Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (17 page)

    
“Get out of his way, Bawser,” I warned.  I saw the murder in his eyes, and his men, about thirty by their horses in the compound, were perking up, and looking for direction.  Bawser had about fifteen men now, looking at Jerarl’s thirty with some worry.

    
“Get off my land, Jerarl,” he warned.  I had already stepped away from Bawser and Jerarl followed me.  I didn’t want the old man to get hurt.

    
This convinced me that Jerarl had been up to something from the beginning.  What I had known of mercenaries came from ancient Earth history, not here.  I had been acting in my own behalf.  Coincidentally, it had been in the interest of Bawser Shipping.

    
Jerarl leapt at me with his sword up, looking to get inside of my reach and to engage my sword, to keep it off of him.  He must have believed that if he could get the sword out of my hands, he could take me.

    
Man muscles are much larger than Uman, and mine were larger than those of most Men.  I recognized the twist in his wrist as the cross guards of our swords locked and countered by loosening my grip with my sword hand, making his sword slip out of the lock.  He found himself standing before me with the flat of his blade facing me, having no
en garde
position available, and the edge of my sword inches from his unprotected face.

    
I could have let him go, or demanded he surrender, or taken him as a hostage against his men – but I couldn’t know if that would work and, quite frankly, I wasn’t looking for the Good Guy of the Year award.  I used my greater strength and size to force his forearms back and blatantly slashed my sword down across his face, making it clear to his men that I could and would cut him or any of them who came up after him.

    
I am amazed at how little it takes to kill someone.  He dropped like a rock, his face half-sawn off, screaming and moaning and his heels drumming on the ground as he passed.  Bawser’s men stood and shouted a cheer, and Jerarl’s were already getting up on their horses.  I whistled for Blizzard as the mercenary poured out his blood on the ground and he died, forgotten except for what killing him meant.

    
I had worked with Blizzard for weeks on this now, as well as other commands.  That advice had come from Tezzen as well.  The stallion bulled his way past two mercenary horses, stepped one Uman’s foot as he sought to stop him, and stood at my side in a few seconds.  Normally, a heavily armored man would have a hard time mounting a horse, much less could he do it quickly in battle.  In English jousts, the nobles used to armor themselves so heavily that they needed to be levered up to their horses.  In combat, the English Mastiff could be the knight’s best friend and worst enemy, used to protect his master by leaping up at opposing knights and knocking them from the saddle.  The knights would then be trapped on their backs and easy prey.

    
The Dwarven armor felt surprisingly light and I could mount easily.  The saddle had been built strong and could stand the weight of my armor and the strain of my quick mount.  Blizzard had no trouble with my weight.  Then I was one mounted man against thirty.  Bawser’s fifteen were already running for their weapons.

    
The mercenaries obviously saw Bawser’s men with swords ready and had no leader.  Likely they could have taken us but there was no money in it and they were out the gate instead.  No one tried to stop them.  Myr had no “police force” other than a local Master At Arms, paid by the Duke of Myr, and he usually just kept fights from turning into riots and trained the city garrison.

    
I rode to the gates and shut them from Blizzard’s back.  Bawser’s men were shouting my name and shaking their fists in the air, excited by the prospect of battle. Bawser looked at me with what seemed to be a sense of pride in his eyes.  I was just glad I wasn’t dead.

    
That seemed to me like a pretty lucky win.  I would have expected a seasoned warrior to put up a better fight.  I would also have expected a little help, although I had learned here that interfering in such a duel went against the Volkhydran way.  Again, luck and the exceptional sword had saved me.

    
“We should ship as soon as we can,” Terok was saying.

    
I nodded.  Aileen couldn’t possibly be comfortable sitting on my armored thigh, the cold steel changing the shape of her butt, but she refused to move and just looked at me, as if she, like I, couldn’t believe that I had survived.

    
We were still at the shipping compound, in Bawser’s twenty-by-twenty-foot office.  He’d installed a big window where Bawser could make sure he could see everyone working, an expensive-looking desk covered with paper, weights and ink stands, and a round table where I sat with Bawser, Terok and Aileen.  The last two had appeared as we were arranging for the Master at Arms to haul away Jerarl’s body.  Drelg could interview our new warriors and would take over my sparring for today.

    
Bawser smacked his hands together.  “Fortune to the fortunate, I will have a jump on the entire market in Volka, even if the shipment is a little small.  Rancor, you will be taking the wagons, of course.”

    
“That’s why I get the big bucks,” I said, smiling.

    
Bawser nodded solemnly.  “The biggest men we have, but no more than five, I think.”

    
When you think about it, more of what you say is slang than you might otherwise believe.  Nothing like a complete change of place to remind you of that.

    
“Five should be enough,” I said.  “Unless Jerarl’s men are looking for revenge.  Then all fifteen won’t be enough.”

    
“I will have another fifteen in a week,” Bawser said.  “But it isn’t like mercenaries to be vengeful.  There is no money in it.”

“I’
m worried about the money aspect of what they’re after,” Terok said.  Aileen still looked silently at my face with sad eyes.  It was
very
uncomfortable in front of her father.

    
I knew how I had gotten this sweet job, now, and Aileen.  Elle had likely known the two of them and proposed me as a rich warrior of marriageable age.  Fat Garret had obviously been a warrior by the damage done to him – in fact, former warriors had the wanderlust out of them and appreciated a good home, and made good husbands in Elle’s opinion.  Because Bawser had no son, he needed to adopt an heir and Aileen, at eighteen years of age, and pretty, was in what locals considered her prime. With thousands of people living there, Myr might still be considered a small place. 

    
“We’re lucky Rancor saw right through him,” Bawser said, nodding in my direction.  Before I could decline the praise, the door to Bawser’s office blew open and Aileen’s brother strode in.

    
Tareen wore a maroon cape he liked and riding gloves, and had a light, leather breast guard and a rapier at his side.  He had left to complain to the Duke’s office of the attack and to insist that the mercenaries be driven out of town. Myr had more than three hundred warriors in its local garrison and could handle thirty miscreants.

    
“Well?” Terok asked his son, as he sat with us, pulling a skin from under his arm and offering it to Bawser, who took it.  Tareen looked me in the eye and nodded, as if to say, “OK, you challenged someone and I accept you now.”  I didn’t like it.

    
“They will act.  The Duke’s man was very receptive to our request,” Tareen said.  Terok nodded, taking the skin as Bawser pulled a quick draught.  I hadn’t known that he and Bawser were friends before today.  Now I sat at a table with both of them, as someone whose opinion they wanted.

    
Aileen stroked the side of my face but didn’t say anything.

    
Tareen caught it.  “Speaking of receptive to requests.”

    
Bawser guffawed and Terok almost snarled.  Aileen seemed to rise from her reverie and looked sadly at her brother.

    
I patted her butt lightly.  “Tomorrow, we leave,” I said, accepting the skin from Terok and, before drinking, added,  “I will pick the men.”

    
“Take Tareen,” Aileen said, softly.  Tareen raised an eyebrow and her father scowled.

    
“I need him here, girl – there are hops and barley to measure and barter for.  Would you trade Bawser’s business for mine?”

    
“Oh, I never do any of that, anyway, father,” Tareen argued, fingering the hilt of his rapier, as Aileen took the skin from me and drank surprisingly deeply.  It was a good wine, odd from a beer merchant, though they must get sick of beer.

    
“Well, it is about time you did, then!”

    
“I would pay him well, Terok,” Bawser added. “He wants to go.  You were a lad once yourself, you know.  Let the two of them have their fun.”

    
“Some fun, killing your way across the Volkhydran midland,” Terok grumbled.  Aileen whimpered and nearly choked on her wine as she passed the skin back to Tareen.

    
“I will take a shipment of our beer and sell it in Volka to the sailors.  Maybe I can get a vat or two into a ship bound for Trenbon.  I am told the Scitai love beer.”

    
I had no idea what the Scitai were.  The idea obviously interested Terok, and it was settled before I could try to squelch it.  Tareen wiped the end of the skin, as none of us had, and tilted the skin back, draining it.

    
Aileen wanted Tareen to go to ensure that I came back.  I didn’t intend to come back, and that wouldn’t go over well with Tareen.  It would also burden him with my good-bye.  I couldn’t say that now, with this going otherwise exactly as I wanted it.

    
We stood and said our farewells.  Terok grudgingly asked me to his house for dinner that night, and Bawser wheedled an invitation for himself.  Aileen just kept looking as they left.  I tried giving her a dry kiss on her lips, but she turned it into a deep, wet one right in front of her father.  I
really
didn’t like that, though I saw no graceful way out of it.  Terok harrumphed and took my wrist in his hand, saying nothing.

    
As they left, Bawser nudged me.  “The rest of you must be as big as the whole of you, lad, by the look of that one,” he said, laughing.  I didn’t get it for about an hour, and then I kind of wished I hadn’t.

Chapter Eight

From the River to the Sea

    
Aileen awoke alone in her bed, the morning dawning bright and red.  Her stomach churned as she tried to rise, and after a moment’s fruitless battle against the inevitable, she threw back the covers and leapt from beneath the pile, rooting for the chamber pot kept beneath her.  Just in time she found it and retched miserably.

    
Minutes later she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her stomach still a tumult like the river in a storm.  Absently she stroked her belly, as she had come to do this past week, knowing that Rancor’s seed had caught her off her guard, and that she would, in nine months’ time, be a mother.

    
He didn’t know, of course.  A typical man, he thought nothing of her cycle, and didn’t miss it when it didn’t come.  Since age thirteen she had been as regular as Law, and when she had skipped, she had known.

    
Her mother knew, had hugged her and told her what a good man Rancor was – so powerful and wise and
handsome
.  And Bawser thought highly of him, a good woman behind him and he would have Bawser in early retirement and glad of it.

    
Aileen saw a clay jar, the seal still on it, sitting like a promise on her dresser.  She had thieved some preserved beets from the larder, as she had done regularly since she was a little girl, but the thought of them turned her stomach.  She stood and pushed the white porcelain chamber pot aside.  She would let the maid get it – she saw no point in hiding her condition.  She walked to the window and looked southwest, in the direction of Kendo, and Volka, and her Rancor.

    
Yes, mother
,
she thought
.
 
He is a good man.  And I love him.  Oh, Law, do I love him.  He has done to me what no other ever has – touched my heart as well as this body.  Eyes so blue that I swim in them when he looks at me, and a laugh so rich and pure that Adriam himself must stop to listen.  Rough hands that I am safe in, strong arms that I still feel around me.

    
One tear – her last one for him ever - fell down her cheek, rolling to her chin as she lowered her sad face, and dropped like her whole life to the rough wooden boards.  Rancor wasn’t really his name, she knew.  But that didn’t matter.  Of all his wonderful parts, she hated his heart.  It made of him a wanderer, a heart that belonged to War, a desert where love’s flower died.  She would always remember him as her first lover, and she would bear him a child, quite likely her only.  But she would never be his first love.

    
She looked up again, resolve steady in her blue eyes, straight into the sun.  And she swore to Law that no matter what happened, she would be a good mother to this child, and raise it as a True Child of Law – pure and respectable.  If a girl, she had decided she would be Erica, and Eric if a boy.

    
Aileen knew what she would have to do.  Rancor would never come back.  She had known it that day in the compound, after the killing.  When she had run to him from her father’s carriage and, for just a second, she saw in his eyes that he didn’t want her fussing over him.  She knew that he had no room for her in his life.  She had taken her last kiss from him and watched him go, sent her brother because Rancor would never say good-bye to her himself, but might pass a note through Tareen.  This was the best she could hope for.

     I can remember thinking to myself,
Not smart enough to get out of the rain
, over and over again.  The downpour beat a tattoo on my helmet, dribbling down the Wilhelm’s horns and around my forehead to my eyes.  Blizzard slogged southwest on a muddy trail free of his new armor, the wagon bearing it creaking next to him, one of seven in a line.  Two teamsters sat atop each wagon, another man on a horse next to one of them.  I had two more men a half-hour ahead of us, two men twenty minutes behind.  Every hour, one checked in from each. 

    
I figured we could still be surprised if someone were to watch us long enough to get the signals, but our moving made that pretty hard.  We would keep any casual brigand from taking a chance, anyway.

    
It took three days to ride with wagons from Myr to Kendo.  We were on our second.  Tareen had brought one wagon with three huge vats of beer and six draft horses pulling it.  I put him on the point to keep from having to talk to him.  The teamsters spoke softly among each other as we traveled.  I didn’t permit the guards to talk, although occasionally I heard a guffaw from ahead.  At night Tareen proved to be a storyteller in love with his own yarns, and just as loud.  He also wouldn’t stand watch and clicked his tongue at me for doing so.

    
The wind changed direction and the rain fell harder, right into my face.  It carried no noise and no sense of danger that Blizzard or I could detect.  I had been hoping that it would lessen up by noon so that we could have a dry camp, but it didn’t seem likely now.  We were wearing out the horses pulling the wagons through the mud and I debated calling it an early day when we pulled up over a rise and saw Tareen and Varne, another Volkhydran, standing their horses.

    
I kicked Blizzard into a run and he obliged me.  The teamsters began circling the wagons at the top of the rise, and the other horseman rode back to bring up the rear guard.  I wiped rain from my eyes and looking questioningly at Tareen a moment later.  The other guard looked down the road and avoided my eyes.

    
“Care to share?” I asked, angrily.

    
“Hmm?” Tareen asked.

    
I sighed.  Slang problem again.  “Why are you just standing here – why wasn’t one of you riding hard to warn us if something is wrong?”

    
Tareen bristled and Varne chimed in.  “We were about to – we really weren’t sure what we saw and we were debating whether we should check it out or go back.  We weren’t as far ahead of you as I thought.”

    
“Ok,” I said.  “What did you
think
you saw?”

    
Tareen said, “I heard a horse whicker and someone curse in Uman.”

    
The wet slap of hooves on a muddy road told me that the man who had lit off for the rear guard was already returning at full gallop, the other two behind him.  Twenty minutes walk translated into about seven minutes run and he had been gone about three, running too fast to be safe in the rain.

No rocket science involved there!  The three of us turned our mounts and pounded back up the rise to the wagons, mud splashing high from our horses’ hooves.  Blizzard topped the rise before the other horses.  The teamsters had finished their circle and unbundled their weapons – crossbows and short-bladed swords for close fighting.

    
I wheeled the horse around, with Tareen and Varne close behind me, in time to see eight men coming up from around the bend in the road.  As I turned back to the wagons I saw another eight following our rear guard.  All on horseback, heavily armored, most carrying long, thin sabers or heavier broadswords.  A few leveled crossbows as they road.

    
Technically, our twenty outnumbered their sixteen.  In fact, the teamsters wore no armor and would be useless in close fighting.  The rain would bog down our horses and the wagons would pin us to the road.  When we fell, the men in the wagons would spend their crossbows and go down in the first wave of assault.  Odds were the raiders wouldn’t lose many men.

    
I refused to accept that.  I looked for the chief teamster, an older man with gray hair, human, a long moustache and a bad shave.  He stood by a draft horse wiping rain out of his eyes.  I rode Blizzard to him while the other four guards and Tareen argued over how to defend the wagons.

    
“Are your men good with those crossbows?”  I shouted.

    
“Good enough,” he said, looking up at me skeptically.

    
“How much ammunition does each of you have?”

    
“I don’t know what amm’nition is, but we each carry ‘bout a dozen quarrels. They’re the double weight kind and hard to reload.”

    
“Take on the men coming up the rise, and hold them as long as you can,” I told him.  “We’re going after the rear guard, then we’ll come back.”

    
He protested but I didn’t stay to hear it.  There was no time.  I drove my heels into Blizzard’s side and he sprang forward like a cannon shot, directly into Tareen’s animal.  Knocking the other stallion aside, Tareen fighting to stay on his back, I shouted, “With me!” and galloped as fast as my horse would go to the raiders behind us.

    
I knew it was dangerous to outdistance my comrades.  I knew as well that they might not follow.  However, we weren’t going to outfight all sixteen of them and I couldn’t count on Tareen not to argue.  If we could split their forces, fight at better odds twice instead of being overwhelmed one time, we had a chance, and the teamsters might actually kill a few of them in defending themselves.  I counted on the men from Bawser’s not to just let me die.

    
I closed the distance, maybe twenty yards, before the raiders realized they were set upon.  My sword swung out like vengeance and beheaded the first of them, catching him on my right, beneath the chin, glancing up from his gorget
. 
I swung the sword around in front of me and caught the second on my left in the shoulder, merely wounding his left arm.

    
Then I had charged past them, digging my knee hard into Blizzard’s side to turn him.  Hooves slipping and flailing, the white stallion spun around in the mud, righting himself in time to catch the first charge of the smaller horses as they wheeled around and engaged.

    
I had no time to look for support as, holding the sword two-handed, I chopped down at the closest man and, as he parried, pulled the sword out sideways to disengage him and defend from another man with a rapier as the first recovered.  Now the horses and the rain were my allies as the muddy road slowed the raiders and the horses, and kept more than two of them from engaging me until their fellows could circle us.  Feint, dodge, shoulder-fake and parry – one man’s sword slipped past my guard and screeched across my breastplate, nearly knocking me from the saddle.  Blizzard sidestepped and I was righted in time for another sword blow to ring my helmet.

    
That
hurt.
  I saw stars and lowered my guard for a moment, as my opponent drew back his sword for a straight thrust into my face.  I gripped the pommel of my saddle to steady myself and brought my sword around, slowly and shaking, to defend, knowing I would not be in time.

    
Then the whole world tilted as Blizzard saved me, rearing up on his hind legs and screaming.  I heard to solid
thumps
and thought then that the brave horse had taken the sword strokes for me.  I saw red rage – Blizzard was my one true ally on this world.  It infuriated me that anyone would take him.  My mind cleared and it was no longer a novice swordsman these raiders were facing.  Blizzard landed with a tooth jarring crash with his front hooves slipping in the mud.  I pulled up my right leg to dismount the wounded beast and kill.

    
As he recovered I saw a dead man pinned under a dead horse to our left, the rain washing blood and brains into the road mud.  The other six horses were shying in fear of Blizzard, their riders trying desperately to keep them from bolting.  Unscathed, he snorted a spray of rain as he righted himself and pawed the earth.