Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  “Very well,” Ancenon informed them.

  “Then, I ask you to recall a day, about thirteen years ago, in Outpost IX, when you and I and a Scitai named Xinto had a meal together.”

  Ancenon felt the smile cross his face. “Our first meeting,” he said. “How could I forget?”

  “Our second,” Lupus corrected him. “You’d seen me two days before at the Fovean High Council.”

  Ancenon frowned, not liking to be corrected. “I won’t argue that,” he allowed the Man.

  Lupus smiled. “Remember when you called me a Bounty Hunter?” he asked.

  Ancenon thought about it. An hour out of forty-five decades didn’t merit much space in one’s memory.

  “I could believe I called you that at the time,” he said. “Your existence in Trenbon, your armor, your command of many languages, and your association…”

  “My association with Xinto, whom you knew was a Bounty Hunter,” Lupus pressed him.

  Ancenon sighed. The Emperor had enjoyed more than his share of the attentions of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild after that night. Likely he wanted to know why Ancenon hadn’t defended him more vigorously.

  In fact, Ancenon had gone to great lengths to do just that. It was an incredible inconvenience to him to be associated with someone whose every third thought was either defending himself from or hunting down Bounty Hunters. However, he’d invoked the Guild, calling himself a Bounty Hunter for whatever bizarre reason, and touched off a war.

  Despite the reasons, he’d walked away victorious.

  “Then you remember my then informing you that I wasn’t a Bounty Hunter,” Black Lupus said.

  Ancenon frowned and looked sideways at his adopted sister. “In fact, I do remember this,” he said.

  Lupus smiled even wider. “There’s someone whom I’d like you to share that with,” he said.

  * * *

  They served dinner in the palace hall. A gigantic bay window ran the length of the northern wall overlooking the city and Tren Bay beyond it. A long, heavy table set for dozens of people, all of whom apparently had decided to attend, ran down its center. Lupus sat at the table’s head, his Empress to his left, a Man to his right, his children next to Shela and three old Men in white robes next to the Man.

  The Man’s name was Hectar Gelgelden, the Duke of Eldador the Port, chief advisor to the Emperor, an elegant man with long gray hair and a widow’s peak. They called the old men ‘Shem Hannen;’ Lupus called them, “Oligarchs” when he spoke English. They advised him as well.

  Down the right side of the table sat what Lupus called, “Palace Barons,” members of the nobility who held only title and no lands, and who mooched off the Eldadorian state. Lupus had informed Bill he considered them mostly useless, although once in a while they could surprise him.

  Glynn sat among them now, frowning all around herself as greasy hands reached into platters stacked high with food. Meats and fish and bowls of cooked vegetables, pots of foamy ale and carafes of wine; Bill sampled from a wheel of cheese so sharp it made his eyes water, and the style for feeding appeared to be to just reach out and grab.

  Bill could find himself remembering how thin he used to be when he got here, if he didn’t control himself. He also knew how much he loved to eat. Instead, he leaned over to Melissa and gave her a gentle bite on the ear.

  “You need to ride horseback more often,” she said, kissing his cheek.

  “Will you do something for me?” he asked.

  “Right here?” She opened her eyes up wide and innocent, looking stunned for all the world.

  “Goofball,” he told her. “Fill my plate for me, okay?”

  “Do what?” Her pretty eyebrows knit. “You mean, feed you?”

  “Make sure I don’t eat too much,” he said. “You know how much weight I’ve lost here?”

  “Yeah, in fact,” she said. “I give myself a lot of credit for it.”

  Bill grinned an evil grin. “As do I,” he said. “And I know if I take what I want, I am going to put it right back on.”

  “Say no more,” she said, taking his plate from him. “I told you I was going to flatten that belly.”

  “What is this now?” Lupus said. They had spoken in English. He had apparently been listening.

  “She doesn’t want him to get fat,” Shela said in Uman. “He needs to lose weight so he can race you and win.”

  “Ho, ho! I heard of this,” Hectar said, stabbing into a pile of pork with a long, two-pronged fork. “Seems to me Blizzard’s ready for the pasture.”

  “Not likely,” Lupus said. He turned his attention to J’her, eating on the side of the table opposite the palace barons. “Lord Supreme Commander, when did you lose sight of Blizzard?”

  “At the first tower, Lupus,” he said.

  “And when did you see him again?”

  “At the stables.”

  Lupus turned back to the Duke. “Faster than fast, your Grace,” he said. “Doesn’t mean anything about Blizzard.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t just change bits on him,” Shela said. “That should have been the first thing I did.”

  “Well, not the first thing,” Bill said, watching Melissa. “I would have reshod him first, then looked to the person who broke him to the saddle. I didn’t pick up on the bit until one of the Wolf Soldiers told me that he was taking it in his teeth.”

  “I didn’t see him doing that,” Shela admitted. “When he killed his second rider I should have.”

  “Second rider?” Melissa exclaimed. She dropped the plate down in front of Bill. “How many did he kill?”

  “Um—am I Bugs Bunny here?” Bill looked into a plate more fit for Little Storm than for him.

  “He killed four,” Lupus admitted. “But he didn’t stomp them, they just fell off and were dragged.”

  “Whoa—when were you going to tell me?” Bill asked.

  “Never,” Lupus said. “You’d have been afraid of him.”

  Melissa took Bill’s beer out of his hand and replaced it with wine. He scowled and she said. “Empty calories.”

  “He was right not to tell you,” Karel of Stone said. He’d been seated on Bill’s other side. “It would have made you shy of him.”

  “Power help you if the horse smells that,” Shela said.

  “Grandfather is going to let me ride him,” Vulpe said.

  “I get to ride him, too,” Lee protested. Vulpe stuck his tongue out at her—Shela put something that looked like yellow mashed potatoes on it.

  “Eat,” she warned.

  Lupus looked to the corner of the room where Nina stood, back on duty. “You’re clear as to that, right?”

  She nodded, then resumed her vigilance.

  “You handled your time at sea passing well,” the Scitai said to Melissa, looking over Bill’s belly. He had to sit on a board that crossed the arms of his chair, much as a young child would. His blue eyes seemed almost hawkish as he assessed the girl. “Are you of a sea-faring people?”

  “I grew up in a port,” Melissa said. She picked greens for Bill, and he started to think this had been a bad idea.

  “We had a skiff,” she said. “One-master, low and fast.”

  “A—I’m sorry, a what?” Karel said.

  Shela said the word in the language of Men, then in Uman for Bill’s benefit. “Like Volkhydran raiders use.”

  Karel smiled. “In with the wind, out with the tide,” he said. “You weren’t the daughter of a pirate, I hope?”

  Melissa smiled. “Not much of a pirate, no,” she said.

  “Perhaps of a Wizard?” Glynn asked, picking pieces of meat and vegetables from where the court barons had raided the platters on her side of the table. “That would explain the incident in the stables.”

  It turned out Lupus had ordered that no man touch the Princess. Some males, such as Karel of Stone, one of the palace wizards and other members of what he called ‘the Free Legion’, and what others called ‘Daff Kanaar,’ had been excluded from that. N
ina had sworn a blood oath to protect the girl, and she took it seriously.

  No one knew what had happened in the stables. Nina’s energy had been drained to only a sufficient amount to keep her alive. She hadn’t passed out; she had been sleeping, regaining her strength. Even now she could do almost nothing magical.

  Bill didn’t understand it entirely. It seemed to him as if these people who cast spells had batteries.

  “I had never seen a Wizard before—” Melissa began, and Bill nudged her. She caught a look of warning on the Emperor’s face, and Bill had already been told not to talk about their home planet.

  Glynn seemed willing to let it pass. “I wish I had been there to observe their exchange,” Glynn said. She wore a gorgeous green dress, strapless, its neckline plunging down almost to her navel and the back up past her neck, fanning out into a starched collar that expanded past her ears. Its skirts billowed out, in the current fashion. Her hair hung green down to her shoulders, curling inward.

  “You tried to kill him, correct?” Glynn said, looking at Nina.

  Nina looked back at her, unimpressed. “Yes.”

  “Does anyone not want me dead?” Bill asked the room.

  “And it required the touch,” Glynn continued. The rest of the room grew quiet, interested in this exchange.

  “It did,” Nina said.

  “I have cast spells on her,” Shela said. “I was successful each time, and in fact was not weakened.”

  “Raven,” Glynn said, looking at Melissa. She had already gotten used to her new name. “I want you to listen carefully.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “This will hurt you,” she said, and she raised her hand, glowing white with power.

  “Glynn,” Lupus warned her. A trail of white rose up like a cloud from Glynn’s hand, arced over the table, and reached for Melissa.

  Stupid trick, Bill couldn’t help thinking. Glynn wouldn’t kill her, she would just create an illusion to see what happened. Melissa waited for the arc to come close to her, then she batted it with the back of her hand.

  “Please,” she said.

  Glynn flew backwards out through the bay windows, with a crash of glass and a sound like metal tearing. Melissa watched with her mouth opened as Glynn sailed out over the palace wall, and dropped behind it.

  “New rule,” Lupus said. “No more spell casting at dinner.”

  It took a few moments before Glynn realized what had happened to her. She had heard the sound of metal tearing. She had heard the crash of glass. Her reality couldn’t immediately adjust to accept that she still sat in her chair, traveling backwards through the night sky.

  The cold air slapped the sense back into her, as she sailed over the palace wall, and watched it seem to rise, meaning she fell and would soon hit the ground.

  Levitation had been the first feat she had ever mastered. She tried it now, and found the strength within her to impede her progress downward, slowing gradually as the chair continued to fall.

  “Hey,” she heard below her, in the language of Men. She could do nothing but continue to descend. In several minutes she felt her toes on the ground, her dress in tatters and her delicate skin cut in a dozen places.

  “So women just drop out of the sky in Eldador?” she heard from behind her.

  Glynn turned and saw a Man, taller than she, stocky, dressed in the shaggy pants and overcoat of a Volkhydran, a sword on his hip and a pack on his back. He had brown hair cut above his ears, brown eyes, and a nasty scar down his left cheek, similar to the Emperor’s.

  “Actually we are shot out of windows,” she said. “I don’t suppose you know the fastest way to the palace gates?”

  “The palace gates?” he repeated. “I’m not sure. If you don’t hit me with another chair, I suppose I can escort you until we find it.” He punctuated the remark by spitting on the ground.

  “I really don’t require an escort, Sirrah” Glynn said. “However I would welcome the company.”

  “Good enough then,” he said. He started down the road they stood on, stone buildings lining either side. His boots banged the cobblestones in a rhythm she knew well enough. She straightened the moment that she heard it.

  “How long were you a Wolf Soldier, Sirrah,” she asked him.

  He didn’t stop, so she had to quicken her pace to keep up with him, tripping on the hem of her ruined dress every third step.

  “What makes you think I was a Wolf Soldier?” he asked.

  Glynn smiled. “You march when you walk,” she said. “I know that tread from the sack of Outpost IX, the Battle of the Two Horses, and the second invasion of Thera.”

  “I had heard it was the Uman-Chi who financed the second invasion of Thera,” he said, not looking at her. “There were no Uman-Chi at the Battle of the Two Horses.”

  “Thera happened in the days when we thought we could defeat the Empire,” she said. “All Uman-Chi know better than that now. As for the other, I happened to be in Volkha.”

  He laughed softly. “The Uman-Chi were never so quick to learn,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, though. I’m not a Wolf Soldier.”

  “You just have the walk?”

  He kept looking forward. “I’m not one any more,” he said.

  “Might I ask your name, Sirrah?” she asked.

  He walked for a while, and didn’t answer. She felt tempted to repeat herself, when he said, “Jerod. Jerod the Bold, of Volkhydro.”

  “I am honored, Jerod,” she said. “I am Glynn Escaroth, of the family Escaroth, and now the Baroness of Britt as well.”

  “An Eldadorian barony?” he asked, looking sideways at her.

  “Indeed, Sirrah,” she said.

  “I don’t suppose you expect me to call you m’lady or anything, do you?” he asked her.

  “Whatever your manners and your common courtesy demand, Sirrah” Glynn answered him.

  She felt she should know this one, but she couldn’t recall him. She’d listened to his voice, watched his manner, and marked his stride. He came of Volkan-kind, the bigger, meaner Men who lived along the Confluni boarder. A city dweller, not one of the tribesmen—she could tell by the hard soled shoes, the way he walked, the way he spoke. He used complete sentences and his diction seemed good. He had seen the inside of a school or been tutored.

  She didn’t need the company of a Man, but an escort meant less chance of some ridiculous peasant or city rogue bothering her. “What path brings you to Galnesh Eldador?” she asked him. She tried to reach out with her mind to the Empress or to the palace wizards, but her magic seemed indeed weakened.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, and spat. “Doesn’t the Emperor say, 'All roads lead to Galnesh Eldador'?”

  “The Emperor boasts many things,” Glynn countered him. They came to a crossroads and the Man turned to his right. She would have chosen that direction herself. In fact, looking down the road, she could see the palace spires, several hundred yards away.

  An impressive distance, she noted. There could be more to this Raven than she had assumed.

  “You don’t believe you can trust me?” she asked.

  “I know people,” Jerod said. “I know Uman-Chi.”

  She smiled indulgently. “You are welcome to your secrets.”

  He remained quiet for a bit, his boots staccato on the cobblestones. Say what you would about Men, Duke Hectar and the Emperor kept a clean city. Even in Outpost IX one saw a little slop in the street. Not so, here.

  Jerod sighed. Glynn made her face blank, suppressing a smile. That is a Man, she thought. They cannot bear their own secrets.

  “A month ago I argued with my father, and I decided that I should see the rest of Fovea,” he said. Glynn already knew he lied. He wouldn’t look at her, his inflection showed insecurity. His thumbs in his wide belt and the hunched shoulders testified for him.

  “I was going to come here eventually, but I wanted to see Andoran. I had just stepped off of the boat in Chatoos when I couldn’t get
it out of my head that I wanted to be in Outpost IX.

  “And no sooner did I leave for there, then the Port of Eldador seemed better. I’m here now, and I don’t want to be anywhere.”

  “Just so?” Glynn said. Certainly this seemed too convenient for comfort.

  “Just so,” he said. “I am going to see some friends, I think, and maybe replace my sword with Eldadorian steel. I’m told the Emperor employs Dwarves at his forges.”

  “Uman trained by Dwarves,” Glynn commented. They fast-approached the palace gates. Glynn could see horses there already, one of them a huge, white stallion.

  Jerod stopped dead.

  “You know the Emperor?” Lupus didn’t want for enemies.

  “No, and I am going to keep it that way,” Jerod said. “He kills a lot of people.”

  “Precaution is a better armor than steel,” Glynn quoted.

  “What?”

  “I agree with you,” she said.

  He nodded. “Be well, m’lady,” he said, and spat again.

  “Might I inquire to your lodgings?” Glynn pressed him. She saw nothing wrong with being forward with a Man. They knew nothing else.

  “I’m told that ‘The Rider’s Inn’ is owned by Men. Uman in Eldador think all Men are rich. Others of my kind know better.”

  “I should like to inquire after you, Sirrah,” she said.

  “You would?” he seemed amused. The Emperor had marked her already and his stallion approached with a riderless palfrey and three score Wolf Soldiers.

  “Be it to your convenience,” she said.

  Jerod looked to the approaching Wolf Soldiers, then to Glynn. “Tomorrow night,” he said, and turned on his heel. He disappeared down a side street without a backward glance.

  “Are you well?” Lupus asked as he approached her, from atop his stallion, in his usual flawless Uman-Chi. The Wolf Soldiers fanned out around them.

  “I am injured, and I am drained, but I will recover,” she said. “I was aided by a good citizen.”

  “We saw him,” Lupus said. “He was polite to you?”

  She knew what he meant—had a rogue pressed his fortune? “A good citizen, to be sure,” she said. She didn’t want them chasing the man down. She reached for the stirrup of the palfrey and pretended her knees were giving way.