Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (38 page)

     Too bad.

     Our warriors clashed.  My sword decapitated one man and cut the arm from another.  A scimitar screeched across my mid-section but didn’t get to me.  Blizzard shouldered another stallion facing him to one side and I straight-armed his rider with my left hand, knocking him to the ground where the warriors behind me likely trampled him.

     I didn’t check to be sure.  Before I would have thought possible I was through their lines and emerging from the other side, wheeling the stallion to the left to line him up for another pass.

     About half of my lancers had made it with me.  We wheeled and started trotting back toward the enemy.  Thanks to Two Spears’
training, every warrior wheeled to the left, minimizing our recovery for the second pass.  All of them did it at about the same time.  The back row became the front, the group of us, though depleted, worked as a unit.

     The Andarans facing us had lost far more warriors than we had, and now they were in a tangle.  As soon as a few of them realized that we were charging again, a few turned their horses toward us while most tried to collect themselves.  Horses bumped each other, reared and fought their riders.  Their leader screamed orders in shrill Andaran as we picked up a canter.

     We rode down the few riders who’d come out to meet us and then hit the rest of them at least as hard as before.  Horses screamed and warriors swore and died.  Once again modern warfare, the time spent training the warriors who engaged each other, prevailed.  Where archers could get by just putting missiles in the air, the horse moving as one delivered unimaginable punishment to the unready enemy.

     When we passed through them this time it took longer.  When we found ourselves on the other side, we met another hundred fresh riders lined up as we had been, and we outnumbered our enemy, a good portion of whom threw down their weapons and headed for the plains.

     Back at the main battle, we were nearly half way around the Andarans, who had begun to collect themselves.  Half of Two Spears’ infantry were marching out to support us, many of them carrying bundles of fresh lances.  Dev’s warriors were taking a beating on the far side of Andaran mass but where holding, which was all I needed them to do.  A wave of pure flame flowed off of the plains toward us and evaporated before it reached our lines.  The earth shook and then stopped.

     My riders were beginning to disengage the enemy and line up in two files facing the Andarans, waiting for their lances.  Very soon we’d begin a final charge into their midst.

     I saw Angry Lion at the center of them now.  He was screaming at his warriors and telling them to line up like we were, to meet us ready and to fire their arrows.  Other tribal leaders were shouting contradicting orders and, just as the first of my Wolf Soldiers began handing out the first of the fresh lances, an entire section of Andarans, over one hundred strong, turned East and departed as fast as they could.

     My orders were to let them go.  I wasn’t here to slaughter, just to survive.

     When the desertions started the Andaran confidence started to shake.  They still outnumbered me by at least three to one.  I’d lost warriors as well, but their dead littered the ground and actually limited where they could move easily.

     Andarans were starting to take Angry Lion’s orders and to line themselves up toward us.  Another chieftain or some important Andaran was pulling troops away from Dev’s front in order to focus more on us.  As I had done so many times, they’d realized that it was better to fight two smaller enemies than to address them both at the same time.

     I pulled the collapsible bow from my thigh – the one I’d taken from Genna what seemed so long ago – and I pointed it into the air.  It fired, arcing over the Andarans, and then it burst into green flame.  Shela has placed a simple enchantment on it before the battle began.

     Almost no one on the Andaran side reacted to it.

     Then arrows by the hundreds flew out of the swaying plains grass to the southeast.  Nina had gone back to her people and told them that I might need them on the plains, even before I’d fought my first battle here.  Krell had responded as soon as he could.  Fortunately, as Nina had told me when I rode out onto the plains that night and she’d leaped up onto Blizzard’s butt, it had been soon enough.

     The Andarans were taken completely by surprise by the Aschire archers.  More to the point, when they recognized whom they were up against, a third of them turned tail and ran for the east, leaving the rest to face me on three fronts.

     I reached down and accepted a lance from a grinning Wolf Soldier, my warriors with me.

    All that was left to do now was to call the advance.

Chapter Nineteen

             
Empire

     Very few battles are ever fought to the last warrior, although I’d certainly seen my share.  At some point, even the worst commander or whoever outlived him realizes that all hope is lost and it’s time to run and fight another day.

     By the time the Andarans came to that conclusion, I clearly outnumbered them. 
The Andaran may have thought that the first skirmish should have been perfunctory – just a ‘getting to know you’ battle where we felt out each others’ weaknesses.  This would give their tribes the opportunity to learn to work together and their chieftains time to argue over the things that were important to them.

     Me hitting them so hard on the first pass had caught them by surprise, but then when you think about it, that’s a pretty important thing to do if you want to survive the kind of crazy crap that I did.

     I couldn’t have done it without the help of the Aschire.  Once again, my purple-haired allies had come to my rescue when I needed them, not that they needed a lot of prodding to come after the Andarans who raided their forest for wood. 

     I rode out into the plains on the night after the battle, where scavengers were eating dead horses and dead warriors from both sides.  The place stank of rotting flesh and excrement, of blood and urine and wet steel.  I pushed Blizzard through this, past the
occasional Andaran family looking for a familiar body, and out into the open where the Aschire were camped.

     Once again, I sense
d rather than heard small, running feet from behind me, and then Nina vaulted up onto Blizzard’s butt, her arms wrapping around my armored waist.

     Once again, the stallion reared in surprise.  I took hold of his mane and leaned forward until he settled.

     “He’s going to bite you if you keep doing that,” I informed her, turning in the saddle.

     She smiled wide.  “I’m too fast for him,” she informed me. 

     “I never thought I’d see my daughter on a Man
’s horse,” Krell informed me, rising up out of the plains grass.  Others popped up behind him.  “These are not good days.”

     I couldn’t see his face well in the darkness, and an Aschire is hard to read, anyway.  I hoped he was kidding but I couldn’t be sure.

     “Part of her training,” I said to him, smiling as wide as I could.

     He nodded.  I didn’t reach down to take his hand because the Aschire didn’t do that.  He stared up at me, his head to one side.

     “You beat a lot of Andarans,” he stated.

     I nodded.  “I couldn’t have done it without you,” I said.

     He looked around him on the plains.  “Don’t know how I feel about that,” he said.  Then he looked back up at me.

     “Why do you want to fight for this place?”

     Krell was one of my Dukes now, so he deserved an answer, however even a trusted ally could know too much about you. 

     I also didn’t know how much I could spill in front of his people, not that they were likely to talk to anyone.

     “I need the lake,” I answered, honestly.  “I’m going to build a city on it.”

     “I’ve never been to the lake,” he said.  “I don’t think it even has a name.”

     “Maybe I’ll name it,” I said, smiling again.

     He nodded.  “Well,” he said, “I hope the lake brings you happiness.”

     “Thank you, Krell,” I said.

     “Your Grace,” he answered me.

     “Pardon?”

     “You call your Dukes, ‘Your Grace,’” he corrected me.  “You should call me that.”

     I nodded.  “My apologies,” I said.  “I didn’t think you wanted me to, when we are alone.”

     Krell considered that.  “I didn’t think I’d like it,” he said, finally, “but it seems that other Aschire consider me to be part a Man now, and a leader among our people, for bringing them to you.  If that is true, then I can be a Duke, and you can call me, ‘your Grace.’”

     “My thanks to your people, and you, your Grace,” I said to him. 

     “Our pleasure, your Majesty,” Krell answered and, to my surprise, made a fist over his heart.  I felt Nina give me a squeeze.

     I didn’t know if this was a case of power corrupting, or Krell coming into his own, or Aschire getting a taste for the combat I kept exposing them to from the winning side.  Whatever it was, the Aschire were probably not going to be the same anymore.

     I felt that this was an example of one of those things War wanted.  Whatever it was, it had been added to the price of this excursion into Andoran.

     In the
beginning of the month of Power, with seasonal storms not uncommon on the Andaran plains and a giant graveyard freshly dug both for my warriors and theirs standing to our north, I crossed a wide, beaten plain where the last battle had been fought.  This is where thousands had died, where the land had been scored and the long grass ripped away.  Errant breezes pulled the bloody dust across the ground and here and there a bird would land to pick at nothing. I sat Blizzard once again in front of a delegation of Andaran tribes, facing Hungry as a Bull, Angry Lion and Black Hawk again, Tartan stood his mare at my left and Two Spears his stallion at my right, and Shela on her gelding behind me.

     This time an older, fat Andaran woman
had been brought on a litter; her black hair was streaked with grey and tied into a ponytail behind her head.  Her face was leathery and deeply tanned, her crooked nose on its way to meeting her chin.  She wore a tan dress that resembled a bag more than anything else, clinging to a round stomach.

     This was Hungry as a Bull’s sorceress wife – the one whom Shela had held at bay
during the battle.  She didn’t look up at us, she held a strand of beads in her hands and she seemed focused on that.

    
They’d brought a few dozen warriors with them – most of them showing scars from battle.  I’d brought my same fifty, none of them injured, though most of them with banged-up armor.

     It had occurred to me that the first improvement that my new city needed was a forge.

     “We appreciate that you buried our dead alongside your own,” Hungry as a Bull informed me.  His horse was a draft almost the size of Blizzard, brown with white socks.  He rode it with a saddle, where a large majority of his warriors were bareback.

     I nodded, not saying anything.  Tartan looked straight ahead
beside me.  He’d supposedly done his share of fighting from among the lancers, and it had left him a little grimmer.  I heard a little chuckle from Two Spears.

    
“We would like to see you leave this place,” Black Hawk spoke up.  That got him a sideways look from Angry Lion and Hungry.  “You know you don’t belong here.”

     “Seems to me like I do,
” I answered him.  “At least, it doesn’t look like you can do much about it.”

     Hun
gry opened up his mouth, but his wife spoke instead.  Without looking up, she said, “Shela, it looks to me like these men are wanting to fight each other again.”

     “Yes, Strong Spirit,” Shela answered, her attention focused on the old woman.  “It seems that way to me, too.”

     “I have enough to heal among the Sure Foot,” Strong Spirit continued.  I hadn’t been introduced to her – they didn’t bother introducing the women unless there was a reason.  “Are there so few among the Wolf Riders?”

     This was the first pe
rson outside of the tribe who’d acknowledged us, other than Two Spears.

     “My tents are full of sick and injured,” Shela responded.  She shot me a glance.  “I have alcohol to treat them, but it still takes time.”

     Strong looked up at Shela on her horse.  Shela wore her regular Andaran garb, the leather halter and skirt split up the side.  The faint stretch marks on her stomach were becoming more noticeable as her pregnancy was starting to show.  The light breeze pulled at her long, black hair.

    
“My people have no alcohol,” she said.  “We know that yours use this, and you save many lives.  I have hundreds sick with fever.  Even if I had alcohol, I wouldn’t know how to use it.”

     “If my tribe were friends with the Sure Foot,” I said, interrupting them, “then I would have to share my alcohol, and show my friends how to use it, and how to make it for themselves.”

     Hungry exchanged glances with Angry and Black Hawk.  It looked to me like the latter wasn’t ready to forgive me yet, but before the days when surgeons realized that germs spread disease and sickness, and that they could be killed with alcohol, more warriors died after a battle from infection than during it from lethal wounds.

     The secret of alcohol would make a huge difference to the Andaran people, where the tribes fought frequently.

     “If you would do this,” Angry Lion said, “then you would be a friend to my people.”

     “And mine,” Hungry added.

     The two turned to Black Lion.  He stared straight at me.

     “I would take it as a bribe not to attack you,” he said, finally.

     Good enough.

     Until the month of Desire, the Wolf Riders traded with the Sure Foot and the Hunters.  In that time my Sea Wolves set sail for Eldador and returned with stocks of raw alcohol and witch hazel extract, building materials and tools, artisans and experts, as well as wealthy commons looking to invest in the new enterprise, the city I would call Wisex, which would rise up from the lake bed.

     A cavalcade of Dwarves arrived as well, only one of whom I knew. 
I’d sent messengers back to the north to ask for more help in designing a new city, and twenty had responded.

     Kvitch waddled down the gang plank from one my newest ships, “The Stallion.”  She was more in the design of a cutter than a warship, meant for speed, a scout ship to precede an armada.

     “Dwarves do
not
like ships!” the ambassador of the Simple People informed me, taking my forearm in his.  Once again he wore that golden sunburst amulet that I’d seen on him when last we parted.  Other Dwarves were already poking around the dirt and staring out into the lake, probably looking for the island that they’d come to work on.  They all dressed in rough brown pants closer to canvas than cloth, white homespun shirts with wide collars and green capes over their shoulders.  Their beards were brown and red and black all streaked with grey.  These were older Dwarves more experienced in what they did.

     “Well, you’ve a few more trips on them in front of you,” I informed him.  “We’re going out onto the lake tomorrow and raise up that island you’ll be working on
.”

     “And you believe your wife – your queen – can do this?” he asked me.

     “She believes it,” I said.

     “I don’t know of any Uman-Chi who could do something like that,” he informed me, his eyebrows twitching skeptically.  “Your wife is very self-confident.”

     “I might be able to help with that,” another said, a white-robed figure in a brown cowl.  We both turned and watched Dilvesh, my Druid ally from the Free Legion, descend down the gang plank from the same ship as the Dwarves.  I’d sent for him, too – Shela felt sure that she could raise the island on her own, but this was more of Dilvesh’s thing.

     I felt a smile spread across my face as I stepped forward and reached out a hand to Dilvesh. 
He returned the gesture, reaching out to me and smiling from under a mob of green, curly hair.  He threw back the brown cowl and opened up his out robes to reveal the green question mark, turned upside-down on his white inner robes.  I gripped his forearm in mine as the Dwarf looked on.

     “This is the returning Druid that we’ve heard about in the North?” the Dwarf asked.

     Dilvesh regarded him.  He’d probably staid dark and hidden on the ship while it sailed – that was more the Druid’s way.  No one had known they still existed a year ago and that wasn’t a habit he’d be quick to break.

     Not Dilvesh, anyway.

     “Your idea interests me,” he admitted.  “This idea of creating a city on a lake where no island exists, starting with the island.”

     “I thought you’d like it,” I answered him.

     “You’ve seen that there’s lots of good land here,” Kvitch commented.

     I pointed out onto the plains at the end of the peninsula, where the beaten down plains stood out between us and where the winter hay blew wild; where horse bones could still be seen.  “This land is vulnerable,” I said.  “I don’t want something where I can defend
myself; I want something where I don’t have to.”

     “That idea worked for the Uman-Chi,” Dilvesh noted.

     “Until you came along,” Kvitch added, smiling through his beard.  “Or had you not noticed that, either?”