Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (34 page)

             
“I would not send one less man—” Lupus began, but stopped when he saw not only M’den but J’her shaking their heads.

             
“Nor should you,” J’her said. “But if it happens again, then we hide reserves in the city. We know what our enemies know, and we let them think us vulnerable when, in fact, we are not.”

             
Lupus thought, and then he smiled. He nodded and turned back to his wife, and took Chawny from her. He nuzzled his daughter in his arms.

             
“If there is a next time, we’ll send out seven hundred and fifty of each Millennia, and retain the rest at the walls in the city,” he said. “You’re right, M’den—we went too far. We were lucky we lost as little as we did.

             
“But then,” the Emperor asked them, “what did they gain?”

Chapter Eighteen:

             
An Emperor, An Empire

             
Bill hadn’t slept alone in what seemed like a very long time now. In fact it had just been a couple of months, but he’d grown used to another body in the bed. He hadn’t realized he’d reach for Melissa in the middle of the night until he reached for her and she wasn’t there.

             
The guy with salt-and-pepper hair had charged him as her guardian protector. He needed to protect her from harm. How the hell was he supposed to do that if she was going to take off without him?

             
So, after a long night where sleep usually eluded him, Bill came to a conclusion in the dark and rose up before the sun. He donned a tough pair of trousers and a blue shirt and undershirt that fit him right for riding, sturdy boots they’d made for him, and the falchion and scabbard they’d let him keep. As quietly as he could, he exited his personal rooms and beat a path for the stables.

             
He found Little Storm waiting for him. The stallion had curled up in his stall in a pile of straw he’d collected against a wall. Bill pulled a carrot out of one of the bags they kept throughout the stables and held it out for the stallion. The giant beast rose up out of the straw and crossed his paddock to the gate where Bill waited. He sniffed the Man and batted his chest with his nose, then took the carrot in one mouthful and crushed it in his powerful jaws while Bill stroked the side of his head.

             
“Planning a trip?” Bill heard behind him.

             
Bill didn’t turn. No matter how much you trust or love a stallion, you don’t take your eyes off of him; you don’t turn your back on him, not for a second. That will be the second when he wonders what the back of your head tastes like, or gets playful and kicks you.

             
Besides, Bill knew that voice.

             
“You’re not invited, Karel,” Bill said.

             
The little Scitai stepped up to the gate and leaned against the lowest rail. He’d dressed out in his bear skins with a silver question mark turned upside-down on the front. He bore a rapier over his shoulder much as the Emperor wore his own sword, and looked up at Bill with eerily similar blue eyes.

             
He laughed. “I don’t think I’d like to go,” he said.

             
Bill nodded and sighed.

             
“You going to try and stop me?” he asked.

             
The Scitai frowned and shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I had a woman like that; I’d take off after her, too.”

             
Bill nodded. A sleepy groomsman emerged from the hay barn. It wasn’t abnormal for the bachelors to sleep there. It was warm in the winter, cool in the summer and free. Their presence kept the rats away and if there were ever a fire, always a fear with so much dry hay, they were right there.

             
“M’Lord,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Are you in need of your horse?”

             
Bill sighed. This was supposed to be a secret.

             
Karel stepped in. “Saddle up Little Storm,” he said. “Pack him with food for a week. Be quick about it.”

             
The Uman scowled, then saw who’d given him the command and his eyes widened. “Fast as light,” he said, and turned on his heel, running toward the tack barn.

             
A moment later another Uman scurried out of the barn in his undershirt and boots with an over-large halter for Little Storm. Bill stepped back from the gate as the small Uman opened it and approached the stallion.

             
Little Storm didn’t react to him. He allowed the halter to be put over his head, and he allowed the Uman to lead him out.

             
“Include a hoof pick in the supplies, and a brush,” he ordered the Uman.

             
“Of course, m’Lord,” he said.

             
He led the horse into the barn. Bill regarded Karel.

             
“Why are you being so helpful?” he asked.

             
Karel smiled his wide, Cheshire cat smile and said, “You don’t think I’m just a good person and a fast friend?”

             
“Not to me, you aren’t,” he said. “You barely know me.”

             
Karel nodded. “True enough,” he said.

             
The Scitai walked away from Bill toward the barn. Bill followed him. He stopped at the barn’s open double-doors and watched three Uman curry and prep Bill’s horse, tied by two lines betweem his halter and opposite polls inside the barn.

             
“You know big things are coming,” Karel said. It wasn’t a question.

             
“Yeah, I kind of sense that.”

             
Karel grunted. “You have no idea,” he said. “I never heard that song when Glynn sang it. I’ve had it explained to me, but when she opened her mouth to sing, I heard nothing.”

             
“That’s strange,” Bill said. He honestly didn’t know what to make of it. “I heard it in my native language, and I guess everyone else does, too.”

             
“Yeah,” Karel said. Just then an Uman entered the barn from a side door with the huge saddle designed for Little Storm, much like the Emperor’s. It was outfitted with a forward crest rather than a saddle horn, and a sling on one side by the stirrup for a lance. A front brace and a bucking strap made for a saddle designed to stay on no matter what the rider went through.

             
The Scitai turned and faced Bill. “I can’t help but feel you’ll play a big part in this, you and your woman,” he said. “Black Lupus thinks the same. He thinks he needs to keep you close, monitor what you see, make sure you stay on his side.”

             
“And you don’t?” Bill said.

             
Karel smiled that smile again and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I think you need to get yourself out of here, and see what he thinks he has to fight for. I think you need to get your hands dirty, if you want to call yourself a farmer.”

             
“What?”

             
“Sorry,” Karel said. “He speaks in allegories and I’ve developed the habit. If you don’t know Eldador, then you’ll never feel you’re fighting for Eldador. You already know the Emperor. You need to know the Empire.”

             
Bill nodded. The Uman were already cinching the saddle to Little Storm. The stallion didn’t react to any of them.

             
“Can you get a message to the Emperor for me?” Bill asked.

             
Karel shrugged. “It’s not like I’m not going to tell him this happened,” he said.

             
“Let him know I’m not abandoning him, I just need to find Raven.”

             
Karel nodded. “Probably a good thing for him to know,” he said.

             
Bill looked into Karel’s eyes. “You’re afraid of him, aren’t you?” he asked.

             
Karel smiled. He pointed to the question-mark turned upside-down on his breast. “You see this?” he asked. “That’s the mark of the Daff Kanaar. People with this mark, they can’t hurt each other, and they can’t allow anyone
else
to hurt someone wearing this mark, so no, I’m not afraid of Rancor Mordetur, Emperor of Eldador.”

             
Bill nodded, knowing he hadn’t gotten the whole story yet. “Okay,” he said.

             
Karel took a step back from him. Two Uman were picking Little Storm’s hooves while the third was feeding him his bit and settling his bridle.

             
“That said,” Karel added, “if you want to know how I feel about a Man who was able to take over a nation and turn it from a backwater into the top power in Fovea in a handful of years, and who did it pretty much by eliminating anyone who stood in his way, maybe starting with one of his best friends in the world? Well, I can tell you that I wouldn’t cross
that
Man without more than a real good reason, and I wouldn’t be the one to advise anyone else to do it, either.”

             
Bill nodded. Pretty much the same story he’d gotten from the porters, without the warning.

             
“You have a safe trip,” Karel said, turning on his heel. “Come back real soon.”

* * *

              “You miss your Mountain,” Glynn asked, urging her mount up alongside Melissa and disturbing her musing.

             
They’d found a place to camp last night, a small town with a small tavern where travelers sometimes stayed on their way to Galnesh Eldador. Glynn paid for each of them to have a private room and for each of them to eat breakfast this morning. None of them had thought to bring food for the journey.

             
She nodded. “He is a good man.”

             
“I don’t see how he is your guardian protector, however,” Glynn continued. Melissa couldn’t tell where the Uman-Chi’s ambiguous eyes pointed, and it immediately put her on her guard. “In fact, had he not mastered that stallion, I would not know what to make of him.”

             
“Why is that such a big deal?” Melissa asked.

             
Glynn thought for a moment, either choosing her words or framing them simply enough for Melissa to understand them.

             
“Do you understand why Blizzard is so special?” Glynn asked.

             
“Only Lupus can ride him,” Raven said.

             
“No,” Glynn corrected her. “Blizzard is of a clan of horses far to the north, known as the Herd that Cannot be Tamed. They are larger and stronger than any other horses on Fovea, and they are sacred to the goddess Life. They will bear the touch of no living thing, and there are many Uman-Chi, as well as Uman and Men, whose deaths or injuries prove they cannot, in fact, be ridden.”

             
“And Blizzard actually loves Lupus,” Melissa concluded. “And Life is probably not on good terms with a god called War.”

             
“Yes, precisely and astutely, Raven,” Glynn complimented her. “Lupus, we fear, is the champion of the god War, and to have mastered one of Life’s sacred is to say the wolf has surely bedded down with the lamb.”

             
Melissa really didn’t understand what that meant, but she got the feeling Glynn didn’t feel sure, or her people couldn’t be sure, who fought on whose side when it came to their gods.

             
“Now here is Little Storm, and he is sired of Blizzard and, like his sire, he will let none master him,” Glynn said. “However he is not his sire, and thus he can be ridden, if not tamed.”

             
“Until this Mountain leaps onto his back and humbles Blizzard,” Xinto added from his seat behind Melissa, “and the invincible Lupus.”

             
“So now you want to know who is letting Little Storm know that the Mountain is okay,” Melissa said.

             
“Again, astutely measured,” Glynn said. “We Uman-Chi have made record of the forty sired of Blizzard. First we know that Blizzard rejects most matings.”

             
“Or it would be more like four hundred sired,” Xinto said.

             
“And so. Next, we see only a handful that could be ridden. These all remain under Lupus’ control with the exception of Little Storm. Of them, only Little Storm, another stallion named, ‘Bastard,’ and three other mares show any likeness to Blizzard. The rest are either overlarge draft animals or too wild to be useful.”

             
“So perhaps the goddess Life doesn’t want her sacred animals mixed in with regular horses,” Raven said.

             
“Or perhaps she is using them for very specific purposes, meaning our Mountain has more to him than we have thought,” Glynn said.

             
“So what does all of this mean, Glynn?” Melissa asked. “We let him keep doing his thing and watching him, or we do more to protect him and hope for some ‘sign.’”

             
Glynn sighed. Melissa had come to hate those sighs. To her they meant, “Stupid human.” Glynn would smile in a person’s face, but no one ever forgot for a moment the Uman-Chi thought of everyone else as inferior.

             
“I believe it means we must first find what god favors our Mountain,” Glynn said. “Then we must encourage the Mountain to that god’s will. If we are to follow the prophecy of Eveave, as I think we are, then we must seek other allies for our advantage, for Eveave will give us only balance, where we seek purchase.”