by Robert Brady
“You have seen me fight,” he said. “I am not so easily bested.”
“I’ve watched the battle,” Glennen said. “And I know what I’ve seen. If you want me to have her leave, I will.”
“It would make no difference now,” Ceberro complained. “Look at what his wife’s spell has let him do to me.”
I stepped up, because this really started to piss me off. “First,” I said, “she is my slave, not my wife.
“Second,” I said, and waited for him to meet my eyes. “Accuse me of cheating again, and I will call for swords, not fists, and I will wait for you to heal, and I will carve you to pieces with Shela a mile away just to prove to you what a woman you are. I don’t need anyone’s help to beat a rank amateur like you.”
That got him. He swung and caught me right on the jaw. I stepped back and he caught me in the stomach, and again, and again. As I had with Two Spears, I held my fists in front of my face and let him work the stomach, taking what he had, until I felt his blows begin to weaken.
Then I treated him to a one-two combination to the jaw, leading with the right this time, leaving him staggering and his mouth open. I closed it with my right, hit him in the stomach with my left, feeling it sink into his unready muscles, then grabbed his shoulder with my right. I pulled him past me, kicked the back of his knee with my heel, and folded him over backwards onto the sand.
I stood over him. When he tried to rise I punched him right in the nose. He tried to rise again, and I hit him again.
“I can do this all day,” I said.
“You won’t let me rise?” he asked.
“Apologize for accusing me of cheating,” I said.
He tried to rise, I hit him again.
“Like I said, I can do this all day.”
He turned to Glennen, then back to me. I had hoped that this would be an amicable fight. He had fooled me. I wouldn’t let that happen again. I knew he’d say that I didn’t beat him fairly. I wanted to be able to counter later with his admission now. I didn’t care how I got it.
“You didn’t cheat,” he said. “May I rise now?”
I held out my left hand, he took it with his. As I predicted, once I’d pulled him three quarters of the way up, he swung on me, looking for another shot to the jaw. He misjudged the distance, however, and missed my face by half an inch.
I yanked him to his feet and knocked him back on his ass. This time he just sat there.
“I can’t beat him,” he said, looking at Glennen.
“It appears you can’t,” the king said.
“I concede, then,” he said. He looked at me. “I am defeated by you. You’ve beaten me. You are the Heir.”
I nodded and stepped out of the ring. Shela ran to me and gave me a warm hug and a hero’s kiss. Hectar pounded my back. I looked past them and saw that the Uman-Chi were in attendance, watching us with ambiguous eyes. They were against the far wall, by the single entrance to the gym. Ancenon nodded to me, and I nodded back to him.
Shela wouldn’t have helped me. D’gattis wouldn’t have thought twice about it. They had a debt to pay to Ceberro.
I felt Glennen’s heavy hand on my shoulder, and turned to see him smiling. Two Wolf Soldiers were helping the Duke up off of the ground. He looked at me, spat blood, and looked at me again. I made an enemy here today, another one I didn’t need.
“Let’s all drink to this,” Glennen said. “Invite your Uman-Chi, Rancor. Let us celebrate a new beginning.”
I thought, “You’ve got that right.”
We sat at the royal dining table. Glennen had the mead flowing. Ceberro tried to match Glennen bowl for bowl. I decided to watch myself. The Uman-Chi and Hectar drank wine.
J’her had the security of the palace if I had too much. Jameen had left with one of the court barons and, as far as I knew, hadn’t sought out Shela. She’d taken the baby to the stables.
Glennen recanted some escapade he and Ceberro had gone on into the Aschire. Ceberro laughed along, wincing at the pain in his smashed lips. The Uman-Chi listened politely and I could tell that Hectar had heard the story before.
“You know,” Ceberro interrupted, “your own Eldadorian warriors are defending the Aschire right now from your own merchants.”
Glennen slammed down his bowl. He looked once around the room, then at me. The liquor hadn’t incapacitated him yet, but it had impaired him.
“And who ordered that?” he demanded.
“I did, your Majesty,” I said. “He wouldn’t be trying to use it to anger you if it had been anyone else’s edict.”
Ceberro raised his eyebrows in surprise. D’gattis actually chuckled, and Ancenon looked sideways at him. Hectar opened his mouth to speak, but Glennen interrupted him.
“So you admit that you are supporting the squirrels,” he said.
“They are Eldadorians,” I said. “If I let our merchants chop down their trees, they’ll retaliate against the merchants and we’ll have civil war. An internal war will see Dorkan soldiers on the Andurin peninsula in a month, rest assured. They’re still angry about our actions in Katarran.”
“Merchants are chopping their trees down?” our monarch had been given too much information.
“They want the wood to house Sentalan grain,” Hectar said. “The Heir has seen to it that we profited mightily from the war between Volkhydro and Sental.”
“Us or the Aschire?” Ceberro challenged him.
Glennen waved him off. “The Aschire don’t care about grain or gold,” he said. “Why was I not informed of this war?”
“You were,” I told Glennen. “We discussed it at length a week ago. You told me that you wouldn’t mind leading a few thousand Eldadorians in among the Uman and having at them.”
Glennen grinned at that. Ceberro took a drink and scowled.
“Trenbon shall be sending peace keepers,” Ancenon offered. “That is, if the hostilities continue.”
Glennen laughed. “Uman against Uman. The Volkhydrans will carve you to bits. It takes Men to fight Men.”
Hectar grinned to himself on that point. D’gattis took a sip of wine to hide a smug look.
“Clearly, the most effective fighters on Fovea are Wolf Soldiers,” Ancenon said. “And they are from all races.”
“That is true,” Hectar said. “You can’t talk to a military man right now about anything but the invasion of Thera by the Confluni.”
Glennen slammed his hand down on the table. “Conflu invaded Thera?” he demanded.
“Months ago,” Ceberro said. “I believe it was 30,000 defeated by half their number?”
That was a mistake, I thought. It made Glennen seem stupid to the person who mattered most to him: Glennen.
“I believe that Thera at the time had 4,000 foot,” Ancenon said, his eyes not clearly focused on anyone. “And their lancers were relieving the siege of Eldador the Port.”
“From you,” Ceberro added.
“And, so,” Ancenon said. “We were under the hire of the Trenboni at the time. When the Wolf Soldier horse intervened, we quit the field.”
Glennen put his bowl down and considered all of this, as if hearing it for the first time.
Ceberro scoffed. “No four thousand could defeat thirty,” he said. “Even from the walls of Thera.”
“We defeated them on the field,” I said. “And if you would like to enter war games with the Wolf Soldiers, you are welcome to try your luck. I can assure you, the numbers are correct.”
Ceberro had likely seen the war games in Thera when the Wolf Soldiers defeated the Legionnaires. Everyone knew of the battle of Tamaran Glen. Wolf Soldiers were reportedly invincible.
Ceberro just looked down into his bowl.
The future with him would suck, I knew. He would pull this crap and make as much trouble for me with Glennen as he could. His Eldadorian troops would pull stunts in the battlefield if I needed them, and he definitely planned to withhold taxes, so that I had to either treat him like Uman City or give him a free pass and piss o
ff every other city in Eldador.
Glennen said, “Why am I hearing all of this for the first time?”
I looked him in the eye. “You aren’t, your Majesty,” I said. “I have kept you up to date with everything.”
“Am I getting old?” he asked. “Am I senile, that I don’t remember?”
“If I may speak plainly,” I said, “your Majesty, I think it is the drink.”
“You think I drink too much, do you?” Glennen said, looking me in the eye.
“You know you do,” Hectar said. “Glennen, you are drunk almost all of the time. I have personally peeled the piss-soaked pants from you, as have Rancor’s Wolf Soldiers, the Oligarchs, and your personal assistants, until we couldn’t trust you around them.”
Glennen slammed his hand down on the table again. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “Why couldn’t you trust me with my own staff?”
“You have tried to rape most of the women,” I said, coming to Hectar’s defense. “As for the men, you stabbed two of them. The Wolf Soldiers are the only ones who can handle you when you’re really drunk.”
Glennen stood in fury, slamming his hand down once again. Ceberro seemed caught between satisfaction and fear. It depended on whom Glennen decided to vent on.
“I have never raped,” he roared.
“I can summon the servants,” Hectar said. “And you can choose the wizard for the truth saying. At one point you were going to go into town –“
“Enough!” he bellowed. His face turned beet red now. I could see the look in his eyes, not just the anger from being accused but, behind that, the realization, the shame, that he knew that he couldn’t be sure of his innocence.
His honor had been his life. People had followed him, made a king of him, for his character. Who was Glennen the drunkard?”
“Bring Shela here,” he said suddenly. “Bring her, bring her right now.”
I looked at a Wolf Soldier guard and nodded. He bolted out the door in a moment. Glennen sat back down, his face still red, his hand on his shoulder, rubbing it.
He turned in his seat to face Ceberro. “Did you know of this?” he asked.
“I have been absent, Glennen,” he said. Not ‘your Majesty,’ I noted. There was a time to play politics and there was a time to put it aside. I think Ceberro wanted to take advantage of an opportunity if it presented itself, but it would be suicide to blame me for this now, especially if he had just called for my woman.
Glennen looked at Hectar. “You?”
Hectar looked away, and then looked back at him.
“I know you miss her,” he said. He put his hand on the table, as if on his friend’s arm. “I know what she meant to you.
“I know you can’t stand to think of her, so you drink instead. But I have watched you chase your children away, and you have done things you would have killed another man for. Rancor holds the kingdom together, but he isn’t the king and he hasn’t the power to do it forever. Did you know Yerel from Uman City tried to revolt?”
“Yerel?” Glennen blinked in surprise. He reached for his bowl of mead, then looked at it and pushed it away.
“Is he dead?”
“I’m holding him in Thera,” I said. “I deposed him. He’s a common, and I had you name another Duke of Uman City.”
Glennen shook his head. “I don’t remember,” he said.
“It happened on the day we pulled you naked out of the fountain,” Hectar said. “I had to sign your name at your order, because you were too drunk to do it.”
Glennen reached out his left hand, open and closed his fist, looked at it like it didn’t belong to him. “This makes the world close in on me,” he said.
Sweat poured off of his forehead and down his face. His breath sounded shallow. I looked into his eyes. He stared at his hand as if he could see nothing else.
Oh, crap!
“Your Majesty,” I said. “Is there a pain in your chest?”
“I,” he said, and wet his lips. “I – can’t breathe.”
“Does your chest hurt?” I asked, more forcefully.
He looked at me with his mouth open, a ragged whole in the center of his face. The color drained from his face, from red to pale. He didn’t seem to recognize me.
“I, who?” he said.
I leapt to my feet and ran to him. “Hectar,” I said. “Get Shela here, and get her here now. Send Wolf Soldiers for royal healers.”
“Your Highness,” he said.
“Go!” I ordered him.
Ceberro stood, looking like he wanted to get between Glennen and me.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
I knocked him out of the way. Ceberro flew backwards over his chair, crashing to the floor and breaking one of its legs. I hadn’t meant to hit him that hard. I put a hand on Glennen’s arm, and it felt clammy. I turned to the two Uman-Chi, watching all of this as they might a play.
“Do you know what a heart attack is?” I demanded.
They turned to each other, then back to me.
“His heart is damaged from the strain of his drinking, and his weight,” I said. “It is about to stop. If it does, he’ll die. Can you do something for him?”
“We cannot subvert Adriam’s will, if this is when He will take him,” Ancenon said.
“Can you heal his heart?” I demanded.
Ancenon looked at me with ambiguous eyes, saying nothing. Uman-Chi knew that Men had short lives, so another one dying, even a king, didn’t surprise them.
Shela burst in the door, Lee in her arms. Lee’s eyes were full of tears and she clutched her doll.
Glennen’s eyes rolled back in his head and his breath had become raspy.
“Shela, can you heal him?” I demanded.
“What?” she said. She hurried down the dining room, past the chairs, moving as fast as the bulky skirt to her dress would allow her. “White Wolf, what is happening?”
“He thinks that Glennen’s heart is under attack,” D’gattis said. “I can detect no magic.”
“It is the yellow sickness,” I said. That had been her term for it. “His heart is about to stop.”
“Oh,” she said. She stopped dead in her tracks, as if afraid to approach him.
“White Wolf, there is no cure for that,” she said. She looked into my eyes, I could see her sadness.
“I have told you, the yellow sickness kills.”
“No!” I demanded. I turned him over backwards in his chair, laying him gently as I could on the floor. The table stood in my way, and without thinking I threw my shoulder against it, knocking it back four feet to clear room for him.
Wine and mead flew everywhere. The Uman-Chi leapt gracefully back. Hectar stood behind me, trying to help me, and Ceberro stood behind him, watching from where he’d picked himself up off of the floor.
“What can I do?” Hectar asked.
“Nothing,” Ancenon said. “Lupus, I will prepare him for the next world, if you will let me. I know he is a child of the All Father. But I know the yellow sickness, and your slave is right. It kills.”
I took Glennen’s hand in mind. His breathing made a horrible sound, his eyes coming in and out of focus, as if he were already looking into the next world.
“Glennen, listen to me,” I said. He didn’t look my way. “Glennen, don’t give into this. Be strong. You can fight it. Stay awake, stay with me.”
War wanted this, and I was supposed to want it, too. I didn’t care. My cheeks were wet with my tears, sprung out of nowhere. My nose clogged with an itching mass. Here it was – this was the event I had been anticipated and dreading.
No! Not only no but hell no! War could turn me inside out while I was still alive – I didn’t want this.
His head turned away from me, I took his jaw in my hand and turned it back. “Glennen, no! Don’t give up! Fight it!”
It sounded weak and stupid to me, but I didn’t care. I didn’t think I could do CPR on him if his heart stopped. I doubted very much that anyone here did
heart surgery.
“She is here,” he whispered. He opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Rancor, she is here,” he told me.
“No, Glennen, don’t go to her,” I said. He wanted to give up. Now I realized that he’d been trying to kill himself all along. If he thought he could get to Alekanna this way, I would lose him.
“Alekki,” he said, turning from me. “Alekki, I am so sorry. I let you die, my love, my queen.”
“Glennen!” I cried. I saw my own tears fall on his face, and I didn’t care. “Glennen, look at me!”
“I missed you so much,” he said.
“Lupus.”
I turned to see Ancenon. I felt his thin-fingered hand on my shoulder. With a strength that surprised me, he pulled me up and away from Glennen. I reached for him, but Ancenon turned me away.
“Lupus, let him go,” he said. “His time is done. He goes to his reward, from the All Father.”
“He can’t –“ I began.
“That is not for you to say,” Ancenon told me.
I looked into his ambiguous eyes, the silver cornea barely distinguishable from the silver iris. He gently moved me aside, took my place, kneeling, and took Glennen’s hand.
He began to pray for the King’s soul.
“No!” I raged. My fist fell like a hammer on the corner of the table, denting its surface. It burned like fire.
Ceberro, Hectar and, from somewhere, J’her were on me like coyotes. They pulled me back from Glennen and Ancenon, to a corner of the room, pinning me to the wall. Hectar said something, but I couldn’t make it out.
The berserker rage came over me. I welcomed the violence.
And then Shela put herself right in front of me with Lee in her arms. My dark-haired daughter, her ‘bebe’ bent over her arm, looking soulfully into my eyes. She reached out and touched the skin on my face, leaning out of her mother’s arms.
“Dada,” she said. Her first words. I focused on her, my girl. Felt her cool fingers on my burning skin.
“Dada,” she said again.
She dropped me right to my knees. I wept openly, five feet from Glennen, the energy from the rage dispersing from me. My hand and shoulder throbbed. I held my head down, saw the tears puddle on the floor.
