by Robert Brady
I nodded.
“Then… you’re a Count?” the earl continued.
“I have no idea,” Eric answered him. “Gharf Bendenson has yet to recognize me.”
“Indeed he has,” the other, brown-haired earl said. “When Tezzen fell to –“
He looked guiltily at me. I smiled and nodded to him.
“Well,” he continued, “when Tezzen fell, one of the survivors of the battle claimed that you were Myr’s Viscount, and then the King named you.”
“Meaning you can go to Myr and rally the city,” Karel said. “Myr is a county – it has no Duke or Earl.”
“I have no interest – “, Eric began, but I interrupted him.
“You may not,” I said, “but you have people dependent on you. At the very least, your city is a good place for this army to prove itself and to get some practice. If I were invading, I would start with Myr.”
The concerned look on Eric’s face told me of the conflict he was feeling. Nantar put a hand on his shoulder.
“You aren’t the first Daff Kanaar with conflicting allegiances,” he said. “When your father was an Eldadorian Earl, he had to balance Eldador with his vow to us, and you’ll have to do the same. You should look to him for advice.”
The frown on Eric’s face told me how likely that was to happen. “Nina, fortunately,” I said, “has as much experience as anyone in that regard.”
Eric smiled at that.
“We need to know more about this Maree,” D’gattis chimed in. It wasn’t normal for the Uman-Chi to take a back seat at a meeting, and I’d almost forgotten he was there. “Karel, can you get me something of hers?”
Karel laughed and reached into his bear skins. He pulled out a locket and laid it on the table.
“And so,” D’gattis acknowledged. “This should be something very personal, and should give us what information we need.”
I remembered back to our inspection of Outpost X, when little trinkets such as daggers and old books we found throughout the city were made to tell stories of the people who’d lived there.
“It’s probably going to upset her greatly when she realizes she doesn’t have it,” Eric noted.
“That should tell us more about her than this wizard can,” the blond earl said. I thought that was particularly shrewd – however Volkhydrans in general don’t put a lot of stock in magic.
“We shall see,” D’gattis said, taking the locket and inserting it into the sleeve of his white robe.
We talked more about the strategy of moving to the south, of what we should do to move against them, and when. Being from the north, we decided that what we considered to be a very cold winter probably didn’t bother our new enemy as much, and a battle now might not go as well in our favor as we’d think. We ended up deciding that Eric would return with Nina to Myr, at least long enough to shore up the city, and that Nantar would leave with his daughters for Volkhydro’s border city, as soon as he could have a couple hundred of his Sarandi here.
We’d find out if Shela could tell us where Vedeen was and, if not, then we’d get in touch with the Green One. If she had information about these northerners, we needed it.
All-in-all, we were on our way to the next step in what might be as much as a three-front war, as we pushed forward here, in Conflu and then against the rest of Fovea, which had to be planning its next step in what to do about the great gains made by Eldador in the past year.
***
I returned with Eric and Nantar to the family tower. Karel had his own things to do, and of course D’gattis couldn’t be seen walking the halls with Men.
By the time we got there, Shela was just returning. The whole family, including Nantar’s wife and girls, were in our chambers.
“I’ve arranged for the First Millennium to be ported here,” she informed us, as I took her in my arms. Nantar did the same with Lynette, and his girls laid a thick fur at his feet when he sat, so that they could stretch out on it.
“That was fast,” I commented.
“We watched your meeting, father,” Lee said. “We’ve also arranged for four hundred of Nantar’s Sarandi to leave from Metz through Andurin.”
Nantar grinned wide.
“I’ve ordered the Bitch to be among the porting ships,” Shela said. “If we’re here, she should be here.”
Shela used to hate the name of that ship, I thought. Now, she considered it hers. I think that had to do with its reputation in battle as much as anything else. If the Bitch of Eldador crossed the horizon, most ships simply ran.
“So now we plan for war?” Eric said, sitting on the end of the one bed, with Nina at his side. “I’ve seen how you do this.”
“You’ve seen how I do this, you mean,” Vulpe said.
“Oh,” Lee said, “like you made it all up on your own?”
“How many cities have you conquered?” Vulpe challenged her.
“One,” she said, “and I didn’t need an army to do it!”
I had to admit, that was true.
“I think we won’t be creating any – what does your father call it? – vol – can – news – in Volkhydro,” Lynette chided her.
“I think I would like to see one of those,” Dagi commented.
“No,” I said. “We aren’t going to fight a scorched-earth war in Volkhydro.”
“It did scorch the earth,” Lee admitted. “And it filled the air with ash.”
“That might be useful in the Northern Mountain Range,” Shela said, sitting at my feet, as I sat in a chair at the edge of what was a pretty large circle of my family and associates.
“If we have to, we’ll consider it,” I said, “but there are going to be ramifications to just creating volcanoes where the earth is supposed to be stable. Not to mention what that tends to do to the planet.”
That got a bunch of blank stares. I remembered back to a volcano that erupted in Washington on Mt. St. Helens. It cooled the whole planet by two degrees for a few days.
It bothered me that my daughter had access to that kind of power. It bothered me more if we ushered in a new ice age by putting black soot in the upper atmosphere.
“What I meant,” Eric informed us, “is that I can do that in Myr, if you want.”
I nodded. “You should,” I said. “And you should send an emissary to King Bendenson, and you should tell him what’s going on.”
Eric’s eyes widened.
“You make of yourself, his man,” Nina said to him. “You show him that he has a friend, when he so desperately needs one.”
“And you show him that friend is no fool,” Shela said. “When he comes to see you, and he will, you have him name you an Earl.”
“I have no interest in that,” Eric said.
“And if you act like you don’t, he’ll wonder why,” Nina said. “Every Count wants to be an Earl, ever Earl a Duke, and every Duke, a King.”
I had a hard time arguing with that.
“If you don’t,” Nantar said, leaning forward, “Bendenson will wonder why.”
“And he’ll eventually decide that’s it’s because you’re already an Eldadorian prince,” Lynette said. “I know Bendenson and I know his wife – if he doesn’t come to that conclusion, she’ll bring him to it. If you’re an Eldadorian prince first, you’re a threat to him.”
Eric sighed.
“If we’re to fight a war,” Nantar said, “and it looks more and more like we are, then the north of Volkhydro is not a good place to have to fight it.”
I nodded. “The terrain has too many places where forces can hide,” I said, “and the locals really don’t consider themselves Volkhydrans. They’re Volkhan, they’re Hydran, and they’re all tribes.”
“In the spring and summer, game is plentiful,” Lynette said. “An army could feed itself well if it had to – so that means no supply lines.”
That was more advanced thinking than I’d ever heard from Lynette. In honesty, I’d never considered her to be anything more than Nantar’s hanger-on.
“Another thing to consider,” Nantar said, “is that the center of Volkhydro is home to about one thousand wild horses now. Ever since the Battle of the Foveans, horses lost by the Andarons have run free.”
“Free for anyone to catch,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that. We either have to keep those horses away from the Northerners, or we may have to match them.”
“A few hundred horse can change a battle,” Shela said.
I couldn’t risk bringing Angadorian Knights up here at all- I needed them in the south. Theran Lancers, while available, would strip the city of Thera and leave it wide open to invasion.
Any one of these enemies weren’t a threat to me. Together, I’d bitten off way more than I could chew, safely or otherwise.
I could feel War grinning over my shoulder. I didn’t need to ask to know that this was exactly what he’d been working for.
***
Finally, we broke the party up and all went to bed. It felt like I’d been awake for a year. Shela hung up her gown and crawled in naked beside me in a huge bed with a goose-down mattress, piled high with quilts. It would get cold on a Volkhydran night and this would at least keep us warm with our own body heat.
As I drifted off, I dreamed of riding Blizzard again, this time across a barren, frozen Volkhydran hillscape. I was dressed in my usual homespun and leather pants, the chain across the instep of my leather boots clanking on the stirrup to my saddle.
Blizzard pulled up short and, although I saw nothing, I knew why.
“You have served me well,” the god War informed me.
“Thank you, my Lord,” I said, and lowered my head.
“You should have a boon,” he told me. “Would you like to return to your home world? Would you prefer to live out your days here, undisturbed with your books and your studies?”
Why did this feel like the conversation your boss has with you, on the day you’re losing your job?
“Am I no longer the Emperor of Eldador?” I asked him.
The ground trembled. Blizzard pawed the rubble at his feet. “That position has served its purpose,” War informed me. “The tide sweeps in from the North, and with it a plan for which I do not need you.”
Well, isn’t that a damn shame?
“You’re saying that I can’t beat this army?” I asked War.
“I’m telling you,” He informed me, “not to try. You have a woman who loves you, you have a horse. If you wish to stay, take them, and do as you will. If not, then I can return you to your world, more powerful than the boy who left. More able to handle the petty problems that haunted his life.”
I thought about that. When I left my world, I was accused of killing a cop’s brother, because that brother was beating a dog. The cops were going to make sure I got a murder charge for it, and I had reconciled myself to prison.
Now, I knew better. Now, I wouldn’t be intimidated by the cop, and I would find the evidence I needed to prove that I was defending myself.
Then, I was a mechanic, dishonorably discharged from the Navy. Now, I knew how to make myself so much more.
If this were a dream, I wouldn’t mind waking up from it, but it wasn’t. I had a wife here. I had children.
“What of my kids?” I asked.
“Lost to you,” War informed me. “No matter your choice, your children are entangled in prophecy. They are doomed to die.”
“No!” I shouted, and realized I was sitting up in bed, covered in sweat.
Shela leapt up next to me, raising a hand white with power. The light cast shadows like demons all around the room.
“White Wolf!” she exclaimed.
I took her in my arms. No, I thought to myself. No – there’s a lot of things you can do to me, and I’m sure you will – but you’re not killing my kids.
I thought of Lee as a baby, quiet in my arms. Of Vulpe – trying so hard to be the image of me. Of Chawnee, screaming at the light and beating me with her tiny fists as I held her.
Eric, Chessa, Dagi, Lupennen – each their own individual, each a part of me.
Shela held me tight, and I thought, No, War, I am your instrument, or I’m not, but no way am I running out on my kids.
And in my mind I heard, “So be it.”
Chapter Fifteen
Less is More
Six days later I was back in the throne room. It was almost the end of Desire’s month, and people were thinking of All Gods’ Day, or taking time off from their lives if they could afford it, and of the beginning of another year, this one in a Fovea very different from last years’.
Eric and Nina had probably already arrived in Myr, I thought, or would be shortly, depending on the weather. Karel was off scouting the north, trying to find out where our new enemy had decided to build his new fortresses. The search for Vedeen and Jack had been a bust, and the search for the Green One hadn’t gone much better.
Once again, Dragor sat his throne in his red and brown livery. Once again, I sat in the gallery, Shela beside me, D’gattis behind us in his white robes. My Empress had commissioned several new gowns for herself, her daughter, Chesswaya and Dagi. Trying to put a dress on either of Nantar’s daughters would have been a waste of time, were they here, however the three of them had left with one hundred Eldadorian Regulars for a tour of the cities of Volkhydro, and Lynette had remained with us.
Dagi was off doing whatever it was that Dagi did when she wasn’t arguing with me. Chesswaya, usually attached to her at the hip, had remained with Shela and I, seated next to D’gattis. They were deep in some sort of conversation about magic that went right past me.
“The Lady, Maree, of the Great North,” the page announced, tapping the marble floor twice with his oak staff.
This time Maree entered, dressed in her leather pants, knee-high boots and a shaggy brown overcoat, took three steps into the room and stopped, the smile removed from her face.
“Shall we continue this charade?” she asked Dragor.
The Duke’s eyes widened.
She sighed, took a few more steps down the red carpet until she arrived at the gallery, and turned on her heel to face me.
“Emperor Mordetur,” she said to me, directly, “will you surrender the north of Volkhydro, or shall you defend it all?”
That was a hell of a breach of protocol and a direct slap in the face to Dragor, for whom she clearly had zero respect. I had to think she didn’t have that much more for me, seeing as he was my Duke.
I stood. Some arguments could be made with words, some couldn’t. This was one of the latter.
Without my armor, it was pretty easy for me to step over the banister that separated the gallery from the throne room. Maree had her smile again as she took a step back and made room for me.
I drew the Sword of War, and the smile vanished.
There was a gasp behind me, and I could have sworn it came from Chesswaya. It wasn’t a good time to find out. Maree drew a long, thin rapier, almost a fencing foil.
“It is death to draw on the Emperor,” Dragor shouted, not that it really mattered.
She surprised me in that she struck first, feinting for my leg and then trying to poke me in the eye with her foil. I ducked back, actually seeing a nick on the blade, it came so close to me; then smacked the blade aside and struck for her left arm.
No need to cripple her – I was making a point rather than a statement.
The sword slashed her coat open. She withdrew and shed it in one motion, the overcoat spinning from her body in a flourish as she changed sword hands from right to left. She struck again, this time going right for my head.
I met her sword with mine, the steel scraping, as I spun the point of her sword in a circle and then pushed it to her left, leaving her wide open.
I punched her directly in the nose – a complete surprise to her – and she took a step back, a splash of blood on her upper lip – a complete surprise to me.
That punch would have knocked out a man my size.
She struck with the sw
ord again, going for the right arm this time, thinking she could slow me down if she could cut a muscle.
I almost let her hit me, then remembered that I didn’t have my armor, and ducked down and to the left. As the sword passed by me, I raised my own sword underneath it, pushing her off-balance.
She released the sword, letting it go spinning across the throne room, and pulled a dagger from her waist band with her right hand, lunging for me for close quarters combat.
This Maree was an alley-cat, looking for a win more desperately than I had expected. I grabbed her right wrist with my left hand, pulled her straight down and rapped her on the back of her head with the pommel of my sword.
She fell flat, dropping the dagger, then was back on her feet in breath with a dirk in her hand, having pulled it from her boot.
The razor-sharp edge reached for the underside of my gut. I stepped back and parried, weapon-to-weapon with the Sword of War.
The invincible blade shattered – not just breaking or cracking, but exploding into a million pieces, as if it were made of glass.
The smile on Maree’s face was wicked as she advanced on me. I fumbled for the dagger that I kept on my belt, a reminder of Genna, knowing I would never pull it in time.
Without warning, Maree flew like a rag-doll down the throne room, smashing against the polished, steel-bound doors. She dropped to the floor, tried to rise, then crashed back to the marble as if a giant, invisible hand had tried to squash her.
I turned to my left, expecting to see Shela with a hand raised, and instead saw Chesswaya, her staff raised and the green gem glowing.
“You will be gone, vile raptor!” Chesswaya hissed, an invisible wind blowing back her long, brown hair; her green eyes flashing like emeralds.
“You will not return!”
The hell you say!
Maree rose carefully from the marble floor, looking to me like she expected to be squashed back down onto it. When she was sure she’d be allowed to get her feet under her, she stood up to her full height. Her own green eyes flashed indignant. She tossed her long hair over one shoulder, straightened her back and regarded the room.
