“I regret your inconvenience,” I said, by way of apology. I had already learned that it lay beneath my station to actually apologize, even when at fault.
That should have settled it, but Sammin was pissed. “I tell you, Rancor, I will have none of it,” he continued on. One of the sergeants gasped. I managed to hold my face straight, but barely. “If you want to satisfy yourself with the Duchess like a common soldier that is certainly your prerogative, but it is my responsibility to protect you.”
“Oh, I agree entirely, Sammin,” I told him, putting on my best Ancenon air. “I happily offer you satisfaction.”
That gave him a moment’s pause. “Satisfaction, sir?”
I nodded. “I would prefer swords, of course,” I continued, watching his look of amazement. “Marshal my command as witness and put on what armor you think might protect you, but if you would have none of this then I can certainly oblige you.”
Sammin had just realized what he had done at that point. I don’t think that Glennen’s court acted awfully formal and he expected to get away with disrespecting me.
But then, I came here to bring about change.
“I hardly expect to match you, sir,” he said, with the tiniest amount of condescension he could still manage. “It would hardly seem fair.”
“You yield quickly for someone who called himself a veteran when I met him,” I answered back. Now he’d treated me like an upstart noble, and that just pissed me off. I couldn’t be sure that I had any advantage over him. Glennen had informed me that Sammin had worked his way up through the ranks. I doubt he had done that by being too nice of a guy.
He stiffened predictably. “I do not yield,” he asserted. He tried to express with his weathered face that I couldn’t back him down this way, but the old Randy hadn’t expressed himself much since coming here, and frankly I missed him.
Sometimes, someone calls you out, and you just fight.
“And yet you suppose that you can speak to me, and use my first name, as if you were my equal?” I said.
“I suppose that you wouldn’t act like a buck in rut.”
No backing down now, not after that.
“Then assemble the men. We’ll see who lays in a rut.”
He sighed and turned on his heel. Shela had already fetched my armor and sword. Wolf Soldiers scrambled about their duties while looking sideways at me. The Free Legion still hadn’t really noticed.
“You are making the right decision, White Wolf,” Shela told me, pressing her face close to mine as she buckled my armor. “This will increase the morale of your troops to know that no man can stand against you and live.”
“That was my thinking,” I said. “Flip-side, if he gets away with that, they will all think they can push me around.”
“Flip on your side?” she asked, looking into my eyes.
I just shook my head.
My armor went on pretty easily with Shela there, and Sammin returned in a light mail coat and some extra-long broad sword with an ornate hilt. The mail clung to his massive forearms and torso – this man had lived by his sword longer than he had lived by his tongue, relying on one to protect him from the other. He looked me up and down, spat on the ground and stuck the end of the sword in the dirt.
In warrior’s tongue, that meant, “One of us will be planted here.”
“If he gets the best of you, I will be sure to intervene,” Shela assured me, giving a final tug on the front of my breastplate.
“You better,” I said, kissing her cheek.
“Don’t flip on your side,” she warned me. “He won’t fall for silly tricks.”
I marshaled the men myself and I addressed them. “I am Duke Rancor Mordetur, of Thera,” I shouted to them, in the most imperial voice I could muster. “I have been challenged by your Captain, Sammin. Today, you stand witness to that challenge, and his death.”
The men, to their credit, stood stock-still. Sammin raised an eyebrow. “To the death, is it?” he asked.
“Yours,” I said, drawing the Sword of War.
He didn’t waste any more words but charged straight at me, swinging his sword low. The hard-packed ground shook under his weight.
I moved to parry, my sword light in my hand, as with a flick of his wrist he pulled his own sword back and tried to plunge it into my groin.
I turned sideways, his sword passing between my weapon and my armor, and quick as a dancer he pulled the long blade back against the steel of my armor. It felt almost deliciously unnerving to come that close to death, protected only by a thin skin of steel.
I stepped forward and swung low, going for his shins. He leapt up off the ground as the sword passed beneath him, and his broadsword rang my helmet. I saw stars and tasted blood, having bitten my lip.
Sammin skills as a swordsman far exceeded my own.
No time to worry, just have to focus. Nantar and Thorn had taught me that I would face better warriors, but if the heart remains undefeated then that is my best chance of survival.
I would be a father – I would hear my child’s cry when my wife bore it.
He pressed his advantage, circling to my right to make me open up my guard. To counter him, I predictably began to circle to my left, and paid for it when his sword snaked in and caught me underneath the shoulder guard on the left side. The arm felt like it had received an electric shock, and then hung useless at my side.
Nantar had taught me this trick as well. The injury would take hours to recover from and would keep me off my balance.
His sword whipped around, over his head, to go for the other side. He felt confident of his victory now, and was showboating. That move, however, I knew from my time in the SCA. He would go for my helmet again.
I forced myself to wait until the very last second, then parried with the Sword of War. I smacked his sword aside and stepped in, too close for swords as long as ours, and bumped him with my armor.
He stepped back with a look on his face like he’d caught me watching porn in church, and hesitated long enough for me to take a few swings at his head and upper torso. He stepped back to recover, absorbing my attack, then all of a sudden parried my blade and chopped down on my armor with a force that put me back on the defensive.
Once again, Dwarfish craftsmanship had saved my life, but now I knew the advantage I could play. Sammin thought like a soldier.
Soldiers obey rules.
He lunged for me and I turned sideways, trying to get his forward momentum to carry him past me. I knew he’d never fall for that, but then I spun my sword around in my right hand and brought the hilt down with all of the strength I could muster on the back of his neck. He actually cried out in pain and rage but, where he could have put his hand against me and pushed me away from him, he smacked my breastplate with the side of his broadsword instead, a feeble effort that I barely felt, as he danced back to regain his stance.
He wouldn’t fight with his hands, his feet, nothing like that. In a sword fight he would fight with a sword.
He came after me again and I made an obvious effort to dance back like I had seen him do a moment before. That would, in any other fight, have been a really stupid maneuver. I wore twice his armor, and it would mark me as some novice fighter trying to imitate what he saw.
I knew Sammin believed just that. I looked off balance and he lunged in to finish it.
His sword spun over his head like a baton and he struck directly for my left upper arm. I braced myself with my left foot, pointed the right directly at him and, with all of the strength in my hips and lower back, I held my ground and put the Sword of War in his path, the blade pointed down. I caught his cross guard on mine and, using my superior strength, I twisted my grip one hundred eighty degrees and pulled his body up against mine, his forehead inches from my helmet and our swords between us.
Sammin had made of himself an accomplished swordsman, a warrior, and a champion. He had trained with gifted men; he fought with style and honor.
His green eyes met mine for j
ust an instant, then I bit him in the face. My canine teeth crushed the bridge of his nose and he screamed in surprise. His grip loosened for just a second and I had the Sword of War free, leaving him with a stunned expression and his sword in a useless en guarde position.
I struck him full in the face with the heel of my hand. He stepped back, blinking and bleeding from a smashed nose. I pursued, swinging my sword over my head and, before he could parry, down the front of his mail, parting it like silk. He moaned and kept retreating, bleeding from his chest and stomach, the big sword faltering in his grip. I could have just beheaded him right then and been done with it, but I needed to make a point and I only wanted to make it once.
I smacked the sword out of his weakening grip. It clattered to the beaten ground. I drove my heel into the blade right at the cross guard, snapping it.
“I yield,” he gasped. I could probably still find a way to save him. We had an abundance of spell casters here.
My sword whistled out and took him under the left knee, parting his mail and severing his leg. His eyes widened as he began to fall to the left, and his left shin to the right.
Before he’d fallen more than forty-five degrees to the horizon, I whipped the sword over my head and straight down on his right leg, taking him mid-way up the thigh. The Sword of War passed right through his leg, and he fell straight to the ground, pumping blood onto the face of Earth from his severed limbs. The dirt around him darkened. I walked to his side, looking into his eyes through my helmet.
“I – I yield,” he repeated.
“Who cares?” I asked. The sword fell again, and his left arm leapt from his body at the shoulder. To his credit, he hadn’t screamed once or shown any cowardice. He probably couldn’t believe that this could be happening.
It took more effort – I had to reach across his body – but I managed to cut his right arm away next, just above the elbow. His body dumped blood on the ground and would soon go into shock. He wouldn’t be alive a minute from now.
“Let this lesson be for all,” I shouted, looking at my men. There were Free Legion soldiers crowding in around their ranks. Many of them, mostly the women, had their hands to their mouths to stifle their surprise. I had met almost every last one of them personally, if only for a few moments. The Wolf Soldiers I had eaten with, trained with, and led to victory in war games.
“No man, no man at all, stands against me and lives,” I told them. “The enemies of the Free Legion, of Eldador and of the Wolf Soldiers will all fail.”
For emphasis, I brought the Sword of War down and severed Sammin’s head from his neck. Still wearing his steel cap, it went spinning to one side. The earth around him had been stained red, and Uman blood dripped from my sword as I held it over my head.
Probably the most bloodthirsty thing that I had ever done, and it felt very good. In that moment I understood the Roman people who attended the gladiatorial arenas, and the Emperors who turned their thumbs over fallen men. In that brief moment, when you hold life in your own hand, you know satisfaction and Power.
My men responded as well. I had drawn Wolf Soldiers from the more ruthless prisoners and dissidents – men and women who wanted power like mine. To the last man and woman, we worshipped War.
“Lupus!” they shouted, across the plains for anyone to hear. “Lupus!” they cried, pledging their names and their lives to mine. Swords whistled from sheaths and were thrust into the air. Free Legion soldiers looked at Wolf Soldiers in surprise. How different they were, right then.
Nantar and Drekk came up to me and clapped me on the back. Shela gave me a victor’s kiss, her savage tongue cleaning the blood from my lips, and my men shouted my name again. Sammin’s remains discolored the plains, and his sword had already been taken. One of my subordinates would ship it back to his wife.
A new era had begun. As I shook my blade clean I could see that now.
“Somewhat unnecessarily violent, wouldn’t you agree?” D’gattis asked me.
We rode side-by-side, between the Wolf Soldiers and the Free Legion soldiers. I had volunteered to hold the vanguard, the ‘van’, because our squads of ten were more effective against any encamped force that we came across.
Also, I expected us to be attacked from the rear.
“Not unnecessarily, no,” I said. Blizzard stood about four hands taller than his mount, so he had to ride a little in front of me and look over his shoulder to see my face. It must have been uncomfortable for him, but you couldn’t tell it looking at his face while he kept a perfect posture.
“The man did yield, though,” D’gattis said. I didn’t know what answer he wanted, but I had started to wonder.
Arath scouted our point with his woodsmen. Thorn held the rear. Genna, once again, performed our flying recon, and Ancenon and D’gattis rode with Shela and I. Dilvesh coordinated all things through his Natural Trinity, keeping tabs on all of them. Nantar marched with the men, and at any time Drekk could be anywhere.
I had offered Karl Henekhson Sammin’s job for the journey, and he had accepted, surprising us both. He looked uncomfortable telling my Wolf Soldiers what to do, and they were still a bit shocked to be taking orders from a second new Captain, but Karl needed this. I looked down the road that the poor lad would walk and saw a beaten, submissive man. Let him get some self-esteem before he had walked that path too far.
Ancenon stayed quiet, keeping his own council. Shela seemed to be off in her own world, riding sidesaddle with one hand on her stomach.
“It was a fight to the death,” I said, looking into the Uman-Chi’s ambiguous eyes. “He disrespected me in front of my men. You just can’t have that.”
“And if I were to disrespect you similarly?” he asked, an eyebrow raised.
I chuckled. “I wouldn’t recommend it,” I told him.
“Nor would I,” Ancenon said finally. “Stop baiting him, cousin, he did nothing wrong, although I expect Glennen will pay large reparations to Sammin’s widow.”
“That is nothing to me,” I said, looking forward. “The man had no honor.”
“Honor is a precarious thing,” Ancenon told me. “You showed none when you slaughtered him – and yet your own men shouted your name. You replaced him with a boy, and they embrace him. These Wolf Soldiers of yours – this way you look at War – it is all strange to me, Rancor. I need it, but I am not sure I like it.”
“Tell me again how you feel when we are coming home alive from this mission,” I said to him, a smirk on my face. He nodded.
“There is that, of course,” he agreed. D’gattis had something to add, but Dilvesh rode in, interrupting him.
“To the woods,” he said, out of breath. I had never seen him that way before. “A major army of Confluni infantry, heading this way.”
“How far?” I asked.
“How many?” D’gattis interrupted me. It was probably a better question.
Dilvesh answered both, turning his horse already to bring in our scouts.
“Genna estimates ten, maybe twelve thousand,” he said. “Maybe an hour away, between us and Volkhydro. They knew we were coming, I am sure.”
He rode off, and Ancenon looked at me with silver-on-silver eyes that said everything and nothing.
“You were saying?” he asked.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
What Transpired in Conflu
We numbered four thousand, one hundred men, our officers and ourselves. They had three times our number, roughly, and surprise. Thanks to Dilvesh we had a position in a huge glen in the Confluni woods. I knew nothing about Confluni Wizards, if the Confluni had any, or what training their men had – but went into this fight outclassed.
D’gattis turned to Ancenon, and then to me. Nantar had already started marshalling the troops. I heard Karl calling orders and then saw him looking over his shoulder, back at me.
“We aren’t ready for them,” the Uman-Chi informed us all. Brilliant man.
“We better be,” I answered him as I reined Blizzard to my right.<
br />
“Or to die,” Ancenon said, following me.
Karl ran to my stirrup a moment later. “Twelve thousand Confluni, an hour away,” I said. “Call up the small city and keep them calm.”
I pulled Blizzard’s reins to the left and felt his hand on my stirrup. “The what?” he asked. “Call up what?”
I looked down into his sullen brown eyes. Defeat had been beaten into them long before any idea of victory had been given a chance to take hold. Blame his father for years of tearing the poor kid down and degrading him in an effort to build a so-called “better man.” Another example of the high price of bad parenting.
“They’ll know,” I told him. I reached down and put my hand on his shoulder, holding his eyes with mine. “Act like you know what you want, they will give it to you. They want winning strategy from me, they just need confidence from you.”
He nodded and I rode back toward Nantar. The Wolf Soldiers and the Free Legion had been extensively trained. They would do what they needed to do. At least I hoped they would.
Nantar met me halfway through the ranks of the Free Legion soldiers. “You spoke with Dilvesh?” he asked.
“Twelve thousand,” I said. “Three to one odds.”
“Can your men handle that?” Nantar asked. “Hold the center, let us flank them?”
“In infantry to infantry fighting?” I asked him. “We wouldn’t break but we would be overrun before you could do anything. I have them starting the small city.”
“Make camp?” that was Thorn, who had come up from the rear. “Sit here and wait for them? We’ll be slaughtered!”
“No,” Nantar said, grinning through his coarse black beard. “Make them come to us, be prepared – that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“If they can’t just blast us with their magic, then we have a chance,” I said, nodding. “I put my money on Dilvesh, D’gattis and Ancenon.”
Nantar smiled. Thorn looked skeptical, but he wouldn’t be Thorn otherwise. The orders were given and that is what counted.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 44
