Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (62 page)

    
In warrior’s tongue, that meant, “One of us will be planted here.”

    
“If he gets the best of you, I will be sure to intervene,” Shela assured me, giving a final tug on the front of my breastplate. 

    
“You better,” I said, kissing her cheek.

    
“Don’t flip on your side,” she warned me.  “He won’t fall for silly tricks.”

    
I marshaled the men myself and I addressed them.  “I am Duke Rancor Mordetur, of Thera,” I shouted to them, in the most imperial voice I could muster.  “I have been challenged by your Captain, Sammin.  Today, you stand witness to that challenge, and his death.”

    
The men, to their credit, stood stock-still.  Sammin raised an eyebrow.  “To the death, is it?” he asked.

    
“Yours,” I said, drawing the Sword of War. 

     He didn’t waste any more words
but charged straight at me, swinging his sword low.  The hard-packed ground shook under his weight. 

    
I moved to parry, my sword light in my hand, as with a flick of his wrist he pulled his own sword back and tried to plunge it into my groin. 

    
I turned sideways, his sword passing between my weapon and my armor, and quick as a dancer he pulled the long blade back against the steel of my armor.  It felt almost deliciously unnerving to come that close to death, protected only by a thin skin of steel.

    
I stepped forward and swung low, going for his shins.  He leapt up off the ground as the sword passed beneath him, and his broadsword rang my helmet.  I saw stars and tasted blood, having bitten my lip.

    
Sammin skills as a swordsman far exceeded my own.

    
No time to worry, just have to focus.  Nantar and Thorn had taught me that I would face better warriors, but if the heart remains undefeated then that is my best chance of survival.

    
I would be a father – I would hear my child’s cry when my wife bore it.

    
He pressed his advantage, circling to my right to make me open up my guard.  To counter him, I predictably began to circle to my left, and paid for it when his sword snaked in and caught me underneath the shoulder guard on the left side.  The arm felt like it had received an electric shock, and then hung useless at my side.

    
Nantar had taught me this trick as well.  The injury would take hours to recover from and would keep me off my balance.

    
His sword whipped around, over his head, to go for the other side.  He felt confident of his victory now, and was showboating.  That move, however, I knew from my time in the SCA.  He would go for my helmet again.

    
I forced myself to wait until the very last second, then parried with the Sword of War.  I smacked his sword aside and stepped in, too close for swords as long as ours, and bumped him with my armor.

    
He stepped back with a look on his face like he’d caught me watching porn in church, and hesitated long enough for me to take a few swings at his head and upper torso.  He stepped back to recover, absorbing my attack, then all of a sudden parried my blade and chopped down on my armor with a force that put me back on the defensive.

    
Once again, Dwarfish craftsmanship had saved my life, but now I knew the advantage I could play.  Sammin thought like a soldier. 

    
Soldiers obey rules.

    
He lunged for me and I turned sideways, trying to get his forward momentum to carry him past me.  I knew he’d never fall for that, but then I spun my sword around in my right hand and brought the hilt down with all of the strength I could muster on the back of his neck.  He actually cried out in pain and rage but, where he could have put his hand against me and pushed me away from him, he smacked my breastplate with the side of his broadsword instead, a feeble effort that I barely felt, as he danced back to regain his stance.

    
He wouldn’t fight with his hands, his feet, nothing like that.  In a sword fight he would fight with a sword.

    
He came after me again and I made an obvious effort to dance back like I had seen him do a moment before.  That would, in any other fight, have been a really stupid maneuver.  I wore twice his armor, and it would mark me as some novice fighter trying to imitate what he saw.

    
I knew Sammin believed just that.  I looked off balance and he lunged in to finish it.

    
His sword spun over his head like a baton and he struck directly for my left upper arm.  I braced myself with my left foot, pointed the right directly at him and, with all of the strength in my hips and lower back, I held my ground and put the Sword of War in his path, the blade pointed down.  I caught his cross guard on mine and, using my superior strength, I twisted my grip one hundred eighty degrees and pulled his body up against mine, his forehead inches from my helmet and our swords between us.

    
Sammin had made of himself an accomplished swordsman, a warrior, and a champion.  He had trained with gifted men; he fought with style and honor.

    
His green eyes met mine for just an instant, then I bit him in the face.  My canine teeth crushed the bridge of his nose and he screamed in surprise.  His grip loosened for just a second and I had the Sword of War free, leaving him with a stunned expression and his sword in a useless
en guarde
position.

    
I struck him full in the face with the heel of my hand.  He stepped back, blinking and bleeding from a smashed nose.  I pursued, swinging my sword over my head and, before he could parry, down the front of his mail, parting it like silk.  He moaned and kept retreating, bleeding from his chest and stomach, the big sword faltering in his grip.  I could have just beheaded him right then and been done with it, but I needed to make a point and I only wanted to make it once.

    
I smacked the sword out of his weakening grip.  It clattered to the beaten ground.  I drove my heel into the blade right at the cross guard, snapping it.

    
“I yield,” he gasped.  I could probably still find a way to save him.  We had an abundance of spell casters here.

    
My sword whistled out and took him under the left knee, parting his mail and severing his leg.  His eyes widened as he began to fall to the left, and his left shin to the right.

    
Before he’d fallen more than forty-five degrees to the horizon, I whipped the sword over my head and straight down on his right leg, taking him mid-way up the thigh.  The Sword of War passed right through his leg, and he fell straight to the ground, pumping blood onto the face of Earth from his severed limbs.  The dirt around him darkened.  I walked to his side, looking into his eyes through my helmet.

    
“I – I yield,” he repeated. 

    
“Who cares?” I asked.  The sword fell again, and his left arm leapt from his body at the shoulder.  To his credit, he hadn’t screamed once or shown any cowardice.  He probably couldn’t believe that this could be happening. 

    
It took more effort – I had to reach across his body – but I managed to cut his right arm away next, just above the elbow.  His body dumped blood on the ground and would soon go into shock.  He wouldn’t be alive a minute from now.

    
“Let this lesson be for all,” I shouted, looking at my men.  There were Free Legion soldiers crowding in around their ranks.  Many of them, mostly the women, had their hands to their mouths to stifle their surprise.  I had met almost every last one of them personally, if only for a few moments.  The Wolf Soldiers I had eaten with, trained with, and led to victory in war games.

    
“No man,
no man at all
, stands against me and lives,” I told them.  “The enemies of the Free Legion, of Eldador and of the Wolf Soldiers will all fail.”

    
For emphasis, I brought the Sword of War down and severed Sammin’s head from his neck.  Still wearing his steel cap, it went spinning to one side.  The earth around him had been stained red, and Uman blood dripped from my sword as I held it over my head.

    
Probably the most bloodthirsty thing that I had ever done, and it felt very good.  In that moment I understood the Roman people who attended the gladiatorial arenas, and the Emperors who turned their thumbs over fallen men.  In that brief moment, when you hold life in your own hand, you know satisfaction and Power.

     My men responded
as well.  I had drawn Wolf Soldiers from the more ruthless prisoners and dissidents – men and women who wanted power like mine.  To the last man and woman, we worshipped War.

    
“
Lupus
!”
they shouted, across the plains for anyone to hear.  “
Lupus
!
”
they cried, pledging their names and their lives to mine.  Swords whistled from sheaths and were thrust into the air. Free Legion soldiers looked at Wolf Soldiers in surprise.  How different they were, right then.

    
Nantar and Drekk came up to me and clapped me on the back.  Shela gave me a victor’s kiss, her savage tongue cleaning the blood from my lips, and my men shouted my name again.  Sammin’s remains discolored the plains, and his sword had already been taken.  One of my subordinates would ship it back to his wife.

    
A new era had begun.  As I shook my blade clean I could see that now.

    
“Somewhat unnecessarily violent, wouldn’t you agree?” D’gattis asked me.

    
We rode side-by-side, between the Wolf Soldiers and the Free Legion soldiers.  I had volunteered to hold the vanguard, the ‘van’, because our squads of ten were more effective against any encamped force that we came across. 

    
Also, I expected us to be attacked from the rear.

    
“Not unnecessarily, no,” I said.  Blizzard stood about four hands taller than his mount, so he had to ride a little in front of me and look over his shoulder to see my face.  It must have been uncomfortable for him, but you couldn’t tell it looking at his face while he kept a perfect posture.

    
“The man
did
yield, though,” D’gattis said.  I didn’t know what answer he wanted, but I had started to wonder.

    
Arath scouted our point with his woodsmen.  Thorn held the rear.  Genna, once again, performed our flying recon, and Ancenon and D’gattis rode with Shela and I.  Dilvesh coordinated all things through his Natural Trinity, keeping tabs on all of them.  Nantar marched with the men, and at any time Drekk could be anywhere.

    
I had offered Karl Henekhson Sammin’s job for the journey, and he had accepted, surprising us both.  He looked uncomfortable telling my Wolf Soldiers what to do, and they were still a bit shocked to be taking orders from a second new Captain, but Karl needed this.  I looked down the road that the poor lad would walk and saw a beaten, submissive man.  Let him get some self-esteem before he had walked that path too far.

    
Ancenon stayed quiet, keeping his own council.  Shela seemed to be off in her own world, riding sidesaddle with one hand on her stomach.

    
“It was a fight to the death,” I said, looking into the Uman-Chi’s ambiguous eyes.  “He disrespected me in front of my men.  You just can’t have that.”

    
“And if I were to disrespect you similarly?” he asked, an eyebrow raised.