The Bastard King (35 page)

"Think they're ripe yet?" Nicator asked one afternoon.

After weighing things, Grus nodded. "Yes. Let's get this over with - if we can."

When the sun rose the next day, Nicator ferried Hirundo's force over the Enipeus. Corvus and Corax's men needed longer than they should have to realize this wasn't another pinprick raid. The first few scout companies that went up against the attackers vanished without trace. Then the whole rebel army began to move, in sudden, desperate haste. From the north bank of the river, Grus watched the pillar of dust that signaled where every force moving on land in summertime was.

As soon as he was sure Corvus and Corax had committed themselves, he ordered the rest of his own force onto Nicator's fleet. Horns blared. Sergeants shouted and cursed. Horses neighed or simply snorted in resignation. And the fleet did what Grus had wanted from it - it put his men right in the rebels' rear.

Sergeants shouted louder than ever as soldiers streamed off the barges and boats and river galleys. "Move!" they bellowed. "Move fast! Help your friends! We do this the right way, we all get to go home afterward!" If anything would make the men fight like fiends, that was it.

As soon as he was on the south side of the Enipeus, Grus mounted his horse. As a rider, he remained a good sailor. King Lanius, not far away from him, had a much better seat. But Grus stayed on, and he stayed out in front of his men. "Come on!" he shouted. He waved his sword, and didn't quite cut off the horse's ears with it. "We've got'em where we want 'em now! This time, we finish'em!"

The men cheered. Lanius said nothing at all, and didn't try to keep up with the van of the onrushing army. Grus knew his fellow king was unhappy with him. He also knew Lanius wasn't, and never would be, a warrior.

Grus had more urgent things to worry about, anyhow. Before long, his soldiers started scooping up men who'd fought for Corvus and Corax. "What are you bastards doing here?" one of them snarled as he went off into captivity. "You're supposed to be up there." He pointed upstream, where Hirundo's men unquestionably were.

"Life is full of surprises," Grus answered. The rebel only gaped at him.

Others who fought for Corvus and Corax must have galloped ahead to let the brothers know they were under attack from front and rear at once. Before long, Grus found rebels drawn up in a ragged line across a field of barley. He pointed his sword at them. "Can
they
stop
us?"
he yelled. His men roared in response, and he led the charge at a gallop, hoping all the while he wouldn't fall off his horse.

Some of the rebel horsemen and foot soldiers had bows. Grus watched a rider take aim at him. He hoped the fellow wasn't taking dead aim. The archer let fly. The arrow hissed past Grus' head. Then he and his men were on the soldiers who followed Corax and Corvus.

Battle, as always, seemed a blur. Grus struck and turned blows and shouted and cursed and urged his followers on. Sometimes he missed; sometimes his sword bit on flesh. Even when the blade did strike home, more often than not he had no idea how much damage he did. Everyone on the field was shouting and groaning and screaming. What was one more cry of pain among the rest?

"We've broken them!" someone yelled. It was, Grus realized, someone on his side. Sure enough, the rebels - those of them still on their feet - streamed off in flight.

"This is only the beginning," Grus called. "This was just a rear guard. They wanted to slow us up. We didn't even let them do that. We've got to keep moving now, come to grips with the rest of the army, and break it, too." He pointed west. "Forward!"

His men cheered. Why not? They'd won a fight, and hadn't suffered much doing it. That made them ready for more.

They got it, too. A scout came galloping back with news: "Corax and Corvus are mixing it up with Hirundo's men. If we pitch into their rear now - "

"That's what we're here for," Grus agreed. He shouted, "Forward!" again at the top of his lungs.

As his scouts told him what the rebels were doing, so their outriders warned them his army was on the way. His men couldn't simply pitch into their rear, taking them by surprise. But Corvus and Corax didn't have enough soldiers to withstand Hirundo and Grus at the same time. When the rebel leaders pulled men out of the fight against Hirundo to confront Grus' advancing army, Hirundo pressed them harder. And Grus could see how the line they'd quickly turned about and formed against him wavered.

He spied Corax, who was crying, "Kill the king! Kill the false king!"

"Come and try it!" Grus yelled. He spurred toward Corvus' brother. The rebel count, seeing him, booted his own horse up into a gallop. Grus wondered if he'd made a mistake, and if he would live through it. Unlike him, Corax really knew what he was doing on horseback. The noble's sword sparkled in the sun.

No matter what Corax knew, it didn't help him. An arrow caught him in the face. That bright blade flew from his hand. He slid off his horse and thudded down into the dust. He might have died even before he hit the ground. Grus, clutching the hilt of his own sword, allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief.

And seeing him fall broke the rebels' spirit. Some of them ran off in all directions, thinking of nothing but saving themselves. More threw down swords and spears and bows and flung up their hands in surrender. Only a stubborn handful around Corvus fought their way free of the disaster and headed south in any kind of order.

By then, the sun was almost down. Grus let that last knot of rebels get away, not least because he doubted any pursuit could catch up with them. He was, for the moment, content to see what he and his men had won.

He turned to Hirundo, who had a bloody rag tied around a cut on his forehead just below the brim of his helmet. "Let's camp here for the night. We'll care for the wounded and go on from there in the morning."

"That seems fine, Your Majesty." Hirundo sounded as weary as Grus felt. He had a dent in his helm that hadn't been there the day before; maybe the wound to his forehead had come when the brim got forced into his flesh. He waved. "The men are camping here whether we want them to or not."

Sure enough, tents sprouted like toadstools at one edge of the battlefield. Soldiers prowled the field, plundering the dead and looking for missing friends who might have been hurt. Grus tried not to listen to the moans of the wounded. He always tried. He always failed. To take his mind off them, he pointed to an especially large tent and said, "There's King Lanius' pavilion."

Hirundo nodded and pointed in a different direction. "And here comes Lanius himself."

"Good." Grus waved to his fellow king. He'd hardly seen King Lanius since the fighting started. He was glad Lanius had come to him now. He didn't want them quarreling. Lanius waved back, and Grus' bodyguards stepped aside to let the young king join the older one.

And then, altogether without warning, Lanius jerked out a dagger and stabbed Grus in the chest. He let out a horrid, wordless cry of dismay when the point snapped off - King Grus still wore a light shirt of mail under his tunic.

Grus' response was altogether automatic. His sword sprang from its scabbard. He struck once, with all his strength.
His
blade bit deep into Lanius' neck. Blood fountained. It smelled like hot iron. With a groan, head half severed, the young King of Avornis fell dead at his feet.

Chaos in the camp. The racket a little while before had been bad enough. Anyone who hoped to sleep would have had a hard time of it. Now the endless moans of the wounded - and their shrieks when surgeons set about trying to repair their wounds - were joined by a sudden chorus of outraged shouts. And those shouts didn't ebb. They spread over the whole encampment like wildfire, getting louder and more furious at every moment. Running feet were everywhere, too. All at once, no one in Grus' army or Hirundo's seemed content to walk anywhere.

At first, the shouts had been wordless - expressions of raw, red rage and horror. Little by little, though, men started yelling one king's name or the other's. And they started using a word that, when connected to any king's name, meant nothing but trouble and worry and sorrow ahead for the realm the man had ruled. They started yelling, "Dead!"

Up till then, it had been possible to ignore the racket, especially for someone who wanted nothing but food and rest. But hearing the word
dead
connected with the name of Grus and with the name of Lanius proved impossible to ignore, even for the most detached, scholarly individual in the whole encampment.

With a sigh, and with a look of regret aimed at the bread and dried meat he wouldn't be able to eat, at the cup of wine he wouldn't be able to finish, and at the inviting cot he wouldn't be able to fall into any time soon, King Lanius got to his feet and ducked his way out through the tent flap and into the night.

"What on earth is going on around here?" he demanded of the first soldier he saw.

He expected an answer. He might have gotten an excited answer, an angry answer, even an incoherent answer, but he thought he would acquire something in the way of information. Instead, the soldier gaped at him, mouth falling open. The man's eyes bugged out of his head. "A ghost!" he cried. "Sweet Queen Quelea guard me, a ghost!" He fled.

Lanius said something nasty under his breath. He drummed his fingers on the outside of his thigh.
Why me?
he wondered.
Why do I find the maniacs when all I'm looking for is the answer to a simple question?

The frightened soldier's wails made other men stare his way. He walked toward them, repeating, "What on earth is going on?"

"Oh, by the gods," one of them said fearfully. "It is him. I know his look, and I know his voice, too."

Then they all cried out, "A ghost!" and fled every which way.

King Lanius pinched himself. It hurt. He was, emphatically, still flesh and blood. He hadn't really needed to do any pinching, either; all the time he'd spent on a horse that day had left him saddlesore. Avornan lore said a great many things about ghosts. Some he'd heard from servants, some he'd found poking through the royal archives. Never in all his days had he heard of a saddlesore spook.

He strode forward. If things had been confused before - and they had - the addition of eight or ten fleeing men screaming, "A ghost!" at the top of their lungs did nothing to calm the situation. He heard more soldiers - men who couldn't possibly have seen him - also start shouting, "Ghost! Ghost! Gods preserve us, a ghost!"

"Idiots," Lanius snarled. "Fools. Morons. Imbeciles. Lack-wits. Dolts. Clods. Chowderheads. Buffoons.
Soldiers."

One of them, trying to run away from him, almost trampled him instead. Lanius grabbed the fellow and refused to let him go. "Oh, Queen Quelea save me, it's got its claws in me now!" the man moaned, plainly believing his last moments on earth had arrived.

"Shut up, you ... you soldier, you," Lanius told the trooper. He shook him, which only terrified the fellow worse. "Now, gods curse you, tell me why you think I'm dead."

"Because ... Because ... Because ... King Grus killed you." The soldier got it out at last. Then his eyes rolled up in his head. He went limp in Lanius' arms. Lanius had heard of people fainting from fright. Up till that moment, he'd never seen it.

And he'd finally gotten an answer. He didn't think he'd gotten any information, though. "King Grus did what?" he said. The soldier, of course, didn't answer. Lanius let go of him in disgust. The man slumped to the ground and hit his head on a rock. As far as Lanius could tell, that was more likely to hurt the rock than the man's obviously empty head.

Resisting the impulse to kick the fellow while he was down, Lanius looked around for Grus' pavilion. He didn't see it, and growled something he'd heard a bodyguard say after banging his thumb with a hammer.

If he couldn't find the pavilion, maybe he could find his fellow king. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than another soldier caromed off him. He grabbed this one, too, and snarled, "Where's Grus?"

The man goggled at him, but didn't faint. Lanius
would
have kicked him if he had. Instead, still gaping, the soldier said, "He's over that way." A moment later, he blurted, "Why aren't you dead?"

"I don't know," Lanius snapped, exasperated past endurance. "Why aren't
you,
you simple son of a whore?"

"You're the bastard," the soldier retorted, at which Lanius, in a perfect transport of fury,
did
kick him. He howled. He also managed to break free, which was lucky for him - Lanius was reaching for the dagger he wore on his belt. Up till then, he'd used the fancy weapon only as an eating knife. Now he wanted to kill with it. "Nobody cut me down," the soldier added. "That's why I'm not dead." Lanius would gladly have taken care of it, but the man ran off into the night.

Since the soldier had escaped, Lanius went on in the direction in which he'd pointed. A couple of minutes later, he came upon Grus and General Hirundo. Bodyguards surrounded them. And, sure enough, a corpse dressed in royal robes much like those Lanius was wearing lay only a few paces away.

"What happened here?" Lanius asked loudly.

Everyone stared at him. The guards, after a moment's astonishment, started forward to lay hold of him. "Stop!" Grus said, and they did. Lanius knew a momentary stab of jealousy. Nobody ever obeyed him like that. With what Lanius later realized was commendable calm, Grus went on, "I just killed somebody who looked and sounded exactly like you. Are you the real Lanius, or are you somebody else who looks like him and wants to do me in?"

"By Olor's beard, I'm beginning to wonder myself," Lanius answered. "You realize I'd say I was myself regardless of whether that were so?"

"Oh, yes." Grus nodded. "The other fellow had your voice, but you sound more like you even so, if you know what I mean." He wore not a dagger but a sword on his hip. His hand had closed on the hilt, but he didn't draw the blade. Instead, he asked, "What was the name of that Therving trader who gave you your first pair of moncats?"