Semper Indomitus: Book Five of the Fovean Chronicles

by Robert Brady

  I wouldn’t assume that I would win, because my army was better.

  But I needed a few days for them to lick their wounds and consider, and I had to think I had that now.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Deafening Echo of One Hand, Clapping

  According to Nina, Henekh came right to Eric and demanded that he relinquish the throne, based on his inability to defeat the Great North.

  Eric informed him that this was a pretty impressive demand from a war lord who hadn’t even tried, and who’d hid in his city while Eldador took three cities, almost unchallenged.

  Then he put it to the troops, and gave them a day to decide and, that night, Nina used her magic to recreate our last engagement with the Great North, with Shela’s help.

  The support for the Holy Avenger was overwhelming. Suddenly it wasn’t so bad to be Free Legion and the son of the Emperor.

  If I could do that, why not my son, who was so much like me – who even had his own, devastating sword?

  Eric renamed Henekh warlord of the Volkhydran people under him. Being so magnanimous was really popular with the warriors who didn’t want to kill Henekh outright – a surprising number of whom were from Teher. Everyone remembered who Henek’s son turned out to be.

  I didn’t think that was very fair, but unfortunately I needed to perpetuate it.

  Two days after the battle, and one day after we’d denied access to the battle field by the Great North to retrieve their wounded, Maree showed up at our pickets, demanding to see me.

  She was dressed out in her skins and boots as usual, this time with a long, thin sabre over her back. She was still smiling her usual smile – I had to think that she considered the battle just a set back. This time, she had 20 of her warriors escorting her.

  You could see in their eyes that they were spoiling for a fight. You could also see them all sweltering in their shaggy furs.

  “At least this time you were smart enough to meet me in armor, old man,” she told me.

  Old man?

  “Sure,” I said.

  “And I see your horse died,” she added.

  Trying to piss me off – can’t see why at this point of the negotiations. I had to think that trading insults was part of the negotiation for her.

  “Aren’t there troops you could be blowing?” I asked her.

  Three of her warriors drew their swords, and all of mine drew theirs. She raised her hand.

  “Enough, then,” she said. “We want to relieve the troops in the field.”

  “No.”

  She blinked her eyes. “War’s wages,” she began.

  “Don’t care.”

  “We could treat your warriors –“

  “You already do.”

  I looked into her brown eyes. It was incredibly demoralizing to stand there and watch the man whose shoulder you stood at, who maybe took that blow for you, die of it over a couple of days, without food or water.”

  I sure as hell wasn’t giving that up.

  “We will attack you,” she said.

  “Do it,” I countered. “See what I do in return.”

  Her men were exchanging glances. Obviously, attacking me in a suicide blitz was in their game plan.

  She sighed. “We are willing to negotiate a new treaty,” she began.

  I just laughed. That really pissed off her guard.

  “You’re going to lose, Maree,” I told her. “You’ve got no reserves coming. You’ve got a big chunk of land, but you can’t hold it. I could have another hundred thousand on the field in a month if I want to, plus the Volkhydrans, and maybe others of the Fovean nations who know that letting you in here is a big mistake.”

  “Your victory – your one victory did not turn the war,” she insisted.

  “The next one will,” I said. “Wait and see.”

  I had to think they’d already wrapped up Senta, and they’d done it the same way as they had their previous city. They were looking at Alun now, in what could be a very logical progression, very demoralizing to the Volkhydrans and the rest of Fovea.

  However, they were bogged down here, and here is not where they wanted to be bogged down. If they were smart, they’d withdraw to their two cities, weather the summer and replan.

  I could also tell it didn’t even occur to her. I couldn’t answer for Vinkler.

  “What do you want?” she demanded of me. She wasn’t smiling now.

  “You surrender, so does your boyfriend,” I said. “You disarm your troops, we let them walk back to the Great North via the land of the Dwarves, which you’ll stop hunting and eating.”

  She shook her head. “You ask too much,” she said. “We keep the north of Volkhydro in the name –“

  I shook my head. “Never going to happen,” I said. “If I have to hunt your troops down one-by-one, I will.”

  She turned on her heel, and she left. Her men, glaring at mine, followed after her. I watched them walk back to the hill tops where the horde was holding up now.

  Well, I thought, at least that was a waste of time.

  Karel showed up later that day, on foot. Supposedly he’d been scouting the enemy, and it hadn’t gone well.

  He sat with Vulpe, Varr, Grainger and I in the pavilion. Shela and Chessa were focused on our wounded. We’d given him ale and a meal and he dug into it.

  “I’m going to miss that pony,” I said. “Their crossbow bolts go farther than I thought, and they’re deadly accurate with them. It’s my fault that I lost him.”

  I still stung from the loss of Blizzard and could sympathize.

  “I watched your battle from behind their lines,” he said, looking at me. “When your Wolf Soldiers started moving forward, they really panicked. They knew exactly what you were going to do.”

  That wasn’t good, because I hadn’t done anything like that since Andoron, and that wasn’t with Wolf Soldiers.

  “Spoken to D’gattis and Ancenon recently?” I asked him.

  He leveled his gaze at me.

  “They’ve been curiously absent,” he said. “I usually hear from D’gattis very regularly. Also, I have spies that I hear from in Trenbon, who have been quiet.”

  Adding Nina to the Free Legion said to me that the Fire Bond was still active. I hadn’t actually heard D’gattis say those words.

  “I think we need to find out,” I said.

  Shela couldn’t contact D’gattis, try as she might. We waited two more days and then had the first runners from Eric’s army. In that time, Nina had tried to get Vedeen to contact the Green One, but Vedeen wouldn’t say if she could, one way or another.

  The next day Vulpe, Lupennen, Shela, Karel and I rode out to the West to meet with Eric and his entourage, which included Nina, Vedeen and Jack on Little Storm. The latter had lost weight and looked, if anything, even more estranged.

  Nina had her baby in a sling at her breast. I couldn’t think that there was really any safe way to ride a baby on horseback, but it wasn’t my kid.

  “The sacrifices to the new god collect,” Jack muttered.

  Karel, sitting on the back of Lupennen’s horse, said, “What does that mean?”

  Vedeen looked at Jack, the worry clear on her face. “His mind is leaving us, I fear,” she said. “Perhaps it was the power he wielded – and he is sinking into the black mind.”

  Shela shook her head. “No one sinks into the black mind,” she said.

  Regardless, Jack was clearly a couple logs short of a bonfire.

  “Jack?” I asked him, from on back of my new, Angadorian stallion, “Who is the new god?”

  “Ask me what you don’t already know, instead,” he told me.

  “OK,” I said. “Who betrayed us to the Great North?”

  He looked up at me. “The same question, the same answer,” he said.

  That was revealing. Karel and I exchanged a glance.

  “Do you know who’ll win this war?” Karel asked him.

  Jack looked back down. “How can anyone win, when so few
are wise.”

  “Please, don’t molest him,” Vedeen said, and reached up to put a hand on Jack’s knee where he sat his stallion.

  “I think he could use a little molesting,” Eric said. “Your guarding him doesn’t help.”

  “Vedeen,” I said, “will you contact the Green One for us, or not?”

  She looked right at me. “What makes you think I could, or that I would want to?”

  “You can,” I said, “because you’re still a Druid, and you want to, because right now our enemy, who would kill you slowly just to prove a point, seems to have inside information on us, and we’d really like to know from whom.”

  Vedeen sighed. “I did not know this,” she said.

  “Someone tipped them off to our strategy the other day,” Vulpe said. “We’d have had them all and this would be nearly over otherwise.”

  Karel laughed. “Don’t be so sure of that,” he said.

  Eric nodded. “We’ve got 20,000,” he said, “and we’ve been shadowed here by at least half of our number.”

  That was not good. “So many?” Shela gasped.

  “When they meet with the survivors in the middle of Volkhydro, they’ll come after us,” Karel told me.

  “It wouldn’t hurt to have more troops here,” I said. “Eric, stop your forces tonight and see if they do the same or keep moving. If they do, get within a few hours of us, and then camp.”

  Eric nodded.

  “Is Henekh giving you a hard – is he being difficult?” I asked.

  Eric frowned. “He questions everything,” Nina said. “Usually when a lot of Volkhydrans can hear him.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Karel said. Vulpe just nodded. I turned to Lupennen.

  “Would you go with your brother?” I asked him.

  He nodded. I turned to Eric.

  “Lupennen has skills,” I began. Eric shook his head.

  “I’m well aware of what Lupennen can do,” he said. “Thank you, brother.”

  Lupennen trotted his horse over to Eric.

  Good enough then.

  “If at all possible, we need not to fight them for four more days,” I said.

  “Why four days?” Eric asked me.

  “I called for reinforcements,” I said. “We have to assume now that they know everything that we’re likely to do. We have to do something unlikely now.”

  “Four days is a long time,” Eric said. Nina, next to him, nodded her head. “I think they’ll be together in two –“

  “That means we really need to buy you one day,” Lupennen said. “I can buy you one day.”

  I nodded. I didn’t need to ask how – I think I already knew.

  We talked a little more about troop reserves, the likelihood of growing the Volkhydran resistance and how much help it would really be. They were going to fight heroes style, and that meant they were going to lose. Even knowing that, we had to have a way for them to contribute to their own defense.

  When we were done, we returned to our own armies, better informed, but less sure.

  ***

  The Green One was waiting for me in the pavilion. He’d been talking to Dagi, who was up and walking.

  “How are you?” I asked, and ran to her side when I saw her.

  I took her in an embrace which I think surprised her. Chessa stood by, watching. “I’m,” she said, and then I felt her hug me back. “I’m well… father.”

  I held her at arms length. “No more taking on the whole army by yourself,” I told her.

  She smiled – I could tell she was still in pain. “I promise,” she said.

  I turned to the Druid. “We have a problem,” I said.

  “Just one?” he countered.

  I turned to the rest of the people there. “We’re going for a walk,” I said. “No one is following, no one is listening in.”

  Shela opened her mouth, but met my eyes and shut it. Karel smiled but I pointed at him, “Especially you,” I said.

  “As you will,” he said.

  Dilvesh and I left. The spring was springing – War was almost over as a month. It was warm enough that the breeze that blew was refreshing, not chilling. Dilvesh walked with his hood down, waiting for me to begin.

  “Did Ancenon and D’gattis turn on us?” I asked him, point blank.

  “How would I know?” he countered. I looked him right in the eye.

  “It’s just you and I,” I said to him.

  After the Battle of Tamaran Glen, I’d learned a secret about the Druid, when his ability to share his mind with me had back-fired, and I’d read part of his. I knew his secret, and he knew that I knew. I never told a soul – no one, and he knew that, and we kept up a fiction because of it.

  It was too late to play.

  “You know,” I said, “because you’re Cheyak. You know because no one keeps closer tabs on the Uman-Chi than you. You know because you know the consequences of a deal with Power and War better than anyone else alive, except for me.

  “Did Ancenon and D’gattis switch sides?” I asked him, again.

  He looked down, and he shook his head. “No,” he said. “They didn’t, but the reason that you think that they did is because they’ve been telling Angron Aurelias everything they know about you since they met you, and Angron Aurelias switched sides.”

  “Pretty neat trick from a guy who should know better than the rest of us how bad the Men from the North are,” I said.

  “Angron Aurelias,” Dilvesh said, referring to the 1,000 year old King of Trenbon, “has decided that you cannot, in any way, be controlled or contained.

  “He’s also decided that what he did to your daughter cannot go unanswered,” he continued. “He only recently learned that she’s alive, and before then he realized that there were North Men moving south, and he made a deal with them.

  “The Men of the North have no ships,” Dilvesh concluded. “He thinks himself safe from them on his island and, when the time comes that they do have ships, Fovea will be a turmoil, and the Uman-Chi will return again to right it, as they did before.”

  “Ancenon and D’gattis?” I asked.

  “I told them of it, they tried to change his mind, and he had them jailed,” Dilvesh said. “In fact, the same prison where he kept Shela, more than a decade ago.

  “Ancenon and D’gattis argued for what they called the ‘original plan,’ of which you are aware.”

  I nodded – the ‘original plan,’ since they decided that pissing me off wasn’t going to work and that the Bounty Hunter’s guild wouldn’t finish me off, was to wait for me to die, and then come after my replacement and rule through him or her. Uman-Chi think in terms of generations and centuries, not years. That brought me to another conclusion.

  “Angron Aurelias could fix the pass back to the Great North!” I realized.

  Dilvesh shook his head. “Not without going there himself, and that won’t happen while you and Shela are between him and it. I’d be more worried that the Men of the North are going to fix it themselves.”

  “I did a pretty good job –“ I started.

  “No, the Dwarves did,” Dilvesh countered, “but you underestimate the Men of the North and their ingenuity. You’ve bought yourself until the fall, I think.”

  If I couldn’t beat them by the fall, I thought, then I’d be in trouble anyway.

  “How are things down south, really?” I asked.

  Dilvesh smiled. “The Confluni have no idea what you’re doing,” he said. “They were made aware of Outpost X by Angron Aurelias, as well- they’d counted on the gold from there to fund their war effort and, without it, they are hard-put to maintain it, now that your daughter cut their nation almost in half.”

  “Lee’s volcano,” I said.

  Dilvesh nodded. “Lee’s volcano,” he repeated. “Thousands dead, tens of thousands displaced, the very balance of the Earth changed, from Lee’s volcano.”

  Way to go, Lee.

  “Any good news?” I asked.

  Dilvesh nodded. �
�The Free Legion is marching here from Katarran,” he said. “They’ll arrive in another two weeks with Thorn leading them, myself as well. It seems that the Dorkans, since you gave them back that city, are happy not to invade Eldador.

  “Unless Eldador seems weak,” he added. “Let that happen, and all of your enemies will come to call.”

  “Just one last thing,” I said.

  “Blizzard is with a bachelor herd,” Dilvesh told me. “The very Earth shouted when he was freed from you by Life. He is content and he will live several more years. Wild horses die, Rancor Mordetur. Not even Life can prevent that. He will fall when he falls, but it won’t be with a sword in his guts.”

  “For so long,” I said.

  “It was you and he in this world, I know,” Dilvesh said. He looked me in the eye as we started to walk back to the pickets. “The loss of him was supposed to toughen you and make you address these Great North invaders with your typical hatred, you know.”

  I kind of suspected.

  “Who knows what Lupus the Calm will do, when faced with his next dilemma?” Dilvesh asked.

  Who knows, indeed?

  ***

  On the next day, fast runners informed us that there was a desertion among the Volkhydrans, and that Henekh had attacked the Great North with 10,000 warriors. By evening, we were informed that half of those 10,000 had died or were injured beyond use, and that Henekh himself was dead.

  When Lupennen buys you a day, it might be good to ask, “At what cost?”

  Eric was planning to rendezvous with me where I was, but I picked a spot two days march south, acting as if this loss had shaken our resolve. I doubted very much that Vinkler and Maree would fall for it, but my warriors would know that I was up to something, and so would Eric’s, and that boost to their morale would hopefully balance out this loss.

  As well, there were fewer hills to the south, and for the next fight, I wanted the land as flat as I could have it. The risk I was taking, however, was that the Great North would make a bee-line to a Volkhydran city as soon as they thought I was retreating, but fortunately they weren’t having it. I picked up and moved, they picked up and came right after me, encouraged by another victory.