The Bastard King (32 page)

That
was
interesting. Lanius hadn't believed any shrine to Olor and Quelea had existed so far south. He read on, doing his best to ignore the old-fashioned language. The merchant had been lucky to get out of Yozgat in one piece, for he'd left just before the Banished One himself came to view the Scepter.

Had I been there then, the Menteshe do assure me, nothing less than death or thralldom had been my portion. The Menteshe have no love for us Avornans, but the Banished One, being filled with a cold and bitter hate against us, is here even harsher than these his people. In his jealousy, he minds him that we were privileged to wield the Scepter of Mercy, whose touch he to this day may not abide. Thus he stole it, for to keep it from being turned against him.

Lanius slowly nodded. That all fit in with what other sources told him, but was more definite and emphatic than anything else he'd seen. He wished the merchant had gotten a glimpse of the Banished One.
That
might have told him things worth knowing. Or, on the other hand, more likely it wouldn't have. Had the Banished One sensed an Avornan close by, the intrepid explorer would have paid the price for his zeal.

Carefully, Lanius returned the ancient parchment to its pigeonhole. If ever an Avornan army went down to Yozgat, it might prove useful to the commander. Lanius had never seen a better description of the city's walls and defenses. On the other hand, it was also more than three hundred years old. No telling what the Menteshe had done since to make sure the Scepter of Mercy stayed exactly where it was.

He laughed a little, sadly, as he left the archives. No telling, either, when an Avornan army might push south past the Stura River, let alone all the way down to Yozgat. These days, the fight was to keep the Menteshe on their side of the river, and to keep the Banished One from making yet more Avornan farmers into soul-dead thralls.

The tide may turn again,
Lanius thought, and tried very hard to believe it.

Colonel Hirundo beamed at King Grus. "The tide has turned, Your Majesty!" he exclaimed. "We drive the barbarians."

"Yes." Grus sounded less delighted than his officer. "We've given Dagipert something to think about, anyhow."

"Something to think about? I should say so," Hirundo answered. "Three weeks, and we've driven his army all the way out of Avornis. There ahead, across that stream, that's Thervingia. We're heading into Thervingia." By the way he said it, he might have been talking about exploring the dark side of the moon. Up till now, the Thervings had had all the better of the fighting between the two kingdoms during Dagipert's long reign.

"Send your cavalry across," Grus told him. "Find a good farm, a prosperous farm, close by the border. Burn it. Run off the livestock. If the farmer puts up a fight, deal with him or capture him and bring him back for the mines. If he flees, let him go. Once you've done that, bring your horsemen back."

"Bring them
back?"
Hirundo gaped. "Olor's beard,
why?
Uh, Your Majesty?"

"Because we've still got to worry about Corvus and Corax, that's why," Grus answered. "Dagipert's never going to take the city of Avornis, not if he sits outside it for a thousand years." He'd been more worried than that when Dagipert besieged the royal capital not so very long before, but he wasn't about to admit it now, not even to himself. He went on, "The rebels just might, though, if we stay away from home too long. Bound to be traitors in the city that Alca's witchery didn't find, and who knows how much trouble they can cause if we give'em the chance?"

Would Lanius sooner have Corvus for a protector than me?
Grus wondered. He'd done everything he could to make his usurpation as painless as possible. He couldn't very well have gone further than marrying his own daughter to the young king. From all the signs Grus could read, Sosia and Lanius were getting on as well as a couple of newly weds could. But would Lanius think he could be king in his own right if Corvus overthrew Grus? Grus was convinced he'd be wrong, but that might not have anything to do with what Lanius believed.

With a sigh, Grus waved Hirundo on. "Go do as I tell you. We'll let Dagipert know what we might have done. Next time, if we have to, we
will
do it. This time, he gets off easy, and let him thank the gods for it."

Grus hoped Dagipert would take his moderation as a warning and not as a confession of weakness. He knew that was only a hope, though, not a guarantee. Dagipert might think the Avornan civil war was a pot he could stir to his own advantage. He might think that - and he might be right.

Hirundo saluted. "One burnt-out farmhouse coming up, Your Majesty."

He called orders to his horsemen. They rode along the stream, looking for a ford. Before long, the whole band splashed across, then raced on into Thervingia. Grus waited on the Avornan side of the border, worrying. If the Thervings had an army waiting in ambush among those trees over there, as they were fond of doing ...

But no roaring horde of Thervings burst from the woods. No more than a quarter of an hour after Hirundo's men crossed the border, a column of smoke rose into the air. The soldiers who remained in Avornis with King Grus pointed to it and nudged one another. The vengeance the horsemen were taking might be small and symbolic, but vengeance it was.

Then Hirundo led his column back from the west. This time, they made for the ford without hesitation. Water dripping from his mount's belly and from his own boots, Hirundo rode up to Grus. "It's taken care of, Your Majesty," he said. "The farmer and his kin tried putting up a fight from inside the house. Brave - but stupid. One of their arrows hurt a horse. I hope it makes'em feel better in the next world, but I wouldn't bet on it."

"All right," Grus said. "We've done what we came to do."
We've done enough of what we came to do, anyhow.
"Now we go back to the city of Avornis and take care of something else."
We'll take care of a piece of something else, anyway. I hope we'll be able to take care of a piece of it.
He wished he could worry about one trouble at a time, instead of having them land on him in clumps.

At Hirundo's orders, the army turned about. Grus watched the men, liking the way they kept looking back toward the border. They weren't worrying about the Thervings falling on them. They were wishing they could have done more in the enemy's land. That was all to the good.

Hirundo seemed to be thinking along with him. "These men have the Thervings' measure," he said.

Grus nodded. "I think you're right. We've spent a while running away from them - running away or getting trapped. The sooner Dagipert decides he can't get away with bullying us, the better off we'll be."

"Well, we made a fair start here," Hirundo said.

"It also helps that we had an officer here who did such a good job against the enemy. Congratulations, General Hirundo."

Hirundo's eyes glowed. "Thank you very much, Your Majesty! This is a lot better than chasing the Menteshe all over the landscape."

Grus looked south. "One of these days, maybe, we'll see if we can do a proper job of chasing the Menteshe." He sighed. "It won't be anytime soon, though, I'm afraid. We have a few other things to worry about first." A laugh without mirth. "Oh, yes, just a few."

But, as the long column of horsemen and foot soldiers and wagons made its way back toward the city of Avornis, Grus kept looking southward. He knew where the kingdom's greatest enemy dwelt. He would have been a fool if he didn't. He laughed that unhappy laugh again.
I may be a fool. I've been a fool before
-
the gods know that's true. But there are fools, and then there are fools. I'm not the kind of fool who forgets about the Banished One. I hope I'm not. I'd better not be.

Part of King Lanius was disappointed to have King Grus come back in what looked very much like triumph. Part of Lanius, in fact, was disappointed to see Grus come back to the capital at all. Had the Thervings overwhelmed the usurper, Lanius would have been King of Avornis in fact as well as in name.

Unfortunately, though, becoming king in fact as well as in name wouldn't have magically turned him into a general. And, if Dagipert's men had slaughtered Grus, they would have slaughtered his army, too - which would have left exactly nothing between them and another siege of the city of Avornis. They'd come too close to taking the capital the last time. This time, they might actually bring it off.
And then where would you be?
Lanius asked himself. He liked none of the answers he came up with.

Grus, meanwhile, had other things on his mind. "Well, Corvus has proved he's just as bad a general when he's fighting against Avornis as he was when he claimed he was fighting for the kingdom," he said.

"I don't understand," Lanius told him. "How can you say that? You haven't fought Corvus at all, not yet."

"That's exactly how I can say it - because I haven't fought Corvus yet, I mean." Grus grinned at Lanius.

Lanius didn't grin back. He knew he was being teased, and he'd always been sensitive of his dignity. "Stop joking and tell me what you mean," he said severely.

To his annoyance, Grus' grin only got wider. His unwelcome colleague on the throne bowed low and said, "Yes, Your Majesty," as though Lanius held it all by himself -
the way I'm supposed to,
Lanius thought. Grus went on, "If Corvus were any kind of a soldier, he would have come up here and tried to take the city of Avornis away from me while I was busy with the Thervings. Since he didn't, I get to move against him instead of the other way around - and I intend to."

"Oh." Lanius' irritation evaporated. He nodded to King Grus. "Yes, you're right. I understand now. Thank you."

"'Thank you'?" Grus echoed. "For what?"

"For showing me something I hadn't seen myself, of course," Lanius answered. "It hadn't occurred to me that you could judge a general by whether he fought at all as well as by how well he fought."

"Well, you can. And you're welcome, for whatever it's worth to you." Grus' expression remained quizzical. "You're a funny one, aren't you?"

"So I'm told, now and again. I don't see the joke myself - but then, that may be what makes me funny to other people." Lanius shrugged.

"You
are
a funny one," Grus said positively. "If you're willing to give it, I'm going to want your help against Corvus and Corax."

"What kind of help?" Lanius asked. "I just proved I'm no soldier myself." He remembered his own recent reflections on what he might have done if Grus hadn't come back from his campaign against King Dagipert. And, eyeing his fellow sovereign, he added, "Besides, didn't your pet witch show you I'm not to be trusted?"

"Alca's not my pet. Alca's not anybody's pet, and you'd be smart not to call her that to her face," Grus replied. Lanius decided he was probably right. Grus continued, "And she didn't show me I couldn't trust you. She only showed me you didn't like me. I already knew that."

He didn't sound angry. He didn't sound amused, which would have made Lanius angry. He might have been talking about the weather. On that dispassionate note, Lanius had no trouble dealing with him. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Come along with me when I move against Corvus and Corax," Grus told him. "When the time comes, show you're with me and want me to win. That will make the men fighting for the gods-cursed nobles know they've picked the wrong side."

But the right side is mine, not yours,
Lanius thought. Grus waited. Lanius made himself ask another question.
Is Grus' side better or worse than Corvus'?
He sighed. However much he wished he did, he didn't need to think very long before finding an answer there. "I'll come with you," he said.

Back in the city of Avornis, people spoke of the Maze as though it were impassable, as though a man who once set foot in it were certain never to come out again. No doubt the Kings of Avornis had encouraged that view of the marshes and swamps behind the capital. When they exiled foes to the Maze, they didn't want them emerging again. They didn't want people thinking they could help exiles emerge again, either.

The truth was less simple, as truth had a way of being.

Grus had no qualms about moving an army through the Maze. There were streams that traversed the entire region. He'd learned about some of them while still commodore of Avornis' river galleys. Others were known to the folk who dwelt in the Maze without being exiles - fishermen, hunters, trappers. River galleys couldn't make the whole journey. They drew too much water. Flat-bottomed barges, on the other hand ...

Despite that, he hadn't been in the Maze very long before he started to wonder whether he'd made a ghastly mistake. That had nothing to do with the barges. A breeze even meant they could move by sail. The men who poled and rowed them along rested easy for the time being. Everything was going as well as it could. Grus still worried. The more he looked at Lanius, the more he worried, too.

Lanius kept looking now this way, now that. It wasn't curiosity, of which Grus had seen he owned an uncommon share. The more he stared around the Maze, the paler and quieter he got. His lips thinned. His jaw set. He kept sneaking glances at Grus. Grus didn't like those glances. He knew looks couldn't kill. If he hadn't known that, he would have feared falling over dead.

Here, at least, he thought he knew what the trouble was. When King Lanius looked out into the Maze and then glowered at him yet again, he decided to strike first, before things got even worse. "Are you looking for your mother's convent?" he asked.

Lanius started. Grus hid a smile. Lanius hadn't thought he was so obvious. Grus didn't think he had. After a moment, the young king nodded. "Yes, I am," he said with as much defiance as he could muster.

"It's over that way, I believe," Grus told him, pointing southeast. "I'm sorry she's there. You can believe that or not, just as you please, but it happens to be true. If she hadn't tried to kill me, she'd still be in the city of Avornis. I'd like to hope you believe that's true."