Semper Indomitus: Book Five of the Fovean Chronicles

by Robert Brady

  That was a simpler time, and I’d probably never see it again.

  ***

  We awoke in the morning. The pavilion was cold, the boys all snoring. Dagi was already awake with her sister and both had left for the cold outdoors.

  I followed after them while Shela started breakfast with Lee. I was saluted by the guard on duty and then came up on Radmon Rukh from behind.

  “Anything to report, Lieutenant?” I asked him.

  He turned and saluted me. “Men are cold, food is bad, horses are fattening up a little,” he said. “All standard, your Imperial Majesty.”

  I smiled and nodded. “I’m looking for two of my daughters,” I said.

  He jammed a thumb over his shoulder. “I was watching to make sure they’d be well,” he said. “They’re over that rise, the one with the staff praying, the other defending her or standing watch – or both.”

  I thanked him and told him to assess our supplies. We might need to go out and hunt.

  From there I headed out after my daughters.

  The cold bit my nose and made my cheeks tingle. For two Andarons used to a more equatorial climate, this must be a form of hell.

  When I found them, Dagi was bouncing on the balls of her feet to keep warm, and Chessa had her back to me, on her knees with the staff across her lap once again. This time the green crystal within it was pulsing.

  I thought for a moment that it might be Morse code, but I don’t know Morse code, so that wouldn’t have helped me, anyway.

  “Don’t disturb her,” Dagi warned me in a hushed voice.

  I nodded. We watched her together for a while.

  “You do this every morning?” I asked. Dagi just nodded.

  “How long does it take?” I asked.

  “You don’t have to stay,” she told me.

  I shook my head. “I’m not impatient,” I said, “just curious.”

  She nodded.

  “We come at the false dawn,” she told me. “She’s usually done before the sunrise.”

  That was coming soon. The false dawn occurred about an hour before the actual sunrise. I’d been here for more than 15 years and I still hadn’t figured out how some people could just wake themselves up for events like that.

  For that matter, I still missed coffee.

  “This isn’t an Andaron ritual,” I said, watching Chesswaya. “When did she start doing it?”

  Dagi didn’t answer me right away. I resisted looking at her – giving her the option to just ignore the question. Somehow, I knew she wouldn’t.

  I was right. “When she got the staff,” my daughter said. “A lot of things changed then.”

  “It was the same for me,” Lee said, from my left.

  I about jumped out of my skin. Lee had used her spear again, or whatever abilities that spear gave her, to sneak up on me. She was dressed out in wolf fur, which was common to this area. Her little fox was behind her to her left, watching us all.

  “You’re going to get your head cut off if you keep doing that,” I warned her. She grinned wide but didn’t say anything. Her big, bright smile was exactly like her mother’s.

  Dagi laughed and the quieted herself. We all turned to Chesswaya, but she was still doing her thing.

  “I never do that,” Lee said.

  “Neither does your mother,” I said.

  Dagi was immediately defensive. “You two have different powers,” she said. “We saw Chessa humble the Empress in Andoron.”

  That was true enough. Shela had begun to marshal her power and Chesswaya had just raised that staff and shut her down. Of course, it was by surprise and Shela wasn’t exactly humbled.

  Lee didn’t see it that way. “She wouldn’t humble me,” she said.

  Dagi stiffened.

  I felt that paternal instinct to intervene, but I bit my lower lip instead. Dagi saw herself as Chessa’s protector, just as Nantar’s daughters saw themselves as protectors to the both of them. The kids were going to have to work out their own dynamic, and there were going to be fights.

  Which brought me to another issue. “Where are Nanette and Thorna?” I asked.

  Both girls looked up at me.

  “I haven’t seen you two go far without Nantar’s daughters watching over you,” I added.

  I lowered my head and listened. I could hear the girls breathing in the cold. There were the normal guard sounds from the jess doonar, I smelled gruel on the air, meaning that breakfast was in the making.

  Behind me, some pebbles clattered down a hill we’d crossed to get here. One of them was directly behind us.

  The other would be as close to the 10:00 o’clock position to that as she could be. That covered the whole area without putting the two girls in each other’s line of attack.

  I looked up and about 30 degrees to my left there was a hill with some scrub brush on it.

  I smiled and waved to it. Then I turned and saluted to the hill behind us. It took a moment, but then Nanette rose up from the hill and, after her, Thorna from the brush.

  Chessa picked then to straighten and shake out her hair. There was a little frost on the tips.

  “You’re like an aurochs,” Thorna said to Nanette, as the two approached the rest of us.

  “I’ll smash you,” Nanette responded. Nanette was the larger of the two, Thorna the more graceful. While both would be attractive women, Nanette promised to be a buxom beauty, while Thorna was more sharp-featured. Thorn himself had trained her in his hunting skills. Nanette was more of a tom-boy and a brawler.

  When I’d seen them in Andoron, they were carrying long poles. Now these poles had spear-heads on them. Both were dressed out in Volkhydran hides much like the men wore, with fur-wrapped boots and short capes over their shoulders. Both had their father’s jet-black hair, even though their mother was a blonde.

  “You’ll try,” Thorna challenged her, never one to back down.

  I chuckled. They gave me a sour look that reminded me of Thorn.

  “You’re all too loud,” Chessa said, rising and turning in one motion. “A person can barely concentrate.”

  “My apologies, my daughter,” I said to her, in Andaron. “I take the blame for all of this.”

  Dagi laughed. Nanette and Thorna just lined up behind her.

  “Are we going back south today?” Lee asked.

  I shook my head. “We have men on the road, getting supplies from Myr, and we have men and horses who were sick, getting better. I hope we’ll leave in four more days.”

  Dagi groaned. “I hate this freezing place,” she said. “In four days, I’ll be an ice icicle!”

  “Maybe I’ll spar with you and your brothers,” I said. “That should keep you warm.”

  Her eyes brightened. I turned to Chessa. “I’m sure that you, Lee and Shela have plenty to talk about,” I said.

  Chessa nodded. “The Empress is guarded with her power,” she said, “but Lee and I have shared much. She might want to hear of that.”

  “I could hear the story of your adventure in Conflu,” I told her.

  “With the handsome Hectaro,” Nannette added, smiling. “Perhaps a story a father shouldn’t hear?”

  Lee blushed crimson and I stiffened my back before I realized it.

  “Nothing happened with Hectaro,” she said. “Even if it were, I’m marrying Tartan Stowe – do you think he’d have me if I weren’t a virgin?”

  “War’s beard, no more!” I said, covering my ears.

  All of the girls smiled evilly. Where were other males when I needed them?

  For that matter, where was Karel of Stone? The Scitai wasn’t there when I fought Jack.

  Or was he?

  Holy crap – did I kill him without realizing it?

  The girls were all focused on my face and looked hesitant. I had to ask them, “When was the last time you saw that Scitai friend of mine?”

  Thorna laughed. “He left right after you,” she said. “We expected to find him and his pony here.”

  Nanette no
dded. “He’s not, though. Father says, “Looking out for Karel of Stone is like trying to take care of your shadow – it’s going to do what it does and there’s nothing can stop it.”

  True enough – at least if he was dead, it wasn’t my fault.

  Chapter Ten

  The Road Back Home

  As predicted, we were back on the road on the 13th of Power’s month, all of our warriors and horses healthy, all of my kids in tow.

  In that period of time I’d sparred with each of my sons and with Dagi – who admittedly gave me the hardest time. With her new sword in her hand she was particularly difficult for me to beat – with sword and shield, nearly impossible. Give her a wooden practice sword and she was almost more likely to hurt herself.

  Her answer, of course, was to just use the sword and shield. I tried to teach her, as Nantar had taught me, that she could lose either a sword or a shield in battle. She’d be dead in that event. She didn’t want to hear it.

  Eric, of course, simply couldn’t spar with me with his new weapon. With practice swords I was amazed at how similar his style was to my own. Of course, we’d both trained in the same gym in Myr. With Vulpe there was no threat – my sword couldn’t touch him. That made him a reckless daredevil willing to charge in swinging, believing that he had nothing to fear and relying on that surprise to give him a quick victory.

  His brother gave him a black eye to teach him differently. I was glad that I didn’t have to do it. In two days we had him sparring with Dagi with practice swords, both complaining that this was pointless and both learning despite themselves.

  Was I ever so young? I remembered my temper – the most likely thing to have put me in this situation. Face your own mortality a few hundred times and it’s funny how you get a perspective on that.

  Although we were moving south, it was becoming steadily colder as Power turned into the month of Desire. We’d spent more than four weeks getting here, I had to think it would be no less than three weeks to get back, and that if we ran into no opposition. When was the last time that had happened?

  So it was that, at the end of our first week of travel south, under a grey sky and crossing hills covered in scrub and dead grass, we realized that we were overtaking one of the caravans I’d been seeing sign of.

  We travelled with a vanguard of 10 warriors, all with lances, then the family, then forty more warriors, the back 20 also with lances. This meant that we could meet a charge or we could quickly dismount against arrow-attack from the side (where it was more likely), and that I was expecting trouble to come up behind us rather than to meet it. Big and burley as they were, Volkhydrans could be pretty stealthy in their own lands.

  Shela rode next to me. She and I actually caught sight of the back of a wagon before it registered with anyone in the van. That was an issue to deal with later. As usual, Eric and Nina were in the back of the family portion of the train, so I called for him, getting the notice of the rest of the family.

  Eric trotted up to me with Nina sitting on the back of her horse. Chessa and Dagi were behind me with Nannette and Thorna behind them, leaving Lee, Vulpe and Lupennen in the rear now, ahead of 40 mounted Knights.

  I pointed out the wagon we were catching up on.

  “See a problem with that? I asked him.

  He squinted his eyes, studying the back of the wagon, before they widened. He’d been raised in Volkhydro, so likely he took wagons for granted normally.

  “That’s not a Volkhydran wagon,” he said. He was right. The wheels, though wooden, were banded in steel. The back of the wagon had a tail gate – Volkhydrans didn’t do that, either. Its width was also wrong – Volkhydrans liked wide wagons pulled by many horses or, preferably, aurochs. This one was narrow – it would go faster if it was chased and could be pulled by fewer horses.

  I’d only picked this up from watching them in the rain as a caravan guard, so many years ago.

  “Something drove that through the Ogre lands,” I informed him. “Or they came across Sental and crossed the Llorando somehow. Either way, I’d love to know more about it.”

  “Want me to meet them?” he asked. I nodded.

  “Take ten of the Knights with no lances,” I told him. Make sure you don’t surprise them – they’re in Volkhydro and if they haven’t already been attacked once it’s a miracle. Find out what you can about who they are and where they’re going, and then come report to me.

  “If they ask,” I added, “we’re the vanguard of a much larger force, back from culling the Ogre tribes.”

  He nodded. He trotted back to Radmon Rukh and told him to assign him 10 Knights. Rukh threw a look at me before he did what Eric told him.

  “You aren’t going yourself?” Shela asked me.

  I shook my head. Normally, that was my way, but the kids needed to learn to do things like this. Eric and Vulpe were considered men now. Lupennen as well, if you want to say that killing someone makes you a man. I considered sending Dagi, but she was pretty aggressive and this needed someone with more finesse.

  Lupennen must have thought the same thing, because he trotted right after Eric without a glance at me. I sighed. I could have called him back, but better to speak with him in private about it when I wouldn’t be embarrassing him in front of his siblings.

  We rode on. Eric overcame the last wagon at a trot and, unpredictably, they didn’t slow down, they just waved Eric and his group on, forcing them to go two-by-two alongside the road. Tactically speaking that wasn’t good for Eric’s team. Anything could jump out of those wagons at them and they’d be defenseless and actually encumbered by their horses.

  They topped a rise and we lost sight of them. We plodded on for minutes that seemed like hours before we topped the same rise. When our own vanguard topped it, they started looking back at me but didn’t dispatch a rider, telling me that there wasn’t actually anything going on that they believed needed my immediate attention.

  I climbed the hill on Blizzard, Shela next to me. My kids were having a moderately hard time keeping their own horses back, their mounts sensing their anxiety, I think.

  When we achieved the top of the hill, we overlooked a small valley between another set of hills about 10 daheeri away. Between them the road stretched out straight, and on a well-worn road we saw a caravan no less than a daheer long, packed with wagons and peppered with mounted warriors in black steel armor with high, pointed caps and nose-guards. They bore lances like my own Knights, however theirs were topped with steel points, which I hadn’t introduced.

  Like me, their leader had put a few dozen horses in his vanguard. I could see Eric riding alongside a man with a red cape draped over his horse’s butt, warriors around him.

  I could have known nothing about the military and I would have known that this was a scouting party whose mission was to set up a base of operations for a larger force. From my vantage point I could see wagons packed with timbers and with heavy metal tools like augers and braces. The center of Volkhydro wasn’t populated with trees that would make good timbers for a fort, so they’d brought their own.

  So the exploration had already been done. This was settlement.

  I’d really expected to find relief troops from Sental, loaded with food to support another army. These were Men, pale-skinned and burly. Warriors as heavily armored as these would have to be as solid as Volkhydrans, and it was no coincidence, then, that they were coming here.

  I’d knee-capped the government here because it made it easier for me to conquer them. That was going to work for anyone, not just me.

  “White Wolf,” Shela hissed.

  “I see it,” I said.

  Another thing occurred to me - telling this group that we were the van to a larger force was absolutely the wrong way to go. It would make them more desperate, not more cautious.

  I’d stopped Blizzard without thinking about it – now my Knights were bunched up behind me on the road. There had to be a couple hundred mounted fighters in that group – we weren’t going to sweep i
n there with our numbers, hindered by southern troops in a northern clime, and save Eric if he couldn’t get out of there.

  “Lee,” I called for my daughter. She rode up on Singer, her brother next to her.

  “Can you get in close to Eric?” I asked her.

  Shela’s alarmed look told me what she thought of that. Lee just shook her head.

  “Not on horseback,” she said. Then she squinted her eyes and leaned forward.

  “I can see that he’s arguing with the man in the red cloak,” she told me. “Lupennen is trying to calm both of them down, but no one is happy and the Angadorian Knights all look scared.”

  We were a couple daheeri away from them. I couldn’t even see their faces.

  I could have asked her how, but I could guess. It didn’t matter. “Lieutenant!” I shouted for Radmon Rukh.

  He trotted up on his bay stallion.

  “Take your lances – all of them – and circle to the east, where it’s flat,” I told him. “Let them see you doing it.”

  “My Lord,” he said, making a fist over his heart.

  “If you have to engage, so be it,” I told him, “but if you can avoid a fight, that’s better. Let your men know that their lances are steel-tipped – your armor won’t protect you as much as you think.”

  He nodded and wheeled his horse around.

  “Yonega Waya?” Shela didn’t know what I was doing and she didn’t like it.

  “Tell Nina to get out of there,” I told her. She’d communicated to our Aschire nanny many times before this way. “Have Eric break for the East as soon as he has his warriors together.”

  Shela nodded and her eyes took a far-away look. Below us, my Knights were picking their way down a clear place on the hill, off of the road, while the caravan kept moving.

  “Nina has the message,” Lee told me. “She’s whispering into Eric’s ear.”

  “Chessa,” I said, turning to my daughter, “how are you with illusion?”

  “Weather has a thousand guises,” she informed me.

  I smiled – that’s what I was hoping to hear.