Indomitus Sum (The Fovean Chronicles Book 4)

by Robert Brady

  She sat silent, her hands on the basin, turning when he needed and waiting for him to be done, collecting her strength. The dog attended them, running back between the basin and the bed, sniffing both of them in the nature of her kind.

  Once he’d cleaned her, he fetched her leathers, and he dressed her. Finally he gave her the ruby she’d made for herself when she’d come into her power. Karl had tied a piece of leather around it so she could wear it as a pendent. She tied it around her neck so it sat in the hollow at the base of her throat. She didn’t speak the entire time, and he said nothing to her.

  It was not in the nature of Water to communicate.

  Finally Raven turned to him, looked him in his eyes, took his snout in her delicate hands and held him. Inside, he melted—to be touched by Water’s living instrument exceeded any thrill he’d ever known.

  “She spoke to me again,” she said, in the language of Men. “She told me the time was coming—that I had a decision to make. I’ve been wondering about that. What am I doing that no one else can do? We’re about to find out now, I think. I’ve got a decision to make, and I’m getting scared that I know what that decision is.”

  A tear ran down her cheek. Her brown eyes shimmered for the ones she hadn’t shed. Slurn’s inner eyelid flickered sympathetically, as his eyes stared reverently into hers.

  She took him in her arms, embraced him, her breasts pressed against his scales. In the history of Fovea, perhaps they were the first of their two species to do this.

  From outside the room’s one window, high up in the West wall, the sun suddenly streamed in. It didn’t bathe them directly in its light; however it might as well have for how Slurn felt right then.

  “I asked for help,” she whimpered, “and I was told there’s a price. She showed me what I’d have been without her, and when she saved me, I didn’t know there’d be a price.”

  Slurn had no idea what that meant, however he quoted to her:

  “They will fall, who walk with her

  They will fall, who oppose her

  They will fall, for the power

  Of the goddess, who chose her.”

  She pulled away and looked back into his saurian eyes.

  More tears, and then she nodded. The hardest thing any of them learned sometimes, Slurn realized right then, was that some things just have to be.

  * * *

  When Vulpe invaded Volkha, the armies under the Fovean High Council prepared to march to the West to relieve the city and to engage the enemy. No longer needed, the Trenboni fleet, or what was left of it, set sail south for the Silent Isle, to protect the Trenboni nation in case of retaliation from the Emperor.

  Admiral Geledar Taboorin in his flagship looked not to the south, but to the east, where he could occasionally see masts over the horizon. Someone’s large fleet was moving north, past them, back to Volkha.

  There weren’t too many large fleets on Tren Bay.

  A military man and a strong advisor to the King, he’d ordered the Caster, Duke Haldan Evoprosee, to inform the King and request permission to return and to defend the city.

  “Denied?”

  The Admiral was incredulous.

  “These are your orders,” Evoprosee informed him. The effete Duke sipped wine from a crystal glass with a pinky finger extended, his white robes almost glowing in the gloom of the Captain’s cabin, which he’d claimed for himself.

  “Surely, I understand the importance—,” Taboorin insisted, but was rudely interrupted.

  Evoprosee wasn’t even bothering with the proper forms.

  “I must assert,” the Duke said, “that you, in fact, understand nothing, and that we, the King’s vassals, cannot pretend to his wisdom in this. You have your orders, Admiral, and need hear no more.”

  Taboorin straightened and, seeing no point in continuing the conversation, extended his forearms in a bare semblance of the appropriate withdrawal, and did so, leaving the gloom of the cabin for the sunlight of the weather decks.

  Ten daheeri to the east, a mast peeked up as if to taunt him, and then descended back beneath the horizon.

  He remembered a time when Uman-Chi fleets engaged other ships just out of their own curiosity, and answered to no one for it.

  If Evoprosee represented the best of his own kind, then perhaps the time had come for those days of supremacy to sink beneath the waves.

  Admiral Taboorin, in the back of his mind, began to compose the elegant speech which would announce his retirement.

  * * *

  Glynn Escaroth had always been familiar with the idea of a nightmare, however it wasn’t until the march to Volkha from Hydro that she’d experienced one, and then not right away.

  They’d spent a week in the Volkhydran city by the Llorando, Karl Henekhson slowly but surely usurping command of their international army, Geeguh Digatish at his side. It hadn’t bothered her to see the armies called in to camp on the plains around the city—she’d seen armies before.

  It hadn’t bothered her to see them in war games, Karl dividing them into two sides, and those two sides into groups of ten. It hadn’t bothered her to see warriors fight, to see them resist Karl, to see him bully and beat them into submission.

  She’d seen all of that before.

  When they’d left, her sitting her palfrey with Vedeen on her huge roan to her left, Raven on her Eldadorian war horse and a man’s saddle on her right, and their dog trotting beside them, she’d allowed herself to congregate with her fellows of the song, rather than with her people. She’d prefer the company and the wisdom of Angron Aurelias, but she would settle for the admiration of these lesser species.

  That hadn’t bothered her, either. She’d grown used to their boorish ways.

  Three days march toward Volkha, and she’d heard a sound she hadn’t been exposed to in almost a decade, however, and that had frozen the noble blood in her veins. Out of nowhere, tenuous at first and then with the confidence of fate, she’d heard the tread that had preceded the Wolf Soldier army, the stomp of thousands of feet, all hitting the ground at the same time.

  A mathematical impossibility, embodied in the warriors who’d sworn their oath to the Emperor, filled the plains around her. When Karl heard it, his face split in a wolfish grin. Geeguh Digatish, the Andaran warlord whose name meant ‘Bloody Spear,’ had pounded him on the back. Their warriors marched a little straighter, their shields held a little higher, at the sound—not just Volkhydrans but Confluni and Sentalans as well—a combined army of nearly fifty thousand, and a supply train that stretched back to the horizon.

  The following evening, when they practiced, they were moving back and forth across the plain like pieces on a game board. That night the pickets shone brilliant with pride.

  In a fitful sleep, Glynn had seen her father beheaded again and again by the Emperor’s sword. That night, she saw her brother spitted on an Eldadorian lance, the sadistic leer of the Emperor’s Andaran brother chasing her through the bloody streets of Outpost IX.

  Since then, awake or asleep, she saw those images in her mind, punctuated by the drumbeat of their army’s tread.

  Meditation, though achievable, gave her no solace. Food held no taste. The iron resolve of a Caster saw her through the calamity, however her heart yearned for the two males who had guided her whole life, replaced by the traitor Ancenon, now of her house.

  “You are pensive, baroness,” Vedeen commented to her, a smile as ever on her lips. A light breeze tugged at her beautiful blonde hair, picking up strands like pennons behind her.

  Baroness now, not Duchess. She didn’t want the accolades of the Southern Towers and House Escaroth.

  “My sleep is disturbed,” Glynn said, dismissing her. She’d come to suspect the Druid. The Battle of the Vice had come back to haunt her. Jahunga’s questionable death reinforced that doubt. How had the Druid so easily warned Raven, and yet proved so useless in the fight? How had she found Jahunga so close to his being slain, and then escaped the Daff Kanaar so easily? Dilvesh,
called The Green One, had proven one of the Emperor’s strongest allies—this one must have some of that power to have replaced him.

  “The coming battle, perhaps?” the Druid pressed her. To her right, Raven pouted in her own thoughts. The goddess Eveave had visited her again—an opportunity wasted on her inferior mind—and she puzzled fruitlessly over what she remembered of the words.

  Now Raven traveled with a hand on her stomach, the tail of her raider’s jacket spread out on her horse’s behind, exposing her over-full breasts barely held in their harness. Flaunting her sexuality and a pouting lower lip—typical of Men.

  “You will be casting for us, no doubt?” Glynn asked her of a sudden. Normally Uman-Chi protocol forbade being so forthright, however even D’gattis had argued that, with Men, a sudden thrust was sometimes called for where a parry seemed more elegant.

  Raven and Vedeen both blinked and straightened. They couldn’t see where her eyes pointed, so of course both thought themselves asked. This should play out interestingly.

  Raven opened her mouth to speak, however she shut it when Vedeen answered, “I am here to observe. I never promised to act.”

  “The song—the prophecy,” Glynn began.

  “Surely you’ve realized I am not the One Who Fights as Does the Sun,” Vedeen said, through her smile.

  Glynn had grown so accustomed to these lesser races she’d spoken like one, too soon and out of place. She’d forgotten they did that from their own limitations.

  “You can hear the song—” Glynn began.

  “As can your King,” Vedeen informed her. “I think he is not the ‘one,’ either.”

  Glynn had to allow herself a little smile. No, Angron Aurelias did not fight as does the sun.

  Glynn sighed. “I fear to lose more before we’ve found that one,” she said, finally, then turned her head, leaving no doubt as to whom she meant to address.

  Around her, the drumbeat of feet on hard-packed Earth.

  Vedeen’s smile only grew, but Raven answered. “We found ‘the One who Fights as Does the Sun’ a long time ago,” she said.

  Glynn raised an eyebrow and gave her protégé her full attention. Perhaps this was some insight she’d been granted from the goddess?

  Raven kept looking straight forward as she rode. “Eveave told me I had to be ready, that I had a decision to make, in Her way. I told Her we weren’t ready, that we couldn’t keep the weapons together. I wanted to tell her we didn’t know what to do. She got real mad, and she told me to stop asking questions we already had the answers for.”

  “So, perhaps Vedeen—” Glynn began, but Raven cut her off.

  “No, Glynn,” Raven said, finally turning on her warhorse to face her. “It isn’t Vedeen. Vedeen can leave us any time she likes. Vedeen doesn’t even help us. All of the ones mentioned in the song felt like they had to come to find me, even you, and they all have to help whether they want to or not.

  “Even Zarshar,” Raven continued, and turned her face back forward. “You think Buh—um, Jack bound him with that agreement, then attacked us, and Zarshar couldn’t twist that around if he wanted? He didn’t even try. Vedeen let them attack us before the Battle of the Vice and didn’t warn anybody.”

  The Druid’s smile died on her lips, regarding the two of them. Glynn’s attention flew between the other females, her mind racing to get to the place where Raven’s seemed already to have gone.

  “Vedeen,” she said at last.

  “I am here to observe,” she answered, the smile returning to her lips, if not her eyes. “I cannot interfere.”

  “Take that attitude to the Emperor,” Raven told her. “Go ahead. Go observe him, and tell him you were with us, and see if he just smiles and lets you keep your skin attached.”

  Vedeen actually showed her surprise with that. “The Druids have ever been the allies of the Emperor—”

  “No,” Raven said. Her sullen face more determined than Glynn had seen in her before. She had changed since her great casting—this seemed certain. Glynn had done the same once. She’d embraced Eveave and began great castings before singing her song.

  Chaheff had told her long ago—the casting changes the Caster, as the Caster changes the world around him. She might be closer to understanding that now.

  “Lupus doesn’t touch your Druids because he needs ‘The Green One,’ and because Dilvesh is a member of the Daff Kanaar,” Raven continued, oblivious to Glynn’s musings. “That’s not friendship—that’s not even respect. As soon as he wants something more than he wants The Green One, he’ll do whatever he has to with you.”

  Vedeen looked down and was silent. Raven had given her much to think about.

  “And so—the ‘One Who Fights as Does the Sun?” Glynn pressed her. If she’d received insight from Eveave, then surely Glynn needed to evaluate it.

  Raven put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. The dog’s head perked up at her side. She snapped her fingers, and she pointed at Karl, ahead of her, carrying a lance now. He’d been practicing with Geeguh and the Andarans at charging.

  The dog bound off toward Karl. The Volkhydran Warlord turned at the sound of the whistle, then smiled as he saw the dog approaching. When the beast didn’t slow, the smile vanished and he kicked his horse into motion, to get out of her way.

  The dog changed direction. Now the horse began to stamp and shift sideways. Others stepped away from Karl, opening a space around him like the reverse of a shadow, cast before the dog.

  At the last second she leapt, her giant paws outstretched. Karl went for his sword but he was too late—the dog crashed into him and forced him from the saddle, the warhorse screaming and bucking in a circle dangerously close to the fallen Man.

  The dog leapt from Karl and then focused on herding the spooked horse. Two Confluni footmen, smiling to each other, ran to the Volkhydran’s side to help him to his feet, from the ground where the weight of his heavier new armor pinned him to the ground.

  They could all hear Karl’s swearing. One Volkhydran pulled his sword and approached the dog, who turned on him with vicious teeth bared, taking up of all things a defensive posture over Karl.

  Glynn turned to Raven. “Surely not,” she said.

  “I fear it was very obvious to me,” Vedeen said. She turned to Raven. “When did you discover it?”

  “As soon as I thought about it,” Raven said. “How does the sun fight? It passively shines and takes down everything in its way, then leaves it alone. The sun doesn’t celebrate its win, it just continues on, doing the same thing.”

  Vedeen smiled and nodded. Glynn’s heart constricted.

  When she informed her King that one of the beings mentioned in her song turned out to be a common dog, he would reconsider how seriously he should regard the warning.

  Her mind sought to refuse this, but Caster’s logic prevented her. Even as Karl sent a nasty look toward Raven and called his own warriors away from the dog, Glynn realized she would have to embrace this beast, and explain its importance to Angron, hoping the wise King would see as she did, that they were all the same in the eyes of the gods.

  * * *

  A month after he and eight thousand, five hundred Daff Kanaar warriors had departed Eldador for the north, Earl Arath of Metz looked out from the one standing tower in the remains of the palace at a city once called Katarran—now referred to as Luparran.

  Black Lupus’ vanity was exceeded only by his avarice, he reminded himself, even as he regretted the city hadn’t been renamed ‘Karath,’” as he’d wanted.

  Hundreds of Uman and dozens of Dwarves labored below him on the reconstruction of the tumbled-down walls, the smashed and burned buildings and the ruined wharves.

  A Dwarf with a golden emblem, a sun symbol with a hammer at its center, hanging from a gold chain around his neck and over a beard tucked in his belt, stood next to him. The Dwarf had introduced himself as Kvitch, Ambassador for the Simple People.

  Invited here by his Dwarven kinsman, J’ktak, whom Arath k
new as Black Lupus.

  “How much longer until we’re done here?” Arath asked him. Below, he saw Nantar working with some new and veteran troops. Recruiting was always easy in Sental—they’d been sending emissaries across the border, bringing the sons of farmers back.

  “Years,” Kvitch answered him. “Surely J’ktak told you this.”

  No, Black Lupus had sent him a scroll, asking him if he was willing to invade the Dorkan nation and retake this city. He had just assumed there’d be an army here. Of course, there hadn’t been.

  All of the glory to Lupus, all of the work to those around him, Arath grumbled to himself without speaking.

  “I didn’t even know Dwarves could be hired for work like this,” Arath said.

  A troop of five hundred Dorkan infantry had been marching down the road from the north for hours. Nantar planned to meet them with these veterans and new recruits outside the city walls. No point in letting them in and telling others how far they’d gotten.

  “We can’t,” Kvitch informed him. “However, J’ktak is one of us, and we do this for him out of love.”

  “Little big for a Dwarf, isn’t he?” Arath grumbled.

  Nantar marched out to meet the Dorkans. The Wizards were apparently very upset that someone was working on the city they’d left to seed. Nantar was probably informing them this city, Luparran, was a protectorate of the Eldadorian Empire.

  Yeah, Arath thought, they should really like hearing that.

  Kvitch smiled through his thick beard, his stubby fingered hands playing with the chain on his breast. “I have to believe you know of the Battle of the Two Mountains and how J’ktak came out of the north,” he said.

  Of course Arath knew that. Everyone knew that. Of all of his secrets, that was one Lupus was freest with.

  Anything to tell the world what a great general he was!

  The Wizards shook their fists at Nantar. Knowing his friend, Arath didn’t expect that to go well, either.