Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Brady, Robert

  D’gattis was the opposite, cultured and flamboyant, conservative in his ideas but liberal in sharing them. I didn’t doubt that we were all beneath his station save Ancenon, whose favor he curried openly. If he spoke to the priest and another of us approached, he stopped the conversation until we left. He only spoke with us to lecture on what he foresaw and what he expected of the team. As a powerful wizard it seemed obvious what Ancenon had brought him here for, at least to me. Still, he left no doubt in my mind that he had his own agenda.

  Genna turned out to be the local equivalent of a for-hire reconnaissance marine. She and I had sparred, both in bed and out. Both were the same with her – first a direct intrusion to the situation, followed by feints and parries at close range. Once she had acquired her target, she collected her data, and she either pursued or withdrew with all of her conviction. Once on ship’s deck she actually threw a dagger and hit me handle-first in the nose-guard, followed by a two-handed attack to the arm-joints in my upper armor from which I barely defended myself. In bed she was no less aggressive, and left me feeling like conquered territory when we were done.

  Woods lined the coast of Sental almost down to the shoreline. I thought this odd for a salt-water bay like the Tren. Twice as we approached we saw different bands of warriors in black and green come to the water, look at the ship, and leave. How any nation could afford to maintain border patrols that efficient and that numerous was beyond me.

  “Made us again,” Thorn said to Ancenon, and any other who cared to hear, as we were pulling away from the second band. We wanted to beach by the Sea of Xyr, on the north side, but the shore looked too heavily guarded.

  Ancenon sighed a frustrated sigh. D’gattis stepped in. “I can make us such that they do not see us,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “And such that we cannot see ourselves, much less our ship,” Thorn added. “We couldn’t land a ship we couldn’t see, D’gattis. We would wreck and kill us all.”

  Nantar nodded, and D’gattis subsided. Genna stepped up, dressed out in her leathers and green paint on her face. Without saying anything to any of us, she dove over the side of the ship, into the water without a splash. We were no less than one hundred fifty yards from the shore, and she swam most of the distance before her head bobbed above water.

  She sank back under in a second – I didn’t know if I could have exhaled and inhaled air that fast. There hadn’t been a bubble between her and us. Next we saw her creeping up out of the water on fingers and toes, straight into the forest without a backward glance.

  “What will she do?” I asked.

  D’gattis snickered and walked away. Ancenon looked up over his shoulder to where I stood behind him. “She will do what she does, Lupus,” he said. He hadn’t flickered or hesitated once on the name change. “She will clear out that patrol so that we can land, and do away with the bodies.”

  “What if she can’t take them?”

  “Then you will have to lay someone else at night,” Thorn said, standing his ground right next to me.

  My hand clamped down on his throat before he could react, which was saying something for a man like Thorn. He pulled a dagger from his belt and stopped when I pressed my left thumb into his eye.

  “Any other comments from you, little man?” I asked him. If I pushed my thumb through his eye socket, into his brain, he would die and he knew it. Still, he faced me with the same pinch-faced determination that he always had.

  “I am not afraid of you,” he said.

  “I can change that.” I don’t know why the comment pissed me off so badly but it did. Genna didn’t want for heart but we’d seen no less than ten men in that patrol, and that’s a tough fight for anyone.

  “Need to not do this,” Nantar said quietly. I could see peripherally where Drekk and Nantar had moved to either side of me and D’gattis had turned around. I knew Ancenon had positioned himself behind me, as well.

  I released him and dropped my hands. He swung on me immediately, the hard handle of the dagger flashing toward my cheek. Ready for it, I pulled my head back and, as the swing passed, I caught him across the back of head with the steel guard on my forearm.

  I stepped back and pulled my sword. These people knew each other but they didn’t know me, and I wasn’t going down without a fight. I had already resolved to take Drekk first, so I could focus on Nantar. If I couldn’t drop him before Thorn got back on his feet, they’d have me anyway.

  The arrow that hit the deck right them came as a complete surprise to us all. As one we turned involuntarily to see Genna step out of the forest, then back in, drawing no more attention to herself than absolutely necessary.

  “Well,” Ancenon said, making us all jump a second time. “We need to be beaching. I assume that this can wait?”

  I looked at Nantar and Drekk, who looked at Thorn, getting up off of the deck. Thorn looked me right in the eye; again, the same pinched face.

  “It can wait,” he said angrily. Nantar sheathed his sword and I sheathed mine. Under Ancenon’s quiet direction, the sailors brought the ship around and beached it at half sail, landing us with a jolt. They had the horses coming up out of the hold, Blizzard first, in moments and we were all leaping off the side of the ship minutes after that. I had barely mounted when the ship pulled back out – the entire evolution couldn’t have taken five minutes.

  We were under the cover of the trees faster than that, and Genna emerged right after. She seemed to melt out from the forest stepping right up to Ancenon’s horse, taking his shin-guard in her hand.

  “There were ten,” she whispered, “but I got rid of them. No noise. I need to know what direction the patrols are moving in and how many. Paint the damn horses green, Ancenon – I told you they were a bad idea, I saw you from a few hundred yards away, especially the white one!”

  Then she vanished, melting once again into the brush and trees. Thorn dismounted his horse and Arath with him, breaking out supplies from their saddlebags. I dismounted when I saw Ancenon and D’gattis doing so. Drekk, on a black mount, stayed put.

  “Here,” Thorn said, tossing me a clear jar with something dark green in it. “Paint that stallion.” I caught the jar and opened it, finding a green paste inside. I dabbed some on my finger and smeared it on his coat, seeing how a little of it would go a very long way to giving me a green horse. It took me about ten minutes, then I took the pot back to Thorn as he finished up as well.

  “Thanks,” I said, handing it to him.

  He barely looked up from his horse’s hoof. “Keep it,” he said. “You will need to reapply if it rains.”

  That came as close to making up as we were going to get. I was good with it.

  We spent that day moving slowly and keeping low. Genna checked in about every hour, give or take a few minutes. Each time, she spoke softly with Ancenon as we all crowded around to hear, with the exception of Drekk who kept an eye to the trees each time. It seemed to me that the Uman didn’t care enough to bother with Genna’s reports. He would deal with whatever arose.

  We had landed well north of the mouth to the Sea of Xyr, just above the peninsula. We were moving south. Patrols were thick here, about an hour apart, coming in from the west and then going south or north. They would be onto the missing one later today or tomorrow, and then they would be thicker and more vigilant. We didn’t know if they patrolled at night but we knew we were going to find out.

  Luckily, they followed routes and Genna had us off of them by the third hour. Once she sprinted to us just minutes ahead of ten men and had us with the horses on their sides just in time to let them pass. I had lain across Blizzard’s neck to keep him down, Genna at my side.

  “Picked a fight with Thorn, huh?” she whispered.

  “Something like that,” I breathed back to her.

  She kissed my cheek. “Not every day that someone defends this lady’s honor,” she said. She’d pulled her hair back in a bun and covered with black cloth, but she still tried to shake it. It must have been a reflex a
ction with her.

  The patrol passed. Genna left again. We moved on.

  That night we camped, cold and dry. We stood the horses together by a bank of saplings that we found, making them one large blob of darkness rather than several small ones. We set guard duty, me taking the first one. After a quick meal of water and jerked beef, most were asleep and the rest drifting.

  We agreed to take three-hour watches, measured by an hourglass we brought, but I didn’t feel that tired and took a fourth. Drekk had the next watch, and seemed to know immediately that he had slept too long.

  “Don’t do that,” he said.

  “What?”

  He looked up at me, pulling his leathers on, checking his weapons. He wore sandals rather than boots, and slept with them on.

  “Don’t deny yourself any sleep,” he said. “You have a job, here. You need to keep fresh, and you do that with sleep. I am not going to replace you in a fight, pretty much just stand and watch unless I need to defend myself.”

  I nodded. “Won’t happen again.”

  He nodded, strange Uman eyes regarding me as he did so. He didn’t do it the way Genna constantly sized me up, and it felt somewhat threatening. Drekk saw me as a commodity – a sword to defend him, nothing more. He wanted that sword sharp when he needed it.

  “Sleep,” he said, and stepped into the dark night.

  I curled up in a blanket, putting most of it beneath me. The ground will take your heat faster than the air, and I didn’t want to wake up stiff. I saw that Thorn had wrapped himself in a shaggy skin, and Nantar slept in a breechclout on a bearskin, his sword by his hand. Ancenon had set up some sort of tarp lean-to, D’gattis with him. I saw no sign of Genna.

  I slept with my sword beside me, and only woke for a moment when Genna tossed a blanket over both of us during the night. She smelled like the forest, fresh and green, as she pressed her hot skin against me. I laid a hand on her naked breast and buried my nose in her hair as I went back to sleep. When I awoke, the sun just peeping through the trunks of the trees, I slept alone, although I could still smell her. D’gattis had taken the third watch and had broken out breakfast rations.

  More hard tack and water. Once again I missed my morning coffee. At least in the Navy they had fed me pretty well.

  Genna walked back into camp while we ate. She’d painted her face differently and, unlike the rest of us, she looked fresh. Drekk had twigs in his short grey hair and all of us, save Nantar, needed a shave. Even D’gattis didn’t look fresh.

  “They don’t patrol at night,” Genna said, “though that might change when they miss those ten I killed. I saw dog droppings, which means they are going to pick our trail up today.”

  “Any horse?” D’gattis asked?

  Genna shook her head. “I doubt it, but they won’t need them with the dogs. The dogs will find us today and bay, and then they will come from every direction.”

  Ancenon looked at D’gattis. “That isn’t enough time.”

  “Do you know what wintergreen is?” I asked Genna. I relied on this translation ability I seemed to have to let the others understand me. Because the word wintergreen sounded strange on my tongue as I said it, I doubted that they would.

  She shook her head, confirming it. I looked at Arath and Thorn, who were looking at me.

  “It is a pungent plant, like skunk cabbage, but it smells sweet, kind of fresh and spicy. It comes in a plant with three leaves.”

  Arath’s eyes widened and he took off into the woods. Thorn went to his saddlebags and returned with a sprig of something that looked like a little tree.

  “Like this?” he asked.

  I smelled it. It was old and dry, but I still recognized it. I nodded.

  “The place is overloaded with this, if you know where to look,” he said, nodding to Ancenon. D’gattis took it and smelled it and handed it back to Thorn with a look of disgust. “I can chew this for a little relief if I am getting stitched,” Thorn added.

  Arath returned a few moments later with a bushel of the little plants, held in a piece of leather at arms length, so that he wouldn’t smell of it himself.

  I took the sprigs and, as the others watched, twisted the leather that contained them and mashed it with a rock. When I saw that the sap from the wintergreen had started to seep through holes I had torn in the thin leather, I opened it and used a stick to pick out twigs and other solids from the goo.

  “Oh, that stinks,” Ancenon said. Genna had left on her patrol once again, Drekk standing his usual guard. Thorn and Arath were watching with extreme interest, Ancenon and D’gattis conferring quietly.

  I made a funnel from a wooden bowl and stoppered the bottom of it with my finger. Then I poured the smelly goo I had made into the bowl, and emptied a half-full water skin into it. Finally, I replaced my finger at the bottom of the funnel with the mouth of the water skin, and let the whole thing drain. I had to swirl some water in the bowl to get the goo out of it, but I got most of it. Thorn helped by holding the skin.

  “We need Genna,” I said. Arath had left again, as Thorn and I dug a deep hole and buried the leather, the refuse from the work I had done and the bowl. Ancenon and D’gattis had finished their discussion and were packing the horses.

  Genna reappeared with Arath and came right to me. “We heard dogs,” Arath said. “We need to be on our way, and fast.”

  I nodded and handed the skin to Genna. She uncorked it and smelled it, then pulled her nose away in disgust, looking at me.

  “Pour that in our tracks,” I said. “Just little bits, and just the most obvious tracks. If you see any horse dung, be sure to hit that.”

  She looked at me like I was insane. “Why?” she said. “The dogs will just follow this instead of us.”

  I shook my head. “The dogs won’t smell anything for the rest of the day after they get a snoot full of that. In fact, they might just go looking for it instead. That may smell awful to you and me, but it is like candy to them and they will smell as much of it as they can as soon as they can.”

  The two woodsmen and Genna looked at me skeptically and I sighed. I went to Blizzard, took a small rag out of my saddlebag, and took the skin from Genna. I put a small amount of the liquid on the rag and waved it in front of the horses. All heads rose as one and, when I dropped the rag, they all lowered their heads to smell it. Finally Blizzard got his nose to it and chewed the rag, establishing himself as the lead horse.

  Next, I took a dried apple from my bag and cut it with my knife. I waved it under one of the horse’s nose, where he should be able to smell it but not see it. He didn’t react to it.

  “Satisfied?” I asked.

  Genna smiled, took the bag and left. The rest were smiling, but in fact I hadn’t been sure it would work at all. I knew that escaped criminals would sometimes pour gasoline across their tracks to confuse dogs, and I knew from the Discovery Channel that wild animals would chew wintergreen and get a rush from it. I made an educated guess based on that.

  We buried the rag and ate the apple, core and all. I scrubbed my hands in dirt from the bottom of the hole we dug to get the smell off and then we were gone. By then, we could hear the dogs baying.

  We moved faster that day and every time Genna caught up with us she was panting. She had been judicious with her water skin and still had most of it left, knowing full well that there might be more dogs. Preparing the concoction had taken most of an hour, using time we might not have later. The cleanup was dangerous as well because it used our tools and left them as evidence.

  She had seen the dogs hit the wintergreen, and she had seen them go nuts for it after. Some did go looking for more wintergreen, while some just went off on a tangent from there. This left the patrols confused as to how to proceed.

  “They will likely sit tight and get more dogs,” Genna said. “It won’t do them any good. I didn’t just spray our trail, but left some false trails away from us and ahead of us as well.” She patted her bag. “A little of this goes a long way, we should be f
ine until tomorrow, and then we can make more.”

  D’gattis smiled at Ancenon. “If we can get past tomorrow, we won’t have much use for that bag at all, I think.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chaos and Krakatoa

  We moved further south, changing directions at forty-five and ninety degree angles to the east and west at random intervals, moving in a specific direction but taking a round-about way to get there. Genna roamed free around us, keeping up with patrols, looking for the time when they finally realized that there was someone out here to find. Then it would be a matter of time before the patrols were so dense that we couldn’t avoid them. By then we would be at Outpost X or travel with our swords ready.

  My sword sat pretty loose in the scabbard already.

  Ancenon and D’gattis were more and more alert as we pressed south. They now traveled side by side on horseback, each taking turns snatching a piece of parchment from each others’ hands and peering into the forest with their ambiguous eyes. The trees grew thick, the canopy above us cutting normal light down to a green gloom. I had to let Blizzard pick his trail. I usually rode the second point man behind Thorn, who frequently dismounted and remounted his horse. Behind me rode Drekk, then the two Uman-Chi and the three pack horses, then Nantar, finally Arath, with his head bowed and his ears doing what eyes should do on guard. Scrub trees and bushes and a foot-thick bed of leaves crunched under the horses’ metal-shod hooves, filling the air with the semi-sweet, musky aroma of life mingled with decay. I would have liked the journey if the stakes hadn’t been so high.

  We made another forty-five degree turn, this time bringing us back south. The diversion didn’t seem all that clever to me – anyone could tell we were moving south. I thought we might have done better to make a beeline to the southwest and then proceed east, but I didn’t know how to track like a woodsman or do recon like Genna, so I kept my mouth shut and tried to learn something.