Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (56 page)

    
I had only been home for a week when a man on a roan mare road into the coliseum with two Aschire just barely behind him.  A tall man with a firm body, he rode with a straight back and a look of supreme confidence.  From behind him the head of a dressed-out deer, freshly killed, lolled against his mount’s flank.  He reined in and looked around him with almost regal disapproval, his eyes finally settling on me.  Without speaking he shook out his long, black hair.

    
I had been sparring with some of my Wolf Soldiers.  I looked up and saw him standing there, the wild horse stamping in the open coliseum.  I smiled.  It had been a long time.

    
“Took your time getting here,” I said.

    
“These friends of yours slowed me down,” he responded, indicating Krell and Evokain.  “I cannot imagine a man who would refuse to ride a horse.”

    
Krell regarded Two Spears with dark, grey eyes.  “I cannot imagine a man whose legs are not strong enough to bear him,” Krell said.  “Get down from your shaggy perch and I will show you Aschire birding, hawk-face.”

    
I chuckled with Two Spears as he dismounted in one motion.  Evokain approached me and nodded.  “I did not think we would meet again,” he said, not taking my forearm.

    
I didn’t take his.  “I hope it is sooner next time.  I wish to be a great friend of the Aschire.”

    
“I appreciate the gesture, but I do not see why,” Krell told me.  “There is nothing outside of the Aschire for us, and there is nothing in the Aschire for Eldadorians.” 

    
Years of hatred had sewn the seeds of prejudice in the Aschire, and the roots ran deep. I invited them to eat and drink, Shela ran to her brother and hugged him while we spoke of the relationship between Eldador and the Aschire.

    
The Aschire are not just the people, neither is it just the forest.  The Aschire, it seems, is a wellspring of life between the Andarans and the Eldadorians and the Mountains and Tren Bay.  The Aschire is a beast of many parts working together for one goal.

    
And it all shrank a little every year. 

    
“The Aschire will have to evolve or become extinct,” I told Krell and Evokain, and Shela and Two Spears too, as we sat together over the deer that Two Spears had killed to honor us.  His sister wore its blood above her eyebrows as a token of his affection.

    
“The Aschire does not change,” Krell told me.

    
“All things change because death is change,” Two Spears answered him.  “All things die. That is the way of things.”

    
“The Aschire will not die,” Evokain told him, looking warily at Two Spears.  There was no love lost between the Andarans and the Aschire, either.  The Andoran plains had no trees.

    
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I told them all. 

    
We talked into the night.

     The next day the call of the town crier notified me that the royal personage would be visiting Thera.  The buzz was that Klem had not only paid his taxes for once, he had paid them on time, and that had drawn royal interest.  The Earl showed up at my doorstep before noon, with a look on him that somehow reminded me of Bobby the Service Writer.

    
I faced a pudgy, balding Man with a nasal voice and the look of a bunny, without the long ears.  Supposedly he had been a great friend of Glennen’s once, and Thera had been a great gift that had gone to seed.  I couldn’t see this man with a sword in his hand, and he didn’t have the bearing of a wizard or the stealth of a rogue like Drekk.  He didn’t run his city like some kind of genius accountant, so I couldn’t imagine any vital service he performed for anyone.

    
“Glennen, Alekanna
and
the royal court will be here on the morrow,” he informed me.  If he had been good at his job he would have known earlier, but I saw no point in exploring that now.  Two Spears and Evokain were on the plains with my Wolf Soldiers, drilling them mercilessly and trying to catch a few wild horses.  Krell and Shela had taken off to discuss Nina’s tutelage and how to grow things in a garden.  Kuruul, her five Dwarven artisans and another twenty Men and Uman laborers were setting the foundation for Casa de Mordetur, and if not for the crier I would have been setting off to do some recruiting for the Free Legion.

    
And for myself, of course.

    
“So?” I asked Klem. I still hadn’t forgotten the tone of his letter. We stood in the middle of the coliseum, surrounded by tents.  The sun beat down on us and I could see him sweating, probably not from the heat.

    
“So?” he parroted me, wringing his hands.  “So?  So how shall I feed them?  Where shall they stay?  Who will entertain them with plays and fine food until finally they leave Thera?”

    
“If you just want them to leave then don’t do any of that,” I told him with a straight face.  Klem, Earl or not, wore on my nerves. 

    
He took me by my shoulders, then saw the look in my eyes and released me.  I stood a foot taller than him and hadn’t made a reputation for my good temper, but as the guy who had punched through the gates of Katarran.

    
Not really, but he didn’t know that.

    
“Mordetur, I am in duress,” he pleaded.  “I
paid my whole tax burden
.  I have
nothing
to spend, and it will be no less than a thousand Tabaars to properly entertain the royal host!”

    
That’s when I realized that he wanted money.  Until then, I honestly thought that he’d come here just to complain and wondered why he chose me.  I guess I was the richest guy in town, much as the next richest guy owned two boats.

    
He wanted a loan.  Life can be sweet sometimes.

    
“Why don’t I just put them up?” I asked him.

    
He looked at me shrewdly for a moment, much as a weasel might look at… a bigger, meaner weasel?  I didn’t know for sure, but I finally decided that his skill as some sort of scammer had gotten Klem where he was today. Anyone who knifes his way to the top spends most of his time wondering who is knifing his way up behind him once he gets there.  The idea that I might out-perform him didn’t sit well with the Earl of Thera.

But then he remained out of debt, and I know what a good feeling that is.  How much damage could be done in one visit, after all?  He pointed me toward the best hotel in town and I rented every room in it, as well as the entire staff, indefinitely.

    
I had to put up the entire bill
and
entertain them, but the unique opportunity made it worth the gold.  Klem should have gone back into debt, but he’d been willing to hand this to me and I’d been smart enough to take it.  They hadn’t come to Thera to see him, anyway.

    
Lucky for me that I had the track income from Steel City, because that is where I drew the money until I could be replenished by the gold in Outpost X.  Of course I couldn’t just take anything I wanted from there any time I needed, but Ancenon would have a choking fit if I told him that I turned the King of Eldador away.  The problem with going to Outpost X being that I had to go to Chatoos first, and that took a long time that I didn’t have.  So I sent a message instead to Ancenon that the collective owed me the gold I spent, and then spent the money from my own account.

    
Eventually we would build a teleportal here.  Chatoos had never been intended to be the only one.

    
When Glennen and Alekanna arrived we had the usual hugging and drinking and smacking of backs.  Glennen acted impressed with our success and our strategy, and wanted every detail no less than five times.  He nodded sagely when we spoke of the tactics we used and he roared with laughter over giving back the city’s treasury.  He remarked that he had been asked about the Free Legion as a viable source of men and confided in me that he had given us his highest recommendations.

    
He toured the city in a carriage drawn by six black horses.  Alekanna, who refused to let Shela out of her sight even for a moment, held a hanky to her nose for most of the journey.  Klem found one million discrepancies to apologize for and another million ways to say he was sorry, saving his last million mentions of how Thera now, for once, had paid its tax burden.

    
We dined together at the hotel where they were staying.  Musicians played to one side and the bay window by our round table gave a beautiful view of Tren Bay.  Two Spears and the Aschire abstained from the royal personage and were keeping track of the men.  Glennen had seen the Aschire but waited for the after-dinner drinks to comment on them.

    
That dinner could be considered elegant by any standards – a variety of beef unique to Thera, where the cows were raised on whole corn.  The meat had been basted in a mix of wines with domestic and wild herbs, bringing out its own flavor rather than disguising it with something else.  There were peas and beets and potatoes, wild onion and something that tasted like carrots, except that it was green.  Rather than bringing it out in courses, they piled the food high before us, and we all dug in and feasted.

    
With his usual bowl of honey mead, and a hand on his over-full stomach, Glennen said, “I see the purple hairs are hanging ‘round your army.”

    
I smiled a wry smile.  Glennen wouldn’t even soil his tongue with their name.  “The Aschire have more to offer than even they know,” I told him.

    
Alekanna looked sideways at Glennen then at Shela.  Something had been confided somewhere but I knew right then that Glennen himself was the reason why relations with the Aschire were so bad.  No wonder all of the nobility shunned them.

    
“You know what squirrels are?” Glennen asked me, wagging a finger at me.

    
“Rats with a marketing campaign?” I answered him. He looked at me owlishly, the mead already affecting him.  He thought about that, then he shook his head and held out his bowl to be refilled. 

“They are treacherous and they are low,” he told me.  “They think they are trees and bushes, and they run around bare-arsed in their stupid forest.”

     “Did they wrong you somehow, then, your Majesty?” I asked him.

    
That marked the first time that Shela ever kicked me under the table.  She wore, of course, the red dress that I had gotten her in Eldador, her hair loose around her shoulders.  I wore my leather pants and white shirt.  No armor to protect my shins.

    
Glennen glared at me.  “You tell me, you don’t know?” he asked.

    
“I do not, your Majesty,” I said, looking him right in the eyes.  “Forgive me, it is none of my concern.”

    
He slammed his hand down on the table and all of the silverware, and all of the hotel staff, jumped.  “By Adriam’s beard, it is your concern if you are in my kingdom,” he bellowed.  He looked around and his eyes found Klem, and Klem actually seemed to become ten pounds lighter under that gaze.

    
“Tell him, Earl,” he commanded.

    
Klem cleared his throat.  “Well, Master Mordetur, it has always been the destiny of Eldador to touch the Andaran plains,” he said.

    
“Touch the plains!” Glennen agreed, slurping from his bowl. With his eyes off her, Alekanna touched Shela’s forearm for support.

    
“And so we sent them an emissary, and they were offered the citizenship of this Kingdom – by me, if I might add,” he continued.