Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (7 page)

    
Beside the portcullis and the gate, on the right, stood a tower that reached fifteen feet higher than the city’s 25-foot wall.  The towers had been built fifty feet across, and showed arrow slots on every level, to the outside and within the gate.

    
Walk your army in there, and you would lose ten men or more a minute.  If you were smart, you put your shields up against the arrow slots and hoped you could destroy the main gate before they could pour hot oil down on you.

    
You could send a squad in with a battering ram, but the first few waves were going to die.

    
I sat my horse outside where the guard could see me.  The Uman-Chi had a spell that protected us from arrows in case someone got brave.

    
“We would speak with Duke Yerel, or his proxy,” the herald pressed him.

    
More talk behind the gates.  Why didn’t I proclaim myself the heir, or the Duke of Thera?

    
Those were Wolf Soldiers on their front lawn.  But they were on the wrong side of the wall to do much.

    
“May we treat with him alone?” the guard called down, finally.

    
The herald looked back at me, and I nodded.  He withdrew, and I trotted Blizzard up to the gate.

    
The gate groaned open about a quarter of the way, and an older man in chainmail armor trotted a dappled gray warhorse out to meet me.  His hair shown as gray as the horse, cut close to his scalp, and his face clean-shaven.  He was an Uman, but as big as a Man.  He nodded and I nodded back.

    
“Your highness,” he said, “I am Jak, Captain of the Guard.”

    
“Well met, Jak,” I said.

    
“I must ask your intention,” he said.

    
He looked me right in the eyes, but you could tell he didn’t want to.  A soldier followed orders, like them or not, and closing the gates to the Heir wasn’t an order that he liked following.

    
“I am here to speak with his grace, Duke Yerel,” I said, “under treatise of the King of Eldador.”

    
He looked at me more directly.  “The King hired you?” he asked.  “Why would he hire the Heir to do the duties of the Heir?”
     “He hired the Free Legion,” I said, “of which I am a member.”

    
He opened his mouth, and then closed it.  He opened it and closed it again.

    
“His Majesty has sent mercenaries to the city?” he asked.

    
“He has sent tax collectors,” I said, “under hire.”

    
“This has never been done before,” he commented, as if he could argue us away.

    
“Times change,” I said, simply.

    
He thought about that.  “I can tell you,” the captain said, finally, “that Yerel will not open his gates to invaders.”

    
I nodded.  “You know of course,” I said, “that the Heir has no power to order him to open his gates, or to collect taxes.”

    
“Yerel has made this point many times in the last few days,” he said.

    
“And the Heir cannot order the army into an Eldadorian city,” I added.

    
“Again, the Duke made this clear to me.”

    
I looked back at the Wolf Soldiers, then back at the Captain.

    
“We aren’t here as Eldadorians,” I said.  “We are here
for
Eldadorians.  If Yerel doesn’t see me today, he will have this army and even more Free Legion warriors on his doorstep, and we won’t be here to talk.”

    
“That sounds like a threat, your Highness,” he warned me.

    
“A threat is something that someone might not do,” I corrected him.  “This is a promise – as soon as the Free Legion reinforcements arrive, I will destroy your gates, purge your walls, take the coin owed the state, and bring Yerel to Eldador the Port in chains.”

    
The Captain nodded.  I dismissed him, and he rode back in through the gate.  I got Blizzard out of the murder hole before they realized that they would be the first group to die if I invaded.

     Uman City had been laid out much the same as Outpost IX was: outer wall, inner wall, cobblestone streets and a central palace with its own wall.  They had no coliseum for the Fovean High Council, no flying bridges soared above us, however I saw where flying bridges might be, if they’d wanted them.

    
They had only one gate, but the walls had the same kind of towers, only shorter.  Someone had probably seen Outpost IX before they made this city, and then came as close to it as their budget would allow.

    
I walked in with my wizards and a 50 Wolf Soldier retinue, more to show off five squads than because I thought I needed them.  Five squads wouldn’t hold off the whole city guard, no matter who they were.

    
We marched down the central way to the palace.  Wolf Soldiers who were veterans of the sack of Outpost IX looked on in wonder and recognition, just as I did.  I hadn’t been here before, but it felt like I had.

    
The palace gates were open.  I doubted those would close until we actually attacked.  The streets were crowded with civilian onlookers, some watching quiet and dour, others waving scraps of cloth with my Wolf’s Head insignia drawn on them and shouting, “The Conqueror!”  News of a military victory travels fast, and no one loves the Uman-Chi.  Still, I think that most of them didn’t like that army outside of the gate.

    
We entered the palace, and here my expertise ended because I hadn’t been in the palace at Outpost IX.  I saw a similarity to the palace at Steel City, where the inner gates were a straight shot from the outer gates.  The palace exterior included towers and tiers and a grand marble stair leading up to its double doors.  We marched past liveried Uman warriors and in to a main hall that mirrored Outpost X, right down to the gallery on the right hand side.

    
Cheyak tradition ran deep.

    
Yerel sat on a raised dais, on a throne carved of stone.  He had no one there to advise him like Glennen and I did.  He looked the same as when I had seen him in my home in Thera, except that he looked angrier now than then.

    
“Your Highness,” he greeted me.

    
“Your Grace,” I returned.

    
“I am told that you are here to collect taxes,” he said.  He came straight to the point.  I didn’t feel like sparring with him, anyway.

    
Well, the conversation wasn’t over, either.

    
“You are delinquent,” I said.  “Are you able to deliver?”

    
“I can deliver,” he said, “but I see no reason to do so for the Heir.  You have no authority to collect tax or tithe.”

    
“You will note,” I said, politely, my helmet under my arm, “that I am not here as an Eldadorian, but as a member of the Free Legion.”

    
“And I find that strange,” he said, leaning forward, “because the Free Legion are under my employ.”

    
Didn’t see that one coming.

    
“They are?” I asked him.  I felt my scar twitch.  “That would not explain the troops on your gate.”

    
“Oh, I assure you, I hired the Free Legion last month, to clean out Aschire raiders near my city,” he said, half of a smile on his face.  “They have been busy for me.”

    
Now,
that
would suck, I thought.  We had an agreement with the Aschire, an agreement through me, and that I depended on, that said that there would be no combat between the Aschire and the Free Legion.

    
I knew for a fact that every member of the Free Legion knew of that agreement.  If they broke it we would never be able to incorporate the Aschire into our larger plans.

    
My first instinct right then was to bail from here, hunt down Ancenon and smack him down for screwing this up.  I actually put weight on my left heel for a quick turn when it occurred to me.

    
Ancenon did a better job planning than that.  He’d lived much longer and learned much more than I had.  Ancenon Aurelias would not screw himself in the long term for some short-term gain, because Uman-Chi live for centuries, and they just don’t think in the short term.

    
Yerel had tried to play me, and he knew just how to do it.  That was pretty smart.  I couldn’t help myself from smiling.

    
“You are amused, your Highness,” Yerel said.

    
I looked him in the eye.  “No member of the Free Legion,” I said, “would harm a purple hair on the head of an Aschire, for any amount of gold or silver.”

    
He sat up straight, probably because I called him a liar in his own court, rather than because I had caught him in a lie.

    
“I take offense,” he said.

    
“As well you may,” I pressed him.  I knew I had him.  He was bluffing, and no one bluffed who held a good hand.

    
“And I will demand satisfaction,” he said.

    
I smiled.  I could take Yerel.  He might have been a warrior, but that had been years ago. 

    
“You shall have it,” I said.  They don’t throw down gauntlets here.  I had mentioned it once, and been told quite plainly that it was a stupid waste of an expensive piece of armor.

    
“Shall we use seconds, your Highness?” he asked me, “or will you be fighting yourself.”

    
“I fight my own battles,” I said.

    
I had been so pleased with myself that I didn’t think before the words came out of my mouth.  Why the hell would he want to ask about seconds?

    
Unless…

    
The man who stepped out from behind the stone throne could have been Nantar’s bigger, meaner brother.  He was armored from head to toe in thick plate, carrying a sword with a blade four feet long over one shoulder and a mace on his hip.

    
“Well, I am an old man,” Yerel said, “and I shall choose a second.  May I introduce you to Varoth, of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild?”

    
Crap.

     You had to admire the planning.  You really did.

    
The Bounty Hunters approached Yerel and got him on their side, probably with some dispersion against me.  Then they betrayed him to me, through their emissary to Eldador, to encourage me to come after Yeral. Now, of course, they supported Yerel with this warrior so he stayed on their side.  This got me to do the one thing that they couldn’t arrange on their own: open up direct combat between them and myself.

    
I could see where they had cut Shela out of the picture as well.  If she were here, Varoth would already be dead.  They knew I wouldn’t bring the whole family to a siege, and Alekanna’s assassination was still too recent even to consider leaving the baby alone.  I am sure that, if we had, then Lee would be in the possession of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild anyway right now, and Varoth would be delivering the message, “Give us yourself, or we will settle for your daughter.”

     That tended to say that they already had someone in the palace at Eldador, but I couldn’t focus on that now.

     On the first day of the month of Weather I stood on the square, just within the main gate of Uman City.  Two hundred of my Wolf Soldiers stood as my witnesses.  Whether I won or lost, they would wait until combat finished, then take the gate and the tower.

    
Two Spears sat outside the gate with 1,000 heavy horse.  When the gate opened, they would charge directly to the palace and slaughter anyone who resisted.  The foot would be right behind them.  On this side of the gate, I could take the city with what I had.

    
I wore my armor tight.  My wizards had already thwarted three attempts to cast spells on me.  I let them respond in kind.  The Uman-Chi felt certain that he had blinded at least one of their wizards.

    
Varoth stepped into the square.  He held his sword in both hands.  It looked similar to the Scottish claymore, long handle, over-stated cross guard, a foot of steel with no edge at the base, then sharp to a point on both edges.  He didn’t swing it in any fancy way, just held it before him, point down, waiting for battle to begin.

    
His mace hung from his hip.  Seemed to me that the mace would be a better weapon to start out with.  My armor would be a hell of an obstacle to his sword.

    
Yerel stepped out onto the square.  “For the honor of Uman City,” he said, and stepped back.

    
Varoth advanced.  I pulled the Sword of War from over my shoulder and held it up between us.