Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (51 page)

             
Xinto’s mouth dropped open. He’d been through the truth saying—no one had ever doubted Rancor Mordetur’s guilt in having invoked the name of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild on that fateful day, outside of Outpost IX.

             
“Apparently, only days before, Ancenon had, in your presence, called Rancor Mordetur a bounty hunter, and he had clearly demonstrated he had no idea what that title meant.”

             
Xinto thought back to the dinner with the Prince and the Man who’d called himself Mordetur, then a vagabond in expensive armor.

             
Ancenon had sought his service—had Ancenon wanted a Bounty Hunter? Surely not!

             
“This is all to be properly inquired upon,” Tagarag informed him, “at the Lair in Galnesh Eldador. There, three Masters will determine your fate—however, Xinto, were I you, I would make peace with Eveave in the meantime.”

             
The other Hunters surrounded him—Xinto didn’t kid himself into thinking he could fight his way clear. He might elude one of them, but with so many on his trail, in a place like Kor, he would be fortunate to make it to the nearest cross street.

             
Suddenly, it seemed very likely that this would be the end for Xinto of the Woods.

Chapter Twenty-Eight:

              Sacred Places

              If there was anything better than being the son of the Duke of Eldador under the most powerful tyrant in Fovean history, Hectaro wasn’t aware of it.

The son of Hectar, whose health promised him
at least
another twenty summers, Hectaro drew on magnificent wealth and privilege, with the resources of a Duke and an Emperor at precious little cost to himself.

One of those costs approached him in the royal stables, even as he saddled
Bastard
, his own stallion. Little known to anyone outside of the royal family and his own, Bastard was a son of Blizzard, whose mother he had rubbed with wintergreen oil to make her more pleasing to the infamous brute.

Lupus had learned of it, of course.
Mares don’t seed themselves. Rather than the rage Hectaro had expected, he’d been labeled a ‘clever little bastard,’ and been allowed to keep the horse. Hence the horse’s name.

One of those precious little costs for his many gifts for his life style, the Princess with her little brother in tow, found him musing as he heaved the saddle onto the grey, 17 hand stallion’s back.

She’d watch him ride, she’d watch him fight, she’d watch him eat dinner.
If she could have arranged it, he felt sure she’d watch him as he slept, content to say nothing all the time.

She had a childish crush that entertained the whole palace and delighted his father no end.
What better wife for him than the daughter of the Emperor, and a spell caster to boot? With such power, Lupus had carved himself out an empire.

“Whatcha doin’?” she asked him.
Wonderful—she was in a speaking mood.

“Math problems,” he kidded her.

“Nuh, uh,” she told him, her nose in the air. She was as serious as her father when she wanted something.

“Nuh, uh,” her brother repeated.

“You have me, my beauty,” he told her, getting a giggle from the girl and a sigh from the boy.
“I intend to ride while the spring weather holds.”

“I want to ride,” Lee informed him, her eyes already searching for the groom.
Hectaro groaned internally. He wanted to
run
. He wanted the gasps of a crowd of peasants as his stallion ran impossibly fast past them all, then to bed the most comely among them.

“I’ve not seen the groom, your Highness,” he tried to skirt out of the issue.
“An it please you, I will keep to the wall until you can find him—”

“Pfft!” she made that noise her father made when he heard something that he considered stupid.
“I can saddle my own horse. I’m an Andaran, you know.”

“My apologies, your Highness,” Hectaro said, the back of his hand sweeping the hay in the bow called ‘the dying swan.’
He knew from experience it was the Princess’ favorite. “I am ever attendant—”

Then with the subtlety of a hurricane, the Empress burst into the stables, twenty Wolf Soldier guards behind her.
She wore the voluminous skirts and tight bodice of court fashion, her hair decked with jewels and flowing out around her like a night sky. The look on her face spoke of fury.

When the Baroness of Britt had merely hidden one of her children, Shela Mordetur had vowed she would live an Uman-Chi’s life covered in honey and buried to her neck in red ants.
If she assumed impropriety with this daughter, Hectaro might dream of such a fate.

Shela had killed for her family before, and not cleanly.

“Hectaro, you’re ready, good!” she informed him. “Help the children—I want fast horses.”

“Your Imp
—m’lady, but—what—” Hectaro was caught completely off his guard.

She stepped into the stall reserved for her personal gelding, an Andaran horse she’d had for over a decade.
Without warning she pulled open the bodice, shucked the dress and had kicked off her shoes.

She turned and saw him standing with his mouth open, and the look of anger returned.

“You’ll have weeks on the road to catch me naked, Hectaro,” she informed him, “stop ogling me like an untouched virgin and
get those children’s horses saddled
! I mean to ride to Uman City and I don’t intend to waste this day.”

“Uman City?” he wanted to move, but his feet were fastened to the dirt floor.
“M’lady—my father—”

A saddle flew from the tack room, took a corner and struck him full in the chest.
After it flew a bit and bridle, a blanket and a pair of boots. He found himself on his back in the straw and manure with a naked Empress looking down at him.

“Want the rest of the tack room?” she demanded.

“No, your Imperial—”

She turned, not needing to hear it.
He stood as she stepped into some kind of one-piece leather thing that rode up her behind. The stretch marks were fine on her stomach and groin, but that unmatched beauty for which she’d been so famous was undiminished on her now.

Lee picked the saddle up from off of him.
It looked almost as big as she was.

“When mama’s like that, you best do what you’re told,” she commented.

“Salient advice, m’lady,” he commented to her, almost as he would to any friend or ally when attacked.

“I can saddle my own horse if you can tighten up the cinch,” she told him.
“Want to get Vulpe’s
Marauder
tacked up? He rides cavalry.”

Cavalry saddles rode high in the back and didn’t have a horn.
Hectaro rode the same himself. He had dreamed of riding with the Eldadorian Lancers some day, not as a career but to be able to point to a few military victories some day.

“Immediately, m’lady,” he informed her.
He looked into her eyes.

“She doesn’t like men lookin’ at her,” Lee added.

“I’m sorry?”

Lee looked at her mother, pulling a tight leather skirt up onto her hips and shimmying to get into it.
The Wolf Soldiers were all busy about getting mounts together and saddling. Two Uman were arguing whether a particular mare in heat was worth the risk of bringing.

Lee sighed.
“She knows she’s pretty, but papa’s the only one who gets to look at her,” she said, with the frankness of children. “If you go starin’ at her like you just did, she’ll probably just blind you so she doesn’t have to deal with it.”

Hectaro swallowed.

“She did it before to one of Groff’s sons,” she added, turning. “I don’t think he got most of it back.”

Lee took off for her own horse’s stall and her own horse,
Singer.
Her mother was already dressed out in her black, leather Andaran raider’s outfit, complete with thigh-high boots and leather overcoat. Hectaro tightened his own cinch and took Vulpe to the tack room to pick out his saddle.

He couldn’t help thinking,
This was turning out to be such a good day!

* * *

The Lone Wood reminded Jack of what some people called an old-growth forest. Ancient trees bigger around than he was tall, under a canopy that blotted out the sun, surrounded them and towered over them. The two Druids, Samhail and Haman, slipped between the trunks like ghosts, their white robes swishing between and over bushes, their feet hushed even in the crunching of the leaves.

             
Jack followed behind them leading Little Storm, the dog roving at his side. Glynn followed after him with her mount. Her ambiguous eyes didn’t disguise the scowl on her face. The Devil trudged along last, crashing through the undergrowth.

             
Jack replayed the encounter with these Druids over and over in his mind. On a whim, he’d crossed himself, as he’d learned in catechism, and said the words he’d heard so many times from the priest at his first church.

             
“
En nomine patri, et fili, et spiritu sancti
,” he’d said. “In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit.”

             
He’d seen the look on their faces, and he’d seen the words bring the Devil to his knees. His first thought had been that he’d violated their agreement—Zarshar would attack them now. Then he’d remembered the ‘intentional’ clause that he’d insisted on.

             
Thank god—he barely knew which one now—for an education in sales contracts.

             
He’d already asked once where they were going, and how long it would take to get there, and been ignored. The Druids had made clear only that they would make nothing clear.

             
The dog stayed at his side, and that surprised him. She usually ranged far ahead and then checked back with them. She loped along with her ears forward now, her eyes alert and her nostrils flaring.

             
He’d thought that finding a people called ‘druids’ made for an awfully big coincidence. For them to speak Latin, however, exceeded any chance of that. Either these people came from his Earth themselves, or they were descended from others who did, and maintained some of their traditions. Either way, they retained a language the Druids had in fact rejected, unto death.

             
That told Jack whatever game was being played here, it had been played before. He mulled this as he saw the forest open up before him, and then stepped out into a tiny glen.

             
It couldn’t have been more than fifty feet across, one hundred feet long, centered around a shallow pool with lily pads at one end and a moss-covered boulder at the other. The dog immediately ran forward to lap water at its bank, while the Druids turned and stood between the rest of them and the pond.

             
“This is a resting place,” Samhail told them. “Zarshar will remember it, I’m sure.”

             
The Swamp Devil took a step forward. With one massive claw he pulled his cuirass from his body and tossed it into a bush. “I’d wondered if you remembered me,” he said, simply.

             
Haman smiled. He was of the race of Men, long brown hair and beard, brown eyes, deeply tanned skin. Jack had already noted something off about him—something in the eyes. They had that ‘look’ Uman had—that indefinable feral wildness, as if the bonds of civility only held them loosely.

             
“You are a legend,” he said. “Neither of us greeted you, but all of us know of the creature that walked right into the Lone Wood.”

             
“Creature?” Zarshar raised an eyebrow.

             
“I am certain they meant no offense, Sirrah,” Glynn intervened. The Druids smirked and looked to each other, then back at Glynn. Jack knew that condescending expression and wondered if the Uman-Chi recognized it as well.

             
“As before,” Samhail continued, “we’ll want you to wait here. We must confer with the rest of the Brothers, and then return.”

             
Jack frowned pensively and nodded, Glynn as well. The Swamp Devil simply leapt into the pond, one long, black streak slipping into the still water with barely a splash, then disappearing beneath it to emerge moments later at the far end by the boulder.

             
Jack pulled the headstall from Little Storm’s head, freeing the bit from his mouth. Glynn dropped her own horse’s reins on the ground, clearly expecting Jack to pull the tack from her mount, as well.

             
Jack shook his head and smiled to himself.

             
“Something amuses you, Sirrah?” she asked him.

             
“Hmmm?” he asked, pretending not to understand. “What? Oh – of course not.”

             
“You can’t expect
me
to put away its saddle,” she challenged him.

             
“Of course not,” Jack said. “You’re a woman, after all.”

             
Her eyebrows dropped over her ambiguous eyes. “If that is how you must justify your role, Sirrah,” she shot back.

             
“My role?”

             
“Oh, just take the saddle off her horse,” Zarshar intervened, leaping up onto the boulder at the far end of the pond. He turned and scrunched his talons into its mossy surface. “I don’t want to listen to you two arguing all day, and you already gave me a headache.”

             
Jack felt his brows knit. “I wanted to apologize for that,” he began, pulling the saddle from Little Storm’s back. The dog had already left the side of the pond and had begun turning a circle in a puddle of sunshine next to the tree line. “I didn’t mean to—”

             
“You’d already be dead if I thought otherwise,” Zarshar informed him. “I’d never heard those words before, but they went through me like a knife.”