Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  Lee was shouting now in her self-made baby-language. Nina was bouncing her. The level from the lake didn’t change as this rock was simply a rearrangement of the lake’s bottom.

  This was going to create even more crazy channels in the lake’s currents, and probably dump a ton of silt into the swamp downstream.

  I might be dealing with a lot of angry Slee.

  All at once, Shela stopped her chanting. Dilvesh continued for a little while longer, then he stopped, too. They both stared out at what they’d created for a minute or two afterwards, and then they both turned to face me.

  Shela looked exhausted and Dilvesh could barely stand. They approached me and Wolf Soldiers ran out to support them both. Shela almost fell into my arms from theirs.

  We took them to the pavilion and laid them down to sleep. Nina entered after us with Lee in her arms, and laid the baby down next to her mother on a mat on the floor, her bebe next to her.

  “Did you see that?” Nina asked me.

  “I was right there next to you,” I informed her.

  Outside of the pavilion, the Wolf Soldiers and the Andarans were chattering about the amazing thing they’d seen. I could hear Kvitch arguing with a captain of one of my Sea Wolves that he needed to go out and inspect this new island right away, and the captain was saying that he wanted some time to study the new currents.

  Nina clucked her tongue at me.

  “I meant Lee, Lupus,” she said to me, in that exasperated way kids have. “Did you see Lee?”

  “Yes,” I said. I squatted down next to my sleeping girls and pulled a blanket over them. Shela would likely sleep through the day. Lee was anyone’s guess, and Dilvesh pretty much did what he wanted to.

  “That was very funny,” I said.

  Nina actually smacked me. I turned to look over my shoulder into her angry grey eyes.

  “She joined in the spell,” Nina informed me. “I can’t even do that.”

  I felt my eyebrows drop and my scar twitch.

  “Your daughter’s a sorceress,” the little Aschire girl informed me.

  Chapter Twenty

  Reconstruction

  I stood on a wide field of stone, miles across, the surface rough and uneven and black, in the middle of a lake where the current twisted like a tangle of snakes and the sun beat down in the autumnal month of Power, sacred to my woman’s god.

  It would be winter here. Supposedly the Andaran plains were always temperate, but this had turned into a cold month. On ‘the rock,’ as I’d been calling it in my mind, it seemed pretty warm to me.

  “We can use this,” Kvitch informed me. Other Dwarves were nodding. “This is a good base – we can build your city on this, if you want it.”

  It wouldn’t have happened without my daughter’s interference. She wasn’t just a sorceress, she showed the raw abilities to be a powerful sorceress. Shela and Dilvesh were wracking their minds to try to figure out where her power came from, while the Dwarves were doing the same thing in regard to this lump of rock we’d given them.

  “Of course, you’re going to have to defend it before we’re finished with it,” one of the Dwarves said. Her name was Grellia – a red-bearded Dwarf with fine fingers and long eyebrows. “The currents dumped a ton of silt into the Mid River and the Slee who live there aren’t going to put up with that for long. They’re going to come looking for a reason why, and if what I’ve heard of them is true, they’re not going to like the reason.”

  What was scary was how right they were.

  “If the Slee can weaken you, then the Andarans will sweep in right behind them,” Two Spears informed me. “My people have made peace with you, but they did it because they had to, not because they want anything to do with you.”

  More good news.

  “So my question, thin-brained Man,” Kvitch asked me, crossing his arms over his stomach and looking up at me with those soulful brown eyes, “is, ‘Do you want it?’”

  Daughter whose powers were going to exceed her abilities and endanger us all, enemies on every front, most of whom I’d gone out of my way to piss off, expense uncertain and future unclear; hell, yeah, I wanted it, and I said so.

  “Build it,” I informed him. “Make it tough enough to withstand the combined Fovean armies if it has to. Whatever you need, just tell me.”

  I turned on my heel and started back to the barge that would take me back to the Sea Wolf, that would take me to the shore. The currents were too crazy for it to be trusted to go too far – in fact, the Sea Wolf would have to push itself into a position to block that current for the four strong Men who rowed the barge to move it from the stone shore to the ship’s side. We’d already lost a rowboat down the Great Mid River and two squads of fast horses hadn’t been able to get to it before it bore its occupants down into the Slee swamp. Nothing came out of there alive.

  It was all creeping over me, I admitted to myself. It was becoming too much. Being a monarch, being a warlord, being a husband, a father; keeping it all together. I couldn’t move ahead anymore, I was just fighting how much farther I fell behind.

  If this kept up, I was going to crash, and I didn’t do anything small.

  If you went upstream of the Black Lake, as we were calling it, into Confluni territory, you came to a mountain range that sat as an escarpment to the north of the Great Mid River. The Dwarves claimed that the rock from there was good enough for what they wanted to do.

  Before they left, Aschire scouts verified that there were no Confluni patrols in that part of their territory. No one came to this part of Andoran, and so the Confluni saw no point in guarding it.

  We pillaged the forest, we’d pillage the rock escarpment. We could build a city out of nothing and call it ‘Wisex.’

  I don’t even know where I came up with the name.

  I left on a Sea Wolf back to Eldador the Port with my wife, Nina, Tartan and our horses. The Wolf Soldier contingent and associated Theran Lancers were going to winter here, and then I’d make a decision on how many stayed through the summer based on the city’s progress and how many Andarans I attracted.

  Two Spears would stay in command for a while. He’d met a girl he liked, a short brunette named ‘Soft Eyes,’ whom Shela had sent his way. Sisters named their brothers in Andaran culture and picked out their wives, and despite everything else that might be going on, Shela tended her men and performed her duties as an Andaran woman.

  She kept it all together way better than I did.

  Dilvesh actually absented himself before we realized it. The next morning he just wasn’t there. He’d brought that big horse of his, and it was gone, too; I had to assume that, whatever Druids did, he was off doing it.

  We pulled in to Eldador’s busy port on the twelfth day of Desire, after a long and arduous sea journey. The wind blew cold over Tren Bay and it was misery to man the rigging of a Sea Wolf. Barefoot sailors crunched across swaying decks sometimes slick with ice, or through freezing rain, with a strength I wasn’t sure I possessed.

  There wasn’t much of a crowd to greet us – the weather didn’t lend itself to cheering crowds and we hadn’t announced the arrival. We pulled directly into a slip next to the part of the wharves I’d walled off, and only did that because another Sea Wolf was being finished in that place.

  We’d construct a temporary wall here if we had to, however it was fast-becoming pointless now. We could point to five Sea Wolves now and we’d double that before the spring. I couldn’t keep them all in the Black Lake, even if I wanted to.

  I walked Blizzard off of the ship and led him down the wharves with his tack on his back, because it was too slick and dangerous to ride him. Shela did the same with her gelding. Nina carried Lee, whom we’d dressed in a fox-fur parka. Of course, her bebe had to have one, too.

  J’her met us half way down the wharves with fifty Wolf Soldiers. He wasn’t smiling.

  “How bad?” I asked him.

  That got a little smirk from him. “Bad enough,” he informed me, turning so t
hat he could walk next to me. The Wolf Soldiers formed up around us. Blizzard stomped and snorted at them, not liking to feel hemmed in.

  Sea travel was always hard on him.

  “The Andarans have complained that you illegally invaded their nation,” J’her said, “and they’ve called an emergency session of the Fovean High Council. You’ve got a week to respond, but Dorkan is already pledging two thousand warriors to the conflict, and the Confluni and the Toorians are willing to support them, magic aid included.”

  “That was fast,” I commented.

  “You supposedly killed a lot of people and left a sizable army behind you,” he said. “There’s also a rumor that you made the lake down there even more impassable, and now the Toorians are saying you’ve ruined irrigation systems that took them decades to build.”

  I felt my scar twitch. “I didn’t know they did that?” he said.

  J’her shook his head. “No one did,” he said. “No one goes to Toor. No one knows what they do down there, and I didn’t think that you could do anything that far upstream of them that could affect their nation.

  In fact, I did know that silt could travel for hundreds of miles downstream of a disturbance like the one we’d created. I’d been worried that we’d create natural dams that would raise that lake’s level and overrun the island, but apparently that’s not what happened.

  “We have to be in Outpost IX in a week?” Shela asked J’her.

  The Uman nodded. “That’s what we’re informed,” he said, “however I think you’d be crazy to go.”

  We were passing through the market place and approaching the city gates. They’d been constructed of wrapped timbers which had proved difficult to maintain and which always looked like they were about to come apart. I needed to have them remade.

  Hitler worried how he’d widen the streets of Berlin so that it could function as the capitol of the world, as his troops fell back on every front, too.

  “You think that the Uman-Chi will arrest him the second he puts a foot down on Trenboni soil,” Shela said, looking sideways at me.

  “I would,” J’her agreed.

  I wouldn’t, but I don’t act like most of the people here.

  “If I don’t go, then they’ll try to invade me before I make that place too strong to invade,” I said. “I guess this isn’t something that the delegates I employ can handle for me?”

  “That’s a question better asked of Duke Hectar,” J’her said, looking straight forward. “He’s been running the actual government while you were away.”

  “How’s he been doing?” I asked.

  J’her shrugged inside of his armor. My officers wore scalloped steel sleeves and tooled steel greaves outside of their grey tunics, with their breastplates underneath, while the regular enlisted just wore tunics over leather or steel with single-piece, plain covers on their lower legs and upper arms. “He’s had a lot of practice so he’s good at it. He wouldn’t complain to me, if he had any.”

  I sensed some tension there but it wasn’t worth pursuing. I could let them work it out and intervene if one of them asked me. There were just some things here that I had to let go, and this was one of them.

  We walked the rest of the way in silence, until we found ourselves inside of the city proper. J’her had a big, black carriage waiting with six black horses to pull it. Everyone but me climbed in – I knew Blizzard wouldn’t trail behind it so I rode him in its wake.

  Sitting atop him, I saw passersby recognize me and wave. I waved back as much as I could. I’d dressed out in my armor because the padding kept me really warm, a few of the braver people, mostly Men though some Uman, too, actually approached me and knocked on it. I’d been told before that knocking on a warrior’s armor was a wish for him to have good luck in combat.

  I had to order the Wolf Soldier guards to let them pass, of course. I think most of them would have bashed some heads, had they had their way. They took my safety pretty seriously and an attempt on my life by the Bounty Hunters’ Guild was still fresh in their minds.

  I reached down and let some of the commons touch my gauntlet. Some of the women would take it and kiss it. A few of the kids tried to touch Blizzard but I warned them off – he didn’t have a friendly reputation. The Wolf Soldiers had to step in a few times on that account.

  It took an hour but we made it to the palace. No one got hurt. That’s pretty good for me.

  I clipped my helmet to my belt and I entered the throne room while court was still in session. Hectar was listening to some fat guy with no hair describing his need for tax relief from the State. The Duke looked for all the world like he’d rather be hanging by his thumbnails in the dungeon than sitting where he was. His face expanded in a smile when he saw me and I could almost hear him saying, “Good – you do this now!”

  “His Majesty,” the court crier, an older Uman whose baritone had gotten him the job, called from next to the gallery, “Rancor the First, of the House Mordetur, King of Eldador.”

  “King of Eldador,” I corrected him, striding down the length of the throne room as guests and subjects rose, “and of the city state of Wisex on Black Lake.”

  “Wisex on Black Lake, your Majesty?” Hectaro asked me. “I do not know this part of Fovea.”

  “Black Lake is the joining of the Great Mid River and the Safe River,” I said, “and Wisex is the Andaran village next to it, as well as the name of the island at the center of it. Both are claimed by the Wolf Rider clan, of which I am chieftain.”

  “My congratulations, your Imperial Majesty,” Hectaro said, standing. “Although I believe that the Fovean High Council may well have an opinion as to Eldador’s expansion.”

  I trotted up the steps to the stone throne and took Hectaro’s forearm in mine. He stepped down a step and I stepped up, turned and sat in my throne.

  The court sat as well. The old, fat guy at the foot of the stairs to the throne just stood there trying to smile, and probably wondering if he’d have to repeat his whole story again.

  “How do We interest this gentleman?” I asked Hectaro.

  Hectaro smiled a political smile and said, “This Baron of the town of Jellith is justifying to me why we should forgive him his taxes. He’d also like to rename his village to Lee’s Hope, after your daughter.”

  I smiled despite myself. That was pretty creative. If I allowed it, then half of the country would be named after my family before the year was out, and I didn’t like looking like that sort of narcissist.

  But I like to reward creativity.

  “First,” I said, “I don’t want any other cities, towns, villages, hamlets, by-ways or what-have-you’s named after my family,” I said to him. The murmur was already flowing through the gallery.

  “Second, why do you need tax relief?”

  “Our little town is located to the south of Eldador the Port,” the fat man informed me. “We have only farming to support us, and most of our population has lived in Eldador for less than a year.”

  I shrugged inside of my armor. I don’t know if he could tell. “More than half of the villages in the country can say the same thing,” I said.

  “We seek to build a marketplace,” he continued, oblivious. “In this, we can consolidate the products of our neighboring – “

  “No,” I informed him. That one was easy.

  He turned his chubby cheeks up toward me, dumbfounded. “Your – your Majesty?” he asked me.

  “Markets will grow up where people need them,” I informed him. I remembered this much from college economics before they kicked me out. “Giving you a tax break to create one won’t make people want to come to it – it just means we’ll be supporting it forever. You’ll be here in a year complaining that the market just needs a little more investment, and the year after that saying, for all of the money we’ve put into it, we can’t let it fail now.

  “No,” I said. “If your little town needs a market, rest assured the people there will start one. You’re not getting one from me.” />
  I didn’t mean to come off so harsh to him, but it had been a pretty screwed up month and I didn’t know what to do about the Fovean High Council. I hadn’t counted on the Andarans running crying to them, and that was a mistake.

  I didn’t like making mistakes.

  The Baron nodded and withdrew. There were a few other courtiers but most of them didn’t even try with me – I guess they all wanted money, too.

  Court ended early and I left down the normal passageways with Hectar and the ever-present Wolf Soldier entourage. Shela and Nina had taken off together after the stables and I had no idea where Tartan had gotten to.

  I’m told it was quite a battle in Andaran,” Hectar commented. I just grunted at him.

  “The troubadours are calling it, ‘Battle of the new Emperor,’ whatever that means.”

  I gave him a sideways glance but didn’t slow down. “It probably means that they don’t like me leaving a few thousand warriors and a powerful Duke in Andoran after wiping out two of its most powerful tribes,” I said.

  Hectar nodded. “The Fovean High Council was rather impressed with that, as well,” he said.

  “I heard,” I said.

  We turned down a passage to the right on our way to the royal chambers. The kitchens were along the way and I felt like grabbing something to eat. Me showing up in the kitchen usually freaked out the staff, but I was hungry and, frankly, I didn’t care.

  These mood swings weren’t helping me, I knew.

  “This is more than your delegates can take care of for you,” he informed me, looking straight forward. “You’ve pushed the High Council too far, and given them too many arrows to point against you. The Dorkans, the Confluni, the Trenboni and now the Andarans – all of them will benefit from your downfall now.”

  “What do you think they’ll want?” I asked him.

  Hectar was quiet for a moment, marching on next to me, giving me his profile. I didn’t like this. I wanted to be the guy with the answers, not the questions. I don’t know why I thought that taking on the mantle of King would give me the one without the other, but I realized then that I’d thought exactly that.