Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) (18 page)

    
“Thought to do to you what you did to me,” he said.

    
“So you steal Lee?” I asked.

    
“The Bounty Hunters want her.”

    
I looked at the other one.  “Why?” I asked.

    
Blood flowed over his lips from his missing teeth.  “I’ll nebber tell you, you scum,” he said, spraying a mist of blood in front of him.

    
One of the men holding him punched him in the stomach, the other kneed him in the groin.  His knees buckled and he had to be dragged back up to his feet.

    
“Fetch a wizard,” I said.

    
J’her sent one of the men off.  The Bounty Hunter smiled.  “A truth telling will do you no good,” he said.

    
“I don’t need a truth telling,” I said.  “All I need to know is the nearest member of your family.  I don’t care if it’s a second cousin, male or female – you think you were treated badly?  Wait until I’m done with him or her.”

    
His bruised lips curled.

    
“If you haven’t satisfied my curiosity before the wizard arrives,” I said, “then no matter what you tell me, that relative will be tortured to death, and you won’t get this offer again until the
next
member of your family is sought.  If there isn’t one, then I will settle for people you knew in your childhood.  You have met a lot of people in your life – you are willing to tell me what I want to know for one of them.”

    
“You are lep den a demon,” he told me, looking in my eyes.

    
“You are wasting time,” I told him.

    
He didn’t look away, neither did I.

    
“I need water,” he said finally.  I looked away as if to order it, then turned and punched him square in the nose, breaking it.  His blood covered my steel gauntlet.

    
“Drink that.”

    
He licked his bloody lips, smiled, and spoke.

    
The lack of teeth slurred his teeth.  A man needs his teeth to speak, and the bruised and swollen lips made it no easier.

    
He confessed that he’d come here to get near enough to me get Lee – that I already knew.  The Guild planned to make me trade myself for her – that I had guessed at.

    
The Bounty Hunters had informed the Dorkans not only of my role in the Battle of Two Mountains, but of my statement to Aniquen outside of the gates of Outpost IX, and how that had led to the sack of Katarran, and how I had profited from that sack.

    
That came as a real surprise to me, but only one man could have put all of that together.

    
“There is a Bounty Hunter named Xinto, who is a Scitai,” I said to the other captive, the
real
bounty hunter.  “Do you know him?”

    
“Do you?” he asked me, looking in my eyes, which got him a smack in the gut.

    
“Answer.”

    
“Everyone knows Xinto,” he said.  “Xinto brings one gold coin in ten to our coffers.”

    
Xinto knew of the plan to go to Outpost X, and Xinto knew that we were still alive and suddenly very, very wealthy after.

    
So Xinto knew that we had
found
Outpost X, and Xinto came from Conflu.

    
The wizard entered the courtyard with the Wolf Soldier guard.  I turned back to the Bounty Hunter.

    
“You have satisfied my curiosity,” I said.  Then I looked to the Wolf Soldier to his left.

    
“Cut off his head, his legs, and his arms, and then send all six parts of him to Dorkan City, in the care of the Bounty Hunter’s Guild.”

    
I turned back to young Klem.

    
“You are a traitor to the Eldadorian state,” I said.  “You can rot in a cell for forty years.  That should mellow you out.”

    
“Aren’t traitors hung?” he asked me.

    
“You want to die,” I told him.  “I want you to think on how you failed and what it cost.”

    
I looked down to his missing foot, then back up at him, and grinned in his face, looking into his swollen eyes.  “Don’t worry, Klem, I will make sure that, if it gets too easy for you, it will become harder.”

     That night I lay in bed with Shela in my arms.  Lee had herself a little nest in our bed, wrapped in blankets on her stomach, her head pillowed on her mother’s breast.  A squad of Wolf Soldiers guarded the door, and Wolf Soldiers stood every watch in the palace.

    
Glennen had tried to kiss the lips of one of the female captains, and had to be restrained from going further, but to her credit, she hadn’t gutted him.

    
Shela’s breath felt comforting on my arm, as I told her of what had transpired today.

    
“Do you think that Ancenon knew of Xinto as a Bounty Hunter?” she asked.

    
“It would be pretty sloppy of him,” I said, “no matter how you looked at it.  If he knew, then he had let Conflu and the Bounty Hunter’s Guild know that we found Outpost X.  If he didn’t, then he seemed unaware of a secret that a lot of people knew.”

    
“I think he is so used to ignoring Scitai,” she said, “that he didn’t even consider it.”

    
“Sloppy,” I repeated.  She’d likely nailed it, and I would have to ask him when I saw him next.

    
“What do we do now, White Wolf,” she asked.  I could feel her warm hand on my stomach, moving down to my groin.  “Do you hold this nation together until its monarch recovers or dies,” she asked.  “Or do we go forward in his name?”

    
I smiled.  Shela didn’t waste a lot of time.

    
“I spoke with Glennen today,” I said.

    
“So did a Wolf Soldier, I am told,” she said.

    
“Yes, that wasn’t the disaster that it could have been,” I said.  “For which I am grateful.  But he still thinks that he has to drink to do his job and not miss his wife.”

    
“I haven’t seen him do any job,” Shela said. 

    
“Drunks never realize that, unfortunately,” I said.  “In his mind, he probably thinks he’s working harder than the rest of us.”

    
“What is your plan for his children?”

    
I thought about that for a few minutes.  I had put a lot of work into that and hadn’t gotten far for my effort.

    
“Tartan, I think, should learn something of the military,” I said.  “I need to find an Eldadorian commander who can train him.  Alekennen needs a husband, but I’m going to settle that tomorrow.  There isn’t a lot we can do with Averee and Terran.  When they’re older, we’ll get the girl a husband.  I don’t know how Terran is going to turn out, but I would hope to get him at least a barony.”

    
Shela nodded.  “There is nothing wrong with being a common, you know,” she said.  “I’m informed repeatedly that, call me what you will, I am one.”

    
I sighed.  “I’ve been looking for a way to broach that with you,” I said.

    
“You want so much for me to be your equal,” she said.  “That is neither my place nor my desire, and it never will be.  I am a slave, White Wolf.  I am
your
slave.  I would cry it from the tops of every tower in the city if you let me, but only if you let me, because I am yours.

    
“I have no desire to be anything more.”

    
I gave her a squeeze and she kissed the skin on my arm.  “I think ‘mother of my children’ is a pretty important role for you,” I said.

    
“As do I,” she said.  “And I know that my children are free to choose a life in this city as prince and princess, or free on the plains of Andoran.  Just marry Lee well and teach our sons to be men.”

    
“Maybe not so cruel as I am,” I said.

    
She lay quiet, and then she said, more softly, “So it did bother you, what you did today,” she said.

    
I sighed again.  “I would be a monster if it didn’t,” I said.  “But the traitors had to be purged, and the purging had to strike fear into the heart of anyone who would follow them.”

    
“I think that it will be a brave Bounty Hunter indeed who crosses The Conqueror next.”

    
“They do tend to end up dead,” I said.

    
“And not nobly,” she added.

    
We were quiet for a moment, and then she said, “The palace is in fear of you because of what you did.”

    
“Just for that reason?”

    
“The palace cook calls you, ‘The Demon with Angel Eyes.’  The former Eldadorian Captain of the Guard used to call you, ‘His Excellency, Death.’  Right now, the house staff won’t invoke your name, for fear you will appear.”

    
“Wow,” I said.

    
“It seems to me a trend is forming, White Wolf.”

    
“Hard to argue with that,” I said.

    
She settled in next to me, moving Lee to a pillow at our heads.  We had a lot to do the next day, after all.

    
Listening to my girls breathe, I thought that this might be one of those rare, best portions of my life.  I had wealth, power, security – not bad for a guy who’d been looking at twenty-five to life for manslaughter if lucky.  War’s price might be high, but worth paying.

     No, he didn’t own my soul yet, but he’d put a down payment on it.
  The man named ‘Randy’ who’d come here couldn’t have done what I had done today.  He wouldn’t have even considered going after someone’s family.  If he’d thought to threaten it, he’d have never actually
done
it.

     Lupus the Conqueror formed his morality from a certain knowledge of what his god wanted of him.  He could do these terrible things because he knew that there would be no punishment for it.

     The cost of proof, instead of faith.

     I sat at court in Eldador the city, the gallery thick with courtiers.  I had personally made sure that they had all of the blood and teeth and whatnot cleaned off the flag stones in the palace courtyard.  This meeting meant a lot.

    
“His Grace,” the herald said, “Duke Groff, of Andurin.”

    
Groff entered with a purple cape flowing from his narrow shoulders down to his heels.  I remembered him as a tall, thin man, with gray hair flowing straight back from his forehead down his back.  He had an angular, severe nose and pointed chin, with dark brown eyes set back in his head.  He took long, purposeful strides down the carpet to the dais.  Behind him, obviously hurrying to keep up, were a dozen guards, their swords clanking at their sides.

    
I didn’t think people could bring swords before me, but I had worn mine to meet King Glennen, and been made quickly glad of it.

    
I’d stationed one hundred Wolf Soldier guards within charging distance of the throne.  They served the dual purpose of guarding me and keeping Glennen from stumbling in here, but they were armed.

    
He stopped at the stone circle before the dais, where Shela had once killed a Bounty Hunter, but didn’t enter it.

    
“I came to speak to his Majesty, the King,” he said.

    
Well, the gauntlet lay down before me.  The question being would I pick it up or let it lie there.

     I doubted very much that he would stop if I didn’t react to him, so I took the bait.

     “I sit for the King,” I said, looking directly at him.  “Glennen has a schedule, you don’t merit changing it.”

     Gauntlet back to you, you muther.

     He looked stunned.  Clearly he knew I needed his support and thought he would get some sort of explanation or apology.  If I did that, then I would be at a disadvantage to him.

     “I can return when he is less busy,” he said, his words clipped in anger.

     “You will find you have apartments ready for yourself and your family,” I said.  “Your men can be billeted in the house of the Eldadorian guard, outside the palace.  We had sought to thank you for your excellent support of the Eldadorian state against the Free Legion, but if you would rather have that from the King, I can ask him for his time on your behalf.”

     “I thank you,” he said, “but I can have my own conversations with the King.”

     I nodded.  “As you will.  You are dismissed.”

     That earned another look, but he turned on his heel and left.