Semper Indomitus: Book Five of the Fovean Chronicles

by Robert Brady

  Archers were another matter. Aschire appeared on our battlements to the tune of 100, and they let loose with the deadly accuracy for which they were famous.

  Taken completely by surprised, the Andarons dropped from their horses by the dozens. For a moment I thought they might try to muscle through, but then by groups of five and ten they turned their mounts around and made back for their encampment on the plains outside of the city.

  Three Centuries from my Millennia broke off at a sprint and let the rest have it with spears. Maybe fifty made it back to the main group, and that was generous.

  We gathered up the horses that survived, and we put down the ones that were wounded. The warriors we left on the field.

  Either from an arrow or a spear, most warriors won’t die right away. You’ll bleed a lot and eventually that could end you, but most commonly you take it through the torso and, unless the arrow takes you in the heart, you’ll last quite a while.

  I hated doing this, but I was making a point. I’d done the same thing outside of Chatoos.

  On the 26th, most of those warriors were still alive. A few had crawled back toward the city, more had tried.

  The birds were feasting on the rest.

  Another five hundred came for them at a dead-charge. This time I dispatched a Millennia from both jess doonari, coming at them in a ‘V’, forcing them toward their fallen, whom they could trample or try to save. We were bristling with spears.

  The five hundred pulled up short over a distance of a third of a daheer. That told me what I was suspecting – there was no overall leader here. They were doing what Andarons do: enough of them got together until they felt brave enough to do something, then they did it.

  That fell apart as moods changed. They were looking to and arguing with each other now, as a few riders from the main group rode out fast, probably to tell them to come back before they reduced their numbers again.

  While they did that, my two Millennia inched closer and closer to their lines. In twenty minutes, someone in the group of five hundred noticed and screamed a war cry as a warning to the rest.

  When he did, 2,000 arms pulled back as one and 2000 spears let fly at a gaggle of totally unsuspecting and unprepared Andaron warriors.

  I saw warriors pinned to the ground by their stomachs, pulled off of their horses by the short, light spears we threw. Mine were designed like the Roman ‘pilum,’ half of it a shaft of soft iron, half of it a wooden grip, with a jointed connector designed to break on impact.

  When it hit, it bent. It broke. In other words, it didn’t come back at you in the next volley. If it hit a shield it stuck and made the shield too heavy to use. If it found bone, it bent inside of you and was even harder to remove.

  Half of the horse were out of range, but they saw that big, dark cloud of spears fly up out of the mass of 2,000 warriors, arc in the air and kill their brothers.

  Some charged us, some ran back for the main force. The ones who charged came into the teeth of another volley, then our swords and shields. Our ranks stood 200 across and five warriors deep; the few who made it past our single lines were met by Aschire archers.

  This time I lost warriors, maybe fifty all told, but only 100 made it back to the Andaron lines.

  On top of this, the other tribes, the ones to the south, were watching. They saw our supplies coming in right from the bay with no supply lines to exploit. They saw our jess doonari surrounded by spikes that would ruin their horses on the first charge.

  They saw our Aschire archers, and they didn’t advance.

  On the 27th day of Law, ten ships from Volkhydro pulled in and started shipping in my canine corps.

  I’d bred the closest thing I could find to mastiffs with another breed more like a collie, and come up with a somewhat ugly beast that looked very much like a neopolitan mastiff, but with shaggier hair. Ranging around one hundred thirty pounds or more, they were trained to leap up and knock riders from their saddles. They were trained to believe it was fun, and then they were taught to round up the horses.

  They were actually big, friendly dogs and reasonably smart. It had taken me a while, but I’d invented a dog whistle and, using that, we could collect them all as one, send them out in a charge, send them out collecting horses or recall them.

  Once an armored man was on the ground, my Theran Lancers or my Angadorian Knights would simply run over them. Working together, the canine corps increased the impact of my mounted warriors tenfold.

  I’d used them against Andarons in Volkhydro during the Battle of the Foveans. Those Andarons had used lances, these didn’t. While an Andaron didn’t wear armor, he couldn’t remount a spooked, angry horse, especially if the dogs rounded them up and took them away. As well, Andarons were simply not that formidable on the ground.

  These Andarons, however, would have bows. While they didn’t waste them against the shields my warriors carried, they’d be plenty effective against my dogs.

  I had about five hundred of them unloaded when the Andarons picked my easternmost jess doonar and stormed them, five thousand strong, leaving a little less than half their number to keep the rest of us from taking the city.

  I manned the jess doonar to the farthest east. I had all of our horse, less than 1,000 and mounted up with all of our dogs, taking the long route to the battle, keeping the jess doonar between me and the sitting Andarons and our dogs in close amongst the horse.

  The Andarons ran slashing attacks at the jess doonar – sweeping in, firing arrows from horseback while our warriors hid behind barricades and shields and our archers, my Regulars and our Aschire, fought back. The Andarons were arcing their shots high, dropping arrows within the confines of our ‘small city,’ looking for unprepared targets and finding them. Our archers were more direct, but on moving targets.

  I was waiting for the rumble from the south that said that the other tribes were engaging. If that happened, this could go either way.

  We rounded the third jess doonar and I called the charge, riding Blizzard in his full barding, a lance in my left hand and the sword of War in my right. More than 1,000 from the attacking Andarons peeled off to meet us and to protect the mainstay of their force from our charge.

  I waited as the distance between us rapidly shrank. A few arrows flew out from their mass, but we were in full charge and the Andarons needed to match us or be overwhelmed.

  Five hundred yard, four hundred, three; the thunder of hooves and the war cries of angry Andarons echoed from the city walls.

  Less than 100 yards, less than fifty, less than twenty. Blizzard’s breathing was like a roar.

  Our lances lowered, and I blew the attack signal to the dogs.

  Out from our midst they swarmed like a big, grey mass. Some bore leather jackets and most bore spiked collars. The charged out from amongst us and went right for the Andaron riders.

  The surprised looks told me that none of these were veterans of the battle to the north. My canines leaped out and knocked rider after rider from their mounts, avoiding scimitars and some few arrows. I think more Andarons hit each others’ horses than my dogs.

  When they were half way through the enemy, I blew the herding call. The dogs broke out from the midst of the Andarons and my lancers engaged.

  We were mostly riding Andaron horses, which are fast and light and not used to lancing. We’d been able to practice a little, but it takes as long as a year to teach a horse to do this properly.

  Horses shied when lances broke and when men were knocked from saddles and ridden down. Horses used to scimitar-to-scimitar combat didn’t like a big stick being waved to one side of them and wanted to turn from it. We passed through the mass of riderless horses and into the surprised warriors behind, meeting out punishment from feet away and passing through their numbers. My own lance was left in the middle of a young Andaron whom I barely saw, and the Sword of War cleaved the head from another.

  We passed through their ranks and, as one, we wheeled our horses to the left.

  Hor
sed and unhorsed Andarons were scrambling to turn and meet us, seeking their own horses, cursing the dogs that were driving them away, when we renewed our charge and swept in again, this time mostly with swords, against a completely unprepared enemy.

  On the second pass, almost none of them survived. Those that did ran for the south, not the army outside of the city. Now we had hundreds more horses, and the force trying to take my jess doonar had lost more than 20% of their numbers.

  They broke off, back for their main army. I retreated back to my jess doonar, leaving the dogs and the horses here. The dog handlers were already moving the rest of the canines and our own troops were collecting men and dogs from the field.

  I don’t think I lost twenty canines. I also didn’t think I’d get that lucky again.

  That night, I was informed that three chieftains from the army on the plains between my troops and Talen wanted to talk terms.

  ***

  We marched into Talen, now Lupen, on the first day of Order. The local chieftain / city leader was supposed to meet us at the city gate, but instead he bailed in a small, Volkhydran skiff with as much of his wealth and his family as he could carry. Talen’s walls were around ten feet high with flat platforms behind them, much like Thera. It had a good deal more solid armament pointed toward the Aschire, and a large bazaar at the sea port, where they did a great trade in ship building. A lot of Confluni lumber flowed into here, so I could guess where the evacuating family went.

  We marched in through an open gate in our armor, Eldadorian Regulars marching ten across, Millennium after Millennium, after our horse.

  If the tribes had attacked us en masse, I’m pretty sure they could have taken us. At last count there were 5,000 to the south, and the number growing. My reinforcements were days away and had to be ported in. Their problem wasn’t in their numbers or their determination, it was in their inability to organize.

  This war would end that.

  Talen really didn’t have a palace like Charancor, but then Talen had never been an Outpost. I wasn’t taking it for its treasure trove or for its tactical position, I was taking it to be thorough.

  What served for an official residence here was a long, two-story house with a meeting room and a raised dais on the main floor, and living quarters above it. It wasn’t uncommon for the homeless to come here at night and sleep under a roof when it was raining. Once again, I installed Daggonin as my local, military regent and then made plans to bring a couple palace barons from Galnesh Eldador here to take over from him as Earls.

  I spent a week settling here, just like I did in Charancor. Just like there, people weren’t real happy about the name of the city changing, but Talen was so much like and Eldadorian city there wasn’t too much to worry about or reorganize. We passed an edict that beads were no longer a coin of the realm, and I almost declared that the Bank of Eldador would have an official office here before I realized that they already had one.

  During that time I was informed by Thorn in Hydrus that the settling of the Volkhydran coast was going according to plan, that the palace barons from Eldador had shown up there, in Lupha and in Medya, and that he was leaving to come home.

  Thorn being Thorn, he delivered that message himself.

  We sat together in the official long house (for lack of anything else to call it), torches lighting the rafters and a gaggle of semi-important Andarons seated throughout the place. This was the first time I’d seen anything that was like a throne room here, that wasn’t patterned after the Cheyak model. He sat on a blanket on the floor, I sat on the top of the dais, on another blanket.

  “So you’re sending your armies home?” he asked me.

  There was the rub. Home didn’t have enough food as it was, and apparently House Stowe was making a killing importing Sentalan grain. It was straining the coffers to feed the existing army of 50,000 in Uman City, and I really didn’t need to add to it.

  “I may leave them here,” I said. The sour-faced Andaron shook his head.

  “If you leave another big army in Andoron,” he said, “the people will unite against it. They will believe that in the spring you’ll march south and push them into Slee Nation. Most believe that you hate Andoron and that you plan to do away with it.”

  Nothing could be father from the truth, but Karel of Stone had already briefed me on why I’d made people believe it.

  “To use one of your expressions,” Karel said, from the other side of the dais, “those people are pretty pissed.”

  Of course I had no idea that Karel was here and I hadn’t invited him, but when did that ever stop him?

  I turned to Grak, whom I had invited. “Do you have that scroll tube I gave you, from Charancor?” I asked him.

  He did and I took it for him. I moved down to the bottom of the dais and, sitting on its lowest step, I spread it out on the floor so that the rest could see it.

  “My daughter created this,” I said.

  “Lee?” Thorn asked. I nodded. I’d already informed him as to what had happened with her, as much as I knew.

  Karel’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. His blue eyes found mine in the gloom of the long house.

  “That’s a map of Conflu,” he said.

  “It is,” I agreed.

  “No one has a map of Conflu,” he said.

  Again, I agreed with him.

  He looked and shook his head. I was sure he was memorizing it as best he could.

  “I’ll let you have it to copy,” I said, “if you’re going to give it back.”

  He nodded and reached for it. I stayed his hand.

  “Do you know what this map is showing us?” I asked him.

  Karel was silent, so was Thorn. Suddenly Grak, of all people perked up.

  “A back door into Conflu,” he said. “One that they don’t know we have.”

  I nodded.

  Thorn looked up from the map at me.

  “If you offered the Andaron people a chance to strike back at the Confluni,” he said. “I think you could convince them that the issue with the horse was a misunderstanding.”

  Imagine that, I thought. Fifty thousand Eldadorian Regulars with a couple thousand Andaron horse, trained as lancers, taking a city named ‘Jeng Chao,’ which, according to the Wolf Soldier whom Lee had confided in, was the likely home of the royal family, and hence the capitol.

  I nodded. “Can you tell the people?” I asked him.

  He nodded. Karel took the map and rolled it back up, then reached for the tube.

  “I’ll bring a copy of this to Lupparan, in Dorkan,” he said. “Arath is going to want to see it, and he’s going to want to hear about this plan.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more. We talked more until the sun went down, then we set up a Wolf Soldier guard and slept out the night.

  My dreams were of Shela, but they always were.

  ***

  On the morning of the Eighth of Order the dawn saw frost on the grass, and I could see my breath in the air. I woke up stiff, and I was informed that three Trenboni Tech Ships had pulled into the harbor under the banner of the Fovean High Council.

  I collected my three Wolf Soldier wizards and met them in the long house. Of course, they’d decided to send friggin’ Aniquen again, this time with a couple Uman lackies.

  He entered and bowed low, glancing to left and right and turning his head so that I would know that he was doing it. He was clearly trying to show what standards he believed I was keeping now.

  I sat on a blanket at the top of the dais and waited for him to speak.

  “Your Imperial Majesty,” he said, bowing low, “or should I refer you as the war lord of the Wolf Riders?”

  “Whichever suits you,” I said. It occurred to me right then that I could actually call this an Andaron civil war again, as I had in the past, and then declare it over, because my tribe now controlled these two cities.

  Would make it a little hard to explain both why not one of my Wolf Riders was involved in the fighting, and
what the Regulars were doing here, but hind sight is what it is.

  “You realize, of course,” he said, “that you are officially in violation of the rules of the Fovean High Council?”

  I shrugged. “Suppose I am.”

  “Then I am entirely within my rights to take you into custody,” he added.

  I smiled.

  “That would be amusing,” I told him.

  “So you shall not, in fact,” he said, “come with me willingly?”

  “I don’t have the power of precognition,” I informed him, “but I don’t foresee it, regardless.”

  “Do you really want to meet the combined Fovean armies in the spring?” he asked me.

  “Combined from where?” I asked him. “Specifically where do you think these armies will come from, and where do you think they will go?”

  “You’ve become overconfident, your Imperial Majesty,” Aniquen informed me, with that cockiness that young guys tend to have, much as he was likely more than 10 times my age. “You’ve conquered greatly, but what can you hold? You’ve a strength of warriors here, but can you repel the supported armies of Conflu at the Safe River? And if you do, what shall you do against another out of Sental?”

  I shook my head. “Both will have to cross a river,” I informed him. “Best of luck with that. March as many troops as you want across a river-mouth where my Sea Wolves can meet you with Eldadorian Fire.”

  Aniquen’s eyebrows rose. “You would use your deadliest weapons against simple soldiers?” he asked.

  “I would win, if attacked,” I countered. I leaned forward and I added, “Let me tell you something wise, Aniquen: in a war, coming in second, for any reason, isn’t good enough.”

  “In that time,” he said, “the Trenboni Navy will be back to its full strength. Would you face that?”

  “I have before,” I informed him. “It went pretty well for me.”

  “Not the last time,” he said with that same, smug smile.

  Earlier this year, Trenbon met my Wolf Soldiers and managed for the first time to sink more than they lost before they retreated. They called it my first military defeat. That bugged me, and if I’d known they were going to do that, I’d have ordered the fleet to follow them back to wharves of Outpost IX.