Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  And they walked with that timed step that Lupus drilled into them from the first day they signed on. These men moved like…

  “We’re sailors,” the old man said. “I’m Forn, and I was captain of the Sprite until she went down just north of here. We walked in and ain’t had no luck since.”

  “So how do you know the E—”, Jerod began, and caught himself. “How do you know Lupus?”

  No sound behind him, the men from in back had started circling around to get a look at his face. If they’d planned an ambush, they might have changed their minds.

  “We ported him from Volka to Trenbon,” Forn said. He shook his head and spat—a loose gob with more spray than anything else. The man had no teeth.

  “Almost lost the Sprite right there, damn him,” Forn continued. “He was a traveling emer-sary, or some such thing, and he didn’t tell no one. That made carrying him—”

  “Illegal, I know,” Jerod interrupted. Volkan sailors were notorious chatterboxes, and this one was no exception. Before the rise of Eldador and the Daff Kanaar, they had moved most of the commerce on Tren Bay.

  Daff Kanaar shipping moved more, charged less and any nation that interfered with them risked the attention of Daff Kanaar. That made them about the safest shipping anyone could choose. Volkhydran ships suddenly found new opportunities in the islands past the shores of Dorkan, and with them new calamities.

  “So you have no ship,” Jerod said, and spat. His was cleaner.

  “No,” Forn said, “though if yer lookin’ for some good men…”

  Jerod let the smile cross his face. It felt good.

  * * *

  Slurn had never been to the Salt Wood before. He found it dry, filled with unfamiliar smells and unfamiliar prey, some of which he could barely hunt, and some of which he ran down almost too easily.

  In the swamp, he could just lay in the muck and know everything he needed about the world around him. Here he had to use his eyes, his nose, his mind. Here things moved in straight lines along the ground, himself included, making his hunting style difficult.

  The thing the others had called ‘rabbit’ still clung to the spaces between his teeth. He’d had to remove its bones—they were brittle and thick and could not be easily digested. He waited here, unwilling to enter the city they called ‘Kor,’ rank with the stink of Men and Uman. The Salt Wood pressed almost to the city walls, branches scraping her towers, beasts and beings both finding means in and out of the city other than its battered gates.

  The female had asked him to do this, in her way. He found the race of Men horrifying to look at—all angles and hair, smelling foul and tasting worse. It was odd for him to see this one and have the mating desire, but he could not help what he felt, and he felt this one would, if she were a Slee, be his, if she would have him.

  As it was, there was no possible way for that to be, yet he felt the contentment with her that one feels with a mate. When she had been threatened, he had killed for her. She had rewarded him with a stroke of his snout that had sent his heart racing.

  He’d crossed the Andaran plains, the Iron Mountains and the Eldadorian nation to find her, knowing her on site, and then followed her further until he’d seen her stand against a Swamp Devil and humble it. Then he’d known, he’d felt it in the cold depths of his heart, his destiny had been crossed to hers, that together they would do something unique and important.

  Now he waited in a dry, foul place, where he found water scarce and food vile, because she didn’t dare walk beside him into a city filled with Men and Uman. Now he watched the sun set through slitted eyes, from beneath a pile of leaves and mud, and pined for that which, a year before, he might have eaten.

  Contemplating the unreality of these thoughts, he felt on the scales of his belly the tell-tale tromp of creatures he had come to know all-too-well in the Slee Nation. He turned his snout to the north and waited, barely breathing, then to the south, doing the same.

  The south—they came from the south, definitely. As stealthy as a whisper, he slithered southward to investigate.

  He marveled at his own anger now—his instinct to protect her. If, in the days it would take him to know for sure, he discovered what he expected, then she would need protecting.

  * * *

  The candle’s flicker in the dark could hypnotize—a red and yellow teardrop balanced on the point of a candle’s wick. It stood between the two women, one of the race of Men, and the other an Aschire.

  “The flame is the vortex,” Nina told her. “The flame is the gate. It doesn’t exist anywhere, and yet it produces light and heat in all of the places it doesn’t touch.”

  Raven’s knowledge of what flame actually was tended to interfere when Nina went on like this. Spiritually, maybe flame was a vortex and didn’t really exist. Scientifically it was the result of a very predictable chemical reaction that—”

  The flame expanded and swallowed half the wax on the candle. The flash had her seeing spots.

  Nina looked exasperated. “You really need to not do that,” she complained.

  “I did that?” Raven asked. Her vision blurred, then refocused.

  “Of course you did it,” Nina said. “I didn’t do it—you think it did that itself?”

  They knelt alone in a hotel room that they both shared. The cramping in her knees told Raven they’d been doing it a long time.

  “How—why?”

  Nina sighed. “You are focused,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “When you focus, your energy is right there,” Nina said, indicating the flame. “It is a winged animal you have in the palm of your hand.”

  Raven considered that, imagined it—this flame bird that could sit in her hand.

  The flame in the candle immediately took on the shape, exactly as she imagined it. She watched it, both knowing she was creating it and surprised it existed at all.

  Nina shook her head. “Fine—yes, like that.”

  “I didn’t mean to do that!” Raven protested.

  “You did,” Nina countered. “But you aren’t controlling your thoughts and your emotions. You’re focused on the flame, and now the flame is of you. If you don’t want the flame any more, then release it.”

  She thought about that. The flaming bird was beautiful. It looked at her and tilted its head, flame dripping from the ends of its wings. It devoured the candle, and soon it would be scorching the table.

  She forced her mind to release it, to let its energy dissipate. She thought about the heat being gone, the light being gone, the popping like a soap bubble.

  Wrong allegory—the flame flew from the candle. Nina contained it with her own energy. The bubble that contained the energy she had released touched the tip of her nose.

  “Not like that,” Nina told her.

  “No,” Raven agreed. She shook her head, and the flame was gone. In a second they were in the dark.

  “Like that.”

  * * *

  “Is that it?” Jack asked her, pointing to the horizon.

  Glynn nodded. She looked to her left, where the Swamp Devil ran doggedly on, its tongue lolling, its body wet with sweat. This Little Storm proved to be a remarkable animal, its endurance flowing like a river from it, pounding out the miles one after the other with no need for a rest. He own horse lagged alongside of it.

  As amazing was the Swamp Devil running beside them. Without complaint or query the Black Adept, Zarshar, ran the same miles as the horses at the same speed.

  “Zarshar,” she said, gently. “You have triumphed, Sirrah. That is the Lone Wood, as I know it.”

  Zarshar’s red eyes looked out to the horizon, then back down. He didn’t respond and she couldn’t fault him. Each kept his or her own company until they achieved their goal and stood before the dense line of trees that abruptly marked the haven of the Druids.

  Jack dismounted and, as ever, reached his hands up to her, to lower her to the ground. With his exertions, the Swamp Devil put his hands on his knees, panting,
and just watched them.

  As for the dog, it ranged tirelessly behind and before them. As often as they had outdistanced it, it had found them when they rested. Only rarely had Jack thought to pull it up beside him on Little Storm’s back, and then she had whined until he had let her back down.

  Little Storm didn’t seem bothered by the animal or its weight. Of course, Jack had lost so much himself the horse might not have noticed the addition of the dog.

  “I’ll rest before we enter,” Zarshar said simply. There was a haunch in a bag over his shoulder. He stood and pulled the strings open with his back to them before they could answer him.

  “Is it safe to get wood from there?” Jack asked her, indicating the trees. “There looks like plenty of deadwood.”

  Glynn shrugged. They needed to know how well the wood was protected. “Don’t touch anything living,” she said. “And don’t start your fire where the smoke will enter the forest.”

  Jack nodded and walked directly into the wood. The dog stood at the forest’s edge, whining for the Man and wagging its tail. Glynn remained between her own mount’s and Little Storm’s head, her eyes pointed at Jack but her mind already focused on the wood, sniffing for anything that might be a welling of power.

  She had been here before, decades ago, with her father. The Lone Wood existed as a place of raw energy, and so she had needed to see it as a part of her early training.

  Jack’s only problem seemed to be the plentiful scrub, soon encumbering his arms in a load that reached to his beard. He exited quickly, raising his nose to the wind to feel its direction on its face.

  “Wind’s blowing east,” he said. “I’m going to go back north twenty yards.”

  She nodded, pressing into the Lone Wood with her mind, looking for some flicker, some indication of life, of magic.

  Nothing.

  “You hungry?” Jack asked, from behind her.

  She nodded. “For anything but your bitter ale.”

  Jack chuckled. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  She shook her head and turned to face him. He had piled his sticks into a pyramid, as she had seen him do. He would stuff the center with dry grass, and strike a spark from a dagger he’d picked up and a piece of flint.

  She, of course, would use her magic—by why bother if the Man was content with this? He cooked for her, as well. She found that those times when he was occupied with something other than his endless string of questions were best suited to her need to meditate and to refresh her power.

  “I am looking for our friends, the Druids,” she said. She had found a patch of grass a little thicker than that around it, and thought she would be comfortable there. “I think we have caught them napping.”

  “Sending a Man to his death,” she heard from behind her, “is not catching us napping. It is catching us forgiving.”

  She turned and there were two of them, dressed in white robes and brown over-cloaks. Both were Men, younger by the look of them, no more than two decades in age. They stepped out of the forest as if out of a fog, directly into the plain.

  “Who are you to send others to defile this sacred place?”

  Zarshar was up off of his haunches with a roar, his talons and his teeth bared, taking on a fighting crouch. Comically, the dog took up a position beside him, her teeth bared and a growl low in her throat. Jack, a thick branch in his hand and the fire before him, stood and waited, looking to her for direction.

  Glynn allowed her power to swell. Not flame, she thought immediately. They would have mastered flame. In fact, no elements at all—even calling down the lightning would be risky with Druids.

  “I am Glynn Escaroth,” she proclaimed, throwing her green hair back over her shoulders with a shake of her head. “I am Baroness of Britt, keeper of the southern walls of Outpost IX, Duchess Escaroth. I prithee, name thyselves, that I might know thee.”

  One looked to the other, then both back to her. Now she wondered if these were, in fact, Men. They were slight of build, and Men were burly. Their hair was brown in the tradition of Men, but their ears had no lobes.

  Uman? No—they didn’t feel like Uman.

  She’d seen an Uman-Man hybrid among the Druids—she remembered him as Dilvesh, a member of the Daff Kanaar. Running into him wouldn’t be good for them—but this risk had to be taken. These, however, could be his kind.

  “We are of the Order,” the one on the left said, meaning the Order of Druids. “We are guardians of the Lone Wood, and would know your business here.”

  Zarshar stood behind her now, still in his crouch, however still taller than she. The dog flanked him. A word from her and both would pounce. She had more to fear that one would do it anyway.

  “We are summoned to the Lone Wood,” Glynn replied, her left hand reaching out behind her to find the savage breast. She saw no point in lying—Druids were mighty. “If we may have the forbearance of the Druids, then we will be about our way quickly, we assure you.”

  “Druids?” Jack asked. He approached the three of them, looking at the two Men as if they were art on display.”

  “You are Druids? You—um—worship nature?”

  Glynn shook her head—this wasn’t going well and it wasn’t getting better. She held the Devil; Zarshar could be restrained against attack unless provoked. However Jack’s questions couldn’t be guarded against.

  “We recognize the Trinity,” one of them said, regarding the Man. “Weather, Earth and Water. We hold the power—”

  Jack picked right then to do a curious thing: he stepped forward, and raised his right hand to his forehead, then to his belly, then to his left and right shoulders.

  The stunned look on the faces of the Druids was unmistakable. They looked to each other, and then to him, and said a thing in a language she didn’t understand.

  He shook his head, and repeated something back to them, and they smiled.

  Until Zarshar roared and fell to his knees, his hands to his ears, as if they’d gone aflame.

  * * *

  Slurn peeped out from the muck at the side of a stream he’d found. Although not as familiar to him as his home in the Slee Nation, he’d been able to make a decent meal for himself of frog and eel and, with a full belly, his outlook on life improved significantly.

  That is, until he happened upon the source of his disturbance, two days hence. That rhythmic shake in the ground—the tread of thousands of feet, striking the face of Earth at the exact same time—brought back memories of home more realistically than any river could hope to.

  The march of Wolf Soldiers—thousands of them—not from Galnesh Eldador or from Thera, but from Vrek, that meant the Emperor’s southern legions were on the march.

  With the threat of Toorian renegades raiding up into much wealthier Eldador in the last few years, the Emperor had moved two thousand troops into Vrek under the command of Duke Ceberro. Men captured by the Slee had spoken of this, of the honor this meant for Ceberro, the only Duke alive to be given command of the Emperor’s elite forces.

  Since installing his Wolf Riders and their own Wolf Soldier troops on the plains of Andoran, Slee had become increasingly interested in Wolf Soldiers. Where Andarans had been somewhat easy to avoid and easier to prey upon, Wolf Soldiers had fortified their position at what his people called His Jaws, the meeting of the Great Mid and the Safe Rivers.

  Slurn knew a lot about Wolf Soldiers—and one of those things was that, when they marched somewhere in this many numbers, it was to kill something. Once when there had been famine and the Slee had raided Wolf Rider cattle, fewer than this had marched on the Slee Nation and left a bloody wake behind them.

  Slurn turned in the muck and tucked his arms and feet beneath him, clutching his spear. With his tail to drive him and his snout to steer, he slithered swiftly down the little stream, which he surmised would empty into the Forgotten Sea just south of Kor. From there it would be child’s play to enter the city and find the woman he protected. She must know she lay in the path of Wolf Soldiers.


  * * *

  Xinto found it irritating that Xareff would simply snub him, as he had. In the back of his mind, he still blamed the air-headed Man, Karl, for bungling what would likely have been a smooth negotiation, at the first sign of trouble.

  He sighed, as his legs carried him near as fast as a Man down one of the side streets in what could best described as a bad section of Kor. Considering what passed for a good section of this place, a bad section made for a place he was less likely to want to go.

  However, if he couldn’t have the Duke’s help, then there were others who could be relied on.

  He approached the green door as it has been described to him—an ill-fitted aperture to an ancient stone building. Xinto wondered who had originally put such care into these old stone buildings, these huge walls and towers, and what happened to them to let them fall to seed as these had.

  The Man who stood at guard beside the door carried a battle axe Xinto doubted he could lift, much less wanted to be struck by, and so instead he flashed the secret sign of a Bounty Hunter guildsman, his hand a flicker in and out of the sleeve of his robes.

  The guard recognized him and stood aside, pulling the door open in its jamb. The will of Adriam himself had to keep the thing on its hinges, Xinto thought as he passed through it. He heard the huge Man wrestle it back closed behind him as he entered a gloomy room, very wide, the windows boarded over and light barely peeking in through the chinks.

  “Those who die well,” someone prompted him from within—a male voice, older, Sentalan Uman by its accent.

  “Paid double,” Xinto answered. He’d derived this challenge—it was one of his favorites.

  “You always had a Mannish sense of humor about you,” the other said, and stepped from the gloom to reveal himself. He wore the heavy leather cuirass and leggings of a Fighting Hunter—one who killed by challenge—rather than a Stealthy Hunter, like Xinto, who worked by guile.

  He would lead here, Xinto knew. The Fighting Hunters did not number many, but were recognized simply as more fit to lead, for the nature of their business.

  “Tagarag,” Xinto recognized his old friend. His once-green hair had gone gray and left him with a widow’s peak. His thickset arms and almost Man-sized hands combined with a jowly face to mark him for his farmer-heritage.