Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (22 page)

“It looks like a warm blood mix,” Bill said, in Uman.
“It has the look of an Arabian to its head, but the thick legs and wide barrel of a draft—but, no, look at that tight middle!

“And you never see a warm blood all cuddly like that
—but you say to anyone else, he’s mean?”

“Blizzard loves him like I have never seen a horse love a man,” Shela said.
“No horse in Andoran would do what that horse does to be with him. And, yes, he hates everyone else. I can’t even brush him if Yonega Waya isn’t there.”

“So they cart him out here for the Emperor to ride?” Bill asked.

“They have to,” Shela said.
“Yonega Waya, he built a thing called a winch, it pulls Blizzard on a chain into the cart. Then another horse pulls the cart. I think you will be riding that horse.”

Bill saw that the groomsmen had returned and were removing the horse from the traces of the ruined cart.
To its credit it had stood stock-still while Blizzard had snorted and reared.

“A
—um, you want me to ride the draft?” Bill said.

Shela laughed.
She rubbed her youngest daughter’s nose with her own and was rewarded with a giggle. “That horse is ‘Little Storm,’” she said. “Blizzard is his sire. He is like that. What you want him to do, he does, but nothing bothers him. He is not as big or as fast as Blizzard, but he is close.”

“I want to go on Little Storm,” Vulpe immediately demanded.

“I want to go on him, too,” Lee said, not to be outdone by her brother.

Shela shook her head.
“You will come with the women in the cart,” she said. “Blizzard is going to want to run, and Little Storm is going to want to run with him.”

“I’ll sit with grandfather,” Vulpe offered.
He looked imploringly up at Bill. “I’ll be good.”

“I will be good, too!” Lee promised.

Shela looked into Bill’s face. She raised an eyebrow in an expression of amusement and shrewd skepticism.

Bill knew full well the best way to make sure
he didn’t get executed would be to get the kids to love him. She must have known that, too.

“They asked if I was Lupus’ father,” Bill admitted.
“I told them I was a grandfather, but not theirs.”

“Papa can order him to be our grandfather,” Lee said.
“He can—” and then another word that Bill didn’t know.

Bill found it frustrating.

“Your papa will not make a law that another man has to be your grandfather,” Shela said, lowering her voice. “Now, if you won’t do as you’re told—”

“
Get in the wagon right
now!”

Lupus’ voice thundered out as only a father’s can.
Bill had done it himself. Once you became a dad, you got
the voice
, that certain octave and decibel, that just scares the hell out of children.

They crashed into each other as they climbed into the covered wagon.
Nina took up a position at the door, even the Wolf Soldiers deferring to her.

“I will see you at the palace,” Melissa said to him, and reached up to kiss his cheek.

“Shela tells me there is no way you can outride Lupus,” she whispered into his ear. “I think if you could, then he would have a lot of respect for you.”

He gave her a hug, and surprised her with a pat on the behind.
She giggled and jumped away, then followed the children up into the wagon, throwing a last, speculative look at him over her shoulder just before she disappeared inside.

“If you
can
outride him,” Shela said, passing him, “then yes, he would respect you a lot. I think you might just want to do your best. Blizzard is very fast and Little Storm is very hard to ride.”

Bill smiled and watched her go.
Glynn followed both of them into the wagon without a word to him.

She had turned out to be quite a little pain in the ass, after all, Bill thought.

“Ready?” Lupus asked him.

Bill counted six horses there.
Blizzard had already been saddled; Little Storm had just been cinched. Bill saw four mares between them; three had Wolf Soldier guards and one a plain looking Uman in a breast plate and a cloak. He had close-cropped hair and three scars in a line on his left cheek.

“This is J’her,” Lupus introduced him.
“J’her, this is—”

He knew better than to say Bill’s name, but he didn’t know what else to call him.

Bill stuck out his hand to the mounted man. “The Mountain,” he said. Lupus laughed. “I am told it is a good name for me.”

“I was told J’her was a good name for me,” J’her said.
“Then I found out it was a type of rock that you make fences with.”

“Which makes it a good name for you,” Lupus commented.
“You are the most solid man I know.”

“You are too kind, Lupus,” J’her said.

“J’her is the Supreme Commander of the Wolf Soldier Guard,” Lupus said. “Wolf Soldiers all call me by name, so don’t be surprised when you hear it. That saved my life once.”

J’her cleared his throat.
“Your horse is stomping,” he noted.

“He
is,” Lupus said, and reined him to the left. “Mount up, Mountain, or you will be late.”

* * *

J’her watched the new man, this older version of Lupus himself, approach Little Storm, a horse very few people could ride.

He thought this a cruel trick, but then, the Emperor
’s judgment proved right more often than wrong. If he thought this an appropriate test of the newcomer, then J’her would support him in it. He would ‘have his back,’ as Lupus liked to say.

The Mountain stepped up to the horse and looked it in the eye.
He rubbed its neck and ears and let it smell him. ‘That is good; let the horse know him,’ J’her thought. He had ridden, anyway. He had a chance to survive.

The wagon pulled away with the women inside, all of them but Nina, who leapt up to its roof, barely touching the side.
The tiny thief, Karel of Stone, had already climbed up there. J’her had seen the little man bundle the other Scitai up to the top as well. If he recognized the legendary Xinto of the Woods, then it would be better not to have him occupy the same air space as the Empress.

J’her had been briefed before the flagship touched the outer docks.
Imperial Wizards had spoken with the Empress while she sailed. They brought two more like Lupus, Men from the north. They would be treated like guests and guarded like hostages, to be considered important.

And this morning, the next message, “Have Blizzard and Little Storm ready for a turn around the city walls.
Minimal guards.”

J’her had become used to such sparse directives.
Lupus played the world in close, giving his subordinates minimal information and expecting unquestioning loyalty. J’her smiled to himself. Absolute, unquestioned, unconsidered loyalty.

The new Man mounted Little Storm and the horse stood stock-still like it always did.
Black like a shadow, still as a stone, Little Storm seemed an enigma until he decided to get going. Then you saw its sire in it. It had killed men who had fallen from it.

J’her had been in prison for multiple murders when Lupus had offered him a position in the Wolf Soldier guard
over a decade ago. He had expected to die—he’d been a farmer. Better to die with the sun shining on his face than in the cold of the Steel City dungeons.

He had been one of fifty Wolf Soldier to survive the Battle of Tamaran Glen.
He had seen Lupus turn the battle himself, charging the Confluni infantry with his sword and his horse, and nothing else. Terrified Free Legionnaire lancers had held to the trees until he shamed them with his bravery. When they engaged, the Hero—the Volkhydran warlord named Karl—had screamed, “Lupus!” and plunged into the fray, Wolf Soldiers at his back, and the Free Legion defenders had followed him.

The Confluni had fallen apart.
Wolf Soldiers had turned the battle, and J’her knew right then he would be one for the rest of his days.

He remembered that day.
He had never been so sure he would die, and he had never felt so alive, and afterwards, dripping from more wounds than he could count, seeing double from the pain, the blood of a score of men mixed with his own, he had never felt so proud, so powerful, so certain in his whole life.

So J’her, as he said, “Had Lupus’ back.”
What other choice could there be?

Chapter Twelve:

              A Race to the Finish

The wagon seemed dark as a tomb and didn’t smell a lot better. It didn’t seem close, but it had become musty, probably because they almost never used it.

             
Glynn sat prim and proper in a corner seat, her back to the front of the carriage, farthest from the door. The children avoided her; they had never liked Uman-Chi. Few Men did, in fact, and children usually had a good sense of people.

             
Now that they didn’t have The Mountain to entertain them, they focused on the other newcomer, Raven. Shela forced herself to think of them in terms of their new names, put their old ones out of her head, with the discipline that came with being a sorceress.

Raven grinned ear-to-ear, answering the million questions a child has for every new situation.
Was she their aunt? Was she Andaran? Was she a sorceress? Did she want to see Lee do a spell?

“You will
not
,” Shela interjected. “And you will not make that offer again.”

             
Lee lowered her head. “Yes, mama,” she said.

             
“She did a spell the other day,” Vulpe offered. He had the advantage on his sister now, so of course he immediately exploited it.

             
Lee glowered at him. “You’re a brat!” she hissed.

             
Vulpe didn’t care. He knew that if the tables should turn, then it would be his head on the chopping block. “She floated some plums from the larder and she ate them.”

             
“You ate them too!” Lee challenged him.

             
“After you made me sing for them!”

             
“So what we have here,” Shela interrupted them, “is a thief, and a liar. Not very much like the Prince and Princess of the realm.”

             
And then she invoked the words more powerful over her children than any spell, “I think your father needs to know about this.”

             
“No!” Their eyes went wide as gold Tabaars. They clung to her skirt and pleaded with her. “No, mama! You handle it! You handle it!”

             
Shela felt her heart swell with love for them. Another of her husband’s terms, ‘You handle it.’ They reminded her so much of him. Lee’s strength and determination, Vulpe’s eyes and nose, the way he held himself with perfect posture like Lupus, the way she dissected every situation and turned it to her advantage.

             
“In truth, does he sing?” Glynn asked them.

             
“He sings to us all the time,” Shela said. “He has a beautiful voice—I think it is Nina’s influence as much as any—”

             
She looked around the carriage and her heart froze. “Xinto!”

             
“On the top of the carriage,” Raven told her. She had seated herself in the opposite corner from Glynn, her hands in her lap, her blue dress billowed out around her legs. “I think they are keeping him away from you.”

             
“Karel of Stone is no fool,” Glynn commented.

             
The two women smiled at her expense. Shela felt her back straighten.

             
“I wouldn’t hurt him,” she said.

             
“I think Karel is afraid to take that chance,” Glynn pressed her. Yonega Waya had left Glynn to her care, encouraging Glynn to be bold again.

             
“Shela,” Raven said, and reached forward to touch the back of her hand, “let him freeze outside. Do you
want
him in here?”

             
“I don’t,” Shela admitted. “Karel probably did what was best.”

             
“How does Nina stand the cold?” Raven asked her, leaning forward. The Trenboni dress shifted on her upper body, accentuating her figure as she moved. “I was freezing with furs.”

             
“She is an Aschire witch, like Shela,” Glynn interjected again. “If she wishes to she can be as warm as on a summer day.”

             
“I think that the idea with the peasant dress is a good one for you, Baroness,” Shela said. “Expect to have one in the morning.”

             
“Your pardon?” Glynn said, lowering her chin, her eyes wide.

             
“Well, clearly you have no respect for me,” Shela said. “Calling my trainee a witch, speaking familiar as you are. Humility makes Kings of peasants, as my husband says.

             
“I think that Eldador shall make you a queen.”

             
Raven actually had to bite her lower lip to control herself. Glynn sat back and glowered. The children remained quiet—they had dodged the arrow on the spell and the plums, they would be perfectly happy to see Glynn take their mother’s attention for a while.

             
Shela pulled the laces of her bodice open, ignoring all of them. She had promised her husband she would have Angry at the Sun on solid food by the spring thaw, but this would be her gift to herself. Even through the pain of baby-sharp teeth on her nipple, she knew the comfort that belonged to her, and that only her child could give her.

             
She regarded Raven and asked, “How well does your man ride?”

* * *

              Back outside of the gate, behind Lupus and J’her and in front of the three mounted Wolf Soldiers, Bill struggled with the reins and tried to guide the horse.

             
He had already made them stop once so he could shorten the stirrups. Little Storm was iron-mouthed; he would resist the bit and take the pain of the steel in his gums to do what he wanted to do.

             
What he wanted to do seemed to be to follow his sire and knock people and objects over, apparently in his own meanness. He didn’t like heels in his sides, he didn’t like direction, he had no idea what a knee pressed into his barrel meant, neither did he neck rein.

             
Bill saw Lupus and J’her had immersed themselves in some conversation, so instead he looked behind him for some help from the Wolf Soldier guards.

             
“Do you know this horse?” he asked them.

             
One of them, a Man, kicked his horse up alongside Bill and said, “I rode him once.”

             
“How was he?”

             
“Rough,” the Man said. “Mean. He takes the reins in his teeth—he has them there now.”

             
Bill gave the reins a sharp tug and, sure enough, Little Storm snorted and turned his head, revealing the bit in his molars. No wonder he acted hard to maneuver!

             
“Your Imperial Majesty?” Bill called. The Wolf Soldier fell back. Lupus turned, making no effort to hide his exasperation.

             
“Yes?”

             
“He has the bit in his teeth—would you smack him for me?”

             
Lupus looked at Little Storm and smiled. “He’s a bastard, isn’t he?” He dropped back and whacked the stallion on his sensitive nose. The horse snorted and Bill pulled back on the reins, feeling the bit drop back in the horse’s mouth.

             
Little Storm immediately arched his back and dropped his flank. He stepped back, bucked once and then crow-hopped, as Bill fought to keep his seat.

             
“Is he too much for you?” Lupus asked him, once Bill had settled the horse down. “Little Storm is from Blizzard out of what they call a dray mare here—a draft horse. I was hoping for something as powerful but more mellow than Blizzard, but I don’t think I got it.”

             
Now it was Bill’s turn to be exasperated. “He is a draft horse,” he said in English.

             
“He's broken to the saddle.”

             
Bill shook his head, pulled up on the reins and dismounted. He stepped to Little Storm’s head and pulled the headstall from him.

             
Little Storm just stood there, looking at nothing, still as night.

             
“Is there a tack shop near here?” Bill asked.

             
“We’re in the market,” Lupus said. “What do you need?”

             
“I need a snaffle,” he said. He showed the bit to Lupus. “This is a straight bit. I bet he throws riders all the time.”

             
“He does,” Lupus said. He ordered one of the Wolf Soldier guards to get him a new bit and tossed the man a bag. The warrior, an Uman, took off like a shot.

             
“You know your horses,” J’her commented in Uman, while they waited.

             
“I was raised on a farm,” Bill replied, also in Uman. “I had two Appaloosas growing up. The mare had to have a hackamore, a harness with no bit.”

             
“How did you ride a horse with no bit?” J’her asked him. “She would never learn to turn.”

             
“You teach her to go with your knees,” Lupus said. “You’ve seen me do that with Blizzard.”

             
“Blizzard has a bit, though,” J’her protested.

             
“You just have to know her,” Bill said. He straightened out Little Storm’s mane with his fingers, pushing it to one side. It had been wild cut, too long for proper riding. If he had scissors and a brush he’d have taken six inches off and pulled half of it right there.

             
The Wolf Soldier returned with six different bits, all jointed, all about six inches wide. The harness had been designed well and Bill changed the bit out easily. He selected what he recognized as a ‘Tom Thumb,’ a jointed bit with extended trailers for the reins.

             
Little Storm looked like he would gag on that one, too, but accepted it. Bill watched to see if he would scoot it forward to his molars, but he left it. Bill remounted and took the reins two-handed.

             
They all moved. Little Storm rode like an entirely different horse now. What Bill had called meanness turned out to be his inability to decipher what Bill tried to tell him. The Tom Thumb let Bill take a better grip on Little Storm’s head and communicate to him.

             
They found their way through the market and moved on to the plains. Radiating out no less than a mile from the city walls, Bill could see hard-packed earth full of the frozen prints of horses, wagons and men. Bill saw melt on some tracks around their edges, pearling as the sun rose, meaning mud and slop and all sorts of hazard here.

             
“Hya!” Lupus shouted, and Blizzard took off like a bullet.

             
“Hya!” Bill shouted, and Little Storm dropped his flank and leapt after him, leaving the others to catch up as they would.

             
It had been
so
long. The horse at Outpost IX had been so well trained, it reacted almost on thought. Bill didn’t like that. No fun riding an animal with so little spirit. He wanted some fight.

             
Little Storm obliged him—his first goal being to challenge this older stallion. Bill stood up in the saddle just enough to pitch his weight forward and to take his ass out of the seat. He whipped the barrel of this young horse with the reins, spurring him on to challenge the older, larger horse.

             
The wind whipped his eyes and left them stinging. Reflexively he narrowed his eyelids and turned his head to one side, squinting through his lashes and blocking the brunt of the wind with the side of his face. They already approached one tower, where there would be a turn.

             
The turn lay in the shadow of the tower. The ground would be frozen hard still. “Hya, Little Storm!” Bill shouted, and pushed the horse ahead.

             
Lupus looked to his left in amusement as the black horse pulled up alongside him. Blizzard’s great neck was bowed, the cheek like a great disk and the nose as small as a teacup bobbing as he ran. He might not be in his prime anymore, but he was still a healthy animal with many natural advantages, and Lupus certainly would use them all.

             
They took the turn. Lupus slowed, Bill passed him on the outside. Blizzard screamed in anger, Little Storm in challenge.

             
“Hya! Hya! Hya!” Both riders urged their mounts on into the straightaway to the next tower.

Turning on the big stallion made Bill feel like he was about to fly off sideways.
His heart thrilled to the danger of it—that horse falling would be the death of him. Bill’s legs and lower back had already begun stiffening. At fifty, he wasn’t in the shape Lupus surely found himself, but he wanted this—he wanted to show the old man hadn’t become useless, even if he had been treated like baggage since he got here.