by Robert Brady
He saw the look cross her face. He shouldn’t have done that. She wanted him to press her. War’s whiskers, he was already naked.
“Oh, oh—no,” she stammered. “I—I have to talk to Glynn—”
She almost leaped up out the furs. Karl put a hand on her breast, feeling it move beneath his fingers, pressing her back down to the furs beneath them.
Oddly, she subsided. She pressed her breast into his hand. He’d never had that before.
“Just tell me,” he informed her.
She looked away, then back at him. “Zarshar took me out into the plains, and he told me—um, it’s, well, he told me I needed to accept one god, at least one god from this planet.”
That was stupid. “What do you mean, accept a god? How can you not accept the gods?”
She shook her head. “In my world, um, where I’m from, we only have one god, and not everyone believes in Him.”
Even worse. “You don’t believe in your god? What do you believe in, then? Who makes the sun rise? Who keeps the harvest and makes the game plentiful.”
“None of that comes from any god,” she said, looking into his eyes. “Well, not where I’m from—we don’t, I don’t know Karl. But Zarshar told me I needed to find one god, and so I reached through my feet, and I looked for Earth, and I found Him.”
“Earth?” Karl found himself blinking. “You mean it—you actually reached down and you found Earth?”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “I mean, aren’t I supposed to find Earth?”
Inherent in his religion he had the primary rule of the gods—no contact. No one could violate that, but she spoke of other worlds. Other realities.
“What are you, girl?” he asked her.
Her brown eyes searched his. He pulled his hand away from her but she took it in her own, held the fingers in her tiny hands.
“I’m a champion,” she said finally. “I think that’s what Slurn and Zarshar have been trying to show me. I’m special somehow. Here, now, I’m part of a prophecy. I can touch your gods, and they can talk to me, and they do. I think Lupus does this, too, and that’s why he’s so successful here, and that’s why I have to face him.”
Karl looked skeptical. “You’re going to match the Conqueror,” he challenged her. “A tiny girl.”
She smiled at him. “Yep, me—a tiny girl. And I’m going to need help, Karl. Not like Jack—I’m going to need help I can rely on. I need a man who can stand beside me for this, Karl. A fearless warrior.
“People say you’re the bravest Man who ever put a foot down on Fovean soil,” she said, and she moved her right hand from his hand to the side of his face. “Will you stand beside me, Karl?”
Karl chuckled. “Glynn really has her fingers in your mind,” he said.
Raven chuckled back. “I don’t think Glynn has an idea of half of what’s going on,” she said.
Before he even realized it, her hand was in his hair. Before he could react, her tongue was in his mouth. He hadn’t encountered a woman who wanted this before. While his hands ran rough and hungry over her smooth, naked body, her hands were on him, too, and her knee rubbed the inside of his thigh.
“Yes,” he sighed into her ear, her hair framing his face as their bodies moved together, “yes, Raven, I will stand beside you.”
Afterward, he knew he’d never cried out so loudly, and he wondered what the faces of his travel companions would look like when he saw them, after the rain stopped.
* * *
“Oh, like hell!”
The Sword of War cleaved through the table before them and into the stone floor beneath.
Thorn reminded himself that this had once been Black Lupus’ war room, before he’d turned the whole thing over to Tali Digatishi, Duke Two Spears.
Tali held himself in check, a good Andaran to whom material things meant nothing.
It took him a moment, but he pulled the blade out of the stone floor. Of course there wasn’t a blemish on it.
“Are you done with that?” Tali asked him, “or do you need us to bring in more furniture for you to destroy.”
Black Lupus glowered at him.
“He’s right,” Thorn chimed in. “The damage is done—these rumors are everywhere, and you can’t destroy enough furniture to make it go away.”
It occurred to Thorn that almost every person in this room now—Tali, Shela, himself, Vulpe, Two Spears’ wife Wanigey Digitolay—were Andarans. Andarans were running this Eldadorian Empire. Andarans were the strength of it.
Lupus had his ‘Oligarchs,’ but they’d betrayed him before.
The Uman, “Thebinaar”, said, “Tongues are wagging all over the Empire about your first defeat, at the hands of the Uman-Chi.”
Black Lupus seethed.
Thorn had never seen anyone take defeat so seriously before. Everyone was beaten eventually. He himself had to admit now he couldn’t match Lupus with swords, pole axes or daggers. He’d never matched him wrestling—even Nantar couldn’t beat him. Those thick, thick bones of his—you could hammer on him all day and he’d just laugh and come back at you.
But Nantar was still the greatest warrior alive.
“I think we need to change our plans a little,” Lupus told them. Thorn recognized the wicked look in his eyes.
“You want to go fight them in Volkhydro,” Thebinaar said to him, “where our operatives in Outpost IX says they’re gathering.”
“And where the King of Trenbon is so conveniently sailing,” Two Spears said. “Yonega Waya, you must know this is a trap.”
“You think?” Lupus demanded of him. “You think that’s what they’re doing? Because I wasn’t sure.”
“Yonega Waya, please,” Shela put a hand on his arm, but he shook it off.
Then Wani, Two Spears’ wife, stepped in. She took the sides of his face in her soft hands, and made him look into her eyes, even though he didn’t want to.
“We love you, Waya,” she said, her voice like a song. “And we know you’ll destroy your enemies, and we know you’ll stain Tren Bay red with their blood.”
Strange words from one so soft, but that was the way of their women. An Andaran woman’s blood ran hot, but her love ran so cool.
Finally, Black Lupus looked into her eyes. “Waya,” she said. “You promised the warriors will stay home this year; that you will take Way Point late in the season and hold your surprises until next year when your enemies are weak, after they spend their gold for nothing, and their nobles scream about high taxes to pay for it all.
“That is a brilliant plan, Waya,” she said. “Will you be undone by this decrepit Uman-Chi King farting on his throne? You’ve beaten them every time—will you let them trick you now?”
Thorn had told Tali he should grow fat with a wife so sweet, and he thought about that now. Wani, if she wanted to, could sing the birds out of the trees.
Shela stepped in next to him, pressed her body to his, and whispered into his ear, “Yonega Waya, my love, next year you’ll take them all when they’re weak, and you won’t just take Volkhydro, you’ll take every nation on Fovea, and lose half the warriors.”
Black Lupus looked into Shela’s eyes, and then Wani’s. Thorn considered that it had been a long time since his own wife had flirted with him so shamelessly.
But it would have worked on him.
“They’re gathering in Hydro?” he demanded of Thebinaar.
The Uman nodded. He hadn’t been fooled. “It’s the logical choice. Take that city and you own half of Fovea’s commerce.”
“We strike at Volkha,” he said. “I want those hundred and fifty ships from the battle with Trenbon ready to go in a week.”
“We’ll only be able to move—” Duke Tali began.
“Thirty thousand,” Lupus said. “I know. And then we’ll only be able to leave twenty five thousand. That’s all I need. Send Eldadorian Regulars for now. Then bring the ships back and send more.”
Thorn sighed. He’d go, too. Not enough he’d saved Lupus’ whole
nation. Not enough he fostered Nantar’s brats with his own people. Not enough he maintained the moral of the troops, when no one else could.
Once, on the deck of a ship, he’d fought Lupus, and lost, been thrown down and at Lupus’ mercy.
Lupus had treated him like an equal ever since. Thorn could do a lot for another Man with integrity like that.
Chapter Fifteen
The Road to Conquest
Tartan Stowe left the Battle of the Vice, as it was being called, with 2,500 mounted warriors, give or take a few dozen. Because the Emperor had taught them to use alcohol and witch hazel and ‘conventional healers,’ the only Knights who died after the battle suffered of their wounds in the two week march south to Angador, his duchy in the south, the bastion against Toor and producer of some of the finest horses on Fovea.
For two weeks he wondered what had become of the expert tracker, Jean who, as the battle roared, melted into the chaos and did not return. He’d hoped to make that woman part of his personal army.
For two weeks, he listened to his wife Yeral complain they had suffered more than any other, that they had turned the battle, and been less rewarded, not so much as thanked, for their efforts.
Now the noble walls of Angador, pennons snapping from her eight towers, took all of that away.
“Your glorious city, my Lord,” J’lek informed him, as if he needed to be reminded.
“Once we’re inside, we must contact Central Communications in Galnesh Eldador, and we should
demand—” Yeral began.
Tartan nodded and just tuned her out. He’d done that a lot these past weeks. She’d become more irascible since the Confluni had been sighted on Eldadorian soil. When he’d returned from the battle, bloody and victorious and feeling like a true son of the Emperor, her callous complaining had all but ruined it for him.
This wasn’t characteristic of Yeral, and left him at a loss to deal with her.
“I want a week of liberty for these warriors,” Tartan informed J’lek, interrupting his wife, then added, “in-city,” when the Uman raised an eyebrow. “Send scouts out on three days ride. If anyone is seen coming—”
He interrupted himself when two squads of mounted warriors thundered out of his city’s open gates. They flew his personal pennons, meaning they were either under his command or en route to him, the latter being more likely.
Tartan’s eyes swept his towers. Sure enough, over the gate, a new pennon not his own.
“Ceberro,” he said aloud.
“Your Grace?” J’lek asked him.
Tartan pointed. Behind him he heard thunder rumble. Late spring storms—bad ones. Interspersed with that, his warriors were passing the news about the liberty.
“Over the gate,” he said, “where I’ll see it, first thing, the fist on the anvil—Ceberro’s personal pennon.
“Ceberro has returned to Angador.”
* * *
“Your Highness,” the Uman serving girl interrupted her.
Lee looked up from her writing desk in her new, personal rooms outside of the nursery, in the royal tower. She’d chosen the ones vacated by Alekennen, Glennen Stowe’s daughter.
As a grown man now, Vulpe wouldn’t sleep in the nursery. As his sister, she’d chosen him a room one floor lower than hers, once belonging to Tartan Stowe.
One floor lower, presumably to allow him to protect her from attack. She’d be damned if she’d stay in the nursery when her younger brother had left it. She doubted very much her mother would even raise an eyebrow.
Lee had only stayed there so long because she’d grown used to her brother’s tagging along. She wouldn’t have that any more.
“Yes, Kenne,” she said. In Nina’s absence, Kenne served her. She was a slight girl, forty years old, a woman in Uman terms but with no children. Her husband served in the Eldadorian Regulars.
“Central Communications, your Highness,” she said.
Lee sighed. How did her mother stand it? They’d developed a method where thoughts and images could travel between the cities, without the need of teleportation or messengers, however it all ran from here. Shela or another wizard had to assert her or his will to make it happen.
“Not Groff again?” she asked, standing, pushing the letter she’d been writing to her mother to one side. Groff had contacted her daily to keep abreast of the war effort, not that she knew anything. Meanwhile, his younger son, Grak, always stood in the background. Eighteen years her senior, Grak possessed Groff’s severe features, his humorless attitude, and his hair already showed a widow’s peak.
He’d taken her hand at banquet, and it was cold as ice.
“I am not so enlightened, your Highness,” she said. She wouldn’t be, Lee knew to make sure of that. Her father had taught her that her secrets were the greatest weapon their enemies could have, and this, after all, was war.
She followed Kenne out the door and down the stone-walled halls, a squad of Wolf Soldiers taking up her guard behind her. She knew their sergeant, D’leer, an Uman warrior in her father’s service for years. No one less could be trusted to guard her person.
Up three gray stone flights, past her parents’ chambers and one of her mother’s remote studies, she found Central Communications, a circular room the width of the tower, a pulsing mass of blue and white and violet in the center of a sparse room. No chairs, several chalk boards, and a semi-circular table—her father’s design with her mother’s influence.
“Your Highness,” Hectar greeted her. He’d come with J’her and his son, Hectaro. She nodded, entering through the one door and closing it on Kenne and the two guards.
“Your Grace,” she greeted him back. She held her hand out for J’her, who always loved to kiss the back of it. As stern as a thunderstorm, she knew he loved her, and she was the only one who saw this side of him.
She curtsied for him, and treated the coward, Hectaro, to a dark look. She had nothing for him. Hectar hauled him around now just to try to squeeze him back into her favor.
“Ascenda, flagoona,” she incanted to the Central Communications mass. The mass glowing purple and white rose up from where it hovered a foot from the floor and expanded, now with an image at its center of Tartan Stowe, his wife, her friend, Yeral, and Duke Ceberro of Vrek.
To their right, an Uman wizard who’d served her mother here before being transferred to Angador. He held the conduit open and had contacted Galnesh Eldador. Behind them, she caught the former Wolf Solider, J’lek, J’her’s son. He’d joined the Wolf Soldiers after getting in trouble in Steel City, trying to win back his father’s farm by killing the people on it. J’her himself had intervened on his behalf.
“Your Graces!” she greeted them. “It seems the orb is broken—I see Vrek and Angador at the same time!”
Tartan smiled, then Ceberro. Her father had never trusted the latter, and in her opinion trusted the former too much. Tartan, name him what they wanted, was a Stowe, and how could the Stowe’s be happy as Dukes and Earls, not Kings and Princes? At least Yeral, once her mother’s lady in waiting, had gone there to watch him.
“Your magic is infallible,” Ceberro answered her, “we are, in fact, in Angador together.”
“The southern cities are uniting?” Hectar asked, pretending at being shocked. “Has Toor attacked?”
Toor would never attack, she knew, but her father worried about the loyalty of his cities when he left them. She’d overheard him telling Hectar what to do if any or even all of them revolted while he was away.
She watched their eyes through the orb.
“The south is secure, as always, your Grace” Ceberro informed him. “We contact you to inform you that, to the best of our knowledge, this Confluni army is bound for Lupor.”
She turned to Hectar. He was frowning, his arms crossed before him. “Not good news, your Highness,” he said. “Lupor is recently conquered and may not be able to defend itself from their thousands.”
“Our thinking exactly,” Ceberro said. “And the Daff Ka
naar have suffered heavy losses against them. Over one thousand dead in one strike by this Raven, and outrunning this army on the open plain.”
“We believe even two thousand horse—” Tartan began.
“I spoke to my father of your bravery,” Lee interupted him. He’d barely mentioned it, but Lee knew Tartan, having grown up with him, and knew his fragile ego. “He believes that, were it not for you, Eldador would have been cut in two.”
“Really?” Tartan stumbled, then collected himself. “In truth, your Highness? I hadn’t thought—”
She wanted to watch Tartan, but a sideways look from Yeral caught her eye. She seemed almost upset to hear this praise.
Yeral, too, was the child of someone deposed by her father. But—Yeral was her friend.
She decided to push it. “Your Grace, you are too humble!” she exclaimed, almost gushing. Hectar and J’her exchanged a look.
“My father refused to stop talking about your bravery and your genius,” she gushed. “Your Angadorian Knights, invincible against so many times their number? He slipped many times and boasted about the enemy caught between his two sons.”
Tartan straightened. Ceberro rolled his eyes.
Yeral fumed, then looked into the orb and collected herself, smiling sublimely at her husband.
More bad news.
“Your plans, your Highness?” Ceberro asked her. “Time may well be of the essence.”
Lee turned her back to the orb and looked into Hectar’s eyes, then J’her’s. The effort of keeping the conduit open had started weighing on her.
“Cut them off?” Hectar asked J’her. As her father had said, rank was one thing, and ability everything. When it came to the defense of Eldador, J’her’s voice stood second to the Emperor’s.
J’her considered. “If they achieve the Salt Wood, they’ll scatter and we’ll get some of them, but never all of them. They could run what the Emperor calls guh—riyah operations on our villages and we’d be hard pressed to stop them.”
“No chance the Daff Kanaar will overtake them?” Hectaro asked them.
Lee felt herself making a face.
“No chance of the Angadorians getting between them and Kor in time, either,” J’her said. “We need to send out the Wolf Soldiers from Lupor, and then reinforce Lupor from Andurin.”