by Robert Brady
“Her power is impressive,” Vedeen said, solemnly.
“I hear from the wind that these victories will not last,” Jack said, without looking at any of us. “As their numbers grow, our power dwindles. This is the time of War.”
Karel leaned forward. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Raven regarded Jack. “He wasn’t like this when I knew him,” she said. “He didn’t mumble that wierdness, he didn’t refuse to explain what he meant.”
“He showed no sign of this after rescuing me,” Vedeen added. She opened her mouth to say more, but Lupennen interrupted.
“He spoke to himself once in a while,” he said, looking me in the eyes, “when he was telling us about the prophecy and the gods. He’d look to one side, and he would remind himself of something –“
“And then sometimes,” Dagi chimed in, “he’d start on a whole new idea, nothing like the old one.”
Everyone but Jack looked at Vedeen, who looked away.
“If you’re going to lie and cover for him,” I informed her, “then you are useless to us.”
She stiffened. “So now,” she said, “you have use for me? Other than to gut me on a pole, that is.”
Raven sighed. “Vedeen,” she said.
But the Druid stood. “No,” she said. “let us be clear here. If the Emperor had not been interrupted, then I would be dead. I – who was the only one who understood –“
“I am not,” I said, “the ‘One who is of War.’”
She stopped herself, and she looked into my eyes.
“You had it wrong,” I said. “We all did. Everything you thought you knew, you didn’t know. All of your secrets, your betrayals, playing both sides, or thinking you were. All of that time was wasted.
“I am not the ‘One who is of War,’” I repeated. “I think Maree might be, or this Vinkler. There might even be someone behind them, whom we don’t know yet, who is ‘of War,’ but it’s not me.”
Vedeen snorted and sat back down. “You lie,” she said.
I spread my arms wide. “Am I missing something?” I asked.
She looked at me. “Your armor –“ she began.
“Your sword,” Raven gasped. The baby in her arms stirred a little.
Vedeen scanned my body from nose to toes – her magic felt like a flow of ants down my body.
“You’re – you’re,” she stammered.
“He is no longer of War,” Lupennen stated. “Those gifts to him are gone.”
It kind of rankled me that Lupennen was so in touch with what was going on, at his tender age. He was around Lee’s age of 14, that’s when kids really start asking serious questions, but it seemed that Lupennen spent more time answering them.
Jack looked up.
“For Fovea, Fovea, then must they live and die.
Fight the battle from within
With a champion from outside.
You shall be the weapons
The tools of men and gods
Who come too late for victory
And win despite these odds.”
Raven turned to Jack, and she put a hand on his forearm. He didn’t look at her.
“Jack,” she said. “Are you telling us something?”
“The dirt speaks,” he said. “The water listens.”
“Oh, no,” Vedeen said, and looked at me with a kind of horror.
“This is strange,” Karel of Stone said, looking at all of us.
“What is?” I asked.
“No one but Glynn could sing that much of the prophecy,” Raven told me. “Not a whole verse like that.”
“No,” Karel said. “What is strange is that I could hear it. When Glynn sang, I couldn’t hear anything – it was just quiet to me. But that was your prophecy, wasn’t it?”
“Part of it,” Raven said.
“I could hear it,” Karel informed us.
Vedeen shook her head. “People, we’ve left an important matter hanging,” she said. “Much as I am impressed that our friend Scitai is now enlightened to our prophecy, we’ve discovered yet another flaw in our believing.”
“Which is?” Raven asked her.
Vedeen looked directly at her. “That you are not the champion,” the Druid said.
She looked at me. “He is.”
That night I slept in a comfortable bed, that I still had to pay for. My kids had their own rooms, and Karel did whatever the hell it was that Karel did, and he did it on his own dime.
This prophecy stuff could drive you crazy. I’d love to pretend I didn’t know why the gods didn’t say, “Go left, stop at this door, knock three times, turn the knob and meet your fate.”
However I knew exactly why the gods didn’t say that – because they can’t say that. If they said that, you would have proof that there were gods.
With proof, you have no faith. I had realized long ago that I am the original, perhaps the only man with no actual faith, because I didn’t need it, I had proof.
I’d always known atheists and agnostics – people who loved to cry out, “I have no faith.” What they had, invariably, is faith in something else, even if that faith was in their lack of it. Being an atheist is in fact a much more restrictive religion that Catholicism or Islam or any of the ones I’d seen here, because atheism brooks no challenge and stands no question. Atheists have more faith than they like to believe.
I had spoken to my god. I had, absolutely, no faith. I knew what He wanted and, up to now, I did it.
I knew the actual consequences to my actual actions. I knew for a fact that, if I started to win in my fight, that he was going to bring the pain back, and then I was going to do anything he wanted, because there was no way to withstand the amount of agony he could throw at me.
He hadn’t done that to me since before the kids were born, since I’d met Shela on the Angadorian plains, and he’d thought I’d betrayed him. If I thought too much about it, I would weep. Gods don’t just have resources, they have imagination that we as mortals can’t fathom. I couldn’t steal myself against what He could do, because my mind couldn’t embrace all that He was capable of.
Right now, my resisting Him was an unfortunate choice that probably made the whole thing mildly more interesting to Him. That had to actually last past the point where, if He hit me with what He had, then it would be pointless, because He had already lost.
Which meant out-planning at least one god, maybe more. That was highly unlikely to happen.
Or I could retire, go to Wisex or back to my own world, and give up my family. That was not going to happen.
Alone in the night, with the cold outside of my blankets, I reconciled myself to the idea that, to win this, I might have to take myself out of the equation.
Is man not great, that he would give of his life for another man? I don’t remember where I’d read it, but I knew it. What I really had to ask myself was, “How much do I believe in it?”
Chapter Sixteen
To Win Despite the Odds
We saddled up in the morning, and we headed back toward Hydrus – Karel out front with Trickery, myself a little behind him with Dagi, Lupennen to the middle with Raven and Jack on Little Storm, Vedeen bringing up the rear.
A few Andarons had wanted to come with us until they realized where we wanted to go. Every last one of them was a veteran of the Battle of the Foveans and none of them wanted to be reminded of it.
The cold was really wearing on Dagi’s Andaron mare. She was having a hard time keeping weight, and Dagi ended up spending most of the trip back behind my saddle. Blizzard being a native of the Wild Horse Plains was used to colder weather than this.
We limped back into the city on the 12th day of Adriam, coming in late, entering through the new, back entrance to the royal stables. There was no fanfare and there didn’t need to be any – this was a time to get serious, not to party.
No one had come back from anywhere. I was sort of surprised we hadn’t heard from Eric, but I knew that Nina was smart enough to know that
Gharf Bendenson would be looking for a fast rider reporting back to the Emperor, immediately after meeting with this upstart Count, and wouldn’t allow it. Either she’d find her own way to report back, or she simply wouldn’t.
Merchants from the north were rare this time of year – most of Volkhydro was battened down for a rough winter, of which we had two more solid months. People coming into the city from the north were more likely to be starving deserters from the Volkhydro army and women who were victims of the rapine after the Battle of the Foveans, who were all showing by now and in fact would be giving birth in two more months.
Lynette and Shela had set up a charity for them while I was gone. They’d used some Outpost X gold to buy a large warehouse and then employed some down-on-their-luck veterans to gut it and build a hostel in its place. The influx of gold to Hydrus in a very off part of the season didn’t bother anyone.
“We had our share of them in the City with No Name,” Raven informed me. “Andarons were taking them as wives.”
That made sense. Andaron culture was far more focused on who raised a child than who fathered him or her. A woman from Volkhydro would become an Andaron if she was accepted by the tribe – the Andarons probably thought of themselves ‘accepted’ by the City with No Name and then didn’t think twice of taking Volkhydran wives.
Fovea was changing – war does that.
War the god does that.
The second half of Adriam’s month was, if anything, even colder than the first part. It wasn’t until the 28th that we finally heard from Eric, via two Andaron riders who were, on their own initiative, building something similar to my postal service between the cities of Volkhydro.
Dragor was holding court in his throne room when they arrived. He was supposed to be embracing the five-day work-week that the rest of Eldador used, but he was resisting it. It really pissed off the Eldadorian staff that had come here, hoping to see more rapid advancement than they would in Eldador. First and Last days off were already sacred.
I met the Andarons, two swarthy men with mustachios past their chins and long, black hair down past their shoulders, in Dragor’s war room with Shela, Dagi, Chessa Vulpe and Lupennen. Karel was back out doing what Karel did and Lynette occupied her days missing her husband and working her charity.
The first of them, “Bear Eyes,” inclined his head to me. His compatriot, Loud Eagle, stayed quiet.
“This is from the Count of Myr,” he informed me. “It is a secret post – we could not deliver it until we had other business in the city.”
I took it and nodded. “You are very clever Men,” I said.
Loud Eagle grinned to himself. Both were dressed in thick, Volkhydran furs. I was informed that the horses they rode were more like southern Andaron drafts than the light, swift war horses they were famous for.
Drafts were slower but could weather the cold better, and could pull if they had to.
“We have had many successes in the lands you ruin,” Bear Eyes informed me, to my surprise. “A man who thinks, he can go far – past any horizon.”
Kind of a slap in the face there. “You speak to an Emperor and the War Chief of the Wolf Riders,” Shela informed them in their own language.
The loss of the Sword of War hadn’t set me back in my ability to understand languages, thank whatever god. By now I had been speaking them all for so long that I knew them.
“We know who he is,” Loud Eagle informed us. “You call him ‘Yonega Waya,’ the White Wolf. In Andoron, more call him, ‘He Sews with Blood.’
That was practically a curse. Dagi’s hand dropped to her sword, which she’d taken to wearing around, with some light chain she’d picked up somewhere.
Chesswaya stepped forward, and the gem in her staff glowed green. “And what do the people call me, Wohali Asdaya?” she asked.
He blanched. Inherent in the Andaron people was a healthy respect for their sorceresses. Shela was seen as more of an Eldadorian after all of these years, but the people had spent a great effort in educating Chessa, and a few saw her as their next, great sorceress.
“You are the wolf’s song,” Bear Eyes said, stepping between the rest of us and his friend. “We mean you no offense, honored one.”
“See that you don’t,” Dagi said.
“You need healing,” Chessa told them. “Both your bodies and your minds are sick. You will come with me.”
The both lowered their heads. The Andaron shaman’s first duty was the health of her tribe – even in other tribes, a powerful sorceress might be sought where the skills of the local one were insufficient.
I had thought that I might invest in their new post office – I didn’t waste my time. If they were going to make it, they were going to want to do that with me.
He Sews with Blood – not a good nick name. In this case, it was more like, “One who creates new things with blood.”
Chessa and Dagi left with them. Shela snatched up the sealed envelope and inspected it.
“This hadn’t been tampered with,” she informed me.
“What does it say?” I asked.
She handed it to me. I saw Eric’s signature across the front, partially obscured by the seal. I popped the wax blob that held it shut and read the contents.
“Father,” it began. That was a good start.
“As you advised, I pressed Bendenson to be an Earl, which he refused.
“Maree has spoken to him, and informed him that he must secede the north of Volkhydro to avoid her armies. He tried to negotiate with her for the northern cities of Senta and Vellock, and Maree responded that she would have those, regardless, and that Myr would need to be empty of Volkhydrans by spring.
“Bendenson immediately planned to raid our stores and move the army back to Vol. I could not allow this, so I killed him.
“I am now King of Volkhydro. I have spoken to Karel of Stone, and he and Nantar are going to support me. No one was happy with Gharf Bendenson, and I am beginning the mobilization of the local militias for the spring. The Great North had already completed one strong garrison in the caves where Vedeen and Jack had settled, and are almost done with two more.
“It would help a lot if you could give back Hydro and Volkha to me. You can rally in Medya and we can push back the Great North from all sides.
“His Majesty,
“King Eric Aileenson”
“No one is going to accept him as King of Volkhydro,” I said, allowed, before I really thought about it. I looked guiltily at my family members.
“They will if you give him back Volkha and Hydro,” Lupennen said, just as quickly. “That’s something no one else could do.”
True, I thought. And wouldn’t I look like a class A dumbass, after I did it?
Of course, that was exactly the thinking that had gotten me into this mess.
“I need to speak to Dragor,” I said, “and to Henekh Dragorson, who is officially Warlord of Volkhydro. Both of them have a legitimate claim to the throne, if Gharf is dead.”
“What could you tell them?” Shela asked me.
“Not a whole lot,” I answered. “Dragor might be reasonable and realize that even if he wants the throne, a civil war hands it to the Great North. I would expect Henekh to want Eric to be reasonable, and to hand it to him, so that there’s no civil war.”
“Meanwhile,” Vulpe said, “you can’t just go and kill them because you don’t agree with them. Then you won’t just have civil war, you’ll have revolts in your cities as well.”
Vulpe had been living this for the last year. As well, he was the one on the ground when we took Volkha, which I renamed Lupha. I was pretty sure that he might have met Henekh.
“I should go to him, father,” Lupennen said.
He looked up at me with those cat-curious eyes.
I shook my head. “Henekh is a stereotype Volkhydran, son,” I said to him. “He’s not going to take you seriously – he’s more likely to do something to you to prove a point.”
“Not if we send Dagi
and Chesswaya with him,” Shela said, “and a few hundred Wolf Soldiers.”
I usually relied on Shela’s council. I also knew how she felt about these other kids showing up. I wasn’t willing to say that she would send them on a suicide mission, neither was I able to say for sure she wouldn’t.
“Eric needs to come to Hydro and take it,” Lupennen continued. “If he shows up here with an army and you withdraw, then he’s going to have credibility with the rest of the Dukes and War Lords in Volkhydro.
“And I need to be the one who goes with him,” Lee said. “Not Dagi and Chessa.”
Now it was Shela who frowned.
“I’ve run the capitol, mother,” Lee said to her. “I’ve commanded Wolf Soldiers. Also, the minstrels are already singing about my travel through Conflu – the Volkhydrans hate and fear the Confluni. They might not take Lupennen seriously, but the will listen to me, even Henekh.”
I hated it, but she was right. Both of them were. Eric needed to run me out of town to seal his position as the King of Volkhydro, before too many of the city leaders got invested in the idea that he could be replaced. As well, if Henekh was going to listen to anyone, it would be Lee.
“Lee can handle herself,” I said, to Shela. “Lupennen has a strong head on his shoulder and a knack for reading the room. We’ll send three Centuries from the First and replace them from Uman City, moving those troops to Medya. The fewer troops we have here when Eric arrives, the more believable his victory will be.”
The kids all nodded, Shela didn’t. I could imagine that there was a hell of a conversation going on in her and Lee’s heads right then.
“I’ll draft a letter and get it back to Eric to tell him what to expect. I need those Andarons back here when Chessa is done with them.”
Lee and Vulpe left the room with Lupennen. Shela regarded me.
“White Wolf,” she began.
“Do you want to know what War offered me, Shela?” I asked her. She looked into my eyes, dreading what she might hear.
“I could go back to my home world, and lose you all, or I could go somewhere like Wisex, and lose all of the kids.
