Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (65 page)

    
Happened again in a soccer game.  My best friend slept with my girlfriend and I kicked a soccer ball into his head.  Nearly killed him

    
Since then I had resisted it.  When the ensign in the Navy had shoved me and I decked him, I almost went berserk but I reined it in.  It hurts your soul to be that way – don’t let anyone tell you different.  You have to actually look at the most violent part of you and embrace it; tell it to take charge.

    
It doesn’t take the taste of blood – it can either come on by surprise or, when you’re older, it might take an actual, conscious desire to be as violent as you can possibly be and not care about the consequences. 

    
I had that now.  My world went red, righteous tears were already flowing from my eyes.  Those bastards had killed my wife – my
wife and child
!  No, nothing mattered now expect that every last one of them had to die.

    
I let it boil in me for a moment, let it fester, tasted it.  My skin prickled from the tips of my toes to my fingers.  Like a real wolf raising its hackles against an enemy, except that the real wolf just wanted to survive.

    
Dilvesh’s mind tried to withdraw from mine, seeing nothing that he could do to help me.  I held him cruelly, not even knowing how I could do such a thing, as I spurred Blizzard forward.  Dilvesh had argued for Shela to stay, let him witness my death as his own.  Blizzard leapt from the ground into the forest, my lieutenants ordered the attack as I left them standing.  I didn’t much care if any of them followed me or not.  The odds remained about eight thousand Confluni to one of me, but that didn’t bother me.

    
No way would I live through this.

    
Blizzard’s hooves pounded the soft earth and the wind pulled at my long hair, grown out from beneath the Wilhelm.  Branches and bushes tore at our armor. A war cry, more a scream of anger and pain than anything else, rose up out from the depths of me.  I wanted blood now, looking for the thing that would end the pain of losing Shela.

    
Less than a minute passed before I thundered into the camp where their magicians had hidden.  I saw twelve of them in long, flowing robes and waist-length, black fetlocks.  One of them turned and pointed at me.  Without slowing I raised the Sword of War and pointed it back at him, letting him know that I would kill him first.  When he released the same energy that he had released at Shela my sword drank it all like wine and hungered for more. My body tingled like ants swarmed it.

    
Blizzard’s charge bore straight down on the surprised little man and the Sword of War fell like a scythe, reaping the top of his skull.  Blizzard’s hooves trampled two more into the ground and another smacked his head on the Dwarfish barding and went down.  I wheeled the stallion to the left, mud and turf flying from his hooves, and my sword cleaved down, reaping another of their number.  The spatter of hot blood touched my face and drenched my hungry soul.  A hastily cast spell destroyed a tree behind me.  I licked the brains from my salty lips as those Confluni magicians who hadn’t died panicked and ran right into my advancing lancers.  Free Legion warriors skewered them without slowing. 

    
I hauled on Blizzard’s reins and drove him toward the main clearing, through the short remainder of the forest.  Here were the armed soldiers.  Again, Blizzard’s hooves pounded the soft earth, and again my battle-scream preceded me as we burst out of the murk of the forest into the open air.  Blizzard charged through the remains of the CNG archers and the Sword of War drank yet again, carving a red and gruesome path to the back of the advancing Confluni horde. They barely resisted, running from me, unwilling to fight. They were boys, children – warriors not yet ready to hold a sword.  Where my weapon didn’t reach them, Blizzard’s steel-shod hooves crushed flesh and bone, swords ringing on his armor as his scream joined mine and we were one, a flurry of white hot death, tears and blood.

    
I didn’t want this, this wouldn’t help me.  I didn’t want to slaughter, I wanted to
fight
.  I wanted to beat my sword on another man’s, best him, crush him, let him
know
who took him.  I wanted to fight and kill until I could take no more.

    
My bloody hand rose and fell through a crimson haze.  I didn’t know where my lancers were and I didn’t care.  Had I been thinking I would have rallied them and led slashing attacks on either flank and tried to turn their army away from the Free Legion, allowing our foot soldiers a counter attack.  That wouldn’t do it for me, though.  Blizzard overtook their advancing army and I engaged them, my sword swinging low.  I felt the bodies trampled under Blizzard’s iron-shod hooves as if he were a part of me. CNG were turning to counter this blond on a white menace who invaded their ranks. 

    
They had me surrounded and stabbed at me from every side.  The Sword of War sang against their armor, bathed my right arm up to the shoulder and both of my hips in blood and gore.  Blizzard’s barding and his iron-shod hooves offered him some protection from those who got past my guard.  I realized I had a bloody gash in my thigh, a dagger wedged between the plates of my armor.  A troop of pikemen already approached to counter us – I knew I would not be able to keep those weapons from his alabaster hide.  My shoulder and back ached and my bicep felt full of wet sand.  Blizzard’s sides were scuffed and wounded and the bold stallion had begun to falter.

    
I will be with you, Shela,
I thought, cleaving another skull, readying myself for the pike that would punch through my armor or the sword that would catch Blizzard unawares.

    
They pressed me and I could not fall back.  My enemy stood more than ten ranks deep on every side.  I felt Blizzard gather himself beneath me, he would rear and this time there would be no way to protect his underside.  One of them would strike and then I would lose the bold stallion.  A pikeman threw his weapon and it took me in the face, pushing my head back and making me see stars.

    
The time had come to die.  To be with my family again.  I shook my head as another warrior planted the end of his spear against my breast.  Blizzard screamed from being wounded.

    
Faith, I thought, remembering Ancenon’s words.  What faith have I?  I had faith in Shela, and now she was gone.

    
With a rumble of thundering hooves, Free Legion lancers crashed headlong into the rear of the Confluni guard like a tidal wave.  Later I would learn that my lieutenants, who watched in horror as I threw myself into the Confluni mass, simply decided that I lead by example and followed me suit. Lances killed one, two and three men for every mounted soldier, and then their swords came out and their momentum carried them well past the center of the advancing army, carrying me along in a wave.  The pikemen who had pursued me had been caught along their right side and overrun.  The Lancers’ victory renewed me and the Sword of War rose and fell again in a crimson wash, reaping a harvest of blood and brains to the insane anthem of screaming, moaning, crying, and calls for mercy.  Dilvesh cringed back farther into my mind as I reveled in tribute to the god War.  I think back on it now and I can remember a small part of me that saw this in horror and a
huge
part of me that knew a joy that exceeded orgasm in the physical pleasure it brought to me to kill
this
many people all at the same time. 

    
“You took my wife,” I finally screamed in Confluni.  “I will kill you all, I will kill every last one of you and hunt down your families and kill them, too.  You will remember the
White Wolf.
”

    
I swung the sword over and over, killing and screaming, closing the distance between my lancers and the Free Legion.  Unconsciously I returned to the place where she had died.  If the Free Legion tried to stop me, then I would gladly kill every last one of them, too.

    
Blizzard clambered over the naked mound that was all that remained of the small city’s earth barricade.  Men were screaming behind me.  My allies parted before me, whether in respect or fear I didn’t know.  On a dirty hill she lay on her back, Ancenon at her side.

    
I dropped my sword point first in the ground and dismounted.  I knelt at her side, my gauntlet off and my hand on her breast.  For a moment I felt nothing, then that sweet breast rose and fell.  Blood fell from my face to spatter her leather harness.

    
I looked into Ancenon’s ambiguous eyes.  They told me everything that I needed to know. 

    
She
lived.
  It had been close.  He had gotten to her in time.  She would
live.

    
“Thank you,” I said.  From rage to sorrow, my eyes misted and my nose filled with a burning, itching mass.  I wept unashamed tears both of grief and relief.

    
“No need, your Grace,” he countered, a hint of a smile on his lips.  “The two of you saved us all.”

    
“The two of us?” I asked, my voice cracking.

    
He nodded.  “Look behind you,” he ordered me.

    
Trembling and weary, I obeyed.  It took everything I had left, but I stood and looked to see a shaking Blizzard, his head down and his front legs splayed, so exhausted that he could barely stand, and bleeding.  Next to him my sword had blood sliding from its perfect blade and soaking the ground - a hideous, man-eating plant.

    
Beyond them I saw the backs of our soldiers in advance, outside of the small city, being led by Arath and Nantar.  Of all people, Karl lead my Wolf Soldiers and the Free Legion squads on one side, and the Free Legion fighting heroes’ style on the other, in a classic pincer, pressing the enemy against our mounted swordsmen.

    
Our troops had crushed our enemies, less than a thousand of them tried to claw their way back to the woods.  Between them and their goal, the Free Legion warriors and mounted swordsmen ran slashing attacks under our lieutenants.  Dilvesh had freed himself from my mind and had joined them on that big horse of his.

    
The Confluni had no leadership, no magic and were faced on three sides by what were now superior numbers.  They were doomed.  We would kill them all, just like Nantar had wanted.  Just as I had tried to do myself.

    
My cheeks were drenched with blood and tears, Ancenon turned away to give me my dignity.  Shela lived.  Shela who loved me.  Let the whole world burn in hell if I could just have that.

    
There is no stink like the stink of a battlefield.  Men die and release their bowels, or get split from shoulder to crotch and dump their entrails on the ground.  Birds descend like rain and pick them apart – the rats and other scavengers aren’t far behind them.

    
We had rebuilt the small city and were treating our men.  Half of our warriors were injured somehow, of the two thirds who hadn’t died in the battle.

    
I had about 30 Wolf Soldiers left, led by Karl.  They adored him – he had called up Free Legion support and saved their lives.  All of them injured, Karl included with a nasty gash down the side of his arm, I had seen to them being treated before I had sought it for myself.  Blizzard and I were both a mass of scratches – a particular nasty gash down the stallion’s whither would keep me off him for a week or more.  My thigh burned from a sword wound, my ribs from a dagger, and I would bear a scar under my right eye for the rest of my life – the Mark of the Conqueror.

    
Which is what our men were calling me – Lupus the Conqueror, the Killer of Conflu.  I had no idea how many lives I had ended – more than my share assuredly.  Had she been able I am sure that Shela would be cursing a blue streak about the condition of my armor.

    
Now she lay in my pavilion, guarded by my wounded Wolf Soldiers, unconscious on a cot with me seated on a three-legged wooden stool, holding her hand.  Three chests of gold and rare gems were arranged neatly in a corner – the take from the enemy, as yet uncounted.