Nantar seemed impressed. Thorn didn’t. “If you hit another armored man with that, he would just as likely knock you from your saddle as you would knock him from his,” he argued.
By the laws of simple physics, he was right, I thought. But hey, two million English knights could not be wrong! I kept my lance.
We left right after, Thorn guiding us past one patrol and then through another, which raised an alarm and set dogs after us as we passed. The dogs kept pace with the horses and bayed until we dispatched them with our arrows. It made for good practice for mounted archery and left me feeling a twinge of regret for beasts that had only served their masters loyally. Funny how you could kill a man and feel nothing, and then weep over a dog’s death.
From then on it was an actual horse race. We just galloped headlong south, nothing fancy, making for the catapult battery. D’gattis would be watching us with some spell he maintained, and Ancenon would be coordinating between D’gattis and his ship. We would both arrive at the northern point of the entrance to the Sea of Xyr as close to the same time as possible. This would give the battery something to be looking at when we stormed them. If there were only a few men, then we would destroy them. If there were too many, then we would turn north, get picked up by the ship, and find a Tech Ship. I carried a bar of gold in my saddlebag – it would be enough to pay an Uman-Chi captain to hold off the battery until our ship could pass. If not, then a letter from Ancenon rested in Thorn’s saddlebag to increase our chances.
That was our worst possible option. The battery was reputed to be more than a match for a single tech ship. It also involved the Trenboni in the offensive, which we didn’t want. The Trenboni didn’t need to know that we were here, much less that we had been successful. Ancenon and D’gattis couldn’t tell them of the gold, but they didn’t have to stop them if the Uman-Chi should figure things out for themselves.
We managed to rest one more time later that day. All three horses were tiring, and according to Thorn we had about two more hours of time left to us. We had seen neither hide nor hair of another Confluni patrol, assuring us that one was due. Nantar made me fashion him a lance, and Thorn made his own, demanding a slightly thicker sapling than what we had. I didn’t question him.
“We have to be getting closer,” Thorn said. “I can smell the ocean to either side, so the peninsula is narrowing. I think we will be early instead of late.”
He would have said more but his head came up suddenly and Nantar and I needed no more warning to run to our horses. Thorn mounted before us and circled to get the direction of the sound that he had heard.
If you hear a sound in the forest, it will echo from all of the trees and confuse you as to where it came from. There is a theory that the last echo is the true direction, but then, if your hearing is a little off or you are making noise, how do you know that the last echo you heard was actually the last one? A real woodsman moves and knows that all of the reflected sounds are weaker than the actual ones – and figures it out that way. Don’t ask me how, because I can’t do it.
Thorn pointed due south of us, and Nantar and I kicked our horses. We had ridden right through the last patrol because they weren’t ready, but we were going to have no such luck this time. No matter what we did, we were going to be outnumbered and facing arrow fire. This would be bloody. I couched my lance back under my sore left shoulder and held my sword in my right hand, seeing Nantar doing the same. Thorn held his lance in his left like a spear and had a crossbow out as well.
We topped a rise and caught them coming up the other side. Quick and dirty, I charged Blizzard down the other side, letting his speed make life harder for the enemy archers. A quarrel from a crossbow whizzed right in front of my eyes, and another rang off of my right shoulder, which exploded with pain. I pressed down the hill as other missiles sped by.
The lance took one Confluni right between the eyes and broke as I tried to free it. Obviously I needed to develop a lighter touch with it to use it more than once. I came up on a second man on my right and sheared his head half off his shoulders as he tried to strike for Blizzard’s legs. Another on the left took my lance’s broken end in the face as his partner on the right back pedaled and merely got a nasty scratch across his chest. He let me have it at close range with his crossbow, catching me in the left arm. Then I pushed through and gave Blizzard his lead to get clear as quickly as I could.
I looked behind me to see that Thorn and Nantar had followed me in like fashion. Nantar had seen my mistake and taken two with his lance, and two more with his sword as he passed. He also got a nasty crease across his thigh in the process. Thorn had shot one man dead with his crossbow, pinned another through the stomach to the ground with his lance/spear and brutally cut the forearms from the last man as he hefted an ax to strike. The downhill advantage and our speed saved us; all ten in the patrol had been accounted for. I could see light ahead of us and we rode on.
I leaned to my left again and held Blizzard up long enough to shear a thicker sapling. This time I left a few twigs but hacked the top from the shaft as I rode, making a wicked point on the end that I knew would bend if it hit metal. I couched it under my sore left shoulder and held my sword in my sore right hand as I pressed on with Nantar and Thorn right behind.
The quarrel had struck me between the upper and lower sleeve of my left arm. I could feel the tip of it in the upper arm, pulling in and out painfully as my arm moved. My bicep tightened and I knew I’d lost strength there. If I got into another fight it would betray me.
I looked up from my arm in time to see the sun burst from the forest as Blizzard leaped onto the end of a peninsula, right into a very surprised mass of men. I saw a flat compound, one low building to my right and a battery of catapults loaded and ready before me. One soldier manned a tower to my left, armed with a telescope of some kind. Yellow faces and wide, dark eyes looked up at this monster on a green horse with a big stick coming from his chest, and they faltered.
I would have been dead if they hadn’t. They numbered too many. Here we should have pulled back and caught the ship, but I’d been surprised and moved in too fast to turn around. Thorn and Nantar later agreed that they would have shot us both down with arrows had I tried.
I whipped the lance across one man’s eyes and through the shoulder of the guardsman next to him, then kicked Blizzard and lunged into the fray. The men screamed as one, some seeking weapons and others trying to mob me and pull me from my horse. I drove the lance through a soldier’s groin and cut no less than five hands from bloody arms as I kicked Blizzard again to break free. Another Confluni made the mistake of taking the stallion’s bridle and Blizzard, in turn, bit his forearm from his elbow as he reared.
I moved with the stallion and was ready when he crashed to the ground, hooves bloody and the way before us clear. By then, Nantar and Thorn were out of the forest and into the fray, lance and swords spilling blood and carnage and men screaming, as many were outnumbered by three.
Numbers telling, I took a sword-hit to the upper thigh and Blizzard barely stepped out of the way from a Confluni intent on chopping one of his legs. My sword fell and cleaved his brains, another Confluni smashed his sword down across my forearm and the Sword of War flew spinning to the ground.
I was shocked! I had never been disarmed in combat before. My right hand tingled and my left arm felt numb. Blizzard kicked out behind me and the Confluni pushed in.
Without the sword I felt helpless. I would die. They swarmed too close for the lance and left me too far from the sword. Trying to hold back the Confluni, I swung the lance’s bent point at faces and eyes.
Fortunately Thorn and Nantar, seasoned veterans of many more battles than I, took control. Nantar’s sword fell like a scythe among the Confluni, carving him a path toward me. Thorn moved in the other direction, toward the sea, taking on the Confluni who scrambled from their catapults. He met them first with the lance and then with his sword, dropping one, skewering another and his horse trampling a third.
Nantar turned his horse around and had the beast mule-kick the wall of the small building. By the second blow it fell over and revealed no one inside. Thorn leapt off of his horse and skirted back into the woods to check for pursuing patrols. I retrieved my sword and used it to sabotage the catapults in case we had to leave the position. I looked up once and saw our merchant ship, her wide sails snapping and her prow plowing the waves toward the beach.
Thorn came running back five hundred yards ahead of another patrol just as I destroyed the last of the catapults and our ship grounded herself. They came close enough to shore to lower a steep ramp with cross bars for the horses. Even with these, Nantar’s horse, the smallest and most burdened of the three, had to try twice to get aboard and then was encouraged by an arrow hitting the ramp next to him. We were pulling away and dragging the ramp as the patrol hit the beach and began frantically trying to use one of the catapults. We sailed past under the assault of nothing more serious than a whole new vocabulary of Confluni curses.
Luck was with us and a northbound wind carried us faster than the speed of the horses. Nantar and I used the time to let Thorn stitch us back together. I had a huge purple welt on my left shoulder, another on my right forearm, a bone bruise on my right shoulder and a deep gash in my left arm. My right hand still felt numb.
“Broken?” Nantar asked Thorn.
“Nah,” he answered, handling me expertly. I felt like a colt under his care. “Never seen bones so thick though, Nantar. Look at this,” and he bent my elbow, showing the outline of my tibia and fibula.
Nantar held his forearm next to mine. He obviously had more muscle but my forearm was bigger around. He looked in my eyes again in his soulful way.
“Is your father a blacksmith?” he asked me.
I felt tempted to lie, but I didn’t know if it might be a violation of the fire bond and I didn’t want to find out. Better to skirt the issue.
“My grandfather was an athlete,” I said. I stopped myself from saying “football” just in time.
Thorn nodded. “A gladiator,” he said. “Makes sense. He fought for your father to be free.”
My grandfather had been a black Irishman who came over to America for a new start. I nodded to Thorn.
“Exactly,” I said.
We arrived as the sun set, in time to see a flash as the rest of the newly named Free Legion appeared in the woods a few hundred yards from the beach. They met us with horses laden with gold bars a few moments later. This time no patrol chased us, all of them now moved south to capture Thorn, Nantar and I. We loaded our horses with the ship’s crane to save time, much to the chagrin of our mounts.
I secured them in the hold, Drekk and Nantar bundling our golden treasure as it came aboard. The sailors, having loaded us, brought us around and began to tack against the wind to bring us south. Even against the strong wind, the crew demonstrated their skills as mariners and we made good headway. We would be back on Tren Bay before the sun rose again.
Genna lay in the Captain’s cabin. She had to be kept out of the wind. Ancenon watched me work, D’gattis next to him. “Well done, Lupus,” Ancenon said.
I nodded, chaining Thorn’s mount’s fetlocks in place. I had already hooded and chained Blizzard, but he hadn’t settled down. He bobbed his head and stomped, likely looking for a reason to rear and attack a few sailors. It had taken me an hour with my sore limbs to get the blood and brains out of his hooves.
“What, by the way, became of their catapults,” D’gattis asked.
“Broke the windlasses,” I said, describing the winding mechanism that bent the heavy beam used to fling missiles from the cup on its end. “Hacked a big chunk out of the beam of each of the catapults and, just to be sure, all of their windlass ropes are up on deck someplace.”
“Any chance that they can cannibalize all four of the catapults and make one working one?” D’gattis asked. As I had thought more of faith, his lack of it bothered me.
I shook my head. “The windlass is a specialized piece, you can’t just make one out of another. It bears a lot of tension and the parts have to be fitted. Even if they could get one shot out of any of the beams I hacked, they have no ropes. That rope is over an inch thick and tightly braided. They are going to have to go get that.”
“If you got it all,” D’gattis said.
“Well,” I said, standing and facing him, “just call this the year of living dangerously, D’gattis. I just hope my life is as valuable to me as yours is to you.”
D’gattis bristled and Ancenon stepped between the two of us. “Gentlemen, please,” he said, a hand on both of our shoulders. “This gains us nothing. If they fix one catapult, we destroy it from the ship. That, however, sounds very unlikely, and I doubt that Lupus would have lived this long as a bounty hunter if he didn’t know what he was doing.”
D’gattis looked right into my eyes, and I into his. For the first time, in the gloom of the hold, I saw what had to be a tiny pupil of lighter silver at the center of his eye. I wondered how many had gotten the opportunity to see this.
Regardless, he nodded and stalked away. Ancenon stayed with me, not helping as I finished securing the mounts. I wished that Arath would take this job. My muscles cramped and grew stiffer as the day progressed. I would wake up in agony tomorrow, I knew. The ship swayed beneath me, and the horses stamped, unsure how to react. I waited for Ancenon to say what he had to say.
Finally, he exhaled. “Might I ask your plans for the future, Lupus?” he asked.
I straightened and thought about that for a second, then bent back to my work. “I have an idea of what I will be doing, why?” I said.
Ancenon fell silent for a moment. “You have been a very useful man.”
“I aim to please,” I said, not looking up. One of the horses had stamped one of the manacles needed to hold it in place, and I had to bend it right.
“In truth, I brought you along because of your killing skills, and because I felt reasonably sure that you wouldn’t want too much of the gold, if we even found it. I just assumed your aim would be good.”
I laughed, as much at his misunderstanding my slang again as what I knew he was trying to tell me. “Well, then shame on you, Prince Ancenon of Trenbon.”
“Indeed, “he agreed. “Were you to leave right now, then it would prove an expensive lesson.”
I casually moved back by Blizzard, acting as if I needed more light to see the manacle I worked on. In fact, I made sure I could kill him as I drew my sword, if need be. The practice from this excursion had improved my skills somewhat, but the soreness more than countered that. At my best I doubted I could match Ancenon.
“Trying to tell me something, then, Prince?” I asked.
Ancenon sighed, drew his sword and, as I watched him, tossed it back away from him, toward the food stores. I let my shoulders fall a little. Now I wondered what game he was playing.
“My adopted father will live for hundreds of years,” Ancenon told me. His voice sounded tired. “By then, he may father more children, or any of a number of things could happen. There is no guarantee that I will remain his appointed heir.”
“You don’t want to tell me you want your step father killed, Ancenon,” I told him. No one won in that scenario.
Ancenon looked appalled, thank goodness. “Never, I assure you, Lupus,” he said. “Far from it, I desire my own nation, to be carved out of plentiful wilderness, maybe even right here, at Outpost X.”
I chuckled and bent by another of the horses, Arath’s, to chain him in place. You had to be careful chaining the horses in the hold. They couldn’t be allowed to kick, but they wouldn’t be able to balanc
e, either, if the chains were too short. If one stumbled he had to have enough room or enough support to stop himself or he and possibly other horses could be lost.
“After this, the Confluni will never concede Outpost X, Ancenon,” I told him.
The Uman-Chi chuckled. “Well-placed gold in the right places -” he began.
I stood, shaking my head and picked up another manacle. “No, you don’t understand, Ancenon.” He moved to speak, but I continued. “You hit these people right where they live, literally. Look at how many of their resources they expend to prevent what we just did. How many of their men did we kill – do you know?
“And the result? You go ask them for rights to Outpost X in the next few years and they will know you had a hand in it somehow. They will never admit to themselves that you found in three days what they couldn’t find in eleven centuries. And any Confluni politician who supports you in that is a dead man, either among his people or his peers.
Ancenon considered. He fell quiet as I finished off the horses and cleaned up my hands. I gave Blizzard a pat and let him smell me. I decided, when I got back to dry land and if a legion of bounty hunters or the local guard wasn’t waiting on the docks for me, then I would take a week off for some serious riding and fun for the two of us. Maybe even ten days.
“That is frighteningly logical, Lupus,” he told me. “I hadn’t seen that, but you may be right. Certainly, it would close Outpost X to us in any event. We would have to tell them where it is, after all, to get rights to be there.
“Never forget that, compared to us, you Men are short lived, Lupus. I can just wait for all of the men alive right now to die of old age, and make my proposition to the next generation.”
I nodded and sat down next to Ancenon. That is some option to have. I admit that now I also worried whether I had done a good enough job on those catapults. Damn, but D’gattis could put fear in anyone. Self-righteous bastard.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 25
