Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (54 page)

* * *

Karl Henekhson padded down a side street, as quietly as his hard-soled shoes could take him
; his heels rapped the cobblestones deafeningly in his own ears, although in fact he knew at the same time he made less noise than a slippered priest in church.

The lizard had been gone too long.
The sun had dropped and risen with no sign of him, although that came as no surprise.

The thing was barely more than an animal, and when did an animal ever care what time of day it was?

It hadn’t taken much to track it. He’d found its marks all over the gutters and through what refuse piles he came across. Either the thing had no ability to smell the stink of such places, it didn’t mind the reek or it actually liked it. Having come from a swamp, he might even consider it an improvement.

The thing had taken to a sewer near here
—Karl assumed it needed to get past a ruined wall that it didn’t feel comfortable climbing over. Then he turned a corner and found himself not ten feet from a huge man with a battleaxe, standing in front of a battered green door.

No need to draw Karl a picture.
Either Xinto had alienated the people who employed this man, or he’d joined them and done something to alienate them. Either way, they’d taken him, and odds were they’d made a carpet of the Slee by now.

So much for songs about prophecies.

“You don’t need to be here,” the Man told him; a Dorkan by the look of him, a big one, too. Most of them were dumber than the oxen that pulled the plows before them, but once in a while you got the cunning of a bull from one, and Karl saw that now.

“I’m here for Xinto of the Woods,” Karl informed him.

The Man grinned. “I’d forget that name, were I you,” he said, and turned the axe’s wooden shaft in his weathered hands.

The axe would be too big to meet with his sword.
When the man swung it, it would crush everything in its path. Many Volkhydrans preferred axes for that reason. Karl could fight that.

He whipped out his sword.
The Man lunged with the axe, taking an over-hand swing, aiming straight for Karl’s torso.

Three shafts protruded from the Dorkan’s chest.
His mouth opened wide, revealing rotten teeth. Karl recognized the shock in his eyes, the look of a warrior whose mind was telling him the body was already dead.

The weight of the axe dragged his whole body prone to the ground, snapping the shafts.
He heard Nina swear behind him. She’d probably wanted those back.

His Volkhydrans melted out of the shadows behind him.
A younger man picked up the axe and tried to heft it, but an older, larger man took it from him.

“Here, now,” he complained.

The older man backhanded him casually. He parked the weapon on his shoulder as if War had grown it there.

“He
would
fall on his face,” Nina complained. She kicked the huge man over just enough to retrieve the feathered ends of her shafts. With those she could fletch new ones, although as far as he knew, they only used wood from their forest.

More likely she didn’t want her handiwork recognized.
They didn’t know yet whose home this was.

“I sense a whole crowd on the other side of that door,” Raven told him.
She’d put on her leathers and stood at his shoulder, her feet apart, the dagger still in her boot.

“Stop that,” Nina warned her without looking up.
“They’ll sense
you
, and do worse if there’s a caster among them.”

“And there is,” they heard from behind them.
Karl turned to see none other than Xinto of the Woods, perched on the top of the ruined wall. Typical that he would show up right
after
the perfect moment.

“So much for saving you,” Karl complained.
He’d rather not have killed this man, and he already had a sneaking suspicion what sort of place this was.

“Slurn already did that,” he told them, leaping deftly from the wall onto the street with them.
“His timing couldn’t have been better, either. Did you know that there’s two Millennium of Wolf Soldiers bound for here from Vrek?”

Raven nodded.
“He told us,” she said, drawing a cocked eyebrow from Xinto. “Is he alright now—”

Xinto nodded.
“He’ll pop up in a moment,” he said. “He took to the sewer to get out of there—like as he wants to finish something he killed. I saw no reason to watch that.”

“Good sirs,” Forn addressed them.
The old Volkhydran seemed nervous. “As far as I know, where one guard’s dead, there’s twenty more to be upset about it—”

“Ha!” Xinto barked a laugh.
“More like a hundred,” he said, “and not guards, but Bounty Hunters, so why don’t I get you thin-brained Men right out of this city before we have to decide whether to fight Wolf Soldiers, Bounty Hunters or both?”

Forn didn’t miss the insult.
“As like as we could, short sir, were we not so preoccupied with your pious arse,” he countered.

“Enough,” Raven told them.
Fifteen Volkhydran Men, and as one they’d all fallen in love with her. Karl shook his head. Sailors did nothing but fight, drink and fall in love, or so his father had informed him, on more than one occasion.

“I think we’ve worn out our welcome in Kor,” she said.
Karl had never heard that expression before. “If the city’s going to be overrun, then the best thing we can do is not be in it when that happens, so either we have to get ourselves a ship, or get out of the gates and head north for—what is it, Andurin?”

“Andurin would be the next city north,” Xinto told her.
“But stick your pretty nose in there and the Emperor’s men will grab you by it and lead you to a waiting cell.”

“If not me, then you,” she countered.
“But I didn’t say we’d go in, just wait there for Glynn to show up, hopefully with the one who fights as does the sun.”

Xinto opened his mouth, but Nina spoke next.
“I can get you into Andurin,” she offered. “I know Alekennen, who was Glennen’s daughter—”

Raven spun on her heel and drove her fist into the Aschire’s jaw.
She’d been spending time both with the sailors and with Karl himself, learning how to defend herself with her hands, if her newfound magic ever gave out.

A woman of the race of Men could weigh as much as twice what the heaviest Aschire woman could rise too.
Nina had been raised with Men, and had grown larger even than most Aschire males, but still was a fraction of Raven’s stocky build.

Her feet left the ground as she flipped over backwards to the cobblestones.
If the blow to the jaw hadn’t silenced her, the rap she took to the back of her head would have.

A Volkhydran knelt at her side and put three fingers to her neck.
Karl saw the pert breasts rise and fall and had his answer before the Volkhydran could deliver it.

“She lives,” he said.

“Leave her,” Raven commanded him. “The Bounty Hunters will want someone to blame for this, let ‘em have the Emperor’s nanny.”

Karl and Xinto both grinned.
The Bounty Hunters would have no trouble believing the Emperor had sent his troops in after Xinto, if it was Xinto he wanted. The invasion would make it seem only more likely.

“So to Andurin?” Forn asked.

Karl shook his head. “She said that for Nina’s benefit,” he said. Raven grinned up at him, her dark eyes sparkling mischievously. “We head southwest, for the Lone Wood.”

Xinto barked a laugh and took off down the alleyway.

Chapter Thir
ty:

              Back in Black

Back on the Eldadorian plain, the Lone Wood behind them and Little Storm beneath him, Jack ran the previous day’s events over and over in his mind.

No,
he kept concluding.
No way. Not buying it.

They
’d tromped up to the Lone Wood, were welcomed with open arms, here comes this Vedeen who hears their song, and then leaps on a horse and joins them—the one who fights as does the sun.

No,
Jack told himself.
No way.

Why did they need Zarshar for that?
Why did they need him? Raven, Jerod, Jahunga—any of them could have come and had the same results. These Druids were supposed to be so xenophobic, and here they were all smiles and help?

Vedeen rode beside him now, long blonde hair and long white robes flowing out behind her, riding a roan stallion, reminiscent of a thoroughbred in height and power, pacing Little Storm, her eyes before her and that mention of a smile as ever on her lips.

She’d asked, “How does the sun fight?” Initially Jack had believed that meant with fire and overwhelming power.

But the sun knows that its planets are going to keep spinning, and that they sure as hell aren’t going anywhere without it.
The sun hurtles through space and drags its system along with it—it is more concerned about what’s before it than about what’s around it.

Vedeen wouldn’t even commit herself to being on their side.
She’d said she was going along. That could be prophetic.

Jack watched their dog cross the plains before them, from his left to his right.
She didn’t usually get ahead of them but had been energized since leaving the Lone Wood. Behind him Glynn rode her own horse side-saddle, her thoughts her own, and the Swamp Devil loped along behind her, no longer sprinting as urgently as he had when they had come here. They’d been to the Lone Wood and decided they’d accomplished their mission. Now they ran to Kor to pick up the rest of their comrades.

Jack couldn’t help thinking they’d seen something really important and missed it.
It itched like a scab that wouldn’t be picked.

* * *

              Narem was an Uman who’d been born in Kor nearly one hundred years earlier, when there hadn’t been an Eldador; much less an Eldadorian Empire, and Jark, a Man who called himself The Pirate King ruled the city.

             
His mother had been a whore and his father a pirate. He’d liked to think his father had loved his mother but because he was dead before Narem’s 10
th
birthday it was hard to be sure. By his 20
th
birthday the pox that killed whores had taken his mother and Narem was alone.

             
He didn’t want to be a pirate, so he’d joined the Koran Guard, the warriors who guarded the city when it was invaded, which happened now and then. The Koran Guard were the only police force the city knew. They kept fights from becoming riots. They made sure robberies didn’t turn into massacres, and as much as was possible in this city they kept some semblance of order. Narem never thought he’d see his 30
th
birthday, but he justified that if he had to die that way, then he’d do it keeping another man alive, not robbing him for his treasure.

             
Eight decades later and he was still doing it. He’d seen Jark the Pirate King fall to Tendehr, the Baron of the Forgotten Sea; him to Geler the Bloody, and him to another until twenty years ago Xareth had shown his wasted face and become the Duke of Thieves.

             
No matter who ruled the city, no matter who occupied what part of the tumble-down palace or who hung his banner on what was left of the walls, the Koran Guard persisted, it served and it lived on, taking a part of the spoils of every ship that pulled in here and a part of the profits from most of the crime, at least the major crime. In return they protected the city as best they could.
              “Wolf Soldiers?” Xareff demanded, sitting on his ‘throne,’ a cracked marble edifice on top of a dais with chipped steps. Narem stood below him in a leather cuirass and steel greaves that didn’t match, a sword on his hip and a crossbow over his shoulder. A few of his guardsmen flanked him, wearing what armor they’d come across in their travels.

             
“Two of what they call ‘Millennia,’ meaning fifty score each,” Xareff informed him.

             
The scrawny ‘Duke’ fidgeted on his throne, looking to the two Toorian pirates who stood one to each side of his throne. Both were Xareff’s trusted advisors—more trusted than the Koran Guard and Narem, anyway.

             
“Why so many, do you think?” he asked.

             
Narem shrugged. “They’ve not come to raid us,” he surmised. “We’ve not done anything to the Emperor except to report on his nanny, and I think he’d hardly raid us for that.”

             
Xareff shook his head and looked away. “You don’t know that,” he said. “It’s impossible to know the Emperor’s mind. He’s crazy, he’s just grasping and crazy.”

             
Narem couldn’t argue that he didn’t know the Emperor’s mind, however he’d seen crazy men before and they didn’t tend to have empires.

             
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he commented to the Duke. “I’ve got five hundred men and women—you’ve got another three. I’ll need them to hold the city.”

“Hold the city?” Xareff exclaimed, standing.
“Hold the city? Against that? Against one hundred score Wolf Soldiers? Are
you
crazy?”

Xareff thought a lot of people were crazy, Narem noted.
What that usually meant was pretty clear.

“The Koran Guard will defend the city,” Narem informed him.
“If you don’t want to stand with us, then you can step down. Others before you have tried. I can tell you the people who live here won’t take it well.”

Xareff looked to his two Toorians, heavily muscled males with blousy, cloth pants colored purple
and bare chests. They both gave the Duke a sideways glance but said nothing. When Narem had been a captain in the Guard, Kraig the Beast had gotten Trenboni attention by slaughtering an Uman-Chi family on their yacht off of the coast of Dorkan, and when they’d come looking for him he’d tried to quit the city. The populace had caught him and presented his body to the invaders as a collection of parts in a wheelbarrow. That had satisfied the Uman-Chi and they’d left.

There was no way to know if that would work with the Emperor.

Xareff turned to one of the Toorians. “Are we still following that group with the Hero of Tamara in it?” he asked.

“We are,” the man said in a deep baritone.

“Find them,” he said. He turned to Narem, smiling.

“We’ll see their appetite for a knife in the Emperor’s nanny,” he said.

* * *

People were scrambling, collecting what they could, making barricades in front of some buildings and collecting in alleyways and other places that seemed easy or at least easier to defend.

Jahunga led their mixed band through the streets of Kor to the stables where their horses were kept. From there they’d find a low-point in the broken down walls and leave while the Eldadorians and the Koran pirates fought for the gates.

“How much time do you think we have?” one of his warriors asked him.

Jahunga shrugged. One of the Volkhydran sailors chimed in, “The Koran Guard isn’t more ‘n a few hunnert. If there comes two thousand Wolf Soldiers, then they won’t last long.”

“A warrior behind a wall, even a bad one, can hold off more than his own number of invaders,” Jerod
—Karl—said. All of them were looking to him now that they knew who he was. Jahunga had wondered why the Volkhydran insisted
he
was the hero, fate foretold, but now he understood.

A hero made by the one they were opposing.
Fate may be foretold, but only the worst fate.

“If they don’t just run,” one of the Toorians, a warrior named Mfassa who’d been Jahunga’s friend for years, said.

One of the Volkhydrans shook his head. “The Koran Guard’ll fight,” he said. “Some of the pirates, too. More, if the Emp’ror brought a few ships. I know as I’d ruther take my chances on the ground with Wolf Soldiers than at sea with Sea Wolves.”

Jahunga nodded.
He had to agree. Sea Wolves ruled the ocean and everyone feared them.

“Funny you should mention that,” an Uman voice said from behind them.

They all turned to see a troop of warriors in various kinds of armor, watching them. They approached from behind as the group moved down a city street, now they were fanned out, thirty of them, most with clubs or rusty swords.

Jerod stepped out in front of the group, Jahunga stood up next to him, Xinto right behind.
Raven kept back among the warriors and Slurn was nowhere to be seen.

“Doesn’t seem funny to me,” he said.

The leader of this new group, an Uman in a leather cuirass and mismatched steel greaves, with a sword at his hip and long, white hair, regarded them with flat, brown eyes. “I’m Narem of Kor,” he said. “I’m Commander of the Koran Guard.”

Jerod nodded.
“Not easy to get that job,” he said. “Guess you don’t want me to waste your time any more than you want to waste mine.”

“No,” the Uman said, smiling.
“That would be inconvenient.”

“We know about the Wolf Soldiers,” Jahunga said.
“We did not bring them.”

“Didn’t say you did,” Narem informed them.

His warriors had their weapons out. They were Men, Uman, a couple Toorians that Jahunga noticed. All had long, unkempt hair and any of them could use a shave and a bath.

Jerod sighed.
“You want to settle this, you and I, save your warriors to fight the Emperor?”

“I don’t want to fight you at all,” Narem said.
“But Xareff believes the Aschire bitch with you will keep the Emperor from invading us, and if that’s true I mean to have her.”

Jerod nodded.
“Would likely work,” he said. “We left her outside of a building with a green door, in an alley back—”

Narem barked a laugh.
“That’s a Bounty Hunter’s Guild lair,” he said.

“We know it,” Xinto said.

“So you know they’ll quit the city, and take her with them,” Narem said. His men were exchanging glances, working up their courage in case they were going to charge.

“That’s what we plan to do, without the girl,” Jerod said.

Narem shrugged. “Even if I were going to allow that,” he said, “I think those Wolf Soldiers aren’t going to.”

“We’re not worried about them,” Jahunga said.

“Not too awfully worried about you, either,” Jerod added.

* * *

Singer pounded out the miles, Lee on her back, her mother and a squad of Wolf Soldiers before her, her brother beside her and Hectaro and another squad of Wolf Soldiers to her rear.

She loved to ride, loved to feel the mare’s power beneath her.
Singer flowed like a river over the well-worn road between Galnesh Eldador and Thera. As her body moved with her mount, her mind sprung free to explore a world so new and fresh to a child.

Now and again she would look over her shoulder and smile at the handsome Hectaro.
She’d imagined him a million times over as her husband, her protector, her hero with a bloody sword, as her father had been for her mother. She’d been raised on stories like the Battle of Tamaran Glen, where Lupus the Conqueror had charged ten thousand Confluni with his horse and his sword, and destroyed them all, to be at his wife’s side.

Her mother had told her she was a daughter of heroes, of
divine instruments, of legends. In her mind, Hectaro’s victories rivaled her fathers as he cast down Swamp Devils and slew dragons while she supported him with her magic.

Now her mother had what she thought of as the ‘Andaran Look,’ that angry focus her people seemed to have.
Like uncle Tali Digatishi when he fought, or her mother when she’d caught Bounty Hunters in the royal palace. When mother wore the Andaran Look, Lee knew that the best thing to do was to keep her whiny brother quiet and be what they considered a ‘good girl.’

So now as her eyes drifted over the seascape, her mind creating great Sea Wolves packed with sailors, the decks slick with blood and her Hectaro battling a Confluni fleet with a sword in his hand, she had to give a start when one of those ships of Conflu actually sprang out of her fantasy and into her reality.

For a moment she wondered if she’d accidentally created a glamour. She’d done it before, when her father had told her of the ‘unicorn,’ a horse with a horn in the middle of its head, which protected virgin girls in their chastity. For a week she’d sworn one was following her around the palace, flowers in its mane, smiling at her, until her mother had reprimanded her for using her magic to such silly ends.