Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (3 page)

     I shook my head, thinking of how few men had supposedly been inside the Trojan horse.  “Just a few men inside to start killing guards, then your army strikes before you know you’re unprepared.”

     “But that argues to increase our outlying patrols,” Def said.  “More
of them searching deeper. More thorough.”

     “Are we trusting other Eldadorian cities?” Ann asked me.

      I thought about that.  I’m the Heir, I knew that Rennin approved of my appointment, but I also knew that Groff of Andurin didn’t share his opinion.  He didn’t want it; he just didn’t want me to have it.

     “I am going to say that any party of armed troops has to say why they’re here,” I said, finally.  “Eldadorian cities have sacked each other before. 
And increase the patrols.  That’s a good idea.”

     “How many troops are we keeping here?” Thebinaar asked.

     “I am only taking 500 as a personal guard.”

     “Horse?” Ann asked.

     “Mounted infantry.  I need to move fast,” I said.

     She nodded.  “Then we have seven hundred heavy horse in the city, and another five hundred in training,” she said.  “Two thousand, three hundred Wolf Soldiers in the city, and another thousand in training.”

     “A thousand?” I asked.  We had never had a thousand in training.

     “Sack the un-sackable city and you would be surprised how many want to cast their lot in with you,” Def said.  “I turned away two thousand more, and put them on the trail to Angador.”

     I smirked to myself.  “That should come as a nice surprise to Arath,” I said.

     “We will be back up to pre-invasion strength before the War months,” Thebinaar said.  “Depending on our losses in the summer campaigns, we could be twice this size next year.”

     “Until then, we are vulnerable,” Ann said.

     “Well, not vulnerable, so much as affected,” Def said.  “There isn’t anyone who is going to come here to this city with 10,000 troops.  Even the Trenboni can’t muster so many to that end.  And until they do, we won’t lose the city.”

     “Which means we will continue to grow,” Thebinaar said.

     If it could only be that simple.  In my own mind, I knew exactly what I would do now to draw us out and weaken us.  I could only hope that my enemies weren’t thinking of it.

     There were plenty of those now.

     I marched through the gates of Eldador the Port at the head of 500 Wolf Soldiers, Blizzard in his full barding raising and lowering his head as Eldadorians and tourists stood aside for us.  The wolf’s head banner snapped under the flag of Eldador on my lance and on my standard bearer’s pole.

    
I arrived on the 21
st
day of the month of Adriam, in the eighty-second year of the reign of the Fovean High Council.  The wind blew cold, the horses loving it.  At a time when most market places had shut down, the one in Eldador thrived.

    
I’d been told that the one in Outpost IX had yet to be rebuilt.

    
We marched to the palace gates, near the center of the city.  The streets bustled with people in their furs or heavy cloth overcoats.  Some stopped to look at us, some didn’t care.

    
We weren’t in the city twenty minutes before a rider met us from the palace.

    
“Your Grace, Mordetur of Thera?” he asked.

    
“And you are?” I responded.

    
“The squire of the Oligarchs, your Grace,” he said.  “I am here to ask you to proceed to the palace with haste.”

    
“We are going there right now,” I told him.

    
“With greater haste,” he said.  I’d seen that look in the Navy.  Something very bad had happened.

    
I kicked Blizzard into a canter, the Wolf Soldiers behind me doing the same.  One blew a single note on a bugle to clear the crowd, which came as a real surprise to me because I didn’t know I had buglers.

    
We got some good speed down the main way.  The thunder of two thousand hooves gives you plenty of warning to get out of the way, especially on cobblestones.  We were at the palace in less than half an hour.

    
A huge fountain had been built outside of the gates to the palace.  A statue of the goddess, Life, here depicted as a beautiful girl in a short skirt and large bare breasts, spewed water from her hand in many high, arcing streams.  The breasts, of course, nursed the world.

    
They had probably not been intended for Glennen to cop a feel, but then, I don’t think he asked the sculpture.  By even casual observation, he was propositioning her, dressed in a breach clout that accentuated the extreme size of his hairy belly.

    
“Oh, crap,” I said.

    
“Oh, I hope he doesn’t,” the squire said.  “Although he does pee in the fountain when the mood strikes him.”

    
As we got nearer, we could hear his slurred speech as he argued with the statue.

    
“C’mon, gurlie, you can give us a little taste, eh?” he told her.  “Maybe jess a li’l dribble?  I could do with jess a dribble.”

     I
rode Blizzard right to the fountain’s edge. “Your Majesty,” I said.

    
He turned, trying to adjust his bleary eyes.  “Who?  Lupus, you bastard, issay you?”

    
I smiled. “It is,” I said.  “Can I bring you back to the palace?”

    
“Not till this bitch here gives me some rec’nition,” he said, scowling.  “I’m a bachelor, now, yanno.”

    
How did I know this would be at the root of it?  “Your Majesty, I can get you a woman who would appreciate you, if you want one,” I told him.

    
He looked at me owlishly.  “Not that child you married?” he asked.

    
Yes, it had been a good idea that not to bring Shela.

    
“No, some other.”

    
He squinted his eyes at me.  “Not her sister?”

    
“No,” I said.  I held out my hand to him.  “Please, your Majesty.  Come inside.  You must be freezing.”

    
He looked down at himself.  “Yanno, I don’t feel it.  But yeah, maybe I will put some pants on.”

    
He stepped onto the wall of the fountain, put his weight on its slippery surface, and of course did a back flip right into the pool.  I saw his head smack the statue.

    
I don’t think Life had appreciated his offers.  Five of my men were off their horses, me with them, as we leaped to his aid.

    
I knew enough to be careful as we moved him.  “Watch his head and neck,” I told them.  One man pulled his sword and we tied his head to it with a few rags, then secured the sword’s blade to his back, immobilizing him as best we could.  Meanwhile four Eldadorian regular army brought a litter from the palace and we rolled him into it, to bring him back inside and to his rooms.

    
Hundreds of people saw the debacle.  I would have worried about the scandal, except that it had probably been going on since I left.  We’d gone
way
past scandal.

     Glennen lay on his bed, sodden and freezing.  The room had been built to be lavish, with gigantic bay windows and real glass to look through.  The hard wood floor had been polished to a shine, except where our steel-shod boots had marred it.  His four-poster bed came with a canopy, piled high with quilts.  A table stood by the door and couches by the window, the bed and the far wall, where a gigantic mirror hung.

    
He hadn’t shaved in several days, but he had been drinking regularly.  His son, Tartan, stood to one side of his father as two royal healers tended him.  His Oligarchs and I spoke quietly at his tables.

    
“How long has this been going on?” I asked.  I had just dispatched the captain of my guard to bed down the men and stable the horses. 

    
“Since All Gods’ Day,” one of them said – the one I had met first, who had come to Shela and me in our hotel room.  It occurred to me that I either didn’t know or didn’t remember any of their names.

    
“He began drinking early, he drank all day and into the night.  Then he started to break things, until he passed out.  Two days later he started again.”

    
“This is what he does now,” another said.  They were all male, all Men, and all old.  “He drinks, he attacks, and he tells us things that are on his mind.”

    
“Sometimes they are terrible things,” the third said.  Of the four of them, he was the only one with short hair.  Like the others, his was white, his robes were white, and he wore sandals.  They all carried a twisted oak staff as a sign of office.  I didn’t know why.

    
“He cannot cope with the loss of the Queen,” the first said.  “And of course, we can hardly hold him responsible for his actions.”

    
“Except that we must,” the fourth Oligarch said.

    
Couldn’t argue with that.  I knew alcoholism when I saw it.  He wouldn’t stop if he didn’t have to, and he didn’t have to unless his kingdom revolted or someone assassinated him.

     This could play right into War’s hands, I thought.  No point in taking the King out if he was going to do it for us.

     I had seen some sailors go pretty far down this road.  Drinking yourself to death is real.

    
“There is no way to get Tartan to take over in his place?” I asked.  Tartan, hearing his name, looked up at us.  “Even just as reagent or something, for the duration of his treatment?”

    
All four shook their heads as one.  “Eldadorian law in unique, in that the monarch has all power to rule.  Glennen always feared that somehow his Dukes would rise up against him.”

    
“Can he proclaim a new law?” I asked

    
They nodded.  “You are wise, your Grace,” the second said. “When he is sober, or just a little drunk, we must get him to proclaim that the Heir can assume power in a crisis of health.”

    
“I will commence the document,” the fourth said.

    
“No, I am the Heir,” I said.  “It should be Tartan – “

    
“Tartan has no standing to rule,” the third said.  “If he were to suddenly take power, it would look like a coupe.”

    “And it will look exactly like that if I take over,” I said.  “And do you really want
me
to be in control of Eldador right now?”

    
“Your recent attack on Outpost IX,” the fourth said.

    
“You fear that it will be a direct affront to the Trenboni,” said the first.

    
“I fear that they could use it as justification to retaliate against anything Eldadorian that they want, and legitimize it before the Fovean High Council, which I just royally pissed off,” I said.

    
They all nodded, and then I realized that my use of slang has been interpreted as I intended.  Had they adapted or had I?
     Tartan approached us with a healer.

    
“He will live,” the healer, a white-hair Uman in a yellow robe, said.  “You were wise to bind his head – his neck had snapped.  We have repaired it.”

    
“I owe you another debt, your Grace,” Tartan said. 

    
“I am at your service,” I said, inclining my head to him, “and to your family’s service, your Highness.”

    
“Actually, it is you who are ‘Highness,’ your Grace,” Tartan said.  “If I am correct on the rules of etiquette, then highness falls below majesty, and you are the heir.”

    
“Correct as ever, Prince Tartan,” the third Oligarch said. “You are my brightest pupil.”

    
He nodded.

    
I squared off on Tartan, so I could gage him.  “We need to get your father well,” I said to him.  “Do you agree?”

    
He didn’t look into my eyes, which I didn’t like.  He looked at his father, then the Oligarch’s past me, then at me, but at my face, not my eyes.  “I do.”

    
“And if we can get him to give you the power to rule in his place, until he is well, would you work with us, and be guided by us?” I asked

    
He looked in my eyes for a moment, and then looked away.  “Would I do as you say, and would I give power back to my father when he felt well?” he asked.

    
I nodded.

    
He thought about it.

    
That answered it for me right there.  He would agree, but he didn’t know for sure that he meant it.