She tilted her head to the side, considering what I had said. I never figured out why kids do that; I am sure it is some sort of left-brain, right-brain thing.
“You still shouldn’t try to kill our men,” she said.
“Well, then, I am sorry, on behalf of the Free Legion, for any harm done to your men,” I said, and bowed as best I could to her, seeing as I held an arm full of wood. “I, Lupus, beg your forgiveness, Lady, and swear that I will do your people no more harm, ever, unless they should first try to harm me.”
She straightened, obviously enjoying being taken so seriously. She curtsied a perfect curtsy and said, “I, Nina of the Aschire, will accept, then, and pledge you no harm, Lupus of the Free Legion, on behalf of my people. You may eat from our cook fires in safety.”
“I would be honored,” I said, smiling. Nina had cute down to a science. “But our cook fires are lit already, so maybe you should come to them? How many are there with your party?”
She stood back and gave a shrill whistle. I heard one of the horses neigh and steel whisper out of four leather sheaths. The same dozen Aschire, and another dozen women and children, dropped around me out of the trees. I had been wondering how a little girl managed to be out unguarded around so hostile an entity, as we must have seemed. Now I knew.
Nantar and Arath were right at the edge of the glen as I turned around with an armful of wood and an entourage. Their swords were out. Thorn and Genna were nowhere to be seen, D’gattis held a ball of fire between his hands, and Shela had her birch bark back out. I looked right at her.
“Honey,” I said, “I am bringing some friends to dinner.”
We ate and drank into the night. It was that simple. The Aschire revealed that they had decided that we were not here to hurt them. To make sure, they had let Nina speak to me. If I had threatened the girl, they would have pin cushioned me and then the rest of us. Because I treated her kindly, we were awarded the benefit of the doubt.
Krell turned out to be the leader of the group after all. He was the one I had floored. He demanded that I show him the move that had decked him, and which I had made up on the spot, then tried it on one of the smaller horses himself several times until he mastered it. He seemed to be a natural acrobat. That made sense for a people who lived in the trees like squirrels.
He dismounted and stood looking at me, much as he had before his last departing. I must be quite a sight in the funky armor and the horned helmet, but I sensed more to it than that.
“I respect that you were kind to Nina,” he said, a fine sheen of sweat on his face. I noted that he didn’t wipe it off.
“She’s a little girl,” I said. “I was waiting for one of you to show up and take her, really.”
Krell frowned. “She is almost nine, and is more than halfway to a woman. To a father, that means that she is gone the moment I take my eyes off of her.” I laughed as he continued. “The promises she made speak from the tribe – I would hope yours do, as well.”
I nodded. “The Free Legion are allies. The promise I make binds all.”
I didn’t know where all of the formality came from, but it was kind of cool. Usually, you don’t get to talk this way outside of Shakespeare or being drunk at a bar.
“What do you seek in Eldador?” Krell asked me bluntly, finally wiping the sweat from his forehead as we walked from the horses.
“Men,” I said. “Women, too, I suppose. Soldiers.”
“Why?” he asked. He became intent now. “Another war?”
I shook my head. “Mercenaries,” I told him. “A mercenary army with no national ties.”
He stopped and looked into my eyes. His were gray, too. Most of the Aschire had blue or brown eyes. Only he and Nina had gray.
“Why?”
I squinted. He was afraid, I decided. I realized right then that his nation had probably been the target of mercenaries before. With no national representation, the Aschire woods were free for the pillaging. Eldador claimed them, but no Eldadorian troops defended them. They had probably been a buffer for Eldador to the Andarans. The Aschire maintained that they were their own collective and had national rights, but no one would hear them.
“Because the Fovean High Council is weak,” I said, putting it in the terms that I decided he would best like to hear. Truth is like a prism, I think. You can look through it many ways, and finally see the color of the light that best suits you. I set my prism to best suit Krell. “Because there are injustices in the political realm, and a large standing army can keep the peace at a profit.”
He thought, and then nodded. “And the Eldadorians?”
“The most likely place to start recruiting. There and Sental, I think. Maybe Volkhydro. We will recruit in all nations, and owe allegiance to none. When the time comes to step in, then there will be less worry about old ties of nationalism being a problem.”
“Step in how?”
“We will sell our services to every nation. We will be an exception to the rule governing army sizes. Where there is injustice, we will fight on justice’s side.”
He nodded again. “And if the Fovean High Council opposes you?”
I shrugged. “How many divisions does the High Council have?”
He smiled.
Krell and I found Shela sitting with Drekk and Nina. Each held one of her hands.
“She has a natural gift,” Shela said.
“I agree,” said Drekk. “Look at these long fingers!”
Shela shook her head. “And what sort of life does that offer her?”
“As good as yours, if not better,” Drekk argued. I saw Shela bristle and decided to intervene.
“Arguing the girl’s future already?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to get to know a little about her, first?”
Shela held up Nina’s right hand to me like an accusation. “This girl has a power in her veins, White Wolf. It must be cultivated right away, or it will go dormant, perhaps for generations.”
“Madness,” Drekk said. “She is a natural acrobat and has the hands of a healer. The girl has more natural potential -”
Krell knelt down between the two of them and took both of Nina’s hands in his. He looked up into her eyes, she down into his.
“The decision must be made quickly,” Shela repeated. “Or it will be lost.”
“I agree,” Drekk said.
Krell looked at Drekk. “You would that she became a thief, a pickpocket?” he asked.
“There are less honorable professions,” he said. Up until then, I had wondered what Drekk was really around for, but at the same time I knew he functioned as our spy, our internal intelligence. He felt at home in dark corners and shadows.
Krell looked up at Shela. “And you would that she became a witch, a sorceress?”
Shela nodded. “She would be a boon to your tribe, much as I served mine.”
“And why are you not with them now, then?”
She looked at me. “I am His, fairly traded,” she said. “My father honed me my whole life for one such as He.”
Krell looked at me, then back up at Nina, who had been silent up until now. I wondered at the gravity for her childish mind, to see adults planning out her future. I had watched Shela as she had taken this in stride, watching her father negotiate her value. Now here came Nina doing the same thing.
I had gone to college and my dad hadn’t cared for what reason, so long as I went. When I dropped out he all but disowned me, and when I went in the Navy, that ended “all but.” I think he knew of the dishonorable discharge, but he never tried to contact me, and that didn’t bother me. My mom had become a drunk in my last years of high school and gotten worse fast. I hadn’t talked to her in years.
Would I have welcomed them telling me what to do with my life? No, I knew instinctively – but I also knew I would have done it. Kids need that beginning, that idea on what to do with their lives from a more experienced, less ideological source. Being eighteen hadn’t made me an adult. I’m still not at twenty-three.<
br />
I felt my face quirk into a wry smile, even as Nina’s life hung in the balance. I had something guiding me, even now. In my infancy on this new world, a god was parenting me, and he wasn’t sparing the rod to spoil the child. I’d been raised with a sense of morality, based on my parents’ beliefs, I guess. They’d spoken to me, I’d gone to church, at least for a while.
We’d learned to question ourselves, our actions. Ask, “What would Jesus do?” I didn’t need to ask, “What would War do,” because he’d done it to me. I didn’t ask what he wanted because he’d told me.
I didn’t need to question what I did, because I was doing it, and I’d just gotten a peek at what could happen if I did it wrong.
Almost from a distance, I heard Krell say, “She is my daughter. I will see her as no rogue, neither as a possession to be traded away for some needed goods. If she has both gifts, then she will have both worlds to go with them. In this, I will ensure her future.”
Shela griped to me for hours after that, even as she lay in my arms after our lovemaking. When I couldn’t tune her out anymore I told her it didn’t matter and to be quiet about it, and she dutifully kicked me with her long toenails and rolled on her side, her back to me. I slept lightly that night and wondered at a lot of things that society, as I knew it, never prepared me to wonder about.
Chapter Twenty-One
It’s Not Just a Job …
The Aschire woods top the Steel Mountains and terminate onto the plains between Uman City and Steel City, which sits as the gateway to the Eldadorian mines. These mines are the lifeblood of the country, well guarded and lucrative. The city produced steel from rich iron ore and coal brought up from more southern mines in the same range. They traded the metal all over Fovea.
We couldn’t say, “goodbye,” to the Aschire when we came back out onto the plains four days later. They just stopped being there as we left. I shook my head, sorry to leave these free people. I could think of worse things than living as they did, even though they got no respect for it. I also foresaw coming back here to recruit for our archers when we needed them. I didn’t see Xinto’s people being warlike enough to join us, so the Aschire would be a good alternative.
Our marching order fell naturally as we moved south: Genna now on horseback, doing our flying recon, ranged ahead with Arath, just at the edge of our vision on the plains. I took the rear, Thorn the right hand side and Nantar the left, about 300 yards from the center of our group. Drekk rode halfway between our center and Arath. Shela, D’gattis, and Ancenon held that center with our packhorses. I could see that Shela changed horses about four times a day, ensuring that she always had a fresh mount. Blizzard didn’t seem to tire, so I didn’t worry about him, but I wondered about the others, and whether getting more horses would be in order.
I thought this when I saw Arath riding back hard, a man just behind him. I drew my sword, Nantar and Thorn joining me as we rode in toward the center. I could see Genna riding almost as fast behind Arath and this other. I looked over my shoulder and saw no one following us, at least not for now.
The man following Arath had curly green hair and wore a long, flowing brown robe. His pale skin, untouched by the sun, shone to us from across the plain. He had narrow features and pencil-thin eyebrows like the Uman people, but his bones and body were thicker, his forehead more pronounced, like the features of a Man. He rode a big bay, somewhere in size between Blizzard and Shela’s gelding. He carried a staff at his side, much as Thorn had carried my lance, ready to spear someone with it. His riding boots gleamed with polish, yet he rode the big horse bareback.
He approached at a full gallop and reined in right before Ancenon, Arath at his side. Both were smiling. The two Uman-Chi remained impassive at the center of the group, and Shela backed her mare up to sit beside me. Genna sat her gelding behind the newcomer.
“This is Dilvesh,” Arath said, “my old friend. His mother was a Sentalan, and his father a Volkhydran warrior who raided her city. He is the only half-Uman I know, and I think we would be lucky to have him with us.”
“Everyone knows that Uman and Men can’t breed,” Genna said.
“Apparently, that is not true,” Dilvesh said.
D’gattis fixed Dilvesh with his ambiguous eyes, and Ancenon neither smiled nor spoke. Shela straightened all of a sudden, then laughed and looked at me.
“What?” I asked her.
“Hush, White Wolf,” she said quietly. “Magic is flowing all around you.”
“True enough,” said Ancenon, overhearing her. Drekk had already circled behind Dilvesh to back up Genna, drawing a wary stare from Arath. Dilvesh met D’gattis’ eyes dead on, his lips a thin line. His white skin shone and a wind I didn’t feel rippled his robes.
D’gattis’ mount took a step back and the wizard looked at Shela. I saw the perspiration on his face.
“Can you?” he asked of her.
She looked at Dilvesh and she smiled. “I think that if I were not with this one, then I would be with him, D’gattis. You haven’t mistaken him for another Wizard, I hope.”
“A plains shaman?” D’gattis asked.
Shela laughed, Arath and Dilvesh smirked. “Maybe his were at one time, Sir, but that isn’t plains magic as I know it.
“Why I would want to kill one of the last Druids is beyond me.”
D’gattis’ head whipped back around. Ancenon’s mount pranced until he took better control of the beast. Drekk put his dagger back in its sheath and circled back, next to the two Uman-Chi. I waited with Shela, wondering at the Fovean equivalent of the Gaelic wise man.
“The Druids are dead, more than a thousand years,” said Drekk.
“That is not entirely true,” said Dilvesh.
“It certainly felt true until about a moment ago,” said Ancenon. He regarded Dilvesh, his politic smile returning. “How many of you are left?”
“Enough,” Dilvesh answered him, “but not many. We need to be in many places at the same time.”
“And yet you sought us out,” D’gattis said. The sweat might have already dried on his face but it didn’t making him look any happier.
The half-Uman nodded. “I had to. Twenty-five days ago, on the Twelfth Day of Order, while I sat in the Lone Wood, I swooned. When I came to, this appeared.”
He threw his robes back, and the question mark, turned upside down, shone there in green. He wore it on a thick white blouse, which he stuffed into his leather breeches. The blouse laced up the front and had big, puffy sleeves, hiding Dilvesh’s thin form. As quickly as he had flashed the sign, he recovered himself in his robes.
“Amazing,” Nantar said.
“Impossible,” D’gattis countered.
“Not for the All-Father,” Ancenon insisted. That was the power of faith: absolutes without needing to prove them. “Nothing is.”
“What is it?” Genna demanded from behind the Druid.
“He bears the same mark as the rest of the men,” Shela told her.
Her eyes widened, and then narrowed.
Dressed in her leathers, she alone hadn’t been marked by Adriam. The idea that Dilvesh had been marked at the same time as the rest of us spoke of Adriam having a purpose for the Free Legion larger than the gold at Outpost X.
I didn’t think that this fact, or the coincidence that only males had been chosen, had escaped Genna.
Adriam had a larger plan in mind, or Ancenon did.
“Regardless,” Arath said, “he is one of us. I have already given him the outline of our purpose here.”
“And why is that?” Drekk demanded, the anger clear in his voice. He brought his horse up boldly. “He didn’t suffer through Conflu, he didn’t risk his life, fall to their warriors.”
“Adriam’s will is foretold,” Ancenon stated, regarding Drekk with his ambiguous eyes. “If you do not like it, then you can address that to the All-Father.”
“Or Ancenon’s will is foretold,” Genna said, airing my thoughts.
Drekk continued, although G
enna had clearly given Ancenon something to say, “I follow Eveave, and the give and take, as do all rogues and thieves. I have a right to a share in the wealth of Outpost X. This -” he indicated Dilvesh with something close to disgust, “this has a right to nothing.”
“I am aligned with Weather, as well as Water and Earth,” Dilvesh said. “I seek no amount of wealth from you – that Trinity provides all.”
“And then why join us?” Genna accused him. “If not for the gold, then why?”
“If that is your whole reason,” Dilvesh said, “then I can give you no answer.”
We all looked at Ancenon, then at Dilvesh.
The rest of us had already established why we were a part of this Free Legion. We sought out the profit in it. We all had additional goals, we all had side-missions. Ancenon wanted his own kingdom, I wanted this army of mercenaries, Drekk wanted knowledge, Nantar wanted to fight. Genna wanted challenges and a place in history.
Dilvesh seemed to see a purpose with us. I already speculated that Adriam would use him to counter me. In that case I didn’t want him, but I couldn’t prove it, either.
Nantar looked at me. “What do you have to say, Black Lupus?” he asked. His beard bristled under his smile, the first time anyone had ever called me that. I had referred to him as the Warrior in Red in my mind, but never openly.
Hell, what did I have to say? Drekk looked at me intently, perhaps as a kindred spirit. I felt the corners of my mouth frowning, looked down at the ground. Arath remained intent that we should include Dilvesh, and Arath seemed steady. I said as much.
“And the gold?” Drekk asked.
“More than any of us could spend in a lifetime,” I said. I looked Drekk in the eye. “I follow War, not Eveave and not this Natural Trinity. I prefer the take to the give. If Dilvesh is here to help me, so be it. A Druid would have a lot to offer.”
“You know very little about Druids, I think” D’gattis said, his brow furrowed.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 32
