Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (60 page)

    
I had seen it, too.  I sent Two Spears and his light horse down the right side.  They were also archers.

    
The arrows fell and the first two lines of Free Legion soldiers fell with them, pretending to be dead.  Their fellows ran over them, and were taken by the higher volley, never expecting it.  They, too, fell “dead.”

    
The visiting nobility applauded politely from a gallery, set off to one side.  The sun rose behind them, burning off the dew.

    
The archers loosed again just before the two armies clashed.  The Free Legion momentum stopped my Wolf Soldiers in their tracks.  Wood grated on steel as they fought to overcome the shield walls.  My men backpedaled as swords and pikes bristled from all portions of the shield wall defense.  Shields pushed together kept the Free Legion swordsmen at bay.  While they waited for openings, pikemen “killed” warriors at the front from a safe distance.  When arms reached around shield walls, swordsmen scored “kills” from that same protection.  Two units of ten from the center of my Wolf Soldiers were simply overwhelmed.  Other units pushed forward to replace them, and the center began to waver.

    
“Now?” one of my Wizards asked me.  I nodded.

    
I kept my strategy simple: don’t engage, and don’t fight them.  Make them come to you, make them expend all of the effort to try and kill you.  When they were tired, clean up.  Until then, make life difficult and frustrating, and keep the men alive.

     My Wizards engaged – lightening crackled down onto the Free Legion, dispelled before it could touch the soldiers as Dilvesh countered.  The purpose, of course, had not been to attack the troops – it had been to occupy the powerful Druid
.

    
Three mock fireballs arched toward my troops.  Shela dispelled them.  The ground began to shake and Wolf Soldiers lost their footing, but my other Wizard quelled that too.

    
Two Spears overran their archers, then turned into the side of the Free Legion’s defenses, slashing at their sides and firing arrows.  If these had been lancers, they would have done hideous damage; for now their long swords and arrows left “dead” wherever they went.  Shela dispelled mock lightning and enchanted arrow-fire against the horse for the most part, though there were casualties.

    
I ordered our center reinforced and pushed back against their superior numbers, now closer to our own from the casualties they’d taken.  Their warriors were already tiring – Arath should have known better than to start the battle with a charge.

    
Dilvesh tried to get the ground beneath us to go soft, but Shela toughened it against him and one of the Dorkan Wizards took over protecting our light horse.  We had lost about two hundred fifty men and they were down to almost three thousand by now.  The Free Legion soldiers, fighting heroes-style, were like wave after wave of a human sea, breaking up on the rocks of my squads of ten.  If this had been a real battle, they would be trying to keep the men rallied.

    
I gave the order for our forces to fall back fast, about forty-five degrees from the center, to the left and right respectively.  Here we really demonstrated the power of these squads.  I could give an order to every single one of them at any time, and Arath could only shout to his soldiers or blow trumpets for them.

    
My warriors retreated smartly from the Free Legionnaires, opening up their center and looking for all the world like they’d broken.  Before Arath could stop them, his men gave chase, only to be drawn into the center of my army and encircled.  Those little squads were more nimble than his hulking army.  This maneuver cut off my light horse, which went after the officers instead, but I had effectively encircled the Free Legion soldiers now with less than half their numbers.  Because most of their men were to the center they couldn’t meet me at more than man-for-man, and organized warfare prevailed against heroes-style.  The Wolf Soldiers pressed them into an ever-shrinking ball, dropping arrows on them the entire time.

    
Nantar threw down the Free Legion banner.  Arath swore loud enough for me to hear him, D’gattis only a little less so.

    
We drank mead together.  I had invited my Captains to join us as a reward.  Glennen, Rennin, Groff, Yerel, the Duke from Uman City, and a Baron or two were there.

    
Everyone wanted to talk about squads of ten.

    
“I want you training the entire Eldadorian army, Rancor,” Glennen said.  “I will move you to the capital and make you Duke of Eldador.”

    
“Hey!” said Hectar, Duke of Eldador.  I’d have been upset too.

    
“Your first loyalty is to the Free Legion,” D’gattis said, maybe too firmly.  Ancenon remained silent.

    
“I will train with you wherever,” Arath said.  “If I can learn that fighting style, I can teach it.  Then we have two forces to work with.”

    
“That is the smartest thing I’ve heard all day,” Thorn said.

    
Shela gripped my hand.  We loved the mansion in Thera, and she wanted her children to be born there.  I said as much.

    
“This is a lot more important than where your children are born,
Earl
Rancor Mordetur,” Glennen warned me.  Rennin sat oddly silent, likely remembering that he had threatened to sack my city.

    
“Not to me,” Shela asserted.  I silenced her with a firm grip on her hand.  It let her know that I didn’t plan to betray her.

    
“I’ll accept the Ducal position,” I said to Glennen, seriously.  “War knows that Thera should be a Duchy now.  And I’ll train Eldadorian and Free Legion commanders – from Thera.  That is not negotiable.”

    
“You swore fealty to me
,
Rancor,” Glennen said.

    
“And Adriam bound you to
us
,” Drekk countered – the most assertive he had been so far.  He looked sideways at the Eldadorians and added, “Who will you choose, when coin is paid for us to march against
them
?”

    
“What?” Glennen said, standing.  The others stood with him.

    
“Well, that was about stupid,” I said to Drekk.

    
“I would hear you answer that question,” Drekk persisted.

    
“As would I,” Glennen added, hotly.  What a nightmare!  This had been intended as my masterstroke.

    
Free Legion and Eldador squared off against each other with me as the reason why.  I had moved from comrade to commodity in a moment.  A week ago anyone here would have laughed, but my Wolf Soldiers, a young force, had just humbled three times their number in Free Legion soldiers, and the Free Legion were mercenaries.

    
Mercenaries with a name for themselves as being good at what they did.

    
I stood and yelled for quiet – they ignored me.  Things were being said, or were about to be said, that were going to be hard to take back.

    
I looked at Shela, she stood beside me.

    
The room fell quiet in an instant.  The woman whose strength derived from Power and desire found herself in her element.

    
When I had their attention she released the spell.  I don’t know what crimes I’d committed against my liege lord, but I didn’t think I would find out with Shela there.

    
“I am an Eldadorian noble,” I said to Glennen, who crossed his hands over his chest and smiled. 

    
“And I am a member of the Free Legion,” I told my allies, who were already starting to frown. 

    
“I will have no part of any action against either,” I told them all.  “We would all do well to remember that our forces are camped here, our supplies come through here, and the bulk of our troops are from here.  So long as these are true facts,” and here, I looked meaningfully at both sides, “I see no future in
any
campaign against Eldador by the Free Legion, or against the Free Legion by Eldador.”

    
“I have no problem with that,” Ancenon said quietly.

    
“Then I don’t see where I would,” said Rennin, who did a healthy trade with us.  Glennen just nodded.

    
I had lost some ground on both sides, but I was still standing.  We were able to agree that I would be receiving generals from Eldador and Arath from the Free Legion, and that I would be compensated.  As well, I’d made myself a Duke.  Glennen gave me the ring off his own finger as my Ducal ring.

    
“Do what I need of you, Rancor,” Glennen said, “and I will name you heir, as well.”

    
Rennin, Groff, Yerel and Hectar all nodded seriously.  I would not have expected this, but later learned that they, like me, had no desire to leave their homes for the thankless burden of running the Eldadorian nation.

    
But if I could defend them against three times their number in foreign troops, then they would have me. 

    
Right then I saw a glimpse of my future and I could hear War grinning in the endless void.

    
That night, for the first time ever, I prayed to my new god.

    
“Thank you, War, for your gifts, and your opportunities, and your bounty.  Thank you for this life I never knew I wanted, until I had it.”

    
So finally you are come to Me
, I heard in my head.

    
Does War answer all who pray to Him
? I asked seriously.

    
My children have little need of Me,
he answered. 
As you would say from your own place, I am not a
switchboard operator.

    
I had to laugh because I had to agree. 
Then I am doing as You desire,
I asked him.

    
You have barely
begun
to do as I desire
.

    
He spoke no more, though I prayed and prayed.  I thought that I had figured it out, but in fact I felt more like a kid who bought one of those ten-thousand-piece puzzles, figured out how to open the box and finally sifted through the pieces to find a corner.  I still had a lot of puzzle left, but now you had a starting point.

    
That left the burning question,
What was this the start of
?

Chapter Twenty-Six

Making Friends and Influencing People

     Teher is a walled city marking the boundary between Volkhydro and the nearest Confluni city, Tamara.  In every skirmish between Conflu and Volkhydro the battle turned on the fate of Teher.

    
The city had no gates on its western side and three facing back to Volkhydro.  Each bore a heavy iron grate, called a portcullis, which when dropped down closed off a thirty-foot long passage between itself and a solid wooden gate.  That gate stood three feet thick and forty feet high.  The usual arrow slits up and down the inner walls of its murder hole would make the average Confluni think twice before he ran in there with a battering ram.

    
They had no problem holding cities but with protecting the fall harvest from raiders.  What I had seen of them last year supposedly meant nothing compared to the bold raids by Confluni National Guard, or CNG, this year.  Half a hundred Confluni soldiers hung upside down from the west wall of Ulef as a warning to the raiders of what waited for them, and this had done nothing to dissuade the pirating.

    
“It is as if they had no grain themselves,” Henekh Dragorson told us, drinking from a mug of ale in his personal chambers.  He had hired the Free Legion to make a punitive strike against the Confluni.  Even if we all died, the Fovean High Council could do nothing against him and the Confluni might have something other than Volkhydro to worry about.

    
Henekh had been born of the Volkhan part of Volkhydro.  He was big and burly and wore skins, his body covered in hair and his face with a thick, rusty beard.  He had rough manners and he liked his manners that way.  Supposedly this made him different from the more civilized Hydran half of Volkhydro, but I didn’t see it.  Aileen had been a more gentle spirit, her brother tending more to be thin and wild than heavy and mean – but I saw same bawdy love of life in both.

    
I saw in Karl Henekhson a dour, quiet lad, just coming to man.  He had sullen brown eyes and a battle-ax over his shoulder.  He lived in the shadow of his father, stoop shouldered from one too many swats on the back.  He attended this meeting because he had to but he obviously didn’t like it.

    
“Perhaps they don’t,” Nantar said.  As one of these people he spoke frankly with them.

    
Henekh eyed him speculatively.  “Well, then that’s their worry, not ours, and not yours either,” he added, wagging a fat finger at Nantar.  “I want these raids stopped and these people dead, dead,
dead
!  That’s what I am paying you your gold for.”

    
“We have no problem killing Confluni, sirrah,” Ancenon assured him.  The rest of us just smiled.  The whole world had no problem killing Confluni, and the Confluni mostly brought that on themselves.  “And for your generous wages I assure you that you will be able to decorate all of the walls in Teher.”

    
“Can’t hardly wait to see that,” Karl mumbled.  Henekh snarled at him and dismissed us.  We were planning to start marching west the next day.

    
I had been a Duke for ten days.  Oddly, I felt no different than I’d felt as an Earl – except that Ancenon kept calling me, “Your Grace.”  That had me calling him, “Your Highness,” which was irritating.  I just wanted to make sure I finished here in time for Shela’s birthing.

    
We had most likely done the deed on the march back from Katarran.  For her the pregnancy had taken far too long, but I considered it one of those events where the destination ended up every bit as good as the journey.  The way we had been going it was only a matter of time.  I would have liked to have waited a few years, but in this culture you got your pretty girl pregnant and, when in Rome, etc, etc.

    
Shela had stayed in Thera of course, with all but a hundred of my Wolf Soldiers.  These were my personal guard who were honor-bound to go where I went.  An Earl could get away without an escort, I’m told, but
certainly
not a Duke.  This suited my men anyway, and Arath wanted to begin learning this more sophisticated style of combat as soon as possible, so the already-trained Wolf Soldiers made that easier.  They were giving instruction to their number in Free Legion soldiers, who would train more similarly, and so on.

    
If we could have a front line of fifty squads of ten then the Confluni would have a really bad day the first time they met us.  Much as they, too, roved their border in bands of ten, they still fought heroes’ style, and would be no match for us in organized warfare.

    
We bivouacked as we always did, in our own encampment outside of the city.  We gave the men leave and I personally handed out a gold Tabaar to each of my Wolf Soldiers.  They had earned it, working double-duty guarding me and training Free Legion soldiers.  This would be the last city some of them ever saw and they should enjoy themselves.

    
I think the Free Legion soldiers got some comparable amount, but not so high as my soldiers.  Their reward would be in plunder after the raid on Conflu. 

    
We sat around our small campfire and looked up at the night sky.  The Earth and the sky struck me as really beautiful here, although their moon had no “face” like Earth’s moon.  I didn’t know what meteor had scarred poor Luna but it sure gave her character.

    
“Your Grace seems pensive tonight,” Ancenon remarked, smirking to himself.  D’gattis clicked his tongue in approval of the comment.

    
“
Please
stop calling me that,” I said.  “I didn’t go around calling you
Highness
, before, did I?”

    
“You do now,” Thorn noted.

    
“Because he started it,” I said, and then heard for myself how silly that sounded.

    
“I can find some way to call you Lupus, if you like, I am sure,” Ancenon promised.  “But not in public, of course.”

    
“Etiquette and all,” D’gattis chimed in.

    
“More likely veiled Uman-Chi insults,” Drekk said, his usual sullen self.  D’gattis cocked an eyebrow at him.  He continued, “Everyone knows that Uman-Chi see themselves as the only ‘nobles,’ and everyone else as a pretender.  When you use titles, you really mean slurs.”

    
“Somewhat paranoid, don’t you think?” D’gattis said, airily.

    
“I don’t know,” Arath said.  “In Eldador, when you call a woman you don’t like ‘ma’am,’ what you really mean is ‘bitch.’”

    
That brought a dark look from Genna.

    
“Where I am from it is no different,” I agreed.

    
“And where is that?” Dilvesh asked me, leaning forward in interest.

    
“North of Dorkan,” I said, immediately.  Even Shela didn’t know where I came from. 

    
“You always say that,” D’gattis complained.

    
“And it isn’t true,” Nantar added. 

    
I cocked an eyebrow at him.  He just looked at me.

    
“Well, it isn’t,” Thorn chimed in, regarding me seriously.  “Nothing lives up there but Ogres. I know – my father traveled there.”

    
“Perhaps he is an Ogre, then,” said D’gattis.

    
“He certainly is as large as one,” Ancenon added.

    
“Although not quite so intelligent,” Arath said, smiling. 

    
“Nor so well-mannered,” Genna said.

    
Dilvesh chuckled.

    
I sighed.  They might try to draw me out but I didn’t bite.  I’d learned the advantages to having no identity and I didn’t want to lose them.  Shela had explained that some incantations used against people in power required their true name or birthplace (or both) to work correctly.  Death spells in particular required a lot of personal information and no one had any way to gather it on me.  Shela had taken a few strands of my hair just so that she could do what she called a “finding,” and this ran beyond even D’gattis’ capabilities.

    
“Where I am from,” I said finally, as the rest went on and on about my ogre heritage, “a man is entitled to his privacy.”

    
Nantar chuckled and clapped me on the back.  “Where I am from, too, Lupus.  I think the Uman-Chi are just upset because you used to be a commoner, and now you rank them.”

    
“Oh, ho?” said Thorn.  “I didn’t think about
that
.”  He grinned ear-to-ear now.

    
“Oh, hardly,” D’gattis almost sneered.  “Eldadorian titles are as common as grass and mean nothing in the Uman-Chi high court.”

    
“Well,” Ancenon said, being more politic, “not nothing.  There isn’t an Uman-Chi alive who wouldn’t refer to Lupus as …”

    
“Bitch?” Genna inserted for him.

   
“Just so,” Dilvesh agreed.

    
Drekk shook his head, standing.  “I am a common and glad of it,” he said.  “You so-called nobles can go straight to hell for all I care.  You have nothing I can’t steal from you.”

    
“
Except
that nobility,” D’gattis argued.

    
Drekk smiled one of his rare smiles and reached inside his tunic.  He still disliked the gold insignia on his breast, but he had changed his leathers for a finer set and still emblazoned them with it.  From behind that he drew an ornate insignia ring and tossed it to D’gattis.

    
“Don’t be too sure,” he warned, still smiling.  The astonished Uman-Chi held the ring slack-jawed as Ancenon (and I) discreetly checked our middle fingers for our own signet rings.

    
I thought back to when we were just traveling the land, not so long ago, and had to set our own watches.  Now we had guards to do that.  My command had ten sergeants, two lieutenants and my personal Captain of the Guard – a huge Eldadorian Uman named Sammin.  He had been the Captain of Glennen’s house guard and been “promoted” to learn from me.  It didn’t seem that he saw it that way.

    
“I need to check the pickets, then I am going to sleep,” I said, standing.  I bid them each good night, even Genna, then walked out through the tent flap.

    
Once again, I walked the night and checked the guards.  I loved the order of the lines of tents, the precision of the pickets.  It gave me a sense of pride as, nearing the exterior of our camp, men whom I had chosen for the Free Legion’s army snapped to attention and saluted, placing their fists over their hearts in fealty.

    
Once again, a familiar voice came at me from behind.

    
“So here we are again, about to enter Conflu.”

    
This time I didn’t turn around, just kept walking.  I heard her feet crunch the dirt in our small city as she followed me.

    
“Running from me again?” she demanded of me, in front of our troops as usual.