Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Brady, Robert

  Right then the door burst open and Nantar’s wife, Lanette, burst in, her dress torn and a scar on her shoulder. I stood up with Nantar and Glennen, the Sword of War in my hand before I realized it.

  She flew into Nantar’s huge arms. He wrapped her in them like a cloak of muscle and bone. Her lower lip trembled and she looked up into his eyes.

  “Drekk is dead,” she told him.

  Drekk liked to hang out at the estate in Thera because of its central location that let him go back and forth between other nations with the goods and information that he pilfered. I let him have the run of the estate, the wharves, Free Legion Shipping and the warehouse that I had given him. We kept it all hush-hush as an integral part of the Free Legion Intelligence Branch that consisted solely of him.

  Or so I had thought.

  Two hundred Wolf Soldiers ringed the warehouse where he and Lanette had met to discuss some trinket that she wanted for Nantar on his upcoming birthday. According to her, ten men had dropped out of the rafters and attacked the both of them, for what purpose we did not know. Drekk had laid down his own life to back her out through an alleyway door to safety. A very subtle sooth-saying by Shela confirmed that she told the truth and hadn’t been involved in the killing in some way.

  The warehouse had been built three thousand feet square, one of the smaller ones but entirely adequate for Drekk. He had stacks of crates against one wall that had been broken open and a desk that had been rifled through. His body had been stabbed at least a dozen times, although blood puddles on the floor around him where he lay by that one door showed that he had not died alone.

  Yet Drekk had never been a warrior – anything but. His weapons involved stealth and secrecy and knowledge only guessed at, the shadow in a shadow and the dagger in the night. He didn’t fight and he didn’t raise armies, but he knew more of the facts about what actually went on than any of us could guess at.

  He didn’t look like he had seen this coming.

  Shela had come with Glennen, Nantar and I, borne on a litter with Lee. Arath and Dilvesh were in the Lone Wood, and fast riders were on their way. Shela had already informed Ancenon and D’gattis, and they were going to find Thorn. The Wolf Soldiers were marshalling. I already suspected what I would find out here, and this would be expensive for someone besides me.

  “Murder, plain as it gets,” Glennen said. He looked at Nantar with brown eyes softer than they normally were. “I am sorry,” he added.

  Nantar nodded, then looked at me, then Shela, then back to me. Lanette had stayed with Alekanna, but we obviously needed Shela’s unique talent.

  “Can she do anything?” he asked simply.

  I turned to Shela.

  Giving birth had done nothing to weaken her magical reserves. If men seeking Power did this murder then she’d know. Otherwise, it became a matter of how well they had protected themselves.

  Looking down at the dirt floor with a tight grip on Lee, Shela incanted something low in her throat. The baby lay quiet and oddly inactive while her mother performed her casting, reaching out with a chubby hand. I didn’t know that much about babies but for three days old this one seemed to make her presence known pretty well and to react to what went on around her.

  Shela barked a command and six puddles of blood glowed an unhealthy green throughout the room, lighting the night in a sick radiance. Outside a horse neighed and, by one crate, a rat scurried out of the packing and across the floor towards the door.

  Shela stopped as abruptly as she began, and looked at me with tear-filled eyes. I didn’t know if she had any relationship with Drekk other than passing, yet I had seen them speak and I knew they shared confidences. She would have to tell me in private how she felt about our assassin.

  Four Wolf Soldiers, of her personal guard, carried her litter. Without her telling them they carried her to the four corners of the room, and stopped by Drekk’s dead body. It had been necessary for us to leave him in his own blood, spilled out on the dirt floor. His vacant eyes looked up at the ceiling, the bloody dirk still in his grasp. Whoever had killed him had disturbed him, yet still left his testament to the battle he had fought and lost.

  “It is as Lanette says,” she said softly, her voice cracking. “But what she could not know is that the men came only to kill her and Drekk. The sacking of the warehouse is a sham and nothing was taken. They would have put the whole place to the torch if they had the time.”

  “If who had time?” Nantar pressed her. I don’t think the idea of someone going out of his or her way to kill his wife sat well with him.

  “I see a talisman of great power, used to speak with Drekk after his death,” she continued. “I see the signature that it has left here and, through that, I see it. I see Uman warriors placing this on Drekk’s dead breast.”

  “Mercenaries,” I said, after a moment’s thought. “Uman killers.”

  “I see the talisman being placed in their leader’s hands by a Man Wizard,” Shela said. “I hear his words.”

  “Dorkans?” Glennen said, incredulous. “This isn’t like what Dorkans do.” He looked at me. “A plague in your house, your water running dry, your crops dying, some subtle magical thing – that is what Dorkan wizards – “

  “There is no arguing, though,” Nantar said. “My people have few Wizards.”

  Glennen looked pissed-off. I went to the litter and took Shela’s tiny hand in mine, looked up into her eyes. “Are you sure about that last part?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “There can be no doubt,” she said. “The amulet they placed on Drekk’s dead body absorbed most of the secrets from his head. That left a powerful signature behind – I can see that amulet as if it were right in this room. It is for that reason I know so much of what has transpired here this night.”

  She spoke that way when she used her magic – she became this other, mystical person. She knew things.

  Drekk had designed the security at the estate in Thera. Why else take him out first?

  “The estate,” I said. I caught Glennen’s eyes, held them with my own. “That’s why they killed Drekk. He designed the security at the estate.”

  Wolf Soldiers guarded the periphery of the Casa de Mordetur. I left a good quarter mile of open space between the walls and the nearest stand of trees or building, and they had created no secret ways in or out. All of my security hadn’t stood up for a second against twenty Uman mercenaries with knowledge of the best ways to gain entry.

  Lanette had survived again, but Alekanna and the house staff had not. This time the evidence of torture was plain for anyone to see. The merc’s had wanted the rest of us, and badly.

  “She screamed and screamed,” she sobbed into Nantar’s shoulder. She had hidden herself under Shela’s and my bed and had still been there when we had burst in looking for her. I felt suspicious that they had missed her, but then they may have already thought her dead. Shela’s truth telling showed that she hadn’t conspired with the enemy.

  “They wanted to know where Glennen and Lupus were,” she continued, sobbing and perhaps going into shock. “Alekanna told them, but they didn’t believe her.”

  “Twenty Uman mercenaries,” Nantar said. “You’re sure?”

  “A Man leading them,” she said. “I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them. Some had Volkhydran accents.”

  “So the Wizard was a Volkhydran,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “The one leading them had that thick, Dorkan voice.”

  “So all of the mercenaries weren’t Uman,” Glennen said.

  I was thinking on this now. Something made deadly sense. I looked at Nantar.

  “Genna was a Volkhydran,” I said.

  He looked into my eyes.

  “Genna is dead,” Shela said.

  “But her sect of trackers were Volkhydrans,” I said.

  “They would never work for a Dorkan,” Nantar said.

  “Genna worked for Ancenon,” I said.

  “Becau
se I asked her to,” Nantar’s normally jovial face had become battle-serious. “They are for sale to rich men, but those men are Volkhydrans.”

  Genna hadn’t told me that. I didn’t know for sure that I believed it.

  “So they would work for a Volkhydran Warlord,” Glennen said.

  The king looked up at me from the floor, where he held the bloody remains of the mother of his children. Her eyes were still open, the look of horror on her face showed that she had died from unbelievable pain. As a well-born lady who had lived her life with noble people, Alekanna could never have imagined that sort of treatment.

  Glennen looked into my eyes and I looked into his. Glennen had been a warrior before he became a king. I knew what he wanted without him saying it.

  The Volkhydran government, or at least a part of that government, had organized this. They had worked with Dorkans and with Uman mercenaries.

  Which meant that the Trenboni had provided them, or the Sentalans, or perhaps Eldadorian rebels. Men would have used Man mercenaries unless they had a reason not to. Getting them from another nation would be such a reason.

  If the King of Eldador squashed rebels, that was his business and no one would interfere. If he pursued revenge against an outside force that sponsored them then that might be questionable. If three or more other nations acted in concert and the King of Eldador retaliated against them then Eldador would be declaring war, no question about it. Especially if the Trenboni had involved themselves.

  Under Fovean Law an act of aggression between sovereign governments demanded action by the Fovean High Council. Eldadorian Councilmen would then argue his case, present evidence, seek allies in the Council and call a vote. If successful, they would demand sanctions, levy fines, raise tariffs and embarrass those nations before the local communities.

  And that didn’t mean shit when your wife lay dead in your arms. Even less when you told her kids about it.

  So he couldn’t do it himself, and he really couldn’t go looking for anyone else. This was the sort of thing you hired a bounty hunter for – to get revenge for you and keep it quiet, because you couldn’t get involved. Glennen knew I wasn’t a bounty hunter, but I don’t think it bothered him.

  “Every last one of them, Lupus,” he said simply. His eyes were like stone, his jaw set, his wife’s blood on his face and hands. “Whatever you need, you have it.”

  “I have no problem with that,” I answered him.

  I went to sleep that night after Shela personally warded every entry into and out of the estate, and 5,000 Wolf Soldier guards split responsibilities for a five-section, twenty-four hour watch, meaning that at any one time there were 333 of them patrolling the property or the surrounding area while 333 slept and 333 performed maintenance duties or thought up better ways to protect us. Glennen traveled under my personal escort back to Eldador the Port, a Wizard with him in constant contact with a counterpart here.

  I dreamed of an innocent woman with a look of horror on her face, trying to convince a group of mercenaries that she didn’t know anything while they tortured her.

  I woke up in a cold sweat, Shela watching me with her knowing eyes. She sat in a rocking chair to my right, nursing Lee. I had finally started to get my mind around this plan I’d been involved in.

  “They have come,” she told me.

  The room stood in shadow, with only the light from a waning moon through its one window to see by.

  A bounty hunter sat in my bedroom. A real one.

  He’d picked a chair in the moonlight to my left, light from the room’s window to his right side casting a shadow across his face. He could be out and on the run in a moment. His features were dim and indistinguishable to me. He had walked past all of Shela’s wards and my guards to get here. He wouldn’t have done that alone.

  “You are not our favorite person,” he told me simply. I sat up in my bed, dressed in leggings and bare-chested. The Sword of War hung on the wall above me.

  “If not for that one,” he continued, indicating Shela, “you would be dead now.”

  “If not for that one,” Shela said, indicating me, “you would be dead now.”

  “And so,” he said, inclining his head in the gloom. “You put out the call for us, and I am here. Know that any ill will you may have for us, or us for you, is suspended for this negotiation. Know as well that you have offended us, and we will eradicate you, be you The Conqueror, The Just or Duke of Thera.”

  “And is that what you are trying to do now?” I asked.

  He laughed, low in his throat. “Were we the ones behind these attacks, we would not have killed an innocent. The bounty on your Free Legion is temptingly high but, in fact, our interests lie in the chaos and animosity you spread, not in your demise.”

  “He speaks the truth as he sees it,” Shela added. I would have guessed as much.

  “What will it take to end your interest in me?” I asked, from the top of my head.

  “Your death, and no less,” he told me. Shela didn’t need to tell me that he spoke the truth as he saw it.

  “And yet you come here,” I said.

  “I was curious about your defenses, and I wanted you to be able to tell your allies that we were not involved in this,” he told me. I didn’t doubt that he possessed a wealth of knowledge about this situation. There would have to be a level of intelligence gathering involved in what they did. It would be good to have them as allies if I could pull that off.

  That wouldn’t happen tonight.

  “The Trenboni, the Dorkans, and the Volkhydrans did this?” I said. I guessed about the Trenboni, but who else had more practice in uniting other nations against each other than the ones who housed the Fovean High Council?

  “I have no reason to tell you that,” he said, simply.

  “Make him tell me, Shela,” I said in his same, bland voice.

  He lunged for the window and then slammed back into his seat just as quickly, his hands welded to the arms of his chair by Power. Even in the dark I could sense his hateful look.

  “Aggressions were suspended,” he said.

  “Information was promised.”

  “We decide what information.”

  “Doesn’t look that way to me.”

  He sat quiet, fuming. If he worked with another bounty hunter, then he or she should have attacked by now. My ears strained for any reason to rip the Sword of War off the wall. I didn’t kid myself that I would be a match in regular combat for a bounty hunter, but the Sword of War gave a hell of an advantage, and Shela provided another.

  I didn’t come here to die fighting fairly.

  “It was those you mentioned, with the Sentalans,” the bounty hunter said. “I am surprised you knew of the Uman-Chi.”

  “I am not without resources,” I said. I had guessed right then that the Uman were Sentalans, not Trenboni. That made more sense in afterthought. Eldadorians rebels weren’t really a possibility. Eldadorians were too busy being happy to rebel.

  “You would have been wise to use them, instead of invoking the Guild in Outpost IX,” he said. “You would have been wiser still to use them than to hold me here now.”

  “What are you going to do, kill me for it?” I asked. “When you take away your enemy’s recourse, you take away any motivation for him to fight fair.”

  “Your recourse is a fatal one,” he said calmly.

  You had to admire the confidence. To threaten me in my own home, in front of a woman whom he had to know could kill him with a glance.

  “A lot of people have told me that,” I said. “And they’re all dead, and I’m not.

  “I believe you that you’re not involved. Get out.”

  He stood and leapt out the window, Shela having released him. I didn’t normally leave it open – he must have done that on his way in. If he got caught on his way out, then that was on him.

  “Do you sense anyone else in the room?” I asked Shela.

  She thought for a moment. “No,” she said, finally. “There was one
other, and she is gone. I am surprised that they wanted so badly to tell us that they are not involved.”

  “I am surprised that the other didn’t attack,” I said.

  “The Free Legion is becoming a force to be reckoned with. If it survives this then these bounty hunters probably don’t want that force turned on them.”

  “They must know that is going to happen anyway,” I said. “The Free Legion won’t tolerate continued threats against its members.”

  “Nor will I,” Shela said, darkly. Sitting in her rocking chair, nursing her new baby, she looked to me like some dark demon mother. Shela had many facets to her and some of them weren’t that pretty.

  “Tomorrow is another day,” I said. “We’ll be focused on Drekk’s death, now.”

  Shela stiffened. “And Alekki’s,” she added.

  I nodded, got up out of bed, took her hand in mine. “That is my worry,” I said. “And it is yours. Not the Free Legion’s.”

  She looked into my eyes through the night gloom and nodded. We just stood there, listening to Lee nurse, for a very long time.

  Chapter Thirty

  You Again

  I pretty much wasn’t surprised when my dreams were disturbed that night. In fact, I think I would have been more surprised if they hadn’t been.

  I was standing on the plains in Andoran again, this time no woman beside me and no rutting stallion off to one side. The sky was in twilight, just bright enough to see a few stars, no moon above me, the west glowing pinkish-red. I could smell the grass growing, waving knee-high to the horizon, in a cool breeze that caught my hair.

  For some reason I was dressed out exactly as I had been when I’d come here – the white home-spun shirt, leather pants and boots with a chain across the instep. For some stupid reason it occurred to me that those pants had held up pretty well, considering.

  You must be aware of my desire in this, my god, War, informed me in my mind. I couldn’t see him, I didn’t really hear him, I just knew who was communicating with me.