by Robert Brady
I shook my head. “The Confluni are occupied to the south,” I said.
“With your troops?” Dragor asked.
“My southern guard,” I said. “Out of Wisex.”
The Duke of Vol slapped the table in front of him.
That was starting to get to me.
“We’d hoped for your full commitment,” Eric said.
“And you have it,” I answered him. “I’ve been syphoning those troops off and sending them north, to Medya and Lupha. While the Confluni await me to the south, they aren’t helping the Great North and they aren’t attacking Eldador – and if those things happened, we would be looking at a much different war.”
“Is there any way to close the northern pass?” Dragor asked Karel, probably to prevent Eric from going back to wanting Lupha back.
“Anything is possible,” Karel said. “The Emperor spoke to the Dwarves before we came here. Dwarven engineers have shown great skill in closing passes and using mountains as weapons.”
“A trick my husband taught them,” Shela added.
“Could you not do this yourself, your Imperial Majesty?” Nina asked me.
I smiled. Time for some more padding of Eric’s position.
“Your Majesty,” I addressed Nina, bringing some raised eyebrows from around the table, “I probably could, but how would I get there? For that matter, what force would bring in the Dwarves?”
Eric looked at the map. “If they do focus on the West,” he said, “then a small, fast force in from the East might get to the mouth of their pass.”
Karel shook his head, “And die fighting their troops. There are marching out entire battalions. A Millenia of Eldadorian Regulars might hold them, but would be detected immediately. If there were, perhaps, two passes, then a small one might come in, but I saw no evidence of it, and I have trained with Dwarves.”
“I have trained with Dwarves,” I said, and all eyes turned my way, “but that doesn’t make me their equal. It is worth our time to ask them.”
“Dwarves do not like Men,” Dragor informed us.
Nantar smiled. “Then we’d better send a Dwarf,” he answered, looking at me.
It was decided that Shela would ride back to Hydro with the Wolf Soldiers and meet with Vulpe, who would take the First Millennium and the rest of the kids to Medya. I was going to take the Sea Wolf on the river to Myr, and then follow the trail back up to the land of the Dwarves.
In our chambers in Vol, Shela held me and she wept.
“You simply can’t go,” I told her.
“You have no friends in Sental, White Wolf,” she told me. “Among the Dwarves you might be safe, but not until then, and the passes are not easy in the winter. You could die.”
I held her close in our bed. We’d made love already. I didn’t let her know what Chessa had told me about her – it didn’t matter to me. I loved this woman.
But there were other responsibilities, too.
“I think we both know you’ll be monitoring me –“ I began, but she shook her head.
“Not when the distance is so far,” she said, “and not so close to the Tears of the World.”
I didn’t know either of those things.
“You know that Vulpe needs you so much more than I,” I said, finally.
She punched me in the chest and turned her back on me. I took her back into my arms and held her against me.
The truth was that I needed to go fast, and no horse we had access to was going to keep up with Blizzard, with the exception of Little Storm, and I simply was not taking Jack.
Shela knew it, and the Empire needed her. Send us both out of contact and there was no knowing what might happen.
The truth was, we were getting spread pretty thin.
We fell asleep in each others’ arms, neither saying another word.
***
In the morning Shela was informed by Lee that Teher would announce for the new king, but only for as long as the war continued.
“Henekh was clear,” Shela informed me. “He should be the next King, and he’s willing to fight for it. Lupennen got him to realize that he’d be fighting for a prize he’d never hold, if we didn’t destroy the army from the Great North first.”
Lupennen had some sort of weird skill at this, well past his years. He reminded me a lot of the little Scitai who’d died fighting against me, killed actually by Karel of Stone.
I wish that Xinto hadn’t betrayed me – I could have used his skills now.
“They will return to Lupha,” Shela informed me. “Then to Medya.”
Shela wanted her daughter at her side. I couldn’t blame her for that. I know she missed Chawnee horribly.
My next conversation was with Eric, Nantar and Karel, with Shela present.
“You’ll coordinate with your brother,” I told Eric. “Vulpe knows how to move the troops, he knows the strategy I mean to use.”
Eric nodded. We were back in the meeting room. Eric pointed at the map on the table.
“You want us to come straight at them?” he asked.
I nodded. “Let them think that we have no idea that they are going to go to the East first,” I said. “If they think they already know what we’re doing, then they won’t try to find out.”
“They’re likely to meet us head on,” Nantar said. “From what Karel is telling us, they won’t fear us, no matter our numbers.”
I had the same feeling, based on my experience with War.
“If they do, even better,” I said. “The more attention they have off of the mountains, the more likely our success. We cut them off forever from their support in the north, and they’re going to become a lot more reasonable.”
“Or decide that they have nothing to lose,” Karel noted.
That was absolutely a possibility – however people in leadership very rarely come to that decision.
We would have to see.
Chapter Nineteen
An Old Friend
It only took my Sea Wolf three days to make it to Myr, going against the current on the Llorando. There was plenty of deep water and the wind was strong, aiding us immensely.
I didn’t bother visiting the city. I disembarked with Blizzard into Sental, where the world was closed for business as far as they were concerned. If anyone recognized the Emperor of Eldador and his legendary horse, they didn’t say anything.
It was a return to my first days here. Sleeping on the ground, keeping track of my horse. This armor wasn’t as warm as my last, so I travelled with a thick fur cape, pulled close around my shoulders, and I’d packed grain for Blizzard.
It took us a week to make it to the start of the lands of the Simple People. The Dwarf who stood the watch didn’t know me, but he knew my armor at one glance.
“J’ktak?” he asked, his eyes opened wide.
He was a big circle of warm furs, out of which hands, head and feet poked out. He had an axe over his shoulder.
“I need help from the People,” I said. “I need you to help me.”
He nodded. “What do you need, J’ktak?” he asked.
I explained to him frankly that we were fighting the Men of the North, and that they’d carved a path through the mountains. We had to stop their adding warriors to the ones already in Volkhydro, or Fovea was lost.
That’s all I needed to say – he nodded and he knew what would be needed, because they’d been doing it themselves already for years.
“Will you come with me to the tunnels?” he asked me. I shook my head.
“Please take my message, and I will meet you here. I have one more task to accomplish, that I must do alone.”
He nodded and was off. I pressed north Blizzard, passing two more days on the road.
Since she’d said the words to me, they’d haunted me. “Your doomed mount.” It wasn’t hard to know what that meant.
Blizzard was getting old. He’d been injured almost as many times as I had, and he’d given me what he had.
I would be damned if I wo
uld ride him to his demise. No, simply not going to happen.
A domesticated horse wouldn’t be able to provide for itself, if you just freed it into the wild. He wouldn’t know that there was grass under snow. He wouldn’t know how to find his own water. Eventually he’d go looking for people, and that would get him into trouble.
I also couldn’t expect that the Herd that Cannot be Tamed would accept him again. He’d have been replaced with another stallion, and he would be seen as a threat. He’d likely have to live his days out in a bachelor herd with the other stallions who weren’t the stallion, and only if he could get them to accept him.
Which was better than dying with a spear in his guts, or an arrow in his throat, or whatever else was awaiting him. However there was another problem here: it was very, very unlikely that Blizzard would go.
I was going to need some help.
So we made camp at twilight, next to the shores of the Tears of the World, which tasted like tears and whose river sounded like a woman crying. I made a little fire, and I fed Blizzard and ate of my own supplies.
I’d never done this before, but it wasn’t like I didn’t know how. I cleared my mind, and I looked up at the stars, and I prayed.
“Goddess Life,” I said, “I need you. What’s more, I’m certain you can hear me, because this is your place. This is where your parents suffer their fate. You’ve gifted me, and now it’s time for me to return –“
A woman with long, flowing grey hair stepped up out of the Tears of the World. She was dressed in gossamer white robes that dragged like wisps of smoke behind her. Her grey eyes found me in the dark, almost glowing with their power.
“I am not to be invoked, child of another god,” she informed me.
Blizzard started when she spoke, then settled. I stood and waited for her. The wind whipped cold from the north, but she didn’t seem affected by it.
She stepped right up to the stallion, and took his great jaw in her hand, looking into his big, brown eye.
“You are missed, Almadain,” she informed him.
“Is that his real name?” I asked her.
She regarded me. “It was,” she said. “But he is Blizzard now, and Blizzard knows his fate.”
“I seek to return him –“ I began, but she interrupted me.
“Do you think I do not know?” she demanded. Her eyes shown in the night. “Do you think I do not suffer? Do you think that his every pain is not mine, and that when this mighty one falls, a part of me dies with him?”
“I could only guess,” I said. If ever, this was a time to be honest. “I cannot know your pain.”
“You would wilt,” she informed me. She returned her attention back to Blizzard.
“I can’t betray him,” I said. She looked back at me. “I’m sorry, no – I’m not as strong as he is. I can’t. I can’t ride him to his death.”
“This decision is not given to you,” Life informed me. “Your fate unwinds. The prophesy reveals itself.”
I sighed, and I took off my breast plate, and dropped it on the ground.
“Where I am from,” I informed her, “this is a mortal sin. I’m not sure how you regard it here.”
“What?” Life demanded. I had her attention now.
I drew the sword. I pressed the point against my breast bone.
“No!” she said, horrified. I had to think that the goddess of Life would oppose suicide, and probably really take it very personally.
“You want him to die for me,” I said. “I choose to die for him, instead.”
She straightened. “You lack the courage,” she said. “Men speak these words, but they are false.”
“Good-bye, and thank you for your gift of him, goddess Life,” I said. “I ask only that you care for him when I’m gone.”
Blizzard reared. I took a firm grip on the sword.
She raised her hand, the sword glowed red, but didn’t leave my grasp. The Dwarves said that they had a hard time forging it, and that’s why I picked this.
I had to think that Earth was involved in what was going on.
“Stop,” she commanded me. I actually did it.
She was a goddess, after all.
She sighed. “Without you, Fovea is lost,” she said, finally. “I would not see you complete War’s plan.”
War wanted me out of the way now. This would do it.
She looked to the stars, then back to me. Her grey eyes smoldered in her frustration.
“Your gift,” she said, finally. “Were you one of mine, I would never have given you a gift so great. It unbalances all of the rest, but then, that is why War chose you.
“Very well – I will make a place for the Almadain in the Herd, and he will live out his days in comfort with his own kind,” she told me.
“But you will be sorely tested without him,” she continued. “Know that no scion of his would have you. You will know none but regular horses and your own feet.”
I nodded. “I accept that,” I said.
She sighed and turned back to Blizzard, the Almadain. She stroked his great jaw.
“It is done,” she said.
“May I?” I asked, and had to choke back my emotions. “May I say good-bye?”
She stepped back from him.
I stepped up to the great stallion. No one had done for me what he had. There had been a lot of times when he was my only friend in the world.
I rubbed him under his jaw, which I knew he liked. I pressed my forehead to his. I whispered to him how much I loved him, and how much I would miss him, and how much I would always owe him.
I stepped back from him, and he pushed me in the chest with his nose. I laughed and pushed his nose back.
He reared for me, pawing the air. Then he turned and charged off to the north.
We both watched him go. I admit it – I cried.
“Thank you, goddess,” I said to her, without looking at her.
“When Steel asked for this, I was wont to deny him,” she said. “When I saw what the two of you did, I was sure that I was right.
“This heartens me, man of another god,” she concluded. “You have learned the lessons that the Almadain was sure that he could teach you, and when you realize it, you will be on the road to being a better man.”
I turned to ask her what meant, but she was gone.
It was a cold night, sleeping on Blizzard’s saddle, under his blanket, missing him.
***
Walking back to the Dwarven nation was pretty freaking depressing after that. I left the saddle and kept the blanket. It took me four days, then I waited another day for the Dwarves to show up.
It was another group that I didn’t know: three males and three females. All were bundled up for the cold weather. They all looked for Blizzard, and I told him that I’d freed him back to his herd.
There was no need to tell then about Life.
“I’m surprised he left,” one said.
“We’ll see him when he’s hungry,” said another.
“We should go back and let the Simple People know,” a third said. I shook my head.
“Blizzard won’t be seen by Men or Dwarves again,” I said. “It was time for him to retire, and he did. Please just believe me in this.”
They didn’t like it but they agreed. I think they knew that there was much more to the story, which I might tell them in my own time.
We set off for north of Volkhydro together, with me no longer feeling like Lupus the Conqueror, but as the wandering sword I’d came her as, but with the consequences a lot higher.
We were a week back down the Llorando towards the city of Myr. Crossing the river this close to the Tears of the World was neither safe nor easy, especially with the winter ending. The cold weather that we cursed all winter had given way to a warm spell that swelled the river to its banks and, in some places, beyond them.
Years ago we had destroyed the bridges between Sental and Volkhydro. No one ever rebuilt them, because no one needed to. River trade moved straight i
nto Tren Bay, and then to Hydrus, Lupha and Eldador. Grain purchased in the breweries in Myr could be easily ported, now that the demand was so much less.
It was just another example of how my influence had changed the world, but it didn’t help us now.
The Dwarves knew of a wide, low spot well before the mountain trail opened up into Sental, just before the mountains turned into hills in Volkhydro. I waded out into it, the water freezing my legs, a rope tied around my waist.
I’d bound my sleeves and greaves into a bundle with my fur cloak and strapped it high up on my back to keep them warm, with my boots. I gripped the slippery rocks with freezing toes, moving as fast as I dared, knowing that when my feet became numb, this was going to be much harder.
The Dwarves had tied two strong ropes around my waist. If I fell, this would save me but, more importantly, I would tie one off on the other side, and then they would use it to cross, and the other to guide back and forth.
I was a third of the way across when my feet were too numb to feel the bottom. Ten more steps and I slipped, gripping the rope with one hand and wind-milling my other arm.
The Dwarves heaved on the rope and, for a precarious moment, I hung between balance and falling. I gripped the second rope with my free hand and pulled, and fell to one knee. Stabilized, I stood again and crossed to the other side.
I had a few deep gouges in the soles of my feet. I tied off both ropes and started a fire right away, not wanting to lose any toes, knowing that we would all need the fire after crossing. I scratched the edge of my sword with a piece of flint over some brush and the little pile caught fire. I fed it, then warmed my feet.
I started bleeding pretty quickly – actually a good sign. The muscles burned like fire as I wrapped them in what passed for socks here, mostly strips of cotton. When the blood flow was a trickle and the pain was just a throb, I put my boots back on, and then stood ready for the rest of the Dwarves.
With the guide rope tight, a Dwarf would tie the other rope around his or her waist, and we’d hold on to both sides. Thus they crossed very quickly, and we could pull the rope back. That Dwarf would warm his or her feet against the fire, while the others would cross. The last one tied the guide rope to the main rope, and then we pulled him across and collected the rope back across the river.
