Indomitus Est (The Fovean Chronicles) (9 page)

    
He reached for the sword and I put my blade between him and it.  He got the idea and straightened back up.  Again, the same vacant expression, like he just couldn’t grasp the situation, and dealt with this chance encounter as best he could.

    
“Where are your Masters?” I asked.

    
That got him.  He looked around in fear for a moment and then calmed himself. “They are everywhere.  They are in your closet, under the bed, in the sky and right next to you if you do something bad.  They look out for us and we look out for them, because we need them to think, and they need our strong backs to work for them.”

    
Now
that
made sense.  An upper class, more educated than the lower, and a system of education only for those who ruled.  England of the Middle Ages had been like this.  Keeping him stupid effectively kept the common man down.

    
I’d learned what I could from this one, and our chances increased every moment that we would be caught.  I didn’t need him and he didn’t need to be telling anyone that I had been here.

    
I made the blow as quick as I could, taking him under the chin.  I didn’t sever his head as I wanted, but I cut deeply enough into his neck where he didn’t last long.  He fell, clutching his throat, staring at me in shock.  I sighed, watching him – the only thing I could do.  On Earth I had never been so cold blooded.  I had been in my share of fights, but never intentionally killed anyone.

    
I didn’t look forward to remembering this simple man’s eyes.  Probably a farmer pulled off his field to fight a battle for a richer, greedier man.  Earth history had been written around those like him, their tale never told, the woes of their families not remembered.  In ancient lands with no welfare, and people hard put to look out for themselves, widows and orphans had an unenviable life.

    
Here, I had killed four men in one day, two of them defenseless.  I knew if I had to, I would do it again.  My insides felt like ashes over it, cold and dark.  I pulled the body into the bush and covered it with as much dirt as I could quickly scrape up.  If no one were specifically looking, he wouldn’t be found. 

    
The jog back to the stallion didn’t take long because he met me three fourths of the way.  He looked at me with big, brown eyes not too unlike those of the man I had just killed.  I rubbed his neck and he battered me with his head, making me laugh.

    
“You and I, then, big friend,” I told him.  “I have no idea what you see in me, but if we can be each others’ best friends, then that’s all right with me.

    
Camp that night consisted of a soft patch of grass by a boulder.  I wanted to set a guard or some sort of trap, but I didn’t know how.  I hoped that the horse would make a fuss if anyone came down the river, and if they came through the mountains, then they would awaken me.

    
Another consequence of my first day riding was that I was stiff in muscles that I didn’t even know I had.  Not just my fingers and my thighs, but my back as well from keeping it straight from riding, and my abdomen from holding my body centered on his back.

    
I knew that as bad as I might feel now, I’d feel even worse in the morning.  I thought back to the ride, pounding across the plains, the wind in my hair, his smell in my nose as I ran.

    
I smiled.  So very worth it.

    
I slept another dreamless sleep.  Dreaming is a funny luxury that I missed having, however this might be so bizarre that dreaming became either unnecessary or too mundane to remember.

      I went back to the place where I had met the Dwarf, and buried the bodies of our enemies.  I could have been blind as a bat and still found them; they were bloated and stank and the birds had been at them.  Through a swarm of stinging flies I found that one of the dead men had hidden a purse full of shiny gold coins, each bearing the head of a man with a beard, and stamped in a language I didn’t understand.  I took the purse and slid my belt through a fold built into it.  I noted that when I walked it didn’t jingle.

    
Next came the waiting.  Kvitch had said three days, so I reconciled myself to six.  The army could be here in a day on horseback, which meant three at the worst by foot.  A marching army might take four, unless they were
very
good.  The scouts would be a bigger worry and I knew that they were out.  By now the dead men were missed and there would be a reconnaissance.  I anticipated trouble by tomorrow at the worst.

    
So the Uman hadn’t lied about being three days ahead of the army.  That made no sense – what kind of tactician did that?  Kvitch should be running to the mountains with the Dorkan army on his heels.  Instead, the Dwarves would be ready.

    
The stallion and I felt bored and restless before noon.  We rode in the open space for a while; I got used to him easily.  By the end of the day, both of us exhausted, he had started to realize that if I pressed him with my left knee I wanted to go right and vice versa.  I felt more comfortable with bareback riding and he seemed more accustomed to keeping me on his back.

    
That night I set up a few landfalls and other such traps that I made up on the spot.  I doubted any of them would actually work, but I kept it up while we had light.  I slept again without dreaming and awoke nonplussed but better rested.  The stallion had made another attempt to get at my food supply but fortunately I slept on top of it.

    
The next day I actually tried to spring my traps and one of them worked.  I congratulated myself and made as many of that type as I could.  I had bent a sapling over and pinned it to the ground with a root, and then used a length of bark to hold it in place.  That piece of bark formed a loop on the opposite side of the sapling – when anything stepped on the bark, it pulled the root away and the sapling sprung free, pulling the bark loop with it.  Then I covered the strip of bark with leaves and debris.  The terrain here consisted of rough scrub grass, little bushes and an occasional tree to hide my handy work. I didn’t think I would actually find a fellow Man hanging upside-down by one of these contraptions, but I would hear the thing go off.

    
By that night my hands were raw.  I did a few drills with the sword to make sure I could still fight and decided I would be no worse off than usual.  Again, I reflected that I would be about dead if I came up against an experienced swordsman.  The stallion had followed me the entire day but stood far back while I whipped the sword around.  Smart animal!

    
The next day my hands felt better and I practiced some more with the sword, then with the long bow that the Uman had tried to use on us.  I set up a target and made sure that I kept the stallion behind me, and tried my hand.  I hit the target one of twelve times and broke one arrow, leaving me with eleven.  Just before noon (assuming noon here was the sun at its apex) I heard one of my traps spring.

    
I mounted the horse, sword in hand, and followed the sound, which wasn’t too hard to find because of the loud swearing.  I slowed as I approached an angry Kvitch untying a noose from his ankle.  The dirt in his beard and the dig in the ground next to him told me that the trap had not only taken him by surprise, it had leveled him.

    
“I suppose this is your handiwork?” he asked, his eyes dark with anger.

    
“Yep,” I said, dismounting with my back to him to hide the smile on my face.

    
The rock that took me between the shoulder blades told me this hadn’t worked.  “Hey!” I said.

    
“Serves you right, Man,” he said.  “Cut this infernal thing from me.”

    
I knelt at his feet and he handed me a twelve-inch knife, handle first.  The grip had been wrapped in strips of leather; the blade curved and hand-pounded, sharp as a razor.  I cut the noose from his ankle and he flexed his foot.

    
“Dwarven bones break hard,” Kvitch told me.  Then he rubbed his nose and shook the dirt from his beard.  “Our noses, however, are different.  What was that thing?”

    
“Rabbit snare,” I told him.

    
“Ah,” he nodded.  I guess they had rabbits here, too.  “Not too bad.  No one would actually look for it.  If you kept a dagger you could have bent the sapling the other way, used a longer strip of bark and made a more lethal trap.”

    
That made sense; I could envision it in my mind.  I looked around and didn’t see anyone else.  Kvitch stood and smiled. 

“No,” he said, “and you won’t see them, either.  We are Dwarves and this is our land.  The dust cloud from the approaching army isn’t far.  We just beat the Dorkans here.”

     “How many Dwarves did you bring?”

    
“Two hundred.  How many Dorkans?”

    
“Two thousand would seem about right.  I saw hundreds of cook fires when I found the camp.  I saw a separate camp with about thirty Men, which I assume are your ‘wizards.’  I caught one of their men about a mile from the camp, but he didn’t tell me very much.  Then I killed him and hid the body.”

    
Kvitch nodded.  “It isn’t every Man who will side against his own with Dwarves, you know.”

    
“They aren’t my own,” I told him.  “Besides, I’m getting paid.”

    
Kvitch smiled and clapped me on my shoulder, standing.  “That you are, my friend.  If two hundred Dwarves are a match for two thousand Dorkans and thirty spell-casters, that is.  They will be to the center of the army, of course, born on litters.  It is important to take them out first.  How good are you with a bow?”

    
I had to mull over “spell-casters.”  “Awful,” I said, half-heartedly.  “I was just practicing.  Broke one arrow and missed with all of the others.”

    
“Well, Dwarves aren’t archers.  We have a few crossbows among us, but those are more for close range.  If you can hit even one of the Wizards, then that is one less to worry about.  Once they are under attack they will draw their army around them and weave their spells.  That is when those of us with no protection from their magic will suffer.”

    
That caught my attention.  “Are you sure of that?  Them drawing their army around the wizards?”

    
Kvitch nodded.  “Standard tactic for any Wizard.  They will be perfectly happy to kill the men they hire to keep themselves alive.  They’ll do heavier damage in the beginning of the battle, then use their troops for clean up.”

    
I looked back towards the rising mountains, beautiful in the noon sun.  I indicated them with my jaw.  “How well do you know those mountains?”

    
Kvitch snorted.  “You need to ask?”

    
I smiled.  “Not anymore.  Well, my friend, I think that it is time for your army to beat its swords into plowshares.”

    
Kvitch just looked at me.

    
We kept busy that day.  When Kvitch heard my idea he marveled at its simplicity.  He called his Dwarves out of the hills and explained it to them, then we marched back into the mountain until dusk and most of us had an early night’s sleep, while other Dwarves (those not standing guard) drew sketches in the sand and argued.

    
That night I actually slept in a bedroll.  I resolved not to give it back.  The stallion, the tallest being there, stood near me and cropped scrub grass where he could find it.  I fed him a few of the nutritional bars that I had left and watered him.  I promised him that I would get him to a meadow sometime soon, though I didn’t know how.

    
The next morning we were awake early and working.  I had nothing to do but practice with my arrows and watch.  The stallion wandered close by, obviously intent on seeing this through with me.

    
The previous day we had worked hard to cover his tracks, while working harder to make as many Dwarf tracks as we could.  We wanted to be found, of course, but horse tracks would put the enemy on their guard.

    
The dust from their column warned us about two hours past midday.  I found it hard not to have a watch to tell time with, but I adapted.  I doubted that “an hour” would mean anything to the people here.  With imprecise time measuring, they would be more likely to speak in days, weeks, and moons, half-days or some such.  I had yet to find a sign of coffee or anything
resembling
coffee, and that wasn’t funny, at least not to me.  While Dwarven scouts ran off to gage the approach of the enemy and the rest of them cleaned up and got ready, I debated whether it would be worth the effort to slap myself awake.

    
“What is the matter with you,” Kvitch asked me.  I sat on a rock, looking bleary-eyed at the sunrise.  With no caffeine jolt to wake me I had to fight the urge to pretend I had a snooze alarm, and then to pretend that I had just hit it.

    
“Groggy,” I said.  “I’m not a morning person.”

    
“What would a morning person be?”

    
I sighed.  Slang again.  “I have a hard time waking up.”

    
“You didn’t get enough sleep is why.  You should have retired earlier.”

    
“There were things to do.”

    
He looked at me seriously.  “There are always things to do,” he told me.  “Go to sleep at a decent hour and they won’t go anywhere.”

    
I shrugged.  “The least of our worries now,” I told him.

    
“Say that when your eyes are full of mucus and you can’t aim your arrows,” he scolded me.  “Make mistakes you can live from, Man, and you will live longer.”

    
That said, he sat down next to me and we waited for the Dwarf scouts to return.  It didn’t take long before they came back at a run, their faces red.  A shorter, heavier Dwarf whom I knew as
Hvarl
joined Kvitch and I.  He had seen me practicing with the arrows and, with Kvitch, had fletched me twelve more.  At least I might add to the confusion.

    
“They will be here at about dusk,” one Dwarf reported to Hvarl.  “They have three Uman scouts we had to avoid.  The scouts will be here shortly.  There is no place closer for an army that size to camp.”

    
Better and better.  We had chosen a bowl-shaped opening from where two large mountains arose.  Centuries of runoff had carved three routes through the mountains.  One trail lead south, where they came from, and two broke north.  The path varied between one and two football fields in width, with an opening wider than two side by side.

    
The Dwarves had turned out to be expert engineers, as expected.  They had rigged two mountainsides each to fall with one hammer-blow.  I had wondered at this – it seemed a really
big
coincidence that the Dwarves of Earth legends should match those of Fovea so precisely. 

    
The Dwarves themselves looked pretty much like Kvitch.  They ranged from four to four-and-one-half feet tall, weighing about one hundred fifty pounds of hard bone and thick muscle.  They had thick, bunched foreheads that gave them a constant, frowning appearance.  They seemed to prefer armor of linked chain or thick plates; some of these were “fluted” or corrugated to give them more strength.  They wore steel caps that covered the bridges of their noses and carried maces, twenty-pound hammers and the occasional spear or pike.  Some also had crossbows.