Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles)

by Robert Brady

  A month later, she learned he had survived, with her, and they’d had a daughter and named her Lee.

  She’d stayed in Conflu from that time until this, because she couldn’t bear to see him. It wasn’t until she’d heard of Xinto’s actions that she’d decided it was safe to emerge. Of all of the Bounty Hunters on Fovea, and of almost all of the people, Genna counted herself among the very, very few who knew what Xinto’s actual crimes were.

  “Yes,” she said, finally. “I left. I couldn’t get near him, and I knew what you’d unleashed.

  “If you’d have stayed in your cage,” she added, “you’d have lived, Xinto. You’d have been returned to Trenbon, and you’d have been tried and found innocent. We’d have decided you didn’t know the nature of your assignment until you walked in on it. You were spying on the Uman-Chi, and no one would have guessed the Emperor could be there.

  “But now that you’ve escaped, and so cleverly, you are mine, Xinto of the Woods.”

  She let herself lick her lips, watching his hips, his hands. He planned to reach for something inside of his cloak—being a Scitai, it would be some sort of cross-pistol or blow gun, no doubt. She’d have him before he could finish it. She just needed to be able to say honestly that he’d attacked her first.

  “You know what we do to escaped prisoners.”

  Xinto planted his foot—he would attack now. She could tell any Wizard on the planet that what was about to happen had been done in self-defense.

  She pulled back her arm, and the room’s one window exploded in a mass of wood and splinters as some giant lizard leapt for her, fangs and claws bared.

  * * *

  Zarshar growled low in his throat. When he’d come here before, he’d seen, at most, five of these druids, and always smelled them coming.

  This two-score and more had approached him from all four directions of the wind and left him oblivious, until in fact the dog detected them and tipped him off.

  He’d come to appreciate the dog. When he had stood to fight, she’d backed him, fang for fang and claw for claw. He’d told no one, but she had laid her great head across his lap one night, and somehow managed to touch him with those soulful eyes.

  This time, when he’d missed the signal in the trees, she’d picked it up for him, and let him know without the pathetic lecturing he’d come to expect from the Uman-Chi.

  Now the Druids wanted to hear their song, and it seemed to the Swamp Devil they wouldn’t have asked if they didn’t suspect already what it told of.

  “It is my pleasure to sing it to you,” Glynn informed Vedeen, “however it is my experience that—”

  She nodded, interrupting the Uman-Chi. They hated nothing more. Zarshar did it as often as he could for that reason.

  “If you would be so kind,” the Druid said.

  “Sing the damn song,” Zarshar told her. “If they can’t hear it, it does no harm. If they can, then we can leave this place.”

  Glynn frowned, then took her left hand in her right, before her belly, straightened her back, and sang the song from beginning to end.

  The words rang in his ears. He’d already figured out what they would find—a dhar k’ten, one of the old ones, the fire-breathing, saurian menace from the Steel Mountains or the Great Northern Mountain Range. Wings, scales, fangs, terror—a close ally to the Swamp Devils, what Men called ‘dragons.’

  The Druids looked into each other’s eyes. Zarshar smelled the magic flow between them. The dog’s tail beat the ground, her ears up, her nose pointing first at him, then at the Man, Jack, then back at him.

  Jack’s eyes moved from Druid to Druid. Grudgingly, Zarshar admitted that, if any of them could hear the words, Jack would likely know it. The Man had a mind like a dagger, carving bits from his foes like an expert swordsman.

  Glynn finished her song. Zarshar saw her aura waver. This effort drained her. If she were an enemy, he would attack her now.

  He’d already reconciled himself that she was not. He wanted the Emperor dead and, on his own, he would have led two hundred Swamp Devils in an all-out assault against him on his next campaign, catching him unawares and unready.

  He would have failed. The Emperor had proven many times that overwhelming force wasn’t the way to take him.

  “We are impressed,” Vedeen told them. “For what few of us can hear the words, even we cannot pass them between us. It seems as if the All-Mother would keep her secret.”

  The Druids had discovered in moments more than the rest of them had in weeks. What this meant wasn’t lost on the Swamp Devil.

  “Then you can hear the words,” Zarshar accused her.

  She nodded. “Succinctly,” she said. “A few of the rest, the melody and, of some of them, the intent.

  “You have a dilemma, my friends,” she said, sighing. “You must have this one who fights as does the sun, but yet you seek the answer before you fully understand the question.”

  Glynn frowned. “I am no one to deny the wisdom of the Druids,” she said, and Zarshar recognized the condescension dripping from her words, “however I assure you, at the very least, all questions are understood.”

  A chuckle arose from the Druids. The dog’s tail kept thumping.

  Three long steps brought Vedeen to the dog’s side. She knelt by the beast’s shoulder and stroked the giant head. It laid its ears back and stilled its tail, the green eyes closing contentedly.

  Vedeen turned her attention back to the Uman-Chi. Jack had stepped up beside her. Zarshar kept his place on the rock—if he needed to move, he’d rather do it from here.

  “So you have your one who fights as does the sun,” she said, squelching Zarshar’s theory. “And now that you have her, what will you do with her?”

  “Are you aware—” Glynn began.

  “You face the Emperor,” Vedeen told her.

  “The One, who walks upon the Earth

  The One, who is of War.

  The One, who others wait upon

  To fight forever more.”

  “In truth,” she said, standing, “it could be no other, and none have been a better friend to our kind.”

  “Would you turn on him?” Zarshar asked her. All eyes turned to him. “Would you betray him, for a song you heard one time?”

  Vedeen smiled to herself. “It seems an odd thing, put that way,” she said. Another Druid opened up his mouth, but she raised her hand and stilled him.

  “If you would have me as a part of your entourage,” she said, “then I would travel with you. This will raise no enmity between Galnesh Eldador and us. The Emperor cannot think to tell us whom to travel with.”

  “And when it comes time to fight him?” Zarshar pressed her.

  She smiled. The dog stood up next to her, pressed its body to her leg. The Druids, if nothing else, were dear to animals, and they to them.

  “When that time comes,” she asked, “then you should ask yourself, how does one fight, as does the sun?”

  * * *

  Karl Henekhson padded down a side street, as quietly as his hard-soled shoes could take him; his heels rapped the cobblestones deafeningly in his own ears, although in fact he knew at the same time he made less noise than a slippered priest in church.

  The lizard had been gone too long. The sun had dropped and risen with no sign of him, although that came as no surprise.

  The thing was barely more than an animal, and when did an animal ever care what time of day it was?

  It hadn’t taken much to track it. He’d found its marks all over the gutters and through what refuse piles he came across. Either the thing had no ability to smell the stink of such places, it didn’t mind the reek or it actually liked it. Having come from a swamp, he might even consider it an improvement.

  The thing had taken to a sewer near here—Karl assumed it needed to get past a ruined wall that it didn’t feel comfortable climbing over. Then he turned a corner and found himself not ten feet from a huge man with a battleaxe, standing in front of a battered green door.


  No need to draw Karl a picture. Either Xinto had alienated the people who employed this man, or he’d joined them and done something to alienate them. Either way, they’d taken him, and odds were they’d made a carpet of the Slee by now.

  So much for songs about prophecies.

  “You don’t need to be here,” the Man told him; a Dorkan by the look of him, a big one, too. Most of them were dumber than the oxen that pulled the plows before them, but once in a while you got the cunning of a bull from one, and Karl saw that now.

  “I’m here for Xinto of the Woods,” Karl informed him.

  The Man grinned. “I’d forget that name, were I you,” he said, and turned the axe’s wooden shaft in his weathered hands.

  The axe would be too big to meet with his sword. When the man swung it, it would crush everything in its path. Many Volkhydrans preferred axes for that reason. Karl could fight that.

  He whipped out his sword. The Man lunged with the axe, taking an over-hand swing, aiming straight for Karl’s torso.

  Three shafts protruded from the Dorkan’s chest. His mouth opened wide, revealing rotten teeth. Karl recognized the shock in his eyes, the look of a warrior whose mind was telling him the body was already dead.

  The weight of the axe dragged his whole body prone to the ground, snapping the shafts. He heard Nina swear behind him. She’d probably wanted those back.

  His Volkhydrans melted out of the shadows behind him. A younger man picked up the axe and tried to heft it, but an older, larger man took it from him.

  “Here, now,” he complained.

  The older man backhanded him casually. He parked the weapon on his shoulder as if War had grown it there.

  “He would fall on his face,” Nina complained. She kicked the huge man over just enough to retrieve the feathered ends of her shafts. With those she could fletch new ones, although as far as he knew, they only used wood from their forest.

  More likely she didn’t want her handiwork recognized. They didn’t know yet whose home this was.

  “I sense a whole crowd on the other side of that door,” Raven told him. She’d put on her leathers and stood at his shoulder, her feet apart, the dagger still in her boot.

  “Stop that,” Nina warned her without looking up. “They’ll sense you, and do worse if there’s a caster among them.”

  “And there is,” they heard from behind them. Karl turned to see none other than Xinto of the Woods, perched on the top of the ruined wall. Typical that he would show up right after the perfect moment.

  “So much for saving you,” Karl complained. He’d rather not have killed this man, and he already had a sneaking suspicion what sort of place this was.

  “Slurn already did that,” he told them, leaping deftly from the wall onto the street with them. “His timing couldn’t have been better, either. Did you know that there’s two Millennium of Wolf Soldiers bound for here from Vrek?”

  Raven nodded. “He told us,” she said, drawing a cocked eyebrow from Xinto. “Is he alright now—”

  Xinto nodded. “He’ll pop up in a moment,” he said. “He took to the sewer to get out of there—like as he wants to finish something he killed. I saw no reason to watch that.”

  “Good sirs,” Forn addressed them. The old Volkhydran seemed nervous. “As far as I know, where one guard’s dead, there’s twenty more to be upset about it—”

  “Ha!” Xinto barked a laugh. “More like a hundred,” he said, “and not guards, but Bounty Hunters, so why don’t I get you thin-brained Men right out of this city before we have to decide whether to fight Wolf Soldiers, Bounty Hunters or both?”

  Forn didn’t miss the insult. “As like as we could, short sir, were we not so preoccupied with your pious arse,” he countered.

  “Enough,” Raven told them. Fifteen Volkhydran Men, and as one they’d all fallen in love with her. Karl shook his head. Sailors did nothing but fight, drink and fall in love, or so his father had informed him, on more than one occasion.

  “I think we’ve worn out our welcome in Kor,” she said. Karl had never heard that expression before. “If the city’s going to be overrun, then the best thing we can do is not be in it when that happens, so either we have to get ourselves a ship, or get out of the gates and head north for—what is it, Andurin?”

  “Andurin would be the next city north,” Xinto told her. “But stick your pretty nose in there and the Emperor’s men will grab you by it and lead you to a waiting cell.”

  “If not me, then you,” she countered. “But I didn’t say we’d go in, just wait there for Glynn to show up, hopefully with the one who fights as does the sun.”

  Xinto opened his mouth, but Nina spoke next. “I can get you into Andurin,” she offered. “I know Alekennen, who was Glennen’s daughter—”

  Raven spun on her heel and drove her fist into the Aschire’s jaw. She’d been spending time both with the sailors and with Karl himself, learning how to defend herself with her hands, if her newfound magic ever gave out.

  A woman of the race of Men could weigh as much as twice what the heaviest Aschire woman could rise too. Nina had been raised with Men, and had grown larger even than most Aschire males, but still was a fraction of Raven’s stocky build.

  Her feet left the ground as she flipped over backwards to the cobblestones. If the blow to the jaw hadn’t silenced her, the rap she took to the back of her head would have.

  A Volkhydran knelt at her side and put three fingers to her neck. Karl saw the pert breasts rise and fall and had his answer before the Volkhydran could deliver it.

  “She lives,” he said.

  “Leave her,” Raven commanded him. “The Bounty Hunters will want someone to blame for this, let ‘em have the Emperor’s nanny.”

  Karl and Xinto both grinned. The Bounty Hunters would have no trouble believing the Emperor had sent his troops in after Xinto, if it was Xinto he wanted. The invasion would make it seem only more likely.

  “So to Andurin?” Forn asked.

  Karl shook his head. “She said that for Nina’s benefit,” he said. Raven grinned up at him, her dark eyes sparkling mischievously. “We head southwest, for the Lone Wood.”

  Xinto barked a laugh and took off down the alleyway.

  Chapter Thirty:

  Back in Black

  Back on the Eldadorian plain, the Lone Wood behind them and Little Storm beneath him, Jack ran the previous day’s events over and over in his mind.

  No, he kept concluding. No way. Not buying it.

  They’d tromped up to the Lone Wood, were welcomed with open arms, here comes this Vedeen who hears their song, and then leaps on a horse and joins them—the one who fights as does the sun.

  No, Jack told himself. No way.

  Why did they need Zarshar for that? Why did they need him? Raven, Jerod, Jahunga—any of them could have come and had the same results. These Druids were supposed to be so xenophobic, and here they were all smiles and help?

  Vedeen rode beside him now, long blonde hair and long white robes flowing out behind her, riding a roan stallion, reminiscent of a thoroughbred in height and power, pacing Little Storm, her eyes before her and that mention of a smile as ever on her lips.

  She’d asked, “How does the sun fight?” Initially Jack had believed that meant with fire and overwhelming power.

  But the sun knows that its planets are going to keep spinning, and that they sure as hell aren’t going anywhere without it. The sun hurtles through space and drags its system along with it—it is more concerned about what’s before it than about what’s around it.

  Vedeen wouldn’t even commit herself to being on their side. She’d said she was going along. That could be prophetic.

  Jack watched their dog cross the plains before them, from his left to his right. She didn’t usually get ahead of them but had been energized since leaving the Lone Wood. Behind him Glynn rode her own horse side-saddle, her thoughts her own, and the Swamp Devil loped along behind her, no longer sprinting as urgently as
he had when they had come here. They’d been to the Lone Wood and decided they’d accomplished their mission. Now they ran to Kor to pick up the rest of their comrades.

  Jack couldn’t help thinking they’d seen something really important and missed it. It itched like a scab that wouldn’t be picked.

  * * *

  Narem was an Uman who’d been born in Kor nearly one hundred years earlier, when there hadn’t been an Eldador; much less an Eldadorian Empire, and Jark, a Man who called himself The Pirate King ruled the city.

  His mother had been a whore and his father a pirate. He’d liked to think his father had loved his mother but because he was dead before Narem’s 10th birthday it was hard to be sure. By his 20th birthday the pox that killed whores had taken his mother and Narem was alone.

  He didn’t want to be a pirate, so he’d joined the Koran Guard, the warriors who guarded the city when it was invaded, which happened now and then. The Koran Guard were the only police force the city knew. They kept fights from becoming riots. They made sure robberies didn’t turn into massacres, and as much as was possible in this city they kept some semblance of order. Narem never thought he’d see his 30th birthday, but he justified that if he had to die that way, then he’d do it keeping another man alive, not robbing him for his treasure.

  Eight decades later and he was still doing it. He’d seen Jark the Pirate King fall to Tendehr, the Baron of the Forgotten Sea; him to Geler the Bloody, and him to another until twenty years ago Xareth had shown his wasted face and become the Duke of Thieves.

  No matter who ruled the city, no matter who occupied what part of the tumble-down palace or who hung his banner on what was left of the walls, the Koran Guard persisted, it served and it lived on, taking a part of the spoils of every ship that pulled in here and a part of the profits from most of the crime, at least the major crime. In return they protected the city as best they could.

  “Wolf Soldiers?” Xareff demanded, sitting on his ‘throne,’ a cracked marble edifice on top of a dais with chipped steps. Narem stood below him in a leather cuirass and steel greaves that didn’t match, a sword on his hip and a crossbow over his shoulder. A few of his guardsmen flanked him, wearing what armor they’d come across in their travels.