Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (56 page)

             
Meker nodded. “Mama,” Vulpe said, “I’m going to take ten Wolf Soldiers and ride out a half-daheer.”

             
So like his father, she couldn’t help thinking. He wanted to know for sure they were safe. Meker had suggested that on the first night and, after a million questions, Vulpe had made it a part of his own routine.

             
“We’ll care for him with our lives, Lady Shela,” Drun, a Dorkan Wolf Soldier, said. Drun was built like so many tree trunks, all sewn together. If Drun couldn’t protect the Prince, then all was lost, regardless.

             
“Come back when you smell the camp fire,” Shela told him, turning her back to him to hide her eyes, wet with pride for her son. She listened to them gallop off as she pulled rations from her packhorse and the other ten Wolf Soldiers began to assemble camp.

             
“Shall I assist you, your Imperial Majesty?” Hectaro asked her. She shook her head, knowing her voice would crack. In fact she was weepy and lonely for her husband, and didn’t want the bother of directing the young man. He
should
have either taken command of the Wolf Soldiers or gone off with the scouting party; however he seemed content to follow orders as she gave them.

             
Yonega Waya, her White Wolf, had high hopes for this one, but frankly she didn’t see it.

             
“I’ll see to your tent, then, and send a man to collect wood,” he informed her. She nodded.

             
Some of her friends would have parked themselves on a comfortable pillow and watched all of these strong, young men take care of her. Nina Mordetur was no such Empress. Twenty-one men would find fifty ways to burn her food and build her tent on an anthill. She’d rather just do what women do, as Power intended it.

             
She pulled a cured haunch wrapped in spring leaves and leather from a pack, and then another pouch with some almost unbruised onions and peas. She was reminding herself where she’d packed the big, cast iron travel skillet she liked when she heard her daughter gasp, “Mother!”

             
She dropped it all and turned, summoning fire in her right hand, to see two of her Wolf Soldiers on their knees, Men behind them turning garrotes, and the other eight already engaged by four others in black leather.

             
She knew the stink of the Bounty Hunters Guild when she smelled it. Chawny still lay nestled in the kirruk on her back. As soon as she’d warned her mother, Lee had put up a defensive wall between her and the rest of them, as Shela had trained her.

             
“Khahen daharr!” Shela snarled, pointing her hand at the man behind one of the kneeling Wolf Soldiers. She needed numbers. The spell might not save him, but the explosion would draw the rest.

             
If they weren’t caught already. She would have taken care of the outlying party before she worried about these.

             
The Bounty Hunter behind her kneeling Wolf Soldier exploded in flame. He screamed and released the garrote, the Man falling forward, dead already. Such weapons make quick work.

             
Someone leapt for Lee and bounced away from her defensive shield. Shela struck for the next Bounty Hunter, behind the other kneeling man, as one of her Wolf Soldiers fell, a sword in his guts.

             
Three of the horses reared, spooked from the screaming and the fire. Hectaro charged across the clearing where they’d planned to camp, toward her, to put his body between her and her enemies.

             
Right where he’d be in the way. The Bounty Hunter who’d been deflected by Lee leapt up and gave chase.

             
Lee gasped, “No!” and dropped her defenses.

             
“Lee!” Shela screamed, and extended her power to defend her daughter.

             
Hectaro fell to the tackle of the pursuing Bounty Hunter. Another of her Wolf Soldiers fell to his knees, no match for the Bounty Hunter training. The one garroting the other man dropped him and pulled a sword, coming for her.

             
Lee’s power lifted the Bounty Hunter from the ground and flung her toward Shela. Shela barely stepped out of the way in time, and then found herself in the path of another Bounty Hunter. Two more of her Wolf Soldiers were down, the others sorely pressed and, now, outnumbered.

             
Someone struck Lee from behind. Shela saw her daughter fall. She felt her anger rise, Power swelled in her veins, her clutching hand rose to wield the spell that would burn them from the inside out.

             
A dagger flashed out of the darkness, nicking her upper arm. At first she considered it poorly thrown, then she felt her anger melt away and her vision blur.

             
Poison. She’d been poisoned. Bounty Hunters used it some times. She’d betrayed her husband, she’d damned her children. The Guild would use them to get Yonega Waya to surrender himself to them, and he would do it.

             
She tried to muster the energy to kill herself and the rest of them, but instead she felt a thud as her knees crashed to the dirt. The poison worked fast. She was swooning.

             
A face crowded into her cloudy vision before her. She wanted to recognize it, framed in red, green eyes.
Who is this?
she wondered. She felt she should know.

             
“Did ya miss me, baby?” it asked her.

             
She fell to her face.

* * *

              Vulpe watched his mother fall, Drun to his right, Grelt to his left, mounted on their Angadorian horses.

             
He’d wanted to charge in and rescue them, but they wouldn’t let him. “If your mother can’t handle them,” Drun insisted, “what chance have we?”

             
Grelt, an Eldadorian Uman who’d been with his father for years, informed him, “If they don’t know we’re here, then we can rescue them. If we’re found, then we join them. Which would you rather do, young prince?”

             
They’d been right, but still he’d watched his sister, Hectaro and his mother fall. He’d watched the Wolf Soldiers die, even Meker, who’d read to him when he’d been just learning.

             
Five Bounty Hunters, one of them a woman with red hair, strutting around, going through their things, tying them up in a circle, their backs to each other and piling the bodies of the dead.

             
They’d gagged all three. If they were smart they’d keep mother unconscious. She could cast without speaking a word.

             
“We have to get him to Duke Two Spears,” Grelt told Drun.

             
Drun shook his head. “We wait, and when they sleep, we go in and take them back.”

             
Dorkan simplicity and Uman caution
, Vulpe thought. His father had taught him about these. Eldador reigned supreme because Eldador took the best parts of every nation and made them its own.

             
Meaning the Emperor took the best parts of the people around him, and made them work for him.

             
But the Emperor wasn’t here, and Vulpe was barely eleven years old.

             
But that was
mama
. That overruled everything.

             
“Send two men to Thera for reinforcements,” he said. He turned his face first to Drun, then to Grelt. “My uncle has wizards who can find ma— who can find my mother. We follow them. If we see a chance to get them back, we’ll decide then.”

             
“Your Highness,” Grelt began. Vulpe knew what came next.

             
You’re a little kid. Do what the adults say.

             
But Vulpe knew what
one
adult would say to that.

             
He turned Marauder with his knee so he could face the larger warriors, and he put his hand on his sword hilt.

             
“I am prince of the Empire, heir apparent, and the son of Lupus the Conqueror,” he informed them, as he’d informed himself before a mirror in the nursery, a toy sword in his hand, playing whatever game his sister or Nina had invented.

             
But now the sword was real, and the woman who needed him was
mama
. He gripped that real sword’s hilt, sheathed at his side.

             
“On your
lives
,” he hissed, “you will obey me now.”

             
They were Wolf Soldiers, and they did what Wolf Soldiers do. Supposedly, once, his uncle Two Spears had held up Lee and asked them, would they storm Outpost IX for her? They’d done so much damage to the city it was
still
being repaired.

             
“Aye, Vulpe,” they said, calling him by his first name, as they would his father. Grelt sent two Men off to Thera, one of them an Andaran, like himself.

             
“We should get these horses out of the way,” Grelt suggested. Drun nodded.

             
“Do it,” Vulpe said, and dismounted.

             
He’d gotten them to do what he wanted. He’d save his mama, if he could.

             
At least he didn’t cry.