by Robert Brady
“He would have beaten me in a fair fight,” I said.
“You underrate yourself,” Def spat. “A warrior green enough to fall for that, you could have beaten him.”
“Let’s just be thankful that we still have him,” Shela said.
Def finally got the idea and contented himself with fuming. I had something else to grab his attention.
I went to my pack, which I had brought to my room, hanging with my armor and my sword. I pulled a package wrapped in oilcloth from it, not that it needed to be. I laid it on the table and sat back down.
“A present?” Ann asked.
“Open it,” I said.
She did. She saw a bar of gold, with an insignia stamped into it.
“Impressive,” Thebinaar said. “That looks like the seal of the Angron Aurelias, but it’s different. Where did you get this?”
“Outpost V,” I said.
“There is no Outpost V,” Ann told me frankly.
“That’s what I thought, until I took that from its unlooted treasury.”
Shela reached out and gripped my arm. I knew that no one could listen in on us here. Shela had warded the bedroom even more heavily than the war room.
“White Wolf,” she said. “Outpost V?”
I nodded. She knew we couldn’t talk about Outpost X, but this was another issue.”
“The myth of Outpost X,” said Def, “is that it is packed with Cheyak gold and is hidden in Conflu. Are you telling me that the lost Outpost is V, not X, and that it is not in Conflu at all?”
“I cannot speak to Outpost X,” I said, truthfully. I would explode or catch on fire or something. “But Outpost V is in Eldador, and it is called Uman City by you and me.”
They were all quiet.
“That is impossible,” Ann said, ever the pragmatist.
Def reached out and hefted the gold bar. “I think that it is not,” he said.
Thebinaar nodded. “I know that everything makes sense after it happens,” he said. “But this makes sense to me.”
“It does?” Shela asked him.
He nodded. We were all looking at him. “There would have to be more Outposts, because there is VII and IX. Most people think that they are underneath Tren Bay, but that makes no sense.
“In fact, this makes me think that Outpost VII is not an Outpost at all, and a lot of other people think that, too.”
“They do?” I said. I didn’t. Ancenon had never said anything about it.
“It is too close to Outpost IX,” he said. “I think the survivors of the Blast erected Outpost VII because they feared Outpost IX.”
That made sense on every level.
“I have to see it,” Ann said.
“We all do,” Thebinaar said.
“Not me,” Def said, shaking his head. “I have to totally repeat his swordsmanship training.”
I groaned.
“Can you wait here while we go?” Ann asked.
“No,” I said. “You remember, drunken king, enemies everywhere, assassination attempt on me? Not a good time for a vacation.”
“It is a fact finding mission,” Ann said.
“I am so sorry I taught you that term,” I said.
“Too late to undo it,” Thebinaar said. “You have to let us go, your Grace.”
“I will let you go,” I said. “But I cannot let you go for at least a month.”
“I can wait a month,” said Thebinaar.
“Good,” Ann said. “While you wait, I will go.”
“You will not,” I said. I was getting frustrated. They sensed it, and were quiet for a moment.
“I will go in a month, and stay a week, and then Thebinaar will go, and then Def,” Ann said finally.
I nodded. My eyes were full of sand and they knew it. I took the easy way out
“Anything else?” I asked.
They shook their heads. I didn’t even wait for them to leave before I crawled into my bed between the thick, cool quilts. They filed out, Shela thanking them, as I closed my eyes and descended blissfully into dark rest.
It felt like a second later that I awoke to Shela stroking my hair, but now the room had gone dark. A candle flickered in a corner.
“White Wolf?” she said.
“Mmmmmmph,” I answered her, rolling stiff onto my back, my head like a brick. I must have caught something in the rain.
“You are called to Eldador,” she said.
“There’s a surprise,” I said, leaving my eyes closed. “Did Glennen kill someone?”
She held my chin; her fingers cool on my skin. I felt her lips on my forehead, my cheek, and on my lips.
“No, my husband, my master,” she said. “The Free Legion has laid siege to the city, under the employ of Trenbon.”
Ancenon had really pissed me off.
According to fast riders from the outlying cities, there were eight thousand infantry and another two thousand horse on the battlefield outside of Eldador the port, and ten Trenboni Tech Ships at anchor outside the city to prevent relief. The entire Free Legion had come, with the exception of myself.
I should have known better than to ignore the juggernaut of our mercenary army once I’d set it in motion. It had always been a matter of time before I took or lost control of it, and it looked like the latter.
Had I been the monarch of Eldador, then I doubt they would have moved against me. However, I was the Heir. That made Eldador fair game.
“We know that Rennin and Groff will stand with you, if you march,” Ann told me. “I can have their armies in motion in a month’s time.”
“They will have the city in a month’s time,” I said. “They won’t be content to siege for long. D’gattis isn’t that patient, neither is Ancenon, and I doubt that Outpost IX has paid enough for an extended stay. They will first try to provoke the gate guard, then they’ll try to call out Glennen personally, and odds are he’ll put on armor and lead his forces out of the gate.”
“The Free Legion has two hundred squads with Wolf Soldier Training,” Ann said. “And their horses are heavy lancers like our own.”
“Wolf Soldiers man the palace guard, and Wolf Soldiers will have to come to lift the siege,” I said. Shela gripped my upper arm. “They are counting on the promise that I made, that I wouldn’t do just that.”
“Arath would love to show that he is superior to you in battle,” Shela said. “He never really accepted your victory at Katarran, or the credit you received in the Battle of Tamaran Glen.”
Another thing I would have been wise to consider.
“We would have to empty the reserves,” Ann said. Def nodded, adding, “We have two thousand Uman militia here whom we can conscript to man the walls of Thera. We wouldn’t be able to invade anyone, but it would take a sizeable force to be a threat to us. Even if you were engaged, we could hold the city for a week.”
“Leaving Thera wide open like that would hurt everything,” I said.
“As would losing the capital,” Thebinaar said, as matter of fact as he could be. “Sack Eldador and kill the King while we do nothing and no one will have faith in Lupus the Conqueror.”
That was an indisputable fact.
And it left only one thing to do.
With Shela beside me, I peered into an orb, similar to a ‘crystal ball,’ and saw Two Speers at the head of 1,500 heavy horse and 5,000 warriors in Wolf Soldier uniforms, marching in smart order in my squads of ten.
I couldn’t attack the Free Legion. My men had made no such agreement.
Beside Two Spears, a big man in my armor rode an even bigger, white horse. He wore an amulet to protect him from magic attack, and this would shield him from magical seeing as well. No one knew my real name, and that meant no magic could find me.
A black-haired girl rode near the center of army in a wagon, an Andaran plains witch – wife to an Andaran Wolf Soldier. She was no Shela, she didn’t come close, but she looked enough like Shela to convince anyone who couldn’t actually put their hands on her.
/> The army marched onto the plains outside of Outpost IX, where the Free Legion had been lobbing rocks over the walls in an effort to draw the army out. Ancenon and D’gattis had managed to neutralize any magical attack from the city, and the gates stayed shut.
Yesterday King Angron Aurelias had announced the adoption of Avek as his favorite son, and the rejuvenation project of Outpost IX at his expense. The Noir’s were back in favor at Trenbon.
Ancenon attempted to balance the scales now. Raining vengeance on Eldador would earn him quite a coupe among his people. He would be welcomed back as a hero.
By now, he knew that 2,000 from Steel City blocked his path back to the Plains of Angador, and another 2,000 from Andurin would be in place in another week to support my Wolf Soldiers. Outnumbered or not, when my Wolf Soldiers engaged him, and the city garrison swarmed out in support, that didn’t leave a lot of room for Ancenon to move.
If he didn’t see that, then Arath would. As soon as they caught site of the Free Legion, the heavy horse lowered their lances and charged, not at the Free Legion, but at the gates. The man on the white stallion led them. The infantry marched double-time behind the van, spreading in a wide arc out of range of the Free Legion’s archers, to take up position with the horse. If the Free Legion tried to take the horse, they would double back to the infantry and play cat and mouse around their shields and pikes, preventing a straight charge and tiring out the mounts and the men.
Heavy lancers were good for long, sweeping charges, but not wheeling back and forth around pikemen and archers.
The Free Legion mobilized, but didn’t charge. Their troops trained as squads marshaled up as a first wave, with the rest of the warriors forming up behind them as reserves. The horse stood stock-still on the right side, lances up, ready to attack or repel.
My horse took up their positions outside of the gates. To their left, my infantry formed up in a checkerboard of squads, ready to fight. On the wall, archers and ballistae made ready to support our side if we should either charge or repel.
The Free Legion, having done what they were there to do, picked up, turned tail, and ran. They would have no fear of Rennin’s two thousand, and Groff would never catch them.
Ann burst into my war room, her face red from running. Her age and weight didn’t make sprinting through the halls very easy.
“We’re under attack!” she screamed.
I stood at the walls of Thera. There were already outlying farms burning on the horizon. An army of Confluni, 30,000 strong, marched in five columns toward me.
They weren’t emulating Wolf Soldier training, which is what I had feared. They always marched this way. At some point in their history they had decided that this was the best way to move a large army and it is what they did.
They wore leather armor and leather caps. They carried long, curved swords or triple-curved bows. They wore round, wooden shields, barely more than a target but less cumbersome than ours, over their backs.
We had beaten them before, but under different circumstances.
“If we wait behind the gates, they’ll ravage the peasants and kill thousands,” Def said, “and then we’ll have to come out and fight them anyway.
“Better to do it now.”
I agreed.
Four thousand men in the uniform of the Theran militia double-time marched out through the city gates. Our walls weren’t much anyway, our gate little more than a framed double-door. Thera hadn’t ever been intended to be a hard point for an invasion.
Men and women stood in a mass. They had the large shields, the swords, the pikes of Wolf Soldiers, but they did what militia did – showed up when they had to, to die on their feet rather than in their beds.
“Those are some terrible odds,” Ann said.
I nodded. She would have the reserves: 1,000 warriors inside of the city. We’d sent riders to call for another thousand Aschire archers to support the city, but the ride alone could take more than a week.
I took her forearm in mine, and then turned to Shela. She would stay right here, in the one, flat-topped tower on our wall. She and her acolytes would be our magic. The Confluni weren’t great Wizards. Ours were.
“You stay alive,” I said to her. “We are expendable, you are not.”
She looked into my eyes. I saw no point arguing with her. She had said it before: I could beat her to death for disobeying me, so long as I lived to do it. An Andaran woman, Shela’s first concern remained for her man.
She kissed me, and touched my chest. We would fight together again, she and I. We had done it before.
I still had some surprises.
The Confluni saw our army pouring out through the city gates and stopped wasting time burning huts and villages. They had something to hold their attention now.
They marched smartly from the outlying fields to outside of the walls, then five columns lined up as five rows to face us. The front would charge with short spears. The three rows after that had shields and swords. The last row had their archers ready. I frowned and nodded appreciatively – they would probably lose the first wave, but we would be in a tangle by the time they were through with us and the archers would pin cushion us before and after, keeping us from reforming before the next wave engaged.
No wonder the Confluni had such a reputation. A strategy like this would even give my Wolf Soldiers pause.
I imagined they felt very confident against the militia.
Commanders customarily make a speech to their men before they fought. I didn’t do it much with the Wolf Soldiers. They didn’t need any inspiration to kill. Militia would be quaking in their boots and need some bracing words. I kicked Blizzard’s ribs and directed him between their approaching army and ours, huddled against the city walls.
“Today,” I bellowed to them, as many looked up in surprise, “you fight for your homes. You fight for your wives, your husbands, your sons, and your daughters. You fight for the Lady Shela and Princess Lee. You fight for me, and my person, and the honor of the city of Thera, where you live.
“The Confluni come here, because they think that no one can stop them. They see militia, and think you are nothing. They come to spill your guts, to rape your wives, and to take your daughters away in chains.
“As you love them, as you love me, as you love Thera, take a firm grip on your swords and prove them wrong.”
The troops answered me with a ‘Rah’. Another answered us from across the battlefield, where loose earth from a fallow field separated us from our enemy. It had been raining, the ground turned muddy and it pulled at our feet.
I preferred this for training my Wolf Soldiers. The solider that could trot across this could sprint across the hard-packed soil of an actual battlefield.
I dismounted and gave Blizzard’s reins to my groom. The stallion reared in anger. He knew the smell of a battle, he knew where he belonged when I waded into one, but he made too big a target for the archers and a charge of one wouldn’t change anything, much as it had in the past. I took my place with the men and women of the militia, among the mob, an unfamiliar shield on my arm.
“Their archers are pulling back,” one of my captains informed me.
“Shields!” I roared.
My order echoed up and down the line. Those who had them raised their great shields and the rest crouched beside those men and women. As luck would have it, we formed a ragged line that gave protection to all of us. I heard a few groans, but as the arrows fell deadly amongst us, they found the wall, and the ground, and then shields, but not very many of the troops.
A quick peek showed their spearmen had begun their charge beneath another flight of arrows. They had less than three hundred yards to go – quite a task for men in armor. But then, they were just going to drive us back against the wall, to be slaughtered by more arrows and their first wave of swordsmen.
“Hold formations!” I shouted. My captains echoed me, and others echoed them. The troops crouched tighter behind the shields. When the next flight of arrow
s fell I heard fewer cries of pain, over a sound like hail falling on roofs in a small town.
I would have expected another flight, but they probably didn’t see the point in wasting the arrows. Let the spearmen throw us into a mess, then make better use of their archers as the second wave came.
The spearmen were less than thirty feet away.
It was time.
“Formations!” I bellowed, my captains repeating my words. “Repel invaders!”
With the precision of a machine, my ‘militia’ fell into squads of ten, four shields in front, three swordsmen behind them, and three pikemen behind them. A wall of shields, five feet high and 900 hardened warriors across snapped into place in front of the faces of 6,000 unsuspecting spearmen.
They crashed against our wall, held by our shield men, and skewered by our pikes. As they fell back, our swordsmen ripped into them as our front line advanced.
Some threw aside the coverings of militia to reveal the infamous wolves’ head tabard and heavy armor of the Wolf Soldier pack. As a man, with no prompting from me, they shouted, “Vivat Mordetur!” in the old language of Men.
This wasn’t rocket science. Ancenon wasn’t stupid. He knew he couldn’t attack me, and he knew I wouldn’t attack him. We both knew that if he marched to Eldador, I would do just what I did: put my body between him and his goal. He would have to break away before my allies ripped him apart.
Anyone who hired him had to know that he and I wouldn’t fight, and if they didn’t then Ancenon would certainly tell them.
So the goal couldn’t be Eldador the Port. The goal had to be whatever they wanted me to march from and leave unprotected. The goal had to be Thera.
So I dressed the militia and as many civilians as wanted money in a lighter rendition of the Wolf Soldier armor, and sent the lancers to protect them on the trip to and from Eldador. Then I dressed my Wolf Soldiers as militia here. No one knew how successful a call to the militia would be, so a full strength of Wolf Soldiers could be disguised.
“Forward!” I shouted. My captains echoed me. From behind me, Aschire archers rose up on our walls and shot arrows over our heads into the ranks of our confused enemies. They’d had plenty of time to get here, moving at night with no cook fires, practically invisible to those watching the city.
