Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  “Historically?” Angron leaned back, grinning shrewdly.

  Lupus grinned. “As of now.”

  “Done,” Angron said.

  Glynn saw herself transferred like so much merchandise. At least she hadn’t missed that Angron had entirely disposed himself of the two Men.

  She would be surprised if they lived until the War months.

  Chapter Nine:

  Interview With a Wolf

  A suite of rooms had been set-aside for the Emperor and his party. The Wolf Soldiers quit the city and built their jess doonar on the plains, tearing up soil and cutting up trees, making themselves a ‘little city,’ supposedly to keep the troops sharp.

  The stakes around their perimeter were sharp enough, that much seemed certain. Their commander, a Major in the Wolf Soldier guard, challenged the Duke General of the Trenboni High Guard to war games, at an insulting disadvantage of ten to one.

  Angron saw the insult of the challenge exacerbated by its refusal for fear of losing. Fifteen Uman soldiers deserted upon the announcement, terrified the Wolf Soldiers would take offense and overrun the city.

  “We paid a high price,” Aniquen informed him.

  Angron nodded. “We did, in fact, risk worse.”

  They sat with D’gattis, Chaheff and Avek in the King’s meeting room as they had before, around a single table. An Uman servant poured them a deep, red wine. D’gattis was already tasting his, not waiting for his king to drink first. Avek clearly chaffed to be with the Emperor.

  “He has warmed to his kinsmen,” Chaheff noted.

  “And to our Glynn,” D’gattis noted, dryly.

  “I will rely upon you to advise her brother,” Angron informed him. “Ancenon should take responsibility for her safety, as a comrade of the Emperor.”

  “I think she will be safe,” Chaheff assured them. “She is a competent enchantress; she has a good intellect, and the advantage of her birth.”

  “And I think she will pursue her prophecy the moment she believes she can do so safely,” Aniquen said.

  Chaheff smiled to himself, D’gattis as well. Angron shook his head.

  “She will wait,” he said.

  “I agree,” Avek said.

  “Imagine my surprise,” D’gattis added, drolly.

  Avek shot him a sideway glance.

  Angron knew he had to rally them. He quelled his own rage at the Emperor’s insult. There were plans in play, and plans within those plans. Things that must be known, disguising what must never be known. The Emperor had made a fatal flaw, and Angron had found a fortuitous way to exploit it here.

  “She is a Caster, an Uman-Chi, and an ideologue,” Angron informed them. “She will let the Conqueror hunt down the others she seeks, and then she will try to unite them and fight the fight she feels is her destiny.”

  They exchanged glances around the table, then turned to Angron.

  “I trust D’gattis will watch this happen without comment,” Angron said. “I know his nature. D’gattis will remain aloof and aware, watch matters unfold and measure his loyalties.”

  “He is my ally,” D’gattis said, “but I have no love for Lupus the Conqueror. In fact, I advised Ancenon Escaroth more than once that he should have been done away with, before our alliance made that impossible.

  “He is, simply, the most creative military mind of our time, combined with an uncanny command of commerce that baffles us, even when we see it. That he took a backwater like Eldador and made it the economic and cultural center of Fovea demonstrates this is not a Man to be taken lightly.

  “I believe, and Avek with me, that by empowering him now, we shall let him reunite Fovea under his banner and, when he is gone, then we shall step back into our rightful place through his successors, and in fact be more powerful than ever we were before.”

  Aniquen slammed his hand down on the table before him. “We are Uman-Chi,” he demanded. “We have the wisdom of centuries—”

  “And not a moment of it will dull the point of a sword,” D’gattis commented in his usual, dry tone.

  This one is almost too intelligent to bear, Angron thought to himself. He is to other Uman-Chi what we are to Men, and yet Men now can command Uman-Chi.

  “He is right,” Chaheff said. “We shall cooperate and work with the Empire while it lasts, and we will be pushed, but only to a degree.”

  His steely gaze swept the group. “Only to a degree.”

  * * *

  Melissa gripped Bill’s upper arm as they walked to the Emperor’s suite of rooms. She still wore her blue dress; he still wore his blue robe. They had been summoned; grim-faced Uman guards in the service of the King brought them to Lupus’ chambers.

  “What do you think he wants?” Melissa asked.

  Bill shrugged. The guards made no secret of their exasperation at their slow pace, but he couldn’t make his feet go faster. Every step took twice as long on his way to the blond man with the scowling face. “Probably to find out why we’re here.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Would you believe that, if you were him?”

  Melissa stayed quiet for a moment.

  “How do you think he learned Uman-Chi?” Melissa asked.

  “Probably the same way he learned to make them so afraid of them,” Bill commented.

  She looked up at him. “You’re in a bad mood.”

  Bill sighed, looked down at her, then focused on the backs of their two Uman guards. “I’m tired,” he said. “It’s late, I’m dying for a cig’ and I just got traded to my countryman. If I met another American here, I’d have thought he’d try to help us out, not buy us.”

  “He might have done both,” Melissa said.

  Bill shook his head. “I saw them when he claimed us,” he said. “I couldn’t speak the words, but the body language looked pretty clear. And did you see the look on Glynn’s face when she saw she was going? That was fear, Melissa. I know fear.”

  “Hey, I’m not sweating it. I have my own guardian protector,” she said, and gave his arm a squeeze.

  She looked up at him and saw the smile on his lips. He worried for her but he couldn’t do a thing for her now. Not guard, not protect, just watch and wonder.

  * * *

  Finally, they stood at the door to the Emperor’s suites. The Uman guard knocked once, and Uman Wolf Soldiers opened them. The five from Eldador shot a contemptuous look at the two Trenboni, nodded and waved the two from Earth in.

  The suites had to be magnificent. Trenbon had provided a formal sitting room with rich tapestries and deep-pile rugs, couches and hand-carved chairs, as well as a circular table stacked with books. Cases of books and exquisite paintings lined the walls. Oil lamps hung from the ceiling and a window opened out onto the city with its flying bridges and bustling people.

  To the left, an open double-door showed a massive canopied bed and more couches. To the right, another double door opened to a formal dining room with seating for twelve

  The Emperor, Lupus, sat on a couch with his bare feet up on a coffee table, dressed in leather pants and a white cotton shirt. His wife, Shela, had changed into a black leather halter-top and short leather skirt, sitting at the table with the books, a pen in her teeth, giving them the side-view of her breasts and flat stomach.

  She was beautiful, Melissa thought, and she knew it. She dressed to accentuate her features. Her belly said she had had babies, but Melissa didn’t see them. She seemed too young for them to be too old.

  The blue of Lupus’ eyes seemed so distinct as to make them almost painful to look at. He wore his hair back and up, with no bangs. He had it tied up in a ponytail now, and it still went past his armpit. His shirt opened at his chest to expose a dusting of fine hair. He wore no jewelry other than a red ruby ring on his middle finger.

  “Welcome,” he said in English, not rising. “Take a seat on the couch, if you would.”

  “Thank you, your—um—Majesty?” Bill said, speaking for both of them.

  He waved the
attempt off. “Please,” he said. “When we’re alone, we’re Americans. Americans don’t call anyone ‘Majesty’.”

  Bill smiled as they sat. “Lupus, then?”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I managed never to speak my name here, so I’m not going to start now.”

  “See dat you don’t,” Shela said, not looking up from her work. Her English had a strange accent, as if her language was more guttural. “And you two, do not say you name no more. You make up dey name for you, like effy-one elt.”

  Melissa looked from Shela to Lupus, seeing if they were kidding. “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Lupus said. “Your name is power over you here. Death spells, summonings, location spells all require your real name.”

  “Spells,” Bill said, skeptically.

  “You are with the Uman-Chi for—what—eight weeks, and you haven’t figured out yet that magic works here?” Lupus asked them, a skeptical look on his face and the scar on his face twitching.

  “Oh, come on,” Bill said.

  “How do you think you got here?” Lupus asked.

  Bill looked at Melissa, Melissa looked at Lupus.

  “We thought it was, like, a black hole or something,” she said.

  He laughed. “A black hole would have ripped you apart,” he said. “That girl, Glynn, who has been keeping after you, woke up with a song in her head, sang it and then poof—here you were.”

  “Back home we were in Titusville, Florida, and a guy with black and white hair pushed us into the fender of my car,” Bill said. “My car was glowing, and we kind of fell into it.”

  “Magic,” Lupus said, and leaned forward. “I need to ask you two some personal questions.”

  Bill answered for them, “We expected you would.”

  “What did you two do for a living?”

  Bill and Melissa looked at each other, then at Lupus. “We worked together at a telesales agency,” Bill said. Melissa just nodded, and added, “When they took us we were on our first date.”

  “Yeah?” Lupus smiled knowingly. Melissa risked a glance and saw that Shela watched them speculatively.

  “Well, out for drinks with people after work,” Bill said.

  “It was a date,” Melissa insisted. He just kept breaking her heart with that crap. Not enough that she slept with him, that she supported him, deferred to him? What more did he need?

  “Easy there,” Lupus said. “From what I’m told, you are an old married couple now, so no matter what it was, it seems to have worked out for you.”

  “Married?” Bill said.

  “I guess she was dressed kinda skimpy when she arrived,” Lupus said. “So they thought you were a—um—well, you were dressed kinda skimpy.”

  Melissa reddened. They’d mistaken her for a hooker. She did not dress like a hooker. That thought brought with it other memories that she didn’t like to dredge up, and which had caused her a lot of pain in her earlier life.

  “She was fashionable,” Bill said, defensively.

  “Dey Uman-Chi, dey tink you either a princess or a whore,” Shela said. She stood, walked to her husband’s side, and sat down at his feet, her head on his knee. He stroked her hair absently. “Me, when dey Lupus come, he take me as his slave girl. I wear less dan diss den. His Uman-Chi friend, dey look down dare noses.”

  Lupus chuckled. “And she whipped them up one side and down the other,” he said. “One of the Uman-Chi you saw tonight, D’gattis—he has a yellow question-mark, turned upside-down on his robes—was there, and he made the mistake of challenging her.”

  “I teach him dey different between dey wizard and dey sorceress,” Shela said.

  “You are a sorceress?” Bill asked her, leaning forward.

  Melissa found herself studying this woman. Shela really, totally loved Lupus. Melissa had never known a woman who would just sit at her man’s feet like that, but she had thought of what it would be like to do it—to have a man who made her want it. Bill would freak if she tried anything like that. It would make him feel even more like a grandpa.

  Lupus raised his eyebrows like he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. Shela smiled, looked around the room, and pointed at a snifter, half full of some golden liquid.

  The glass container flew from where it sat to in front of her. Four glasses appeared, the snifter filled them all, then dropped to the coffee table with a thud as the four glasses flew to the four of them.

  “Uman-Chi brandy,” Lupus said. “If it is less than four hundred years old, I think they use it to wash the dishes.”

  Melissa took the glass from mid air, and took a sip of the liquid. It tickled her tongue and burned it at the same time. It warmed her all the way to her belly and she shuddered.

  Bill held his glass and looking at it like it had become a spider.

  “Wow,” she said.

  Lupus nodded. “Good, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Melissa said.

  Shela looked at Melissa and said, “You got bebe?”

  “I’m sorry?” she asked.

  “Are you pregnant?” Lupus asked her. “She is concerned about you drinking.”

  Melissa looked at Shela. “Um, no, but thank you.”

  “You sure?” she said. “I can tell you, if you want to know.”

  “You can?”

  Shela closed her eyes, held a hand out toward Melissa, and hummed. Melissa felt a tickle go through her, like someone ran a feather down her spine.

  “It you time, but you not pregnant,” she said. “I think you not want to get pregnant for a little while.”

  “So try and control yourself,” Lupus said to Bill, who finally grinned and took a sip of the brandy. “They don’t do a lot of telesales here, with the not having any phones and all. You might want to see what the future holds before you go adding people to it.”

  “What kind of society is this?” Bill asked him. Melissa felt thankful he steered the conversation away from her prospective motherhood.

  She found herself oddly relieved to know she wasn’t pregnant. She didn’t have a regular cycle. No matter how she felt about Bill, the fact remained he had more than twenty years on her and he already had kids. He might not be looking for more. She would ease into that conversation very gently, and with no one else around.

  Lupus took another sip and nodded. “Think of King Arthur, except Merlin is real, and there is more than one of him.”

  “You did okay for yourself, then” Bill said.

  Lupus nodded. “I had a lot of help, mostly from Shela here.”

  “You not listen when he say dat,” Shela warned them. “He good and smart, does a lot of tings. He know dey erck-nomics, he know dey mil’tary. His Wolf Soldiers, the toughest killers dey is.”

  Bill smiled. “You brought them gun powder, didn’t you,” he said.

  Lupus frowned, leaned forward, and said, “Do you know how to make gun powder?” His scar twitched again.

  “I do,” Melissa said. It wasn’t rocket science.

  Bill grinned. “I saw it on Star Trek,” he said. “The episode—”

  “With the Gorn,” Lupus said, sat back and laughed. “Oh, that was the best show ever.”

  “You miss TV?” Bill asked him.

  “I miss coffee,” Lupus said. Still leaning back, he looked at them. “I drink strong tea here, it is not the same.”

  “No, I agree,” Bill said. “We used to smoke. I don’t suppose-“

  Lupus shook his head. Melissa sighed.

  Lupus leaned forward again. “You don’t want to tell anyone here about gun powder,” he told them.

  That put Melissa right on her toes. The one octave drop in his voice, the slight narrowing of his eyes.

  Not advice, a warning.

  “You didn’t develop it?” Bill asked.

  Lupus shook his head.

  “Why?” he asked. “Your armies would be—”

  “What?” Lupus demanded, and his eyebrows dropped in anger. “Invincible? They already are.”


  “But with gunpowder…”

  Lupus shook his head. “You think that if I had that, then I would roll over all resistance and sweep all before me,” he said.

  “Well—yeah.”

  “And who on Earth did that?” Lupus asked him, and Melissa clearly saw the anger now. Suddenly he seemed to be speaking to a stupid child who refused to admit that one and one made two.

  “Well, Napolean—”

  “Defeated.”

  “Okay, Hitler—”

  “Defeated.”

  “England overran a good part of France—”

  “France took it back.”

  “Okay—America,” Bill said. “We kicked Indian ass from coast to coast.”

  “And what did the Indians do about that?” Lupus pressed him.

  Bill thought for a moment, opened his mouth, closed it, then leaned back and took a sip of brandy and admitted, “They got guns.”

  “Exactly,” Lupus said, and he leaned back again. “All of them, in the end, get guns. Why? Because when you base your military on superior technology, the first battle you lose, you lose the technology, too. The Chinese developed gunpowder—they didn’t conquer the world with it. Kublai Khan had it, and he didn’t conquer the world, because he gave the secret to people like Marco Polo. Then the Europeans all had it, then it was irrelevant.

  “The conquerors, like Genghis Khan, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Attila—they didn’t have gunpowder and, once conquerors did, they stopped being able to be conquerors.”

  “So, no gunpowder,” Bill said.

  Lupus looked skeptical, “You didn’t already tell them?”

  “Why would we?” Bill asked.

  “No, we didn’t,” Melissa reassured him. Bill might have been missing this, but she didn’t.

  This man wanted to conquer. He knew it, and apparently the Uman-Chi did, too, and if she could judge people at all, she knew that the Uman-Chi had decided they couldn’t stop him, so instead they tried to suck up to him by giving him…them.

  Why?

  “Why do you want us?” she blurted out. Even Bill looked shocked. Shela grinned this really scary grin, and Lupus smiled to himself and leaned back again.