Semper Indomitus: Book Five of the Fovean Chronicles

by Robert Brady

  Shela didn’t stir once while I was dressing. I kissed her warm cheek before I left and she brushed me off as she would an insect, and rolled over.

  She’d had a hard day.

  I climbed the stairs, past the doors that lead to each of my children’s rooms. All had two Wolf Soldier guards on them. Each saluted as I past. I had to think that the whole family was napping.

  D’gattis and Nantar shared a single floor at the top of the tower, each with their own room, sharing a common dining room. It was all furnished, and the smell of new wood filled the air.

  “You must have just put all of this together,” Nantar informed me, reaching out for my forearm. I took his in mine. He was still wearing his traditional black-lacquered armor, the scarlet question mark, turned upside-down on the front of it.

  D’gattis acknowledged me, sitting on a sofa that had been placed under a shuttered window. The brazier next to him was throwing more heat than I would have thought possible, meaning that he’d used his magic to juice it up.

  Karel of Stone was sitting next to him, dressed in his usual bear skins. I looked for Nantar’s wife but didn’t see her.

  “She’s with her girls,” Nantar informed me, without being asked. He took two hard-backed chairs away from the one table and handed one to me. We sat them down opposite Karel and D’gattis – I turned mine around so that I could lean on the back of it.

  I was a little surprised that Nantar’s bore up under the weight of man and armor. Apparently, we’d bought quality.

  “I am disturbed to learn of this movement to your north,” D’gattis informed us all. “You were right to want me to be here to assay it.”

  Well, I would have been right, but why inform D’gattis?

  “Is there anything you can tell us, that we don’t already know?” Karel asked him.

  “More than I can tell you in a day,” D’gattis replied. For D’gattis, that was pretty funny. “However regarding this movement – no. I’m interested to learn that you’ve located both the lost Raven and Vedeen.”

  “As well as Jack and your missing horse,” Karel added.

  D’gattis knit his eyebrows and said nothing, which spoke volumes. A horse and a Man with no spell casting ability were of no concern to him.

  “Raven has had her child by now,” I informed them. “If it lives, and if Lee and Chesswaya are any indication, then we might be looking at another real force of magic on Fovea.”

  D’gattis’ lip curled in something like a smile. “How so?” he asked.

  “Well,” I said, “Lee just travelled with one Wolf Soldier through the deepest part of Conflu unaided. In the process, she killed a Scitai sorceress in one-to-one combat, and raised a volcano.

  “Chesswaya, before I knew who she was, faced off Shela. Shela said she’d never felt a power like that.”

  The Uman-Chi leaned forward. “I didn’t know this,” he said.

  Karel nodded. I hadn’t enlightened him, either.

  “What’s a volcano?” Nantar asked.

  “A volcano is a hole in the skin of Earth,” D’gattis said, “which releases his blood beneath. That blood burns hot enough to melt stone.”

  “So, a fifteen-year-old girl wounded a god,” Karel said.

  “Not quite fifteen yet,” I reminded him.

  “And Chesswaya is Vulpe’s age,” D’gattis said, sitting back, pensively. “Now, we have another of these younglings, to learn at the hip of a sorceress who turned one thousand soldiers to ash with a single word.”

  “All of these, allies in a fight against invaders from the north,” Nantar said.

  “How do we know that?” D’gattis asked him.

  I straightened. “Because they’re my kids,” I informed him.

  “Adriam help us all,” D’gattis said. “Even a fire bond couldn’t keep you from going off on your own – and you’ve no magic at all.”

  “Daughters of Men,” Karel pointed out, “tend to favor their fathers.”

  “Mine do,” Nantar agreed.

  I didn’t have a lot to say to that. Dagi was so much like me, never having met me, it was scary.

  “Then I suspect that you should do everything you can to keep them on your good side,” I told D’gattis.

  “Which of my sides is that, and why?” he countered.

  Slang – even after more than a decade.

  “To stay in their favor,” Karel corrected me. D’gattis nodded.

  “I should like to meet these girls,” he said.

  “They’re sleeping,” I informed him. “We just spent two months in the north. Outrunning those invaders took a lot of magic, and then there was work to do in Medya, and here.”

  “Not the least of which was securing this city once again,” Karel said. “Evreck Rhor nearly killed us all.”

  I smirked. “He tried, anyway.”

  “And where is he now?” D’gattis asked.

  “Floating face-down in Tren Bay, I imagine,” I said. “I’ve replaced him with Dragor Volkha, under the guidance of one of my generals.”

  “And so,” D’gattis said, “your plan to conquer through conversion, now at the level of the nobility?”

  “Something like that,” I allowed him. He didn’t need to know that it was Dragor’s idea.

  I felt sure Karel would tell him, anyway.

  ***

  It would have been great to take dinner in my room, but that’s not something that visiting Emperors get to do, especially right after taking out a good portion of the local guard and replacing the local Duke.

  Dragor sitting down at the head of the Ducal table was a big surprise to a lot of people, and some of them might have drawn swords were I not there. Being the resident Uman-Chi, D’gattis had to make an appearance, and what party is a party without Karel of Stone?

  Shela appeared elegant beside me in a gown the local palace staff had created for her. I had to think they had a stock of these somewhere that could be fitted to the bodies of visiting ladies, because it was a satiny green that accentuated her waist and bust, with long sleeves, the ends of which her thumbs fitted through, and all of that was too intricate to just create on the fly.

  My daughters were decked out in equally elegant dresses in blue, all some kind of velvet. The boys were all in tunics and hose, like me – although I preferred my usual homespun white shirt and leather pants, they were simply not fit for dinner.

  I was introduced to a few earls whose names I immediately forgot, and some visiting, wealthy commons whom I did the same for. A few tried to make small talk and all of them wanted to ask, “Why are so many Eldadorian Regulars dead now,” and “How come that Duke you deposed is back in charge, while the last guy’s body just got pitched off of the end of a pier?” However none of them had that sort of courage.

  “It was a decent fight,” Nanette informed her father, by way of broaching the subject.

  Nantar’s wife Lanette shook her head and ‘tsked’ at her daughter. She was pretty much as I remembered her: blonde, buxom, with sharp, Volkhydran features and big, soft eyes. She’d taken to smacking Nantar on the shoulder when he joked, and reminded me of Elle and Jack, whom I’d known in Myr so long ago.

  “I should have given you sons,” she commented.

  “Who says you didn’t?” Karel quipped back.

  “I’m more woman than you’ll ever know, you rodent,” Thorna informed him. One of the ladies at the table gasped.

  “Thorna!” Lanette said, clearly shocked at her daughter. The latter lowered her head to hide a smirk.

  “I’m going to beat Thorn when I see him again,” Nantar commented. “He told me that his people would make ladies out of these two.”

  “And I told you they would make us worse,” Nanette informed him. “And I was right.”

  “There’s no arguing with her,” D’gattis commented.

  “You’re another one I could damage,” Nantar informed him.

  D’gattis smiled to himself and took a glass of wine.

 
While this was going on, I watched a courtier enter the dining room and approach the Wolf Soldier guard. I knew it had to be important, both because no one likes to approach the Wolf Soldiers for anything, and because in Volkhydro, interrupting a meal was a big deal. I watched the Wolf Soldier, who had a couple harsh words for the courtier, then sent him away and approached me.

  “Lupus,” he said, bending at the waist from behind me to speak into my ear. He was an Eldadorian Uman who’d transferred in to the Wolf Soldiers to avoid the new Eldadorian training. His name was Tarlet.

  “An emissary from the army to the north waits to address you in the Ducal throne room,” he said. “She has asked for you by name.”

  That spoke of a level of intelligence gathering that I was really not happy to credit them with, as well as a level of tactics I also wasn’t happy to see. Making a meeting that you can’t miss happen at a time that you can’t easily make is a really good way to put your opponent off their guard, and I’d used it myself earlier this year when I’d met with Angron Aurelias.

  I straightened. “Dragor,” I said.

  “My Lord,” the Duke responded.

  “Make your throne room ready,” I said. “You have guests.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Making War is a Dirty Business

  I sat in the gallery with my family, the Free Legionnaires who were in attendance, and too many earls, commons and courtiers. Dragor sat the ducal throne to receive this emissary, not that it was his first rodeo.

  A smallish man with a bald head, dressed in Dragor’s red-and-brown livery stood with an oak staff at the doorway. He tapped the ground twice with the butt end of the staff and announced, “Her person, the Lady Maree, of the Great North!”

  I couldn’t help thinking that was a pretty lame name for a country.

  Maree stepped into the room past the squire. She was a little over five feet, dressed in a bulky, fur jacket and brown leather pants with black boots laced up to her knees. She wore her hair loose around her shoulders, brown and wavy and clearly just washed, not dirty from the trail. That told me that she’d been in the city for more than a day.

  Her light brown eyes ran the Duke up and down, then searched the gallery before she stepped into the room. She found me and smiled a perfect, white smile, then turned her attention back to the Duke and started down the red carpet.

  There’d just been a battle in here, but the place was clean and perfect – had to give credit to the palace staff. Maree’s walk wasn’t quite a march and wasn’t quite a strut – more of a sinewy dance step that said, “This is a woman, and this woman isn’t afraid.”

  She stopped at the Circle of Judgment – either she knew what that was, or she had the same tradition among her people. It was impossible to know how far the arm of the Cheyak had stretched before the Blast.

  She inclined her head, “My Ducal Lord,” she said. “I am Maree, of the Great North.”

  “You are welcome here,” Dragor informed her. He’d put on a thick, red robe and wore brown pants and shirt – tailored to fit him and accentuate his muscle. There was a ceremonial dagger at his hip – you were supposed to look at Dragor and know that he knew the weight of a sword.

  “I find that very difficult to believe,” she said, surprisingly. Her voice was almost a throaty purr. “I came to speak to the Emperor, and instead am met by a servant.”

  Wow, I thought. One shot, right between the eyes.

  Dragor straightened. “I see there are no manners in the North,” he said.

  “Not from those insulted,” she returned. “I’d have gone to Galnesh Eldador to meet the Emperor, were he not here.”

  That she’d been educated was obvious. That she wasn’t intimidated by so-called nobility said that she was from that background or had spent her life serving it closely. Because she was clearly, barely in her 20’s, I had to assume the former.

  “I am all of the audience you merit,” Dragor told Maree. “Deal with me, or return to your savage lands.”

  “Very well,” Maree said, “on behalf of the Great North, we let you know that we will, for the next week, hear terms for secession of the north of Volkhydro to us. If at the end of that time we are not pleased with your terms, then we shall simply take Volkhydro and it and its people shall ever be a part of our nation.”

  Dragor actually laughed. “I think I could give you those terms myself, right now,” he said. “But I doubt you would want to hear them.”

  She smiled that big, perfect smile again. Her eyes almost twinkled – she loved doing this. “Speak first with your master,” she told him. “Until then, I have my own accommodations in your city.”

  She turned on her heel and she marched out of the throne room, keeping an eye on me as she left. I honestly believed that she was expecting me to stand up and call her back.

  Sorry – this wasn’t my first rodeo, either.

  When she was gone, Dragor looked at me in the gallery and said, “Well – we’ve accomplished that.”

  ***

  Dragor had a room similar to my War Room. We filled it with members of the Free Legion, Daharef, the Duke and a couple earls.

  Members of the Free Legion included Eric, but not Nina. Neither did it include Shela, who went with my kids back to my private rooms, where she could spy on us magically and keep them all informed. She wasn’t real happy about it, but there was only so much room.

  We sat around a long, rectangular table, on stools instead of in chairs. There were chalk boards on the walls, which were covered in cork. Dragor must have gotten the Eldadorian memo on how to build one of these so that there would be privacy as well as functionality. I thought the stools were a nice choice – you could get too comfortable in a chair.

  “Does Volkhydro have any history with these people?” I asked Dragor.

  The Duke, still dressed in his red and brown robes, shook his head. One of the earls, whose name I didn’t know, piped up, “We’ve always known of the North, my Lord, but no one ever goes there. The mountains were thought impassible, if not for the ogres then by the terrain.”

  “But the Daff Kanaar just removed all of the ogres,” Nantar said, “or drove them to the West.”

  “As for the terrain,” Karel said, perched like a parrot on his stool, the silver question mark turned upside-down on his breast, “we noted at the time that there were trails, we simply never searched them.”

  “You didn’t want to find more ogres,” the other earl, a little blonde Volkhydran with a hair lip and beady, green eyes, accused us.

  Nantar straightened. I answered, “We didn’t want to go into what we thought could easily be a trap. Those trails are wide enough for two horses or a small wagon – a few hundred warriors would be lined by mountain sides that they couldn’t hope to charge up. One avalanche and some arrow fire and your army is cut in half.”

  The second earl didn’t seem satisfied, the first, who stood taller, bulkier and who dressed in the furs distinctive of the Volkha side of Volkhydro, grimaced behind his long, brown beard and longer hair.

  “If it comes to war, that would be a good thing to take advantage of,” Eric said. “We should scout those trails now.”

  I nodded, as did Daharef. “I’ll put a scouting party together,” he said. “They should be back before the War months.”

  “We don’t’ have until then to respond,” the blond Earl said.

  I felt my eyebrows raise. “What do you think our response is going to be?” I asked him.

  The other earl on his left and Dragor on his right moved imperceptibly away from him. He pushed his shoulders back and tried to look me in the eyes.

  “We have no stake in Volkhydro,” he said. “If Gharf Bendenson wants to leave his hole in Vol, then he can fight them.”

  The angry look that crossed Dragor’s face told me that he wasn’t quite my man yet. That sort of thing, however, took time. I met the blond earl’s eyes and said, “In fact, we have a very large stake in Volkhydro, if only because we know they�
�ll make a better trading partner than an army from the north.”

  “And let me assure you,” Dragor jumped in, “that once they have the north of Volkhydro, they’ll consolidate their position and realize they want the rest of Volkhydro, and backing them will be a few million former Volkhydrans who believe that we let them be defeated by an army from the north.”

  Everyone nodded. Again, the earl didn’t seem satisfied with the answer. I was going to need Karel to check this person out and see how difficult he’d be to replace.

  “In that regard,” the other earl said, “recruiting regulars from the middle of Volkhydro, and making our own deals with the border cities, might be a good way to keep this army at bay.”

  “I can take care of that,” Nantar said. “We don’t want to have to fight this enemy alone, and we also don’t want Bendenson to see us engaged with them, and to come in with a few cities behind us.”

  I had been thinking of that, as well. How many times has a smaller enemy just waited by the wayside for two larger powers to fight it out, then come in and taken out the victor while he was weak?

  “Jack and Vedeen might know something of this army,” Eric chimed in.

  All eyes turned to him.

  He straightened, still in his chain shirt and brown leather pants, his sword over his shoulder.

  “While we were discussing the prophecy with them,” he continued, “I asked about my father’s heritage.”

  He looked sideways at me as if to see if this was a sore spot for me, but that ship had sailed years ago.

  “I told them that he was from the North,” he said, “and Vedeen laughed. She said, ‘If that were true, then he would be an even bigger threat,’ and told us that we should hope never to need to know what she meant.”

  “That’s ominous,” Nantar commented.

  “And who is this father of yours?” Dragor asked him.

  “I am,” I said. All eyes switched to me. “Eric is my son from my relationship with Aileen of Myr.”

  “The brewer?” the blond earl asked.