Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (47 page)

    
“Genna has decided that there will be no common ground between her and I,” Shela agreed.  “I should have thought better about saving her life.”

    
“Shela!” I was shocked.

    
She giggled evilly.

    
“We’ll be in Steel City in two days,” she said, changing the subject. “Is this where you want to begin recruiting this army?”

    
“I think so.  Steelworkers are strong and used to dangerous work.  If this is a feudal system, then they are likely underpaid -”

    
I caught her vacant stare.  Socio-economics and the role of the State weren’t things she thought about.

    
“They have strong men,” I said. “If they’re poor, the place is ripe.”

    
“And what of the Duke of Steel?” she asked.  “This friend of Ancenon’s, Rennin, won’t just let you take his men and make an army in his duchy.  What if you turned it on him?”

    
“Ancenon has said he knows Rennin,” I said.  “If Rennin won’t let us recruit, and won’t be bribed, then we’ll just move to the edge of his lands and recruit from there.”

    
Shela grabbed the back of my head and kissed me.  “You are such a fool, you know,” she said, after she broke the kiss.  I couldn’t help but be hurt.  “Rennin is a Duke and he’s rich.  He has no need of your gold, and he has no reason to let you grow an army.  He won’t let you recruit near his lands and neither will the other Dukes and Barons of Eldador.  If you’re successful, you threaten their power directly and leave them weaker to defend themselves.”

    
“But with people coming to join us -”

    
“They’ll be an unwashed, untrained mass by your own admission.  Rennin maintains a standing army that will scatter them to the winds.  Eldadorians are always attacking each other’s cities, White Wolf.  They have
real
armies that will crush you now, just so that they won’t have to do it later.”

    
That made particularly good sense, I thought.

    
“Think as I do for a moment, my love.  What need are you fulfilling for these nobles?”

    
If gold didn’t matter and friendship with Ancenon couldn’t turn the deal, then the need eluded me.

    
“What need do these nobles have, then?”

    
If not gold?  “To stay in power,” I said.  “To defeat their neighbors, apparently.  Control the masses.”

    
“And how do you suppose they do that?”

    
My eyes popped open wide.  Of course!  It turned out to be so simple – we should have been doing this all along!  She just smiled knowingly, my slave girl, my wife.  Another who, like Blizzard, not only made it happen, but credited it to me.

    
I kissed her deep and pulled her g-string off.  She giggled and spread her thighs to me.  It went fast and hard and furious, and I could almost feel War and Power grinning over our shoulders.

    
“We want to pay your criminals’ fines,” Ancenon said.

    
The silence felt as thick as velvet.

    
We stood together in Steel City’s Great Hall, in the ducal court of Rennin of Steel City.  It had taken us two days to get here and a week to get an appearance at the court.  In the meantime, we had made ourselves as obtrusive as possible.  The city held a regular horse race that I had won six days out of six with Blizzard.  I had bet six gold bars on myself the first day at thirty-to-one odds and about bankrupted the place, then invested half the money back for a twenty percent silent share of the profits.  The owner, a roly-poly weasel of a man named Heverk, with a heavy jowl and a
very
young servant girl, agreed to place my share in a holding company maintained by the Eldadorian State.  I warned him that if I had to come back here to get my money, it wouldn’t go well for him.  Shela backed me with a demonstration of fire in a stable on the other side of the town, a small fire which would have been a disaster were it to happen in the middle of the night instead of during the day.  He seemed to get the message and he sure needed the gold.  I also felt relatively confident that he had murdered the person who had taken my bet.

    
Not to be outdone, the rest of the Free Legion employed themselves in various semi-legal pursuits.  The gladiatorial ring at the edge of town lost three of their favorite champions to Nantar’s sword.       He made a tidy profit until, like me, the odds against him evened out to one-to-one.  Genna, fighting in the ring as well, did no worse, and earned the title
The Red Dagger
by locals at the ring.  Between them they cleaned out many of the local favorites.

    
Drekk displayed great slight-of-hand skills at the state-run casino until they forbade him re-entry and stationed armed guards at all of the entrances when Arath and Thorn walked him in.  I don’t think that my winnings came anywhere near his, but I got to see the rare sight of him smiling on the fourth day. 

    
Even D’gattis got into the mix, selling his services to repair broken foundations and sagging stone walls with his magic far more economically than stonemasons would have been able to do the job.  This might have been seen as an actual service except that in every case, Ancenon had preceded him and discreetly created the damage that D’gattis sought to fix.  Very few people fell for that trick, but everyone paid.

    
It didn’t take the citizens of Steel City long to complain to the Duke whose job supposedly involved protecting them from people like us.  I am not ashamed to admit that the trouble making had been mostly my idea, but I had been inspired when Ancenon’s old friend Rennin seemed unable to remember him. I just figured that if Steel City were anything like New York City – and I saw more and more similarity – then construction and gambling would be where bribes and corruption were the most frequent and lucrative, and where Rennin would
really
feel the pinch.  Considering that Ancenon had immediately disregarded Shela’s (presented as my) idea of buying prisoners instead of recruiting openly, being snubbed both changed his mind and gave him an ax to grind.

    
So here we were, called before the Duke himself to face our peers and to explain why we had dipped deep into the coffers of his two most lucrative and corrupt industries.  The Hall appeared to be just that: a long, low building with a raised dais at one end and stands for courtiers on either side.  The floor had been made from brickwork carpeted down the middle in a low, blue shag (not a footprint on it – had to admire that!).  Clean granite columns, solid cylinders instead of being fluted, supported a vaulted ceiling, once white but now with a gray residue of soot.  With their people removed from the planet for a thousand years, I could still recognize the Cheyak influence in the design. 

The attendees dressed in relatively nice clothes made of cloth, mostly dull colors like dark blue and gray, with splashes of bright
orange and white.  Sashes and medals seemed to be popular among the women.  They ushered us in alone past the long bandstand of courtiers and court functionaries.  Only Rennin sat atop his dais, waiting like judgment, twirling the end of his thick, black moustache.

    
He looked down at Ancenon as if the Uman-Chi had just kicked him.  Rennin’s body resembled a Sumo wrestler, including a fetlock.  I could see that in his day he could have been a warrior to match Nantar, but that day had past.  He still wore a steel breastplate, though the leather fasteners on the side were stretched and fat pushed out here and there.  His finger rolled and unrolled his moustache as he played with it unconsciously.

    
“I was not aware that your nation was so philanthropic, Ancenon of Trenbon,” he said slowly.

    
“Everything is for sale, your Grace,” said D’gattis.

    
“I was also not aware that I was talking to
you
,” Rennin said, his baritone voice sounding incredulous.  The Uman-Chi stepped back with a bow, his eyes unreadable but the stiffness of his posture speaking volumes.

    
“My apologies, Duke Rennin,” Ancenon said, bowing also.  “He is my equal, yet you would have no way of knowing it.”

    
Thorn chuckled.

    
“And these?” Rennin said, indicating the rest of us.  “Your equals as well?  Or a gang of thieves, here to rob honest businessmen and cheat my subjects.”

    
“We are the Free Legion,” Ancenon said, with an imperious wave that encompassed all of us.  He introduced us all by name and the color of our question marks.  Shela had been left with the horses and our gold – little did they know it but the best among us guarded our wealth.

    
Rennin’s eyes hung on Nantar as Ancenon introduced Drekk, and on Dilvesh as Ancenon introduced Thorn.  Genna, her question mark just an outline on her leathers, we called
Clear
Genna.  Ancenon finished with me, and that left the Duke and me eye-to-eye.  Shela had polished my armor almost to blinding, the horns on my helmet only a little less so.  I felt reasonably certain that a spell of some sort had been involved. 

    
“I saw you race on that great stallion of yours,” he said.

    
“I am honored, your Grace,” I said, bowing.

    
“Don’t be – I bet against you and lost mightily.  I am told that we are business partners at the track now, and that you don’t take cheating very much in stride.”

    
“I believe in fair trade, that much is true, your Grace,” I insisted.  I didn’t like where this was leading.

    
“Pfaugh!” he spat, and winced as he gave his moustache a pull.  “The beast is a menace!  Fair trade indeed!  I am told that he all but killed two other stallions in the stables.”

    
“You have been misinformed, I fear, your Grace,” I said, bowing low again.

    
Rennin smiled shrewdly.  “Ho, ho!  Have I?”

    
I looked up, met his brown eyes with my blue ones, and held them as I straightened.  “Indeed, your Grace, I assure you, the other stallions were quite dead.”

    
He slammed his fist down on his chair, and Ancenon winced visibly.  He
really
liked to be the one doing the talking, and this proved why, I feared.  “Your Grace,” the Prince continued, “about the matter at hand?”

    
“Hmmm – matter at hand?” Rennin said.  “Ah, yes – well, seeing as you have my
partner
among you, I would suppose that I am obliged to hear you out – but I warn you – speak in this court of some sort of slave trade, and I will forget that you are Royal, much like myself.”

    
I smirked at that – Ancenon’s wore his nobility closer then his skin – he had been a prince for centuries.  He would see Rennin as an upstart appointed by another upstart.  Either Uman-Chi probably had bad habits older than the entire nation of Eldador.

    
“Of course, the Fovean High Council forbids any trade in slavery, your Grace,” he said.  “However, is it not a tradition that one can – say – buy the time of prisoners in exchange for bonded service?”

    
Rennin slammed his ham-like fist again on the arm of his chair.  I thought that the piece of furniture had demonstrated remarkable strength.  “It is
not
,” he stated flatly.  “Not to Uman-Chi foreigners, at any rate.  This Lupus fellow, and this Drekk, here, come as close as you have to Eldadorians, and even they don’t have the title or the nobility to bond men to their lands – even if they had lands!”