Semper Indomitus: Book Five of the Fovean Chronicles

by Robert Brady

  Which, of course, did not happen.

  The entire horde, still thousands strong, broke for the Volkhydrans.

  The Regulars wheeled to their left, the Wolf Soldiers double-timed their march. The Free Legionnaires, of course, moved to back up the Sarandi, which probably looked to Thorin like the smartest thing to do.

  Lee and Shela hammered the horde with lightening and fire, but that only spurred them on. The horde hit the Volkhydrans with a roar and smashed not only into, but through their ranks. Thousands strong, the Men from the North simply struck at everything in their path until the bulk of them were on the other side of Eric’s army and then they broke for the northeast.

  To the safety of the walls of Vellock, I’m sure. My army was more disciplined than theirs was, but theirs moved much faster, and I had to deal now with thousands of wounded Volkhydrans, or leave them completely demoralized and useless behind us while I chased an enemy that was going to get away anyway.

  If I’d had horse, this would have been a rout. I’d have cut them down fleeing all the way to the road up the west, but that wasn’t going to happen today.

  We let them go – we had to. Now I had to organize a siege in the War months in Volkhydro, and see how badly this half-win had gone for me.

  ***

  The good news is that the enemy didn’t waste any time on our supply lines, which we desperately needed with all of the wounded we had. The bad news is that they’d taken two northern cities at the end of winter, cities that had been well-prepared to feed themselves for months, and then re-inhabited them with a fraction of the hungry mouths, and those with the discipline of an army.

  Meaning they could hold out well-past when the Great North could be expected to relieve them. With their fighting skills and with their crossbows, an attack on the walls of either city was suicide unless I was willing to simply throw men into a hailstorm until the enemy ran out of ways to kill them.

  I was not willing to do that.

  Eric’s warriors were blaming Eric for their poor showing and, unfortunately, so was Eric. We all reminded him that even the Cheyak never beat these people, and that my own tactics really boiled down to killing them from a distance.

  We stood around the map table in the pavilion again, now on the road to Vellock, in the wake of their newly-encouraged army.

  “We should be able to draw them out,” Nantar said. Thorn, at his side, agreed with him. “That tactic of Eric’s worked once –“

  “And the men who fell for it are probably being put to death as a lesson to the rest, right now,” Karel said. I had to agree. “If they aren’t dead already, which is likely. We know their commanders’ tactics are to wait. Cities with walls are really good for that.”

  “They won’t have magic support,” Thorn said, grinning.

  “Not much of it, anyway,” Raven told us. “D’gattis might be good with a sword, but his Uman-Chi cousins aren’t. They didn’t last one pass and, after dropping everything to get away from us, the Men of the North just left them to die.”

  We’d collected ten Uman-Chi casters, all dead. I sent the heads back in a crate to Angron Aurelias. He wanted to consider us to be animals – we’d act like it.

  I’d also sent a message: If I see one more Uman-Chi on the battle field, I destroy your wharves with Eldadorian Fire.

  I had no idea if that would make him fight harder or stop him.

  “With desertions,” Eric informed us, “I’m down to 10,000 men, most of whom will break if we put them in the same situation again.”

  “Well, we’ll have plenty of time to train them,” Nantar said, putting a hand on Eric’s shoulder. “We’ll have them marching like Wolf Soldiers in a few months.”

  “We’ll have relief from the North to worry about in a few months,” I said. “I can’t imagine that a few thousand fresh warriors from the Great North won’t make things a lot worse for us.”

  “I can block those passes forever,” Lee informed us. “I’ve done it before.”

  I shook my head. “There are consequences to doing that, Lee,” I told her. “Consequences that the people of Fovea won’t know about until we’re all dead and buried. I don’t want to sacrifice the future for the safety of the present.”

  “We’ll have neither if the Great North comes to rule Fovea,” Karel said. He was right, of course, but turning the Great Northern Mountain Range into a volcanic hell-storm had to be the absolute last solution.

  “I can have enough Eldadorian Fire here in a month to reduce both Volkhydran cities to ash, if we have to,” I said, “but then we’ve lost those cities for Volkhydro.”

  Raven perked up her head. “Wait a minute,” she said to me. “Don’t you have great stores of ammonia somewhere?”

  I shrugged. “Sure,” I said. “We make it as a by-product for nitrous, and we have people who produce it as a cleaning agent.”

  Raven smiled. “Ever worked in a kitchen?” she asked me.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Ever been told, ‘Never mix ammonia with bleach?’”

  My jaw dropped.

  “I don’t know how to make bleach,” I said.

  “Brine and electrolysis,” Raven said. I’d forgotten that chemistry had been her thing in college.

  “You know what that stuff will do to a person,” I said to Raven. She was talking about mustard gas. It was a pretty horrible way to die.

  “You know what the Great North will do to a person,” Raven countered.

  Point taken.

  ***

  We marched for five days until we were south of Vellock, where the Great North horde had taken up residence and closed the northern road. If I were them, I’d have put 80% of my strength here and 20% in Senta, just in case. We could tell that they had scouts ranging out into the inland plains to make sure that we weren’t going to just bypass the city like they had.

  We set up our jess doonari, the Volkhydrans included. After the ass-whipping they’d just taken, they were a lot more eager to learn some tricks from the Free Legion and the Eldadorians.

  No matter what happened after this, the balance of power was shifted. I would never hold all of Fovea like I’d dreamed. They were going to all start innovating on tactics and battle now – probably even the Confluni, and with their numbers, one could only imagine what they’d be capable of.

  We might actually need the Fovean High Council again.

  We’d sent word to Medya, where Nantar’s wife was running things with the current Earl. She would send to Galnesh Eldador for Eldadorian Fire, ammonia, dried fertilizer and some other goodies that Raven asked for. She’d already sent to the bay for gallons of brine (simple sea water), and set up her own laboratory with some help from Eric.

  Karel, who’d been instrumental in the development of Eldadorian Fire, was eager to learn about this new weapon that scared even me. I really, really did not want to heave mustard gas into a city full of people, mostly because the stuff was nearly impossible to control. You had to guess the wind, position your trebuchet or catapults against it, throw into the wind across your target, have the gas blow back across your target and then get the hell out of there before you reaped what you sewed. The wind direction changed all of the time, as did the speed. You could throw and then have a stagnant cloud, then have the whole thing take off in a new direction that you never intended.

  She’d also started collecting the pee from our troops and boiling it down for urea. I admit that had never occurred to me. She planned to mix that with the nitrates in dry fertilizer to make bombs that she could hurl over the walls, while we were in the process of our other inventions, in an effort to drive out the North Men. If that worked, we’d destroy the ammonia and bleach and never speak of it again.

  We’d been in camp for three days when I was out at the pickets, in the twilight hours, inspecting the troops. A good commander does this – it’s better than I surprise them than an enemy.

  As afraid of the horde as my warriors all were, I didn’t find
one who wasn’t diligent on watch. In fact, one that I surprised actually tried to kill me until he realized who I was.

  I still had my sword out from that encounter when Jack came up behind me.

  His hair was long and wiry now, his beard looked like a explosion of hair from his face. His bloodshot eyes regarded me like I was painful for him to look at, and for all I knew, I was.

  “That’s sword’s not done,” he told me.

  “It isn’t,” he said. Jack shook his head.

  I looked for Vedeen. She’d been working with Raven, and Jack had been getting away from her. I didn’t know how I felt about Druids who could make mustard gas and bombs.

  “Give it here,” he said. I turned the sword around, and he took the handle.

  He still had the falchion I’d given him over his shoulder, so I had to assume he wasn’t so self-destructive that he’d hurt himself with it. He ran his fingers over the hard edge. I’d yet to need to sharpen it, but then I hadn’t used it much.

  “En nomine patri,” he said, “et fili, et spiritu sancti.”

  He stroked the blade. I felt my eyes widen. I knew what those words could do.

  “Et deum, ut benedicat tibi.”

  In the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost. To God, I bless thee.

  The sword glowed white, then yellow, then red and finally blue with power. I felt the heat sear my face, but it didn’t affect Jack at all.

  Then it was over and he handed the sword back to me, saying, “Done.” I took the weapon back, expecting it to be a charred piece of steel, as the older man shuffled away.

  Nothing, not a mark on it. I swung it – it was exactly like before.

  He’d figured out a way to put that power into it or, more likely, someone had told him how. Someone who spoke to the older man with such power and authority, that it was driving Jack mad.

  That, or the power he was wielding was, and that meant that I needed to watch myself, because the real ace in the hole that I was holding onto could make a drooling idiot out of me.

  Walking back to the pavilion, I passed a warrior polishing his armor. It was something they did when they needed to dispel nervous energy, and we didn’t want for that.

  I was going to say something to him, when I looked into his breast plate and saw the question mark, turned upside-down, in black on my own breast plate.

  That, at least, had not changed. Whatever we had created with the Free Legion, Adriam had turned it into something else, and was using it to his own ends.

  Whether that would benefit us as individuals would remain to be seen.

  ***

  We spent two more weeks laying siege to the warriors of the Great North. However they had water, they had food, there was no civilian population for them to worry about (because they killed them all except for women and children), and they had no interest in coming after us, likely because they fully expected to be relieved. I took all of the precautions necessary to prevent the problems associated with a siege from the outside – desertion, dysentery, gambling, etc. - and took the opportunity to seriously drill and educate the Volkhydrans.

  On the 14th day after Jack monkeyed around with my sword, the gates of Vellock opened up and Vinkler and Maree rode out with 20 of their warriors, all on Andaron horses.

  We mounted up to meet them – myself, Shela, Eric, Karel and Raven. Nantar and Thorn stayed back with the army in case this were a trap, and our magical support in the form of my daughters and Nina were too valuable to risk on this. Shela would tell us if they were lying.

  The first thing that I noticed is that the horses were the worse for wear. I had to think they didn’t have as much forage as they needed in the city, and they were letting them wander and eat. Horses doing that would get in trouble, and all grass wasn’t good for them. While fast, the Andaron horses really weren’t that hearty and were having trouble in the cold north, even without being affected by the siege.

  We pulled up about 10 yards from them, which is a pretty standard range for discussions like these. A little closer would be better, but these people were pretty fast and pretty violent, often without warning.

  They stared at me, Maree with her usual bright, white smile, Vinkler more stern. He was blue-eyed with close-cropped, blonde hair and an angular face. When he looked at me, it was right at me, right in the eyes, like he was trying to measure me. He dressed in their usual armor mixed with chain – I had no idea what had happened to the plate I’d originally seen him in.

  I waited, so did they.

  That went on for ten full minutes. My stallion pawed the ground impatiently.

  Maree sighed. “You love your games,” she said.

  I nodded. “Did you like my last one?” I asked. “I call it, ‘Disgracing your army.’”

  Vinkler’s hand fell to his sword. “I don’t see you as so bold now,” he said.

  “You’re hiding in a city,” I told him. “Come out, and I’ll play that game again.”

  His lip curled. That temper was clearly characteristic of his people, but Vinkler was no savage. I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head, putting the situation into different scenarios, trying to see where his best advantage lay.

  “This is pointless,” he said. “You think you’ve cut us off from our people –“ he began.

  “They will be through the passes before the fall,” I countered.

  His eyes opened a little wider. He turned to Maree and looked into her eyes. She shrugged and he turned back to me.

  Take away all of the perceived advantages – leave the enemy thinking you know more than you possibly could.

  “So you know we’ll be relieved,” they said.

  I just chuckled. “I think you think you know that,” I said.

  In other words, I’m laying a trap for your allies, and you can’t warn them of it.

  He also knew that my traps worked.

  “You will die here,” Eric chimed in. “The question is, ‘How?’”

  Karel cleared his throat. That wasn’t as good an idea as it seemed to my son. Giving them no solutions meant giving them no choices. Desperate people take measures that work sometimes, but would not otherwise have been tried.

  Eric looked at me and then back at Vinkler, and I felt certain Vinkler caught it. He was going to realize that taking me out really furthered his mission.

  He had to know how easily Maree had humbled me.

  “We have a tradition up north,” he informed me.

  “Buggering young boys?” I asked.

  That got him. Maree had to lay a hand on his forearm to keep him from charging me on his horse right then.

  “You are a foolish ruler,” he told me. “You have no honor.”

  “None to spare on you,” I answered. “If you’re about to suggest singles combat between you and I, save your breath. You don’t have good enough control of your warriors to ensure they’ll do anything and, in fact, it’s going to be a lot easier to kill you if you’re all in the same place, not scattered with no leader.”

  “So you fear me,” Vinkler said, straightening his back, trying to look down at me.

  This is one of those times when being atop Blizzard was a big advantage. Vinkler was at least my size and I think his horse was a little taller.

  “If you need to believe that, feel free,” I said. I looked at Maree. “Or do you want your babysitter and I to have at it?”

  “If you’ll fight, I’ll kill you,” Vinkler warned me.

  “I am right here,” I said.

  He pulled his sword and I pulled mine. Of course, his warriors broke, deciding the fight must be on, which is why I didn’t actually want to fight him right there. Eric pulled his own sword and Shela raised a hand, white with power.

  That brought the warriors up short.

  “You won’t fight with honor,” Maree accused me.

  “Two against twenty-two?” I said. “Some honor!

  “I didn’t fear you enough to bring my own guard, and I don’t
now.

  “Coward.”

  His warriors flew from their horses toward the city. The starved beasts bolted for my army and their own kind. Shela derived her power from the desires of men, and I had to think that every man on both sides wanted Vinkler and I to have at it.

  Vinkler charged to my right, about to meet my sword with his. I spurred the stallion forward. Maree stayed put and so did Eric.

  Our swords met – mine for the first time since Jack had messed with it. I leaned forward and put my weight into the blow. The sword would either be some devastating weapon or shatter again.

  The two weapons met at their cross guards. My sword rang in my hand, pain shooting down my arm from my wrist to my elbow. His exploded, spraying his face with shards.

  We turned, and he pulled another sword from a sheath on his saddle. His horse stumbled as he turned too tight. I spurred forward, going for his left side, as I changed sword hands.

  I was ambidextrous. It’s not a common trait.

  It wasn’t with him. He changed hands and held the sword at an awkward angle, trying to guide his horse, which was now shying from mine.

  I swung low and laid his leg open, then managed to swat his horse in the butt with the flat of my blade. The starved animal bucked, bucked again, and then threw him.

  I turned my horse for another pass. Vinkler lay on his back on the ground. I meant to ride him down.

  Maree moved in between us, blocking my way. She lowered her long, thin blade toward my horse’s head. If I charged her, she’d kill my horse.

  I pulled up.

  “Saved by a woman,” I sneered at him. “Imagine my lack of surprise.”

  He struggled to stand with his sword in his hand. Three of his warriors were running for him. His horse was half way to the Volkhydran army already.

  “Dismount and fight!” Vinkler swore.

  “You’re a clown,” I said, and laughed again. I looked Maree in the eyes.

  “I pity you,” I said. “A beautiful woman should have a man.”

  It was the first time I saw her lip curl. She really loved that guy, I thought. Just like Shela loved me. The fact that I’d taken him by surprise diminished him in no way for her.