by Robert Brady
He considered this. Clearly he expected it.
“There are more ways out of a fealty than out of a room full of doors,” the baron next to him commented. That drew some looks. Had to be pretty bold to essentially say, “Stupid” to the new boss.
I noted the baron. Maybe a military commission for him. The army needed risk takers.
“Yet there is honor in taking an oath, regardless,” Tom said. He looked at me, considering.
“I would ask you to be bound to my protection,” he said. “But I don’t think you’re likely to do it, and I see what it means to offend you.
“Yes,” he said, finally. “You are well aware that I am a spy for the guild.”
“How would I think otherwise,” I said.
“They will take you, your Highness,” he warned me.
“Heard that before,” I said. “But, you know, all of the people who’ve said it are dead, and I’m not.”
He controlled himself better than I did. He made me wish I was a bounty hunter right then. You just had to like the way he handled himself so easily.
“Our second point of affairs, then,” the fourth Oligarch said, “would be affairs with other states.”
Several nodded. A lot of them had questions about how we handled the delegates from Trenbon. Was this wise? Well, we weren’t paying reparations.
“They demanded reparations, your Highness,” said Hectar, “because they want to sack our ships.”
Many at the table nodded. I grinned and turned to my new general. “How goes our Theran project?”
He smiled, looked at the bounty hunter, then at me.
“If he is worth his salt, he already knows of it,” I said.
“My salt?” he asked, and looked at a bowl with a small spoon in it. “Am I to be charged to spice my meal?”
I grinned. “In ancient times,” I said. “There were nations who had no gold to pay their troops, and paid them instead in rare salt spices. Hence, worth their salt.”
“I have never heard of this,” commented one of the Oligarchs.
“It isn’t a well-known fact,” I said.
“But a considerable option, if the men would sustain it,” the Duke said. “It would be much simpler to dole out spice than silver and certainly more economical to the kingdom.”
“Something to consider,” a baron said.
“Regardless,” Tom said, “I am well aware that you are building your own ships in Thera. I am aware as well that you seek to enhance them magically, as has Trenbon.
“Trenbon has three hundred years more experience than you do,” he added, then took a bite and chewed, adding, “and the best wizards on Fovea,” through his food.
I grinned. “A surprise for them, no less,” I said.
He shrugged.
“The status of our armed forces,” the third Oligarch continued.
“We have the maximum compliment of twenty thousand,” Daharef said, “and your Wolf Soldiers, whom I am told could take them without a sweat.”
“Conflu had one army of thirty thousand,” I said, stabbing at a piece of meat. “The limit of twenty is meaningless if all nations don’t abide by it.”
“That is surely why they are so secretive,” the baron who would soon be in my military added. I looked directly at him.
“This is the Baron Jaheff of Andurin,” Oligarch two said. “He was elevated a year ago, when his Majesty…”
“Got drunk and generous,” Jaheff said. Hectaro barked a laugh, drawing a stern glance from his father.
“Glennen made me an Earl the same way,” I said, nodding to him. “And for my skill at making money. What is your skill, Lord Jaheff?”
“Being in the right place at the right time, it seems,” he said. “My father is Duke Groff of Andurin’s brother, a common merchant. I have no skill at trading this for that, and an older brother who does. I am as like to hurt myself as another with a sword, and no shoulders to bear armor, I am afraid.”
So much for the military aspect, though I couldn’t help feeling that I should find a use for this man.
Dinner continued for a while, with more talk like this. One of the barons, Tenlen, had responsibility for the treasury, and reported that we wouldn’t starve, but we didn’t see much profit, either. We had barely a city and certainly no village up to date on its taxes.
“In honesty, your highness,” he told the room, “the more the cities make, the less they seem to want to pay.
“They are conserving their strength, it seems,” Tom said. “Especially Yerel of Uman City. He didn’t send a payment at all last month.
“What’s the law on that?” I asked Oligarch one, who sat to my left.
He considered. “I can say that he has breached the law,” he said, finally, “but I cannot say that there is a penalty for it.”
“His Majesty would usually appear in person and collect,” Oligarch two said.
“I would not advise that,” said Oligarch three. “However the heir actually has no power to demand taxes.”
I looked at Tom directly.
“How big is his private army?” I asked.
No hesitation. “Three thousand men.”
I looked at Daharef. “Does that seem large to you?” I asked.
He nodded. “Eldador the port has only four thousand.”
“The heir has no power to invade a city within Eldador,” Oligarch four said.
I nodded. “He does have the power to hire outside aid, however,” I said.
“All business transactions of the state are within your domain,” Oligarch two said.
I smiled and took a big bite of beef. It tasted really, really good.
Chapter Four
Under New Management
One great thing about a palace is that it’s made to have too many rooms, so that it takes up a lot of space and looks grand. The downside is that it employs too many people, making it expensive as hell to run.
The royal family lived in the ‘family tower,’ which made up one of the four towers that took up the outer corners of the palace. The family tower consisted of a big room where Glennen slept, then stairs and a room above it for Tartan, then more stairs, a few guard rooms, and then rooms for the other kids. At the top a big, empty room took up a whole floor and had nothing in it. From there you could get to the upper, open air floor where you could station archers behind a parapet with merlons.
No one ever went to this big room, and you could get to it without going through any of the other rooms. No one but the royal family and their guards were allowed in the family tower – and me, of course, not because I had any sort of right to be here, but because they were all afraid of me.
J’her had been a farmer once – an Uman from outside of Steel City. He’d had a few bad years and he’d lost his farm to creditors, and the local Earl had taken it. J’her’s wife had bailed on him with his kids. That had pissed him off, and he’d gotten into the habit of massacring anyone who took up residence on his old farm, until he got caught and was sentenced to death.
This was the sort of person whom Ancenon didn’t want in the Free Legion.
This was exactly who I wanted in the Wolf Soldiers.
“J’her,” I said to him, when he entered the room at my summons. Part of the test had been for him to get himself up here. Apparently he’d passed that.
“Lupus,” he returned. My Wolf Soldiers called me by my first name, every one of them. It wasn’t familiarity; it was a different type of respect. In my world, God had no name, because no name could contain Him. I had no title for the Wolf Soldiers, because no title could measure their adoration of me. I’d made that up, but a few successful battles down the line and they believed it.
I gave them a second chance, in a land where no one gave someone like them a second chance.
“I remember you from the Battle of Tamaran Glen,” I informed him. “I noted you at Outpost IX. You’re a Captain in the Pack now, aren’t you?”
A sergeant in the Wolf Soldier Pack
commanded ten men. A lieutenant commanded five sergeants. A Captain commanded as many as ten sergeants, or a total of five hundred warriors.
I was thinking of reducing that to five lieutenants, and then a major who would control four lieutenants, or an even thousand.
“I was promoted after Outpost IX,” he informed me. He looked me right in the eye. His face was cut by a hawk-nose, his eyebrows thick, green and stern. He kept his hair short where most preferred long, like mine.
I told him of my plan to restructure the Wolf Soldiers, adding, “I need names of warriors who are ready to be lieutenants.”
He nodded, saying nothing.
This guy was perfect.
“While we’re doing this,” I said, “I have a real need to get the Eldadorian Regulars out of the palace, and to replace them with my Wolf Soldiers.”
J’her looked deep into my eyes, as if the thoughts in my brain were accessible to him, if he looked deep enough. Who knows – maybe they were? Uman are a strange people.
“They won’t like that,” he informed me.
“I’d be surprised if they did,” I answered.
He nodded. “When?”
“I’ve got something to do,” I informed him. “While I’m gone, find a reason and make it happen. You’re a Major now – the first one. When you take over the barracks, make sure you have an office and your own room.”
He took the promotion without comment. This sort of thing was normally done in ceremony; however I had means to send the word out when I wanted to. I’d do that as soon as I left here.
“I’d like to see Wolf Soldiers, not Home Guard, when I get back,” I said. “It won’t be more than a few weeks.”
J’her nodded.
“And don’t make it something I’m going to hear spoken about,” I informed him. “It would be bad if a lot of loyal Eldadorian Regulars went missing, or if the rest of them were scared and wondering if they were next.”
“I agree,” he said.
I pointed at the door with my chin. He came to attention, made a fist over his heart by way of saluting me, and then dropped the salute, turned on his heel and opened the door for me. I walked out and he followed me out of the family tower.
It was nice to have one thing go my way.
The month Eveave ended as cold as its beginning. My Wolf Soldiers marched in perfect formation down the long road from Thera to Uman City, their cleats digging into the soil, in the cold months when no one ever made war.
It made sense not to. Men exerting themselves in the cold would sweat and get sick. The frozen ground made marching easier, however food became scarce and we could find no forage, so we had to either move supply wagons, which cost a mint, or carry our supplies with us, which slowed our army to a crawl. I’d chosen the latter.
Snow would make the roads impassable, when the snow melted, the mud made them worse. Blizzard stomped the hard ground, bobbed his head and snorted, loving it. He thrived at the head of 1,000 heavy lancers, a fog exploding from his nose.
Two Spears, beside me, held the van. Behind the horse were 3,000 Wolf Soldiers, a third of them un-blooded recruits. I mixed them in with my veterans, who in the first two days of our march spent most of their time getting them to march in order and to focus. There were more than a few out-right beatings. At night we made our small city, which took twice as long in the cold, and then still found the time to run close order drills at night.
There were fifty attempted desertions in the first night. The horse ran them down the moment we learned of them. I lined them up, walked down their row, and beheaded one in ten, in the tradition of ‘decimation,’ used by the Roman army as punishment for retreat.
The Roman Legions didn’t retreat. Mine didn’t desert. A few asked if they could leave, but I didn’t say, “Yes” and they didn’t push it.”
In the second week of the march, they were showing me something. You could hear the telltale stomp of an army that moved in unison. The whiners were few and far between, and the men wouldn’t tolerate them. When we stopped for the day, they fell apart like the pieces of a puzzle, each to his or her own designation without needing to be told. I’d looked for this in my army – they thought and they fought in unison like the machine I’d made of them.
There were women in my Wolf Soldiers, who held their own right next to the men. If they wanted to screw on their own time, that was their business. If they wanted to rape, then we settled that in-house, and it wasn’t pretty. Women had their place in the Pack – they made better archers, for example. They could be good shieldmen and pikemen but, more importantly, they had good ears and some instincts that men just lacked. A squad of men all hell-bent for leather to go sprinting into trouble could get some ‘wait-and-see’ advice they needed from the women among them, just as a squad of women could be more brave if they had faith that the men among them had faith in them.
The weather still held. Half of our supplies were gone, meaning that if we kept the pace, we would have a week outside of Uman City before food became an issue. I owed that to the women, too – they stretched the supplies better, and they wouldn’t just eat anything. I could have Free Legion Shipping move us purchased goods if I had to, but I would have already with only men.
“How are the horse coming?” I asked Two Spears, as we rode.
He shook his head. “I had them just like I wanted them,” he said, “and then you give me these green troops, on horses they don’t know the tail from the mane of, and you think I can just make them an army for you?”
I laughed.
“I have a good core – the core will fight,” he said. “They are the veterans from Outpost IX. They know combat.
“But half – they are the ones who trip over the others. One stuck his lance into the ground and almost speared himself last night. Two practiced against each other and knocked each other from their horses, then their horses, they crashed into each other.”
“I think I saw that,” I said.
“And how are you, fighting without my sister at your side?”
I still expected her to show up. She wouldn’t this time, though. We needed her in Thera, to hold the Duchy in place in case anyone took this opportunity to attack us. In Eldador the port, the Oligarchs would have to hold power as best they could, and control our beloved monarch. J’her was doing what he was doing, sort of as my unofficial regent – vague enough so that no one knew what power he had.
We were approaching Uman City. Surely they knew we were coming by now. In a few hours we would be able to see the city walls. We would press on until we were a mile away, and then camp outside like a siege army. I would enter with four wizards, two from Dorkan, one an Eldadorian and one an Uman-Chi.
I had personally disgraced him. Outpost IX had been carved into sections with different families responsible for them, and his family had run the gate and towers. They had been relieved. He had been out to sea and been duped by our ‘throw one to the wolves’ trick, and managed with his officers to make it back to Outpost IX.
Uman-Chi live a long time, Uman and Men less so. He would see many generations of us come and go, and they wouldn’t remember his shame for so long as his own people would.
There are a lot of ways to birth a Wolf Soldier.
A fast rider came back to us, up the road from Uman City. We rode out to meet him, not because we couldn’t wait, but to make sure bad news didn’t make it to the men.
I’d chosen Andarans for all of my fast riders. He came from the Red Tail tribe, a clan that had some kinship with the Long Manes. Two Spears knew him and liked him.
“Report,” I barked at him.
“Their gates are closed, the Eldadorian flag flies from the walls. Peasants are shuttered in their houses, and their herds are in, not roving.”
That is what you did to make ready for a conquering army. They knew why we were here.
“Are we the first here?” I asked.
He nodded. “We have seen no sign of the Free Legion,” he told me. “I
spoke with other outriders. In the winter, though, there would be no dust from their army. We would have to be right on top of them to see them.”
It was true. The hard packed ground, cold with frost, wouldn’t kick up any dust.
I dismissed him and looked at Two Spears. “Pick a squad of heavy horse,” I ordered him, “send them in the direction of the Plains of Angador. They can go today, and all tomorrow, then they come back if they haven’t found the army.”
We had asked for Ancenon’s help, but had left before he could have contacted us. They were under no obligation to come if they didn’t want to – the Fire Bond didn’t cover this.
With this few, I could siege Uman City, but I couldn’t overrun it. Not when they were ready for us and hiding behind the city’s walls.
Two Spears dispatched the men. We would have to see what a few days brought.
I rode up to the gates with my wizards. Two Spears had the army in construction of the small city. Tomorrow we would train on the field. Compared to the last three weeks, it would be an easy day, just to sprint and charge and parry.
We had about five days of food left. We couldn’t mess around. Even if I sent a fast rider for aid, the men would be hungry for two days unless I could get food from Uman City.
My herald approached the gate, the Wolf’s Head banner of the Wolf Soldiers snapping from his standard.
“Make way for Lupus the Conqueror,” he said.
That got a curious reaction at the gate. They’d been expecting the Heir, no doubt.
“The gates are closed,” the gate guard shouted back.
Uman City had a single gate, pointed out to the plains. It opened to the left on a series of pulleys. A portcullis stood before the wooden doors, which could be dropped at any time. On the Bay side they’d built long, fortified wharves, slick with ice and inaccessible to us. They didn’t do much trade at this time of year, the fleets had been called in and the sailors manned the gates. The city wall had no gate on the Bay side, and the port seemed more like its own city.
Beside the portcullis and the gate, on the right, stood a tower that reached fifteen feet higher than the city’s 25-foot wall. The towers had been built fifty feet across, and showed arrow slots on every level, to the outside and within the gate.
