Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (41 page)

     I stepped out into the cold crisp air outside of the coliseum, finding a crown of mostly-Uman waiting for me, behind a barrier of warriors in Trenboni livery whose job it was to control the crowd and keep their common hands off of my royal person.

     One of them, an Uman-Chi in military red-and-blues of the Trenboni High Guard with a golden star burst on an epaulette on his left shoulder, stepped forward and regarded me with a hand on the hilt of the sword on his hip.  Behind him, I could see three Uman-Chi in the white robes of their ‘Casters,’ or Wizards.

     Shela stopped dead in her tracks, even her face frozen in an expression of surprise.  D’gattis and Ancenon both leapt to one side.  Three hundred Wolf Soldier guards stood at attention to one side of the entrance to the coliseum, but they had a whole crowd between them and me.

     “What is
this?
” I demanded.

     “Your Imperial Majesty, Rancor Mordetur of Eldador, we present to take custody and possession of the common Andaran woman, Shela, for her war crimes against the sovereign nation of Trenbon, sedition of the Scitai people and her personal attack on Outpost IX,” he informed me.

     I pulled the Sword of War.  He leapt back, and the three Wizards each raised a right hand white with power.  Shela stood where she was, but I recognized a commander’s voice among the Wolf Soldiers calling them to ready.

     This was going to be bloody.  Really bloody.  We were both outnumbered and separated from our troops, and rest-assured that the locals were going to chime in.

     I felt a hand on my shoulder.  I turned to see D’gattis regarding me.  This time, I
could
see the cornea of his silver-on-silver eyes.

     “There is no victory here,” the Uman-Chi informed me.  “Black Lupus, you must accede to this noble warrior and relinquish your slave girl.”

     “My
wife
,” I said to him.  “The Empress of –“

     “No,” Ancenon said, stepping forward.  “You’ve had no ceremony
and the Trenboni government recognizes no slave.  She is a free common the moment her foot touches the Silent Isle, and as such she is responsible for her own actions and her own crimes.”

     My eyes flicked back between the one ally and the other.  I could feel my scar twitch.  “They’ll kill her,” I hissed.

     “They’ll do that now,” Ancenon informed me.  “I am still a Duke of Trenbon, from an important house, and I think you have no small friendship in Avek Noir, the Heir.  I’ll speak to her safety, and where I might fail, I’m certain he shall not.”

     D’gattis gripped my shoulder harder.  “I’ll fight beside you,” he informed me, “but we’ll lose.  You see three casters but don’t see thirty more.  I believe you told me once about existing for another day of combat.”

     “Live to fight another day,” I corrected him.  I turned away and faced the Uman-Chi commander.

     “Harm her in any way,” I informed him, looking into his eyes now, “scratch her skin, bruise her flesh, do anything, and it will be my life’s work, not just to hunt you down, but to find everyone you love, and everyone you’ve
ever
loved, and visit horror on them that you couldn’t imagine if you live another thousand years.”

     “Not wise to threaten a Commander of the High Guard,” the Uman-Chi informed me, seeming unimpressed.

     I stepped into his personal space and almost touched the end of my nose to his.  “A threat is something that I might not do,” I informed him.  “I
vow
to you, unto the god War, one bloody massacre after the next visited on your friends and family if she comes to any harm.”

     The Uman-Chi met my stare and nodded.  He ordered four of his warriors to pick Shela up off of the ground,
and they carried her past their warriors and mine toward the palace at Outpost IX.

     D’gattis kept his hand on my shoulder the entire time.  The Major commanding the Wolf Soldier guard kept trying to catch my eye but I looked right through him.

     This had turned into a really
not
good day.

     While a noble might own a property in a foreign land and stay there, the Eldadorian nation did not, in fact, have an embassy to Trenbon and there was no concept here of embassies being sacrosanct within another nation’s boundaries.

     I could buy land here and have something built, but that would take years.  I could have had Shela raise something but that really wasn’t her thing, and bellied the actual problem that she was in a dungeon somewhere, where her magic was likely negated.

     So I was pacing the captain’s cabin of one of the Sea Wolves I’d brought here, and trying to rely on Karel of Stone’s spies whom we employed here, through what I remembered him telling me about them, which wasn’t much.

     I didn’t want to tip my hand and actually expose one of them, because I didn’t want it in the head of whoever ran this city that they had a real security problem.  I didn’t want to go running around the city, either, because I had to think that the Bounty Hunter’s Guild had
wind of what had happened here by now, and they’d said a lot of times that, if not for Shela, they’d have had me.

     D’gattis had already taken off for the palace in Eldador, but I had no idea how long that was going to take him, and I
did
know that he wouldn’t miss Shela if something happened to her.

    A lot of people would like her out of their way.  This had been a pretty smart move on the Uman-Chi’s part and I should have thought of it beforehand.  Taking Shela out was definitely a way to limit me, and even my own god wanted her out of my life.

     “Someone is going to die for this,” I swore again, my steel heels clanking on the cabin’s floor boards.  I’d put my armor on the moment I got back onboard. 

     “Strike out against the Trenboni and I promise you that your wife will die before you accomplish anything,” Ancenon informed me.  He sat on a padded stool in a dark corner of the cabin away from the door.  “Angron Aurelias is no fool, Black Lupus.  If there isn’t a warrior with a knife at Shela’s throat at all times, then it’s because they thought ahead and rigged a whole portion of the royal dungeons to fall on her in a moment’s notice.

     “You are no stranger here, and there are no doubts as to your wrath.”

     Yeah, that all served me
real
well, I thought to myself.

     I’d left these people nowhere to go and a lot to fear about me.  I’d kept throwing their own rules back in their faces and never guessed that they’d just start ignoring them.  Kick a man who’s down enough times, and if it doesn’t kill him, he’ll get back up no matter what the odds.

     “Lupus?” a Wolf Soldier guard said, poking his head in through the cabin’s door.

     “What?” I snapped at him.

     “A Scitai to see you,” he said.

     I half expected it to be Xinto, but the woman who walked in had red hair and a white blouse and black skirt with a rapier at her hip.  She looked up at me with sea-green eyes and I thought immediately of Genna.

     Genna would be loving this.

     “Lupus the Conqueror?” the woman asked me, looking up from less than three feet of height.

     “One name for me,” I said.  “Who the hell are you?”

     She smiled a wicked smile.  “She’s Tara the Red,”
Ancenon informed me, not rising.  “A pirate on the Forgotten Seas.  She’s a friend of Karel of Stone’s.”

     “Well, more than a friend,” she informed us.  She sauntered in and leapt up on a cot next to Ancenon, casually brushing her rapier out of her way.  She turned and regarded me, looking me up and down like a stallion she might put down a bid on.

     “Karel had a big opinion of you,” she informed me.  “I don’t see it.”

     “You’re probably not as smart as he is, then,” I informed her.  I usually liked banter like this, but I usually wasn’t worrying that my wife was being tortured.  “Maybe I should send you back to him in pieces?”

     That got a wide-eyed look from her.  She wasn’t intimidated, though – had to give her that.  She kicked her feet, looked away from me and then looked back.

     “Just business, then?” she asked me.

     “Probably safer for both of us, yes,” I said.

     “Very well,” she said, then looked to Ancenon, and then to me. “You both know that the Uman-Chi have her locked up tight and naked in a cell in the deepest part of their dungeons, with a dozen wards on her and a few hundred guards, as well as a bunch of other crap that would take too long to tell you about.”

     “You heard this?” I asked her.

     “I saw it myself,” she answered.  “Wasn’t easy, either.  They’re working with the Bounty Hunter’s Guild, and those people aren’t stupid.  If you’re working your courage up to go take your woman back, then you’re wasting your time because you’re not getting in there, and she’s not getting out.”

     I felt this overwhelming urge to strangle the life out of the little red-head but I suppressed it.  I’d let myself get caught, that wasn’t her fault.  The Uman-Chi were taking no chances, and that wasn’t her fault, either.

    
“They’ll charge her tomorrow,” Tara continued on.  “A lot more guards, a lot fewer wards.  They won’t parade her out of there naked, and a sorceress can make a spell out of anything, at least a good one can, and I’m told she’s very good.”

     “So you think I should take her back tomorrow before they have time –“ I began.

     “Oh, no, no, no!” she said, waving her hands in front of her.  “That’s what they want you to do – that’s what they’re counting on.  Then they can swoop in and destroy these ships of yours, which they’re afraid of, and then they can let the Bounty Hunters pile on you, who’re they’re even more afraid of.

     “No, Lupus the Conqueror,” the little Scitai woman informed me.  “You do
not
want to rescue her tomorrow.  You don’t want to even be here tomorrow.  You don’t want to be here
now.
”

     “What?” I demanded of her, pacing the cabin and throwing up my hands.  “I should leave her?  More fish in the sea?  More Andarans where that one came from?  Get on with my life?”

     “Are you asking me?” Tara asked, her eyes wide.  “Because I have to tell you, in my experience, that’s what males do, especially the powerful ones.”

     I turned before I realized it and took either side of the outer rail of the cot she sat on in hand, and placed my face about an inch from hers.  She had a dagger out at my throat but I didn’t care.

     “Well I’m not like that, and if I have to die to save her, than plan the funeral because I guess I’m going to die,” I informed her.

     Even as I said the words, I realized that this would make Lee an orphan, and there was no way to guarantee her life without me.  The dynasty was too new – I didn’t have enough allies who’d pledge themselves to her wellbeing.

     I stood, and I felt my eyes well up.  This was all out of hand.  I’d pushed too far, too fast, and I might now pay for it, but my girls might.

     “Looked to me like your girl friend has been putting on some weight,” Tara informed me.

     I turned back to face her.  I saw Ancenon straighten.  “What?”

     “A little swelly in the belly?” Tara said, grinning.  “Getting ready for a weight gain, then a sudden loss?”

     “She’s pregnant,” I said, wondering where she was going with this.

     “Oh,” Ancenon said, and then grinned wide.

     “What?” I demanded.

     Ancenon looked sideways at Tara and then back at me.  “A woman with child is sacrosanct among my people,” he said.  “No matter her crimes, she cannot be convicted, she cannot even be tried while pregnant.  She’ll be charged tomorrow, but then she’ll declare herself or be found pregnant, and she’ll be tended properly in her cell for the duration of her pregnancy.”

     “And then they’ll find her guilty and they’ll kill her in one day, don’t be mistaken,” Tara said.  “But they’ll even send you back your child, male or female.  A child is an innocent to the Uman-Chi.”

     I remembered the stone statue I’d received from Aniquen the Uman-Chi, so many months ago.
  It was still in Lee’s bedroom.  She’d dressed it up in her clothes once.

     “So no matter what, she’s safe for about seven months,” I said.

     They both nodded.

     “Hmmmm,” I said, nodding with them.

     “Seven months is a long time.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Pretty Much Why No One Likes Me

     A week later I was back in Eldador the Port. People found out Shela wasn’t with me, and they were pissed.

    
Apparently the palace staff really loved her. The common people did, too. I actually had a common woman, an old, Uman great-grandmother with a flock of children in tow, pushed her way past my Wolf Soldier guards to throw her hands around my shoulders and weep against my breast when I went out to the common market on the day before All Gods’ Day.

    
“You get them, your Majesty,” she said to me, looking up into my face through teary eyes. “You get them–you get them all for this. Eveave will forgive you–she’s a mother, too.”

    
I thanked her and pressed a couple gold Tabaars into her hands. Seeing as the Wolf Soldiers were about to brain her and I actually had to hand-signal them not to, she made out better than she could have imagined. Other commons called out from beyond the Wolf Soldier guards, “Adriam be with you, your Majesty,” and “We’re praying for you.” I nodded and waved, and then called the Wolf Soldier sergeant to my side.

    
“You know the Bounty Hunters’ Guild are after me, right?” I asked him, a big, rough Volkhydran named Erok whom I’d recruited after the Battle of Tamaran Glen.

    
“My apologies, Lupus,” he said. “She moved too fast–”

    
I caught his eye. “Too fast? She had to weigh as much as I do, and she’s five feet tall. If she’s too fast for you, maybe you’re in the wrong job,”

    
“It won’t happen again,” he promised me.

    
Another person in his guard, a busty Uman woman with dark hair, cut short, named D’leer, was shaking her head. She stopped when I caught her doing it.

    
“You,” I said, pointing to her. I remembered her–a Trenboni whore who’d stabbed a noble. “Think you can do a better job?”

    
She looked me right in the eye. “Yep,” she informed me.

    
I nodded. “You’re sergeant now. You,” I said to Erok, “are reassigned to the barracks. Send someone there to replace you here. You can keep your rank–for now.”

    
D’leer was grinning fiercely. “Don’t let it go to your head,” I informed her. “Screw up and I’ll demote you to the Regulars.”

Both Wolf Soldiers made a fist over their hands in salute to me. The other Wolf Soldiers in my personal guard were shooting glances between each other and at D’leer. She’d make her way and earn their respect, or she wouldn’t–that’s how things worked in the Pack.

     That’s how things worked in life, or so I was learning.

    
A couple years ago I’d been in the market place of Eldador the Port on the day before All Gods’ Day, and it had been practically deserted. Now I came here and it was packed–people from all nations trading goods that once had rarely been seen in this part of Fovea. Winter crops from southern Toor, steel from Volkhydro, winter wheat from Sental.

    
And horses from Andoran, because Eldador had a huge appetite for horses. I found these traders, city men from Talen, staring daggers at me because they knew what I’d done in their southern nation.

I walked right up to them, my Wolf Soldiers lined up behind me.

     One inclined his head, dressed in his native leathers with beads sewn into the cuffs and shoulders.

    
“Your Majesty,” he said to me, spitting out the words.

    
“You know what’s happened to Shela, my woman?” I asked him in Andaran.

    
“I know what happened to her, because of her association with you,” he informed me. “Don’t think you have allies here, White Wolf, because the Uman-Chi took your slave.”

    
“That slave would be my wife,” I informed him. I tried to look him in the eye but he wouldn’t have it. “That woman bears my child in her belly.”

    
“More a comment on you,” another of the Andaran traders informed me. They kept a small corral with a few mares in it–solid and large, the makings of a draft breed which the Andarans would have little use for, but which Eldadorian farms would want.

    
There were five of them, and I had all of their attention now. City dwellers in Andoran tended to keep clean faces, and these had no mustachios like Two Spears.

    
“Those children are going to be raised by me,” I informed them all. “No matter what happens to Shela, the children will have an Andaran mother and live with me.”

    
“So?” the first one demanded. He didn’t like me–I couldn’t blame him.

    
I inhaled and sighed. I didn’t know if I was giving up something here, because I knew my wife and I knew her beliefs, however most people, especially most Andarans, didn’t know how deeply I regarded her.

    
“Those children can be raised in the Andaran tradition,” I said. “They can be raised to consider themselves Andaran, not Eldadorian.”

The traders regarded me,
then exchanged glances with each other. Using merchants to pass messages wasn’t uncommon in Earth’s Middle Ages and according to my Oligarchs it was pretty normal here.

    
“A son will rule Eldador one day,” I said them. “An Eldadorian Emperor who considers himself an Andaran would be a useful ally.”

    
“Emperor?” one asked.

    
“Pass the word,” I informed them all, looking from face to face. “All I want any Andaran to do is nothing. I can take care of my own, but not if I’m fending off the tribes.”

    
“You have more to worry about than Andoran,” the second one informed me. Another reason people used merchants as emissaries–they tended to hear a lot, so they tended to know a lot more than anyone would think.

    
“I can deal with the rest of Fovea,” I informed him.

    
“Pass my word on to Andoran.”

    
They all nodded. I turned on my heel and I walked away.

    
One down and a lot to go.

     J’her met with me on the morning of All Gods’ Day. I was sitting alone with Lee in the dining room, probably to the anger of a lot of hungry palace barons and three needy Oligarchs. The fourth (or, actually, the second–already forgot his name) had left for Angador with Tartan. J’her just sauntered in with a Wolf Soldier squad in attendance of him, walked the length of the dining hall on the window side and pulled out a chair for himself.

    
“Unca Chair!” Lee said to him, smiling wide. He reached out, grabbed her nose and shook it.

    
From a corner of the room behind both of us, Nina of the Aschire arched an already-arched eyebrow but said nothing. Shela’s loss had hit her hard, but she hadn’t been talking about it. Instead she’d clamped down on Lee’s security. Even Wolf Soldiers couldn’t get near her without Nina wanting to back them off.

    
She also always carried a dagger on each thigh now. Karel had shown her how to use them and from what I’d heard the lessons had been a rousing success.

    
Lee was working on some porridge with an oversized wooden spoon, and went back to it. I had ham and eggs sitting in front of me but they tasted like wax. This was yet another morning when I would have liked a cup of coffee.

    
J’her seated himself. “Hectar has been asking me if it’s safe to approach you yet,” he said.

    
“Told him, ‘No’?” I asked, not looking at the Uman.

    
His mouth curled into a smile below his aquiline nose. “Yeah,” he said. “I told him to try tomorrow. Holy days are hard when you lose someone.”

    
“I have to remind myself you know that better than I,” I informed him.

    
J’her had lost his whole family when Rennin had taken his land.

“I also need you today, and I know you don’t want to talk about your new ships in front of Rennin yet.”

     “And?” I said to him. Like he said–holy days are harder when your wife is missing.

    
“And we can have about thirty of them ready by the War months,” he informed me. “That involves the ports in Andurin, Eldador and Thera. You’re going to have to go visit Groff yourself, though, and explain to him what’s going on.”

    
“What have you had to tell him?” I asked.

    
“I haven’t told him anything,” J’her said. A serving girl had come in and set a tray down before him with food like mine. He drank some of the tea and made a face.

    
“How do you drink that?” he asked me.

    
“You get used to it,” I informed him. He was already on my nerves and J’her practically never got on my nerves. Lee banged her wooden spoon on the table in front of her, and I reached out and put two fingers on her wrist to quiet her.

    
“A two year old is a ruler,” J’her said, smiling at Lee. It was something locals said, like I’d said, “Terrible two’s.”

    
I sighed.

    
“Two Spears was speaking with Groff,” J’her said, mercifully. “Groff wants to rent his wharf space, but he doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on. Two Spears would just do that thing he does where he makes you laugh at your own worries. I can’t do that.”

    
“I can’t do that either,” I said. Not that I’d want to. “I’ll have to tell him what’s going on.”

    
“You should talk to Hectar first,” J’her said, “or, better, bring Hectar with you when you see him. Groff doesn’t like things to change, and this is a lot of change.”

    
I nodded.

    
“Dispatch a troop of Eldadorian Regulars to the Aschire forest, to Duke Krell,” I told him.

    
“Eldadorian Regulars don’t answer to me,” J’her informed me.

    
“Just pass the word for me,” I told him. “Tell Daggonin to pick the warriors – he’s a junior officer in the Regulars. Have him see me before he sends them and I’ll have a message for them to bring.”

J’her shrugged.

     “That all?” I asked him.

    
J’her regarded me with a raised eyebrow. “I guess so,” he said. “Am I dismissed?”

    
J’her had a relationship with me as the second in command of the Wolf Soldier guard. He considered me a friend as well as a leader. He didn’t answer to me as the King or Emperor of Eldador. He answered to me as a man.

    
I owed him better than to just dismiss him. I needed J’her. I’d been doing too much on my own, and J’her was one of the people who could be trusted to help.

    
I needed to pull my shit together, get focused and do what I had to do to get my woman back; I knew it and I believed it.

    
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re dismissed.”

    
He stood and made a fist over his heart in salute to me. He turned on his heel and he left.

    
It was starting to come apart. I was watching it happen. They’d taken Shela from me, and it rattled me.

    
I was starting to think I knew how Glennen felt, and I didn’t want to know that much about those feelings at all.

     All Gods’ Day passed. When I slept, I kept Lee in her bassinette in the corner of my room, and Nina made her usual nest of pillows on some part of my bed. If a servant came in, as they did during the night, she was always awake with a dagger in her hand before I was roused at all.

    
I wasn’t drinking anything but milk and water because the thought of Glennen’s fate terrified me. I was waiting for War’s booming voice to show up in my head to tell me to go get another woman, and I was dreading it.

    
However I handled this had to ameliorate War as well as get Shela back. I’d noted I’d started thinking that way, anyway.

    
When you know your own god’s will, you start to act the way He wants you to as if that’s the way you want to be. You also start caring a lot less about whom it hurts. I could argue there was probably a diplomatic solution to the situation with Trenbon, and in fact that’s what they likely wanted from me. They were already getting their city rebuilt–they probably wanted reparations from me, or some sort of trade consideration.

    
Uman-Chi don’t think of short term gain – I’d made that observation a dozen times. In the long term, they were going to outlive me. They might only ask that I pick someone beside Lee to succeed me when my reign ended.