by Robert Brady
The globule coalesced, and she imagined the air around it, underneath it, couching it, then moving it to her on a pillow.
Like a shot from a gun, the ultra-hard surface flew at her. Vedeen plucked it out of the air before it caught her square between the eyes.
“Perhaps not ready yet to combine spells,” she said, nonchalantly admiring the ruby. It was as big as a thumb, the facets cut at crazy angles; not raw, but perhaps the product of a jeweler who couldn’t make up his mind?
Glynn gave a little grunt. “Couldn’t be real,” she said.
Vedeen raised her eyebrows. “Isn’t it, though?” she asked. “Surely you know more about such things than I?”
“Give it here,” Xinto waddled up from behind them. The other Men were watching, as well, from a safe distance.
Vedeen knelt down and stroked the side of Xinto’s beard, much as she did the dog. Xinto took the ruby, held it to the campfire, then pulled a jeweler’s loop from one of the many pockets in his robe.
Jimmy Hoffa has to be hiding in one of those, Raven thought.
“As real as it needs to be,” he said, finally. He palmed the ruby for its weight. “Big as any dwarf has found. Would you like for me to hold this?”
He looked up innocently at Raven, but she wasn’t fooled.
“Be the last you’ll see of it,” Karl grumbled. He’d gotten his shirt off and walked past her in his breeches, grazing her elbow with his abdomen. He plucked the ruby from the Scitai’s greedy fingers.
“Give that here,” Glynn commanded him. He straightened, then looked at Raven.
Eventually they all had a look. Xinto tried several times to get her to let him keep it. Finally he admitted the stone was worth a Duke’s ransom.
“You’d do well not to display that,” Karl told her, the scar on his face ruddy in the firelight, once they’d all settled down. “Someone is going to convince himself he can get it away from you before we can catch him.”
“Oh, let her,” Vedeen said, smiling. She lay on her hip on the ground, close to the fire; her robes spread out in a blanket and dressed in a brown leather bra and skirt that she wore beneath. Xinto, pervert that he was, had positioned himself for a full view of her ass.
“It’s so beautiful,” she said. “I love the cuts—how did you decide on them?”
“Actually, I didn’t,” she admitted. Glynn was holding it now, its reflection in her silver-on-silver eyes. “I just thought of that plasma becoming a ruby, and it did.”
“Plasma?” Vedeen said. “I do not know this word.”
“Plasma is, well, hmmm—well, in my world, we study chemistry,” she began.
“Chem–stree?” Glynn said. That had gotten her attention.
“You know chem–stree?”
Raven straightened on her bedroll. She had her raider’s cloak where she could pull it over her when the night got cold, which it still did at this time of year, four days into the month of War.
“I studied it on what you call a hoonar—a place of learning for the young by the wise.”
Vedeen nodded. “We have the Collection of the Oaks among the Druids—where the wise teach the novices.”
“Among the Uman-Chi, we have apprentices and masters,” Glynn said. “Mine was Chaheff—I was very fortunate.”
“Well, we call it a college, or a university,” Raven began but Glynn uncharacteristically interrupted her.
“The Emperor spoke to an Uman-Chi you know, D’gattis, about chem-stree,” she said. “About removing the essence of wine and using it to kill something he called ‘germs.’”
Karl nodded. “I remember that,” he said.
All eyes turned to him.
He immediately looked uncomfortable. “Used to be,” he said, finally, “more warriors died after a battle than during it. We thought evil demons fed on their wounds and left poison bile. You’d see fever, and sickness; healers would amputate arms and legs…”
He shuddered. “My uncle, he lost his hand because of a bad scrape. Lupus showed us that, rather than drinking strong alcohol, we could use it on healers’ scalpels and in bandages. After the Battle of Tamaran Glen, we put witch hazel on wounds and alcohol on bandages, and the demons never came.”
“Even we use alcohol now,” Zarshar said, from across the fire. “I never understood why demons would feed on my kind. Chem-stree makes more sense.”
Glynn leaned forward. “You know these secrets, then, Raven?” she persisted. “The Emperor claimed he could remove the salt from sea water, and now there is clean water in every Eldadorian city.”
“That there is,” Xinto said. “He laid huge pipes of clay and wood in the ground, and he builds a building of brick and steel that belches steam and pumps fresh water into those pipes, and now you can be in Galnesh Eldador, or Thera or Steel City or Vrek, and get water fresh as rain pumped right into your house.”
“After he pumps it into huge towers?” Raven asked. Xinto nodded.
“Every city in my land, no matter how small,” she said. “Now everyone lives longer and you have less—um, fewer babies die, don’t you?”
She didn’t know the words for infant mortality.
Say what you would about the Emperor, she couldn’t help thinking, he cares about his people.
Chapter Five
Surprises on the Eldadorian Plain
“Why would you help me?” Jack asked.
It seemed a pretty simple question.
The Uman farmer, Harkem, and his wife, Jeel, kept a small farm, a soddy and a wood barn, a crop of corn almost a daheer wide, a crop of hay even wider, a corral with aurochs, their retrievers to manage them, and a flock of children.
A lot to lose for a stranger.
Jeel had packed him full of food; Harkem had reshod Little Storm and tightened the stitches in his saddle. His saddlebags were packed with dried meat, peas and carrots. When the sun set, they took Jack out past their farm, and into a gulley between two hills. The way the landscape formed around it, you’d have to be standing right on top of Milly’s Gulch to see it. They explained that, in the rainy season, it became a stream they tapped for irrigation. As they waited to be sure the patrols were all in, Harkem looked Jack right in the eye.
“I’m a vassal to Thera, my Duke is Two Spears, the brother-in-law of the Emperor. Do you know what that means?”
Jack shook his head.
“Twenty years ago this was all bottom land with very little clay. I settled here with my wife, we started this farm. I owed nothing to anyone, and I got nothing from anyone.
“Sometimes that meant I had to fight off raiders, but the neighbors banded together, and we lived.”
Jack already had an idea where this was going.
“When Lupus the Conqueror became Duke of Thera, I suddenly discovered my lands were his, and that I farmed them at his good graces. I was informed I had to pay him fifteen parts in one hundred of everything I grew here, but in return I would have Wolf Soldiers looking out for me.
“When the Confluni invaded Thera the first time, they tore up the farms of my neighbors and killed their children. We didn’t see any Wolf Soldiers until they actually turned on the city. Then Lupus and his Wolf Soldiers crushed them, as he promised. He even spent a little of his own coin rebuilding our farms, although he couldn’t replace the children.
“Then he became a King, and then an Emperor and we had this Two Spears. We who paid his way to the throne with our taxes were forgotten. Four years ago, Thera was invaded again, by twice as many Confluni, as well as Uman-Chi and Uman from the Silent Isle.”
Jeel took her husband by the upper arm and squeezed. A tear ran down Harkem’s cheek, and he looked away from Jack.
“I lost a daughter and two sons in that invasion,” he said, and his voice cracked. “The daughter was raped, the sons strung up with the sons of others, t’ draw out the Emperor and the Duke. We was something they could use t’ get under a better man’s skin, no more.
“This time the Emperor came out and met
them in the field. They tore up my farm, they ran over my crops, and they charged over the dead bodies of my children. To get at them Confluni, the Theran Lancers done me and mine at least as bad as they done them.
“And afterwards, this time they didn’t pay nothing. This time that Two Spears, he tells us he suffered so bad, and it cost him so much, he didn’t have no more gold to help those whom the Confluni tortured and killed to get at Eldador.
“That was in War, and then in Chaos, he rebuilds his walls with cheap labor from farmers who ain’t got no farms no more, and my daughter starves to death, crazy from what they done to her. He tells us we should be grateful he got us work at all.”
“So you ask me why I help you, I tell you,” Harkem said, and he gripped Jack’s upper arm tight, “if they want you, then I want them not to have you, ‘cuz maybe I can’t do a lot about an Emperor, but I can do that.”
“‘sides,” Jeel said, and patted the side of his cheek, “you don’t look so bad. What could you o’ done?”
Jack smiled to himself. “Well, nothing that bad,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss. I hope they found peace.”
Jeel smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Well, now,” she said. “Well, that’s nice—that’s nice of you to say.”
“You better git,” Harkem told Jack. “You follow this gulley ‘till it widens out, and you’ll see a wash to the northeast. You follow that; you’ll come to a flat part in the plains, maybe a tenth of a daheer across. Get across that and, right to the north, you’ll find another gulley like this one. You get down that, and you’ll be on the road to Galnesh Eldador, and you can go anywhere.”
“Keep your head down and don’t stop moving,” Jeel told him. “They’ll track you after you get to the plain, but you’ll be to the road so fast after that, you’ll be free. They’ll never track you on the road.”
“And don’t ride,” Harkem said. “Walk that pony—they’ll see the top of your head otherwise.”
“Thanks,” Jack said. He took his horse by the reins.
“Life’s good fortune to you,” Harkem said.
Jack turned away from them and led his horse down the gulley. He could feel them watching him as the walls closed in like a blanket. He mulled their story over in his head as he walked.
He couldn’t say that he’d have done anything differently from Lupus, given the circumstance. It’s a wonderful idea to live free on the plains, but in fact, someone was going to come around who was larger, and take what they had eventually.
Granted he didn’t approve of what Two Spears had done, but he could understand that he had to keep Thera safe or see the same invaders back again, and he probably did think he was doing the farmers a favor by employing them.
He couldn’t really appreciate what it meant to be on both sides of an argument like this, but he could see why people could hate the Emperor, when they thought he just took their possessions to make his life better, at the expense of their own.
He’d never lost a child, certainly never in conditions like that. Would that change him? Would it make him act out against his government?
He had to ask himself again, as he had many times since he’d come here, if he was on the right side of this conflict.
* * *
When he’d been a child, an Uman kitchen servant had taken Hectaro into a pantry, and forced him to sit still and wait for his father, when he’d been caught stealing plums and fresh bread. He’d cried the whole time, and when his father had seen him, he’d ordered the Uman lashed.
“How can he steal what is already his?” Hectar had demanded of the Uman woman. “You serve at my pleasure, and you serve at his.” Later, the woman had been transferred to the stables, and after that the barracks, where the women were notoriously brutalized by the Guard. In fact, Hectaro remembered seeing her carrying water less than a month ago.
Now for two weeks he’d been sleeping and riding with his wrists bound together, and thankful they’d let him keep his own horse. His sword remained sheathed by the bedroll behind him—a testimony to how little they feared him.
Beside him, the Empress was bound hand and foot across the saddle of her gelding. The Princess rode on his other side, her hands bound as well.
When he’d tried to speak, his captors had simply cuffed him. He couldn’t identify himself; he couldn’t demand the treatment due his stature. He’d seen Lee shift her eyes rapidly between him and his sword, but he’d just shrugged at her and said nothing.
He might have taken on one of them, but he didn’t trust enough to his skills to take on this many.
They’d want gold for him. His father had gold. Better just to wait this out.
There were five—the Empress had managed to kill one before they subdued her. He’d at least tried to stand beside her. That would be worth something when they were all freed.
“Hold,” one said, a woman. She led them. The others were all male, two Uman, both with short-cropped green hair and multiple facial scars, and two Men, a Volkhydran and a Confluni by the look of them, the first burly and strong, the second skinny as a rail, with tight leather armor and, like the woman, daggers all over his body.
The woman was of the race of Men as well, shortish, red hair with some gray, green eyes, a wild look to her, as if she had become used to being hunted.
The sun was rising. They’d been moving by night and camping by day, ever south, probably meaning to cut down into the plains and then west to Uman City and passage to Andoran. Excruciatingly slowly—they should have been to Steel City by now.
“This is a good place,” she said. “Plenty of cover, we can get out through those hills over there, or those to the north, and any chasing us will be slowed down by them.”
“Yes, yes,” one of the Uman said. “We all know the terrain here—no need to explain it. You have the bitches off their saddles this time, then. I want to scout back our trail.”
“I can’t lift the Empress,” she said.
“Then drag her off and drop her on her head,” the Uman said. “When did a head injury ever change an Andaran?”
The rest chuckled. Hectaro had made the same joke himself.
“I’ll get her, if you’ll let me,” Hectaro ventured.
One of the Men, the Volkhydran, raised a hand threateningly, but the female held up her hand. “Let him,” she said. “I’ll untie his hands and watch him.”
“You think that’s wise?” the other Uman asked.
“Well, you’re all too busy,” she said. “He’s cowed enough, I assume. Maybe I’ll make him take his pants off first, keep him from running.”
Hectaro blushed crimson as the others laughed. The woman swung out of the saddle, the rest after. She held a dagger up to Hectaro where he sat Bastard.
“Give up your wrists,” she said. He dutifully extended his hands.
She sawed the binds free. He flexed his fingers, letting himself look down the front of her tight, leather top.
Without warning, she yanked him from his saddle. Bastard snorted and bobbed his head, dancing to one side. She reached down and took him by the hair, and dragged him up to his knees. For a woman, her grip was like steel.
“Like the view from up there, ‘my lord’?” she sneered.
“Um, well—er,” he couldn’t think of any answer that wouldn’t get him into more trouble.
“Well, let’s have a look,” she said and, with one swipe, cut the laces from the front of his breeches.
His pants sprung open as she pulled him to his feet. Releasing his hair, she held her knife to his throat as he felt the cool air touch his thighs and nether parts.
The cold steel of a sharp blade touched him. “Well, seems to me you liked it well enough.”
He looked away, and his eyes found Lee’s. He could see the respect she’d already lost for him.
Her father, he felt sure, would have killed them all by now. Her father wore a man’s weight in armor and carried an enchanted sword, too.
“Fix those up, and
get those bitches off their horses,” she commanded him. “Then picket your horses away from ours, and feed them. Then come back here and ask me for something else to do.”
“I—yes, I will,” he promised.
The Men and Uman shook their heads and scattered. The woman took her horse to the other side of their camp and pulled the saddle from him. Hectaro hitched up his pants and stepped to the side of Singer, Lee’s horse, and reached up for her.
“I can get down myself,” she informed him, and did so, even with her hands bound.
“I’ll get your mother,” he informed her.
“Lay a bedroll out for her first, stupid,” she said. “You don’t lay the Empress of Eldador on the ground.”
“Of course,” he said and, stepping to the side of the Shela’s horse, he pulled the bedroll from behind her saddle and laid it on the ground close to the fire. He returned to Shela’s saddle and, as gently as he could, he pulled her from it.
Her body was stiff and, for a moment, he worried that she’d died on them. Her eyes were closed, her head didn’t loll back as he expected. He caught a flicker then, and she saw him, and he knew she wasn’t unconscious, just pretending as best as she could.
“Don’t fondle her, move her,” Lee complained. In a moment he’d gone from hero to low servant, because he didn’t fight back.
Because he’d been cowed and weakened in her eyes.
Hectaro carried the now-limp form of the Empress to her bedroll, and laid her down as gently as he could. He straightened her head on the pillow, and laid her hair down gently at her side, where it wouldn’t get in her way if she decided to act.
He didn’t know if he could beat the woman to the side of his horse to get his sword. She’d told him to picket and to feed the horses. Doing that put him as near to his weapon as he wanted to be.
The woman with the red hair didn’t think he was anything to worry about. The Princess no longer respected him. If he could be of any service to the Empress, however, he could redeem some of his lost honor.