Indomitus Sum (The Fovean Chronicles Book 4)

by Robert Brady

  If he were a particle less controlling of her, she’d have been done with him long ago. Her man knew her like no other could, and kept her when no other could, because he’d rather be dead than lose her, and he’d proven that a dozen times, too.

  “Do this again,” he informed her, “and you’re back on the plains, Nasgiagev Dasqualodi Gatsinula. Alone, with your father’s tribe, until I decide to come get you.”

  Shela whimpered and started crying again. The solemn way he was saying it told her he was serious, that he’d do it. He’d let her go. If he couldn’t keep her, he’d let her go.

  “Never again,” she said, shaking her head, her long, back hair waving back and forth across her breasts. “Never, I swear it. On my life, on my life, Yonega Waya. Never again.”

  He’d called her by her child’s name, by the name she’d had when he’d taken her. She Runs Swiftly—because whenever any man came close to her and tried to be her friend, she’d run away.

  He nodded. She just sensed his movement. He reached for his belt.

  She dropped to her knees before him, pulling open the laces on his leather pants. She was still too tender for intercourse, not completely healed from her infection. He chuckled as she sought him out from his pants and took him in her mouth.

  In fact, she didn’t care for this, but she took it as a part of her punishment. In a corner or her mind, for what she was guilty of, she couldn’t help thinking she might be due far worse.

  * * *

  Duchess Glynn Escaroth, Baroness of Britt and Caster, rose from her meditations with a smile on her face, having communicated with Duke Haldan Evoprosee from Trenbon.

  Such a communication announced her presence like a beacon to every median Wizard in Eldador; however her location had been discovered for a week. Their army pressed east and had marched for four days, just under ten thousand strong and most of them beaten and demoralized under a darkening sky.

  What they would do on the eastern coast of Eldador would be anyone’s guess. She’d informed his Grace of their need and received only an indication of his vague concern.

  Certainly not reassuring, however her King had come back to her side again, and she knew she must not fail.

  “Karl, Jahunga, Vedeen,” she said, pushing open the flap to their shared pavilion in the Confluni camp, “I’ve need of all of thee.”

  Karl and Jahunga both were sharpening Karl’s blade. The warlord of Teher had purchased himself a breastplate and leggings and now looked the properly armed warrior. If he’d been irascible before, then he’d become even more foul since the conflict now called The Battle of the Vice, for the way their enemies had squeezed them.

  Vedeen reclined on a pile of pillows, the dog’s great head in her lap. Glynn saw the drooling beast’s stain on her robes.

  “And how might we help you?” Vedeen asked her, her sweet voice almost mocking.

  “Probably more killing,” Karl grumbled, and spat on the floor of the tent. He’d come to do that more and more, and Glynn had grown to mind it.

  “There is more to life than this,” Jahunga informed him, holding the sword by its handle. “Me, I’ve been a warrior my whole life and not done so much killing as in these last months.”

  Only two of Jahunga’s Toorians and ten of Karl’s Volkhydrans had survived the Daff Kanaar. They served as an honor guard now, a useless service to them.

  “Karl and Jahunga,” she said, “send your warriors home.”

  Both straightened. Karl narrowed his eyes. “Surely my warriors fought better than your Confluni,” Jahunga challenged her.

  “If you think you’re done with Volkhydro’s help—” Karl said.

  “Far from it, Sirrah,” Glynn said, just as the first rain began to patter on the canvas ceiling above them. “It is because of their goodly service that I seek to dispatch them, gold in hand, to the homelands their hearts grow sick for.”

  “What benevolence is this?” Vedeen challenged her, grinning under her blonde locks.

  “I am contacted by his Majesty, the King of Trenbon, and I am asked to purvey good news to all who would hear it.”

  “Well, we could use some good news,” Karl informed her.

  Glynn felt the smile grow on her face. “We are to spread a message, through your warriors and some few Trenboni agents in Eldador, of the defeat of the Eldadorian fleet under command of Lupus the Conqueror, at the hands of the Trenboni.”

  The three of them stood in surprise, the dog leaping to her feet and wagging her tail.

  “In truth?” Jahunga demanded.

  Vedeen clapped her hands. “What joyous news for you.”

  Karl spat again. “It’s a lie,” he said. All heads turned to him.

  “Tech Ships can’t move as fast as Sea Wolves,” he said. “They don’t have the warriors; they don’t have the weapons—”

  “I assure you, and will take truth telling if need be,” Glynn said, “that two hundred Eldadorian keels faced less than forty Tech Ships and four hundred Volkhydran warships, and surrendered the Bay after losing thirty or more.”

  Jahunga picked up his spear and stabbed its butt end into the ground. “If we can do this—” he began.

  Karl shook his head. Glynn sighed. She knew this one would be difficult, and she’d wanted to keep most of the plan away from him. Without convincing, however, Karl would not act, and she needed Karl’s action.

  So she explained to them the battle on the Bay, the Trenboni King’s devices, the attempt on Thera and the plan now.

  She’d have liked to wait for Zarshar and Slurn and Raven, however they weren’t closely available and they could be told later.

  “And now,” Jahunga surmised for her, “you’d like to spread this false tale, based on a truth, to humiliate the Emperor—”

  “You want him mad enough to attack anyway,” Karl said, interrupting Jahunga, putting a hand on his naked shoulder, “because you know now his smartest course of action is to keep his seat, destroy this Confluni army and try again some other time, when you won’t be ready for him.”

  Glynn nodded, looking into Karl’s eyes. “Precisely, Sirrah,” she said. “See you a flaw in this plan?”

  Karl looked back at her face, searching her, giving her that prying look all of his kind used, unable to penetrate her eyes. Lightning rumbled in the distance, filling the quiet.

  “No,” he said, finally, and looked away. “It’s a good plan.

  “We’d better get ourselves out of here, though,” he added, and spat again, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “Because the first thing he’s going to do is grind this little army down to meat.”

  * * *

  Standing out in the Eldadorian plain, the cold spring rain washing over her, Raven let her head hang down, let her hair fall before her in ropy twists.

  Lightening pounded in the distance; she felt the shock run through her. Her essence descended into the living god, Earth, below her, and actually felt Him stirring.

  Four days ago, Zarshar and Slurn had taken her away from the mainstay of the Confluni army. For four days, he’d kept her from eating, barely let her sleep, kept her walking in her bare feet, telling her she needed to reach down, feel Earth with her power.

  She’d learned a lot here, about magic, about people, about herself. She’d been elevated, she’d been hunted, she been held and, finally, she’d been betrayed.

  After four days, the weather getting worse the whole time, she’d found the god. Through Earth below her she felt Slurn’s presence, to her left behind her, guarding her as ever he had, as ever he would until the day one of them died.

  Slurn, not Bill, must be The Guardian Protector, and then it was Bill, not Slurn, who was the one who Eludes Prying Eyes. Vedeen had told them they hadn’t asked the right questions about the poem, and she saw that now.

  The rain beating down staccato on her head helped to focus her. The merciless cold braced her, her very soul shrieked to her now.

  She could reach through Earth, and she
could find Bill’s feet on Him. She knew he’d gone to Thera. She could sense the convergence of power there.

  Power—here, Power was a god, too. She could sense Him, grinning, wicked, embodied in Zarshar, who’d brought her here, who watched over her as she did this, as she committed herself to this new life and this new way.

  She’d been held back because her mind informed her all of this was impossible. No such thing as magic, no such thing as spells. No such thing as God. Even when she wielded the power, she didn’t herself believe it.

  In church, what seemed another lifetime ago, she’d learned that the apostle Thomas hadn’t believed Jesus had risen until he actually felt the wounds in His wrists from the crucifixion. Thomas didn’t have faith, he needed proof. She’d been no different here.

  After four days, she’d reached down and poked the essence of the god Earth. Now she had her proof; now she saw the places it could take her. She knew where she could go.

  Raven’s will reached out like an octopus and grabbed at all of the sources of energy around her. The storm, the lifeblood of the trees and blades of grass, the disembodied dead, even the essence of the god.

  She took it, she bundled it up, she let it flow through her and she expelled it. She willed herself to move forward, not through space or even time but through reality, to place she’d been before.

  Back to the diner, back to the stool, back to the old woman in the sundress, smelling of Sunflowers perfume, cigarettes and coffee; she made it all real in her mind and, through her will; she spiked her presence into it.

  She actually felt the stool beneath her butt, the scrunchy in her hair. She smelled the smoke from the Marlboros Eveave smoked, smelled the coffee in the cup before her.

  “You are confident in your power,” the goddess said, “if you seek to invoke Me.”

  The friendliness had left her. She didn’t face the smiling grandmother now. She saw Eveave, the Taker and the Giver.

  “Why?” Melissa demanded. Not Raven—on the plains, in the wet, she was Raven. Here, in the diner, she could still be Melissa.

  “And what boon shall I hand to your enemies, to balance the benefit of answering that question for you?” Eveave asked her.

  The first time, Melissa had welcomed this woman into her life. The second, she’d recognized her power, but really hadn’t thought that much of it.

  Now she had an inkling of that strength, and she knew what it would cost to challenge it. If she were handed winning answers here, then her enemies would be given winning strategies later.

  If she wanted to come out ahead here, she’d have to get something more creative than help.

  The Emperor had spoken a lot about faith. Later, Glynn had wondered about that, too. If they knew of their gods, if they could speak to them, then they had no faith, they had proof instead.

  But here, no one spoke to the gods—that wasn’t allowed. These gods needed to import people from Earth, to speak to them.

  “Who did you send back?” Raven asked her. “You brought us here—that’s the take. What was the give?”

  Eveave took a drag on her cigarette, held the smoke, and then exhaled slowly.

  “I sent none,” she said, finally. “Your God would not have it.”

  “Then there is still imbalance,” Melissa said.

  She reached down to her cup and, knowing it wasn’t real, she still drank from the coffee, just to taste it. She hadn’t had it in so long she almost lost her concentration over how good it was.

  The scene wavered. Eveave smiled.

  “Much to learn,” she said.

  “But there is imbalance,” Melissa pressed on.

  “Not for you,” Eveave said. “But perhaps for your people. You are wrong if you believe I cannot tolerate imbalance. I simply see no reason for it.”

  “I think it’s Bill, not me, who’s imbalanced,” Melissa said. She thought back to her sales training, to the things Bill had taught her about closing. The buyer had to not only see a win; he had to see a bigger win than yours.

  You get that with the questions you ask. Vedeen had told them they weren’t asking the right questions.

  “I think that, if you’re going to help anyone, it has to be Bill.”

  Eveave considered.

  “Bill has changed sides,” Melissa pressed her. “If I ask you to help him, then no matter what, that’s balance.”

  “No,” Eveave told her. “However, to your understanding, I see you might consider it so.”

  Eveave took another drag on her cigarette, and blew the smoke out through her nose in a very unladylike maneuver young boys were famous for.

  “What boon would I give your Bill, in your opinion, that would maintain balance?”

  Immediately, “Send him back—send him home.”

  Eveave smiled. “Even if I could, then he would not have it. You do not know this child of Men, young one, but I can tell you Bill has become Jack, and Jack is precisely where Jack wants to be.”

  That hurt her more than she could have admitted. She’d given herself to Bill, she’d loved him. He wasn’t supposed to throw that back into her face; he was supposed to love her for it.

  Eveave looked into her eyes and seemed to see all of this. Melissa didn’t know how, but it made a lot of sense to her as Raven.

  There were scary words to be associated with how she felt about herself these days.

  “I think the boon is itself stated,” Eveave said. “Bill shall have it. Balance, if ever it was disturbed, is restored.”

  “What?” Melissa shook her head. She’d missed something. She’d let her mind wander. Her feelings for Bill had distracted her, and she’d lost part of the conversation.

  “In return for this service, you shall be rewarded, young one. Behold.”

  The waitress behind the counter handed her a menu. Melissa took it and opened it. Inside, she saw a map of Fovea, marked with places she recognized, such as Eldador, the Lone Wood, and Kor, which had its name crossed out and replaced with ‘Lupor.’

  She saw an ‘X’ just north of Lupor, on the coast, just within the Salt Wood. “You should be there,” Eveave informed her, “and as quickly as possible.”

  The scene began to waver. She called on her will to hold it.

  “That’s another tough row you’re hoeing, girly,” Eveave informed her, “before you try that, you’d better ask yourself a few questions. Y’ain’t been asking you the right questions yet.”

  In another moment the scene dissolved.

  Raven fell to her knees in the rain, the mud splashing up on her naked thighs and her abdomen, soaking her drenched leather skirt. She expected to feel Zarshar’s or Slurn’s claws on her, but instead felt human hands take her shoulders.

  She looked up, expecting to see Bill there. Instead she found herself staring into Karl’s concerned brown eyes.

  Before she could tell him what she’d learned, what she’d done, she slipped into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  Karl had constructed his own tent alongside of the pavilion where they all slept.

  It was simpler and more like him, small enough to stay warm but large enough to move around and get dressed in. Holding a limp and drenched Raven, he fed her into it through the dropdown flap and followed her onto the furs.

  Slurn had shadowed them all the way. Now he waited out in the rain. Zarshar had just bared his red teeth at them. He’d been standing there, watching her in the rain, when she’d fallen.

  Something was going on between those three, and he didn’t think he liked it.

  Her leathers were drenched. He had a cotton over-shirt he liked. He covered her in it, and peeled the wet leather from her body. He’d never seen a woman who’d kept her stomach so flat—Volkhydrans tended to what they called a ‘belt for the lean times.’ As well, as he peeled off her harness, he noted that Volkhydran women, at least the ones he’d bedded, didn’t shave away their pubic hair.

  Why would anyone do that? He thought it must be incredibly painful. H
e’d shaved his face with a dagger when he’d had to—he’d never thought in his darkest nightmares to apply the blade elsewhere.

  She stirred. The girl had incredible resolve. What would kill another woman made this one uneasy, and what would leave another Sorceress unconscious for days left her napping for an hour.

  He quickly pulled the cotton shirt over her head, and then covered her naked legs with his bedding furs.

  “Oh, ooo—ow,” she complained. She batted her huge brown eyes and held the heel of her hand to her forehead.

  He hung her leathers from a tent pole where they could drip dry. The rain pattered down on the tent canvas as he added his own furs to it. His past experience told him they would stink for getting so wet, but as he wore them, the heat from the sun and his body would dry them in a few days.

  Naked, he slid into the sleeping furs beside Raven, just as she was awaking.

  She looked him in the face and said a word he didn’t know.

  “What?” he asked her, in Uman.

  “Oh, um—hello,” she said. He could see her reaching under the furs, making sure she was proper. Her hand strayed to his naked thigh.

  “Karl!”

  “I soaked my furs pulling you out of the mud,” he said. “And if you’re wondering, yeah, I saw you naked.”

  She smiled and then pulled the furs to her chin.

  Since becoming the Hero of Tamara, he’d had women throwing themselves at him. This one’s refusal—her not caring who he was—he found refreshing. All felt new with Raven. She didn’t care what he’d done; she cared what he did, what he planned to do.

  He hadn’t had that before. He’d learned to like it.

  And, now, this ‘Jack’ had removed himself from the picture.

  He wanted to lift that cotton shirt back up to her shoulders, to hold her down, sink into her. He wanted her fingernails in his back, to feel her resist, as women did, then yield, relent to his need as a male.

  One had to be more careful with a sorceress. He’d heard stories—men turned into unnatural things.

  As well, this was Raven and, truth be told, he didn’t foresee any satisfaction in raping her.

  “What did I catch you doing?” he asked her.