Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (28 page)

    
Ancenon sighed.  “Close enough – we both need to be near it.  Thorn can take the point, D’gattis and I right behind him.  Then Lupus and Nantar, then Arath at rear guard.  Genna, we are going to go straight south, now.  No more skipping around.”

    
“Then I hope you like this sort of fighting, because they will be right on our trail,” I said.  All eyes turned to me, even Arath’s.

    
I had heard enough of this.  I didn’t care if, together, we were competent to take on the entire Confluni army.  I didn’t want their blood on my hands.

    
“We are close enough now where the safest place is Outpost X,” D’gattis argued.

    
“We are that close to Outpost X?” Genna asked.

    
D’gattis held up the thing which I, too, had mistaken for a map.  It had writing on it, but looked more like lines of words with a decorated border.  It looked like any other piece of paper to me.  Already, my attention turned from the devastation of the battlefield.

    
Thirty men!  How many had I killed?  I was losing track.  That didn’t seem right somehow.

    
“To all of you, this should look like a normal piece of parchment,” D’gattis said, holding it up for us to see.  Indeed, it did look like just that.  “To an Uman-Chi, however,” he continued, handing it to Ancenon, “it is a Cheyak relic, a portion of our heritage and, according to what it says on it, penned in Outpost X.”

    
“And it tells how to get there?” Thorn asked.

    
“No,” D’gattis corrected him.  “It doesn’t say much of anything.  But it has touched the very stones of the walls and floors of Outpost X.”

    
“And that gives it resonance,” I said.  Heads turned back to me.

    
“You know of specific item resonance?” Ancenon asked me.  Even with his silver eyes, he seemed incredulous.

    
Actually, it surprised me more that they knew about it.  It has to do with the theory of Brownian Motion, the micro-movements inherent in all molecules.  The theory is that nothing is really at rest – everything moves constantly at the molecular level.  If it moves, it should therefore move with a pattern.  Resonance is the property where the patterns of motions of one piece of material are transferred to another material by contact.  This lets a geologist, for example, place a tuning fork on a piece of rock and learn of its internal structure. 

    
“You believe that there are frequencies of motion inherent in that parchment which are inherent in Outpost X, and you have derived some way to seek out that specific motion,” I said.

    
For my world’s science: impossible.  Here?  Who knows?

    
D’gattis looked at Ancenon and Ancenon at D’gattis.  Then both looked at me. 

    
“Um, yes, that is absolutely correct,” D’gattis said, still disbelieving.  “But it takes two of us – because when one of us handles the parchment – “

    
“You affect the resonance.”

    
Another pause.  “Yes,” said Ancenon.

    
“But when two share the parchment, one can cancel the resonance of the other, by reading the other person and applying the inverse of his resonant frequency.  Thus, where one would eventually change the resonance of the parchment, two are keeping the original frequencies pure.”

    
The rest looked at me as if I came from outer space.  Well, guess what, guys? I do!  Ancenon and D’gattis just nodded.

    
“Can I see that for a moment, please,” I said.

    
D’gattis looked at Ancenon, who nodded.  With a trembling hand, he took the parchment from Ancenon and handed it to me.  It felt like old skin in my hand.  I looked at the writing, nothing but a series of squiggles to my eyes.

    
I waited for the language barrier to break down, as it had with every language that I had encountered so far.  I placed my hand on my sword, still nothing.  Finally, I whispered, “War.”

    
That did it.  The squiggles seemed to move before my eyes, to make sense, to speak to me.  Then it felt as if the insides of my brain were being rearranged; my knees gave and Thorn, of all people, took my elbow to steady me.  I shook my head and looked back at the parchment, blurred to my vision.

    
“Well?” D’gattis said.

    
I read aloud,

“write these words as the end approaches.  So severe is the wrath of Power, our god, as to his defeat at the hands of Law and Order, that he has smitten Earth in vengeance and, in so doing, cracked the land.  I fear that the water from the Forgotten Sea will overcome the Passes of Deception, destroying our plains and bringing to an end this noble land.

Such is the penance a people must face with the fall of their god.  I accept it willingly.  There will be degeneration and a Dark Age.  War will walk the land.  Our slaves, the Uman-Chi and their servants, the Confluni, I do charge to stand up where we have fallen and to change the face of
”

    
“You, um, read Cheyak,” D’gattis said.

    
“Guess so,” I said.

    
“We
really
need to go, people,” Genna said.  I tended to agree.  We could have a lot of time for revelation and reflection in a Confluni jail cell.  I could think of better ways to spend my days.

    
D’gattis took the parchment from me and then looked into my eyes.  The silver orbs were expressionless.  Then he looked at the parchment again.  I guessed that he had to remove
my
resonant frequency from it.

    
It took me a few more moments to stitch Blizzard’s side with a strand from his own tail.  Thorn held his head and talked to him to calm him while I sewed.  I did the same for his mount, which had taken a scrape from an arrow.  Genna went back on patrol and Arath doused some conspicuously left-behind items with our wintergreen extract and then commenced working on some false trails.  We spent fifteen more minutes before we remounted, and then Genna was back.

    
“Another patrol, moving this way,” she said.

    
“Damn, so
many,
” Thorn whispered hoarsely.  I agreed.  This must be extremely expensive for the Confluni government, and for what?  To keep trappers and prospectors out of their country?  What were they hiding that made this economically sound?

    
“Ancenon and I agree,” said D’gattis, holding the parchment, “that we are six to ten miles north of where we want to be.”

    
We had lost two horses.  Ancenon and Drekk were on two of our packhorses, leaving us one spare.  I lifted Genna up with one arm and sat her behind me.  “I guess this is the boring part, hun’,” I told her, as she wrapped her arms around my waist.  Thorn kicked his horse into motion, and the rest of us followed behind him in proscribed order.  We moved south at the fastest gallop we dared through the woods.

    
As a plains horse, Blizzard didn’t like ducking trees.  Genna and I bounced and were scuffed and yes, I admit, I took hold of the saddle horn from time to time.  Good thing for his strength, he bore the heaviest burden of all of the horses.  The armor I wore so lightly was all dead weight to him, and now Genna had been added.  Arath would stop from time to time behind us and create a false trail or spray a little more of our evergreen extract.  His mount seemed used to negotiating through a forest and Arath no less so.  As it turned out, Nantar led Drekk’s mount ahead of me.

    
We heard pursuit behind us.  Odds were they didn’t need the dogs or the trackers, they could hear the horses’ hooves pound and our armor clank.  We weren’t being discreet anymore, but counting on greater speed to buy us time.  Personally I anticipated the patrol that we would eventually overtake to surprise us more than I feared the patrols we left behind.

    
We went a half-hour by my best estimate before Ancenon called a halt.  He and D’gattis were smiling like kids on Christmas.  I could feel Blizzard miss a step as he tired.  The proud stallion had been ridden hard, and would work harder if his stitches should tear.

    
I didn’t see anything resembling what I had seen in Outpost X.  The trees were a little younger, the foliage a little thicker.  One went hand in hand with the other, the younger trees letting through more light.  Arath ran his horse back along our trail, and Genna followed after him on foot, both without saying anything.

    
“We are here,” D’gattis said.

    
“Then we’re doomed,” Thorn complained.  “I had hoped for some walls to stand behind, Ancenon.  They will rip us apart if they catch us in the open like this.”

    
“Did Outpost X have some sort of invisibility or mystical power?” Nantar asked.  I was wondering the same thing.

    
“No, not according to what we know of the Cheyak and their outposts of that time.  Outpost X was the same as any other outpost.”

    
“But Outpost VII is almost nothing like Outpost IX,” Thorn argued.  “There doesn’t appear to be a standard – “

    
“Outpost VII was nearly ruined by the Blast,” Ancenon said, his mind still mostly focused on the scroll.  “When the waters rushed in past the Straights of Deception there was flooding from a tidal wave.  Outpost VII took the brunt of these, allowing Outpost IX to continue on, unscathed.”

    
“So what is so special about Outpost X?” I asked.  I thought it was about time someone asked that question.

    
“It is a part of our heritage,” D’gattis said, indignantly.

    
“It hasn’t been sacked yet,” Thorn countered.  D’gattis glared at him.  I thought the answer more likely.

    
This also tended to explain the patrols.  The Confluni likely knew as much about the legend as the Uman-Chi.  A city like Outpost IX, left for plunder, would be worth a lot of gold.

    
D’gattis sighed and looked at Ancenon.  “I tell you, we are
here
,” he insisted.

    
“I agree, cousin,” Ancenon said, “however I don’t
see
it.”

    
“Um, I am sorry about all of the questions,” I said.  I wasn’t but it seemed a nice way to intrude on their conversation.  “But how long ago are we talking about, for this Blast thing?”

    
“You don’t know?” Thorn asked.

    
“Everyone knows that,” Nantar said.

    
“Let’s assume I don’t,” I countered.

    
“You speak Cheyak, yet you don’t –“ D’gattis began.

    
“Look, just answer, OK?” I didn’t like the direction that lead.

    
They looked at each other, then at me.  I could hear a horse approaching.  I
really
hoped it would be Arath.

    
“About 1,100 years,” Ancenon said.

    
“Big tidal waves, water rushing in?” I said.

    
“Yes, though I wasn’t alive for it.  In fact, the whole world was traumatized.  The Outposts were taboo for centuries, which is how so many of them were lost.”