Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (51 page)

The throne stood on a dais, raised seven steps above the floor.  No one else had bowed or knelt, so I didn’t either.  I looked into his eyes, and he into mine.

     “You have invested heavily in the Eldadorian nation,” he informed me.

    
“It is a great nation, and therefore a wise investment,” I returned.  Suck up to the king?  Didn’t bother me.

    
“And so,” he continued. “You have recruited many men, and women too, I am told, and train an army on the Plains of Angador.”

    
“His Majesty is wise,” I said, inclining my head respectfully.

    
He looked to one of the guards next to the dais, who looked up to him and nodded.  He stepped forward, six feet tall, thick armor like mine, a broadsword sheathed over his shoulder.  He protected his head in a full helmet so that I couldn’t see his eyes.

    
Genna stepped out from behind him.

    
She’d dressed in her leathers, her red hair free.  She wore a very mean grin on her face as she looked down at me with cold, green eyes.  She wore her bandolier of daggers and had replaced the ones that I’d taken.  She looked impeccably clean and pleased with herself.

    
“This man portrayed himself as a member of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild,” the man said, his Volkhydran accent revealing his nationality.  “And I would kill him, your Majesty.”

    
“Do so,” Glennen said.

    
I pulled my sword in a flash, his no slower.  He came at me in a crouch, making himself a smaller target.  He’d expect me to chop down, the obvious move, but I didn’t let myself be baited.  He would have to strike first.

    
He did, a thrust to my middle.  I leapt back and he pursued, a roundhouse spin of the sword letting him chop at my right shoulder, which I parried, then at my left side, which I parried, then from out of nowhere to ring my helmet with a jarring impact.

    
He stepped to my right and tried again for my middle, which I parried again, but this time turned my wrist as Thorn had taught me to push his sword to his right, leaving him open.  Now I thrust to his middle, then to his face, then as he retreated and brought his sword up, cut a sweeping blow to his right knee, to take his leg off and end this.

    
He parried lightly and would have rung my helmet again if I hadn’t ducked.  His sword jumped back in the
en guarde
before I could take advantage of him being off balance.

     You could see that he had more experienced with the weapon than I had with mine.  I’d been outclassed and, if this continued, I would lose.

    
Blood flowed out from under his helmet.  He fell face-first to the floor, the sword clattering on the marble next to him.  I had barely heard Shela speak a word.  I looked up to the dais instead.

    
Genna’s face twisted from a smile to a snarl.  Glennen might have been watching a boring TV show.  The Oligarchs were non-plussed, although several courtiers gasped and two fled the room.  One started down the long, red carpet, but a look over Shela’s shoulder sent him scrambling back up into the gallery.

    
“And so,” Glennen said, “this Free Legion is a force to be reckoned with.”

    
“I have no reason to argue with you, your Majesty,” I said, leaving my sword out.  He’d been willing to let me die here – who said he had finished testing me?

    
“Surely the woman beside you has told you as much.”

    
Glennen acknowledged Genna.  “She recommended that you would survive any trial at arms,” he said.

    
“How very clever of her,” Shela commented.  “Perhaps you would like to see her so tested?”

    
Genna kept snarling.  Glennen did seem slightly amused by this, looking sideways at Genna.  “I may, in the future.  But for now, your army is for hire?” he asked.

    
“It is,” I said.

    
“Then I would hire it,” he finished.  One of the Oligarchs, a wizened man even older than the one I had first met, came up to me with a scroll.  I reached out my hand to see what it had to say.

    
Welcome to my world.

    
Eldador had one problem trading on the Forgotten Sea, and that problem was Dorkan.

    
Dorkan ships traveled to several rich, outbound islands, trading wares.  Eldadorian ships wanted to, but Dorkan ships sank them, and sank them easily.  The port of Katarran lay strategically north of the mouth of the Straights.  They could patrol the natural barrier at will and sink ships as they emerged.  Eldador the Port would have to trade with Andurin if they wanted commerce from the Forgotten Sea.  Because Andurin had the right to tax Eldador the port under Eldadorian law, this took a lot of the profit.

The war with the Dorkan nation provided Eldador with the perfect opportunity to eradicate Katarran, but the Eldadorian presence had to be limited under Fovean law.  Eldador needed the other nations, also camped on the Katarran doorstep, to back them.  However, Dorkan
mines out-produced Eldadorian mines and Dorkan smiths were better.  No one would alienate that nation so that Eldador could move its interests abroad.

    
I sat at a table with Glennen, Ancenon, D’gattis, Genna and the four Oligarchs.  A month had passed since I had met Glennen for the first time.  I had sent word about the offer to the Free Legion and Ancenon had been quick to respond.

    
In that time I hadn’t seen Genna one time.  She had disappeared from court the day she had ambushed us, she hadn’t come to my rooms in the city.  I would have expected
something
from her in that time, but there had been nothing.

    
“The siege ends in two months,” one of the Oligarchs told us.  He, like the others, was an old man.  In a month at Eldador, I had learned that all four Oligarchs were elders of Adriam’s church and personal friends of Glennen’s.  They had come to him to unite the Eldadorian nation.

    
In this Glennen had failed.  His friends who had received top positions, Earldoms and Duchies, had ultimately betrayed him for their own interests.  Cities went to war with each other and left the Eldadorian state powerless to stop them without Glennen having to re-conquer his own nation.  This left Eldador now and forever divided.

    
“Our army is in Andurin now,” Ancenon said.  “Five hundred strong, armed and outfitted.”

    
“And unblooded,” said Glennen.  “I would not have considered this at all, had I not needed you only to begin the battle.  Then, it is nothing to me if all of your troops are slaughtered.  By then, the fight will be on and Katarran doomed.”

    
“And yet,” Ancenon said, “our fee remains our fee.”

    
Glennen harrumphed.  “Too steep. I could raise my own rabble for half of that.”

    
“Not in so short a time, Majesty,” one of the Oligarchs reminded him gently.

    
We were charging him two thousand gold Tabaars, the coin of the realm.  We were demanding payment in advance so that he wouldn’t have the time to mint a batch with cheaper gold.  He seemed happy with the arrangement, but we had met three times on the price.

    
“And you have to do nothing to support these men,” Ancenon reminded him.  “We pay their food, we ship them there, we arm them.  Your two thousand is a clean payment, Majesty.  True, you would pay a ‘rabble’ a silver a week, but you would have to buy their armor and swords and feed them.”

    
Which was true.  We could buy our supplies directly from Sental, where Glennen would have had to buy them through Volkhydro.  We shipped the soldiers ourselves – and Glennen still would have to conquer the Straights.  Rennin sold us armor at a lower price than he sold it to Glennen.  Glennen took armor as a tax, encouraging Rennin to inflate the price.

    
We were no less than a thousand Tabaars cheaper than Glennen could do it himself, and we were there now.  Also, when we were done, we went away.  No veterans to find work for.

    
We held to our price and he signed.  Never any doubt in our minds.

     After the meeting, Ancenon and D’gattis met with Genna and me.  I had asked them to arrange this, having told them what happened. 

    
“Genna, this is intolerable,” Ancenon said.

    
Genna regarded him coldly.  We met on the street, having had to chase her down.  We had asked her to come with us for a private meeting, and she had refused.

    
“He survived it,” she said.

    
“Quite obviously not your intent,” D’gattis said.

    
“I didn’t think his slave girl would let him die,” Genna said.

    
“The Bounty Hunter’s Guild might have other ideas about that,” Ancenon said.

    
“And the means to enact them,” D’gattis said.

    
“Which is an act against us,” Ancenon added.

    
“And yet, no word from Adriam,” Genna said.  “Your logic is flawed, Ancenon.”

    
“Adriam will take you in his own time,” Ancenon said.

    
“Although we can’t know how much trouble she will do until then,” I said.

    
The incident in the throne room infuriated me.  Genna must have thought we would ignore it in light of her winning us our first contract.  Knowing Genna, she might have even thought it funny.

    
“You are powerless to touch me,” Genna said.  “I am in your fealty.  Act against me without cause and you will risk the wrath of Adriam.”

    
“But we
have
cause,” Ancenon said.

“No,” she said.  “Lupus has cause.  Let him, then, raise a hand against me.

     “If he can.”

    
I looked down at the little recon marine.  I had sparred with her.  She couldn’t match me in a fight.  Although faster and more experienced, she didn’t have my strength or my stamina, and she didn’t have the Sword of War.

    
I could kill her, but could I
kill
her?

    
“You want Lupus to risk Adriam’s wrath, thinking that there is no cause to attack you, that you have done nothing wrong,” D’gattis asked.

    
“And because I meant something to him, before his little Andaran whore turned his head,” she said.

    
“Well then I guess there is only one safe way to answer this.”

    
Genna spun on her heel.  Shela had approached her from behind while we kept her occupied.  This hadn’t been our plan – we had wanted her in a room, alone, where we could let Shela bind her. 

    
Genna had refused, and Shela had adapted.  Shela did that.

    
“Did ya miss me, baby?” Shela asked her.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Working for a Living

     I spent a month in Eldador the Port, negotiating with Glennen and his Oligarchs. From the beginning he had requested Shela’s presence as well as mine.  His eyes couldn’t hold enough of her image. The mix of beauty with danger intrigued him, and he asked her opinion on every aspect of our mercenary army.

    
Shela in turn made a point of making Queen Alekanna’s acquaintance through Glennen, claiming that she felt outnumbered by men and had no other friends.  Meeting a woman who didn’t seek her company to further her own position had to be a rare treat for the lonely queen, and the two bonded immediately.  Shela’s wardrobe expanded quickly under Alekanna’s tutelage, and my influence with the King, who saw the benefits of his wife having a friend with a husband other then one of his vassals, grew as well. 

    
The same night that saw our agreement with Eldador approved, had us invited to the royal presence for a last good-bye.  The queen had obviously made the request.  This left “the girls” chattering about children and values and such while Glennen advised me on how to keep some part of our army alive.

    
“You’ll likely lose half your forces at the first volley,” he said, a wooden bowl held loosely in his hand.  Glennen liked his mead and didn’t deny himself on occasions like this.  I tried my best to stay sober, though the drink, fermented honey, tasted exceptionally good.  While no more potent than a grape wine, it didn’t taste of alcohol and, as I had learned the hard way, could get me drunk before I realized it. 

    
“Either they’ll run, or they’ll just die.”

    
“Our morale is pretty high, Glennen,” I said.  He had given me leave to use his name in private a week before.

    
He shook his head.  “It is always high when there is food and pay and nothing to do but train. Let them see some blood and half your troops will piss their pants, and the other half will wish that was
all
that they had done.”

    
“Glennen,
please
,” Alekanna scolded him.  He smiled to himself, for just a moment looking like a little boy who had just raided the cookie jar, then turned to me.  “Better you should let this wife of yours just annihilate the whole city.”

    
Shela smiled to herself.  He often referred to her handling of the bounty hunter that first day.  Since then, neither he nor I had heard anything from the Guild.  I knew that wouldn’t last.  He later admitted that he had received all of his intelligence on me from them.  They were committed to me paying for my crime of invoking their name.  He had nothing to say about Genna’s involvement and I didn’t know him well enough to press him.

    
“I think I will leave this to my husband,” she said, “lest he become too fat.”

    
We all laughed at that. 

    
“
Could
you do that, though,” Alekanna asked, sheepishly, looking sideways at Shela.  “The whole city, I mean, if you wanted to.”

    
“Pfaugh,” Glennen laughed, before Shela could answer.  “She is a little spec of a girl, Alekki, barely old enough to leave her mother’s side.  This Lupus here robbed her in the night from her father’s tent, I am sure.  Let her be a wife for a few years before she has the meanness in her to destroy whole cities.”

    
Shela blinked and I chuckled, though I found the joke to be in the poorest taste.  Glennen became an even worse sexist when he drank.  I used to think of myself that way until I met him.

    
Shela patted Alekanna’s hand.  “Not to worry, Alekki,” she said.  “I only go to keep his favor from camp whores.  If I kill anyone, it will be
him
should he find one.”

    
She said it as a joke and we all laughed, but her casual look toward me told me otherwise.

    
“Now
there
is a skill a wife can use,” Alekanna agreed.  The talking went into the night, and then we said our goodbyes.  It would be months before we saw these people again, if ever.  People die in such things as war.

    
That night I lay with Shela, my head buzzing nicely.  Lovemaking had taken longer than usual because we did it through the mead.

    
“What will you do if your men
do
bolt, White Wolf?” she asked me.  I loved that she called me by this, and War had commanded that no one knew my real name.

    
“Run faster,” I told her.  The usual punch in the ribs.

    
“Shall I annihilate the entire city, then?”

    
“Nah,” I told her.  “We aren’t getting paid for it.  We go in, we start a fight, and we leave.  With luck, we pick up some new troops along the way.”

    
“The Dorkans may not be willing to work with those plans.”

    
“I have fought Dorkans before.  They aren’t so tough.”

    
“No,” she said, “but there are a lot of them.  Their Wizards are trained from birth.”

    
I rolled over, my back to her.  I felt tired and I didn’t like where this was going. “Well, if the going gets really bad, then you can annihilate anyone you want.”

    
She snuggled up next to me.  “Just don’t be in their path if your men start running.”

    
It didn’t sit well with me, and I lay quiet for a while.  Her breath on my shoulder told me that she stayed awake.  She knew I needed to talk more, and she would wait me out.

    
“Could you do it?” I asked, finally.  For everything that I had done, seen, heard and been involved in, I don’t think that anything ever took more of my courage than that.

    
She sighed and didn’t respond to me.  This showed weakness and a woman like Shela didn’t want to be with a weak man.  She liked confidence, conviction and, yes, a good share of cruelty if called for.

    
I knew the most exciting thing I had ever done for her had been that night in the stables.

    
“If enough people wanted it destroyed and coveted it, then likely I could, White Wolf,” she told me.  “I am not a power, my god is Power.  I am a conduit, much like yourself.”

    
I turned back over so I could look into her eyes.  Her hands were around my shoulders.  She looked right into me.

    
“I am
just
a man with a sword,” I said to her.  I’d borne the burden for so long, such a relief to finally admit to it.  “Shela, these things you see in me – “

    
She caressed my cheek.  “You just don’t see them.”

    
“No.”

    
“You think you aren’t special, you think you aren’t great.”

    
“No.”

    
“And you see my power, so obvious, and you feel threatened?”

    
“No,” I said again.  This formed a crux in our relationship and I wanted her to understand it. 

    
“I don’t feel threatened by you,” I said.  “I don’t need to be all-powerful, I have never been the toughest or the smartest or the most dangerous person I know.  I don’t stay alive by being that way now.”

    
I looked into her eyes. 

    
“I just wonder how I am so damn lucky to have you,” I confessed to her.  No less difficult than to a priest, I admitted my guilty feelings.  “I don’t have a single thing that you couldn’t take from me.  You are bound only because you chose to be.  From the day I met you, you were actually expected to take my horse, my life. 

    
“Why not?”

    
She looked into my eyes with that soul-melting stare of hers.  Her cheeks were wet, looking at me.  She kissed me with salty lips.

    
“There is now, and there will always be a thing that I can never take from you, White Wolf, and that only you can give me.

    
“That was it.”

     Katarran stood as a walled city with a huge wooden seaport.  They had a breakwater to one side and seven ships in their harbor restricting any assault to the land.  A narrow plain, less than a mile wide, ran around the exterior of the city, forcing foreign troops to marshal within catapult range of the walls.  At fifty feet high, these were scalable with siege towers, but not ladders. 

    
We were a week getting to the marshalling.  The Trenboni, the Confluni, the Volkhydrans, the Eldadorians and the Andarans were all here, in armies of about fifteen hundred.  The Sentalans were supposedly nearby, although no one knew where

    
As things would have it, the Andarans were the Long Manes.  Kills With A Glance took one look at his daughter and clapped me on the shoulder.

    
“She looks well,” he told me.  “Thin, but well.  I would have expected she would be on her way to your first son by now.”

    
Shela’s eyes welled up with tears; she felt the same way.  Her father and I both saw that.  I tried to think of something else to say and came up with nothing.

    
“I am told that your ‘Free Legion’ is hired by the Eldadorians to side with them in this skirmish,” Kills continued lamely.  “I would be wary if I were you.”

    
“Why is that?” I asked, slipping my hand around Shela’s waist.

    
He indicated the Volkhydran camp with a turn of his jaw.  “That lot, that’s why,” he told me.  “They see the action as immoral and have vowed to side with the Dorkans if it comes down to it.  That’s why we dare not move – not pinned between two armies and unable to attack the one out here first.”

    
I nodded.  One little thing we had forgotten to ask the Eldadorians.  I started to realize that the Fovean High Council didn’t hold the sway that Fovean people gave them credit for.  Not at the higher levels.

    
“If Glennen hired mercenaries,” Kills continued, “then he intends for them to die.  He will want to use your troops to take the brunt of Volkhydro’s advance against him as his own troops move into the city.  Then he can make war against the Dorkans and not start one with Volkhydro.”

    
Ancenon approached as we were talking, and I introduced him to Kills as the leader of the Free Legion.  Ancenon informed me that the bulk of our army had debarked. 

    
“Where do we bivouac,” I asked him, as the Uman-Chi drew me aside.  I wanted to make sure that we were
not
between the Volkhydrans and the Eldadorians.

    
“You use these terms,” he chided me.  “What is biv – oo – ach, and why would we want to do it?”

    
I smiled to myself.  Shela and her father could be heard arguing; I would have a recalcitrant slave girl tonight.  “Bivouac is to pitch a camp with your men, and because we have to sleep somewhere.”