Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (42 page)

“Ok, I was going to come back on a slab, but not now, thanks to you.”

She kicked his shin and hugged him again.

* * *

Jerod watched their ridiculous exchange from where his own horse was picketed. Good to get them away from each other, he thought. No Volkhydran ever slobbered over a woman like that, and an Andaran would stab him in the heart for trying it.

Glynn prepared a beacon
for them, praying by their fire. He would carry it himself, and had been warned several times he shouldn’t let this ‘Raven’ near it. She could discharge it without knowing, and then they would be lost, and have to try to find the three of them, while they themselves worked hard not to be found.

“You are not a good spy,” Jahunga said to him, from behind
his back.

He didn’t turn.
He had heard the Toorian coming, knowing him from the soft shuffle of his sandals on the dirt. Slurn watched the pair from a pile of hay, as well. Jerod could smell him. Zarshar had gone off into the plains to hunt for food for their journey.

“Just waiting to see if they need me,”
Jerod said.

“I think they know what they are doing,” Jahunga chuckled.
Jerod could imagine the smile on his face without seeing it.

Raven planted her lips on the old gaffer’s, and slid her tongue into his mouth.

“You leave a woman behind?” Jerod asked, finally.

“More than one,” Jahunga said, “and many good sons, and fertile daughters, I am sure.
Jahunga’s seed will spread throughout the people of Toor.”

“Not me,”
Jerod said. “Never found the right one. My father tried to match me off a couple times—never felt right.”

“Volkhydran parents often arrange marriages,” Jahunga commented.
“You say you had some choice in this?”

“I chose to run south while I could,”
Jerod said, and smiled. “A wise man told me once that discretion was the better part of valor.”

“And what does that mean?” Jahunga asked him.

He turned. There stood Jahunga, in his white robes and with his spear in his hand. His men waited by the fire for them, and the sun had climbed high enough to be hot in the sky.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Guess I’m not a wise man.”

* * *

At a dead run, Little Storm chewed up the miles, pounding across the Eldadorian plains where the winter grass crunched underfoot or, more commonly, had declined into mud and slop that flew from his hooves, behind him or into Jack’s eyes.

At fifty, Jack never knew that he could love anything so much.
He’d ridden for pleasure, but like this, these long rides, watching the miles go by, he became a part of the world he lived on—felt like he had a stake in it. He existed as a part of Little Storm, and the world moved around him and through him, the air crisp with the promise of spring in his lungs and in the lungs of his mount.

             
As it had done three times already this day, the Devil bellowed out a cry of rage to tell him that he had, once again, drawn too far ahead of them. He needed to be more aware of that, he knew. He was no fighter—he kept his falchion but he could barely use it. If someone ambushed him then he had only Little Storm’s speed to save him, and he knew of one out there to whom that speed wouldn’t matter.

             
He slowed, and he could feel the stallion balk beneath him. Little Storm wanted to
run
—as fast as he could go, wild and free.

             
Glynn rode side-saddle on her Eldadorian war horse. Even now it fought to keep pace and failed. She rode it with her back straight and her green hair flying out behind her. Alongside her, loping like a wolf with its tongue lolling, Zarshar’s long paces devoured the daheeri. Jack watched them follow his trail across the plains, waiting until they came close before he kicked his mount into motion again. By the time he was up to a trot, they ran beside him.

“You stray too far, Sirrah,” Glynn chastised him.

“You will find yourself spitted on a pike like a hog,” Zarshar informed him, gleeful at the prospect.
              “We’re east of Thera,” Glynn said in Uman. “This is the land of Theran Lancers.”

“And if you find them?” Zarshar asked.
“What will you do?”

Jack had no answer.
They were right.

Glynn shook her head.
“They employ good scouts, even in fair lands as these. If they are to war, then they are to war readiness, and this means they will be looking for just such a thing as our trail.”

“We wait,” Zarshar growled.
He looked at Glynn, almost eye-to-eye with her sitting her mount. “In fact, we cut east, and then north. Anyone finding our trail thinks we’re one of those scouts.”

Glynn nodded.
“Sage wisdom. But that our compatriots are so fortunate.”

One of the reasons Jack had been letting his horse run out so fast: it distracted him from worrying about Melissa.
That little girl about broke his heart as he was leaving. He could only hope they were doing a good job taking care of her.

* * *

Nina of the Aschire knelt low to the ground, the wetness of overturned earth soaking into the knee of her leather pants. Ten Wolf Soldiers knelt and waited two hundred paces behind her—what remained of her guard. She’d sent more back to Eldador when she’d picked up their trail at a hostel, and more when the two forces had split.

It had been tempting to follow the enchantress and her two friends
east, toward Thera, but she knew better. Glynn would go to Trenbon—a predictable move. She would try to get a ship from Uman City, and she would be caught.

But the rest headed for Kor, and from Kor they
could
escape, either south with the Toorians or north to Dorkan, two lands where Eldador held little sway. They couldn’t be allowed to do that—couldn’t be allowed to get away.

Xinto and his people moved slowly east across the flat plains now
, just outside of the Salt Wood. It would be easy enough to pass them in a wide arc, to cut them off in just two days, and then appear between them and their goal. Then it would be nothing to obtain the Scitai and Raven once again.

Nina grinned to herself, pulling back,
confident she hadn’t been spotted. Calling for her Wolf Soldiers, she began to set her trap.

* * *

“Where does the power go?” Raven asked Xinto, although the question was good for anyone.

They’d spent three days on the road, and she was bored and tired of her own thoughts.
None of them were talkers, unless they had some stupid question about her and Jack that made her miss him.

“What power?” Xinto asked her.
She could almost feel his eyes on her ass. He had reduced himself to copping a feel about once an hour, be it to stroke her skin as he shifted on the horse’s butt, or pulling himself closer and incidentally getting a hand on her thigh. In the beginning he had gone for the goodies about three times in fifteen minutes, but then she had had this accident involving her elbow and his forehead.

“The power that goes into me,” she said.
“Shouldn’t I—ummm—have to expel it, shoot it out, jump in a bath and have it go into the water or something?”

“I think I will not be bathing with you,” Jahunga quipped.

“I would risk it,” Jerod grumbled without looking at her. He spat to one side from atop his horse, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

The horses plodded on, the Toorians loping along between them.

“You can’t feel it in you?” Xinto asked her.

She thought about that.
Did she? She felt restless, she blamed it on not having Bill there, but even when she had him, she hadn’t slept well since the incident with Nina.

“I am kind of
—I don’t know the word—antsy,” she said.

“I don’t know that word,” Xinto admitted.

“Can’t rest, too much energy for no reason,” she said.

“Ah,” Xinto said.

“I don’t know where an enchantress gets her power,” Jerod said, still not looking at her. “I know a sorceress like Shela is gifted it from her god. Shela claims she’s fed by the desires of her enemies.”

She could feel Xinto turn behind her.
Incidentally again, he put his hand on her belly. “I didn’t know that.”

Jerod
just nodded and said nothing.

“So, maybe I get my power from the people who attack me,” Raven said, removing his hand.

“I suppose that’s reasonable,” Xinto said, “if you are a sorceress, or an enchantress, which you are not.”

Raven sighed.
This was frustrating. They passed a bush, just beginning to get its spring budding.

She pointed at it.
“Burn!” she commanded.

Nothing.

“I am reasonably sure there is more to it than that,” Xinto said, his hand on her hip now.

“That hand finds anymore to it and you will be wearing it on a rope around your neck,” she said.

He took his hand away, but she could feel him chuckling.

“Scitai have bad manners,”
Jerod said.

“Not like Men,” Xinto returned.

They started in on the faults of each other’s races, Jahunga offering his pieces of information, and Raven looked at another bush.

“Fuego,” she said.
“Enflame. Ignite.”

Nothing.

How did Glynn do it? When Glynn had wanted to make her feel threatened, she hadn’t said anything, she had just made it happen. Some kind of white energy snake had jumped from Glynn’s hand to Raven, and she had smacked it away, and then the energy transfer.

So she thought about a plant burning.
What it would look like burning, how it would be hotter and smokier.

And she saw the next bush, actually more of a weed, and she thought about it being on fire.

Nothing.

Maybe she only had the energy for a little while, then.
Or maybe she couldn’t do this at all.

“Mark it,”
Jerod warned. She looked up from the bushes and saw a band of warriors on the eastern horizon, in metal armor, the sun shining from their weapons.

She felt Xinto’s body move as he nodded.

“Got it,” he said.

“Turn?”
Jerod asked Xinto.

Jahunga shook his head.
“Better to meet them head on,” he said. “My men can run all day, but these want to meet us, and I think that, eventually, they will.”

“Agreed,” Xinto said.
“You Toorians won’t ride, or we’d out run ‘em. On the plains like this, we can’t lose anyone.”

They drew up closer.
The warriors waited there, ten strong in their armor, in Wolf Soldier formation of four shield men, three swordsmen and three with pikes.

“Someone else hiding among them,” Xinto noted.

“See her,” Jerod said. “Purple hair.”

“Nina of the Aschire?” Raven gasped.
That wasn’t good. Nina had cruel eyes and, if she wasn’t with her kids, then she wouldn’t be happy about it.

“The Aschire
—I don’t know these people,” Jahunga said. Another of his men perked up, running next to him.

“I do,” he said.
“I wanted to go to Andoran three years ago, and they would not let me through their woods. They wouldn’t fight me, they shot arrows.”

“That’s them,” Xinto said.
“They love Lupus like he’s a god, and they are the best archers on Fovea after my own people.”

“We need to be farther apart then,”
Jerod said. He looked down at Jahunga. “Divide your men in two, half to the left, half to the right. You go right; I’ll go left with the others.

“Raven, you stay with Xinto, and if you see your lizard, keep him close.
We don’t want to fight before we’re ready.”

Jahunga nodded and his men broke off.
Jerod looked at Xinto.

“You talk,” he said.
“Get in front of Raven so she can see you.”

“You might have used that Volkhydran brain of yours to think she and I are the ones Nina are after,” Xinto complained, as he stood up on the horse’s butt.
He managed a hand on either of Raven breasts as he moved to sit in front of her, to plant his butt in her lap.

“You think I didn’t?”
Jerod grinned, and kicked his mount to their left.

“He’s a take charge kind of guy,” Raven commented.

“Isn’t he, though?” Xinto said. “How much do you think this girl hates you?”

“I humiliated her,” Raven said, casually moving his hand from her thigh.
In the same motion, she checked the dagger in her boot. “She wanted to kill Buh—Jack, for touching Lee. She must have something in mind if she let him go.”

“Or she got him already,” Xinto said.
“I know her reputation, Raven—cruel and fast. She learned at the knee of the Imperial couple. Even Wolf Soldiers fear her.”