Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (71 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

The Bull’s Horns

    
“There is a saying where I come from,” I said, sitting in my War room, in the Casa de Mordetur, with Shela and the rest of the Free Legion.  “’If you mess with the bull, you get the horns.’”

    
I’d built my War Room with chalkboard walls, a long table, chairs and no windows.  The walls behind the chalkboards were lined with cork to prevent anyone from listening in on us.

    
“These are very strange people who birthed you, Lupus,” D’gattis said.

    
“Don’t I know it?”

    
A week had passed since the attack on Drekk and the Eldadorian queen, the first of the cold month of Power.  Glennen had returned safe to his palace.  Wolf Soldiers, Free Legion Soldiers and Sarandi had marshaled.  The word had gone out and 1,000 loyal Aschire had already begun the march from their woods.  They would be here in a few days.

Drekk had run a network of spies in every nation, dipping into our gold to pay them.  These men and women were from our own troops, returned to their homelands and established as guards, journeymen, craftsmen and hand servants.  Drekk had seen to it that, at different times, their pay came either from Outpost X, myself, Ancenon, D’gattis, Arath or Dilvesh.  Thorn or Nantar had trained or recruited them, or I had.  Drekk had spies who watched the spies, and
had documented it all in a series of encrypted, leather bound journals entrusted to his unofficial second in command.

    
That second stood before us now, the journals on the table.  Even I couldn’t read them.

    
“So you are Karel of Stone,” I said to him.

    
I had heard of him in Outpost IX, and from time to time in foreign courts.  Where Drekk had been a mystery, a shadow in the shadows, keeping his appearance and his reputation quiet, Karel made of himself an extravagant, actually infamous thief who like Drekk claimed to be able to take anything from anyone and not be caught.  A Scitai, the Uman-Chi maintained an alarmingly large bounty on his head, as the man who had robbed the Trenboni royal treasury not once but twice.

    
“If not then my mother has some explaining to do,” he answered me.  Like me, he had blue eyes and was tall for his people, a remarkable three feet and one inch in height.  He had brown hair and wore armor made of bearskins, turned inside out.  He wore a rapier over his shoulder much as I wore the Sword of War. 

    
I already didn’t like him.

    
“I can vouchsafe Karel of Stone,” D’gattis told me.  “I have known him for many years.”

    
“A friendship whose logic eludes me,” Ancenon commented.  He wore no politic smile now – Ancenon wanted to arrest Karel on site and D’gattis had actually stood against him to prevent it.  In this I tended to agree.  We needed Drekk’s second to run things, at least until a replacement for Drekk could be found.

    
“Oh, I have friends that I can’t be seen with in public,” Nantar said, wearing his usual smile.  “One of them used to be Thorn here.”

    
Thorn glanced sideways at him.  He had taken the news of Drekk’s death personally and seemed more sour than usual.  Probably why Nantar kept at him like that. 

    
“You are able to read those journals,” Dilvesh said.  Dilvesh had been the first to come when he heard of the attack.  He had reaffirmed everything that Shela had told us, not that he needed to.

    
“I helped Drekk work out the encryption,” the little thief said.

    
“And the spy network?” Arath asked.

    
“In place,” Karel said.  “They will need to be paid as usual or they will dissolve, I’m sure.  Like cats, keep feeding them and they will keep coming around.”

    
“Cats aren’t notoriously loyal,” Ancenon remarked.

    
“Don’t underestimate cats,” Karel said.  “They don’t wag their tails like dogs but they know what to do to get their dish refilled.”

    
I had to smile at that.  Personally I hated the little fuzz balls but I could see the truth in what Karel said.

    
“And what do we know from this expensive network of Drekk’s?” Ancenon asked.  Ancenon didn’t strike me as real happy right now.  I doubt that he liked what he was about to find out any more than he liked the one who told him.

    
“Drekk’s and my contacts in Outpost IX are extensive,” Karel said.  “Nowhere else is there such a preponderance of unneeded servants, so it is very easy to sneak more in to watch things.”

    
Arath barked a laugh.  Shela smiled as well.  She had been busy replacing the house staff and cleaning the manor herself during the process, including cooking our meals and feeding her horses.  It made for a mountain of work for a new mother, but I knew she loved it.  Nothing seemed as clean to Shela as when she did the work herself.

    
“There is no doubt but that Angron himself knew of the attacks and actually cooperated,” Karel continued, condemning the King of Trenbon.

    
“Lies!” Ancenon shouted, slamming the long table with his fist.

    
“That information does support what we know already,” Nantar said.  He and I had discussed how Ancenon would react to the news of his King’s involvement.  Neither of us had guessed that he would embrace the idea.

    
“The bounty hunter also confirmed that Uman-Chi had been involved,” Shela said softly.

    
“Why?” D’gattis said.  “Shela, Karel, all of you, I know my people.  Do not think we don’t know how the world sees us.  We are a people motivated first by our own self-interests.  How would those interests be served by eliminating the Free Legion?”

    
“D’gattis, do you know what your Free Legion stands for to a nation like Trenbon?” Karel asked.

    
“Of course he does,” Ancenon snarled.  He still stood, glowering at Karel from across the table.  “Our shipping brings more wealth to the market place in Outpost IX – “

    
“And our armies offer more threat to that market place, Ancenon,” Arath said.

    
“No one would dare attack Outpost IX,” Ancenon said.  “Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone knows a lot of things,” Thorn said.  “I don’t think the Uman-Chi spent centuries talking about ‘invincible Outpost IX because they wanted to prove it.”

     “Better to use their power to prevent any other nation from growing strong enough to try,” Dilvesh said softly.

    
“Which is what provoked this action against us,” said Nantar.

    
Everyone nodded.

    
Ancenon and D’gattis were visibly mortified.  If their own nation wanted to eradicate the Free Legion, that meant them as well.  Life takes on a different tone when your own people want to kill you.  I had learned that in a jail cell.

    
The Prince sat back down.

    
“Eldador poses an even worse threat than the Free Legion,” Karel continued.  “Every court in the land is under siege as word spreads of peasants paying less than one silver in five to their liege lords.  No one understands this uck-nomuks that Lupus invented. Volkhydrans especially are convinced that this is a new way to wage war.”

    
“What?” I said.  I sat stunned.

    
“
That
makes sense,” Dilvesh said.

    
I looked at him.

    
“War is fought by one nation to eliminate another,” Dilvesh said.  “What better way to defeat your enemy than to impoverish his nation by denying them their just gold.  One could fight a bloodless war more effectively with gold than with soldiers.”

    
“But cutting taxes increases gold revenues,” I argued.

    
“Tell that to the Volkhydrans,” Karel said.  “Personally, I don’t believe it, either.  Families are trying to emigrate to Eldador from all over Fovea.  Even Dwarves are coming here.  Tell a baron that he is going to have fewer peasants, and that the ones who stay want to pay less than half their tithe, and you have some very unhappy and vocal barons.”

    
I looked at Shela, she looked at me.

    
This whole thing was my fault.  I had thought that I lived in a void.  I wanted my changes to affect every nation on Fovea and never thought twice what the Fovean nations would think of that.

    
“World shaking changes shake the world,” I said, more to myself than to the rest of them.

    
“What?” Karel’s blue eyes peered into mine.

    
“Nothing.”

    
“The question that remains is what to do about this?” Arath said.

    
“Before we answer that, we must first know who is involved,” Dilvesh warned.

    
“I think we know that already,” said Thorn.

    
“Do we?” asked Dilvesh, looking at Karel.

    
Karel went to the chalkboard and, with a piece of chalk, sketched a rough drawing of the Fovean region.  I had been to every part that he had sketched except for Toor, and still I had a hard time imagining it the way he drew it.

    
“The Free Legion’s enemies are the ones most directly affected by its success,” Karel said.  “Dorkan, who has lost sea power because of the intervention at Katarran.  Sental, whose farmers are coming to Eldador in droves.  Volkhydro, who feels threatened by the expansion of Free Legion power in what they consider to be an Uman nation, and Trenbon, who is most directly threatened by a wealthy neighbor to the south, where you seem to like to spend your gold.

    
“Even now, Eldador could afford to put enough ships on Tren Bay to neutralize every Tech Ship that Trenbon has.  Trenbon believes that you are to blame for this.”

    
“Then perhaps it is time for this experiment with mercenaries to end,” Ancenon said, looking the rest of us in our faces.

    
I hadn’t even considered that idea and felt glad to see that no one else had, either.  Even Karel of Stone looked skeptical.  D’gattis seemed pensive, arguing the idea in his head perhaps.  Thorn was more emphatic.

    
“I will be damned before I let some greedy Trenboni tell me how to live my life,” he said.

    
“I don’t see any other alternative,” Ancenon said.

    
“I do,” Arath said.  He stood, Thorn and Nantar with him.

    
“We have armies, we have warriors, we have lancers and squads and Wolf Soldiers and Sarandi, Ancenon,” he said, looking right into the Prince’s silver-on-silver eyes.

    
“None of which will stand against Trenbon’s might,” D’gattis said.

    
“I am not so sure of that,” Dilvesh said.