Xinto nodded and took a drink from his beer. “Just so, then.”
Xinto’s days were spent in some pursuit that he didn’t like to discuss. He haunted the libraries of wealthy Uman-Chi. Mine were spent in training with Saa Saraan. Xinto met with me in the morning and in the evening and talked about this thing or that, regarding people and Fovea, trying to get me to tell him where I came from.
This went on for a month before I realized that my gold would run out faster than my knowledge could increase.
Xinto had told me a great deal about the pantheon of gods on Fovea. First had come Adriam, the All-Father. Then Eveave, the Taker and the Giver. All other gods were descended from these two, and they wrangled constantly.
I couldn’t ask him directly why War would bring me here. I couldn’t trust him enough, neither did I want to face War’s wrath if that was not His will.
“What do people do for a living around here, then?” I asked Xinto.
“They work,” he told me. “You should try it some time.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “I work.”
He smirked and took a bite from the meal I had paid for, some spicy meat like mutton. When you ate out on Fovea, you ate what they prepared for you, you didn’t get to order. They didn’t provide a “menu” per se, you asked for the cheap, the good and the expensive meal and you ate accordingly.
Xinto always ordered the expensive meal.
“You call hanging out at a gym all day working?” he asked me.
“Ok,” I said, seeing where he was going with this, “how do people earn money?”
“By a trade,” he told me. “What did you do before you came to Outpost IX, then, to afford your fancy armor and your shiny sword?”
“They were gifts,” I told him. “Before I came here, I worked as a guard for a Volkhydran exporter. I don’t imagine that there is much of that around here.”
“Guard work?” Xinto asked me. “Someone always needs to hire a sword. That won’t maintain you in your lifestyle, though.”
“I can live a lesser lifestyle, if you can start feeding yourself,” I said. “I’m trying to learn more about Fovea and the gods and the world around me, though, and it would be nice if I could make a living doing that.”
Xinto shook his head. “I don’t see how. You could call yourself a scholar but you are in the wrong place to be one. Uman-Chi don’t respect anyone else’s knowledge – and you wouldn’t either if you were a few centuries older than they were. Maybe you could get a job with a scholar, but they don’t lead a particularly dangerous life.
“Maybe you are in the wrong place to earn your keep, Mordetur. Have you considered that?”
In fact, that made a lot of sense.
Saa Saraan took one of the last gold coins I had and informed me that he didn’t want to train me anymore.
“Don’t think you have learned all you can learn,” he told me. “But you have learned all that you can from me. You should try your luck in Andoran or Eldador if you want to test your mettle as a warrior.”
“I was going to ask you about that,” I said. “I thought you might know someone who needs a sword?”
He regarded me with silver-on-silver eyes. “There are no Men in the Trenboni home guard,” he said. “There are mercenaries who hire – you could try your luck with them.”
“Whom do these mercenaries fight for?” I asked.
Saa Saraan shrugged. “Whoever would hire them. The Fovean High Council has no law regarding mercenaries, so it isn’t uncommon for one nation to hire a few hundred warriors to go raid another. It is frowned on and it can make you look bad at the High Council, but it is done.”
I had told him about Jerarl’s band of Uman. They didn’t seem to be the type of person whom I wanted to become.
“I think that it’s time I left Outpost IX, then,” I told him. “Maybe Andoran would be a good place to try my fortune.”
“You are a man for hire, sirrah?” someone asked me.
I was on my way to my nightly meeting with Xinto, to tell him good-bye. I had been wrong about Outpost IX being the next step in finding War’s purpose for me.
I turned to see an Uman-Chi flanked by seven Uman guards. He stood about a foot shorter than me, perhaps seventy pounds lighter, wearing tight-fitting armor comprised of thin steel plates linked with light chain mail. Although his men wore the Trenboni royal tabard – an eagle with a lightning bolt in its claws - this Uman-Chi wore only a silver circlet on his head to show his station.
I wore my armor. I put my hand on my sword and the guards reacted in kind.
“I see that you are willing to fight, in any regard,” he said.
I inclined my head. I knew that you were supposed to bow to the Uman-Chi nobility but I didn’t want to. He had come to me, after all.
“I believe I know you,” I said.
“I would expect that you do,” he agreed.
“You were at the Council,” I said, remembering him from the Uman-Chi delegation. “You heard me speak for the Dwarves.”
He nodded. “Quite perceptive.”
“I said everything that I had to say in there.”
“You are a man for hire?” he repeated.
“And you are a…” I said.
He smiled and extended his hand. I took his wrist in mine, feeling the steel rod he kept there. “I am Ancenon Aurelias, adopted son of King Angron Aurelias, Prince of the Realm,” he announced. I could have said that he told me, but he did more than that. I should have been able to hear trumpets blowing a fanfare.
“I see you have made a new friend, Mordetur,” Xinto said. He had apparently found me when I hadn’t shown up to feed him.
“Xinto, of the Woods,” Ancenon said. “A Scitai delegate and a friend of a Karel of Stone’s.”
Xinto smirked. “Not necessarily a friend,” he said. “And not necessarily a delegate.”
“So you say,” Ancenon countered. “Can the Trenboni nation buy a meal for you gentlemen? We have… business.”
I looked at the Scitai, and he looked up at me and shrugged.
“He is who he says he is,” Xinto said. “I doubt he will leave you alone until he speaks his peace, anyway.”
Dinner was served at a huge ballroom-style restaurant. The floor had been laid in veined marble, the walls gilded; huge, thick pillars supported a vaulted ceiling. We were first escorted to a separate dressing room where we were each provided with proper eating attire and could put up our arms and armor. This made me mildly uncomfortable, but Xinto assured me of the security.
An elevated dais stood reserved for the royal family. To get to it we crossed a lavish dance floor made of some polished hardwood and ringed with tables containing diners and meals. Although you could smell the kitchen, you couldn’t see it. A gold-linked chain separated the dais from the main room, and had to be uncoupled for us to cross. The tables and chairs were made of what looked like rosewood. Ancenon spoke briefly with another couple sitting nearby and then sat down at a square table with us. The guards took up a position in a corner.
“Do you know anything about me?” Ancenon began.
I shook my head.
“Then you are not a politician?” he said, smiling indulgently.
“No,” I said, as a steward brought wine for us to drink. “But I don’t think that is your interest in me.”
Xinto snickered. The waiter had to bring a child’s seat for him, and had made quite a point of acknowledging the need to do so. Clearly the prince had no interest in him.
“Ancenon Aurelias is a High Priest of Adriam and he performs adorations at High Mass. He has wealth and power and used to sit on the Fovean High Council.”
“Fair enough,” Ancenon said, as the steward poured for him. A liveried Uman carried a meat platter to us now.
Ancenon spoke with us for a while about the Battle of Two Mountains. He remained sufficiently laid back about the details that I knew he must be very interested in them. He also worked more information out of me
than I would have thought wise to give. His tactic appeared to be to ask about some general, irrelevant point, then tie it into a more important aspect.
“Do you find that Dorkans are as unintelligent as they are rumored,” he asked.
“I think it is part of how they are raised,” I said.
“Elaborate,” he pressed. He folded his thin fingers in his lap and leaned forward, his pencil-thin eyebrows arching over his silver-on-silver eyes.
“I think they might be brought up dependent on their Wizards,” I said, and shared my theory on the Dorkan un-education program.
“So, you think that Dorkan Wizards, then, are of normal or above-average intelligence?”
“I would think so.”
“Yet the Dwarves humbled their army, lead by their Wizards …”
“Oh, I think anyone can fall for a trap, if it is clever enough.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So they were ambushed somehow?”
“They were pinned between two mountains,” I countered – seeing the snare close. “Have you fought them before?”
“I am not a military man,” Ancenon countered.
Xinto laughed. Ancenon grinned and took the opportunity to take a drink of wine.
“Their tactics are wanting,” I told him.
“I am told that they protect their Wizards with the mainstay of their armies, then use the armies to clean up after the damage by the Wizards is done.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And you find that tactic wanting?”
“They did.”
That lead to me giving him details of the battle, and admitted to my part in it. I likely would have told him more if Xinto hadn’t punctuated my remarks with appropriate sighs.
The whole meal went this way. He tried to press me on my country of origin, but I only gave him “North of Dorkan.” He really didn’t like that, but I knew better even to engage him on the subject. Ancenon was clearly more intelligent than I, and once I became sure of that, I shut down on him.
We were having a brandy with our dessert, some kind of cake-thing that tasted too sweet, by the time he got down to some sort of serious business. Again, the lack of coffee haunted me – I asked about it and Ancenon confessed that he had never heard of such a concoction. Xinto had become edgy and had already checked on our belongings twice. I could tell that he didn’t feel as confident of the place as he had let on.
“I have use for a bounty hunter,” Ancenon said, of a sudden.
“You do?” Xinto asked. “Do you want us to recommend one? I know a few.”
Ancenon kept his eyes on me. I kept mine on his. It was disturbing to look at someone with no cornea. Uman-Chi had no whites to their eyes, just pure silver. Although I had noticed this on the ship coming in, I really hadn’t appreciated it until now. You couldn’t tell if they were really looking at you.
“Are you available?” he asked me.
“For what?”
“We need to talk, Mordetur,” Xinto said. I made a push down motion under the table, where he could see it, still holding Ancenon’s gaze. It occurred to me that he might have been staring right at my arm and I wouldn’t have known.
“A journey,” Ancenon said.
“To where?”
“An old, ruined fortress.”
“Which one?”
“I am not at liberty to say, I am afraid.”
“And yet, you expect me to go?”
We were silent for a moment. I assumed that most would say, “Yes” to Ancenon just for the opportunity of getting into his good graces. I didn’t know that I needed the good graces of the High Priest of another god. I sure didn’t need to be his dupe.
I had learned more about bounty hunters. On Earth, they were men with a legal right to hunt down fugitives for money, and who didn’t need a warrant to make arrests or enter private property. Here they were somewhat the same, without the legal needs tied in. I didn’t think that I came across so mean.
Ancenon frowned, considering. “Do you know of the race of Cheyak?” he asked, finally.
“I do.”
“Oh, no,” Xinto said.
Ancenon regarded Xinto. “I mean no disrespect,” he said, “but your services really won’t be needed, and what I am discussing is of a … proprietary nature.”
“Ooo,” Xinto said, his eyes wide in mock-amazement. “Another Uman-Chi is going to violate Confluni territory to go after Outpost X. Big state secret, your Highness.”
Obviously, Xinto also saw no benefit in being in Ancenon’s good graces.
“Outpost X was not destroyed,” Ancenon insisted, glaring at Xinto with silver eyes.
“And the Confluni National Guard, which can find every squirrel crossing from Andoran or Volkhydro into Conflu, have been unable to unearth and sack it because …?”
“There is a reason,” Ancenon said.
“You are certain of this?”
“I am.”
“And, of course, an Uman-Chi would know the place, if he could only see it.”
Ancenon just sat back and smiled.
Xinto looked up at me. “Have you ever been to Conflu?” he asked.
Again, I felt tempted to lie. Again, I remembered that I didn’t know enough about the situation to tell a good one. I now knew that an Uman-Chi and a Dorkan had been able to derive whether I told the truth in the Council. I didn’t know how yet, and this was a bad time to find out.
“No,” I said. “Never.”
“Do you know what the Confluni do to those they catch trespassing?” he asked.
“Murder them,” I said.
“Fair enough,” Ancenon said.
“I have fought Confluni before,” I said.
“Oh?” Xinto said, raising an eyebrow. “And?”
“And I lived,” I said. “It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Raiders,” Ancenon said. “You came here through Volkhydro then.”
“Precisely,” I said.
Ancenon looked at Xinto. “No worse than CNG,” he said.
Xinto nodded grudgingly. “Probably were CNG,” he said. He looked back at me, his eyes narrowed. “How many?”
“Five of us, eight of them,” I said. “They jumped us in the night, when we didn’t have our weapons. Killed our guard, killed one of the others before we could engage them. Killed one more of us in the fight. One got away.”
“Not bad odds,” Xinto said. “I am surprised Saa Saraan was so unimpressed with you.”
Ancenon scoffed and finished his brandy. “I have been a swordsman for two hundred years,” he said. “And Saa Saraan is unimpressed with me. In fact, he claims that his granddaughter has forgotten more that I shall ever learn.”
I smiled. “With me, it was his great-granddaughter,” I said.
Xinto snickered. “The man has a dangerous family.”
Two days later I left the city to exercise Blizzard. Outside of Trenbon’s land-bound gate, extending for about five miles into the Silent Island, they kept a flat marshalling area. Here the grass grew short and brown, if at all, and the soil had been beaten hard by thousands of feet over hundreds of years. Blizzard left the gate running, the open space calling to him like a trumpet. He needed frequent exercise that he couldn’t get inside of the city proper. From just outside the gates, away from the parade of people entering and exiting the city, Xinto sat on a pony while I raced my white stallion back and forth outside the city walls.
After an hour the stallion still pounded the plain. Xinto whistled and behind him I saw five Uman-Chi in silver armor, riding matching bay horses. All of the mounts had their manes starched and tails braided, barded in shining mail and their coats gleaming with health. I turned Blizzard, cut to my left, and pounded across the plain to meet them.
The mounts stood stock-still, the men upon them no different. The Uman-Chi watched me approach, the sun glinting from their armor, nothing in their ambiguous eyes. I reined in before them, noticing as I drew closer that they wore winged helmets and thin, satiny capes i
n purple, gold and green. They left their green and violet hair unbound around their shoulders, and each had a different gold armband.
Xinto turned his pony and stood behind me. I looked for Ancenon and did not find him.
“Uman-Chi nobles,” Xinto hissed. “I know one of them, Aniquen, the one in the gold and purple crest. He is the son of a Baron from the plains outside of Outpost VII.”
“The Scitai speaks true,” that one said. His voice was a tenor, his words similar to song. “I would treat with thee, Mordetur.”
“You would?” I said, arching an eyebrow. I had left my helmet clipped to my saddle. I shook the sweat from my hair and waited for him to speak. We all stood silent for about a minute.
“Well, you hold yourself, Man,” he said, finally. “Are you for employ?”
“Not presently,” I told him. I had business with Ancenon that I hadn’t decided on yet. I was new to the area and still had enough silver coins to keep me comfortable for a little while. I had decided that I needed a better understanding of the lay of the land before I did whatever it was that a bounty hunter did, or least found out why they kept mistaking me for one.
“You haven’t even heard the offer,” one of the Uman-Chi said.
“How rude,” said another. I didn’t like the confident, almost arrogant tone.
“True,” I said. “I didn’t.”
Again, we were all quiet. Xinto sighed, probably because he knew how this would play out and didn’t want to wait for the posturing.
“I have never seen a mount like that,” said the first.
“Also not available,” I said. No need to guess where this would end up. Saa Saraan had disarmed me in a fast few seconds, alone. Five of them were likely more than I could handle.
“He is poorly mannered,” the second said.
“Perhaps we should teach him some,” the first said. Aniquen might have been trying to hold me with his eyes, but he had no pupils or cornea. I wondered whether I should draw the sword or don the helmet first. I didn’t know how strong the steel in their swords was, so I couldn’t gage how well the Dwarven armor would protect me.
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Xinto said, his eyebrows lowered and his beard bristling.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 17