There wouldn’t be slaves, but there were things other than slaves.
Our recruiting began as the armies withdrew. We added three hundred soldiers to our retinue and we had barely lost a dozen. We had made more wealth than we could have prayed for, and done less than we could have possibly expected to earn it.
That night, as we made ourselves ready to level our base camp and get back onboard our ships, the bedraggled remains of the Dorkan army visited us.
Their leader, Harem, had one hundred men left. They had bested the Sentalans on the plains, but barely. They needed food and shelter and wanted to know what we would do to them if they tried to reoccupy the city.
“I think it is the Eldadorians that you have to worry about,” Ancenon told him. “In fact, they are keeping a garrison in the ruins. We fight for coin, my friend, and our work here is done.”
“Mercenaries,” Harem spat. “I saw your horned goat at my gates. Is that what they pay you for? To ruin the lives of decent people and to leave?”
“Essentially,” Ancenon said, smirking. “You are certainly free to do so now.”
Nantar and Drekk approached him from our camp with a chest – he watched them suspiciously as they laid it in front of him. When they opened it, he saw a portion of Katarran’s treasury.
An admittedly small portion, but a portion nonetheless. I would have been surprised that Drekk wanted to be a willing participant in giving back what he had stolen, but in fact it had been his idea. Why not give a little back? We had a huge plunder and this made us look like a more legitimate business than we actually were.
Not to mention that, should there be spell casters looking for looters, well then of course we were among them, but had returned our plunder.
“And what is this?” he asked warily.
“We recovered part of the city’s treasury,” Ancenon said. “I am certain that it belongs to you – you are welcome to it.”
“You are giving this back to the Dorkan people?” he asked incredulously. I felt pretty sure that mercenaries didn’t usually do this.
“Of course,” said Ancenon, as if this were the simplest thing in the world. “Who else should have it?”
He had two men take the chest and then gave us a strange look by way of farewell. I felt for him – he couldn’t feed his men with those jewels. The merchant camp hadn’t gone anywhere, though, and he might be able to supply himself well enough to get to one of the northern villages. Either way, it didn’t concern me.
I went to my tent to sleep, exhausted from a hard day of recruiting. I had seen at least three hundred more men and women whom I wanted to recruit, but Ancenon had vetoed me. He wanted men “of character” and when I reminded him that the whole army consisted of thieves and cutthroats he didn’t seem to care. He had seen them hold their ranks, now he had been convinced that he had the making of an iron infantry.
“I should take them anyway,” I told Shela. “What would Ancenon do, fire me?”
She laughed. She had finally decided that she liked her part in the battle and seeing her people had invigorated her. Her appetite had been insatiable the entire time we stayed here. We lay naked in my bedroll and she played her fingers over my body in a way that I felt entirely OK with.
“So take them,” she said. “We have our own money and our own connections – we’ll have our own soldiers, as well.”
I looked at her. “Apart from the Free Legion?” It hadn’t even occurred to me, but it sounded like a good idea. I could see a lot of reasons why I wouldn’t want to be entirely dependent on the others.
She nodded. “We’ll move them ourselves. Ancenon doesn’t even have to know about them. Our portion of the sack alone would move three hundred to anywhere on Fovea that we wanted.”
I agreed more and more with her, and we planned exactly how we would do this thing together.
Three hundred of my own men to command, using my own resources. In the morning, I let the others know that I had my own business to attend to, and Shela and I left the plains on our horses with a saddlebag full of gold and gems. I acted more independently by my nature anyway and, though there were eyebrows raised, I heard no real questioning. With the fire bond, no one worried that I would betray the group. Even Genna didn’t complain.
Within three days we had five hundred men and women, ranging in age from fourteen to thirty, with arms scavenged from the city and food supplied by Sentalan merchants. We marched from Katarran to Waypoint over two weeks at a fast march, where I lost about fifty of them. Two who remained were Wizards who wanted nothing more to do with Dorkan ideology. Most were the usual Dorkan drone workers and marched until they were told to stop, or dropped. There were perhaps thirty deserters from other armies as well.
Finally Shela and I were back to lovemaking for its own sake. I didn’t hear her mention getting pregnant on the entire trip, which didn’t bother me. Not that my opinion mattered, but I wanted to wait a year before she started cranking out the bambinos.
They are kind of hard to put back if you change your mind.
Chapter Twenty-Four
As ye Sew
I called my warriors Wolf Soldiers. Shela had thought of it.
From Waypoint we took Ancenon’s ships to the village of Thera, south of Eldador the Port. I had been here before when recruiting and had had no luck – these people were simple fishermen and led simple lives. However, Thera had a huge, abandoned coliseum that I purchased from the local Earl, Klem, a week after arriving here. It had been left to grow over with weeds, seeming generally unused, and the Earl counted himself well rid of it.
This had once been an important port city but had been eclipsed entirely by Eldador the Port. There had been no investment in the local business, nothing had been done to attract more trade or to keep what they had. Eldador attracted more attention and had the prestige of being the nation’s capital and, when Glennen started handing out business licenses, the busy streets of Thera became empty.
That made it perfect for what I needed. I sent word to the Free Legion in Angador that I could be reached from here and a month later heard back that they agreed with the idea.
Next came the building of an estate, one befitting the northern-most outpost of the Free Legion’s recruiting center. With a large withdrawal from the treasury of Outpost X, I began building Casa de Mordetur. Mordetur had become generally accepted as my last name. In Spanish, that meant House of Murder, which kind of pleased me in an ironic sort of way, and I had grown used to no one understanding my sense of humor.
Shela wanted a huge spread with a tall wall and nothing inside of it, in her plains woman tradition. This would allow her plenty of room for her personal herd to roam free, and she could stake an elaborate tent in the middle of it and move it when it suited her. I wanted a monstrous, multi-storied mansion with too many rooms and servants’ quarters and stables and all sorts of cool, useless stuff that no one else had, to show what a rich guy I was.
These turned out to be bad ideas and neither one of us knew it. In anticipation of the building, however, I had sent for the best builders I knew, and that is what saved us from ourselves.
On the day that I signed the deed for the stadium, I returned to the bivouac that we maintained on the plains to find the Dwarf Kuruul, who had tried to teach me the skills of a stone cutter.
“You are a sorry sight, J’ktak,” Kuruul told me. I laughed and took the Dwarf’s forearm in my own. Smiling up through a bushy red beard, my former teacher added, “But I suppose if I build a home for you, you may stop making war on behalf of the Dwarven Nation.”
“I take my missions very seriously,” I said, trying to be solemn behind my smile.
I had sent a message to Hvarl from Katarran, via the merchants’ camp, that Katarran had been leveled for the Dorkans’ actions against Trenbon and the Great Dwarven Nation. I had also added that I would be building a home in Thera, and would be honored if he would send an advisor. As an honorary member of the Great Dwarven Nation, I wante
d a home that would remind me every day of the people who had taught me so much and honored me so greatly.
As expected, that sucking up worked and Hvarl had sent a team of Dwarves to bring the craftsmanship of the Simple People to the unwashed masses of Eldador.
Shela and I both made our cases to Kuruul as to what we thought the perfect home should be. Kuruul had been down this road many times, building homes for Dwarves who wanted those dwellings to be an expression of their inner selves, just as we did.
“And what do you want to do with this place?” Kuruul asked.
Right then we were living in the coliseum in Thera in a tent, our troops being marched out onto the plains every day from similar tents in the same coliseum. We were both going to be pretty happy if we just stopped having to do that, and said so.
“Well,” Kuruul continued, “I know that Men are social beasts. I assume you will be having other Men come to this home, to drink and eat and make loud noises like Men do.”
We agreed.
“And I would suppose that an Andaran will have horses, breed horses, feed horses, have a garden, make babies as much as possible.”
Shela blushed crimson.
The wise Dwarf nodded. She reminded me that these are the Simple People, and deserved the title. We spent a day talking about how best to make a place for entertaining and for living, a place that would grow with us, where we could bring in our men if we needed and keep our enemies out if we needed. We sketched in the sand and then on parchment and in a week’s time were consigning granite to be imported from the Steel Mountains, under Kuruul’s supervision.
Kuruul worked hand in hand with Shela during this time, and Shela quickly made a startling discovery.
“White Wolf,” she said to me, “is Kuruul a woman?”
I thought about it, then nodded. Male and female Dwarves both have beards and stocky builds. As they get older they get round bellies and it can get pretty hard to tell the two sexes apart. In my time there, I pretty much just thought of them as Dwarves.
“Yes,” I said, “I am reasonably sure she is.”
Shela just shook her head.
“What?” I asked.
I heard from others who were there rather than from Shela that the two of them went to the privy and that Kuruul had dropped her pants at the appropriate place and time without any warning to my unfortunate slave girl. That is a very dwarfish thing to do and had taken me by surprise the first few times, as well. An absence of anatomy and the way the “deed” had been performed drove Shela crazy until one of the Dorkan Wizards had explained to her that female Dwarves could have beards.
It is the little things in life that keep you hopping, I suppose.
While Kuruul, Shela and a team of “cutters” picked out and prepared land, I left on a mission for myself and for the Free Legion.
It is a ten-day ride from Thera to the Aschire forest. It took me five on Blizzard. The stallion hadn’t been able to stretch himself like this for weeks and thrived from the exercise. We broke speed records to get to the Aschire as fast as possible.
This time I knew better, and I waited at the edge of the forest on horseback. It took two hours for someone within to notice me, but they didn’t drop out of the trees with bows and arrows.
A wisp of a man, with that same thin build, that same purple hair and the same perpetually surprised expression of the Aschire that I knew, walked out of the woods with a bow in his hand. He stood in front of me for a moment, and waited for me to speak.
“I would not enter the Aschire uninvited,” I told him. “None pass the Aschire.”
His eyebrows raised in an even more surprised expression than his normal one. He squinted up at me and then looked at my horse.
“You are Free Legion?” he asked me.
“I am,” I said, nodding. I didn’t dismount and I didn’t approach him. I had noticed in my time with them that the Aschire didn’t do that in greeting.
“What brings you here?”
“I seek Evokain’s band.”
Now he didn’t even try to hide his curiosity. He walked gracefully, like a dancer moves, to my stirrup and looked up at me.
The light is dimmer in the thick Aschire forest. That affects their eyesight on the plains. As well, I think our faces are hard for them to read. Men have a severe look to them, compared to Uman.
“So it is true,” he said.
“Evokain would not lie,” I said, because I believed it. “I met Nina of the Aschire, daughter of Krell, and I ate with them. I vowed that no friend of mine would be their enemy, and she vowed the same.”
“And what do you want with Evokain?” he asked.
“I wanted to tell him that I am in Thera now and, should he wish it, he is welcome in my home.”
That gave him pause. He was Aschire. People lied to them, cheated them, hunted and killed them. In Eldador, Aschire jokes were as prevalent as Polish jokes. They were just as unjustified and I didn’t like them.
“You traveled all of this way to tell Evokain that?”
“Not just Evokain,” I said. “Any of the Aschire would feel welcome in my home.”
“And why is that?” Now he seemed more suspicious than curious, not that I blamed him.
“Evokain knows why.”
The Aschire nodded and, like an Aschire, he left. Like an Aschire, I left too, and rode back to Thera.
I didn’t try to follow him. None pass the Aschire.
The trip back to Thera was uneventful, the arrival no different. I had toyed with the imaginary traumas of half of my troops deserting, my wife leaving me, the Eldadorian state arresting her for harboring foreign troops and a million other things that didn’t happen. At this juncture in my life, I hadn’t grown big enough to care about.
Thera had changed, though – I noticed this right away as I rode through the streets to my new home. The money that I dumped into the economy, buying land and hiring artisans, massing food and weapons and putting silver in the pockets of my retainers, was trickling down. Suddenly shabby streets were clean and shabby bars were buying new tables and chairs, replacing mugs that had been chipped for years and adding less water to the ale. People were whitewashing their walls again.
Earl Klem of Thera sent me a missive asking me to explain my intentions in his great city and to subtly warn me of the folly of an uprising. Seeing as I already had more men than his city guard, and mine were better armed, I didn’t understand the gesture but made sure I sent him a long, boring letter about how happy I felt just to be a Theran commoner. I assumed it worked because I didn’t hear from him for two more weeks.
The building began around the same time. I had purchased a hill to the west of the center of town and cleared it with my Wolf Soldiers of all things great and small. It made good practice for them to work together as a team, and I already watched them for candidates for non-commissioned officers. There would be a need for sergeants and corporals and the like – we called them Petty Officers in the Navy but the concept held. In battle a chain of command through officers and sub-officers would let me control more men more easily.
I thought back to that one man among the soldiers, the one who had really saved the day when the battle went against us. The Free Legion had appointed him as our first officer, Lieutenant Jamack. They put him in tougher armor and bled a single strip of gold on his shoulder, our own tradition to mark him as an officer. I would have to do something like that here.
I had only been home for a week when a man on a roan mare road into the coliseum with two Aschire just barely behind him. A tall man with a firm body, he rode with a straight back and a look of supreme confidence. From behind him the head of a dressed-out deer, freshly killed, lolled against his mount’s flank. He reined in and looked around him with almost regal disapproval, his eyes finally settling on me. Without speaking he shook out his long, black hair.
I had been sparring with some of my Wolf Soldiers. I looked up and saw him standing there, the wild horse stamping in the open c
oliseum. I smiled. It had been a long time.
“Took your time getting here,” I said.
“These friends of yours slowed me down,” he responded, indicating Krell and Evokain. “I cannot imagine a man who would refuse to ride a horse.”
Krell regarded Two Spears with dark, grey eyes. “I cannot imagine a man whose legs are not strong enough to bear him,” Krell said. “Get down from your shaggy perch and I will show you Aschire birding, hawk-face.”
I chuckled with Two Spears as he dismounted in one motion. Evokain approached me and nodded. “I did not think we would meet again,” he said, not taking my forearm.
I didn’t take his. “I hope it is sooner next time. I wish to be a great friend of the Aschire.”
“I appreciate the gesture, but I do not see why,” Krell told me. “There is nothing outside of the Aschire for us, and there is nothing in the Aschire for Eldadorians.”
Years of hatred had sewn the seeds of prejudice in the Aschire, and the roots ran deep. I invited them to eat and drink, Shela ran to her brother and hugged him while we spoke of the relationship between Eldador and the Aschire.
The Aschire are not just the people, neither is it just the forest. The Aschire, it seems, is a wellspring of life between the Andarans and the Eldadorians and the Mountains and Tren Bay. The Aschire is a beast of many parts working together for one goal.
And it all shrank a little every year.
“The Aschire will have to evolve or become extinct,” I told Krell and Evokain, and Shela and Two Spears too, as we sat together over the deer that Two Spears had killed to honor us. His sister wore its blood above her eyebrows as a token of his affection.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 39