Semper Indomitus: Book Five of the Fovean Chronicles

by Robert Brady

  “What news?” she asked me, simply.

  “Nantar and his wife are coming,” I said. “He’ll help us to rally a resistance to these northerners.”

  Shela groaned. She pushed away from me and looked into my eyes.

  “There isn’t another room ready?”

  “Not fit for one of your Free Legion,” she said. “We need to order another bedroom, a living space, another table –“

  “Stop,” I told her. “Take me inside to our rooms.”

  She nodded. She took my hand in hers and led me up the stairs. Once we were in the door, I saw two Eldadorian Regulars standing guard in their full armor, pikes in their hands. Past them I saw a long hall and, to my right, a stairway leading up into the tower. Shela took me up the stairs, which wound along the outside of the wall. We passed levels and had to cross one room which would normally have big, open windows, but which had been boarded up for the winter.

  Braziers burned in most of the rooms. They’d be smaller as we rose up in the tower, or else the heat at the top would make it unlivable. Shafts cut in the ceiling both provided light and a place for the emissions from the braziers to go.

  The whole thing was well constructed. The Cheyak were a clever people, if nothing else.

  We stopped at a door with two more guards at it. They stood aside and one opened the door for Shela to enter.

  I stopped next to him and told him that I wanted Evleck Rhor. He nodded as I passed.

  When the door closed behind me, I took Shela by the upper arm and into the fore-room. It was a sitting room with a table and two divans, multiple chairs and shelves for books. The smell of newly stained wood filled my nose.

  “Shela,” I said to her, “check those guards for me.”

  “Check them?” she asked.

  I looked into her eyes. “Eldadorian Regulars know to salute,” I said.

  Her eyes widened. She focused her eyes on some point far away, and then back at me.

  “They’re Volkhydrans,” she said. “They’re waiting for something – not something like being relieved, but for something to happen.”

  I thought as much. This had simply been too easy.

  “Contact Lee, Nina and Chesswaya,” I told her.

  She nodded and she held up her hand, lowering her head. I saw her lips move – she was tired.

  We were all tired, and now we were going to relax, thinking we were safe. We’d be almost entirely unarmored.

  She looked back up toward me. “Thirty of them, throughout the tower,” she said. “At least as many in the palace. Lee thought to check Evleck Rhor, and he’s waiting for something, too.”

  This was getting worse and worse.

  “How many levels are we on?” I asked.

  “You and I on the third floor,” she said. “Vulpe on the fourth, Lupennen with him in a separate room – but neither of them are there. On the fifth Eric and Nina, on the sixth Dagi and Chesswaya. Lee has a room to herself on the seventh floor – there’s another empty suite there. Nantar’s daughters are on the eighth floor with an empty room above them.”

  I’d personally sent our escort to the barracks, outside of the palace walls.

  “You said that both of those guards are still at our door?” I asked.

  She nodded. That meant that whatever was going to happen, would happen fast. Otherwise the guard would have obeyed my order. He didn’t fear my coming to ask where Rhor was.

  “Lee wants to summon us all to her,” Shela said.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know she could do it, either, but she’s had a lot of practice with it since her trip through Conflu. She can bring us all together in her rooms.”

  “Do it,” I said. Together, we had a significant advantage.

  It wasn’t another moment before my view wavered, and suddenly I was in a wide, empty room with stone walls and a wooden floor. There was a closed window to one side and Lee stood before it, her head down, her fox companion lying across one of her feet.

  Dagi and Chesswaya appeared to my left, Nanette and Thorna to my right. Nina and Eric were next, the former with her purple hair wet, the latter holding his chain shirt over one arm, his sword in his hand.

  There was a pause, and then Lupennen and Vulpe popped into the room – both looking entirely disoriented and surprised.

  “What – what – why?” Vulpe sputtered.

  “The Eldadorian Regulars in this tower are Volkhydran spies,” Eric informed them.

  “Most of them,” Chesswaya said. “A handful are not.”

  “They’re about to do something,” I told them all. “They know we’re exhausted – they’re giving us time to relax, most likely.”

  “They don’t fear the Empress’ magic?” Dagi insisted. “Who would attack the woman who blew the gates off of Outpost IX?”

  “The Empress,” Shela said, “can barely stand. I think her husbands’ daughters are little better.”

  “Bringing you all here was a lot harder than I thought it would be,” Lee admitted.

  “This daughter still can fight,” Chesswaya added, her eyes uncharacteristically bright.

  “And this one,” Nina added, then looked sideways at me.

  She knew as well as anyone that when I’d said, “My kids,” for the past thirteen years, I meant her, too.

  “And you have sons,” Vulpe added, pulling his bone-handled sword.

  “And more daughters,” Dagi said, pulling her sword as well. “But Chesswaya claims we’re against almost three times our number.”

  Nanette, holding her spear in both hands, said, “Fair odds.”

  In fact, we could probably fight our way to the stables and, from there, get out of the city and find a place to collect our strength.

  Probably not without losses, though.

  Lupennen turned to Vulpe. “Can you sing?” he asked.

  That took me by surprise.

  “What?” Vulpe asked.

  “Can you sing?” Lupennen repeated. “Can you sing us a song?”

  “For courage?” Thorna asked.

  But Lee shook her head. “No,” she said. “As a distraction.”

  I had to admit – I didn’t get it.

  Vulpe grinned wide. He certainly did. Nina and Eric ran to either side of the room’s one door – which opened up into the stair well.

  There would be at least two guards on the other side of it.

  “Sing,” Eric ordered him.

  Vulpe sheathed his sword over his shoulder and put one hand in the other in front of him.

  “On morning cold,

  “With breeze in branch,

  “And fog upon the air!

  “On horse of white,

  “In battle tight,

  “The blood in his blond hair!”

  Like it always did, Vulpe’s song wafted out like a living thing, like a stream of consciousness directly to the mind, giving you a picture show in song, the images of whatever he sang of – in this case, the Second Invasion of Thera.

  People who heard it for the first time would, for lack of a better word, swoon. Even when I’d heard him sing a dozen times, I could find myself drifting off into the song, into this world he created, when I could see an idealized Lupus the Conqueror, slaying his enemies on his white horse.

  Eric shook his head, then ripped the door open.

  The two guards stared dreamily into the air, even as he decapitated the first one and drove his black sword into the chest of the other. Both fell without a sound or a change in the blissful expressions on their faces.

  Nina looked him in the eyes, and the two nodded to each other. Together they bounded down the stairs.

  Without a word, Dagi and Lupennen behind me, we charged up.

  We found the same thing on every landing – warriors looking blissfully into the void, three and four at a door. We cut them down, me with my sword, Dagi with hers and even Lupennen with his dagger. At the top of the stairs one of the soldiers seemed about to blink himself out of his r
everie when Lupennen’s dagger caught him in the throat.

  He grasped at the buried hilt as he fell to his knees. My son pulled the weapon from his neck and wiped the blade on the fallen warrior’s shirt.

  In all, we killed twelve. We turned and started back down the stairs, meeting Eric and Nina back in front of Lee’s room.

  “Got them all,” Eric said.

  “Except the loyal soldiers,” Nina said. “We have five at the base of the stairs – they’ll hold their position if more come for us.”

  “More will,” I said. I stuck my head into Lee’s room, where Vulpe had just finished his song.

  “We move!” I informed them.

  “Where?” Dagi demanded. She held her sword dripping blood at a downward angle to her body, her shield loose on her left arm.

  “The stables?” I asked Shela.

  “The wharves,” Lupennen said. I turned to him.

  “It’s three daheeri at least,” I told him.

  “We don’t all go,” Lupennen said. “You and the Empress – there are Sea Wolves in the harbor.”

  I nodded. Sea Wolves – and each with as many as one hundred ready warriors available, depending on how many were on liberty.

  “I can take us to the stables,” Shela said. “But what of the children.”

  “The children,” Nanette said, “will be fine.”

  “We can hold the stairs, if their plans aren’t ruined already,” Vulpe said.

  “If they are,” I said, “then they’ll be more desperate, and then the children of the Emperor would make good hostages.”

  “Hostages need to be alive,” Lee said.

  My kids were growing up fast.

  Shela had apparently made her decision, because the next thing I knew, I was in the stables.

  A Volkhydran in brown and white livery nearly leapt out of his skin, three feet from us. He looked around him for support and, finding none, reached for a dagger in his belt and opened his mouth to call an alarm.

  I drew faster than even I realized, and he fell in two pieces to either side of me before he could voice his warning.

  I was not pleased that this many of the natives were against me. I don’t know what Rhor’s problem with me was but, when I saw him again, I planned to make it a lot worse.

  Blizzard was alone where I’d put him up, Shela’s gelding next to him, and his daughter Thunder Cloud to his other side. I tossed saddle and blanket onto Blizzard and slipped a bit with a simple bridle between his teeth. I pulled him into the stable’s aisle way and he was already trembling, sensing my excitement.

  “Your Imperial Majesty!” someone shouted. We turned to see five more stable hands in the brown and white livery used by Eldadorians.

  “Can we assist you, my Lord!” one called out, grinning. Again, no bow, no salute.

  Because Volkhydrans didn’t do that. This had been put together hastily.

  “They mean to hold you here,” Shela hissed to me, as if she had to.

  I could mount and ride through them, but one with a dagger could cripple Blizzard, and then they’d sound the alarm.

  Besides, I was getting pretty pissed off.

  I yanked my sword from its sheath over my shoulder and charged them. There wasn’t even a look of surprise as four engaged me and one turned to run, to let the rest know what was happening.

  Shela raised a hand white with power and that one fell, never to rise again.

  Three of them had short, two-edged fighting swords, bent at the middle. The bend made the wounds more deadly if you managed to connect, and were also good for catching a longer weapon and turning it, or pulling it from the enemy’s hand. One had no weapon and pulled a pitch fork from where it leaned against a stall. He hung back from the rest.

  They engaged three-at-a-time, the ones on the outside attacking high, the middle man, cutting low, forcing me to defend in two places at once. I caught the two higher in one swing of the Sword of War, then stepped back and away from the one sweeping low. As the two on the ends withdrew and recovered, I stepped in and slashed down at the one in the middle.

  He didn’t have time to recover and I took him in the left shoulder. He screamed as his arm fell useless and blood exploded into the face of the man next to him.

  That one stepped back and I engaged the man to my left, catching his blade in a thrust for my middle, then my leg, before I pushed him back and drove for his chest. He tried to turn the blade but I had a longer weapon and more than fifty pounds advantage on him – my sword taking him in the chest.

  The tines of the pitchfork I’d near forgotten about took me in the left arm. I felt a pain and then a numbness as he tried to raise the weapon and then draw me toward him, where his final friend had recovered and was ready to drive for my middle.

  I cut the shaft of the pitchfork, then slashed down at the man with the sword. He caught my weapon on his and pushed me back. I could smell my own blood soaking my home-spun shirt. The pitchfork head was dragging on my arm and upsetting my balance. The one with the sword pressed me on the left, and the other three the shaft of the pitchfork aside and bent down to pick up his fallen comrade’s sword.

  I met the first one’s sword as he struck for my face, then for my left arm. The other stepped in, thinking me occupied, and I caught him on an upswing, taking him across the face from the chin to the eye. He fell to his knees, screaming.

  The final man pricked my left arm, gashing my bicep, as I swung down with the full weight of the Sword of War. He caught it on his own weapon, but this time I didn’t respond to parry. I kept pressing down with my right arm, adding what I could to my left, using my height and weight advantage to force him to one knee, to use both hands on his weapon to keep me from driving it into his body.

  Without warning I swiped to the left, dragging my blade across his, and across his left hand. He screamed as half of that hand flew off. He stopped when I drove the point of my sword into his heart.

  Shela approached and waved a hand over the head of the man whose face I’d cut. He fell forward and lay still.

  I pulled the pitchfork head out of my arm, and Shela and I made bandages of my left shirt sleeve. My left arm was still numb.

  “No way someone didn’t hear that,” I said.

  She nodded. We took Blizzard, now snorting and pawing, having smelled blood, out into the sunlight, and then mounted him, me first and then Shela behind me. My left arm exploded in pain from the strain of pulling her up.

  “Go, stallion!” I said, and kicked Blizzard’s barrel with my heels. He needed no other encouragement. We were out of the stables and into the street, past gape-mouthed Eldadorian Regulars and Volkhydrans who may or may not consider themselves loyalists, for the wharves. Commons and workers scattered before us on the main fairway.

  The wharves, which loomed up quickly, seemed still almost one thousand miles away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Out with the New, in with the Old

  The Bitch of Eldador wasn’t in port, but four Sea Wolves were, and two of them were about to set sail, meaning all hands were aboard. By the time I reached the wharf and contacted the Harbor Master, my arm was throbbing.

  I dismounted outside of his office on the main thoroughfare, being attended by one of the barely gifted who had some aptitude in healing. Injuries like this were common on the wharves, and this was a good place for someone who could do simple healing to make a good living.

  “The damage is bad, your Imperial Majesty,” the Volkhydran woman informed me. “I see tearing, and dirt on your veins. I’m going to clean it with sea water and stop the bleeding, but you need to see a priest of Adriam.”

  I nodded. Her efforts really hurt. I should have let Shela take care of it, however she was near exhaustion. The healer, a dark-haired girl with a silver streak that ran from her forehead all the way down to her back, applied her will and I could feel the skin knit.

  She dressed in multi-colored layers, making herself a shawl and dress that the sea breeze tugged at
. It was a common look for the barely gifted, to distinguish themselves, and reminded me of gypsies.

  Four captains from four Sea Wolves approached me at the same time from the dock. Shela, still sitting behind Blizzard’s saddle on his back, her hands now on the saddle’s low-point to support her tired body, regarded them.

  “They’re clean,” she said, simply.

  Two of the Captains were Uman, one a Volkhydran and the other an Eldadorian of the race of Men. The Volkhydran had been with me for years – I knew him as Jehreck, and I’d given him the Mark of the Conqueror myself after the Sack of Outpost IX.

  He spoke for the rest, making a fist over his heart in salute to me. “Lupus,” he said. “Who did this, and when do we kill them?”

  I had to smile despite the pain. There was only one person whom the Pack held more dearly than me, and I planned to invoke that, too.

  “It’s worse than you think,” I informed them. “Evleck Rhor has betrayed the Empire, and he’s trying to capture Princess Lee, with the rest of my children.”

  One of the Uman captains actually growled.

  Jehreck turned to the other Captains. “Assemble your men – leave 10 per ship. We march, fully armed.”

  The captains nodded and the group disbursed.

  “Lee informs me that no one has come to the tower yet,” Shela said, the weariness obvious in her voice. “They’ve hidden the bodies of the traitors, and added three more Regulars to their numbers.”

  “Good,” I said. Every warrior supporting them was an argument against opposing them.

  “Lupennen has gone out on his own to scout the palace,” Shela added. “Eric advised him against it, but couldn’t stop him.”

  I shook my head. Nothing I could do for that from here. Lupennen was trained by an expert – hopefully he’d learned enough to stay alive.

  Just as hopefully, the traitors didn’t have orders to kill my family members when they found them alone.

  I had a really reliable general, Daharef, here, who shouldn’t have let this happen.