Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (46 page)

    
Another problem with flags is that flags are a physical thing. You can affect flags. Lights can be put out or misinterpreted, but you can’t change red to green and alter the message.

    
One of the fourteen ‘regular’ Sea Wolves found its way into arrow range of the flag ship, and Aschire arrows flew out from her side. Most were focused on the crew, a few picked flags from the message line down the front of the ship.

    
This changed the message to her fleet. I didn’t know the flag signals, so I didn’t know from what to what, however I saw the Tech Ships break their formation, some almost bumping in to each other, as our ‘special’ ships fired again.

    
Now our fleet was passing through theirs, and more than twenty of their hulls were burning.

    
Arrow fire pin-cushioned the deck and sides of
The Bitch
, killing several of the sailors in the rigging. The ‘special’ ships didn’t have Aschire archers. Jaspar ordered return fire and what Uman archers we still had took up position at the gunwales.

    
“Engage the jewel!” Jaspar ordered, looking to the crow’s nest, or the highest point on the middle or ‘missen’ mast.

    
The jewel was the firing point for our own enchanted weapons. They used lightening, we employed both fire and a heat sink spell with sucked the kinetic energy out of whatever it hit, essentially a ‘cold ray.’ Creating this had required long conversations with exceptionally skeptical Wizards, however the result was something that could freeze the surface of the Bay like a scene from a Batman movie.

    
Our ship fired to starboard and froze a passing Tech Ship’s oars in the water. The ship, passing us, turned hard to starboard itself, right toward us, as the rowers on one side became a drag on the ship and the ones on the other rowed free.

    
Their ship bumped the side of ours. The ship shook and started spinning to port side. The jewel fired again to the other side, at another Tech Ship, as we fought to right ourselves.

    
The Bitch
spun one hundred eighty degrees, her main weapon now pointing at the encumbered ship.

    
“Fire the main!” Jaspar shouted.

    
We sprayed down her side, the unlucky ship exploding in flame and black smoke. Past our personal battle I could see our fleet was passing through theirs. We’d lost at least one other ship, overwhelmed by their archers and then rammed by a Tech Ship who’d shattered her mast in the process. Past that I thought I could see where another of my Sea Wolves was burning.

    
“Hard to port! Hard to port!” Jaspar shouted. Sailors scrambled through the rigging, turning the sails on the mast, bringing the great ship to heel.

    
More arrows peppered the deck. One whizzed by my ear.

    
To port one of the Sea Wolves launched fire from her mast into the rigging of a Tech Ship. Not protected like ours, the main sail burst into flame.
The
Bitch
righted herself and began pressing through the enemy fleet again.

    
“Main Watch! Report sails!” Jaspar ordered. Some of the arrows he’d taken were burning and several of the archers had dropped their bows and picked up buckets. There were a dozen dead or severely wounded sailors I could see.

    
Standing there, observing, not taking charge, was the hardest thing I’d ever done. But a ship can’t have two captains, and this was Jaspar’s command. I didn’t agree with everything he was doing but I’d make it worse, not better, if I interfered.

    
Finally we were through the enemy fleet and each of our ships, once clear of the others, began tacking to port.

    
“Eighteen of ours, twenty-four of theirs,” someone called down from the Crow’s Nest.

    
Jaspar turned to me and grinned.

    
On the other side of the Straights, I could see there were Dorkan ships engaging the fleet out of Andurin. I’m sure they thought they’d beaten this type of ship once and would have no trouble. A quick count showed maybe six of the Dorkans, and three of those were already on fire.

    
Groff could be said to be ‘doing better’ than I was. I’m sure he’d like that.

    
Our ships were lining up again. Their flag ship now lined up all the way to port of their fleet. She was running flags up on the other side of more than thirty burning hulls, through a haze of reeking black smoke that hung low and oily between us.

    
“They’ll use the smoke,” I said to Jaspar. “They’ll line up on the other side of the thickest of it and try to engage us with their archers and their rams.”

    
“Your orders, Lupus?” Jaspar asked me.

    
“All sails to port,” I said. “Leave
The House of Stowe
behind to search for survivors. We’ll come around the burning ships and then hold the enemy against them.”

    
Jaspar nodded.
The House of Stowe
wasn’t a ‘special’ ship. Our ships started to tack sideways to the wind, pushing around the wreckage.

    
Our tacking to port would put us on the opposite side of their fleet as their flagship. With some luck they wouldn’t realize what was going on until we started to trap them.

    
A set of stairs led from the wheel deck to the lower main deck, or poop. I dropped down to where some of the sailors who’d been injured were laying.

    
I’d done triage in the Navy, I did that now. I worked with two other sailors to bind wounds and make those who couldn’t be helped comfortable. It was better than watching good men die.

    
One was an Uman woman with white hair. I thought she might be an old woman when, in fact, she turned out to be a youngish girl.

    
“Lupus,” she said, and licked her lips. “Lupus, I’m dying.”

    
An arrow was buried in her gut. She lay in a puddle of her own blood.

    
“The hell you are,” I said through gritted teeth. I turned her half way over and could see the arrow hadn’t come out the other side. It was probably buried in some internal organ she needed, like her bowels.

    
She smiled and closed her eyes. I hated this. I hated having to pay this price. People had to die for me to do what I wanted. People who’d come to me to have a better life. You can make an argument that some things are worth dying for, but those things tend to change in value when you’re the one doing the dying.

    
“Thank–thank you,” she said to me. She reached up, and she stroked the side of my face with a bloody hand.

    
“Thank you,” she repeated. I looked into her eyes.

    
“All I wanted,” she sighed, and looked away from me, “was to get one chance to fight back.”

    
And then she was gone, and Jaspar was calling to me. The enemy fleet had spotted us coming ‘round the burning hulls, but we’d already engaged a few with our Eldadorian Fire.

    
Thank you wasn’t something I was used to hearing.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Sea Power

      We lost six ships in the Battle of the Deceptions, as it was being called. The Trenboni lost fifty before they withdrew.

    
Their flag ship accounted for two of ours, one a special, in her escape. I could have run her down if I wanted. Our ships were bigger and a lot faster. I didn’t want him, though. I have other issues.

    
On the 9th day of the month of War, my entire fleet of Sea Wolves, twenty-four strong, pulled in to the empty wharves of Outpost IX, where the gates were closed and the city walls were manned with archers, some of them Scitai.

    
Friends can be fickle, but then, who knew what they’d do once the fighting started.

    
Groff and one of his sons, Grak, stood beside me on my wheel deck with Jaspar. Grak stood tall and thin like his father, maybe a little more meat on him but not much. He pony-tailed his black hair like mine, but he already showed a widow’s peak. He’s commanded a ship in the fleet, one of the specials, and he’d supposedly done a good job of it.

    
“Looks like they heard what happened at the Straights,” Grak said to me, a smile on his lips. Another way he was unlike his father.

    
Groff just nodded. I turned to Jaspar.

    
“Let them know we want to talk, before we decide whether we want to fight,” I said to him.

    
“We don’t have flags like that,” Jaspar informed me, but as I opened my mouth, he added, “but I’ll get them out here, if they’ll come.”

    
He went down to the signalman. Flags flew up our missen mast.

    
We waited.

    
Ten minutes later, they dipped the pennons flying over the city gates. These were some kind of bird or something–every house among the Uman-Chi claimed some part of the city and had their pennons over that part.

    
“They’ll talk,” Jaspar said.

    
“Make port, just the flag ship,” I said to Jaspar. To the signalman, I shouted, “To the fleet–stand ready. If they attack us, set pipes for long range and assault the city gate and walls.”

    
The signalman began to raise and lower the covers over our communication lights.

    
“Another attack on Outpost IX?” Grak asked me.

    
“Your Imperial Majesty,” Groff corrected him.

    
Grak turned to Groff. “His troops call him by familiar,” he said.

    
“And will you be joining the ranks of his Wolf Soldiers?” Groff scowled. “I’m sure they’ll take you.”

    
Grak swallowed and bowed to me. “Your Imperial Majesty,” he said.

    
What a family.

    
We pulled into port, and an Uman-Chi in a white robe, surrounded by Uman warriors, was waiting. I don’t know how he got there and at this point I didn’t care.

    
Groff and Grak and I went down to meet him with twenty Wolf Soldiers. He stood at the edge of the pier, watching us as we approached.

    
When we stopped he inclined his head.

    
“Your Imperial Majesty,” he said to me. His hair was white and his skin showed signs of aging. He had a big belly and the usual silver-on-silver eyes, and seemed to want to grin.

    
“I’ve never had the pleasure,” I said.

    
He looked dumb-founded. “Your Imperial Majesty?” he said, not understanding me.

    
I sighed. “The pleasure of meeting you,” I said. “Therefore, I don’t know your name.”

    
He did smile then. “Ah,” he said. “I am Chaheff Tamulin, of the house Tamulin, which are merchants. And yet, I am a Caster.”

    
“You know where I’ve come from?” I asked him.

    
He lost his smile. “You managed to leave a caster or two alive, so yes; I know where you’ve come from, and what you’ve done.”

    
“Then you know why I’m here,” I said.

    
“You probably believe we’ll give you back your wife,” he said, “or your woman, or whatever she is.

    
“I think that would be a good idea, yes,” I informed him.

    
“I could also just kill you right now,” Chaheff informed me. “That might also be a ‘good idea.’”

    
I frowned and nodded. “It would,” I agreed, “except then those ships in your harbor will turn their weapons on your city, and they will burn it in its entirety to the ground.”

    
Chaheff smiled again. “Burn stone?” he said. “I think you were a poor student of the sciences.”

    
“Make stone hot enough and it will crack,” I informed him. “This burns very, very hot, Sirrah. I assure you; they will either destroy your city or leave it uninhabitable.”

    
‘Sirrah’ was something Uman-Chi called other people. It didn’t denote respect, more acknowledgement that without some title, feelings would be hurt. Chaheff seemed a little surprised I would use it now.

    
“Where I to give you your woman,” he said, and I think he was trying to look me in the eye, though it was hard to tell, “what then would keep you from attacking us anyway?”

    
“If I have my woman,” I said, “I will have everything from Trenbon that I could want. I won’t care enough about you to attack you.

    
“You would be,” I said, and I leaned closer, and looked into his silver-on-silver eyes, “insignificant to me.”

    
Not something I think the multi-centurial Uman-Chi were accustomed to hearing, I’m sure. But I’d just whacked their fleet. This was their number one claim to fame on Tren Bay. They probably already knew their magic wasn’t working on my Sea Wolves, whether or not they knew it made them stronger, so they were probably doing more biting than they could do chewing right about now.

    
An hour later Shela rode side-saddle out the main gate of Outpost IX dressed in a red velvet robe and blue satin slippers, a troop of Uman surrounding her. Whether that was to protect her baby or her person from the new crop of widows I’d just generated from Trenbon was anyone’s guess.

     We sat in the dark, in the captain’s cabin onboard
The Bitch of Eldador
. Shela and I–she’d shucked the red robes as soon as she’d entered the cabin, saying she’d rather be naked than wear anything from the Uman-Chi.

    
She hadn’t commented on the ship’s name, but she had other things on her mind.

    
After more than an hour, she said, “They didn’t hurt me.”

    
“Then I won’t kill all of them,” I said to her.

    
“You shouldn’t go after them at all,” she told me. I couldn’t see her face in the dark. I couldn’t guess at what she’d been through, but it couldn’t have been too pleasant. I’m sure they made no secret of their plans for her.

    
“Well, too late for that,” I said.

    
She inhaled sharply. “What did you do?” she asked me.

    
“You know how they used to have the largest fleet on Tren Bay with sixty ships?” I asked her.

    
“You sank them all?”

    
“All but ten,” I said.

    
“Those new ships of yours.”

    
“Yeah.”

    
She slid closer to me in the dark. We were both sitting on the captain’s bed. It could be big enough for two, even two and a half, as we clearly were now. Shela would be delivering some time in Chaos, I thought.

    
I felt her hands on my neck and shoulders.

    
“Who was the girl?” she asked me.

    
Like an ice pick in my heart. I slid my hand around her waist.

    
“Shellene, that friend of Ceberro’s, made an offer,” I informed her. “She thought you’d come back broken if you came back at all, and she wanted to replace you.”

    
Shela chuckled. “Foolish girl,” she said. No one knew me better than Shela. “Proud of her body though?”

    
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Gave me the whole view when she snuck into my chambers in Andurin and washed my hair.”

    
Her fingers stiffened on me. “She bathed you?”

    
“Yeah,” I said. “Made her pitch.”

    
“Did she…”

    
I squeezed her. “Couldn’t even stomach the idea,” I informed her. “I told you–it’s my people’s tradition to have only one. I guess you figured out by now that one is you.”

    
She was quiet for a while after that. The ship rocked from side to side. I felt her cheek on my shoulder.

    
“How many,” she began, and then I heard her swallow.

    
“How many had to die?” she asked me finally.

    
“Thousands,” I informed her. “I lost six ships, sank fifty of theirs. If you want to get technical about this, then chalk up the dead from Andoran. That was what sparked this off, and I had to do it if I wanted to marry you.”

    
I could feel the wetness on my shoulder from her tears.

    
“Once, a long time ago, I think, I held you in my arms,” she said to me. “In a tent in Conflu, you wept for your dead, for the people whom you had to kill, and you lamented that there was no reason, that you could have just lived your life and left them to live theirs.”

    
“And now I’m holding you,” I said to her.

    
“You are holding me, and now I weep, for my pride, because I wouldn’t be a concubine. Because I wouldn’t share you, couldn’t stand a simple thing, another wife, another woman in your bed.”

    
“That’s an important thing,” I said.

    
“It’s not,” she hissed. She took my face in her hands; I felt her breath on my lips as she spoke. “My mother was a second wife. My father took another after her. So why am I so proud? Why can I not share a powerful man?”

    
“I never wanted you to–”

    
She smothered my mouth with hers, her tongue against mine, her hands in my hair. I stroked her back, her belly, her hips in the dark. I didn’t know what she wanted from me, so I didn’t know what I should do with her.

    
She broke the kiss, and she said, “I didn’t know your sadness then. I think that I do now. In the months I sat alone in a cell, naked, nothing to do but think, I thought about the man you are, the man were, the man you are becoming.”

    
She sobbed. “I am destroying you, White Wolf,” she said. “The things you do now, the things you do for me, these are not good things. My selfishness, my greed, it drives you, it makes of you a monster that others fear.”

    
“No,” I said. “No, no–not you. Not ever you.”

    
“Of course me,” she said, and sniffed. “How many did you kill at the Battle of Tamaran Glen? How many in the south of Andoran?   How many now? For me, White Wolf. For me.”

    
“The sack of Outpost IX,” I said. “The Battle of Thera. That wasn’t you.”

    
“But afterward,” she told me, “after those battles, you did not cry. Your own people dead around you, and you did not cry.”

    
I didn’t know what to say. It’s true–it had started to bother me less. I’d have burned Outpost IX to the ground; I’d sent my own warriors to be killed for a tactical advantage. I did what I had to do, and no, it didn’t bother me as much as it used to.

    
But that wasn’t Shela’s fault. I was doing War’s will. I knew the consequences of displeasing Him.

    
“Let’s go,” she said to me. She took my hands in hers. “Let’s leave for Wisex. You can be the chieftain of the Wolf Riders, you can have your magic city on the lake. Let Tartan Stowe have back his father’s kingdom, let the Foveans have their stupid wars.”

    
I could almost see her eyes glistening in the dark. I didn’t need my eyes to see her. I knew every curve of her face. I knew every hair on her head. I could almost name them. I knew how her eyes looked when she cried for me.

    
“The Bounty Hunter’s Guild would love that,” I informed her. “We have done a lot of things no one can forgive, my love. The last thing we can do is weaken ourselves and then dare them to come after us.