Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (55 page)

But no, she couldn’t dispel the image and, in fact, the ship was there, and another on the edge of the horizon behind it.

“Mother,” she spoke into Shela’s mind, expending her power. Communicating this way when they rode was easier than shouting.

“Don’t just use your power to be chatty,” Shela admonished her immediately.
As soon as she’d learned to do this, she’d haunted Shela’s thoughts at night with idle conversation.

“Mother, to your right, a Confluni Ship of War.”

Shela turned to her right and then immediately halted, the rest behind her. Bastard, Hectaro’s mount, stomped and snorted and had to be reined in. Like his sire, he wanted to run, and didn’t want to stop until he was too tired to go on.

“Hectaro, what is that?” Shela demanded.

Lee thought that a silly question, as she’d already said what it was.

“Hush, child,” she heard in her mind.

Hectaro squinted and put a hand over his eyes to shield them.
Lee watched every move. Vulpe immediately imitated him.

“Confluni Ship of War,” he verified.
“Older one, bigger, pre-Empire, I think. Someone important on that. The one behind is newer, small and fast, to get out of the way of our Eldadorian Fire.”

Shela nodded.
She waved her hand before her, and the sky shimmered below the clouds.

The
mirror image was dotted with Confluni ships. Dozens of them, followed by dozens more, all going east.

“Invasion force?” Hectaro asked her.

Shela shook her head. “Could be fifty ships, no more than one hundred to a ship—Conflu wouldn’t invade with five thousand. Not after what we’ve done to them with thirty and sixty. They’re going to Galnesh Eldador, but they’re making a point, not invading.”

“Shame no one’s there,” Hectaro said.
“Although we could beat them—”

Shela shook her head.
“Your father is more than able to handle either the defense of the city, or representing it to some Confluni rabble. If not, I can be back in an instant with the Emperor if I have to. There are still three thousand Wolf Soldiers in Galnesh Eldador. Even if they show up with one hundred thousand, the city would hold out for months.”

“Will you at least warn him, your Imperial Majesty?” Hectaro pressed her.
Lee knew he was angling to return home.

“I already have,” she said.
“While wasting time explaining to you. Hectar will put a few dozen Sea Wolves in their way and see what they do about it, and when we camp I’ll find out what happened.”

Hectaro nodded.
Lee saw the disappointment on his face.

He hadn’t learned to love her yet.
He hadn’t realized whom he was for. Nina had told her once that a woman waits for the right man, not because she isn’t sure of herself, but because, like a good horse, a good man is slow to break.

She smiled to herself as, in her mind, Hectaro stood against the whole fleet of Confluni on the wharves of Galnesh Eldador, the bay around him red with the blood of the fallen, her magic destroying the missiles that the enemies shot at him.

Slow to break
, she thought.
Not impossible
.

Chapter Thirty-One:

              Reinventing Yourself

              Dilvesh of the Daff Kanaar, whom Foveans called ‘The Green One’ for the green hook symbol on his breast and his being a Druid, sat a roan stallion from within the assembled squads of Wolf Soldiers he’d brought from Vrek to here.

             
He’d done so because Black Lupus’ nanny, Nina, had informed him she’d be here, and that a group of Lupus’ enemies were going to use this place to start plotting against him. Dilvesh had communicated with Shela in the capitol through a magic conduit they called ‘Central Communications,’ and then lead these troops here.

             
They’d always planned to take this city—it was a part of their long term plans. If it had become a liability, then there was no reason not to take it now.

             
Duke Tartan Stowe sat his own gelding next to him, of his new Angadorian breed. The youngish man, the eldest son of the old King, Glennen, had made a huge success of his duchy and supplied the empire with some of the best horses known on Fovea.

             
He supported Dilvesh with a thousand of his Angadorian Knights here, and another 3,500 on the Eldadorian plains.

             
Their instructions weren’t just to sack the city; they were to crush it and everyone in it. An important move had begun in Eldador and the lives of a few dissidents didn’t merit jeopardizing it.

             
“We could probably drive right in through the gates,” Tartan informed him. “There defenses are nothing. They probably have magic but if we drive in fast enough you’ll have them before they’re fully engaged.”

             
Dilvesh nodded. “I agree,” he said, “but I think we’ll go slow.”

             
Tartan sighed.

             
He was impetuous, this young man. He chaffed under the Emperor’s guidance. Lupus had over-indulged him after his father’s death, spent too much time with him then and not enough later. Tartan now wanted everything as fast as he could get it, and his successes fueled future failures.

             
“The Koran Guard defends this city,” Dilvesh informed him patiently. “They’ve done nothing else for hundreds of years. They’ll know nuances to that defense we could never guess at. Xareff, the Duke of Thieves, could afford to shore up these defenses if he wanted to, and hasn’t. I think that makes this very obvious weakness a trap instead.”

             
Tartan nodded. The young man wasn’t a total loss, he was simply a challenge. Black Lupus had been right to send him to guide this one.

             
“I’ll direct the attack,” Dilvesh said. “Wolf Soldiers will take the gate and the plaza beyond, then reassess. You’re correct in that I can handle what magic they might have.”

             
Tartan nodded again. “And I’ll handle the exodus that’s sure to follow the invasion?”

             
Dilvesh smiled. “You’ll make sure this exodus isn’t an attack in disguise. It would be very clever of the Koran Guard to put a token resistance here, then hide among the refugees who’ll quit the city, circle back and flank us,” he said.

             
Tartan’s eyebrows rose. His mount pawed the ground beneath him.

             
“Yes,” he said. “Wouldn’t that be clever?”

             
Dilvesh reined the horse away from the Duke, toward his major. Some Aschire or even Eldadorian Regular bowmen would have been a nice addition to this invasion, but there hadn’t been time to bring any. They were going to face losses in the initial attack on the city.

             
But losses are a part of war.

* * *

Nina awoke upright, her head lolling, her neck stiff, her jaw already swelling from where that black-haired bitch had struck her.

It hadn’t taken much effort to contact the garrison at Vrek.
She knew who was waiting there, and he was always listening. She’d told him of her dilemma, and who was holding her.

He’d told her to cooperate.
Apparently, she’d done too much.

Being a nanny had made her soft.

“She’s awake,” some male said, a Volkhydran by the accent.

“Good,” another voice, a woman.
She knew that voice from somewhere, that jumbled accent. It had been a long time, the memory at the edge of her mind.

She raised her head, and looked directly into the symbol of the Daff Kanaar, its outline plastered across a red-haired woman’s breast.

For a moment, she thought she had been rescued. Many of the Daff Kanaar had their personal troops wear their personal mark, in order to delineate them and express their personal power.

But none of them just wore the outline.
Someone had done this to mock them.

“Someone’s going to rip that right off of you,” she told the red-haired woman.

The woman smiled.
“I only wish they had,” she said. “It would have made my life a lot easier.”

Nina looked into this woman’s green eyes.
The room around them was dark, dust motes danced in the sunlight peeping in through cracks in the shuttered windows. She saw couches, and Men and Uman on them, and a couple of skinny girls, moving in between.

They weren’t acting like people in a city, about to be overrun.

“You don’t remember me, do you, Nina?” the woman asked.

She did.
Now that she mentioned it, Nina remembered those eyes, that hair, this woman in black leather, a warrior of some kind, someone who had come through the Aschire.

It was all too long ago, too fuzzy.
She shook her head. This was too much to wake up into.

“I was there when a witch and an assassin decided your fate,” she said.
“Your father declared that you would have both worlds.”

She leaned in closer.
Now Nina saw the scars at her hairline, on her shoulder and her breast, barely treated but easily recognizable as the work of the Slee. Slurn had attacked her, but not finished the job.

But now Nina knew who held her.
She recognized this dangerous woman, believed dead.

“Clear Genna,” she said, looking into haunted green eyes.

“We’re leaving here,” Genna informed her. “The city will fall to the Wolf Soldiers. Already the city’s ‘Koran Guard’ mans the walls, the Duke of Thieves’ warriors are closing the gates, as if that can hold off thousands of the Emperor’s elite troops.

“But I have a message for you, for him,” she said, and leaned in so close, that Nina could smell her breath.
“You tend his children, you have his ear. When you see him, you tell him this right in front of his bitch.”

“I
—I can’t,” Nina stammered.

“You
will
,” Genna demanded. She took a hand full of Nina’s purple hair, brought Nina’s lips to hers, kissed her full on the mouth. Nina sputtered, never having been treated like this, never having known a male’s kiss, much less a woman’s.

The kiss was bitter
—Genna’s tears made it so.

Genna broke the kiss and pressed her lips to Nina’s ear.
She whispered a few words, dark and sinuous, looked into Nina’s eyes, pressed her forehead to Nina’s, and let her know the words were true.

Nina’s blood ran cold.
Such words—such darkness. The ramifications could shake the Empire, and at the worst possible time!

Genna pulled away and fled, the others in the room after her, and then the girls.

* * *

              As the sun rose over the harbor, on the eleventh day of Earth’s month in the 95
th
year of the Fovean High Council, the stomp of marching feet rang off of the walls of Kor as fifty squads of Wolf Soldiers marched out of the Salt Wood into the open glen before the shattered gates of Kor.

             
Arrows whipped out from the city and the warriors crouched behind their shieldmen. A few fell, most survived, pushing out more slowly, covered by their great shields as the squads closed, forming a block where the shieldmen in the second and third rows raised their shields over their heads and created a great wall to protect them.

             
The defenders peppered the Wolf Soldiers. As they crossed half way to the gates, another five hundred emerged from the forest, their shields already in place.

             
In the port, a ship was setting sail and others were trying to do the same. There were five Sea Wolves over the horizon to handle these.

             
Narem watched all of this with flat eyes, the Hero of Tamara standing next to him. An Andaran woman with dark hair stood next to this man, and spoke with a strange accent.

             
“I can throw fire,” she said.

             
“No,” both of the males said at the same time. Karl smiled to himself. “You’ll give away our position to their casters,” Narem added.

             
“The Emperor employs strong Wizards,” Jerod said. “You wouldn’t be a match for them.”

             
The Wolf Soldiers were slowly but surely crossing the glen. When they came in through the gates, there were several mobs of warriors who’d attack them from their right hand side, where Wolf Soldiers were more vulnerable.

             
A runner, an urchin boy, charged up to where the three of them stood. Narem turned to meet him.

             
“They’ve horse in the woods,” the boy said, gasping for breath. “They haven’t found our tunnels yet, but they’re close to the outer entrances.”

             
“We can’t flank them,” Narem said to the open air. He turned to the battle. “Send a message to Xareff—we’ll have to hold them at the gate if we can.”

             
“That’s it?” the female demanded of him. “That’s your whole plan?”

             
Narem regarded her. “That’s all of the plan we need. We catch them at the gate or fight them falling back into the city. We’ll hold them if we can, but I’ve never fought Wolf Soldiers before.”

             
“I have,” Karl said. “You’re doing the right thing. The best way to beat them is to wear them out. Make them move, make them march around without fighting. If you can get their leaders frustrated, it won’t matter how the troops fight.”

             
The female regarded him.

             
“So you think we can win?” she asked him.

             
Karl smiled a half-smile.

             
“No,” he said. “I’d be very surprised if we could win.”

* * *

              Alone, Shela would have covered the distance between Galnesh Eldador and Thera in a week, maybe less. With her children alone, it might have taken her another day. She’d raised them in the Andaran tradition. Even little Chawny was accustomed to riding in a
kirruk
on her mother’s back.

             
Hectaro wouldn’t say anything, but the Duke’s son lagged a few hours into the journey, even on a magnificent stallion like Bastard. In fact, they should all be trailing behind
him
.

             
The Wolf Soldiers also wouldn’t
say
anything, but they had to keep fresh for fighting, meaning a slower pace and shorter days.

             
Eleven days into the journey, and they were just seeing the outer markers for Thera, meaning they still had a day’s ride to get to the city, and the sun was already setting.

             
She reined in. “We stop here,” she said. There was another camp to their east, and they’d been passing supply trains all day. “We’ll camp at the side of the road and enter the city tomorrow.”

             
“Is that wise, m’lady,” one of the Wolf Soldiers, Meker, asked her. Meker had been the captain of her personal guard for years. Of the race of Men, he’d been a Volkhydran miller whose mill had gone out of business. His wife was one of Chawny’s wet nurses.

             
Shela swung her leg out of the saddle, feeling the good pull in her stomach and groin from a day’s riding. Her belly had been softening of late and this excursion had given her that tone back. She’d noted that Lee, as well, had shed some baby fat, and little Vulpe sat straighter in the saddle than he did eleven days ago.

             
“We’re tired, and we’re almost here,” she informed him. “The Emperor isn’t going to march for another month. We’ll see my brother tomorrow and leave the children with him, then carry on with fresh mounts for Uman City.”