Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (54 page)

     The morning dawned bright.  I wanted to puke.

    
What was I
doing
?  I didn’t know how to lead an army.  I didn’t know
anything. 
None of us did, except Ancenon, and he wouldn’t take command.  I didn’t want command, or so my mind repeatedly insisted to me.  I wasn’t ready for it.  The men had trained with Arath and Nantar and Thorn – they didn’t know me from Adam.

    
Then again, no one here knew Adam.

     I assembled the men outside of the small city.  Lo and behold, whom did I see barking and growling at the troops but the man I had humbled the day before? 

    
“Toe that line!” he snarled.  “Straighten up!  If you are going to die today, you are going to die like a Free Legionnaire!”

    
I had to smile to myself.  I had seen it before.  Discipline is contagious; once you have it, you have to pass it on to everyone else.

    
He nodded to me and stepped into line.  I nodded back, scowling, and called, “Forward,
harch
!”  We marched in smart columns toward the gate itself.  Blizzard pawed the earth as I left, not happy that I might leave without him.  If all worked well, Arath and Thorn had found the Sentalan army on the plains and were bringing them north of the city, telling them that the attack had been scheduled for dawn.  We would have them to run behind if we were blocked from our bivouac area. 

    
We estimated that the guard at the top of the gate tower consisted of fifty archers.  Their bows were ready before we approached.  I saw two of their Wizards, or at least some of the smarter Dorkans. 

    
“Halloooo, the gate,” I challenged them, my men still marching.  The other armies were waking up; the Confluni and the Andarans were ready, and the Volkhydrans were scrambling.  The Uman contingents from Eldador and Trenbon were forming up on either side of these Men, pointing them at the gate, as well as my three hundred.

    
“Stand back from the gate or draw our fire,” we were warned.  I called a halt and the men stomped once and stopped.  My credit to Nantar and Arath, they
could
march.  I had done it in boot camp and it wasn’t as easy as it looked.  They stood stock-still and I kept walking, looking straight at the gate.

    
The Dorkans pulled back their bows as one, pointed the arrows down at me. 

    
“Ware, we
will
fire,” they warned me.  I ignored them.

    
They fired, fifty
twangs
of bowstrings, fifty
whicks
as arrows slipped through the air.

    
I winced slightly behind the cheek guards of my Wilhelm as arrows shattered feet from me, but I kept walking, twenty feet now from the gate.

    
D’gattis should be preparing another spell now; impossible to have it prepared quickly enough to protect me from another volley.  Not if the Dorkans were quick enough.

    
The second volley flew, same as the first.  All turned slightly, peppering the ground around me.  I stepped over broken shafts and kept walking to the gate, fifteen feet now.

    
Dilvesh had called on the power of Earth and moved the shafts from me.  D’gattis should have his spell ready now; another ward, protecting only me.

    
Another volley, the Wizard on the gate seemed agitated now.  This time the arrows struck my armor and shattered on it, small explosions all over me, the shafts bursting into flame as they fell to the ground.  Ten feet left until I reached the gate.

    
Back to Dilvesh, readying himself as D’gattis cast his spell.  The Wizard atop the gate would be preparing his anti-magic, but he wouldn’t assume that we could be ready this fast.

    
We didn’t assume there would be more than one wizard, and we should have. One of those balls of fire I had seen whipped up over the gate and flew into our men’s ranks, faster than anyone could stop it.

    
Random shots flew, some of the arrows glowing as the archers were given permission to fire at will.  Dilvesh spelled the air around me, out-thinking the wizard on the gate that we knew about.  Shafts flew to the side harmlessly; they exploded in the air, some sailed back over the wall.

    
I took a step back, a shaft splintering on my breastplate.  Another grazed my shoulder, another exploded on my helmet.  The wizards on the gate were countering, the magic that protected me failing.  Shafts were getting through.  Behind me, I smelled burned flesh and heard rumblings.  I stayed focused on the gate, but I knew we had lost some and the rest were shaken.

    
“Stand fast, you lot!” a familiar voice snarled.  “Hold ranks!  I swear by War and Chaos, the next one of you who opens his mouth, I will rip out your eyes and piss on his brain!”

    
I bit my lip.  I think I had my first lieutenant.  If he could hold them for another minute, we were home free.

    
Another fireball, a low moan from the men, I felt more than saw the energy arc out from our side to meet it.  This took us off of the plan now, so I had no idea whom.  Two more arrows exploded near me and another grazed the back of my shoulder.

    
Finally I stepped up to the gate, reached up and slapped its wooden face with my open hand.

    
The timbers split and the bands snapped.  The gate moaned and trembled as I stepped back from it.  The wizards on the gate, so focused on me, D’gattis and Dilvesh, had been taken entirely by surprise as Shela’s sorcery attacked the very thing that he wanted to protect.  She had been studying the wards that were in place while we fought, and bypassed them.  Now too many men wanted the gate, and her power swelled accordingly.  I worked as her catalyst.

    
The arrows faltered as I stepped back from the shattered timbers.  My men were stock still, but the Volkhydrans were already moving.  The contingents on either side were getting in motion as well, not attacking them but making the Volkhydrans choose to go to the gate or to engage the Uman soldiers.  I moved back to my small army now, with the attention focusing back to the massing warriors.

    
We had lost ten, their bodies charred and smoking on the ground.  Two behind them with red faces showed that they were injured, but not screaming.  You had to admire the discipline.

    
Like I said, “Contagious.”

    
The gates were fractured now, waiting for anything to bring them down. From there, they would be street fighting to determine who would rule the city.

    
And for us, the time had come to get the hell out of Dodge.

    
I sprinted as fast as I could in my armor, mostly just a fast walk.  Again, I missed my stallion.  The men about-faced with their swords out, Dilvesh and D’gattis looking exhausted but leading them.  The Dorkans never saw this coming.

    
Our Free Legion soldiers were moving back to our camp, carrying our wounded.  The Eldadorians broke from the Volkhydrans as expected, ramming the gate with a thick tree trunk.  The Volkhydrans could have us if they wanted us; the Eldadorians were done with us.  The Volkhydrans hesitated and we made as much headway as we could.  We would have arrow fire to cover us if we got close enough to Shela and Ancenon.  Spell cover as well.

    
But you had to look as this from the Volkhydran side: the city had been lost, the gates purged, the Dorkans caught unaware, and here came thousands of warriors about to pour over them.  The Volkhydrans weren’t going to save the day for the Dorkans, and the Free Legion had nothing that they wanted.  We didn’t have a rich camp, I had let them look at it and they had seen supplies and bedrolls, no gold.  The best thing that they could say later is that they didn’t participate in the sack.

    
We marched back to the camp, we turned around and we manned it.  For the rest of that day we watched the sack of Katarran.  The united armies burned it as they withdrew.  We saw two of the seven warships pull out of port and the other five burn.  We saw the Dorkans quit the city and dash for the plains, where the Sentalans waited for them.  That would be another battle, the Dorkans getting the best of it, and Arath and Thorn removing themselves to join us as soon as they could.

    
That night, Drekk came to the camp with Genna and five of his handpicked men; and a good portion of the city treasury strapped to their backs in the form of rare gems.  It would never be missed.  He had told me several times before that the hardest part of robbing a treasury wasn’t the theft, it was the escape and surviving when the spell-casters figured out who you were.  In a raid like this, the treasure would be spread and scattered.  There would be no point in trying to get it back.

    
In the U.S., Fort Knox held gold bars.  One reason why it had never been successfully robbed involved the fact that gold is heavy and hard to move.  One bar that you could hold in your hand might weigh a hundred pounds.  Gems, although more valuable, are more pilferable.  The Dorkans should have known better.  The equivalent of the English Crown Jewels might look wonderful, but you can put them in your backpack and leave with them.

    
The next day rose over the remains of a smoldering city.  It hurt me to see the number of families uprooted.  Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters chased from their homes, dead, or worse.  Amazing that after the battles when the songs are sung, that part usually didn’t rate a stanza.  Katarran had been a bustling city with tens of thousands of families who now had absolutely no way to live or feed themselves.  Rape seemed to be an equal opportunity employer among the Foveans: I had even heard of one game that involved male prisoners and an officer’s stallion that the Andarans found hilariously funny.  I had seen girls younger than Shela clutching torn clothes to their bodies, shattered expressions on their faces.

    
There wouldn’t be slaves, but there were things other than slaves.

    
Our recruiting began as the armies withdrew.  We added three hundred soldiers to our retinue and we had barely lost a dozen.  We had made more wealth than we could have prayed for, and done less than we could have possibly expected to earn it.

    
That night, as we made ourselves ready to level our base camp and get back onboard our ships, the bedraggled remains of the Dorkan army visited us.

    
Their leader, Harem, had one hundred men left.  They had bested the Sentalans on the plains, but barely.  They needed food and shelter and wanted to know what we would do to them if they tried to reoccupy the city.

    
“I think it is the Eldadorians that you have to worry about,” Ancenon told him.  “In fact, they are keeping a garrison in the ruins.  We fight for coin, my friend, and our work here is done.”

    
“
Mercenaries
,” Harem spat.  “I saw your horned goat at my gates.  Is that what they pay you for?  To ruin the lives of decent people and to leave?”

    
“Essentially,” Ancenon said, smirking.  “You are certainly free to do so now.”

    
Nantar and Drekk approached him from our camp with a chest – he watched them suspiciously as they laid it in front of him.  When they opened it, he saw a portion of Katarran’s treasury.

    
An admittedly small portion, but a portion nonetheless.  I would have been surprised that Drekk wanted to be a willing participant in giving back what he had stolen, but in fact it had been his idea.  Why not give a little back?  We had a huge plunder and this made us look like a more legitimate business than we actually were.