Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  Zarshar made good his promise and they set off, walking their horses in order to make a smaller target for any scouts, the dog ranging out before them, then circling back to wag its tail at them before returning to its post. Occasionally Jack would rough its ears with his fingers and then send it back out on its way.

  They had traveled as many as five daheeri before they saw it lay down in a crouch, its tail low and its ears forward.

  “It sees something,” Jack pointed out unnecessarily. Zarshar assumed a crouch and Glynn told him, “Hold, Black Adept.”

  His red eyes regarded her. “Make use your magic before your eyes, Sirrah,” she told him. “What the dog sees may have already seen him.”

  Zarshar nodded. Being able to look through a hill, or through a portion of the Earth to see past the horizon, would be difficult. Every solid thing would have to be addressed and overcome individually—millions of millions of tiny grains of sand, even worms and such things as live in the dirt.

  One might more easily make the sky to reflect an image, as a great mirror, but then of course anyone could see it. What is worse, they would see the caster.

  What one would do instead, then, is to find which way the wind blew, and rob an image from that. It had been discovered long ago that the stuff that air was made from held a picture of what it passed by, and then could be read.

  Glynn felt Zarshar reach out with his will and take hold of the wind, draw it into him, and then make a picture from it, bringing it before them so that all could see.

  She saw files upon files of them, marching Daff Kanaari Soldiers, having turned south for whatever reason, now moving west, directly for them, an army too vast for counting.

  “There must be…,” Jack began, but his voice trailed off.

  “Too many to fight,” Zarshar said. “We run—you better hope that thing can keep up, because I’m not leaving it to lead someone to us.”

  Jack whistled and the dog stood up and turned toward them. Glynn half-expected a flight of arrows to sail by it but none came. She mounted her horse, taking the sidesaddle, and Jack followed her example.

  Zarshar set off south at his loping pace, running for a path between two low hills. Jack followed, and Glynn after him, her eyes to the east, waiting for what she had seen on the wind.

  They ran another daheer before topping an unavoidable rise, seeing a great marching army, a vanguard formed in the squads of Wolf Soldiers, then file after file of trotting lancers, pennons snapping on the ends of their weapons, the hook-symbol of the Daff Kanaar.

  Behind them marched orderly ranks of Daff Kanaari—their foot soldiers. Heavy armor, shields and short stabbing swords, spears over their shoulders.

  Between the vanguard and the lancers, three Men in heavy armor, one each with the hook symbol on his breast: one scarlet, one brown, and one black.

  No one could mistake the horned helmet, the fluting in the plate armor. No one could mistake the great, white charger.

  “The Emperor,” Zarshar growled.

  “No, Zarshar,” Glynn told him, softly.

  The Swamp Devil’s red eyes turned on her. It actually drooled in anticipation. Her horse took a nervous step and she had to tighten her grip on its reins.

  It was the nature of a Swamp Devil to attack its prey, no matter what the odds. In fact, she would be surprised if it couldn’t get within striking distance of the Emperor now.

  However, their first priority needed to remain to find the ‘One who fights as does the sun,’ and they needed Zarshar to do it. Even if the Swamp Devil prevailed, it would never escape the wrath of the Daff Kanaar.

  “We are not bound for this,” she told him.

  “If we kill him now, your prophecy can rot,” Zarshar growled. “I can cut through the hills right there—”

  “Zarshar, you’ll be breaking your oath,” Jack informed him.

  The Swamp Devil straightened to look the Man directly in the eye.

  “I made no such vow,” he said. “In fact, if I charge him now, I could argue I am saving you.”

  Jack shook his head. “None of us are as powerful as you,” he said.

  “When they finish with you, whether you can take the Emperor or not, they’ll back-track where you came from and find us. If you can’t take them all, there’s no way that we can.”

  The Swamp Devil became contemplative. Glynn found herself forced to admire the Man’s grace. Cloaked as a compliment, the Swamp Devil could hardly take offense; neither would he ever deny his own superiority.

  “It irks me to pass him so close,” Zarshar admitted.

  “Remember it, then,” Jack said. “Savor it, and remember how sweet the chase is, over the kill.”

  Zarshar nodded. He took a longing look at the Emperor, and he started down the far side of the rise.

  Glynn frowned appreciatively. She had to admit, she could have done no better.

  Perhaps this race of Men had some small gift to offer?

  Chapter Twenty-Six:

  The Last Free City

  Nina rode behind Raven now, her hands tied behind her. Xinto rode behind Jerrod, and Jerrod didn’t seem all that happy about it.

  “Oh, you disgusting Man,” the Scitai complained.

  The Volkhydran snickered. “Big breakfast,” he said.

  Nina chuckled to herself.

  “All day long,” Raven complained.

  “He claims he used to sit behind you,” Nina whispered into the other woman’s ear.

  She nodded. “Couldn’t keep his hands off of me,” she said. “Vile little male—whatever Jerrod does to him, he deserves.”

  All around them, Jahunga and his warriors travelled through the forest, making sure of their safety. That morning they’d buried the dead Wolf Soldiers or what was left of them. Now they pressed through the Salt Wood.

  “I won’t be putting my hands on you,” she said. “But I will need to educate you in your new skills.”

  Raven turned half way around in the side saddle she rode. “You mean the magic?” she asked.

  Nina snorted. “Of course, the magic,” she said. “What else but the magic? You can’t just start casting on your own. What you did—you have a strength, Raven. Shela saw it, so did I. You need to be trained.”

  Raven shook her head. “I’m not doing it anymore,” she said.

  Nina smiled. “You feel remorse for the dead soldiers?” she said.

  “Don’t you?” Raven countered.

  “Do I wish they weren’t dead?” she asked. “Of course. I knew those men, I shared a fire with them. Some had families, children. You make orphans, Raven. You made widows.”

  A tear ran down Raven’s cheek.

  “You think that’s bad?” Nina pressed her. “You tell me this—did you mean to do it?”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  “And yet, you did. You did it, unaware and out of control of your power. What do you think you’ll do, the next time someone upsets you, now that the magic knows how to get free?”

  Raven considered.

  “How do you know what I did?” she asked finally.

  Nina had been unconscious, of course. A last recourse of the uncommitted—find a technicality to disregard it all.

  “I know because I saw the bodies,” she said, “and don’t forget who raised you from the black mind. And do not be fooled—you were on your way to the black mind. You’d have lived in that fantasy you’d created for the rest of your days, lying in your own wastes, if I hadn’t roused you when I did.”

  Raven was quiet, looked down and finally whispered, “I didn’t know that.”

  “I want you to think on that,” Nina said. “I want you to consider what you might become, untrained.”

  The girl was quiet, and that was good, because Nina had something else to do.

  They thought her stripped of her power, but what they hadn’t realized was that she’d been able to rob a little of Raven’s while she roused her. She used that now, and she reached out with her mind.
>
  Not to Shela—the Empress was too far, and in fact while she was mighty, her might lay in the desires of others. She would be difficult to reach.

  The Emperor’s Daff Kanaar ally, the Green One, was closer, and that one, a Druid, always listened.

  She reached out, and she found his mind.

  “I know this girl,” he informed her.

  “Listen to me,” she told him. “I don’t have much time. Lupus’ enemies are headed to Kor. You need to contact the Empress.”

  * * *

  Northern courts were strange to him. Jahunga took it all in quietly, his men behind him, his friends Jerod and Xinto to his left and right, the women behind the other Man.

  Jerod—he found it hard not to love this one, stern and cruel, his thin lips held in a line and his scar glowing on his face. Jahunga delighted in making him laugh, in making the Volkhydran admit to his humor. It is his humor that defines a man, not his spear. His humor, and the kind of children he raises.

  To stand in a court like this one, a man needed to have his friends and his humor—they had taken Jahunga’s weapon.

  Northern courts had a look. Long, like a lodge, and narrow. The roof rose to a high arch in imitation of the sky. A gallery ran half way down the right side, half as wide as the right wall, and they liked pillars, gigantic columns to reach up to their artificial sky. Some were just poles, some had been carved. He’d been told the ones in Thera, in Lupus’ personal estate, were carved as stallions, and yet the ones in Outpost IX were plain, because everything else there was so grand.

  Here in the palace at Kor, the builders had carved the bases of their pillars as strange, furred creatures which stood man-like, their claws reaching up the pillar heights. They glowered up at the ceiling, as if they saw something above them which they wanted to kill. A bright green carpet ran down the center of the hall rather than the traditional red. Steel doors stood open at the entrance, opposite the throne of a Man called Xareff, the Duke of Thieves.

  He looked stick figure skinny, his pinched face scowling into his audience. Jahunga saw no humor in this man. Experience had left him dry and brittle. Old man fingers with long, old man nails clicked on the stone throne’s arm. He regarded them as if he saw some sort of trash, blown in by the wind, needing to be swept out.

  “You are wanted,” the Duke of Thieves said to Xinto, “and I see no reason not to turn you over to the Emperor.”

  It had taken them a week to get to Kor from the plains. Kor called itself the last of the ‘Free Cities,’ a port full of thieves and pirates, bad men and exiles, whores and schemers and those who didn’t mind buying the loot of pillaged ships.

  One could find every race here, even Toorians. Some men had noted him, walking in with this strange troop. Pressed up against both the forest and the sea, its shoddy rock walls were a brine-stained testament to what the race of Men would put up with to be free.

  “You are no friend to the Emperor,” Xinto countered. He looked comfortable in this element. Jahunga breathed freest when surrounded by trees, stepping on soil, a spear in his hand and a buck before him.

  For Xinto, the court became his jungle.

  “I am no friend of yours, either, little man,” the Duke said.

  Nina had actually gotten them this audience. Nina and their Raven had become inseparable since discovering Raven had been gifted with the power to cast spells. They spoke in hushed voices, they traded secrets—Jahunga spent many waking moments wondering of what.

  “You invoked the Emperor’s name to get where you are,” the Duke continued. “I thought it was to surrender yourselves. If you are who you say you are, then it is no secret to you how things stand between Kor and Eldador.”

  Xinto smiled. “The Emperor’s unreasonable demand that you not sink or rob his ships,” he said.

  The Duke snarled. “I am no fool to take on Eldadorian Sea Wolves—but he extends his protection to any ship that flies the Eldadorian standard. That means any ship—”

  “Would haul the Eldadorian standard the first time they saw your masts over the horizon,” Jerod interrupted him. The Duke bristled. He wasn’t born to this title, he had clawed his way to it, and he didn’t do that with his humor.

  Jahunga wished he had his spear in his hand—he would have gripped it harder. Now he could only flex his fingers and want it. His men, lined up behind him, probably felt the same way.

  “And who are you, to complete a sentence for me?” the Duke demanded, leaning forward. “I don’t know that ugly face.”

  The hair on Jahunga’s skin rose as the Duke’s personal guard put hands on weapons. No one could mistake that signal. The Duke intended to make an example.

  Jerod had never been shy with his opinions; neither had he seemed to need to speak out unnecessarily. In a situation like this, those like Xinto would expect those who carried swords and spears to keep their own council.

  Jahunga reasoned that, if Jerod felt he had to speak now, then something exceptional needed saying.

  Jerod straightened. “I am Karl, son of Henekh, son of Dragor, warlord of Teher of the Volkhydran nation—and if I want to interrupt you, Xareff, I will. If you don’t like that, pick five of your best men.”

  He turned his head to the right and spat on the green carpet.

  The Duke leaned back and looked Jerod up and down, his jaw open and his lips closed. He transformed from angry to shrewd in a moment, and Xinto from shrewd to irritated just as quickly.

  “I apologize for not introducing—” Xinto began.

  The Duke waved the Scitai off, his eyes never leaving the Volkhydran. Jahunga couldn’t decide if Xareff was considering hostages or guest accommodations.

  “Your father seeks you,” Xareff said, finally, “no less seriously than the Emperor seeks these.”

  “My countrymen come here,” Jerod informed him, “and I’m sure they’ve marked me. If I don’t walk back out of this palace, rest assured you will meet many—”

  “Yes, yes,” the Duke said. “Volkhydrans love a good fight more than a good thought. I have no desire to alienate your father, although rest assured he will be hearing from me.”

  Jerod nodded. Xinto stepped between the two of them, trying to ease back into the conversation. “If we can speak of the Emperor for just a moment—” he began.

  But the Duke had finished with them. “You will have no trouble with the Emperor from me,” he said, “but know—you are marked, all of you. The Emperor has put great stock into obtaining Xinto of the Woods, and a woman called Raven, and an Uman-Chi woman. He has made it clear they are enemies of the Eldadorian nation, as are any who travel with them.

  “And you,” the Duke said, looking directly at Nina of the Aschire, “are known to me. The Emperor would not like to know you are keeping this company, and rest assured he will.”

  Nina nodded, and they were dismissed. Walking back down the green carpet to the throne room doors, armed Men waited ready with their weapons drawn to escort them from the palace.

  “Well, aren’t you a chirpy little bird,” Xinto hissed at Jerod as they walked.

  “Kept you alive,” Jerod countered.

  “You know, we Scitai have a saying about Men—”

  “Make sure it’s the last thing you ever want to say, before you speak it,” Jerod said, not looking down.

  Jahunga chuckled. His heart warmed with his love for these people and their ways.

  * * *

  “That couldn’t have been what you hoped to accomplish,” Nina said, a smirky smile on her face, sitting in a crappy little bar, on a dirty wharf, in what had to be the part of town where fish were gutted and then pissed on.

  They all sat around a table, circular—not a board like in the Eldadorian hostel. Tucked away in a corner, Xinto on a stool and Nina trapped with her back to the wall, a Toorian on either side, Raven leaned back and watched the play, a beer mug in her hand.

  “Well, I didn’t know I would have such good help,” Xinto complained, sucking the foam from his m
ustache, a wooden mug in his hand as well.

  “Be glad you did,” Jerod countered him. “Because Xareff was going to put you in a cell and send to Vrekk for Wolf Soldiers.”

  “You don’t know that,” Xinto said.

  “He is probably right,” Jahunga said. They all looked at him. Jahunga didn’t say a lot, which got him a lot more attention when he did speak.

  “We Toorians know the Duke of Thieves,” he continued, and one of his men nodded. “He doesn’t negotiate unless he can’t take what he wants.”

  “And he sure as Life’s nipples had us,” Jerod said, drinking mead from a bowl.

  “I still don’t know why he let us go,” Raven said. This had been bugging her. Since she had woken up on the plains, and confessed to Nina she knew the answer to what Nina called ‘the ultimate truth,’ Xinto had been looking at and acting differently with Jerod, and she hadn’t been able to figure out why.

  Now he turned out to be some kind of warlord? That made no sense.

  “Jerod’s father is the most important man in Teher, which is a Volkhydran city on the border with Conflu,” Xinto said.

  “My father wouldn’t sit by while some Koran trash put his son in a dungeon,” Jerod added, looking into this mug.

  “The Volkhydran people are quick to war,” Xinto conceded.

  “And he just took your word for it?” Raven didn’t believe it. “Why couldn’t anyone just say—”

  “No one would just say they were Karl Henekhson,” Xinto said, and took another drink of beer.

  Jerod just kept looking down, saying nothing. Raven looked from face to face, and no one would meet here eyes.

  “You know about the Battle of Tamaran Glen?” Nina asked her, finally.

  Raven nodded. Shela had told her about it.

  “You know about the Hero of Tamara, then?” Nina asked her.

  “Some legendary warrior or something who turned the battle with the Wolf Soldiers,” Raven said, dismissively. She really didn’t believe it—every battle story that one hero that it turned on.

  Jahunga laughed. “Even in Toor we know about Karl, son of Henekh,” he said.