Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (10 page)

    
“Outpost V,” I said.

    
“There is no Outpost V,” Ann told me frankly.

    
“That’s what I thought, until I took that from its unlooted treasury.”

    
Shela reached out and gripped my arm.  I knew that no one could listen in on us here.  Shela had warded the bedroom even more heavily than the war room.

    
“White Wolf,” she said. “Outpost V?”

    
I nodded.  She knew we couldn’t talk about Outpost X, but this was another issue.”

    
“The myth of Outpost X,” said Def, “is that it is packed with Cheyak gold and is hidden in Conflu.  Are you telling me that the lost Outpost is V, not X, and that it is not in Conflu at all?”

    
“I cannot speak to Outpost X,” I said, truthfully.  I would explode or catch on fire or something.  “But Outpost V is in Eldador, and it is called Uman City by you and me.”

    
They were all quiet.

    
“That is impossible,” Ann said, ever the pragmatist.

    
Def reached out and hefted the gold bar.  “I think that it is not,” he said.

    
Thebinaar nodded.  “I know that everything makes sense after it happens,” he said.  “But this makes sense to me.”

    
“It does?” Shela asked him.

    
He nodded.  We were all looking at him.  “There would have to be more Outposts, because there is VII and IX.  Most people think that they are underneath Tren Bay, but that makes no sense.

    
“In fact, this makes me think that Outpost VII is
not
an Outpost at all, and a lot of other people think that, too.”

    
“They do?” I said.  I didn’t.  Ancenon had never said anything about it.

    
“It is too close to Outpost IX,” he said.  “I think the survivors of the Blast erected Outpost VII because they feared Outpost IX.”

    
That made sense on every level.

    
“I have to see it,” Ann said.

    
“We all do,” Thebinaar said.

    
“Not me,” Def said, shaking his head.  “I have to totally repeat his swordsmanship training.”

    
I groaned.

    
“Can you wait here while we go?” Ann asked.

    
“No,” I said.  “You remember, drunken king, enemies everywhere, assassination attempt on
me
?  Not a good time for a vacation.”

    
“It is a fact finding mission,” Ann said.

    
“I am so sorry I taught you that term,” I said.

    
“Too late to undo it,” Thebinaar said.  “You have to let us go, your Grace.”

    
“I will let you go,” I said.  “But I cannot let you go for at least a month.”

    
“I can wait a month,” said Thebinaar.

    
“Good,” Ann said.  “While you wait, I will go.”

    
“You will
not
,” I said.  I was getting frustrated.  They sensed it, and were quiet for a moment.

    
“I will go in a month, and stay a week, and then Thebinaar will go, and then Def,” Ann said finally.

    
I nodded.  My eyes were full of sand and they knew it.  I took the easy way out

    
“Anything else?” I asked.

    
They shook their heads.  I didn’t even wait for them to leave before I crawled into my bed between the thick, cool quilts.  They filed out, Shela thanking them, as I closed my eyes and descended blissfully into dark rest.

     It felt like a second later that I awoke to Shela stroking my hair, but now the room had gone dark.  A candle flickered in a corner.

    
“White Wolf?” she said.

    
“Mmmmmmph,” I answered her, rolling stiff onto my back, my head like a brick.  I must have caught something in the rain.

    
“You are called to Eldador,” she said.

    
“There’s a surprise,” I said, leaving my eyes closed.  “Did Glennen kill someone?”

    
She held my chin; her fingers cool on my skin.  I felt her lips on my forehead, my cheek, and on my lips.

    
“No, my husband, my master,” she said.  “The Free Legion has laid siege to the city, under the employ of Trenbon.”

     Ancenon had
really
pissed me off.

    
According to fast riders from the outlying cities, there were eight thousand infantry and another two thousand horse on the battlefield outside of Eldador the port, and ten Trenboni Tech Ships at anchor outside the city to prevent relief.  The entire Free Legion had come, with the exception of myself.

    
I should have known better than to ignore the juggernaut of our mercenary army once I’d set it in motion.  It had always been a matter of time before I took or lost control of it, and it looked like the latter.

    
Had I been the monarch of Eldador, then I doubt they would have moved against me.  However, I was the Heir.  That made Eldador fair game.

    
“We know that Rennin and Groff will stand with you, if you march,” Ann told me.  “I can have their armies in motion in a month’s time.”

    
“They will have the city in a month’s time,” I said.  “They won’t be content to siege for long.  D’gattis isn’t that patient, neither is Ancenon, and I doubt that Outpost IX has paid enough for an extended stay.  They will first try to provoke the gate guard, then they’ll try to call out Glennen personally, and odds are he’ll put on armor and lead his forces out of the gate.”

    
“The Free Legion has two hundred squads with Wolf Soldier Training,” Ann said.  “And their horses are heavy lancers like our own.”

    
“Wolf Soldiers man the palace guard, and Wolf Soldiers will have to come to lift the siege,” I said.  Shela gripped my upper arm.  “They are counting on the promise that I made, that I wouldn’t do just that.”

    
“Arath would love to show that he is superior to you in battle,” Shela said.  “He never really accepted your victory at Katarran, or the credit you received in the Battle of Tamaran Glen.”

    
Another thing I would have been wise to consider.

    
“We would have to empty the reserves,” Ann said.  Def nodded, adding, “We have two thousand Uman militia here whom we can conscript to man the walls of Thera.  We wouldn’t be able to invade anyone, but it would take a sizeable force to be a threat to us.  Even if you were engaged, we could hold the city for a week.”

    
“Leaving Thera wide open like that would hurt everything,” I said.

    
“As would losing the capital,” Thebinaar said, as matter of fact as he could be.  “Sack Eldador and kill the King while we do nothing and no one will have faith in Lupus the Conqueror.”

    
That was an indisputable fact.

    
And it left only one thing to do.

     With Shela beside me, I peered into an orb, similar to a ‘crystal ball,’ and saw Two Speers at the head of 1,500 heavy horse and 5,000 warriors in Wolf Soldier uniforms, marching in smart order in my squads of ten.

    
I couldn’t attack the Free Legion.  My men had made no such agreement.

    
Beside Two Spears, a big man in my armor rode an even bigger, white horse.  He wore an amulet to protect him from magic attack, and this would shield him from magical seeing as well.  No one knew my real name, and that meant no magic could find me.

    
A black-haired girl rode near the center of army in a wagon, an Andaran plains witch – wife to an Andaran Wolf Soldier.  She was no Shela, she didn’t come close, but she
looked
enough like Shela to convince anyone who couldn’t actually put their hands on her.

    
The army marched onto the plains outside of Outpost IX, where the Free Legion had been lobbing rocks over the walls in an effort to draw the army out.  Ancenon and D’gattis had managed to neutralize any magical attack from the city, and the gates stayed shut.

    
Yesterday King Angron Aurelias had announced the adoption of Avek as his favorite son, and the rejuvenation project of Outpost IX at his expense.  The Noir’s were back in favor at Trenbon.

    
Ancenon attempted to balance the scales now.  Raining vengeance on Eldador would earn him quite a coupe among his people.  He would be welcomed back as a hero.

    
By now, he knew that 2,000 from Steel City blocked his path back to the Plains of Angador, and another 2,000 from Andurin would be in place in another week to support my Wolf Soldiers.  Outnumbered or not, when my Wolf Soldiers engaged him, and the city garrison swarmed out in support, that didn’t leave a lot of room for Ancenon to move.

    
If he didn’t see that, then Arath would.  As soon as they caught site of the Free Legion, the heavy horse lowered their lances and charged, not at the Free Legion, but at the gates.  The man on the white stallion led them.  The infantry marched double-time behind the van, spreading in a wide arc out of range of the Free Legion’s archers, to take up position with the horse.  If the Free Legion tried to take the horse, they would double back to the infantry and play cat and mouse around their shields and pikes, preventing a straight charge and tiring out the mounts and the men.

    
Heavy lancers were good for long, sweeping charges, but not wheeling back and forth around pikemen and archers.

    
The Free Legion mobilized, but didn’t charge.  Their troops trained as squads marshaled up as a first wave, with the rest of the warriors forming up behind them as reserves.  The horse stood stock-still on the right side, lances up, ready to attack or repel. 

    
My horse took up their positions outside of the gates.  To their left, my infantry formed up in a checkerboard of squads, ready to fight.  On the wall, archers and ballistae made ready to support our side if we should either charge or repel.

    
The Free Legion, having done what they were there to do, picked up, turned tail, and ran.  They would have no fear of Rennin’s two thousand, and Groff would never catch them.

    
Ann burst into my war room, her face red from running.  Her age and weight didn’t make sprinting through the halls very easy.

    
“We’re under attack!” she screamed.

     I stood at the walls of Thera.  There were already outlying farms burning on the horizon.  An army of Confluni, 30,000 strong, marched in five columns toward me.

    
They weren’t emulating Wolf Soldier training, which is what I had feared.  They always marched this way. At some point in their history they had decided that this was the best way to move a large army and it is what they did.

    
They wore leather armor and leather caps.  They carried long, curved swords or triple-curved bows.  They wore round, wooden shields, barely more than a target but less cumbersome than ours, over their backs. 

    
We had beaten them before, but under different circumstances.

    
“If we wait behind the gates, they’ll ravage the peasants and kill thousands,” Def said, “and then we’ll have to come out and fight them anyway.

    
“Better to do it now.”

    
I agreed.

    
Four thousand men in the uniform of the Theran militia double-time marched out through the city gates.  Our walls weren’t much anyway, our gate little more than a framed double-door.  Thera hadn’t ever been intended to be a hard point for an invasion.

    
Men and women stood in a mass.  They had the large shields, the swords, the pikes of Wolf Soldiers, but they did what militia did – showed up when they had to, to die on their feet rather than in their beds.

    
“Those are some terrible odds,” Ann said.

    
I nodded.  She would have the reserves: 1,000 warriors inside of the city.  We’d sent riders to call for another thousand Aschire archers to support the city, but the ride alone could take more than a week. 

    
I took her forearm in mine, and then turned to Shela.  She would stay right here, in the one, flat-topped tower on our wall.  She and her acolytes would be our magic.  The Confluni weren’t great Wizards.  Ours were.

    
“You stay alive,” I said to her.  “We are expendable, you are not.”