Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  J’her had been in prison for multiple murders when Lupus had offered him a position in the Wolf Soldier guard over a decade ago. He had expected to die—he’d been a farmer. Better to die with the sun shining on his face than in the cold of the Steel City dungeons.

  He had been one of fifty Wolf Soldier to survive the Battle of Tamaran Glen. He had seen Lupus turn the battle himself, charging the Confluni infantry with his sword and his horse, and nothing else. Terrified Free Legionnaire lancers had held to the trees until he shamed them with his bravery. When they engaged, the Hero—the Volkhydran warlord named Karl—had screamed, “Lupus!” and plunged into the fray, Wolf Soldiers at his back, and the Free Legion defenders had followed him.

  The Confluni had fallen apart. Wolf Soldiers had turned the battle, and J’her knew right then he would be one for the rest of his days.

  He remembered that day. He had never been so sure he would die, and he had never felt so alive, and afterwards, dripping from more wounds than he could count, seeing double from the pain, the blood of a score of men mixed with his own, he had never felt so proud, so powerful, so certain in his whole life.

  So J’her, as he said, “Had Lupus’ back.” What other choice could there be?

  Chapter Twelve:

  A Race to the Finish

  The wagon seemed dark as a tomb and didn’t smell a lot better. It didn’t seem close, but it had become musty, probably because they almost never used it.

  Glynn sat prim and proper in a corner seat, her back to the front of the carriage, farthest from the door. The children avoided her; they had never liked Uman-Chi. Few Men did, in fact, and children usually had a good sense of people.

  Now that they didn’t have The Mountain to entertain them, they focused on the other newcomer, Raven. Shela forced herself to think of them in terms of their new names, put their old ones out of her head, with the discipline that came with being a sorceress.

  Raven grinned ear-to-ear, answering the million questions a child has for every new situation. Was she their aunt? Was she Andaran? Was she a sorceress? Did she want to see Lee do a spell?

  “You will not,” Shela interjected. “And you will not make that offer again.”

  Lee lowered her head. “Yes, mama,” she said.

  “She did a spell the other day,” Vulpe offered. He had the advantage on his sister now, so of course he immediately exploited it.

  Lee glowered at him. “You’re a brat!” she hissed.

  Vulpe didn’t care. He knew that if the tables should turn, then it would be his head on the chopping block. “She floated some plums from the larder and she ate them.”

  “You ate them too!” Lee challenged him.

  “After you made me sing for them!”

  “So what we have here,” Shela interrupted them, “is a thief, and a liar. Not very much like the Prince and Princess of the realm.”

  And then she invoked the words more powerful over her children than any spell, “I think your father needs to know about this.”

  “No!” Their eyes went wide as gold Tabaars. They clung to her skirt and pleaded with her. “No, mama! You handle it! You handle it!”

  Shela felt her heart swell with love for them. Another of her husband’s terms, ‘You handle it.’ They reminded her so much of him. Lee’s strength and determination, Vulpe’s eyes and nose, the way he held himself with perfect posture like Lupus, the way she dissected every situation and turned it to her advantage.

  “In truth, does he sing?” Glynn asked them.

  “He sings to us all the time,” Shela said. “He has a beautiful voice—I think it is Nina’s influence as much as any—”

  She looked around the carriage and her heart froze. “Xinto!”

  “On the top of the carriage,” Raven told her. She had seated herself in the opposite corner from Glynn, her hands in her lap, her blue dress billowed out around her legs. “I think they are keeping him away from you.”

  “Karel of Stone is no fool,” Glynn commented.

  The two women smiled at her expense. Shela felt her back straighten.

  “I wouldn’t hurt him,” she said.

  “I think Karel is afraid to take that chance,” Glynn pressed her. Yonega Waya had left Glynn to her care, encouraging Glynn to be bold again.

  “Shela,” Raven said, and reached forward to touch the back of her hand, “let him freeze outside. Do you want him in here?”

  “I don’t,” Shela admitted. “Karel probably did what was best.”

  “How does Nina stand the cold?” Raven asked her, leaning forward. The Trenboni dress shifted on her upper body, accentuating her figure as she moved. “I was freezing with furs.”

  “She is an Aschire witch, like Shela,” Glynn interjected again. “If she wishes to she can be as warm as on a summer day.”

  “I think that the idea with the peasant dress is a good one for you, Baroness,” Shela said. “Expect to have one in the morning.”

  “Your pardon?” Glynn said, lowering her chin, her eyes wide.

  “Well, clearly you have no respect for me,” Shela said. “Calling my trainee a witch, speaking familiar as you are. Humility makes Kings of peasants, as my husband says.

  “I think that Eldador shall make you a queen.”

  Raven actually had to bite her lower lip to control herself. Glynn sat back and glowered. The children remained quiet—they had dodged the arrow on the spell and the plums, they would be perfectly happy to see Glynn take their mother’s attention for a while.

  Shela pulled the laces of her bodice open, ignoring all of them. She had promised her husband she would have Angry at the Sun on solid food by the spring thaw, but this would be her gift to herself. Even through the pain of baby-sharp teeth on her nipple, she knew the comfort that belonged to her, and that only her child could give her.

  She regarded Raven and asked, “How well does your man ride?”

  * * *

  Back outside of the gate, behind Lupus and J’her and in front of the three mounted Wolf Soldiers, Bill struggled with the reins and tried to guide the horse.

  He had already made them stop once so he could shorten the stirrups. Little Storm was iron-mouthed; he would resist the bit and take the pain of the steel in his gums to do what he wanted to do.

  What he wanted to do seemed to be to follow his sire and knock people and objects over, apparently in his own meanness. He didn’t like heels in his sides, he didn’t like direction, he had no idea what a knee pressed into his barrel meant, neither did he neck rein.

  Bill saw Lupus and J’her had immersed themselves in some conversation, so instead he looked behind him for some help from the Wolf Soldier guards.

  “Do you know this horse?” he asked them.

  One of them, a Man, kicked his horse up alongside Bill and said, “I rode him once.”

  “How was he?”

  “Rough,” the Man said. “Mean. He takes the reins in his teeth—he has them there now.”

  Bill gave the reins a sharp tug and, sure enough, Little Storm snorted and turned his head, revealing the bit in his molars. No wonder he acted hard to maneuver!

  “Your Imperial Majesty?” Bill called. The Wolf Soldier fell back. Lupus turned, making no effort to hide his exasperation.

  “Yes?”

  “He has the bit in his teeth—would you smack him for me?”

  Lupus looked at Little Storm and smiled. “He’s a bastard, isn’t he?” He dropped back and whacked the stallion on his sensitive nose. The horse snorted and Bill pulled back on the reins, feeling the bit drop back in the horse’s mouth.

  Little Storm immediately arched his back and dropped his flank. He stepped back, bucked once and then crow-hopped, as Bill fought to keep his seat.

  “Is he too much for you?” Lupus asked him, once Bill had settled the horse down. “Little Storm is from Blizzard out of what they call a dray mare here—a draft horse. I was hoping for something as powerful but more mellow than Blizzard, but I don’t think I
got it.”

  Now it was Bill’s turn to be exasperated. “He is a draft horse,” he said in English.

  “He's broken to the saddle.”

  Bill shook his head, pulled up on the reins and dismounted. He stepped to Little Storm’s head and pulled the headstall from him.

  Little Storm just stood there, looking at nothing, still as night.

  “Is there a tack shop near here?” Bill asked.

  “We’re in the market,” Lupus said. “What do you need?”

  “I need a snaffle,” he said. He showed the bit to Lupus. “This is a straight bit. I bet he throws riders all the time.”

  “He does,” Lupus said. He ordered one of the Wolf Soldier guards to get him a new bit and tossed the man a bag. The warrior, an Uman, took off like a shot.

  “You know your horses,” J’her commented in Uman, while they waited.

  “I was raised on a farm,” Bill replied, also in Uman. “I had two Appaloosas growing up. The mare had to have a hackamore, a harness with no bit.”

  “How did you ride a horse with no bit?” J’her asked him. “She would never learn to turn.”

  “You teach her to go with your knees,” Lupus said. “You’ve seen me do that with Blizzard.”

  “Blizzard has a bit, though,” J’her protested.

  “You just have to know her,” Bill said. He straightened out Little Storm’s mane with his fingers, pushing it to one side. It had been wild cut, too long for proper riding. If he had scissors and a brush he’d have taken six inches off and pulled half of it right there.

  The Wolf Soldier returned with six different bits, all jointed, all about six inches wide. The harness had been designed well and Bill changed the bit out easily. He selected what he recognized as a ‘Tom Thumb,’ a jointed bit with extended trailers for the reins.

  Little Storm looked like he would gag on that one, too, but accepted it. Bill watched to see if he would scoot it forward to his molars, but he left it. Bill remounted and took the reins two-handed.

  They all moved. Little Storm rode like an entirely different horse now. What Bill had called meanness turned out to be his inability to decipher what Bill tried to tell him. The Tom Thumb let Bill take a better grip on Little Storm’s head and communicate to him.

  They found their way through the market and moved on to the plains. Radiating out no less than a mile from the city walls, Bill could see hard-packed earth full of the frozen prints of horses, wagons and men. Bill saw melt on some tracks around their edges, pearling as the sun rose, meaning mud and slop and all sorts of hazard here.

  “Hya!” Lupus shouted, and Blizzard took off like a bullet.

  “Hya!” Bill shouted, and Little Storm dropped his flank and leapt after him, leaving the others to catch up as they would.

  It had been so long. The horse at Outpost IX had been so well trained, it reacted almost on thought. Bill didn’t like that. No fun riding an animal with so little spirit. He wanted some fight.

  Little Storm obliged him—his first goal being to challenge this older stallion. Bill stood up in the saddle just enough to pitch his weight forward and to take his ass out of the seat. He whipped the barrel of this young horse with the reins, spurring him on to challenge the older, larger horse.

  The wind whipped his eyes and left them stinging. Reflexively he narrowed his eyelids and turned his head to one side, squinting through his lashes and blocking the brunt of the wind with the side of his face. They already approached one tower, where there would be a turn.

  The turn lay in the shadow of the tower. The ground would be frozen hard still. “Hya, Little Storm!” Bill shouted, and pushed the horse ahead.

  Lupus looked to his left in amusement as the black horse pulled up alongside him. Blizzard’s great neck was bowed, the cheek like a great disk and the nose as small as a teacup bobbing as he ran. He might not be in his prime anymore, but he was still a healthy animal with many natural advantages, and Lupus certainly would use them all.

  They took the turn. Lupus slowed, Bill passed him on the outside. Blizzard screamed in anger, Little Storm in challenge.

  “Hya! Hya! Hya!” Both riders urged their mounts on into the straightaway to the next tower.

  Turning on the big stallion made Bill feel like he was about to fly off sideways. His heart thrilled to the danger of it—that horse falling would be the death of him. Bill’s legs and lower back had already begun stiffening. At fifty, he wasn’t in the shape Lupus surely found himself, but he wanted this—he wanted to show the old man hadn’t become useless, even if he had been treated like baggage since he got here.

  Blizzard gained on him, still faster in the straightaway. Hooves beat the hard-packed earth like some mad drummer. Both stallions screamed as they approached the next tower and the next turn.

  This time the sun beat right on the corner, the shadow from the tower well before the turn. There would be slop. Bill urged his mount to the inside, forcing Little Storm’s tail into Blizzard’s path. The white horse had to slow and take the outside, coming up on the slop at a dead run.

  At the last second Bill pulled up on the reins, slowing his horse in the shadow of the second tower. Blizzard shot past him, caught unawares in a wash of little mud puddles and loose earth. Bill and Little Storm took the turn at a respectable canter while Blizzard and Lupus went wide, sliding and flinging mud, Blizzard dropping to his flank in the slop. By the time they recovered, Bill and Little Storm were forty yards down the wall.

  Bill held the lead through mud and slop as they pounded along the south wall, straining for the next tower and the next turn.

  Damn! Bill swore to himself. Past the tower he saw the southern gate, and a line of people gathered before it. His advantage would be lost if he had to pick his way through, and he would just be clearing the way for Lupus and Blizzard to follow at a dead run.

  When they drew nearer, Little Storm saw them, too, and screamed his challenge. Horses reared, people scattered. Wolf Soldier guards with pikes pushed the crowd back from the gates, as if they expected this to happen and knew what to do. This probably hadn’t been Lupus’ first race around the wall, Bill decided. But then, how could he be caught unawares by the slop?

  Some animal like a goat or a large dog leapt into the path that they cleared and laid down. Men and Uman shouted orders at it, then out ran a pair of children, who threw their bodies across it.

  No way could Bill hope to stop in time. Bill bore down directly on them, kicked with his heels into Little Storm’s barrel and yelled, “Hya!”

  The horse leapt into the air and sailed over the three of them. He landed with a ball-jarring thud on the other side, the horse barely missing a step as it plunged on. Just seconds later, he heard another “Hya!” and a thud when Blizzard had to do the same thing.

  Another corner tower came next, clear now over a mile from the gates. Bill didn’t need to see it to guess it would be pure slop this time. The sun would be against the city walls. Little Storm had taken the last turn sound, Bill crouched down lower to the horse’s neck, his cheek and eyes in its mane, and he gripped the reins close. Pressing to the inside and listening to the drum of hooves on the earth, he entered the sunshine by the tower, waiting for that steady, hollow thud of his horse’s hooves to turn into more of a ‘thunk,’ when the soft earth changed to mud and slop.

  The ground would be hardest by the wall, where fewer people would walk. Bill reined back just a little as he took the turn, Little Storm’s hooves flinging mud and water, coating him in earth.

  Little Storm finished the turn, Blizzard flying past him once again, breaking the turn out wide. Now Bill ran down the straightaway pounding down the length of the wall, to his west rolling hills stretching out to the horizon, blanketed in winter hay.

  They ran for miles, Blizzard pressing Little Storm but not making the push that would give him the lead. Finally Bill saw another gate two thirds of the way down the wall, horses being exercised outside of it. The stables would be here. Lupus’ cr
y of “Hya, Blizzard!” told him they’d come to the final stretch.

  Bill whipped the horse’s barrel with the reins. Little Storm screamed and pulled forward, pounding toward the stables. Bill bounced in the saddle, the pain in his back and shoulders, his feet and hamstrings extreme. “Come on, Little Storm!” he urged his mount, leaning into his neck, whispering into his ear. “Come on! Run!”

  Blizzard screamed his challenge. Little Storm lowered his head and bore down. The ground whipped past them in a swirl. The winter wind bit mercilessly at his face and eyes.

  Men and horses scattered from before the gate. Two mares reared, the handlers struggling with their reins. Little Storm thundered on, Blizzard pulling up along side him.

  They passed the gate together. Bill could argue he had beaten the Emperor, but he would never be sure, and that hadn’t been the point of it. He sat back, the air cold on his face and beard. He’d been sweating like crazy in the cold. He knew he’d be sick tomorrow.

  So worth it.

  * * *

  The wagon trundled into the royal stables. Melissa sat quiet, the older children at her feet, thinking her own thoughts while Shela nursed and Glynn pouted.

  “This is a very smooth ride,” she said, finally, in Uman.

  She had been on a hayride. Even on asphalt the wood and steel wagon wheels amplified every bump and twig.

  “Yonega Waya’s invention,” Shela said. “He calls it ‘take the bumps,’ a steel pipe inside another steel pipe, a spring inside of that.”

  “Shock absorber,” Melissa said in English. She knew the term because they’d blown out in her wreck of a car. Then in Uman, she added, “That makes sense.”

  The wagon stopped, the door swung open. They all waited politely for Shela to be the first to leave.

  “No, you go first,” she said to Glynn. “I want to finish. The Emperor won’t be long.”

  “M’lady,” Glynn said formally. She rose and exited the wagon. The kids scrambled after her.

  “I hate her,” Shela said in English. “I can’t stand Uman-Chi, but she is worse den most.”