“The Uman-Chi need targets,” Karel informed them. “When they come here they will find none.”
“A fire through the woods will find you wherever you hide, son,” Therok told him. “And burn hotter than vengeance with Uman-Chi Wizards behind it.”
We were standing on the beach in the middle of the night. The moon cast a bluish tint on all of us. Two Spears marshaled the men and then drove them into the woods. Each sergeant had orders to keep contact with his lieutenant, each lieutenant with orders to keep contact with his captain and the captains, each with a map of the Silent Isle, were keeping us spread out over miles.
Even if we were discovered, we were just a band of ten Wolf Soldiers here for no apparent reason.
Shela approached us, riding her gelding. Lee remained in Thera with a wet nurse, guarded by a thousand men who knew that their lives were forfeit if anything befell her, not that they needed a threat. Two Spears had done his job and done it well. These men would lay down their lives for that little girl and sneer while they did it.
Shela looked down at all of us. The two Scitai looked up at her, towering from over three times their height on horseback. I stood with my arms crossed over my breastplate, waiting to hear what she had to say.
“No Uman-Chi draws breath within ten miles of this place, Therok of the Plains,” she said, her voice mystical as it always sounded when she used her power. “None will while I walk this Isle.”
Therok clicked his tongue and Karel smiled his mischievous smile. “And how are you so sure, girl?” the older Scitai asked her.
Karel answered for her. “That is the Lady Shela,” he said, loud enough not just for his father but also for the Scitai who were working with us to hear, “whom you know better as the Bitch of Eldador. Do you question her power?”
Therok’s eyes widened. So did Shela’s. I had never heard that nickname before but they clearly had, because Therok stammered out an apology and excused himself.
She dismounted and towered over Karel, her chest heaving in her anger. The look she wore in the moonlight reminded me of that time in Steel City. I wondered if Karel’s death would be as painful.
I didn’t care. I didn’t like him.
“The Bitch of Eldador?” she repeated.
Karel’s eyes widened innocently. I didn’t think that would help him. “I didn’t make it up,” he told her.
That didn’t mollify her – I would have been surprised if it had. “How long have I been the Bitch of Eldador?” she asked.
Karel spread his hands. “You killed a man in Glennen’s own court,” he said. “The Bounty Hunter’s Guild has called you by that name since. Surely you must have known…”
Shela remounted her horse. She had been moody since Lee’s birth and worse since the attack. This news didn’t make her any happier. This was a bad day to be a Bounty Hunter. That’s ok – I didn’t like them, either.
Karel looked up into my eyes. I had noticed that about him – a new difference between Karel and Drekk. Karel looked right at you when he spoke, like he really wanted to know what you had to say.
“Surely she knew,” he said.
I laughed. “I wouldn’t have been the one to tell her,” I said. “Actually, I’m surprised you’re still alive.”
Karel pulled his head back like I had tried to slap him.
“You’re serious?” he asked me.
I laughed again. “My friend,” I told him, “the last person who pissed her off that badly got cleaned up with a broom and a dust pan.”
I turned and went looking for Two Spears. Over my shoulder, I added, “Why do you think they call her the Bitch of Eldador?”
Let the little man chew on that for a while.
The Fovean High Council met on the fifteenth day of Desire to discuss “these outlandish goings on.” By then every bridge between Sental and Volkhydro had been destroyed. Hundreds of warriors on both sides of the Llorando had died trying to defend them, but the Sarandi were veterans with Wolf Soldier training. Many worried in both nations that the bridges would not be rebuilt when the fall harvest came next year and that there would be no portage between Sental and Volkhydro. This meant higher costs for Sentalan goods that would now have to be shipped instead of carried by wagon to market. With the grain on ships already, why bother moving it through Volkhydro? That meant an economic depression for that nation.
Dorkan, on the other hand, couldn’t ship to anyone because Koran pirates had grown bold and raided their merchant ships. They did this because there were so few Dorkan warships, due to heavy losses by them at the Straights of Deception. Again, hard times for a Fovean nation while Kor could expect to grow stronger.
Angry debate shook the Council and many pointed fingers. The cold stone benches at their outdoor coliseum were heated with words, most of these pointed at the Eldadorian delegates, with suspicious glances for the unscathed Toorians, Confluni and Andarans. Dorkans still complained of an entirely unjustified action against them sparked by Eldadorian opportunists and Trenboni with no proof.
The Eldadorians were hearing none of this, however. They claimed to be able to deliver incontrovertible evidence of an international plot to kill the Queen of Eldador. That plot extended to the Free Legion, no member of which had been seen in over a month, save for rumors of Nantar in Sental. The Free Legion was becoming a force to be reckoned with - a force to be answered.
People said that you could hear them arguing from a mile away – which explains why they didn’t hear me coming through their main gate.
I had learned a lot since coming here. I had learned to fight, and to kill. I had learned what it meant to be loved and hated. I had seen that luck is an essential part of life, but taking advantage of it is still a skill. I had learned that most of what had happened to me, for good or ill, had been my fault and my responsibility.
When you learn that sort of lesson you don’t change – you realize how much the same you are. When other people think that you’ve changed, they’re seeing that you’ve realized that. I had heard before that change is the only constant. Now I understood what that meant.
Another thing that I had learned is that if you are going to hit someone, then hit them. Hit them hard and make them think twice before hitting you back. There is no glory in being hit back, it just hurts and leaves you weaker. When your enemy exposes his jugular then you cut it while you have the chance before it is your blood on his shoes.
Because the Trenboni didn’t see the Scitai as a threat to them, they didn’t guard themselves against the Scitai-occupied forests of Trenbon. Scitai scouts led five thousand of us past the few Trenboni patrols or, as we got closer to Outpost IX, through them. Within two miles of Outpost IX I ordered forced march while my lancers under Two Spears slaughtered Uman warriors with impunity.
I approached the main gate at the head of a vanguard of those thousand heavy lancers. Four thousand Wolf Soldiers marched double-time behind us in squads of ten. They marched with their swords out and their shields down, the sun glinting from naked steel. We broke out of the forest onto the hard-packed plain that surrounded the city, heading straight for the merchants’ plaza and the city’s huge main gate. A bell from one of Outpost IX’s many towers announced us and warned the city guard of our coming.
Even though they were on high alert, warned of a pending attack, a mere hundred Trenboni mounted warriors greeted me no more than two hundred feet from the Outpost IX murder hole.
Civilians looked at us in disbelief. Who would bother to visit Outpost IX with so many, or dare to march on the Trenboni capitol with so few?
The Uman-Chi Captain of the Guard wore a gold breastplate and the image of a falcon on his breast. His mount pranced up to Blizzard’s side and he demanded to know where I had received permission to land armed troops on the sovereign nation of Trenbon.
I killed him myself. My blood brother, Two Spears, took command of my lancers and led the follow-up attack. A thousand heavily armored horsemen crashed into the Trenboni mounte
d warriors with lances down, pushing them right through the city gates. Five hundred Scitai and five hundred Aschire archers cleared the walls and towers that defended the murder hole and protected the entrance to the city. Where the Aschire archers were incredible, the Scitai made them look like amateurs, shooting through tiny arrow slits in the city’s stone walls to kill the Uman archers who guarded the main gate.
I took Outpost IX’s invincible gate before the screaming from the marketplace could alert the city watch. Her portcullis, unused for years, dropped haltingly, a screech of metal protesting against rust and dirt. One of my squad sergeants pegged it open by breaking the head of a pike off in the mechanism as we took a tower. Scitai and Aschire archers swarmed into it, assaulting the tower on the other side of the gate with five squads and a barrage of arrows.
When I held the gates I entered the city with a steady stream of soldiers in squad formation. My lancers went first, slaughtering the final remains of the mounted guard. By the time the first handful of Uman warriors scrambled to the defense of Outpost IX my Wolf Soldiers held the open center just inside of the main gate. The Trenboni home guard advanced as a mob onto the white cobblestones and met squads that hit them from the front and both sides before they could even get organized.
Meanwhile Shela and five of her acolytes held back Trenbon’s growing magical defense. They fought that battle from every rooftop and tower in the city. I saw sheets of flame fly down the main street of Outpost IX and dissipate before our marshalling army, lightning fell like rain and sputtered over our head. I received little shocks from the Sword of War as we assembled behind the gate, readying our push down Outpost IX’s main street.
It didn’t take long. Captains coordinated lieutenants, who barked orders at sergeants, who assembled their men. We had been doing it for a year. Smart squads fell into a patchwork of men and steel, centered around my heavy horse.
“They’re ready,” Two Spears told me. “Are you?”
I nodded. He grinned like a kid with candy. Death didn’t mean a lot to Two Spears.
I knew the feeling.
The heavy horse went first, slow from the start but then gathering momentum as a surge of flame and lightening cleared out magic resistance to their movement. Outpost IX’s main street formed a long, straight path to the royal palace, and iron hooves made sparks on cobblestones as their momentum grew, pennons snapping from their upraised lances.
I stayed with the infantry. We marched double-time behind the horse. The key here was not to let a gap form between the main army and the van. If they were smart, they were assembling far down the road, before the palace, and would try to get Two Spears to engage them while they cut in behind with their own horse to challenge my squads.
The heavy horse would have a hard time getting turned around on the main street, and by the time they did my foot would be entangled with their defenses, which assuredly outnumbered me.
The resistance didn’t wait around for me to ponder any more. The horse met their first armed brigades, another mass of soldiers, before we went four blocks. Two Spears stayed at a trot and casually ran them down, to his credit. Behind them, three times their number in bowmen rained arrows down on my horse as they emerged through the foot soldiers. Had they been in full gallop they would have been unable to slow down in time to drop behind my infantry, who were better able to handle the barrage.
My squads of ten marched forward with their shields high, our pikemen and our swordsmen crouching close behind the shield men. They pressed forward with minimal losses until they were too close for arrow fire. Now from behind the archers, the Trenboni foot that had been assembling while we fought swarmed forward, trying to catch my men encumbered and out of formation. Two squads went down and two more were retreating, my center giving way, as wild-eyed Uman in heavy armor and with long swords threw themselves against our shields, our pikemen in no position to repel them.
Forward came the heavy horse again, hooves clattering on cobblestones in a short sprint to meet the new threat. Their lances lowered like a wave as my squads broke to left and right to open a channel for them to pour through, into the charging Uman warriors, skewering them on their lances as some tried to press forward and others to retreat.
When the horse engaged, fire and lightening rolled out of every open window and down from every flying bridge on the street, straight toward them. I winced, thinking they were lost now. Not even Shela could repel all of that so quickly.
And she couldn’t, so instead she and her acolytes attacked the buildings and the bridges themselves. Stones exploded out of ancient buildings and bridges crumbled under Wizards who had prepared themselves for her assault but not the stone around them. Outpost IX was the objective; Outpost IX was the focus of Power. Outpost IX, then, became her weapon against them.
The energy dissipated, crisping but not burning my heavy horse. Men swore and horses screamed, and then suddenly Two Spears found his troops in a dead run down the street, toward the palace, my infantry behind him in full charge.
Both horse and footmen annihilated double and triple their number in city watch and Trenboni regular army, fighting heroes’ style, trying to keep us from the palace. The heavy lancers rumbled down the main street like thunder, leaving dead and dying in their wake. Archers from the rear of our army, Scitai and Aschire, answered the Trenboni with deadly accuracy, clearing towers, rooftops and flying bridges. I marched past shattered lances covered in blood and dead Trenboni in rent armor. Here and there a widow wept alongside a fallen warrior, or a family gathered together to watch in shock as we marched past, our steel cleats clinking on the cobblestones.
No one believed that they would ever see foreign warriors advance in triumph through the streets of Outpost IX. No one who lived here thought that anything would disrupt his or her way of life. Blood flowed red through the gutters like a river into the sewers beneath the city, in what had once been thought the safest place in Fovea.
We marched down the main street where I had once ridden Blizzard. Again and again, the enemy massed and charged in a mob. My shieldmen held them, my pikemen stabbed them, my swordsmen slashed at them if they found their way around our edges. If they pushed a squad back or overwhelmed them then a portion of the horse wheeled back and overran the defenders. We’d driven deeper into the city now, and we could use their side streets to move our horse back and forth past our lines. We proved once again that organized warfare would prevail against an armed mob.
Swarms of arrows buzzed through the air, met by the crackle of energy from spell casting or finding marks among the Uman warriors of Trenbon. Aschire would send their arrows arcing high, over our men, and the Trenboni would have to raise their shields. Scitai would pepper them from between our troops, finding marks I would have thought impossibly difficult. Then they’d switch and kill even more.
Finally we were there, approaching the royal palace at Outpost IX ahead of a bloody swath through the city. Here tens of thousands of fresh Uman royal guard had massed, men who spent more time standing motionless at doors than swinging swords on a battlefield. The interior gates were closed, the merlons on the palace walls manned with archers, with catapults, with steaming buckets of oil. Surely, they were thinking, these troops were worthless against that fortress, especially considering that we had come so quickly, and left so many possible enemies behind us.
Which is why we peeled off to the right and proceeded directly to the coliseum of the Fovean High Council.
We met almost nothing to stop us. It seemed like an entire lifetime since I had been here. A perfunctory guard of fifty Uman warriors in the royal crest of Trenbon crumbled before a single sweep of my heavy lancers. What few archers they maintained on the walls fell pin-cushioned by my Aschire and Scitai bowmen. Even that same, greasy Uman from so long ago, whose breath I thought I might still smell hanging on the air, lay bleeding on the cobblestones.
I stepped up to the dais before the assembled Fovean High Council. No one in history had attempted
such a thing before, and the delegates screamed in outrage.
Uman-Chi arrogance had made it possible. The proper training and planning, the proper patience, had made it happen. I let my steel heels clang on the stone steps as I walked. I had known that Ancenon or D’gattis would betray me; I had counted on them to focus all of the city’s attention on an attack coming in by the Bay, stripping the city garrison to man their navy. Xinto had taught me that the Uman-Chi barely considered the Scitai at all when they thought of their Silent Isle. Now Karel of Stone, much as I didn’t like him, had helped to make this happen.
My men ringed the coliseum and my archers had taken up positions along its walls. Two Spears had engaged the Trenboni Royal Mounted Guard. A thousand Trenboni horsemen with swords tried to match an almost equal number of armored knights with lances. I had confidence in my blood brother and most trusted Captain.
“Silence!” I ordered the collected delegates. They shouted their outrage at me and to each other. Why should they listen to me? They were the sacrosanct ambassadors to the Fovean High Council.
I drew the Sword of War and, stepping down from the podium, plunged it into the chest of a Dorkan Councilman. One of his peers stood for a moment and started to speak, sparks dripping from his right hand as he raised it. A moment later blood flowed from his ears and eyes as he fell back dead in his chair. Shela just sneered at him, her arms crossed beneath her breasts.
Two Uman-Chi delegates took their chance and stood with power dripping red gobbets from their outstretched hands. Before they could complete their casting, Scitai archers pin-cushioned them with arrows. Surviving delegates cast nervous glances one to the other. Many had magical skill but we had the drop on them. Between Shela and the archers they couldn’t be sure of their lives.
Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) Page 52
