Indomitus Vivat (The Fovean Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page B

think you do great things ?
         “I hope to,” I thought in my mind, knowing that He would hear it.
     
         And I stood in a field, feeling the hot sun on me, my calloused hands on the plow before me, the smell of my own sweat mingled with the hearty funk off the horse before me, of the newly turned earth beneath my feet.
         I wiped the sweat from my forehead, and looked toward the great city, Eldador, where I had never been.  Even now more masons were hauling more stones to her, as if more stores would make her greater, as if the sun could not set on enough of it.
         “I paid for those stones,” I thought to myself, bitterly.  “A share in 6 of everything I own, to the drunken king for his wine and his stones and his better life, while I live in a stick house with a roof that might leak.”
     
         And I stood on the solid, wood decks of the newest of the cutters pulling from Eldador the port, and I wore the uniform of a boatswain and looked up in pride at the Eldadorian flag, flying from the mizzen.
         The first mate had told me that most sailors die at sea, the rest are lucky if the scurvy and the whores don’t leave them too twisted to lead a normal life.  I didn’t care; my father and his before me had been sailors and I would be one as well.
         “Mount the main and hard aport,” the first bellowed.  The quartermaster spun the wheel and we picked up the breeze.  The mains’l snapped and billowed out in all of her glory, the spray from the prow of White Stallion splashed on my face and filled my nostrils with her salty spray.
     To one side of the quarterdeck stood a squad of Wolf Soldiers.  Haughty bastards who had never smiled in their whole lives, who never drank with the crew, who never did anything but kill or plan to kill – they are a plague on Eldador in my opinion.  The Heir put them everywhere to remind the rest of us how things would be when the King’s health finally failed him.
         Gendine, my best friend, clapped me on the shoulder, seeing my glare.  “Be still, Vark, they are blooded veterans, and you are still a ‘wog.”
         That they were.  I ran to the rigging, my bare feet gripping the planks beneath me as the ship topped a swell.
         That didn’t make me like them.
     
         And my woman screamed, from our one room home in Thera.  I paced outside the door, on the street, passersby nodding their respect to me or, if they knew her, giving me their good wishes.
         The midwife tended her, I assured myself.  The midwife knew what to do.
         I couldn’t even af ford to replace the bedding after her labors.  At best I might replace the straw ticking and turn the mattress. The bed covers lay on the dirt floor.
         This great land of prosperity called Eldador; it had not been so great for me.  I had come to here a Volkhydran, my Lord’s gristmill empty and his water wheel spinning free.  There was nothing there anymore.  There would be nothing for a long time.
         In Eldador they took almost no tax, and so all of the mills were hiring.  That didn’t mean that they had room for a Man.  Men were lords in Eldador, Uman worked the mills and the fields and the armories.  Uman would hire 1,000 more Uman before they gave a wage to a Man.
         My woman screamed again, bringing forth a new voice to this world, a new mouth to feed.  Whether it would be my son or daughter anyone might guess.  My woman is a whore, bringing wage to the table while I go from mill to farm to factory, begging for the chance to earn a wage.
         She screamed and I could imagine that she blamed me, for my mistake to come here.
     
         “ Enough! ” I shouted. The whole court jumped before me.  The Earl became quiet, looking bewildered at my rage.
         I had misspoken myself.  I stood, and I glared at the Earl.
         “You think that I am a child, that you can massage my ego and