Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (46 page)

    
“I nearly killed him,” Dilvesh chuckled.  “Certainly that is the penalty to enter the Lone Wood.  However, I saw his skill as a woodsman and decided that this was a true son of Earth – and we have been friends ever since.”

    
Everything about Dilvesh spoke of power, from the shine on his boots to his faith in his Natural Trinity to the confident way he spoke about being able to kill out of hand.  I had known people like him in the Navy; the first to fight and the first to seek greener pastures when the going got too difficult.  I decided to keep an eye on the Druid in Green as events played out.

     Our marching order changed somewhat as Dilvesh took the roving position.  Now Arath had our rear, Thorn our point, Nantar and I the right and left wing, spread out over hundreds of square yards on the plains.  Rather than recon, Genna ranged behind us on the off chance that someone came after us from behind.  It took two days to ride to Steel City – closer to three as cautiously as we traveled – and we stopped every now and again to talk to peasant farmers, traveling merchants and the like to get the lay of the land.

    
Dilvesh proved more than adequate to take the point – nothing escaped him and his mount seemed almost as tireless as mine.  His Natural Trinity of Earth, Water and Weather informed him of the presence of anything that swam, walked or crawled if it came near him.  Drekk talked avidly to Shela as we traveled and the Uman-Chi kept their own council.

    
On our first night in the plains with this new person among us, Genna approached Ancenon.  We gathered around a campfire, the sun setting red on the plains, and Arath, who had the second watch, prepared to go to sleep.

    
“It is time to bring me into the Fire Bond,” she said to Ancenon.

    
“I don’t know that I can do that,” he said.  D’gattis, sitting next to him, nodded.

    
“Why?”

    
He looked at Dilvesh, his robes back, the green question mark turned upside-down on his breast a brilliant contrast against his white blouse. 

    
“Adriam has determined our number,” Ancenon said.

    
“You mean that you have,” Genna said.

    
I had been waiting for this.  I had caught Genna’s comment when we met Dilvesh, I suspected no less myself.  Ancenon had created a fire bond that matched his own agenda and somehow included Dilvesh in it accidentally.

    
“I don’t understand you,” Ancenon said, his politic smile painted back on his face.

    
“She thinks you arranged the fire bond, cousin,” D’gattis interjected.  “And lied about its parameters.”

    
“It would tend to explain things,” Genna said.

    
Ancenon, seated in his saddle by the fire, hung his head down, then looked back up at Genna.  The smile wasn’t gone but it had certainly faded.  I caught myself holding my breath and exhaled slowly.

    
“I would defy my own god to exclude someone from the fire bond whom I thought had died, and to include someone whom I had never even heard of?” he asked.

    
“You created the bond to bind us to some agreement other than Outpost X,” said Genna.

    
Shela shook her head. “No,” she said.  “It doesn’t work that way.”

    
“Oh, who asked you?” Genna snarled at her.  Shela pulled her head back and raised her eyebrows.  I don’t think the daughter of Kills With a Glance would be too used to that tone.  “Stupid girl, just because you know some plains magic –“

    
“I would hesitate to say that Shela is a stupid girl,” said D’gattis.

    
“She is a Sorceress of the Andoran plains,” Thorn said.  “Every bit as much a priestess as Ancenon is a priest.”

    
Shela stood slowly.  I watched her and said nothing.

    
This had been brewing.

    
“Genna, what these men entered into is a fire bond,” she said.  “Do you know what that is?”

    
“Yes.”

    
“What is it, then?”

    
The men all remained quiet.

    
Genna stepped up to confront Shela.  She stood a few inches shorter, in age a few years older and she made her living as a recon marine or this world’s equivalent to it.  She had no respect for Shela. 

    
Shela seemed to have something to say about that.

    
“It is a bond that keeps them from betraying one another over the treasure in Outpost X.”

    
Shela looked from Genna to Ancenon.  Ancenon nodded.

    
“The group holds each other in special confidence,” Genna continued, “and are pledged not to take the gold without the knowledge of the others, to tell no one else not in the bond of the treasure, of the location of Outpost X or how to find it.”

    
Shela looked at me next.  “Is that how you understand it?”

    
I nodded.

    
She looked at Drekk, asked him the same question, got the same answer.

    
Shela turned her attention back to Genna.

    
“They all believe this, and they are bound,” Shela said.  “And they are only bound because they all believe it.  Ancenon couldn’t throw another condition into the bond, because they wouldn’t know of it, and they would not be bound.”

    
“Then how do
you
explain this Druid?” Genna demanded.

    
“I cannot,” Shela said.  “Except to say that the will of a god is a strange thing.  I know that, now that he knows the conditions of the fire bond, they bind him.  Were he not then it would fly from his chest or destroy him.”

    
Wow
, I thought to myself. 
How unfair was that?
  To be bound without being asked to a group of strangers, and the penalty for not accepting the decision is death.

    
“Then why can’t I join this bond?” Genna said, pressing her.  I knew Genna.  She took things apart and put them back together in her mind.  She did that now.

    
“I don’t know that Ancenon can bind you,” Shela said, “but I know that he shouldn’t.  Ancenon has clear sign that Adriam’s will is for a chosen few, and that He has determined them.  He should not interfere.”

    
“Your opinion,” Genna said. 

    
“And mine,” Ancenon said.  “Believe me, Genna, I
want
you to be bound by the fire bond, but there is a good chance that Adriam will not allow it.”

    
“And so it will just not work,” Genna said.

    
Ancenon shook her head.  “That is one of many alternatives.”

    
“There are others less pleasant,” said D’gattis.

    
“Such as killing you outright, or Adriam arranging for you to die,” said Shela.

    
“The risk is not worth it,” Ancenon said.  “Take on the
fealty
and be bound to us.”

    
“Will I wear the mark?” Genna asked.  She grasped for something now.  I think this is where the need came from.  She felt like an outcast and this brought her back into the fold.

    
Or she wanted to have something over Shela.

    
“Wear it if you want,” Ancenon said.  “Understand that if there is some other beside Dilvesh whom we have not met, then the color you chose may be taken from you.”

    
Genna thought for a moment, then nodded.  Ancenon began the rights for the spell.

    
Genna had found her angle.  I didn’t doubt that we would be apprised of it.

     As we traveled through Eldador, we stopped and spoke with the common folk whom we passed.  People seemed to be peripherally aware of the government here, but King Glennen didn’t seem overly anxious to involve himself in anyone else’s life.  He had created a ducal system whereby certain nobles – appointed by him – governed areas of Eldador and maintained the law.  These nobles, his friends from days spent as some sort of wandering warrior during the middle years of the Fovean High Council, seemed much more interested in gathering wealth, pursuing pleasure and fighting petty wars with each other than they were in some concept of an Eldadorian state.  Eldador existed as a nation in name and a patchwork of shifting alliances in fact.  If any place might be ripe to start recruiting Free Legion soldiers, it would be Eldador.

    
We camped on the plains at night.  Shela’s leather lean-to seemed equally suited to be a small tent.  Her time of the month of the month had come, leaving her less interested in lovemaking than in discussing this new addition to our forces.

    
“Drekk is furious, and he blames you,” she told me. “He tells me that Genna is only slightly less so.”

    
“I didn’t do anything,” I argued.  “Why not blame Arath?  He brought Dilvesh here, not me.”

    
She shook her head, her pretty hair flying out around her.  I lay on my back, in our tent, my belly full of venison from one of Arath’s kills.  I lay naked and Shela rested on my chest, dressed in nothing but a leather g-string.  I had my arm around her thin waist – thin for a few more months, anyway.

    
“Adriam brought Dilvesh here, Arath just accompanied him for the last steps,” she said.  “At least,” she added, covering my lips with her soft fingers, “that is how our rogue sees it.  The warriors look to you for guidance and you guided them to let the Druid in.  Drekk hates the half-breed, hates Druids more and sees lost gold every time he looks at Dilvesh.”

    
I shook my head this time, and bit her fingers to make her let me speak.  She laughed and flicked my nose, which I crinkled at her.  “I take it Druids are about a step below bounty hunters?”

    
“Oh, no!  Bounty hunters are a time-honored profession, husband, at least in this part of the world.  What does a weak man do, when a stronger man takes what is his?”  I hadn’t considered that.  “But Druids sacrifice animals and
each other
,” she pressed her lips to my ear; her hot breath on my neck aroused me.  “They draw energy from three gods, not just one.  They are a crux, unpredictable.”

   
“Yet he is no match for you?”

    
She smiled and raised her chin.  “My strength is drawn from the needs and wants of mankind, as is my god’s power.  So long as man is unsatisfied, he will pursue Power and feed me.”

    
I considered how that made sense.  Her beauty had the men in the group obviously wanting her, although they wouldn’t violate the fire bond.  In every simple thing she did, her sexuality and her self-confidence were evident.  There were times when we were riding that I just wanted to take her right there on the plains.  If man’s unfulfilled desire became her strength, then that made Shela strong indeed.

    
“Genna worries me more than Drekk,” I said.