Semper Indomitus: Book Five of the Fovean Chronicles

by Robert Brady

  The sun was sinking to the west, and we were picking our way along a foot path when two women popped up in front of me.”

  “Turn back,” one of them said. She was tall – already taller than Shela, and dressed out in furs, her black hair blowing out behind her. The other, a little shorter, was dressed the same but with longer, blond hair. Both carried spears and were ready to throw, showing up between us and the sun so that we’d have our vision obscured.

  I recognized the voice. “Your father will paddle you if you scratch my armor,” I informed them.

  They hesitated. I straightened and let them see the black question mark, turned upside down on the front of my breast plate.

  “Uncle Lupus?” the blond, Thorna, asked.

  Nanette held her ground. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  Her voice was huskier than the average woman’s. Nanette at twelve was the match of most boys her age, and now at sixteen could probably best most men. No surprise, considering her father.

  I gave them my best scowl. “Whatever I want to do,” I said. “Are you questioning me, young Lady?”

  Nanette took a couple steps closer. I could see the suspicion on her face, in her brown eyes. “If you’re here to find your children – “ she began.

  “I am,” I said, cutting her off.

  She’d been told that they didn’t want to see me, most likely by whoever was trying to brainwash them against me. That wasn’t going to fly.

  “They don’t –“ she began.

  “They will,” I countered.

  “You can’t,” Thorna said.

  “Watch me,” I said.

  Any other warrior would have been engaged by now, but I was a member of the Free Legion, and that made all of the difference. She wasn’t going to throw a spear into the chest of one of her father’s best friends, especially not one who’d held her in his arms, read to her, and tucked her in at night.

  Thorna looked to Nanette for guidance. The wind continued to pull at our hair and clothes. It would be exceedingly cold soon.

  Nanette sighed. “Come,” she said.

  Without waiting for an answer she turned herself and started back along the path we’d been following at a trot, Thorna behind her. We wound between hills and passed several false trails before the path took a dip and we found ourselves at the mouth of a cave complex.

  Several hills formed a circle around a flat, bare patch of dirt and scrag stone. Each of them had an open mouth to a cave, two of them wide open and inviting, a storage for a few horses, goats and sheep. Three more were torch-lit farther in, but were more closed and, if anything, sinister. I dismounted, Shela and Karel with me.

  “You can put up your horses,” Thorna said, pointing at one of the caves. “You’ll find hay and straw.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll be back with grandfather and Vedeen,” Nanette said.

  I let that pass. The kids, Lee and Vulpe, had started calling Jack ‘grandfather’ when they met him. Hard to believe that was earlier this year, for everything that had happened since.

  I walked Blizzard into the overhang – he turned a wary eye to the roof and to the other animals, but didn’t give me trouble as I skinned my saddle and blanket from him and rubbed him down. We found water and hay and set it out for the horses, keeping them far enough apart where one couldn’t claim two piles and guard it.

  Farther back in the cave I saw Little Storm, penned in by a rough fence with his own bedding. He rose when he saw Blizzard and stamped his front hoof a couple times.

  I was deciding if I wanted to move the two stallions father apart when I felt more than heard a presence behind me. I turned and saw Jack.

  He was thinner, and a little greyer, and his beard was longer. He still had that giant falchion I’d given him, slung over his shoulder, and Volkhydran skins to keep him warm. Next to him stood the Druid, Vedeen, also in furs, holding his hand.

  Shela and Karel were already aware of them but hadn’t said anything. I waited for them to speak first, just watching them as they stood there.

  “Welcome,” Vedeen said, finally.

  “Thank you,” Shela responded.

  “I guess you and I have a lot to talk about,” Jack said to me.

  “More than you could imagine,” I answered him.

  “Planning to stay the night?” he asked.

  “Can you live with that?” I countered.

  “You are more than welcome,” Vedeen said in that light, sunny voice of hers, as if a couple months ago I hadn’t tied her naked to a pole so that it would be easier to slit her throat.

  “Come in,” he said, gesturing toward one of the cave mouths. “There’s food and we have a couple barrels of ale, if you want.”

  We followed them into the cave mouth and down a rough passage to a widening of maybe fifty feet within the hill. The floor was relatively flat and the ceiling relatively conical – I wouldn’t think it was man-made at first glance, but I didn’t see how something like this occurred naturally, either.

  Possibly Druid magic or, more likely, a natural occurrence enhanced with Druid magic.

  There was a fire, and over it a hood which drew the smoke out, in the center of the opening. A few men in brown robes watched us as we entered – I didn’t see any of my kids. There were cut logs near the fire, clearly meant for sitting, and I sat on one, Shela next to me. Karel remained standing.

  Jack dragged a log from about a half-turn around the fire and parked it in front of Shela and me. Vedeen sat on the ground next to him, her robes spreading out. The fire was warm and he pulled the front of his furs open, revealing some grey hair.

  I watched them, waiting. It seemed clear to me what they were doing – they planned to talk to me about what brought me here and, for as long as they could, act as a gate keeper to my children. That meant that they didn’t have confidence yet that the lot of them wouldn’t take off with me, and that meant that I hadn’t come here too late.

  Good.

  “Shela,” I said, keeping my eyes on Vedeen and Jack. “Can you reach Lee?”

  Lee and Shela had been communicating over distances without words since she was eleven. It was a part of her training.

  “I can,” she said.

  “Tell her to haul her ass and her brother’s out here, and to greet her father properly,” I said.

  Vedeen and Jack exchanged a glance, and Jack rose.

  “You’d best be better with that falchion than I remember if you don’t sit yourself back down in one second,” I told the older man.

  I drew my feet in toward the stump. If he pulled, he was going to find out just how quick I was.

  He sat back down.

  “You’re a match for my sword,” he told me. “You’re no match for my magic.”

  When he’d rescued Vedeen he’d spoken the Ave Maria, the ‘Hail Mary’ psalm, in Latin. He’d disabled Shela, the Green One and Ancenon’s magic, as well as my and Thorn’s swords, without breaking a sweat, then wrapped us up in a small tent and punted us like a football down an actual field. He’d also knocked out about fifty ‘barely gifted’ people, some of whom didn’t even know they were barely gifted, for a radius of nearly a daheer, and spooked half of my herd of horses. By the time I woke up from his assault, it was pouring down rain and they were gone.

  “You got the drop on us once,” I informed him. “Think you’re the only one who went to catechism? I was raised Congregationalist – we called it ‘Sunday School,’ but it’s the same, and our pastor loved Latin.”

  Jack opened his mouth to speak and out came Lee and Vulpe from deeper in the caves, emerging into the firelight as if from the night. Vulpe had a new sword in his sheath – one with a bone handle. He’d dressed himself out in Volkhydran furs much the same as Jack, and he’d let his hair grow out. Lee’s hair looked more wild than I’d ever seen it, light brown except for about two inches at the roots, which told me she’d spent a good amount of time in the sun. She was wearing brown leather riding p
ants, riding boots, a maroon shirt that was getting faded and a long, blue riding cape. She had that harpoon that Shela had found in her hand, carrying it like a staff. No sooner had she entered the cave than a fox came trotting out behind her, keeping to one side of the fire, between it and the far cave wall. The men in brown robes ignored the fox as it passed by them, and I had to assume they were used to it being here.

  My kids’ eyes were wide and their expressions unsure. Then Shela stood and opened up her arms to them.

  That’s all it took. Lee flew to her mother’s side, Vulpe right behind her. The three of them embraced, Lee crying a river, Vulpe trying not to and shooting looks at me.

  If Jack and Vedeen thought they could break that, then good luck to them.

  I stood and saw Eric and Nina come out of the shadowed passage. He was still in his chain shirt and leather pants, the white question mark, turned upside down on his breast. She was dressed in a leather outfit built on what she normally wore. Now, however, she had a wolf skin jacket with daggers at the shoulders.

  After them came the two Andaron girls, Chesswaya and Dagi, the latter carrying a broadsword in her hand a steel shield with a lunging dog emblazoned on it, on her left forearm. Between them a shortish boy with long, black hair and big, staring eyes limped out, dragging a club foot. He was shorter than any of them, even though he was probably only a year younger than Eric. He dressed all in black leather, with a black cape.

  They were shooting looks that told me that they didn’t trust my being here, and then looking to each other for support. Yes, they’d been together with Jack and Vedeen long enough to start to think of themselves as a team. No, they weren’t done with that yet.

  Lee left her mother and wrapped her arms around my neck. I almost lost it myself – I thought this girl was dead for months. I’d raged like a wild man when I heard the news, and I killed a lot of Volkhydrans, because that’s who I had handy.

  “Missed you, little girl,” I whispered in her ear.

  “Missed you, father,” she whispered back.

  I straightened and kept an arm around Lee. Vulpe saluted me, making a fist over his heart, and I saluted him back, then reached out and grabbed him, and took him in a hug.

  I looked past him and made eye contact with Nina. “When did you get shy?” I demanded of her.

  She hesitated, then looked up to Eric, then back at me. She was standing on the balls of her feet and likely didn’t even realize it. One more look at Eric, who nodded to her, and she was off across the cave floor, leapt onto a cut log, did a flip and landed in front of me with her arms around my neck.

  I kissed her forehead. I felt her press her lips to my cheek.

  “We should all sit,” Shela said, finally. I nodded.

  Eric started to move to the other side of the fire, but I wasn’t having it.

  “White Eric,” I called to him, across the fire.

  He looked at me, surprised.

  “Next to me, if you would.”

  His eyes swept to Jack and Vedeen.

  “You aren’t bound to them,” I informed him. “You are to me. We are Daff Kanaar. As my son, you may or may not decide to support me. As a member of the Free Legion, you have no choice.”

  He straightened, and he crossed the perimeter of the fire. He pulled up a cut log and placed it rather deliberately next to mine. Nina ran to the side of the cave and returned with a bearskin, and laid it at his and my feet.

  She and Shela both sat on it. That was actually Andaron tradition, not Aschire, but for whatever reason she’d adopted it.

  The other kids were hesitant. “Come on,” I said to them. “Let me see you.”

  Jack sighed and backed away from the fire. Two of the men in brown robes approached him and Vedeen, making a clear path for them to approach me.

  I’d never had any idea with Aileen – I’d fathered her child and she’d gone out of her way to keep him from me. The Andaron girls had another story – I’d cheated on a deal. I could see where they wouldn’t have much reason to like me and, in fact, I could see where their mothers might have made a point of raising them that way.

  How I’d treated the Andarons lately could only have made that worse.

  Lupennen’s mother, Genna, was simply bat-shit crazy and not one to give up on a grudge.

  I extended my hand to him, and he took my wrist in his. I could see a dagger in his belt, but didn’t feel anything up his sleeve. He looked up at me with those quizzical, cat-like eyes, clearly deciding how he wanted to feel about me.

  “Father,” he said, simply.

  “Son,” I said. “Lupennen, I’m told.”

  He nodded.

  “Tartan Stowe speaks highly of you,” I told him. “And of your abilities.”

  “He taught me how to ride,” Lupennen said. “Then I taught him.”

  I chuckled. I’d heard about that, too.

  “We are your daughters, as well,” Dagi said, approaching me with her half-sister. “I am Waya Daganogeda, and this one is Chesswaya.”

  Their names meant Wolf Song and Wolf Bird, respectively. My Andaron name was ‘White Wolf’ – their mothers both had decided to include my names in theirs. “I remember you,” I told them. “You came to hear your brother sing.”

  She nodded. Chesswaya still had that staff she’d been carrying.

  Shela didn’t let her eyes off of that girl for a moment.

  “Can you bring me food?” I asked them. For Andarons, that’s actually a friendly greeting. Andaron men didn’t cook for themselves.

  Waya Daganogeda nodded and turned on her heel, her sister with her. She dropped her sword and shield on a fur next to a cook pot I hadn’t seen, and then took up three bowls and ladled some sort of stew into them.

  I turned to Eric. “What brought you all here?” I asked him.

  As a member of the Free Legion, Eric wouldn’t be expected to lie.

  Jack probably knew that as well. “We met him in Myr, with his wife and his sisters,” he said. “And we asked him to come here.”

  “Lee and Lupennen as well,” Vedeen added. “I’d been speaking to Lee since her time in the between.”

  Shela’s eyebrows knitted and she turned to Lee. That daughter had decided to sit on the bearskin with Nina and Shela, and the fox had crawled up into her lap. She’d never had a pet that I remembered – we’d tried to give her and Vulpe a dog once, but it was a disaster.

  “You found your way into the place between realities?” Shela asked her directly.

  “Angron Aurelias turned the Central Communications into a portal,” she said. “I would not be a captive of the Uman-Chi, so I upset the magic. He hadn’t closed the portal – he must have thought that we would return that way – and so I tore reality. Hectaro picked me up and leapt through it.”

  “I found her there,” Vedeen said. “And I guided her back.”

  “To Conflu,” I said. I didn’t have a worse enemy.

  “It was the closest point at the time,” Vedeen said. Shela nodded.

  “The between doesn’t lie against our reality like a blanket. It wafts between places like a ribbon, to some places close and to others far away. It’s always changing – Conflu might have been the closest place right then.”

  I had my own opinions, but I kept them to myself.

  “Vulpe followed his sister, Lee,” Vedeen said. “It is part of the prophesy that the weapons should seek each other out, and so they have.”

  “The weapons,” I said. “You think my children are the weapons?”

  “We think your children bear the weapons,” Jack said, “and we think that, because they do.”

  “Weapons made of beings,” Chesswaya said, her voice barely a whisper. She looked so much like her mother, and her voice was exactly the same.

  “Weapons against the One,” she added.

  “The One who is of War,” I said. “The One who others wait upon, to fight forever more.”

  “If you choose it,” Vedeen said. Chesswaya handed
me a bowl of lukewarm stew. Dagi did the same for Karel and Shela.

  The Scitai was being oddly quiet. He’d found himself a round stone to sit on and was just watching the rest of us.

  It was tempting to ask, “You think you’re going to turn my kids against me?” and make my power play right there. I had no doubt in my mind that, at best, they had three of them. I’d split the power and that would give me time to attract the others.

  That would mean using my own kids as tools. They were my kids. I wasn’t about to do that. They’d had hard enough lives, all of them.

  “I thought the whole purpose of prophesy was that you didn’t have choice,” I asked Vedeen. “If you’re predicting the future, then the future is preset and predictable. If that’s true, then there is no choice.”

  That’s actually the argument against time travel, but it also works when you’re talking about the Rapture and other predictions from the Bible. If God knows, then it’s because he can see into the future. If the future is there to be seen into, then there can’t be free will, or you wouldn’t know what to see.

  Your head could go round and round.

  Eric sighed, sitting next to me. Nina’s purple hair lay across his lap.

  “If you want to go down that road, we can,” Jack said to me. He returned to the fire, Vedeen beside him, and sat back down on a cut log. Dagi and Chesswaya sat on the floor near him. Lupennen remained standing.

  “What are you doing here?” Shela asked Lee. My oldest daughter bit her lower lip, holding her fox close, then she stared at the cave floor.

  A portion of it wavered, then rose up like a mushroom, blooming next to her. She put the fox down and sat herself on this new, stone seat. The fox immediately leapt up into her lap.

  “I’m learning more about my craft,” she said. “I have power over Earth – you’ve been waiting for me realize that since we raised the slab at Wisex, I think.”

  Shela nodded. Nina had actually pointed it out to me, more than a decade ago, when Shela tried to create what we called the ‘black slab,’ the rock shelf pulled out of the base of the Black Lake.