Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (28 page)

             
“Would you know if the one following you were protected, perhaps by a sorceress?”

             
The Uman-Chi girl—Glynn Escaroth, had she said?—frowned beneath the hood of her cloak. He didn’t need to know any more. His head rose just in time to catch the hem of a cloak as a man stepped out the tavern door.

             
“War’s beard,” he swore, and leapt up from the table, his body twisting like a dancer’s as he leapt between spilled food and angry people. He slipped out the door, his sword already drawn.

             
To his left, nothing. To his right, that same cloak, flared out from the hem, its owner taking long, fast steps towards the palace.

             
He sprinted after the fleeing cloak, peripherally aware of the girl who followed him. So be it. He didn’t have time to stop her and he could think of worse things than having an Uman-Chi at his back, even one interested enough in him to get him killed by the Emperor.

             
Hard-soled boots like those he wore worked great for the outdoors and horrible for sneaking up on someone. He ran without dropping his heels but didn’t get within twenty feet of his quarry before the one he chased turned around. He recognized an Uman in light Wolf Soldier armor—a leather breast guard, and sword on his hip, tied down.

             
Jerod knew if he killed the man or attacked him on the street, then a swarm of Wolf Soldiers would be on top of them both. As the Uman fumbled for his sword, Jerod closed the distance to him and, without slowing down, took him by the right shoulder and spun him around in a half circle. He heaved the Uman like a sack of grain down an alleyway, past one of the ‘dumpsters’ where Eldadorians liked to keep their great mass of garbage.

             
Jerod turned on his left toe and sprinted after his victim. A few passersby took notice—no doubt one of them would make mention to the next Eldadorian guard he saw, but it wouldn’t be the sprint for aid a swordfight with a Wolf Soldier would bring.

             
The Uman lay on his back, getting up from the ground. Jerod leapt and landed on his shoulder with his left heel, feeling the collarbone snap beneath him. The man groaned in pain, Jerod spun again and had his sword at the Wolf Soldier’s throat before he could cry out.

             
“I have no trouble with killing you,” he said, spitting to one side. “I’ve killed Wolf Soldiers before.”

             
Glynn marched regally down the alley, past the dumpster, her cloak billowing out behind her. She'd thrown her hood back so her hair trailed out green behind her shoulders, her face looking pale and stern, her ambiguous silver eyes seeming fixed on him and unfocused at the same time.

             
“This is not wise,” she told him simply.

             
“What wasn’t wise was you leading
this
,” and he emphasized his point by jabbing the Wolf Soldier with his sword, “right to me.”

             
“He was following me, not you,” Glynn protested.

             
“And yet, he left you the moment he saw me,” Jerod said. “Why do you think that is?”

             
Glynn had no answer, which left him nothing else to do.

             
“Stand back so you don’t get blood on you,” Jerod said, and raised his sword over the man’s heart with one hand.

             
“No!” the Wolf Soldier and Glynn said together. Glynn followed it up with, “I can block the last hour of his memory. He will be drunk in a bar and not missed by the Emperor.”

             
“And in a week he’ll remember,” Jerod said. He knew this Wizards’ trick.

             
“And you will be a week farther from the Emperor than you would be now,” Glynn said. “Unless you can hide the body, and you cannot, the Empress will read the corpse and know you killed him, and then if ever she has met you—”

             
“And we both know she has,” Jerod said. Glynn was right. A dead man needed to be kept away from the Emperor, and toting around a corpse wouldn’t get him quietly out of the city.

             
“I am going to sing something to you, Jerod the Bold,” Glynn told him.

             
“We are going to sing?”

             
“I will sing, you will listen,” she told him, and in a moment, she sang to him, in his native Volkhydran.

That surprised him
—the song seemed familiar, but at the same time he knew he had never heard it before. The man at his sword point stared at the Uman-Chi as if he had no idea
what
she was doing.

“The coming day?” he asked her.

She smiled, a cryptic Uman-Chi smile, and took a step closer to him. She reached out toward the Uman, and he simply closed his eyes.

“He will sleep, and mend,” she said.
“When I am ready, he will awake inebriated in a tavern and fear for his poor judgment.

“You, meanwhile, will go to the next Eldadorian hostel on the way to Steel City.
You will wait there for a week and I will join you with three friends.”

“I will, will I?” he asked her.
Uman-Chi, they are so typical! They thought of the world as theirs to command.

Jerod
the Bold didn’t take commands.

“Or I shall invoke my right as an Eldadorian Baroness, and I shall procure thee to the Emperor, Sirrah,” she said, and took another step forward.
“Or didn’t you say you would rather not meet him?”

Jerod
the Bold wasn’t stupid, either. If nothing else, then she would get him out of the city and to somewhere safe.

“Your word on it warrior,” she said, her face close to his.
He looked into her silver-on-silver eyes, assuming she looked into his. “Your word, you will wait for me.”

“I will wait a week, no longer,” he said.
“After that, I will assume the Emperor was smarter than you thought.”

She smiled.
“Fair enough.”

Chapter Fifteen:

              We Are the Young Americans

             
As promised, Shela took Raven out to the Imperial stables and picked her out a sturdy mare for riding. She’d lent the girl a pair of leather trousers that no longer fit her and a yellow cotton blouse that tied up in the front. She already had proper riding boots from the Uman-Chi.

             
Shela herself had would have preferred her leather skirt split up one side and her halter, but an Empress simply couldn’t be seen in public dressed that way. Instead she picked herself out soft black leather trousers like the ones she’d lent Raven and a red top with frills around the neckline and cuffs.

             
Her Uman servants had decked her hair out with green and blue gemstones. She brought her children in tow, Nina watching them. The children both would want to ride, of course, however she planned to take Little Storm once around the city walls and she didn’t want to have to mind them.

             
A smile split Raven’s pretty face and highlighted her naturally high cheekbones as she held the mare’s headstall in her hands. “She’s beautiful,” the girl gasped.

             
“She’s Angadorian,” Shela informed her. “I’ve a friend in the Duchess of Angador and she does a wonderful job breeding these there. You’ll find no horse with a longer wind.”

             
Raven knit her thin eyebrows and deciphered Shela’s words. Being able to learn languages quickly wasn’t a trait of her husband’s people, she surmised, although in fact these newcomers didn’t do too badly.

             
“And you’re not going to make me ride her side-saddle?” Raven asked, a smile on her lips.

             
Shela clicked her tongue. “You’re no blushing virgin,” she said. “I don’t suppose you think that it will rub off?”

             
Raven laughed and Shela laughed with her.

             
“I want to ride!” Lee protested.

             
“I want to ride, too!” Vulpe joined her. He was already running toward his gelding, Marauder.

             
“You will
not
,” she informed them. “Nina!”

             
“Mind your sister, Lee,” Nina ordered the young girl. At her thirteenth spring, Lee, stiffened as if she meant to defy her nanny. Shela expected the girl to assert herself—she’d never be a proper sorceress if she couldn’t be her own woman. However Lee’s upbringing hadn’t made of her the equestrienne her mother was and one bucking stallion could start a whole herd.

             
“Ninaaaaaaa—” Lee whined.

             
“Ha ha!” her brother tormented her.

             
“You can’t ride either,” Lee shot back at him.

             
The boy bridled and Nina stiffened.

             
“There’s an Uman-Chi scrubbing dumpsters, young ruler,” Nina warned him. “She could use someone to help her.”

             
Vulpe’s eyes widened and Shela pressed her lips together to suppress a smile. Nina always came up with ways to discipline the children that would never have occurred to her. She turned her back on the group of them and went searching for Little Storm.

             
An entire section of the Imperial stables were reserved for Blizzard and his get. Another open-air corral outside of the city walls served for those they’d given up on. Right now there was a grey stallion belonging to young Hectaro Gelgeldin, a chestnut mare which Shela herself had hopes for, Blizzard and Little Storm.

             
Shela crossed the stables to that section. The horse she sought stood still as a statue in his paddock. All of these horses were over-large and had stalls and paddocks twice the size of other horses. All of them were steel-reinforced, and in each case it was pointless. Any of them could leap their paddock wall without trying hard.

             
“He’s such a magnificent animal,” Raven sighed, leading her mare by its halter. Nina followed behind with the children, Lee now carrying little Chawny.

             
“Mmmm,” Shela agreed, studying the stallion with the trained eye of an Andaran plainswoman.

             
She knew this horse. Where some saw a sullen animal, she’d always seen a coiled spring. When he’d dragged his first rider to death, Shela alone hadn’t been surprised. She’d wept for that man, a brother Andaran who left her own tribe to be a Wolf Soldier. She’d known him for a long time and he’d been a great rider.

             
Little Storm’s eye, black against his black coat and black hide, watched her. This animal seemed to know neither joy nor kinship. It waited for her to do whatever it was she planned to do.

             
She plucked the horse’s harness from a hook on the bare steel gate and she pulled open the latch.

             
“Keep the children back,” she ordered Nina absently.

             
“Behind me,” Nina ordered the children in turn. Raven backed her mare up.

             
Little Storm didn’t move at all as Shela approached him. It made her very wary. A horse should react to her; sniff her, step away from her. She reached up and took a handful of his thick, wild-cut black mane and pulled his head down to her. She slipped the harness over his head, behind his ears, and snapped the buckle under his jaw.

             
Still—nothing.

             
She clucked to him. “C’mon,” she said to him, pitching her voice softly.

             
Without a moment’s warning, the horse kicked out with both back feet and launched himself out of the paddock, Shela yanking her hand out from between the harness and the horse’s cheek before he dragged her. She clutched ineffectively for its mane as it shouldered past her and the freedom of the stables.

             
“Horse free!” she shouted automatically, Nina echoing her. Lee called out the same a moment later, back-pedaling to safety with her sister in her arms. Raven’s face turned from left to right, trying to figure out where to go, what to do in the chaos.

             
And like a lone tree on the plains, little Vulpe stood stock-still outside of the open paddock gate.

             
“Vulpe!” Shela shrieked.

             
The stallion barreled out of the gate right at the boy. Vulpe didn’t freeze, his eyes didn’t go wide. He simply drew himself up, so much like his father, and refused to give ground.

             
The mighty stallion reared before Vulpe, pawing the air with front hooves as hard as stone and larger than the child’s head. Still the prince didn’t move, his feet apart, his face set in the same scowl his mother had seen on his father’s face a dozen times.

The stallion took a step back and began to descend, crashing back to earth directly into the same space Vulpe occupied.

Raven swept from the child’s right, abandoning her mare. Tackling young Vulpe, she took the boy to her breast with her left hand and raised her right above her, rolling onto her back, warding off the stallion as he righted himself.

The giant hooves changed direction in mid-air, sliding along an invisible wall to its left.
It was a tiny change, the great beast didn’t stumble. As the stallion stepped back and bobbed his head, Shela sprinted to his side, to take hold of the halter and drag him back into the paddock before he could strike again.

The stallion launched itself again, kicking out with both back hooves and leaving a giant divot in the ground behind him as he shot past Raven and Vulpe into the open aisle between the stalls within the stable.

Three Uman stablemen in the white and brown livery of the horsemen appeared before the stallion. The beast reared again, pawing for them, terrified and angry as only a stallion could be. One held a head tie and the other a crop. The third, the senior man, called out to Little Storm by name, trying to quiet him.

Shela knelt down by her son’s side, reaching for him.
She didn’t miss the ozone stink that hung in the air after a spell of protection.

She took Vulpe to her breast, her fingers in his short, brown hair.
Her eyes finding Raven’s as the girl pushed herself off of the ground and ran fingers through her dusty tresses.

“Mamaaaaaa,” Vulpe complained.

“Shush, you,” she warned him. She wanted to whip him but she couldn’t. The boy had stood his ground. This was second only to taking first blood among Andaran men. In her home tribe he would already have been pulled from her and his name shouted in triumph for such courage.

Or buried, of course, another dead warrior.
The boy struggled and finally subsided, taking his mother in his arms.

Shela saw the stallion was letting the stablemen connect the head tie to his harness.
They would take the horse to their arena and work him to stumbling now. Pointless to beat a horse for being a horse, however as her father had told her growing up, ground work is everything and no horse ever suffered from a firm, fair hand.

Nina took hold of the mare’s reins
, watching Raven as if expecting her to leap off of the ground and bite them. She must have smelled what Shela had.

It wasn’t Nina of the Aschire whose magic had warded Vulpe and Raven; who had created a shield wall between their bodies and Little Storm’s hooves.

There was work to be done in learning of these new comers.

* * *

Bill, who was still having trouble thinking of himself as ‘the Mountain,’ walked the passageways through the palace of Galnesh Eldador with his hands in his pockets, trying to think of something to do.

Lupus was conducting court. That was pretty boring, and done in Uman, which wasn’t a language he could follow easily.
Melissa—Raven now—was off riding with Shela. He’d have liked to go with them but he wasn’t invited and he didn’t want to horn in. He also suspected Shela wanted a crack at Little Storm and he didn’t think he should be there for that.

Karel of Stone was kind of an interesting character but he was in and out and hard to keep up with.
He wasn’t overtly friendly and Bill didn’t want to press his luck there. It might be interesting to hang out with that senior Wolf Soldier guy, J’her, but again, that guy seemed pretty busy, and Bill didn’t want to impose.

In his life, he’d never felt more useless.

“Mountain!” he heard from behind him.

He turned on his heel in a darkened passageway
with steel-banded doors to either side and a single torch burning in a wall sconce next to him and found himself almost face-to-face with Nina of the Aschire, Lee and Chawny with her.

A smile cracked his face.
Lee ran to him and leapt up into his arms, her arms around his neck and her face in his beard. Nina held Chawny, who gurgled and shook her fists at him.

“Grandfather!” she said in the language of Men.

“He isn’t your grandfather,” Nina admonished her, the Aschire’s lips set in their usual thin line, something close to a scowl on her surprised-looking face. Her long, purple hair had a strip of birch bark braided into it on the left. The young woman moved somewhat stiffly, her body unnaturally straight compared to the lithe, dancer’s movements he’d seen in her. Whatever Melissa—Raven—had done to her must have had lasting effects.

“My Lady,” Bill said, and dipped his head.

He turned to face the young girl in his arms. “My Ladies,” he said, putting her back on her feet.

Lee, dressed in a blue palace dress with a white sash that tied up in a bow on the side, dipped a curtsy to him.
“My Lord,” she said, and smiled.

Nina didn’t stop scowling.

“Your horse tried to trample the prince,” she informed him. “The stablemen are working him now.”

“Whu
—what?” Bill stammered in English, then caught himself. “Kak etot?” he responded in the language of Men.
What is this?

“It was scary,” Lee informed him, taking his forearm in her left hand.
“Mama was going to ride Little Storm, and he broke free, and she couldn’t hold him, and he started runnin’, and there was Vulpe, and he didn’t move, and Little Storm reared up, and then
boom!
Raven tackled him out of the way!”

Bill needed that repeated to him a couple of time, but by then they were all moving back to the stables, Bill in the lead and Lee beside him.

He found Raven and Empress Shela leaning on the fence alongside of a covered arena where the stallion was running on a long rope, called a lead-line, an Uman holding a lunging whip cracking the air behind him.

Bill knew what they were doing.
The stallion had done something they don’t like, and they were going to exercise it out of him. Lots of people did that.