by Robert Brady
Wow, they must have thought. There is the brilliant plan of the strategist who out-maneuvered the Uman-Chi.
I saw the frowns that said I was likely right.
I turned my head to the Duke of Hydrus, Evleck Rhor. A former court baron, he wasn’t my best and brightest, but he was who I had left. He dressed more like Hectar used to, in the latest fashions in order to look his best. He’d come here in a crushed velvet, green cape, bearing a rapier on his hip which I’m sure he would have killed himself with, were he to draw it. My general in Lupha actually did most of the heavy lifting for him.
“Your Grace,” I addressed him, “how goes the trade in your city?”
He looked sideways at that general, Daharef, sitting next to him, then stood to address me. “We do mightily well, your Imperial Majesty,” he informed me. “I don’t have actual numbers…”
The general stood. He had replaced Sammin over a decade ago in the Eldadorian Regulars, of the race of Men, a brawny warrior with a long, grey moustache curled at the end, no hair on his head and gigantic ears. He dressed in Eldadorian green with the usual sleeves and greaves of command, a broadsword over his back with a well-worn handle. I acknowledged him. “Our coffers are filling, even though we pay our own troops with our own coin,” he said. “We’ve gotten mutual support agreements that you wanted from Ulef, Teher and Alun that you wanted, and with those came a supply train we’ve exploited.”
Both sat. It was pretty clear who was calling the shots and who was sleeping in late in Lupha.
I turned to the Duke of Lupha, Glennen’s youngest son, Terran. Nearly twenty now, he was a good two inches shorter than the thinner Tartan, but stockier and more of an image of his father. He wore his hair long like mine, with a silver circlet holding it back, a ruby the size of a thumbnail in the center of it. He wore plain, brown clothes, much like his father, but kept a rapier in a purple sash on his hip, making me think more of his mother, who loved that color.
I met his brown eyes. “Your Grace?” I asked him.
“Gharf Bendenson left us a vault full of gold,” he said, referring to the former, Volkhydran King who had ruled his city. “We’ve already doubled it. We sold the Andaron horses that we didn’t need, and gifted the larger ones to some of our outlying farmers. With more horses, goods travelled faster during the War months and the Volkhydran harvest added to the Sentalan.”
“Now we shall invest that wealth,” I said. “Staying clear of Vol, we’ll go to the cities and the hamlets in the center of Volkhydro, and we will invest in their goods.”
Daharef stood and I acknowledged him. “Doing so,” he said, “we’ll put taxes in the coffers that Bendenson needs to fund his army.”
“Not,” I countered, “if he can’t collect them. And we will offer tax amnesty to any city, any hamlet, that will fly the Eldadorian flag and announce for me as their Emperor.”
“Tax… amnesty?” Daharef asked. Clearly there was no such term in the language of Men.
“Forgiveness,” I said. “The Volkhydran state collects taxes on money made in the past year, yes?”
He nodded, others as well. Terran started to smile.
“Those are Volkhydran taxes,” I said. “We will make no claim to them.
“We will only tax them for their next harvest, while they’re Eldadorians.”
Daharef squinted his eyes. “So they’ll keep their earnings.”
I nodded. “See what they think of the Eldadorian state after that,” I said.
Like most feudal states, Volkhydro took as much as half of all earnings. Keeping that would be huge to the local dukes and earls. Afterward, they’d be paying our regular fifteen percent. Volkhydro had never been able to make that work – most likely because they never intended it to be permanent, and their people knew it. People took the extra earnings, be they royals or commons, and kept it hidden for a rainy day. They didn’t get the investment kick because they had no banking system.
“As well,” I said. “We’ll be bringing in the Bank of Eldador, and we’ll make loans, but only to Eldadorian citizens.”
Terran stood while Daharef sat. “So then they can take advantage of Tartan’s plan for investment lending?” he asked, without waiting to be acknowledged.
I chalked that up to being excited. It was just as likely that he wanted the rest of us to know that plan, very popular with the commons who needed to rebuild after the invasion by Conflu, wasn’t my idea.
Terran was never in the running to be the King of Eldador, however he was very supportive of his brother and, from years spent with him, had a lot of sympathy for the people who blamed his father’s drinking problems on me.
Shela had said “I carved my future from a keg of mead.” It wasn’t her belief, but others shared it. She looked sideways at Terran now.
“Yes,” I said to the Duke, “you are acknowledged.” There was a chuckle from the rest of the room.
“And yes,” I added, “your brother’s brilliant plan, so typical of his mind, will benefit Eldadorians here, but not Volkhydrans, and steps must be taken to ensure that one common cannot become an Eldadorian, and then take loans on behalf of Volkhydrans.”
“Such loans would be difficult to collect on,” Terran agreed.
“That one person might finance a dozen others, and default,” I said. “It could cripple our bank.”
More nodding. The general stationed in Hydrus, an Uman with long, white hair named Jerrain Jar, stood for recognition.
The meeting went on and on for hours. They had come in very excited for more battles and fame. There was no glory in brilliant financial plans that converted people to our way without a fight.
There was no glory in being defeated, either. This sidestepped the idea of resistance, of .hard points to overcome (if we could find them) and a counter-strategy from either the Volkhydran King or his Trenboni allies.
While there was no glory here, there was no glory in fighting it, either. No one made an impassioned decision about his finances, he simply made the decision best for him.
Gharf Bendenson would emerge from his city and not even know what fight he had lost.
Chapter Seven
The Last Campaign
On the next cold morning we departed at dawn for the north of Volkhydro, into a nation where the winter winds blew cold over the peaks of the Great Northern mountain range. The center of Volkhydro was hilly with sparse trees and several hamlets, but rarely a town large enough to house fifty-three on horseback.
On top of this, Angadorian Knights flying the wolf’s head banner of the House of Mordetur stuck out like a sore thumb and caused chatter for daheeri in any direction. Sticking to the well-worn roads at this time of year meant moving diagonally or even directly east or west when we wanted to move north, and added days to our trip.
The alternative was to move straight through uncut terrain, risking invading someone’s holdings or, worse, endangering our horses, which could step into a burrow or turn a fetlock trying to descend a loose hill. The wind was brutal on our armor and hard on our hands.
Blizzard was from even farther north and relished the cold weather. The Angadorian breed came from a part of Eldador that bordered Toor, and were not. We found ourselves manufacturing blankets for them for the night, when we picketed them in what trees we could find for some protection.
The Angadorians, as well, were more used to a southern clime, and Shela was kept busy healing colds and wind burn. Within a week on the road all of our troops were covering their faces with bandanas and complaining when they didn’t think I could hear them.
Before I came here, I’d been a petty officer in the Navy. I always heard them.
After the first week, we dressed four of the Knights as Volkhydran warriors on horseback and sent them out in advance with Karel to scout ahead of us for some sign of my kids. A smallish family was going to have a pretty easy time concealing itself in the center of a nation also of Men; a gigantic black stallion ridden by an old man the size of the Emper
or, as well as two Andaron women, one with a distinctive staff, were harder to disguise. Karel looked not only for these signs, but the things people would see if they were hiding them, such as a cart hauling goods when the trading season had ended, and a group with a man that held back, where he could see from the horizon what was going on.
As well as any use of magic, especially of healing magic, in Volkhydro, where spell casters were rare.
It was another week before that bore fruit.
We were between Alun and Kendo, travelling up the middle of Volkhydro on the first day of Law. The hills were rougher here, the terrain less used for farming and the roads less warn. The cold wind chapped the land and could burn exposed skin, even this early in the year. In another month and one hundred more daheeri the temperatures would sink below freezing and stay there, even during the brightest part of the day. The people who grew up here were tough if they survived. The Volkhydrans from here, like Nantar, were among the toughest.
Pushing north, we saw the scouting party, Karel on Trickery and four Angadorian Knights, trotting back. Another thing to be careful of here was not to push your horse too hard. If it were to sweat, it could really suffer.
“There’s a settlement just north of here,” Karel informed me. “Almost a city.”
“That’s not on any map,” I informed him. The lieutenant in charge of the Angadorians, seated next to me on a roan stallion, nodded.
“It’s not on any map because it’s not supposed to be here,” Karel informed me. “At first I thought that the King of Volkhydro might be staging a reinvasion force for a retaliatory strike against your army, but there aren’t enough armed warriors. It’s a whole city, filled with Volkhydrans and Andarons, with buildings made of wood and stone. You’d normally need a year to build so much – they had help.”
I nodded. Andarons in Volkhydro, help with the building – this was what we were looking for.
“Resistance?” I asked him.
Karel shrugged. “Not that I saw, but Andarons usually aren’t seen until they’re ready to act.”
I had to agree with that.
We reformed with myself, Karel and Shela out front with our standard bearer. We marched in four across and 13 ranks deep, a train of heavily armed warriors coming in from the south.
That brought the attention of a dozen armed warriors on foot, Andarons and Volkhydrans both. The Andarons were dressed in heavier furs than they’d be wearing in their homeland.
“Has your Empire come so far?” one asked me. He was a big, hairy Volkhydran of the Volkhan side. Grey streaked his brown hair.
“Not the Empire, just the Emperor,” I said. “We need a place to take refuge for the night. Can you accommodate us?”
“Will you kill us all if we don’t?” one of the Andarons asked.
I guess it was a fair question.
“You can turn us away and we’ll move on,” I informed him. “We’ve been cold on the road for weeks. Another night won’t hurt us.”
They exchanged glances. “There’s a windbreak on the other side of the city,” they informed us. “You can put up your horses and they’ll find forage. Your tents should be warm enough for you there.”
I nodded and thanked him. They stood aside and we marched through the town.
We saw a lot of stone homes with wooden roofs, an actual bar and people moving around between the buildings. I saw what was most likely a storehouse, a common place for their food to be stored, at the center of the town.
An old style collective, no different than the pilgrims used when they came to America.
Any New Englander would know about that.
The Angadorian Knights were familiar with my jess doonar. We built a smaller one. We dug our barricades from the cold, hard ground and we billeted our tents. We collected our horses to the rear and we identified a second way out.
When it was all done, the night had come and the temperature dropped. I established one third of our number to the night guard and went into the town with the rest.
Their central inn was lit for the inside. It was a three story building, the first floor of stone. A balcony on the second floor overhung the street and there were doors and windows on it that were shuttered closed. Light blazed from chinks in the shutters on the first floor, and from a few shuttered windows on the second and third.
We stepped up onto a porch and entered through the front double doors. About twenty heads turned, both male and female, Andaron and Volkhydran. There were round tables and wooden chairs throughout the first floor, a single room with two stair cases, one on either side, leading to the second floor. The ceiling was high and sported two chandeliers.
One woman stood, wrapped in furs. She was short, barely five feet, and her long, black hair hung shaggy past her shoulders. I could see the swell of her belly under her shaggy wolf skins.
I nodded to her. “Raven,” I said, using the name she’d adopted since coming here.
She nodded back. I’d seen her last in the month of Earth, I think. Her body hadn’t aged much, but her eyes had.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” she said. “You’re welcome here, especially since I can’t stop you. Please, sit.”
I told the lieutenant to cut the warriors loose for liberty. Ten remained near me as a personal guard. Raven sat down at her table with a Volkhydran warrior, an older, heavyset fellow with an axe slung over his back. He had long, grey hair and crumbs in his wiry beard. He kept his eyes on me as Shela and I approached their table and sat down.
He definitely wasn’t Karl Henekhson, and there was no way he was the Mountain or, as he called himself now, Jack. I looked around the room as I seated myself and didn’t see anyone who looked familiar, Volkhydran or Andaron.
“My lady,” she said to Shela.
Shela smiled a whisper of a smile as she sat. If she’d hurt anyone, it was my wife. I think Shela had really counted on finding a friend in Raven.
After she sat, Shela asked, in the language of Men, “When are you due?”
Raven looked down and cupped the underside of her belly. “You know,” she said, “I’m not sure. In fact, I thought you might tell me?”
Shela focused her eyes on Raven’s belly as the younger woman straightened. As a trained shaman for her tribe, I doubt she actually needed her magic for this.
“I would say, ‘You’re ready soon,’” my wife said. “Later in Power, more likely early in Desire.”
In Fovea, women of the race of Men tended to be pregnant for a sound 10 months. I can’t say that corresponds to the women I grew up with – just that it is 280 days. That put the time of conception for her in the month of Eveave, around when I met her and Jack.
I could see the surprise on Raven’s face as she did the math as well.
The warrior seated next to her looked sideways but said nothing. I had no idea where this guy had come from, but I wondered now if she’d met someone while opposing us, while Jack had come back to support Vulpe, and thought perhaps he was the father.
“Um, thank you,” Raven said.
Shela inclined her head. We had the attention of most of the room’s inhabitants. The Angadorian Knights had pulled a couple tables together and were ordering ale. The soil in Volkhydro didn’t produce a good wine and ale and beer were common here. If the harvest was good, then there’d likely be plenty of it this early in the season.
If this was some kind of self-sustaining commune, then maybe not.
“What is this place?” I asked Raven. “It isn’t on any map – at least, not any of mine.”
Raven smiled. “It’s been here a long time, supposedly,” she said. “I came across it when I was outrunning your mercenaries, right after they killed my man and my dog.”
“Your – Jack is dead?” I asked.
“Jack?” she asked. “Jack is with Vulpe and your troops.”
I shook my head. “No, Jack left us with a Druid girl,” I said. Shela reached out and touched the top of my hand.
Why give inform
ation to the enemy?
If Raven caught it, she didn’t indicate that she cared. “A Druid – Vedeen?”
“You know Vedeen?” I asked.
She nodded. “We met her in the Lone Wood,” Raven said. “We thought at first that she was the One who Fought as does the Sun, but she wasn’t. She thought of herself as some kind of conscientious objector, observing what the rest of us did.”
I had the same impression from her, but I didn’t say anything.
“Why did Jack take off with Vedeen?” she pressed me.
Because I was going to kill her? I wasn’t about to say that and give up any moral high ground I might still have.
I shrugged. “Jack seemed happy with Vulpe, then he left with Vedeen,” I told her. I know that Raven had some magic now – if she could do a truth saying, then that wouldn’t help her.
“Is that who you’re looking for now?” she asked, quite frankly, “or are you here for me?”
Again, no reaction from the warrior next to her.
Should I tell her I was looking for my kids? We were pretty sure that they were with Jack – if she was this uninformed, then she clearly wasn’t working with him, unless her acting skills had become a lot better in nine months.
I doubted that she could help us, but I was certain she could hurt us. If she was worried that I would take her into custody, then she’d likely go pretty far to avoid that.
Better to make her actions productive.
“Did you know that Shela was taken into custody when she was pregnant with Vulpe?” I asked her.
Raven’s eyebrows rose. “No,” she said. “I did not.”
“By the Uman-Chi,” she said. “An unborn baby’s life is sacred to them. While I was pregnant, they could raise no hand against me, or restrict me with any spell. They treated me as well as I could imagine, without giving me freedom or access to what I’d have needed to escape.”
Shela picked up on my lead pretty fast.
“So, being pregnant, let’s consider you sacred, at least for now,” I said.
She nodded.
