Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (74 page)

    
Therok clicked his tongue and Karel smiled his mischievous smile.  “And how are you so sure, girl?” the older Scitai asked her.

    
Karel answered for her.  “That is the Lady Shela,” he said, loud enough not just for his father but also for the Scitai who were working with us to hear, “whom you know better as the Bitch of Eldador.  Do you question her power?”

    
Therok’s eyes widened.  So did Shela’s.  I had never heard that nickname before but they clearly had, because Therok stammered out an apology and excused himself. 

    
She dismounted and towered over Karel, her chest heaving in her anger.  The look she wore in the moonlight reminded me of that time in Steel City.  I wondered if Karel’s death would be as painful.

    
I didn’t care.  I didn’t like him.

    
“The
Bitch of Eldador
?” she repeated.

    
Karel’s eyes widened innocently.  I didn’t think that would help him.  “I didn’t make it up,” he told her.

    
That didn’t mollify her – I would have been surprised if it had.  “How long have
I
been the
Bitch of Eldador
?” she asked. 

    
Karel spread his hands.  “You killed a man in Glennen’s own court,” he said.  “The Bounty Hunter’s Guild has called you by that name since.  Surely you must have known…”

    
Shela remounted her horse.  She had been moody since Lee’s birth and worse since the attack.  This news didn’t make her any happier. This was a bad day to be a Bounty Hunter.  That’s ok – I didn’t like them, either.

    
Karel looked up into my eyes.  I had noticed that about him – a new difference between Karel and Drekk.  Karel looked right at you when he spoke, like he
really
wanted to know what you had to say.

    
“Surely she knew,” he said.

    
I laughed.  “I wouldn’t have been the one to tell her,” I said.  “Actually, I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

    
Karel pulled his head back like I had tried to slap him. 

    
“You’re serious?” he asked me.

    
I laughed again.  “My friend,” I told him, “the last person who pissed her off that badly got cleaned up with a broom and a dust pan.”

    
I turned and went looking for Two Spears.  Over my shoulder, I added, “Why do you think they call her the Bitch of Eldador?”

    
Let the little man chew on
that
for a while.

     The Fovean High Council met on the fifteenth day of Desire to discuss “these outlandish goings on.”  By then every bridge between Sental and Volkhydro had been destroyed.  Hundreds of warriors on both sides of the Llorando had died trying to defend them, but the Sarandi were veterans with Wolf Soldier training.  Many worried in both nations that the bridges would not be rebuilt when the fall harvest came next year and that there would be no portage between Sental and Volkhydro.  This meant higher costs for Sentalan goods that would now have to be shipped instead of carried by wagon to market.  With the grain on ships already, why bother moving it through Volkhydro? That meant an economic depression for that nation.

    
Dorkan, on the other hand, couldn’t ship to anyone because Koran pirates had grown bold and raided their merchant ships.  They did this because there were so few Dorkan warships, due to heavy losses by them at the Straights of Deception.  Again, hard times for a Fovean nation while Kor could expect to grow stronger. 

    
Angry debate shook the Council and many pointed fingers.  The cold stone benches at their outdoor coliseum were heated with words, most of these pointed at the Eldadorian delegates, with suspicious glances for the unscathed Toorians, Confluni and Andarans.  Dorkans still complained of an entirely unjustified action against them sparked by Eldadorian opportunists and Trenboni with no proof.

    
The Eldadorians were hearing none of this, however.  They claimed to be able to deliver incontrovertible evidence of an international plot to kill the Queen of Eldador.  That plot extended to the Free Legion, no member of which had been seen in over a month, save for rumors of Nantar in Sental.  The Free Legion was becoming a force to be reckoned with - a force to be
answered.

    
People said that you could hear them arguing from a mile away – which explains why they didn’t hear
me
coming through their main gate.

    
I had learned a lot since coming here.  I had learned to fight, and to kill.  I had learned what it meant to be loved and hated.  I had seen that luck is an essential part of life, but taking advantage of it is still a skill.  I had learned that most of what had happened to me, for good or ill, had been my fault and my responsibility.

    
When you learn that sort of lesson you don’t change – you realize how much the same you are.  When other people think that you’ve changed, they’re seeing that you’ve realized that.  I had heard before that change is the only constant.  Now I understood what that meant.

    
Another thing that I had learned is that if you are going to hit someone, then
hit
them.  Hit them hard and make them think twice before hitting you back. There is no glory in being hit back, it just hurts and leaves you weaker.  When your enemy exposes his jugular then you cut it while you have the chance before it is
your
blood on
his
shoes.

    
Because the Trenboni didn’t see the Scitai as a threat to them, they didn’t guard themselves against the Scitai-occupied forests of Trenbon.  Scitai scouts led five thousand of us past the few Trenboni patrols or, as we got closer to Outpost IX, through them.  Within two miles of Outpost IX I ordered forced march while my lancers under Two Spears slaughtered Uman warriors with impunity. 

    
I approached the main gate at the head of a vanguard of those thousand heavy lancers.  Four thousand Wolf Soldiers marched double-time behind us in squads of ten.  They marched with their swords out and their shields down, the sun glinting from naked steel.  We broke out of the forest onto the hard-packed plain that surrounded the city, heading straight for the merchants’ plaza and the city’s huge main gate.  A bell from one of Outpost IX’s many towers announced us and warned the city guard of our coming. 

    
Even though they were on high alert, warned of a pending attack, a mere hundred Trenboni mounted warriors greeted me no more than two hundred feet from the Outpost IX murder hole. 

    
Civilians looked at us in disbelief.  Who would bother to visit Outpost IX with so many, or dare to march on the Trenboni capitol with so few?

    
The Uman-Chi Captain of the Guard wore a gold breastplate and the image of a falcon on his breast.  His mount pranced up to Blizzard’s side and he demanded to know where I had received permission to land armed troops on the sovereign nation of Trenbon.

    
I killed him myself.  My blood brother, Two Spears, took command of my lancers and led the follow-up attack.  A thousand heavily armored horsemen crashed into the Trenboni mounted warriors with lances down, pushing them right through the city gates.  Five hundred Scitai and five hundred Aschire archers cleared the walls and towers that defended the murder hole and protected the entrance to the city.  Where the Aschire archers were incredible, the Scitai made them look like amateurs, shooting through tiny arrow slits in the city’s stone walls to kill the Uman archers who guarded the main gate. 

    
I took Outpost IX’s invincible gate before the screaming from the marketplace could alert the city watch.  Her portcullis, unused for years, dropped haltingly, a screech of metal protesting against rust and dirt.  One of my squad sergeants pegged it open by breaking the head of a pike off in the mechanism as we took a tower.  Scitai and Aschire archers swarmed into it, assaulting the tower on the other side of the gate with five squads and a barrage of arrows. 

    
When I held the gates I entered the city with a steady stream of soldiers in squad formation.  My lancers went first, slaughtering the final remains of the mounted guard. By the time the first handful of Uman warriors scrambled to the defense of Outpost IX my Wolf Soldiers held the open center just inside of the main gate.  The Trenboni home guard advanced as a mob onto the white cobblestones and met squads that hit them from the front and both sides before they could even get organized.

    
Meanwhile Shela and five of her acolytes held back Trenbon’s growing magical defense.  They fought that battle from every rooftop and tower in the city.  I saw sheets of flame fly down the main street of Outpost IX and dissipate before our marshalling army, lightning fell like rain and sputtered over our head.  I received little shocks from the Sword of War as we assembled behind the gate, readying our push down Outpost IX’s main street.

    
It didn’t take long.  Captains coordinated lieutenants, who barked orders at sergeants, who assembled their men.  We had been doing it for a year.  Smart squads fell into a patchwork of men and steel, centered around  my heavy horse.

    
“They’re ready,” Two Spears told me.  “Are you?”

    
I nodded.  He grinned like a kid with candy.  Death didn’t mean a lot to Two Spears.

    
I knew the feeling.

    
The heavy horse went first, slow from the start but then gathering momentum as a surge of flame and lightening cleared out magic resistance to their movement.  Outpost IX’s main street formed a long, straight path to the royal palace, and iron hooves made sparks on cobblestones as their momentum grew, pennons snapping from their upraised lances.

    
I stayed with the infantry.  We marched double-time behind the horse.  The key here was not to let a gap form between the main army and the van.  If they were smart, they were assembling far down the road, before the palace, and would try to get Two Spears to engage them while they cut in behind with their own horse to challenge my squads.

    
The heavy horse would have a hard time getting turned around on the main street, and by the time they did my foot would be entangled with their defenses, which assuredly outnumbered me.

    
The resistance didn’t wait around for me to ponder any more.  The horse met their first armed brigades, another mass of soldiers, before we went four blocks.  Two Spears stayed at a trot and casually ran them down, to his credit.  Behind them, three times their number in bowmen rained arrows down on my horse as they emerged through the foot soldiers.  Had they been in full gallop they would have been unable to slow down in time to drop behind my infantry, who were better able to handle the barrage.

    
My squads of ten marched forward with their shields high, our pikemen and our swordsmen crouching close behind the shield men.  They pressed forward with minimal losses until they were too close for arrow fire.  Now from behind the archers, the Trenboni foot that had been assembling while we fought swarmed forward, trying to catch my men encumbered and out of formation.  Two squads went down and two more were retreating, my center giving way, as wild-eyed Uman in heavy armor and with long swords threw themselves against our shields, our pikemen in no position to repel them.

    
Forward came the heavy horse again, hooves clattering on cobblestones in a short sprint to meet the new threat.  Their lances lowered like a wave as my squads broke to left and right to open a channel for them to pour through, into the charging Uman warriors, skewering them on their lances as some tried to press forward and others to retreat.