Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (27 page)

    
More hard tack and water.  Once again I missed my morning coffee.  At least in the Navy they had fed me pretty well.

    
Genna walked back into camp while we ate.  She’d painted her face differently and, unlike the rest of us, she looked fresh.  Drekk had twigs in his short grey hair and all of us, save Nantar, needed a shave.  Even D’gattis didn’t look fresh.

    
“They don’t patrol at night,” Genna said, “though that might change when they miss those ten I killed.  I saw dog droppings, which means they are going to pick our trail up today.”

    
“Any horse?” D’gattis asked?

    
Genna shook her head.  “I doubt it, but they won’t need them with the dogs.  The dogs will find us today and bay, and then they will come from every direction.”

    
Ancenon looked at D’gattis.  “That isn’t enough time.”

    
“Do you know what wintergreen is?” I asked Genna.  I relied on this translation ability I seemed to have to let the others understand me.  Because the word wintergreen sounded strange on my tongue as I said it, I doubted that they would.

    
She shook her head, confirming it.  I looked at Arath and Thorn, who were looking at me.

    
“It is a pungent plant, like skunk cabbage, but it smells sweet, kind of fresh and spicy.  It comes in a plant with three leaves.”

    
Arath’s eyes widened and he took off into the woods.  Thorn went to his saddlebags and returned with a sprig of something that looked like a little tree.

    
“Like this?” he asked.

    
I smelled it. It was old and dry, but I still recognized it.  I nodded.

    
“The place is overloaded with this, if you know where to look,” he said, nodding to Ancenon.  D’gattis took it and smelled it and handed it back to Thorn with a look of disgust.  “I can chew this for a little relief if I am getting stitched,” Thorn added.

    
Arath returned a few moments later with a bushel of the little plants, held in a piece of leather at arms length, so that he wouldn’t smell of it himself.

    
I took the sprigs and, as the others watched, twisted the leather that contained them and mashed it with a rock.  When I saw that the sap from the wintergreen had started to seep through holes I had torn in the thin leather, I opened it and used a stick to pick out twigs and other solids from the goo.

    
“Oh, that stinks,” Ancenon said.  Genna had left on her patrol once again, Drekk standing his usual guard.  Thorn and Arath were watching with extreme interest, Ancenon and D’gattis conferring quietly.

    
I made a funnel from a wooden bowl and stoppered the bottom of it with my finger.  Then I poured the smelly goo I had made into the bowl, and emptied a half-full water skin into it.  Finally, I replaced my finger at the bottom of the funnel with the mouth of the water skin, and let the whole thing drain.  I had to swirl some water in the bowl to get the goo out of it, but I got most of it.  Thorn helped by holding the skin.

    
“We need Genna,” I said.  Arath had left again, as Thorn and I dug a deep hole and buried the leather, the refuse from the work I had done and the bowl.  Ancenon and D’gattis had finished their discussion and were packing the horses.

    
Genna reappeared with Arath and came right to me.  “We heard dogs,” Arath said.  “We need to be on our way, and fast.”

    
I nodded and handed the skin to Genna.  She uncorked it and smelled it, then pulled her nose away in disgust, looking at me.

    
“Pour that in our tracks,” I said.  “Just little bits, and just the most obvious tracks.  If you see any horse dung, be sure to hit that.”

    
She looked at me like I was insane.  “Why?” she said.  “The dogs will just follow this instead of us.”

    
I shook my head.  “The dogs won’t smell anything for the rest of the day after they get a snoot full of that.  In fact, they might just go looking for it instead.  That may smell awful to you and me, but it is like candy to them and they will smell as much of it as they can as soon as they can.”

    
The two woodsmen and Genna looked at me skeptically and I sighed.  I went to Blizzard, took a small rag out of my saddlebag, and took the skin from Genna.  I put a small amount of the liquid on the rag and waved it in front of the horses.  All heads rose as one and, when I dropped the rag, they all lowered their heads to smell it.  Finally Blizzard got his nose to it and chewed the rag, establishing himself as the lead horse.

    
Next, I took a dried apple from my bag and cut it with my knife.  I waved it under one of the horse’s nose, where he should be able to smell it but not see it.  He didn’t react to it.

    
“Satisfied?” I asked.

    
Genna smiled, took the bag and left.  The rest were smiling, but in fact I hadn’t been sure it would work at all.  I knew that escaped criminals would sometimes pour gasoline across their tracks to confuse dogs, and I knew from the Discovery Channel that wild animals would chew wintergreen and get a rush from it.  I made an educated guess based on that.

    
We buried the rag and ate the apple, core and all.  I scrubbed my hands in dirt from the bottom of the hole we dug to get the smell off and then we were gone.  By then, we could hear the dogs baying.

    
We moved faster that day and every time Genna caught up with us she was panting.  She had been judicious with her water skin and still had most of it left, knowing full well that there might be more dogs.  Preparing the concoction had taken most of an hour, using time we might not have later.  The cleanup was dangerous as well because it used our tools and left them as evidence.

    
She had seen the dogs hit the wintergreen, and she had seen them go nuts for it after.  Some
did
go looking for more wintergreen, while some just went off on a tangent from there.  This left the patrols confused as to how to proceed.

    
“They will likely sit tight and get more dogs,” Genna said.  “It won’t do them any good.  I didn’t just spray our trail, but left some false trails away from us and ahead of us as well.”  She patted her bag.  “A little of this goes a long way, we should be fine until tomorrow, and then we can make more.”

    
D’gattis smiled at Ancenon.  “If we can get past tomorrow, we won’t have much use for that bag at all, I think.”

Chapter Thirteen

Chaos and Krakatoa

    
We moved further south, changing directions at forty-five and ninety degree angles to the east and west at random intervals, moving in a specific direction but taking a round-about way to get there. Genna roamed free around us, keeping up with patrols, looking for the time when they finally realized that there
was
someone out here to find.  Then it would be a matter of time before the patrols were so dense that we couldn’t avoid them.  By then we would be at Outpost X or travel with our swords ready.

    
My sword sat pretty loose in the scabbard already.

    
Ancenon and D’gattis were more and more alert as we pressed south.  They now traveled side by side on horseback, each taking turns snatching a piece of parchment from each others’ hands and peering into the forest with their ambiguous eyes.  The trees grew thick, the canopy above us cutting normal light down to a green gloom.  I had to let Blizzard pick his trail.  I usually rode the second point man behind Thorn, who frequently dismounted and remounted his horse.  Behind me rode Drekk, then the two Uman-Chi and the three pack horses, then Nantar, finally Arath, with his head bowed and his ears doing what eyes should do on guard.  Scrub trees and bushes and a foot-thick bed of leaves crunched under the horses’ metal-shod hooves, filling the air with the semi-sweet, musky aroma of life mingled with decay.  I would have liked the journey if the stakes hadn’t been so high.

    
We made another forty-five degree turn, this time bringing us back south.  The diversion didn’t seem all that clever to me – anyone could tell we were moving south.  I thought we might have done better to make a beeline to the southwest and then proceed east, but I didn’t know how to track like a woodsman or do recon like Genna, so I kept my mouth shut and tried to learn something.

    
We had gone about another hundred yards before Genna appeared out of the gloom again from the east.  This time she didn’t melt out of the forest, she leapt out at a dead run with a few daggers missing from her bandoleer.  I didn’t see anyone behind her, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t coming.

    
No one behind her …

    
I turned to the west and saw them coming, a patrol of ten who had likely just sat and waited on their own initiative.  Guessing we were moving south, they had lain low and waited for us to come to them.

    
I whipped out my sword and turned Blizzard to meet them, Nantar and Thorn behind me.  The rest held back with the horses.  In moments I heard the
whip-whop
of arrows flying through the air from behind us, and saw three of the advancing men fall.  They didn’t have dogs.  They wore green cloaks and brown leather armor, and carried short, fighting swords, double edged and pointed at the ends.  Tight leather caps, giving them a compact appearance, protected their heads.

    
No bows.  Why would they have no bows?

    
I reined Blizzard in hard, the big horse skidding through the undergrowth, almost falling to his knees.  Decayed leaves and soft earth flew from his hooves.  Nantar and Thorn almost crashed into me, swearing angrily, not understanding what I could be thinking.  I looked up for a moment and caught Thorn’s eyes.

    
“Archers,” I whispered hoarsely.  Then I had to pay attention to my slipping mount, trying to get him back on his feet and turned around.

    
The first arrow glanced from my armored shoulder.  The second rang from Thorn’s helmet and another stopped dead on Nantar’s breastplate.  The Confluni soldiers were closing and the three of us were regaining control of our mounts.  I could see Arath, Drekk and Genna with their arrows pointed to the trees, now.  There were more men coming up from behind them, having followed Genna after all.  We were caught in a pincer with arrow-cover bringing us into a tight knot for them to fight.  We weren’t going to win.

    
Dammit!
I swore in my head.  I had come too far for this!  It was entirely unacceptable to me to die this way, for some ambiguous goal with no one to blame but myself for not speaking up.

    
Well, the archers probably wouldn’t shoot their own men.  Arath, Drekk and Genna would have to hold ten men with their arrow fire or their swords until we could get turned around. 

    
“To me!” I shouted.  Nantar and Thorn looked at me in surprise.  I didn’t wait for their approval as I sped forward and engaged the seven remaining from the west.  I only hoped that they would follow.

    
As I had done before, I used Blizzard’s great size to my advantage, running down one of the men as my sword slashed the throat of another.  Blizzard’s strength lay in his speed on this mission, so his barding had been left on the ship.  This left me worrying about exposing him to an armed man.  On my left side, I felt a sword clang from my shin-guard.  I heard another grunt from that side and knew that at least one of the team had followed me.

    
Having run through their numbers, I brought Blizzard between two trees and around for another pass.  Nantar had come with me, Thorn having gone back to help fight against the greater numbers.  Arrows clanged from his armor, catching in the chinks between the heavy plates.  A Confluni rose up before me, sword in hand, and made the mistake of spooking Blizzard, who reared and crushed his skull with a huge hoof.  He crashed back to the ground and I saw Nantar twenty feet from me, fighting one man on each side of his mount, his sword moving faster than the eye could follow, back and forth across his horse’s mane.

    
I charged over to him, ducking trees, looking for more men to fight.  There were none, between the arrows and Nantar and I there were just these two left.  Nantar finally drove the point of his heavy sword into one of the two men’s eye socket, and I took the other from behind as I passed.

    
Nantar looked up at me in surprise, then grinned through his beard.  Together we looked back at our comrades and saw them ringed with men on foot.  D’gattis had his sword out, blood running from a shoulder wound down to his hand.  Ancenon, his horse down, parried two men at once while Genna put her back to his.  She fought two men with one of her daggers in each hand, her crossbow at her feet.  Drekk had fallen to one knee, and with a man pressing him. Thorn had a dead man at his feet and had just finished off another. 

    
Arath engaged one man, his sword dancing in the air as if alive.  I saw no men on the ground; still there were only nine.  I assumed then that Genna’s missing daggers hadn’t been wasted.

    
We charged together, Nantar and I.  I had an urge to give a battle cry, but I suppressed it.  Finally our horses brought us through the trees to where we needed to be, and we dismounted as one, the fighting too close for horseback.  I charged in and immediately plunged my sword into the kidneys of the man fighting Drekk.  The Confluni fell on the Uman.  I turned in time to catch one of Genna’s men as his blade swept down toward my shin.  Our swords rang once, then again, and then a third time before I could feint for his leg and punch him in the face with an armored fist.  He stepped back and I finished him, my sword piercing his leather breastplate and then his heart.

    
Nantar had come to D’gattis’ aid, killing the man who had pressed him.  D’gattis stood back now, his face a mask of concentration while blood flowed free from his shoulder.  Almost simultaneously, Genna finished her man with a slash across his throat, Ancenon cut the head from one of his opponents, having felled the other, and Arath disarmed his man and held him still, a sword to his jugular.  As fast as it had started, it ended.

    
Except for the archers.

    
I turned and knelt to make myself a smaller target just as D’gattis clapped his hands together and spoke a single word.  I don’t know what that word was but it ran through me like a shock wave.  I heard Nantar grunt and Thorn swear as well.  In front of me another patrol of Confluni, ten strong, dropped as one from the trees, landing limp, their faces twisted in pain. 

    
I listened for more but there were none.  I stood and shook the blood from my sword, leaving it clean.  It coated me up to the elbow, splashed on the lower leg and hip as well, some of it mine.  The man on the ground had gotten me.

    
I looked over at Blizzard and saw that he too had taken a few wounds.  I stepped over to the big stallion, standing still, tongue lolling, and saw that the white hide, stained green, had been parted at the shoulder and the rib cage. He would need a few stitches but wouldn’t die on me.

    
The rest were another case.  Drekk had a serious shoulder wound, D’gattis as well.  Nantar was unscathed, Thorn nicked by a few of the many arrows that had rained down on him, but Genna had scratches from head to toe from her run through the underbrush and her fight right after.  Arath’s man tried to bolt and the woodsman had to drop him, which was a shame.  Ancenon knelt down beside where Drekk lay, put his hands on him, and closed his eyes.

    
After a moment of silence and a ringing in my ears, similar to music, light seemed to shine through the Prince’s hands as they lay upon Drekk.  The Uman stirred, moaned and then lay still, sighing.

    
Thorn hissed, “We need to ride, and you incapacitated him.”  Ancenon looked up.

    
My insides felt like ashes after the experience.  I had never killed so many in so short a time.  I remembered all of the looks I had seen; the dying men, the sick feel of parting their flesh with my steel Sword of War.

    
At least none asked for War’s Wages afterward.

    
“He would have died,” Ancenon insisted.

    
“If we have to leave him, he’s dead anyway.”

    
I looked into other faces, concerned over this latest spat.  Nantar absently wiped blood from his armor so that there would be no permanent stain in the metal.  D’gattis placed a hand on his own shoulder and performed a lesser version of what I had seen Ancenon do for Drekk.  When he finished, even the fabric of his robe had healed.

    
After all of the other things I had seen, the fact that they could use their “magic” to heal each other struck me as less of a surprise.  In my heart I knew that there had to be some explanation for it, but in light of being kidnapped by a foreign god to another reality, holding an invincible sword and riding an impossibly huge horse, I didn’t need to go looking for it.

    
“We’ll tie him across his horse,” Arath said, wiping his sword clean with a rag.  “I’ll lead it.  You take the point, Thorn.  D’gattis will ride with you.”

    
“Me?” the Uman-Chi seemed almost insulted.

    
“You have the map,” Thorn said.

    
“It isn’t a map,” Genna threw in.  She tightened her leathers while I just appreciated the view.  Genna’s beauty had no trouble shining through blood and scratches.  The perfect curve of her behind distracted me from my reverie.  It’s funny how a girl can do that.

    
Ancenon and D’gattis looked up immediately.  D’gattis narrowed his eyes.  “And how would you know?” he asked.

    
She smiled from where she knelt, trussing up her shin-guard.  “I looked.”

    
“And who said you could do that?” Ancenon asked, scowling, his eyebrows lowered over his ambiguous silver eyes.

    
“No one,” she said.  “But I know it is a key, not a map.”

    
We all looked at Ancenon and D’gattis, save for Drekk, who had been tied across his horse and Arath, who had tied him.  Our enemy dead lay where they were slain, uncared for and of no concern.