Indomitus Sum (The Fovean Chronicles Book 4)

by Robert Brady

  The Fovean Chronicles

  Book Four:Indomitus Sum

  By Robert W. Brady, Jr.

  Sometimes victory is simply the absence of defeat.

  The Fovean Chronicles

  Book Four: Indomitus Sum

  © 2014 by Robert W. Brady, Jr.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical photocopying or through a retrieval system without the express permission in writing of the author, except by a reviewer who may publish excerpts as part of a review.

  ISBN: 978-0-9793679-7-7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art: Adrijus Guscia

  First Printing

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedicated to Ralph Fisher

  Who gave his life in service to his country, not on the battlefield but in the aftermath, with courage and distinction befitting a member of the armed services.

  A better man than I.

  The Map of Fovea

  Prologue

  The man-god Steel stood atop the Iron Mountains, sadly watching the city called Steel, filled with people who didn’t even know this city had been named after Him, not after the ore carried out of the adjacent mines. Steel watched soldiers marshalling on a practice field, girding themselves in armor and weapons, making ready to kill others barely different than themselves.

  Steel’s mother, Life, had birthed him after she coupled with one of these. Life had created all manner of things on the face of the god Earth, alongside the goddess Water, who lay forever asleep in His arms.

  These two had birthed Life, after all. Steel was born of an exotic and powerful line.

  Atop the mountains, the goddess Weather, a lesser god, pulled at Steel’s salt-and-pepper hair. She begged him, “Worry not. The machinations of Men, of Uman and Dwarves, of Slee and Swamp Devils, Scitai and Uman-Chi, are nothing in the long stretch of things. War might think Himself ascendant, but in fact he’s just another storm, on a planet where there’s ever sunshine.”

  Steel knew better. Unlike the Fovean gods, He was himself part Man, and this could sometimes give Him insight into mortal things. The god War had brought forward His instrument from another reality, and had sidestepped the Rule of the Gods; He could speak to Lupus the Conqueror. In retaliation the All-Mother, the goddess Eveave, had brought forth two others from the same place, not to face War’s instrument but to counter His plans.

  And then had come a song, and the song had been Steel’s own creation. The song, sung by the Uman-Chi Glynn Escaroth, forewarned of the coming battles, the events about to shake Fovea and the world it lay on.

  “On Fovea, on Fovea, seek a noble young and old,

  A foreigner among his kind

  A hero, fate foretold

  One who fights as does the Sun

  Waits in a sacred place

  A guardian will bring you there

  With a devil born and raised”

  “Through Fovea, through Fovea, over you shall watch

  One who eludes prying eyes,

  With one who can’t be touched.

  So shall they come together

  Heroes of the land

  Together to oppose the One

  While all apart they stand.”

  As loudly as He dared proclaim it, as directly as He dared push against the Rule of the Gods, which bound Him loosely as half a Man. Six to fight against the One, to work with Eveave’s champion while they could.

  Steel wept, watching warriors march on the plains below him. So many of these would be lost, and for what? More influence to the god War? More power to War’s father, the god who called himself Power? A bloody feast at the table of the lesser goddess Destruction?

  When the first living beings, the Cheyak, walked upon the face of Earth thousands of years ago, there’d been a balance. The gods had been content to watch, to tinker, to push idly without real concern about the outcome of Earthly things. Then the god Power had found this other Earth, domain of the One God, and found a way past the Rule of the Gods. He’d heavily influenced the Cheyak and, in the end, destroyed them. That had led to the thousand-year reign of the god Chaos, the formation of the new Fovean nations, the ascendance of Fovean peoples such as the Andarans and the Confluni and, finally, a great peace brokered by Life’s sister and brother, Order and Law, which stifled the fighting in the name of Adriam, the All-Father.

  That peace had lasted less than one hundred years. Now the one called ‘The Conqueror’ ruled the nation of Eldador in the name of War. Now all nations rallied to the clarion call of fear; fear of War, fear of His instrument, the Conqueror, fear there would be a return to the days of their great-grandfathers and the reign of Chaos. Fear of the losses of War.

  For this Steel wept.

  He’d interfered. He’d done His best. He’d sent the Almadain, the mighty stallion from Life’s cherished herd, to soften War’s instrument. The Almadain had birthed half-breed sons and daughters which, in time, could aid them, but even now the instrument of War moved forward with a plan to take Fovea.

  That, Steel knew, must never be. That would usher in a time of blackness even He couldn’t see the end of. The Conqueror knew his god’s will, and such a person was capable of monstrous things, yet even War’s instrument had no concept of what his own successes might usher in.

  Eveave countered him with Her Instrument, the woman called Raven, perhaps greater in her way than the Conqueror, however Eveave would never let her instrument know her will, and so this Raven would never know the maniacal commitment of a true follower.

  Steel did not believe the Raven could prevail, and so He’d set his prophecy in motion. His prophecy put a whole new set of rules, a whole new set of possibilities in play. Should He be wrong, then War’s darkness might intensify one hundred fold, and live to the time when Life became unwelcome on Fovea.

  If successful, the best Steel could hope for was a dim time, not a dark one. His best hope, his brightest dream, was for a time of only gray.

  Sometimes in the world, victory is simply the lack of defeat.

  Chapter One

  Secrets

  “Blast!”

  “Blast, blast, blast and damnation!”

  Thebinaar had seen the Duke, in these last ten years of his reign in Thera, in various states of joy and anger, but not like this, not in court where everyone could see him.

  Def Namek nudged him in the ribs. “Think he’s angry?” he asked.

  The Master at Arms had a strange sense of humor, even for an old Man.

  “I wouldn’t make that comment to him,” Thebinaar responded, dry as ever. An Uman, he had a longer view of things than a Man.

  Andarans at their best could be difficult.

  “Def!” Two Spears roared, bellowing like a bull on his Ducal throne. He sat atop a raised set of four stone steps, still a powerful Man in his thirties, a little grey at the temples of his long, black hair, the black mustachios wagging under the chin of his otherwise clean-shaven face. The courtiers in the gallery were already stirring and the two Wolf Soldiers before him were so rigid at attention that they must be in fear for their lives.

  “Your Grace,” Def said, stepping forward on the platform to the left of the Ducal throne. Thebinaar and Def served as the Shem Hannen of Thera, much as the three who served the Emperor in Eldador. In old Cheyak, the term meant literally, “The Wise Ears.”

  In all things they were opposites. Def stood stick-fig
ure thin, old for the race of Men, in his late sixties. His wiry hair stood out like the whisps of an old brush from his head, revealing a spotted scalp.

  Thebinaar, on the other hand, was less than ninety, middle-aged for the race of Uman. His people were fair-skinned where Def was ruddy and the Duke olive-skinned. Thebinaar’s hair was close-cropped and white, but it had been white his whole life.

  The Duke fixed the Master at Arms with furious brown eyes, the nostrils flaring in his hawk-like nose. “My sister has been captured with my nieces by the Bounty Hunter’s Guild,” he said. “My nephew’s whereabouts are unknown.”

  “Yuh—your sister, the Empress?” Def spluttered.

  Well, that should make for interesting conversation at every table in the Empire over the next week, Thebinaar thought to himself. Why not just surrender to Conflu?

  “Of course, you imbecile,” Two Spears bellowed, hammering the wooden arms to his throne. He’d broken them one-per-year for every year of his reign and Thebinaar didn’t hold out high hopes for this one now.

  The gallery was abuzz. Courtiers were already glancing furtively at the doors. Some of them came here from other nations. When Rancor Mordetur had been a Duke, he’d helped to make this place one of the most important cities on Tren Bay for culture and commerce, and since then Two Spears had been at least as successful.

  “We—by War’s Whiskers, your Grace, shall we take this out of the court?” Def at least tried to contain the situation.

  The Emperor had some cliché about closing barns doors once horses escaped, but Thebinaar couldn’t recall it at the moment.

  “I want three thousand Theran Lancers on the marshalling field by the time I have my armor on,” Two Spears demanded, “and I want a message sent to the Aschire that I need as many archers as they can spare. Send a fast horse to the Emperor in Uman City and let him know that, when I have my sister back, I’ll be sending her to him.”

  “Your—your Grace, shall we not—”

  A fist like an anvil shattered the arm of the wooden throne. “By the wind in Weather’s hair,” Two Spears swore, red faced, “if I have to repeat myself I’ll let my scimitar do my talking for me—I think it’s about time we cleared out this court of those who can’t do what I tell them to, and when!”

  “Im—immediately, your Grace,” Def stammered. Thebinaar held to the better part of valor and his tongue, not that it saved him.

  “To me, Uman,” Two Spears said, standing. “We have a few things to set straight. Def Namek—War better be right at your shoulder if you tell me anything but that you’ve done what I need of you, when next I see you.”

  Def nodded. Thebinaar glided out after Two Spears, so enraged that he didn’t even bother to dismiss the court.

  Let the courtiers sit until their courage caught up with their hunger, Thebinaar thought. The longer it took them to spread this bad news, the longer the Empress would be alive.

  “Your Grace,” Thebinaar said, soft as a whisper, as one might to a spooked horse, once they were away from the throne room. “How may I be of—?”

  Two Spears turned. He stood tall, almost as tall as the Emperor, broad shouldered and heavily muscled. The corners of his brown eyes showed the wrinkles of both age and worry. Being a Duke in Rancor Mordetur’s Empire was no easy job.

  “My nephew took eight men, and they’re following the Bounty Hunters,” he said, softly, a hand on Thebinaar’s shoulder.

  “Vulpe?”

  The boy had seen eleven springs, no more. Thebinaar had rarely spoken to him, but for a child of Men he’d shown amazing intelligence. At six, he’d actually sung at the Theatre au Thera, and so beautifully even the Uman-Chi had given him a standing ovation.

  “He took control of a squad, he’s given his orders, he sent for reinforcements and he’s looking for a way to get his mother back.”

  Thebinaar was actually dumbfounded. “At eleven?”

  Two Spears nodded. “The Wolf Soldiers are calling him by his first name, and you know what that means.”

  Wolf Soldiers referred to the Emperor, the boy’s father, by his nick-name, ‘Lupus.’ It was their term for respect and obedience, and they hadn’t shared it with any others.

  “Your Grace…”

  Two Spears nodded, and started stomping back to his personal chambers, where once the Emperor had slept with Shela, Two Spears’ sister. That same sister had picked the Duke out an Andaran wife from the Wolf Rider tribe—the one that had made Rancor Mordetur an Andaran.

  She waited for him there, tears in her eyes, Two Spears’ armor already waiting for him. He’d given up the familiar Andaran leather for Eldadorian plate—some of the finest in the world, a gift from his brother-in-law.

  “Oh, Tali Digatishi,” Wanigey Digitolay, his wife, greeted him. In her Andaran tongue, it meant ‘Soft Eyes.’ “The estate is already seething with it—”

  He took her in his arms. The Empress had picked this woman out for her brother, another custom among their people. She was everything Two Spears never let himself be—soft, loving, caring.

  On her first day here, she’d disappeared and they’d found her in the inner city, helping wash peoples’ clothes. When asked why, she just said, “Well, it needed to be done.”

  Thebinaar himself admitted his own heart swelled with love for this dusky woman with long, black hair and eyes the size of Tabaars, colored golden brown.

  “I’ll have all four of them back before Weather’s end, and the skins of the Bounty Hunters dripping on the walls,” Two Spears promised. “Wani—I need you to run the city while I’m out.”

  She turned her soulful eyes to Thebinaar’s. She laid a hand on the upper curve of his gigantic belly and asked, “You’ll help me, wise one?”

  I’d walk across hot coals to bring you your wine, he thought to himself. “I am forever at your slightest service, your Grace,” he said.

  Love or hate the Emperor, he knew how to pick good people, Thebinaar thought to himself. Thera was the bulwark of Eldador’s economy, and her people loved their Duke and Duchess so much, they’d do anything for them.

  An Uman-Chi poet once wrote,

  “The thunder of Theran Lancers

  “So like the thunder of God,

  “Rings not so loud as Theran coin

  “In every purse abroad.”

  “You see, ‘Tisha,” she said. “I am all well. My love, you must find them.”

  “You claim your nephew…” Thebinaar intervened.

  “And what was that?” Def burst into the room behind them.

  Two Spears grinned wide. His wife already had his blouse and breeches off, and was dressing him in his armor.

  “You liked our little play?” Two Spears asked him.

  Def fumed.

  These Men, Thebinaar thought. Like onions. So many layers and, when you peel them back, all you get is tears.

  “You know every tongue in the Empire—” Def began.

  “Will be wagging,” Two Spears concluded for him, “and woe to any who see these scum on our soil.”

  “The Bounty Hunter’s Guild—”

  “Has an agreement with the Empire,” Two Spears said. His wife was sliding his greaves up his shins. “Do you know the real reason why they stopped trying to kill the Emperor?”

  Yes, Thebinaar thought to himself, I know exactly why. It was my idea.

  “Because the Emperor swore that, after the next time he was attacked, he would declare all out war not only on the guild, but on anyone who did business with them.”

  “And no nation wanted the animosity of the man who sacked Outpost IX,” Two Spears said. “And if the Bounty Hunter’s Guild believes their own members have taken the Empress—”

  “Then they will do everything they can to get her back,” Thebinaar said. “But, of course, only if they know she is gone.”

  Def just fumed.

  “When next we spar,” he said, finally, “I am not going to go so light on you as before, Tali Digatishi.

  “
I used to despair of damaging your brain, but now I hold no hope for it.”

  * * *

  Nina found herself left all alone, waiting in the semi-darkness. The night before, the Wolf Soldiers had taken the city. Someone had cast a torch into the room. It landed on a couch, which started burning. Nina wondered, struggling against her bonds, if this would be the end of her, her message undelivered.

  Aschire live their lives in harmony with their forest. The plants, the trees, the animals, the rocks; are all the Aschire. An Aschire is born into a crowd and lives in one. For her to restrict herself just to the royal family had itself been a sacrifice in her life.

  Where normally her power would have freed her, being abandoned here had left her so rattled she could barely douse the torch, and even then only after several tries. She’d always favored flame.

  That morning her heart leapt when someone kicked in the green door. She saw the guard still lying dead in the alleyway beyond it. Kor had seen its share of bodies before him.

  “What have we here?” a Wolf Soldier sergeant demanded? He stepped up to her, took her jaw in his hand. She almost melted into his rough palm, welcoming the touch of any living thing.

  A moment later she knew from the look in the sergeant’s eyes that the battle lust was on him. He’d probably raped already and wanted to do so again. Lupus encouraged his men to be merciless.

  “Nina of the Aschire,” she informed him, straightening in her bonds. “Guardian Protector to the Princess Lee, of the House of Mordetur. Mistreat me on your life, sergeant.”

  The sergeant sneered. Another behind him put his hand on the Man’s shoulder.

  “She’s who she says she is,” he said, a Volkhydran. “I served two years with the First Millennium. I’ve seen her many times; I know the Mist—I know the Lady Nina.”