all, as one, agreed to it, fire engulfed the space between our hands.  From where hands clasped wrists, a bright red ball formed from nothing, rose and divided seven ways, striking each of us in the chest.  I saw a bright flash and then my toes as I flew backwards across the room, to land in the muddy water along the walls of our common area.  I shook my head and wondered idly if my armor was dented.

    
I saw Nantar across the room from me, also shaking his head.  A question mark, turned upside down, had been burned in red into his breastplate.  It ran from his cuirass to just above his swordbelt.

    
I looked to my left and saw Thorn, five feet from me.  He turned to stand and, as he faced me, I saw the same mark, the same way, but colored tan.  To my right Ancenon wore the mark in purple across his breast, and next to him D’gattis in yellow upon his white robes.  Arath had been marked in dark brown, interlinked through his chain mail and, next to him, Drekk’s mark was gold.

    
I looked down at my armor and, across the ridges of my plate, I bore that self-same mark, but in black.  I would have thought that color more appropriate for one of the Uman-Chi, but who was I to argue with the All-Father?

    
I touched the mark gingerly, and it didn’t feel hot or come off.  I scratched it with my fingernail, then with one of Genna’s daggers, but still it remained.

    
“Amazing,” D’gattis said, in complete awe.

    
“A sunrise is amazing,” Ancenon told him, fingering the mark up on his previously bare breastplate.  “This is prophetic.”

    
“You foresaw this?” Drekk accused him.  I didn’t think that the man who dressed entirely in black liked the color of his mark.

    
“I could not bear the tabard of the Royal House on my breast because of it,” he said, simply.  “Even when forced by affairs of state, I couldn’t sustain it – I literally ripped the insignia from my body.”

    
“I think that is one oath we won’t be breaking, my friends,” Nantar said, his usual, jovial self.  I laughed.  We still had to bring back our gold and bury Genna where the rats wouldn’t disturb her.  I had spoken with Nantar and we had formed something of a bond, with Thorn at the periphery of it.  I went to him now, his hand still on his breast as if the mark were attacking him.  Thorn drew his sword and planted its point in the ground, watching me.  He could hear whatever I said to Nantar from where he stood. 

    
“Would you two come with me?” I asked.  My voice wavered as I said it.  I just didn’t want to go alone and I didn’t want to go with everyone.  A small party, a solemn funeral for the girl who did nothing wrong other than challenge the world.

    
Thorn watched Nantar, Nantar looked me in the eye.  For such a capable fighter and such a violent man in battle, he had this soulful expression when he wanted it.  It felt like he could read my heart sometimes.  I wondered if fighting and killing for a living did that to you, of if that was just Nantar.

    
He smiled, clapped me on the shoulder, and nodded.  Thorn saw this and nodded, too.

    
As usual, Ancenon took charge.  He led us because leadership came naturally to him.  He told Arath to go up out of the hole through our glamour to make sure that the Confluni were no closer to finding us.  That used to be Genna’s job, now it belonged to Arath.  D’gattis went after him, disappearing with that snap and flash. 

    
Nantar, Thorn and I left down our passage to the sewer opening.  We didn’t talk because we had nothing to say.  Ancenon would likely wait an hour or so before he sent the rest of our Free Legion after us to start cleaning up, counting and allotting for our gold.

    
Down through the sewers, up outside of the throne room, every twist and turn a memory of Genna.  Already it felt distant to me, like when I left Aileen.  I wanted to miss her but I couldn’t.  She was gone.  What I would miss about her I couldn’t get from just anyone, not the sex but the funny little friend who wouldn’t stop charging forward.  I liked that no one could stop her or slow her down.  Her death burst that bubble, I supposed.

    
“This looks familiar,” Nantar commented as we entered the Cheyak throne room.

    
“Outpost IX?” I asked.  It would make sense to me that all of the Outposts looked the same.

    
He and Thorn both shook their heads.  “Not just that,” the bearded warrior said.  “All throne rooms – all the ones that I have been in, anyway, and that is a few.”

    
“All of the Eldadorian duchies,” Thorn said.  “The great hall in Chatoos.  Long hall, raised dais, gallery on the side.”

    
He pointed to the ruined stands on the left of the hall.  “In Chatoos, I stood right there.”

    
Nantar nodded. 

    
It made sense, like on Earth where Roman international law prevailed to this day.  People copy the first people who did it right.

    
Thorn looked at me, his face bland, and his mud-brown eyes gentle in his face.  “Where is she?” he asked.

    
“Through that door,” I said, pointing at the ruined entrance.  “Down that hall, to the left up a ramp.”

    
“Want us to...” Nantar said, his voice trailing off.

    
I shook my head.  “I should do it.”

    
We turned to the doorway and there she stood, holding the frame.  She was missing a few knives, and her leathers were torn.  Her face was pale and shaking and her hair looked like a bird had nested in it.  There were bloody marks on her face where the needles had stabbed her.

    
“You should do what?” Genna asked us.

     A millennium is a long time on a poison.  It might have mellowed with age, or she might have gotten over it, or this might have been what the poison did.  It would make sense that the Cheyak would want to interrogate someone who got into their treasury.

    
She’d been left weak but alive.  She wouldn’t be running through the woods any time soon.  While Nantar and Thorn and Arath dragged gold bars to the throne room from the treasury under D’gattis’ supervision, across the steel door that we used as a bridge over the pit of spikes, I sat with our horses, Drekk, Ancenon and Genna.

    
“I don’t know what I can tell you,” Drekk said.  “She’s alive from a poison that kills.  She’s weak.  She may get stronger, she may still die.”

    
“That’s comforting,” Genna remarked, leaning against my armor.  I felt like I should hold her, but it felt like snuggling a corpse.  Her skin felt cold and clammy, like her body had died and forgot to tell her brain.

    
“I have heard of a punishment,” Ancenon said, “called the
walking death
, where the Cheyak cast a spell that ruined your body but didn’t affect your mind.  You were supposed to suffer while you became steadily weaker, and then died.”

    
“Is that what this is?” I asked.

    
He looked me in the eyes.  “I wanted to ask you,” he said.  “You speak all of their languages, I thought you might know their history.”

    
I shook my head.  “No better than you,” I said.  “Is there some spell you can cast to make her well?”

    
“It doesn’t work that way,” Ancenon said, standing over both of us.  “If I knew the cause, I could possibly counteract it, but if I have no idea I could kill her in an instant trying to help her.”

    
“So I die,” Genna said, frankly.  She took my hand and gripped it.  I gripped her back.

    
“So, you live,” Drekk answered, standing next to Ancenon.  “While you are alive, you survive as best you can.  You were dead and now you are better.  Who is to say you won’t get better still.”

    
“That does make sense,” I said.  “In a few days you will be running through the trees like a wild thing.”

    
She touched her face where the blood had crusted into little beads, like pox.  They hadn’t bled when I left her.

    
She had been dead.

     Genna couldn’t join the fire bond.  The strain would kill her, of that we had no doubt.  She swore by Adriam and Eveave to be bound as we were, but she couldn’t take the vow.

    
Drekk had already told me that he didn’t trust her; Ancenon and Nantar as well.  The Fire Bond felt like a burden and a relief at the same time – we found it easier to rely on Adriam than in each other.

    
The gold had all been hidden under the dais in the throne room, protected by wards and glamour and a few nasty traps that Drekk had derived.  If anyone found their way to the throne, found the catch in the dais, disabled the spell and took apart the traps, D’gattis would know of it immediately.  Before we left the place as secure, I saw him inscribe a mark in one of the walls with a dagger.

    
“What is that?” I asked him.

    
He regarded me as a parent might a nosey child.  “A focus.”

    
“A focus for what?” I asked.

    
He finished it with a flourish of his dagger.  “A spell to bring me back here.”

    
“Like you did with the horses?”

    
“Quite.”

   
“The focus makes the spell easier,” I surmised.  “You can travel farther between two points like that.”

    
He regarded me with his silver on silver eyes.  “Yes,” he said.

    
I nodded.  It made sense as much as anything magical made sense.

    
“You are an odd one, Lupus,” he told me.

    
We were alone in the throne room.  It tired Genna too much to crawl through the sewers, and the rest were making ready for us to leave.  My “fun part” was coming.

    
“Just noticing?” I said.

    
He smiled one of his rare, sarcastic smiles.  “No, just mentioning it,” he said.

    
He squared off and continued, “I do not understand how you could read dead languages of Cheyak and know nothing of their history.  I can see you understand very complex things, like resonance and a focus and the spell poison that is in Genna.  Yet you are surpassed by basic concepts that everyone knows, like the Blast and the Outposts.”