Semper Indomitus: Book Five of the Fovean Chronicles

by Robert Brady

  My warriors really hated to ride with me, for the simple purpose that Blizzard needed to fully stretch his legs, and that made me impossible to guard. In fact, if they could, my riders would form a giant circle, daheeri across, around me, and then I could give Blizzard’s legs a stretch within their moving ring. Of course, that also meant that we would find out we were under attack when they started dying, so it didn’t make for a much better plan.

  Despite what you might have read, most people want to stay alive for as long as possible.

  We’d been out for three days when a tribe of Andarons popped up in front of our moving ring. Rather than engage them, our front guard spun their horses and ran as fast as they dared back toward me, and all of the other guards came in with them. We were fifty – an Andaron tribe could be ten or hundreds, depending on the tribe.

  However, they’d stood up to let us see them, meaning they weren’t here for a fight. Those among my Wolf Soldiers who were Andaron (I usually picked them for my cavalry) had already started to slow, seeing what I saw.

  The tribe was the Long Manes, Thorn’s people. They’d stood against us in Charancor.

  Both of my daughters wore beads in their clothes that attached them to that tribe.

  I slowed Blizzard to a walk and approached them warily, at the head of my warriors, just as a chieftain would ride at the head of his people. The sun was high in the sky on a hot day when we finally came face-to-face.

  “Saeyo,” I said to their war lord, in their own language. He was a heavyset warrior in his mid 30’s, the veins standing out on his bare arms, his long black hair down past his shoulders and his mustachios past his jaw. This wasn’t his first time to the fair.

  He nodded and didn’t greet me. Showing that kind of disrespect meant a lot between the tribes, and technically I led the Waya Agiladia, the Wolf Riders.

  “Shall we just fight?” I asked him, looking him right in the eye.

  “I didn’t think you fought when your woman wasn’t there to protect you,” he answered me.

  My heels dug into Blizzard’s heels and the stallion leapt forward. The surprise on the other man’s face was obvious as he scrambled for his sword.

  I wasn’t taking that sort of crap off of anyone. Clearly he had more warriors where I couldn’t see them, however taking him out of the equation would change that pretty fast.

  He had his scimitar out in time for me to shatter it with my own blade, then I wheeled Blizzard around for a second pass. His horse turned to face us without him touching the reins, and one of his warriors tossed him another sword.

  Normally they wouldn’t do that. Every man fought their own fight, as a manner of honor. They’d decided that there was no honor here. I was to be gotten rid of if they could.

  This made zero sense, and I pulled Blizzard up short, just out of where we could reach each other.

  “You have no honor,” I told him. “You aren’t worth killing.”

  A couple of his warriors screamed out their outrage at the insult. That was a bad one, but this was exactly how they were treating me.

  “We come only to take back the sorceress and her sister,” the chieftain informed me, “and the daughters of Nantar, who is your friend. That is our honor, not you.”

  So my other daughters, and Nantar’s, hadn’t gone back to their tribe. That was both interesting and really unexpected.

  Especially Nantar’s daughters. They were tom-boys, but they were obedient to their dad.

  “The four of them left on the day we took Chatoos, which is now Charancor,” I told them. “I thought they went back to you.”

  I was sure that wasn’t what they wanted to hear, and if they were going to attack, it would happen now. There was a sign language that went along with Andaron, and if he lifted his hand, pinky up, he was telling his archers to fire on us.

  I wasn’t about to have the lot of us pin-cushioned because this clown felt like I didn’t belong here.

  “You should leave,” I told him, “or get out of our way.”

  He frowned. Behind me, horses were shuffling, sensing their riders’ tension. Mostly Andaron, they knew exactly what was going on.

  With a war whoop, the chieftain turned his horse and galloped toward Talen, his warriors with him. Nothing flew out of the plains at us. As lucky as I could be, I was – I’d received some valuable information and was still alive to tell it.

  I caught up to the first Millennium under Daggonin on the fifteenth day of Law. You could see Talen on the eastern horizon and our warriors stretching back to the west when we decided to call it a day.

  We’d replaced my command pavilion with another one from Eldador by this point, and my generals, including Groff’s son, Grak, had followed me in from the second Millennium. Generals don’t usually like being on the front lines, but no one wants to tag behind the Emperor, where it’s safe.

  Grak was tall and thin like his father, though a little more muscular from having campaigned with me for a few years. His brown hair was a little grey and hung down past his shoulders. Where most of my officers preferred a broad sword, he carried a rapier.

  “You know,” he told me, as we sat on the ground around a camp fire, eating a stew that one of the camp followers had made for us, “all anyone is talking about among the ranks is how many illegitimate kids you have.”

  Grak could be too familiar. He wasn’t a stalwart like Groff, but instead seemed to consider me one of his buddies. I put up with that because he came up with information like this, which I needed to know.

  “Really?” I asked him.

  He nodded. We ate the stew from wooden bowls, using bread torn from a loaf to sop up the broth and meat and vegetable chunks rather than a spoon. Because the men ate bread anyway, that saved us a fortune, because we didn’t have to provide cutlery.

  Little things add up to big differences when you’re campaigning.

  Little things like, “How many of the warriors are claiming they’re my kids?” which is what I asked Grak next.

  “Surprising few,” he said, and took a mouthful. He added, “Some mothers are going to answer some questions when this army returns home,” around it.

  I couldn’t hold back a smile.

  “Other than that,” Daggonin said, from the other side of the fire, “the troops are ready, morale is good.”

  “No one doesn’t expect us to overrun Talen,” Varell, another of my generals, said. He was a Volkhydran from the Hydran side. He’d sprinted up through the ranks on coming here from Volkhydro. He was brown-eyed and grey-and-brown haired like Grak, but more reserved and more serious.

  “That includes the people already in Talen,” I said, “and don’t discount that. We’ve got this city pinned against the Aschire and the southern tribes – they have nowhere to go.”

  “Those shipyards have been building for Eldador for years,” Grak said. “They’re more Eldadorian than they are Andaron. You’re more likely to have an Eldadorian Tabaar in your pocket that a string of Andaron beads.”

  “So you’re thinking they might listen to the ‘join the Empire before the Empire enjoins you,’ argument?” I asked.

  “I think we should give them the option,” Varell said. “Maybe send in some of our Andaron troops –“

  I shook my head. “You’d think that would work, but when an Andaron goes into Talen, the first thing he’s going to be asked is, ‘What tribe are you from,’ and if he lies about it, someone from the tribe is going to find out about it, and then he’s in real trouble.”

  It was in the nature of Andarons to talk to each other all the time, passing on and improving their oral tradition. ‘I just met someone from your tribe named’ was going to come up, and fast.

  In fact, I had Karel of Stone and his spy network working the city since my plans changed in Destruction’s month. I wanted the common people thinking that it was better to be an Eldadorian than an Andaron on their own, before we came here and brought up any feelings of nationalism.

  We’d know
if it worked tomorrow.

  Chapter Four

  A City Named Lupen

  Waking up in the morning to see a line of Andaron tribesmen on their horses between my troops and Talen wasn’t as big of a surprise as I might have thought.

  If the tribes had addressed my warriors Millennium by Millennium rather than all in a mass at Chatoos, they might have held the city, or at least made a better showing of themselves. In fact, I would have just staged farther from the city and marched the whole mass in from that staging, to the same effect. But they didn’t know that.

  The number of those mounted tribesmen was a bigger surprised. I assumed we’d face no more than 3,000 from the scattered tribes in Chatoos, and they already had three times that now.

  I hadn’t brought my canine corps. I could have them here in a week, but I didn’t think this many were going to wait.

  I found myself looking for Eric, but I didn’t see him. He didn’t have a standard that I knew of, but there really weren’t Andaron standards or pennons. Oddly, the Sure Foot would have a red hand print on their chest before they went to battle. I suppose a red footprint on your chest sent the wrong message.

  “I say we don’t charge them,” Grak informed me.

  I wasn’t much in a mood for joking.

  “Send word back to the Millennia,” I told one of my subordinates. “Rather than marching straight here, I want the next five here, the five after that to our southeast, the next five to their east, and the final four between them and the Aschire.”

  An Eldadorian Regular made a fist over his heart, turned on his heel and trotted off. Fast horses would have the marching orders changed before the end of the day.

  Grak looked at me quizzically.

  “The tribes come from the plains,” I said, “and they go back there to hunt. The city won’t be able to feed that many new warriors for long and, even if they do, the horses will chew the grass down to the dirt in a couple days.”

  “So you hold these here, and you starve them, while you prevent more from coming in to join them?” he said.

  You catch on fast, kid.

  Would that work? We’d build our jess doonar and harass anyone coming either way. Their horses wouldn’t do well against our actual walls.

  Years ago I’d beaten them by circling them and only allowing the ones on the outside of their camp to fight. I’d do that again if I had to, but that got a lot of people killed on both sides. I’d also done it with a lot more mounted warriors than I had now.

  Still, I had a couple more cards to play.

  Our troops completely encircled the land-side of Talen by the 20th day of Law’s month. I had ten Sea Wolves off the coast, turning incoming traffic away. I’d heard from the Aschire and no one was getting in there.

  The land around Talen was nothing but dirt. Talen was providing the warriors and their horses with water, but they didn’t have much in the way of hay reserves, because normally they’d be bringing those in now.

  I’d sent a delegation in to the city but the mounted warriors wouldn’t pass it. That told me that in fact the city was looking to talk ‘deal,’ but the tribes weren’t having it.

  My own planning might have caused this.

  Of course, Grak was hounding me to just engage the enemy now that we were here in full strength. I had my canine corps on the way, but that was actually going to take another week. All of the horse that we had was purchased here, and that meant if I wanted to meet these riders lance-to-lance, then I would have to bring in the Theran Lancers that I’d just returned to Thera.

  Or port Angadorian Knights in through the Aschire, and who knew how that would go?

  A bloody battle might be inevitable, but not if I could get into the city and see how Karel had done. Shela was probably back in Galnesh Eldador by now – I really could have used her.

  The problem was, I had no way in there and no way to contact someone from the Free Legion fast enough to make a difference here. If I took off for Charancor now, it would demoralize the troops and hearten the enemy.

  “You’re in a fine fix,” Karel of Stone said, from behind me.

  I almost skewered him on the Sword of War. We were standing on the plains, outside of one of my jess doonar, looking at the dust around the enemy cavalry.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked him.

  “An angry woman, just like yourself,” he informed me.

  Wow – I really hate Karel of Stone and, if I ever forgot that, he was always there to remind me.

  “How did you get out of Talen?” I asked him. I almost said ‘there,’ but I knew he’d intentionally misinterpret it. He thought that was hilariously funny for some reason.

  “They have guards on the walls,” Karel said, nonchalantly. He stepped up next to me as he spoke. “The guards change, they look away for just a moment, that’s all I need.”

  I’d seen that before. Give him a second and Karel of Stone could remake the world.

  “Any luck in there?” I asked him.

  “With the whole, ‘you’re better off as an Eldadorian’ thing?” he returned, then scowled. “Please. Half of the populace is wearing Eldadorian green so that you don’t slaughter them when you burst through the gates.”

  “So it’s just the tribes?” I pressed him.

  “Oh, yes,” he agreed. “Just around 10,000 hungry, angry, insulted veteran warriors between you and changing another city name to sound like yours.”

  Like I said – I really hate Karel of Stone. However, something he said caught my attention.

  “Insulted?” I asked him.

  “Why insulted?”

  I needed the Swamp Devils out of my way. They were tough as hell, merciless, and they love to fight. If I had to put a Millennium up against 100 Swamp Devils, I’d think twice about it.

  To get rid of them, I put a bounty on their heads. Whoever brought me 10 Swamp Devil horns, matched or unmatched, would be awarded one of Blizzard’s foals.

  Of course, by ‘Blizzard’s foals,’ I meant one of the unridable, unapproachable wrecking machines that he’d sired, and which anyone else would have put down, except that I couldn’t convince myself that it was OK to slaughter an innocent horse.

  Apparently, sometime while I was here conquering Andoron, some unlucky tribesmen actually collected the bounty, and were awarded a stallion that immediately killed one of them.

  With a great deal of effort, they proudly brought it back to their tribe, while all of the other tribesmen returned to their tribes from Toor, through some pretty unfriendly territory.

  That stallion immediately killed that tribe’s existing stallions and took their herd. What’s more, he guarded it from them.

  They had to kill it, and then they had no stallion, a lot fewer warriors, and one less capitol city.

  So, yeah – they were a little miffed over that.

  More importantly, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. There was no miracle, no payoff, no coincidental good act I was going to be able to come up with. Andarons might appreciate a ‘good trick’ where someone traded something of no value for something of high worth, they didn’t appreciate being ripped off.

  There was a difference, and this was it.

  Those troops were not just going to go away. While the Andarons in the city could have cared less about the whole thing, the ones on the plains were pretty riled, and that was a major issue in uniting them.

  Either Thorn or Shela could have given me some more advice, but I don’t think they could have unsaid what Karel had told me. I reconciled myself to having to deal with these tribesmen, and maybe more of them. In this case, a siege wasn’t going to work in my favor, because the longer I stayed here the more tribes I would piss off.

  My plans didn’t call for all-out war with Andoron.

  My canine corps were on the way, but by the 23rd day of Law we started seeing sign to the south that more tribes were gathering and, if those tribes were numerous enough, I could actually end up trapped between two
halves of a superior force, and that could encourage the city to turn against me.

  No, this had to be turned around, and it had to be done in a way that reinforced to the people in the city that their future was with me, not as Andarons. I thought back to the Battle of Tamaran Glen, more than a decade ago, and the march home from what was a pretty significant victory.

  Snipers in the woods throughout Conflu began picking off our soldiers. We rattled the bushes for them, but even when we found them, the sniping continued and morale plummeted. I barely made it away from a military triumph, probably on the actions of fifty warriors.

  So on the 23rd, I sent a message into the Aschire, born by Eldadorian Uman who would have the best chance of going in there and being listened to as my emissaries. The Aschire might be a duchy in Eldador, but its people were by-and-large wild.

  But reliable, and they did not like Andarons.

  On the 24th of Law we were able to ascertain that three major tribes were gathered to our south. They were clearly waiting for more, but they were ready to move. The Sure Foot were among them, though there was no sign of Hungry as a Bull. Likely he’d lost his position.

  On the 25th of Law, just as the sun rose, a swath of mounted warriors peeled off from the main force between us and the city, trying to cut between my eastern-most and southeastern jess doonari. Around 400 strong, the probably wanted to get out fast, coordinate with the tribes to the south and then come back with some portion of those tribes’ supplies.

  I didn’t know for sure because I didn’t ask them – I just know that’s what I would have done. What I did do was to put a whole Millennia of Eldadorian Regulars between them and their goal. While infantry didn’t do well typically against mounted horse, these were packing the same spears we’d used in the Battle of the Foveans, and later to a lesser extent outside of Charancor. If they charged into the teeth of that, they were going to take some pretty heavy losses before they ever engaged.

  Knowing this, they veered to the east, to cut between that Millennia and the nearest jess doonar. No one was going to come running out of one of our ‘small cities,’ and you can only throw a spear so far.