Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (70 page)

    
“Genna is dead,” Shela said.

    
“But her sect of trackers were Volkhydrans,” I said.

    
“They would never work for a Dorkan,” Nantar said.

    
“Genna worked for Ancenon,” I said.

    
“Because I asked her to,” Nantar’s normally jovial face had become battle-serious. “They are for sale to rich men, but those men are Volkhydrans.”

    
Genna hadn’t told me that.  I didn’t know for sure that I believed it.

    
“So they would work for a Volkhydran Warlord,” Glennen said.

    
The king looked up at me from the floor, where he held the bloody remains of the mother of his children.  Her eyes were still open, the look of horror on her face showed that she had died from unbelievable pain.  As a well-born lady who had lived her life with noble people, Alekanna could never have imagined that sort of treatment.

    
Glennen looked into my eyes and I looked into his.  Glennen had been a warrior before he became a king.  I knew what he wanted without him saying it. 

    
The Volkhydran government, or at least a part of that government, had organized this.  They had worked with Dorkans and with Uman mercenaries.

    
Which meant that the Trenboni had provided them, or the Sentalans, or perhaps Eldadorian rebels.  Men would have used Man mercenaries unless they had a reason not to.  Getting them from another nation would be such a reason.

    
If the King of Eldador squashed rebels, that was his business and no one would interfere.  If he pursued revenge against an outside force that sponsored them then that might be questionable.  If three or more other nations acted in concert and the King of Eldador retaliated against them then Eldador would be declaring war, no question about it.  Especially if the Trenboni had involved themselves.

    
Under Fovean Law an act of aggression between sovereign governments demanded action by the Fovean High Council.  Eldadorian Councilmen would then argue his case, present evidence, seek allies in the Council and call a vote.  If successful, they would demand sanctions, levy fines, raise tariffs and embarrass those nations before the local communities.

    
And that didn’t mean
shit
when your wife lay dead in your arms.  Even less when you told her kids about it.

    
So he couldn’t do it himself, and he really couldn’t go looking for anyone else.  This was the sort of thing you hired a bounty hunter for – to get revenge for you and keep it quiet, because you couldn’t get involved.  Glennen knew I wasn’t a bounty hunter, but I don’t think it bothered him.

    
“Every last one of them, Lupus,” he said simply.  His eyes were like stone, his jaw set, his wife’s blood on his face and hands.  “Whatever you need, you have it.”

    
“I have no problem with that,” I answered him.

    
I went to sleep that night after Shela personally warded every entry into and out of the estate, and 5,000 Wolf Soldier guards split responsibilities for a five-section, twenty-four hour watch, meaning that at any one time there were 333 of them patrolling the property or the surrounding area while 333 slept and 333 performed maintenance duties or thought up better ways to protect us.  Glennen traveled under my personal escort back to Eldador the Port, a Wizard with him in constant contact with a counterpart here.

     I dreamed of an innocent woman with a look of horror on her face, trying to convince a group of mercenaries that she didn’t know anything while they tortured her.

     I woke up in a cold sweat, Shela watching me with her knowing eyes.  She sat in a rocking chair to my right, nursing Lee.  I had finally started to get my mind around this plan I’d been involved in. 

    
“They have come,” she told me.

    
The room stood in shadow, with only the light from a waning moon through its one window to see by.

    
A bounty hunter sat in my bedroom. A real one.

    
He’d picked a chair in the moonlight to my left, light from the room’s window to his right side casting a shadow across his face.  He could be out and on the run in a moment.  His features were dim and indistinguishable to me.  He had walked past all of Shela’s wards and my guards to get here. He wouldn’t have done that alone.

    
“You are not our favorite person,” he told me simply.  I sat up in my bed, dressed in leggings and bare-chested.  The Sword of War hung on the wall above me. 

    
“If not for that one,” he continued, indicating Shela, “you would be dead now.”

    
“If not for that one,” Shela said, indicating me, “
you
would be dead now.”

    
“And so,” he said, inclining his head in the gloom.  “You put out the call for us, and I am here.  Know that any ill will you may have for us, or us for you, is suspended for this negotiation.  Know as well that you have offended us, and we
will
eradicate you, be you The Conqueror, The Just or Duke of Thera.”

    
“And is that what you are trying to do now?” I asked.

    
He laughed, low in his throat.  “Were we the ones behind these attacks, we would not have killed an innocent.  The bounty on your Free Legion is temptingly high but, in fact, our interests lie in the chaos and animosity you spread, not in your demise.”

    
“He speaks the truth as he sees it,” Shela added.  I would have guessed as much.

    
“What will it take to end your interest in me?” I asked, from the top of my head.

    
“Your death, and no less,” he told me.  Shela didn’t need to tell me that he spoke the truth as he saw it.

    
“And yet you come here,” I said. 

    
“I was curious about your defenses, and I wanted you to be able to tell your allies that we were not involved in this,” he told me.  I didn’t doubt that he possessed a wealth of knowledge about this situation.  There would have to be a level of intelligence gathering involved in what they did.  It would be good to have them as allies if I could pull that off.

    
That wouldn’t happen tonight.

    
“The Trenboni, the Dorkans, and the Volkhydrans did this?” I said.  I guessed about the Trenboni, but who else had more practice in uniting other nations against each other than the ones who housed the Fovean High Council?

    
“I have no reason to tell you that,” he said, simply.

    
“Make him tell me, Shela,” I said in his same, bland voice.

    
He lunged for the window and then slammed back into his seat just as quickly, his hands welded to the arms of his chair by Power.  Even in the dark I could sense his hateful look.

    
“Aggressions were suspended,” he said.

    
“Information was promised.”

    
“
We
decide what information.”

    
“Doesn’t look that way to me.”

    
He sat quiet, fuming.  If he worked with another bounty hunter, then he or she should have attacked by now.  My ears strained for any reason to rip the Sword of War off the wall.  I didn’t kid myself that I would be a match in regular combat for a bounty hunter, but the Sword of War gave a hell of an advantage, and Shela provided another.

    
I didn’t come here to die fighting fairly.

    
“It was those you mentioned, with the Sentalans,” the bounty hunter said.  “I am surprised you knew of the Uman-Chi.”

    
“I am not without resources,” I said.  I had guessed right then that the Uman were Sentalans, not Trenboni. That made more sense in afterthought.  Eldadorians rebels weren’t really a possibility.  Eldadorians were too busy being happy to rebel.

    
“You would have been wise to use them, instead of invoking the Guild in Outpost IX,” he said.  “You would have been wiser still to use them than to hold me here now.”

    
“What are you going to do, kill me for it?” I asked.  “When you take away your enemy’s recourse, you take away any motivation for him to fight fair.”

    
“Your recourse is a fatal one,” he said calmly.

    
You had to admire the confidence.  To threaten me in my own home, in front of a woman whom he had to know could kill him with a glance.

    
“A lot of people have told me that,” I said.  “And they’re all dead, and I’m not.

     “I believe you that you’re not involved.  Get out.”

    
He stood and leapt out the window, Shela having released him.  I didn’t normally leave it open – he must have done that on his way in.  If he got caught on his way out, then that was on him.

    
“Do you sense anyone else in the room?” I asked Shela.

    
She thought for a moment.  “No,” she said, finally.  “There was one other, and she is gone.  I am surprised that they wanted so badly to tell us that they are not involved.”

    
“I am surprised that the other didn’t attack,” I said.

    
“The Free Legion is becoming a force to be reckoned with.  If it survives this then these bounty hunters probably don’t want that force turned on them.”

    
“They must know that is going to happen anyway,” I said.  “The Free Legion won’t tolerate continued threats against its members.”

    
“Nor will I,” Shela said, darkly.  Sitting in her rocking chair, nursing her new baby, she looked to me like some dark demon mother.  Shela had many facets to her and some of them weren’t that pretty.

    
“Tomorrow is another day,” I said.  “We’ll be focused on Drekk’s death, now.”

    
Shela stiffened.  “And Alekki’s,” she added.

    
I nodded, got up out of bed, took her hand in mine.  “That is my worry,” I said.  “And it is yours.   Not the Free Legion’s.”

    
She looked into my eyes through the night gloom and nodded.  We just stood there, listening to Lee nurse, for a very long time.

Chapter Thirty

              You Again

 
I pretty much wasn’t surprised when my dreams were disturbed that night.  In fact, I think I would have been more surprised if they hadn’t been.

    
I was standing on the plains in Andoran again, this time no woman beside me and no rutting stallion off to one side.  The sky was in twilight, just bright enough to see a few stars, no moon above me, the west glowing pinkish-red.  I could smell the grass growing, waving knee-high to the horizon, in a cool breeze that caught my hair.

     For some reason I was dressed out exactly as I had been when I’d come here – the white home-spun shirt, leather pants and boots with a chain across the instep.  For some stupid reason it occurred to me that those pants had held up pretty well, considering.

    
You must be aware of my desire in this
, my god, War, informed me in my mind.  I couldn’t see him, I didn’t really
hear
him, I just knew who was communicating with me.

     “I’d have to assume that you want me to go out, kill the killers, get into Glennen’s good favor and be his Heir,” I informed him.

Did I sense a kind of satisfaction?  I really seemed that way, which was comforting, because that meant he wasn’t going to turn the pain on me, and disturbing because it meant that I was starting to think like War.

    
Your rise to power has been satisfactory
, I was informed,
but insufficient to my needs.  The change coming over the backwater nation of Eldador could not have been anticipated by any of the other gods, and this leaves them with no time to counter.

     “So if I’m running it,” I said, fleshing out the idea, “
then it’s not just the Free Legion stirring up the other Fovean nations, it’s another nation which obviously is immune from the Free Legion, being able to expand and grow while they’re all killing each other.”

     Again, the satisfaction.  I understood this – this had been instrumental to the growth of the United States after the revolution from England.  While any of those nations, or all of them combined, could have quashed the upcoming democracy, they were all so involved with getting over on each other that the US had plenty of time to grow.

     That hadn’t exactly been a smooth road.

     “Can I ask you something,” I asked him, trying to sound meek in my mind, “without – you know – you torturing me or something?”

     I was afraid that even
that
could bring on the pain, and I waited the few seconds like they were hours, bracing myself for the thing I feared the most, before He responded.

    
I will allow this,
he informed me.

     With the relief came a new fear – what if this pissed him off anyway?  What if I just couldn’t tell if I was going too far?  War was a god – he could change the rules any time he wanted to. 

     Suddenly I was back to
faith
– did I believe that if he said he wouldn’t crush me, then he wouldn’t?  I’d abandoned faith – I’d come to rely on proof.  I did things in a certain way and he didn’t hook me up to whatever it was that made me feel like I was being turned inside-out.

     Maybe I should just ask, “Am I being a good boy?” and keep my questions to myself?

    
Ask,
he commanded me.

     I smelled the fresh air that wasn’t, felt the cool breeze that wasn’t, looked out to the horizon that existed only in my mind and asked him, “How far am I supposed to go with all of this?”

     There was a moment of silence, and once again I felt myself (that wasn’t) shaking in anticipation of being tortured again.

    
You want to know if I expect you to tear the world apart?
he asked me. 
Do I want the Fovean lands to run bloody, until the last two soldiers end each other on a field of battle?

     “Yeah,” I informed him, losing myself in my relief.  “Because, you know, I think that could work against you in the long run.”

     Did I actually sense him chuckle at that?  He didn’t crush me, I had that going for me.

    
The purpose of the Instrument is not to destroy all things,
he informed me
, no more than the design of War is never-ending conflict. 

     “So all of this is for some sort of ‘better tomorrow’ purpose, then,” I asked him.

    
As much as you could understand it, yes.

     That was actually a real relief to me.  I’d caused a lot of people to die.  I’d done it out of fear for my own safety.  It made me feel kind of, you know, not so fresh?

    
Once you have secured the position of Heir to Eldador, you will not find it difficult to dispose of the current king and then to replace him.

     And there was that feeling, right back again.

     “Kill Glennen?”

    
I would consider it the best way,
he informed me. 
A king can maintain in disgrace or embarrassment, so to redefine him would be just a waste of time.

     I did
not
want to kill Glennen.  Glennen was probably as close to a friend as I had here, after Shela and my horse.  I liked Glennen better than I liked most of the Free Legion.

     War must have sensed that.

    
You would do well not to defy me,
he informed me. 
I have not the patience to wait for that one’s natural end, while you grow older and less useful to me at the same time.

     I clamped down on any feeling about that.  That road lead to nowhere good.

    
You will insert yourself as Heir, you will win the loyalty of the Eldadorian people, and you will destroy the King
,
War informed me. 
This is
My
will, and then all that matters to you.

     Think, doofus, think, I told myself. 

     “If I do it too soon, are we agreed that I run the risk of being deposed myself, and less useful to you?  I mean – how common is it for someone to be named to some new position and then go kill the boss to double-down?

I think War actually had to chew on that for a bit.  I’d gotten nervous and loaded down with slang again – I really needed to work on that.

     I needed to not be tortured, and I needed to not be called ‘Usurper’ and kick off a revolution by taking out Glennen a week after becoming his Heir, either.

    
I can agree that, should you move too soon, then other Eldadorian nobles might call you ‘Opportunist’ or worse,
War conceded to me. 

    
Spend time garnering their love.  When you have it, ensure that Glennen dies. 

     Phew!  “As you wish, my Lord,” I informed him.  That bought me time.  A lot of things could happen.

    
Encourage the growth of the Free Legion, and expand the power of Eldador until then,
He informed me. 
You will have need of these.

     “I will, my Lord,” I promised.  I wanted to do that, anyway.

    
Remember this, as well, Instrument,
He said, and it was as if I felt him draw near.  The sky darkened, the wind stopped.  The plains around me grew unrealistically large, or I shrank.

     Almost feeling His breath on me, I heard in my mind,
While you have finally realized that you have enemies, and you have begun to see where those enemies are, understand that you have more of them than you could know, who would wish more ill upon you than you could imagine.

     Well, wasn’t
that
a surprise?  Who the hell else was coming after me?

    
Continue to pray to me, as it suits me.
He informed me, and then he was gone.

     I awoke in my bed with Shela.  The baby was in her bassinet on her side of the bed.  The Sword of War hung over the bed, glowing like a night-light.  I guess it sensed what had just been happening.

     It was a long time before I could go back to sleep.