Semper Indomitus: Book Five of the Fovean Chronicles

by Robert Brady

  “Let it be war, then,” she informed us. “Cherish the god.”

  I felt like I should be repeating, “Cherish the god,” as well, but didn’t. I was still digesting that a dirk had shattered the weapon that could cut through stone.

  She turned on her heel and she was gone. It occurred to me that we could just kill her and probably buy ourselves a couple weeks to be more ready, but disregarded it. You never knew when you were going to have to fall back on negotiations, and killing the emissaries made it hard to get good ones.

  As I watched her leave – to be honest, as I waited for her to come back in and finish me – I felt a hand on my left arm, and turned to see that Chesswaya was standing behind me, the green jewel in her staff quiet now.

  “I think that we should talk, father,” she informed me.

  ***

  We were back in Dragor’s War Room. We may have been falling into a rut.

  This time it was more family – Chessa and Dagi and Lupennen and I, Shela clinging to my arm – in addition to Dragor and one of his earls. This one I hadn’t met – the two from the last meeting apparently had other people to irritate.

  “I regret the loss of your weapon,” Dragor informed me.

  That’s an understatement, I thought.

  “I find it no surprise that these northerners are beloved of War,” D’gattis informed us. “Knowing this, I can imagine now their end designs.”

  I knew exactly, now, what their end designs were. I knew what they were here to do, and I knew how they were going to do it. I knew, because they were following my marching orders, and I’d received those loud and clear.

  “We’re going to need Raven,” I informed the room, “and Jack – we’re going to have to get them here at all costs.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” D’gattis said. “I think instead that we should summon your combined armies, with ours – “

  I shook my head. That wasn’t going to matter. War already knew exactly what I had to match these guys and, being a god, I had to think He wouldn’t have done whatever it was that He had to do to inspire them, if these Northerners couldn’t beat my army.

  True ignorance is pretending toward greater knowledge – I was going to lose if I matched wits with a god. I had to do something better than that.

  “It’s time to tell you something that I think you already suspected,” I said to the room.

  “That you speak directly to the god War?” Chesswaya asked.

  D’gattis gasped. Dragor looked skeptical, the earl as well. Lots of people thought they spoke to ‘god,’ and most of them stood in rags on street corners, telling the rest of us that “the end is near.”

  Today, they got it right.

  “Since I came here,” I said.

  “The rule of the gods – “ D’gattis began.

  Again, I shook my head. “No god may speak to any child of Life,” I informed him.

  “I am not, in fact, descended from her.”

  “Heathen!” the earl exclaimed, standing, slamming both hands on the table.

  He opened his mouth to say more, then took on a surprised look. He looked once around the table, reached for his back, then fell to one side, sliding under the table.

  Lupennen was left behind him, holding a bloody blade.

  “The Inquisition that he would have started,” my young son said, lowering his bloody dagger, “would have helped none of us.”

  “You can’t just kill my earls!” Dragor protested, then looked sideways at Lupennen.

  “I think, in fact, he can,” D’gattis said, “and will. Lupennen is right – you were not wise, Black Lupus, to broach this subject in front of such a one, and you would do well not to do so again.”

  Shela nodded, so did Chesswaya. Lupennen wiped his blade on the dead man’s pants leg.

  “That was a mistake,” I admitted, “but the fact remains – I was able to speak to War.”

  “You were?” D’gattis repeated.

  I nodded. “That is no longer an option,” I said. “I no longer serve War. However, when I did, His purpose and mine were to unite the Fovean nations into one, and then to rule it with one voice, under War.”

  “And now these Northerners have that purpose,” Chesswaya said. All faces turned to her, the staff in her hand as always, but the green gem quiet and her green eyes almost glowing. “They come under War, made far more powerful by you and your efforts, to finish what you have begun.”

  “But that makes no sense,” Shela argued. She was still in her blue palace gown, her long hair decked out around her shoulders, but without the usual jewels that her ladies loved to adorn her with.

  “You were doing what War wanted,” she said. “Why leap from a fresh horse?”

  “Onto a better one,” D’gattis finished for her. “By his actions, we see that Black Lupus will only go so far. Clearly these people from the harsh North will go farther. In the eyes of the god War, they are more fit to rule.”

  In my opinion, D’gattis had nailed it. This had been a risk that had been raised before – this was one of the costs of proof over faith: the ones with faith are very simply willing to go farther. Proof means knowing where the road ends.

  “Earlier this year, we heard a prophecy, and we thought we knew its meaning, but we were wrong,” I said. “I am not the ‘one who is of War.’ We wasted our time and a lot of our resources pursuing people who were never more than a distraction. The war that ensued scattered the forced that I would have used to meet this army, and engaged them with the other forces that could have been used to meet this army.

  “While we need to continue to assemble that army, in fact that can’t be our strategy,” I concluded. “That strategy will lose.”

  “And for this new strategy,” D’gattis said, “you need these others from your world?”

  “I need a power that only they can wield,” I said. “We need to put something into the fight that the god War didn’t anticipate.”

  “No one can even guess at the knowledge of a god,” Shela warned us.

  “No one,” Lynette said, “save for he who speaks to that god.”

  That’s what I was hoping.

  I did something I hadn’t done in a long time – I rested for a few days, the family and friends with me doing the same. D’gattis went on a hunt for the Green One, and Karel spent a lot of time with Dagi. Lynette and Shela ran the palace for Dragor, who was subtly re-interviewing all of his warriors as well as some of mine. Nantar’s Sarandi showed up and then left to find him, and when my Eldadorian Regulars came back a few days later, I assumed they had.

  When All God’s Day rolled around, we went out into the city and let the commons see us and cheer. News had been coming into the city that there was something bad going on in the middle of Volkhydro, but no one was sure what it was. Supposedly Gharf Bendenson had worn out his welcome in Vol, and he and his army had moved north to Myr.

  That couldn’t be a coincidence.

  The celebration was made better when the first of 20 Sea Wolves pulled into the port, each with a full compliment of Wolf Soldiers. My elite warriors marched in their squads down the main thoroughfare, 1,000 strong, the invincible First Millennium. People stood by the road side and cheered and threw bits of paper with ‘He conquers’ and ‘War’ written on them.

  Funny how that wasn’t going to work out.

  Near the end of the day, I found myself in the stable, working Blizzard’s hocks. He was getting up there in years and the cold could make him stiff.

  Shela found me and took me in her arms from behind.

  “We leave tomorrow?” she asked me.

  “I do,” I told her.

  Her grip tightened a little.

  “You have to stay here,” I told her. “Someone has to coordinate things.”

  “Lee and Vulpe –“ she began. I shook my head.

  “If this were Galnesh Eldador, yes,” I said. “Especially now that Hectaro is back, but it isn’t. Someone who can handle Dragor has to re
main, and that’s either me or you.”

  She sighed. “Who goes with you?” she asked.

  I thought for a moment. “Lupennen,” I said. “His horse is as fast as mine. Karel and Dagi seem to be attached at the hip – I’ll bring them both.”

  “And a guard of Wolf Soldiers?” she pressed me.

  I shook my head. “We know where we’re going,” I said, “and we know who’s between us and them. A bunch of troops is just going to slow us down and draw more attention, when we need to be quiet and quick.”

  “Do you think she’s even still there?” Shela asked me, meaning Raven.

  “I thought I’d ask you,” I said.

  She frowned. “Raven’s power is strange and distinct,” she said. “I can sense it when she uses it, but she has not – not for a long time. A new mother, especially a first time mother, focuses on her baby in her arms.”

  Shela would know that better than I.

  “If the Green One shows up,” I said, “send him after me. He should be able to find Vedeen, if nothing else.”

  “I will,” she said.

  I turned and took her in my arms. I still hadn’t replaced my armor. I’d settled on a breast plate and greaves that I wasn’t wearing now, so I took her in my arms, my hands reaching inside of the warm, fur cloak she wore, and felt her press her head against my chest.

  “I fear for you,” she informed me.

  “You’ve always been pretty smart,” I said, smiling.

  She punched my chest with her tiny fist. I laughed and squeezed her.

  “Make love to me, my Emperor,” she said.

  She took my hand and led me back to our rooms in the palace, never looking at me the entire time. I remembered the last time we’d met in a stable and left to be together in our rooms. It seemed like one hundred years ago – we were different people back then.

  Different and the same.

  We left in the quiet and the cold, just as the sun was rising, the four of us and two pack horses for supplies.

  Karel on Trickery took the point, well ahead of us. Lupennen wanted to trail behind but I wouldn’t hear of it, even if there wasn’t a horse alive that could outrun his. I was more worried about the arrow that we couldn’t see than the warrior we could.

  Dagi chattered along like a typical Andaron while we travelled. I learned more about her life, her mother, her adopted fathers, than I thought possible. She told us how she’d met Steel, the Savior, and then confided to us that, although she’d stood up to him, she’d been very afraid.

  “Well,” I said, “they call him a man-god. I’d be afraid, too.”

  “The stories of you say you’re never afraid,” Lupennen told me.

  “That’s why they’re called stories,” I informed him, and he gave me his usual, cat-like stare, as if he didn’t know if he should believe me or swat me.

  Conversation like that took us through the days. We spent the nights in a pavilion, with another for the horses, which we picketed as well. This gave the horses more warmth than they would have had and still let them lay down, but kept them from getting at each other. The food was the usual water, wine and jerked beef that travelers carried. No one complained of it, because no one wasn’t used to it.

  By day four, Dagi admitted that she was missing Chesswaya, and on the fifth day of our journey we saw sign of the valley between the hills where I knew Raven lived.

  Once again, we followed a trail, now much more obvious, to the City with No Name. By the size of the hoof prints and their depths, I could tell that these were from mounted warriors, no less than thirty strong, even if Karel, Dagi and Lupennen hadn’t informed me already.

  We came to the same three-storied inn in the same, quiet town. The doors and windows were still all closed, there was still light behind them. There was a place to tie up our horses outside but I didn’t want to use it. We waited for a few minutes and finally a burly Volkhydran came out from the main house.

  “What do you want here?” he demanded. I didn’t recognize him from my last time. I’d expected Byark Olgarson.

  “I want – “ I began, but Karel interrupted me.

  “We’re here to see Raven,” he said. “She’s expecting us.”

  “Raven is dead,” he informed me. “She died in child birth. If you want to see the grave, it’s back down the trail – there’s a break to a pass, where you can find our cemetery.

  “I saw it,” Karel said. “I saw no fresh grave there.”

  “In this cold?” he laughed. “There’s a marker. Her body is in a holding house, where you may not go.”

  Lupennen leaned forward, “He’s lying,” he said. “He’s scared – but not of us.”

  Someone else had found this place. Normally I’d reach for the Sword of War, but that was no longer an option. I should have settled on a backup weapon before this, but I hadn’t and I hadn’t thought I’d need to.

  “Can’t a stranger come in from the cold?” Karel pressed him.

  The Volkhydran shook his head. “We’ve no food to share,” he said. “It will be a long winter.”

  “Even for gold?” Karel asked.

  The man frowned. “You can’t eat gold.”

  Karel nodded. “Just for warmth, then,” he said.

  The man’s eyes shifted, as if he were waiting for someone to come up behind him. It was distinctly possible that there was someone on the other side of the door, telling him what to say.

  If that someone was Maree, then I didn’t want to go in there.

  “There is a wind break farther down –“ he began.

  “We’re aware of it,” I said. He turned his attention from me, and he squinted his eyes.

  “I know you,” he said, finally. “You don’t have your armor or your sword, but I know your face.”

  I nodded.

  “When does the Emperor travel so lightly?” he said, accentuating my title. I could imagine that, inside of the inn, people were moving.

  I really should have had a sword.

  “Let him in,” I heard from within. It was a woman’s voice, tired-sounding. Definitely not Maree.

  If that was Raven, she’d had a hard time of it.

  Three Andarons came out of the inn, pushing past the Volkhydran, to take the horses. Dagi made the sign of safe passage for a new tribe, her fingers in a peace-sign, tapped twice against her chest, and then in a circle around her face. The Andarons looked at each other and then at her, and one returned the sign.

  On Andaron honor, they wouldn’t steal or hurt the horses. She dismounted and the rest of us did as well.

  Ten years ago, I would have told them to be careful with Blizzard. He’d been handled by enough strangers, especially Andarons, to be more calm. He could still turn on someone inexperienced, but he wasn’t looking to like he used to.

  We stomped up the steps to the porch for the inn, and the Volkhydran stepped aside for us. He wasn’t about to open the door and he wasn’t about to turn his back on us, either.

  We entered and saw the same bar and sitting room, with fewer tables and fewer men, most of them Andarons.

  In the center was Raven, a baby in her arms, standing and waiting for us.

  On either side of her were Jack and Vedeen, and they didn’t look real happy. Jack’s beard was especially wiry and weird looking, like he’d taken an electric shock, and his hair was growing long. Vedeen’s free-flowing blonde locks were now in a braid over her shoulder, and she was sporting a baby bump.

  You procreating bastard, I couldn’t help thinking.

  “Came to check on my son?” Raven asked me.

  “I see his father did, finally,” I answered back.

  She looked to her right, to Jack, who just glared at me. “He was here when it counted,” she said. “Vedeen delivered the baby herself. I guess I might owe you something for sending them down here, so then this is it.”

  “Then this is it,” I said. I gestured to one of the tables. “Can we sit?”

  She nodded and we took our
places at a big, round table. A red-haired Volkhydran woman brought out a platter with steaming beef surrounded by potatoes, and another who could be her daughter brought out another platter with a pitcher of ale and wood cups. They served us and for a little while, we just exchanged glances amongst ourselves and glares amongst the others.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Karel asked, finally, indicating Jack.

  “We’re not sure,” Vedeen said. She spared a worried look at the side of Jack’s face, then turned back to me. “It wasn’t long after your battle with him, that he began to meditate, and then to slip away from us. Now we can’t tell if he’s meditating or not – or what nonsense he speaks.”

  “I speak to the dirt,” Jack said. “I sing to the water. The wind blows another song, and I don’t know the words.”

  Just from that, I was pretty sure what was going on, but I didn’t want to say anything yet, and certainly not in a room filled with the faithful.

  “He knew when you were coming,” Raven said, “and said that we should send you away. I would have, anyone else, but I knew you’d just come back with enough warriors to make us see you. This is simply better.”

  “You’ve been attacked recently,” Lupennen said, in his matter of fact way, his cat-like stare focused on Raven.

  She nodded. “We lost a lot of our men when a band of 25 armed warriors marched in here, led by a woman, and demanded that we swear fealty to the Great North.”

  “Byark Olgarson informed them that this city has no fealty, and tried to welcome them,” one of the Volkhydran men, the one who’d met us at the door, said. “They killed him just for that, just for speaking, so we attacked.”

  “They fight like demons,” one of the Andaron men, seated at another table, said.

  “Had it not been for my magic, I don’t think we would have driven them off,” Raven said. “I expected that the woman would be a sorceress of some kind, but she wasn’t.”

  “Her name is Maree,” Karel said, “and this is the first attack we’ve heard of from her, other than on Lupus – um, the Emperor, here.”

  “I didn’t beat her, either,” I said.

  “My sister did,” Dagi chimed in.