The Bastard King

CHAPTER NINE

The green-robed priest held out the torch to Grus. “As the flames and smoke rise to the sky, so may his soul ascend to the heavens,” he said as Grus took the torch and walked toward the pyre.

“So may it be.” Grus blinked back tears. Atop the pyre lay his father. Crex, to look at him, might have been asleep. An embalming spell had kept his body fresh while Grus came up from the south. From what Turnix had said while they watched the Thervings, such spells differed little from those the well-to-do used to keep their meat fresh longer than nature usually allowed. That was a bit of lore Grus could have done without.

Crex had been dead for almost a month. Grus had known his father was dead for half that time. He’d had to leave the fleet on the Tuola to come home. He should have been hardened to the knowledge by now—or so he kept telling himself. But his hand shook as he thrust the torch at the pyre.

He died easy, he told himself. You should be so lucky. He was sitting in that tavern with his disreputable friends, and he slumped over, and that was the end of it. Some of Crex’s disreputable friends—retired royal bodyguards, most of them—stood with his family to do Grus’ father honor.

“Have a drink up there for me, you old bastard,” one of them called to Crex. “And pinch the barmaid’s bottom after she fetches it for you.”

“You have to pinch ’em afterward,” another graybeard added. “Otherwise, they’re liable to spill the wine in your lap— accidentally on purpose, you know.”

In spite of himself, Grus smiled at that. He touched the torch to the oil-soaked wood. It caught at once, with a blast of heat that made him step back in a hurry. He held a hand up in front of his face. When he took it down, he couldn’t see his father’s body anymore. The flames had swallowed it.

He and his family had given the old man the best send-off they could afford. The pyre was of cedar and cypress and sandalwood, the oil scented with cinnamon, so even the smoke was sweet. “Good-bye, Father,” Grus whispered. “Gods keep you joyous forever—and I hope you do pinch that heavenly barmaid’s bottom.”

Estrilda came up to him. He put his arm around his wife. “He was a good man,” she said, and a tear slid down her cheek. “He was like my own father to me—he was nicer to me than my own father, if you want to know the truth. I’ll miss him.”

Sosia came up, too, and put her arms around Grus. His daughter was taller than his wife now, and starting to be shaped like a woman. That astonished him. Neither had been true the last time he saw her, half a year earlier. Sosia was a sweet-natured girl. She had to take after Estrilda there, he thought, for she surely didn’t take after him.

He glanced over at Ortalis. His son was well on the way to becoming a man, and a handsome man at that. At the moment, he was avidly watching the pyre. Grus’ mouth tightened. If I know him, he’s trying to see the body burn, he thought unhappily. That he’d gotten a vicious son surprised him as much as having a sweet daughter, and distressed him far more.

“If you will excuse me, Commodore, I must return to my sanctuary,” the priest said. “I shall pray to the gods to sustain you in the wake of your loss, and also to guard and honor your father’s spirit.”

Grus bowed. “Thank you for all you’ve done, Your Reverence. I’m grateful, and so is my family… Yes?” That last was aimed at a pair of newcomers. They were both solidly made men, with hard, watchful eyes, and a weathered look that came from spending a lot of time outdoors. Swords hung from their belts. Soldiers, Grus thought.

“You’re Commodore Grus?” one of them asked.

“That’s right.”

“You need to come with us right away,” the fellow said.

“Come with you where?” Grus asked in more than a little irritation. “I’ve just burned my father’s body. I’m off to his memorial feast. It isn’t something that can wait.”

The two soldiers looked at each other. The one who hadn’t spoken before said, “To the royal palace. Queen Certhia’s orders.” The other one nodded, relieved that his companion had come up with an answer.

He looked so relieved, in fact, he made Grus’ suspicions flare. “I’ll come as soon as the feast is done,” he said, as mildly as he could. He wasn’t carrying a sword. He hadn’t thought he would need one at his father’s farewell. How bad a mistake would that turn out to be?

“That’s not so good, Commodore,” one of the strangers said. “That’s not so good at all. Her Royal Highness won’t be happy with you, not even a little she won’t. Why don’t you just come along now, like you’re supposed to?”

“I’ll apologize when I get to the palace,” Grus said. “It’ll be on my head, not yours.” He wanted to keep wearing his head awhile longer. What do I do if they draw sword on me? One knife against two longer blades made fearful odds.

And then, from behind him, someone said, “These lugs bothering you?” Grus cautiously looked over his shoulder. Four or five of Crex’s old soldier friends had drifted up to stand at his back. They wore swords; he would have bet they wore them everywhere except to bed. As Crex had been, they were nearer seventy than sixty, but they weren’t soft and they weren’t feeble. Two of them against the pair of ruffians wouldn’t have made an even fight. The lot of them together? That was a different story.

Ortalis came up behind Grus, too. He didn’t have a sword and he wasn’t quite a man yet, but he did have a look on his face that said he’d jump right into a fight and do something nasty to the losers if he won.

The men who’d asked Grus to come with them looked to be weighing their chances. One of them made shooing motions at the retired soldiers. “Shove off, old-timers,” he said. “This here is none of your business.”

Grus could have told him that was a mistake. The graybeard who’d spoken before said, “It is if we make it our business. And if you don’t like it, you can bend over and stick it right there.” The other veterans nodded. A couple of them had already let their hands fall to the hilts of their swords.

“I’ll go to the palace right after the feast,” Grus said. “We can sort everything out then. I’ll see you there, won’t I?”

He didn’t think he would ever see these fellows again. He just hoped they wouldn’t try to murder him now that they hadn’t managed to spirit him away. When one of them said, “Queen Certhia won’t like this,” and started to walk off, he allowed himself the luxury of a sigh of relief—they hadn’t been paid to risk their lives, then. More reluctantly, the second soldier followed the first. They argued as they went.

“Who are those men?” Estrilda asked quietly.

“My first guess would be, Count Corax’s soldiers,” Grus answered. “He owes me one—or thinks he does.”

“I’m glad you don’t believe they came from Queen Certhia,” his wife said. “What would they have done with you?”

“Nothing good. He must have tried this on the spur of the moment, when he found out I was in the city. Otherwise, he would have managed something better.” Queen Certhia would have managed something better, too, if she’d really wanted my head, Grus thought uneasily. He remembered tossing that letter summoning him to the city of Avornis into the Tuola. Sometimes things like that came home to roost, though he hadn’t worried about it then.

One of Crex’s friends tapped him on the shoulder. “You want us to go home with you, Commodore? Never can tell where you’ll find more buggers like that pair prowling around.”

“Thanks, but—” Grus stopped. The graybeard was right. Being polite here might get him killed. Grus shook his head. “No buts. Thanks. I’ll take you up on that.”

“Smart lad,” the veteran said, just as Grus’ father might have. “Let’s go, then.”

“Yes.” Grus turned away from the pyre. “Let’s.”

King Lanius’ tutor clucked reproachfully. “Your Majesty, you’re not paying attention,” he said. “I don’t even bother bringing my switch with me anymore, but maybe I should start again. What has been the matter with you lately?”

“I’m sorry.” Lanius knew exactly why he’d had trouble thinking about geometry. He’d been thinking about Prinia instead. She’d taught him a couple of things the day before that he hadn’t learned from Marila. He wondered what the archives had to say about things a man did with a woman. He’d never tried to find out, not till now. The archives said something about almost everything. What they had to say about that might prove very interesting.

“‘Sorry is not enough,” his tutor declared. “You’ll need to show more effort—and more success—or I’m going to have to speak to your mother.” He sighed. “I haven’t had to warn you like that for a long time, either.”

Before Lanius could answer, a bodyguard stuck his head into the little room where he had his lessons. “What’s this, Rallus?” Lanius asked in surprise. No one bothered him during lessons. He’d decreed that a long time ago, and in that his word was law—not least because the decree was so inconsequential.

But Rallus said, “Marshal Lepturus wants to see you right away, Your Majesty. It’s important.”

“What is it?” Lanius asked. Rallus just stood there. With a sigh of his own, Lanius told his tutor, “I’d better go. I’ll be back soon.”

He wasn’t wrong very often. This turned out to be one of those times.

Rallus led him to a chamber off the throne room. Lepturus sat there. So did Lanius’ mother. Lepturus always looked gloomy. Now he looked as though he never expected to see day dawn again. Queen Certhia might have aged five years since the morning. Her face was pale. It showed more lines than Lanius had ever seen there. Her eyes were wide and staring.

“What is it?” Lanius said in shock. Then his mind made one of its swift leaps. “Oh, by the gods,” he whispered. “Count Corvus has finally fought the Thervings, hasn’t he?”

Jerkily, Lepturus nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty, he did. A little the other side of the Tuola, it was—he got sick of waiting for Dagipert to come to him, and went out after the Thervings instead. The first fugitives just got back here with word of what happened. The short answer is, Corvus picked the wrong time to get bold.”

“The first fugitives?” Lanius didn’t like the sound of that.

Lepturus gave him another jerky nod. “Dagipert met him on a meadow with a glade of trees off to one side. Corvus, like I said, was feeling bold. He sent his men—our men—charging ahead, and the Thervings gave ground before him.”

Three sentences were plenty to give Lanius the bad feeling that he knew what was coming next. Hoping against hope, he asked, “Did Count Corvus send scouts into that—glade, you called it?”

This time, the commander of the royal bodyguards shook his head. “We were advancing. Why did he need to worry about anything like that? I’m guessing what went through his mind, understand. I don’t know for sure.”

“Nobody knows for sure whether anything went through his mind,” Queen Certhia said bitterly.

“Nobody—nobody here, anyhow—knows for sure whether he’s alive or dead,” Lepturus went on. “He pushed on, happy as—”

“Happy as any man pushing it in,” Certhia interrupted again. “Just that happy, and just that stupid.”

Lanius looked at the floor, at the walls, at the ceiling—anywhere but at his mother. He hadn’t thought she knew what he’d been doing with the serving girls. But she was unlikely to have chosen that particular comparison by accident. Next to this news, though, even that was small. “And there were Thervings in amongst those trees?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, by the gods, yes,” Lepturus answered. “They stayed hidden there till our battle line had pushed past ’em, then they all came swarming out, and they rolled us up like a pair of socks. The soldiers who’ve gotten here are the ones who ran first and fastest, so things may not be quite as bad as they say, but they’re pretty gods-cursed bad—no two ways about it.”

“What do we do?” Lanius asked. “What can we do?”

“I see two things,” the guards commander told him. “Number one is, we ready the city here to stand siege, on account of it’ll draw Dagipert the way candied apricots draw ants. And number two is, we bring up all the river galleys we can to help hold him back and help defend this place.”

Queen Certhia looked as though she’d bitten into an unripe persimmon. Lanius needed only a moment to realize why. “That means calling on Commodore Grus for help,” he said. Lepturus nodded. Certhia’s face puckered up even more. Lanius said, “Mother, you’ve got to write that order.”

“Me?” his mother burst out. “If Grus hadn’t left Corax and the Heruls behind—”

“Who knows what would have happened?” Lanius broke in. “Corvus might have walked into an ambush anyhow—he seems rash enough. But we need Grus now, and he knows you’re angry at him. That means you need to be the one who softens him up.”

Certhia shook her head. Lepturus said, “He’s right, Your Royal Highness.”

“Are you betraying me, too?” Lanius’ mother demanded.

“No one’s betraying you, Mother,” Lanius said. “We’re trying to help the kingdom. Grus will do whatever you order. He seems a clever man, and he’s done a lot of good for Avornis. Don’t let your pride get in the way.”

“Oh, gods help me! I’ll write the letter,” Certhia said. But before Lanius could get too happy about that, she added, “Anything—anything at all—to keep from being lectured by my own son.” Lanius started to get indignant about that. Then Lepturus couldn’t quite smother a chuckle. Lanius deflated in a hurry.

Some Thervings were watering their horses at the bank of the Asopus, not far from the city of Avornis, when Commodore Grus spotted them. “Let’s make them pay!” he shouted to the men aboard the Crocodile. “Oarmaster, up the stroke! Marines, stand to starboard with your bows!”

The drumbeat picked up. The river galley glided along the Asopus toward the invaders. The Thervings hadn’t even bothered posting sentries. After smashing Count Corvus’ army to bloody rags, they’d pushed east all the way to the walls of the capital, and no one had come forth to challenge them. Why should they have worried?

“I’ll show them why,” Grus muttered.

He’d gotten almost within arrow range when King Dagipert’s men noticed the Crocodile. Even then, the Thervings kept right on tending to their animals. A couple of them shook fists at the river galley, but that was all. The Crocodile, after all, was in the Asopus, and they were on the riverbank. What could the ship do to them? She might look like a centipede, with her oars rhythmically rising and falling, but she couldn’t run after them on land.

“Ready!” the marines’ lieutenant shouted, and the men drew their bows back to the ear. He raised his hand and let it fall. “Shoot!”

The volley tore into the Thervings and their horses. The big blond men shouted and shrieked. The animals screamed. The Avornan marines reached into their quivers for more arrows and shot again. The second volley wasn’t quite as smooth as the first had been, but more Thervings fell. A few of Dagipert’s men started shooting back, while others either mounted horses or led them back out of range. That took a while, and the Avornans punished them till they escaped.

“Well, that was fun,” Nicator remarked. Two marines had taken arrows—one in the shoulder, the other in the hand. Neither wound looked serious, and they were the only hurts aboard the Crocodile. Eight or ten Thervings sprawled and writhed by the riverbank—some dead, others injured. Several horses were down, too.

“So it was,” Grus said. “One more fleabite for Avornis. They got careless, and we nipped ’em.”

“They won’t bring their horses to the Asopus again anytime soon, or to any other stream with enough water in it to float a river galley,” Nicator said.

“No, so they won’t,” Grus agreed. “But they don’t have to, either. They can still besiege the capital.”

“What are we doing here?” Nicator grumbled. “Shooting up a few fools is fine, but we should be doing more.”

“Well, if we had some soldiers aboard, we could put them and our marines ashore where they might do the Thervings some harm,” Grus said.

“Oh, happy day.” Nicator spat. “Just like Corax and his gods-cursed Heruls, you mean.”

That made Grus spit, too. “Gods curse Corax, and gods curse Corvus, too. Between the two of them, they’ve done Avornis more harm than Dagipert ever dreamt of. Corvus threw away all the soldiers we might be carrying.”

“I hear he made it back to the city of Avornis,” Nicator said.

“Why am I not surprised?” Grus said. “You can’t kill fleas, however much you want to. Or maybe Dagipert told his men to let the bastard go on purpose, figuring he might want to beat him again someday.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” Nicator said. “Dagipert is smart, and Corvus—”

“Thinks he is,” Grus broke in.

“Right,” Nicator said.

“Until we raise more men down in the south, I don’t know what we can do except pray the walls hold,” Grus said. “They should. They really should.” He hoped he wasn’t just trying to convince himself. He also hoped the Menteshe wouldn’t swarm north over the Stura with Avornis so busy here by the capital. And he kicked at the deck of the Crocodile, for he could do so very little to make either hope come true.

Lanius wore an iron helmet shaped like a pot, a plain linen surcoat over an equally plain shirt of mail, and baggy wool trousers that itched. If he’d had a beard, he would have looked like a soldier on the walls of the capital. Since he didn’t, he looked like one of the youths who brought the men food and arrows and whatever else they might need.

What he didn’t look like was the King of Avornis. The Thervings weren’t likely to shoot at one nondescript youngster on the walls. Lanius enjoyed the disguise. He also liked the taste of freedom it gave him. Count Corvus and Lepturus, who accompanied him, hid their rank the same way. He wondered if they enjoyed it, too.

Thervings out beyond the ditch in front of the wall did shoot arrows at the defenders. More Thervings threw bundles of sticks and brush into the ditch, trying to work their way close enough to the wall to set scaling ladders against it. The Avornans concentrated their arrows on those men, and also shot fire arrows at the fascines. Lanius thought the curved trails of smoke from the fire arrows were fascinating.

Then one of the bundles caught. Dagipert’s men poured water on it, but it kept burning. The fire quickly spread to other fascines thrown into that part of the ditch. Cheering, the Avornans pincushioned the Thervings who were trying to put out the blaze.

Count Corvus said, “We ought to sally against them, Your Majesty, while they’re in this pickle.”

“I don’t think so,” Lepturus answered. “We’re not trying to beat them. We’re only trying to make them give up and go away.” He had good sense. Protecting the king and the capital was usually more important than commanding in the field. Comparing Lepturus’ performance and Corvus‘, Lanius regretted that.

“That is a coward’s way to fight,” Corvus declared.

“You had your chance in command, Your Excellency,” Lanius said coolly. “You had it, and look what you did with it. Lepturus leads in the city of Avornis.”

“I was stabbed in the back.” Corvus reddened with anger. “That baseborn turd Grus betrayed me. He betrayed my brother. He betrayed the whole kingdom. Do you blame me for what he did?”

“No, I blame you for what you did. Grus didn’t command against King Dagipert,” Lanius said; as always, illogic oppressed him. “Had Grus commanded, he might not have fallen into Dagipert’s ambush. You fell into it.”

Corvus’ hands folded into fists. “Nobody talks to me that way,” he said.

In a voice like ice, Lepturus said, “You’re speaking to the King of Avornis. You had better remember it if you ever want to see your estates again. He’s earned the right to be angry at you, considering how much you threw away.”

“I was stabbed in the back,” Count Corvus repeated.

“By your own stupidity, maybe—no one else’s,” Lepturus said.

“Enough,” Lanius said. “If we fight among ourselves, who wins? King Dagipert.” Not that he hasn’t won already, he thought. But he added, “And who laughs? The Banished One.”

Lepturus bowed. “That’s so, Your Majesty, every word of it. You’ve got good sense.”

Lanius thought he had tolerably good sense, too. And what has it gotten me? he wondered. I could be a drooling idiot, and I’d still wear the Avornan crown. More than a few people might like it better if I were a drooling idiot. Then they wouldn’t have to worry about what I thought, because I wouldn’t think anything at all.

“The Banished One laughed when Grus betrayed Corax,” Corvus said furiously. Neither Lanius nor Lepturus said a word. They both just looked at him for a long time. Lanius wasn’t sure what his own expression seemed like. He was sure he wouldn’t have wanted anyone with Lepturus’ scowl glaring at him. And Corvus, most reluctantly, yielded. “All right,” he muttered. “Let it go.”

A stone-thrower hurled a rock as big as a man’s head—Lanius glanced at Corvus to make the comparison—out toward the Thervings. They had no weapons to match the catapult. But it did less good than it might have. It skipped—as a smaller, flatter stone might have skipped on water—and landed harmlessly, well beyond the clump of men at whom it was aimed.

The soldiers serving the siege engine cursed furiously. “They’ve got a wizard out there working for them,” one of the men said. “By the gods, why haven’t we got wizards here to put their bastard down?”

“That’s a good question,” Lanius said. “Why haven’t we, Lepturus?”

“Because somebody’s gone and botched things, that’s why,” the commander of his bodyguards answered. Wizardry was a rare talent; reliable wizardy even rarer. Still, a sorcerer should have been on the wall. Corvus brayed laughter. “Oh, shut up,” Lepturus told him, “or we’ll shoot that boulder on top of your neck at the Thervings next.” Lanius snickered. He couldn’t help himself. He wasn’t the only one who’d had that thought, then.

Scowling, Corvus stalked away. If he could have raised fur on his back like an offended cat, he would have done it. Lanius sighed. “I suppose we shouldn’t bait him.”

“Why not?” Lepturus said. “He shouldn’t just be baited—he should be bait. You could catch plenty of fish with bits of him on the hook.”

“Heh,” Lanius said, though he didn’t think the guards commander was joking.

The Thervings held their ring around the city of Avornis. Out beyond that ring, they did as they pleased. Pillars of smoke marked the funeral pyres of farmhouses, villages, towns. Lanius began to wonder if any of the northwestern part of the kingdom would remain unravaged by the time Dagipert finally decided to go home for the harvest.

Instead of going home, the King of Thervingia launched a furious, full-scale assault on the capital three days later. His wizards did their best to hide his preparations, and then, when the attack was launched, they hurled fireballs and lightning bolts and sudden storms of rain at the Avornans on the walls.

More than a few of the first messengers who brought word of the attack back to the palace sounded panicky. Like most people inside the city, Lanius had thought Dagipert would know he couldn’t take it, and so wouldn’t try very hard. To find out he was wrong alarmed him, as it always did. Might he also have been wrong about the city’s invulnerability?

He couldn’t ask Lepturus. The guards commander was on the walls himself, seeing to the defense. Lanius tried to go out there, but palace servants stopped him. “Sorry, Your Majesty,” said a steward who sounded not sorry in the least. “Your mother has forbidden you to go to the fighting.”

Lanius fumed and pouted. Later, he realized he might have done better to bribe the man. That might have worked. His show of temper didn’t. He had to stay and wait and wonder if the next soldiers he saw rushing toward the palace would be Avornans or ax-wielding Thervings.

Only as the sun set behind the Bantian Mountains did the din abate. A last messenger came to the palace. “Olor be praised,” he said simply. “We’ve thrown ’em back.”

Even then, though, King Dagipert refused to withdraw. Instead, he went back to ruining the Avornan countryside. Trapped within the capital, all Lanius could do was watch the smoke rise. After a week, Dagipert sent a messenger up to the walls under flag of truce. “Hear my master’s terms,” the Therving shouted in good Avornan.

Lepturus let him enter through a postern gate and sent him to the palace. There he bowed to Queen Certhia and, a little less deeply, to Lanius himself. “King Dagipert must see he can’t break into the city of Avornis,” Certhia said. “What do we have to give him to make him go away?”

“You Avornans must see you cannot drive King Dagipert from your land,” said the envoy, whose name was Claffo. “He says, Thervingia and Avornis should not have to fight anymore. He says, we should make them one, to keep it from happening again. He says, let King Lanius wed Princess Romilda, as was agreed once before.”

Lanius no longer looked at the idea with automatic horror, as he had a few years earlier. If Romilda had a pretty face and a nice shape, he was willing to think about it. But his mother spoke only one word, and that was “No.”

“King Dagipert says he will make you sorry if you refuse,” Claffo warned.

“No,” Certhia repeated. “Tell Dagipert he cannot make me as sorry as I would be if that wedding went forward.”

“I will tell him,” Claffo said mournfully. “But you will regret this.”

After he’d gone, Lanius said, “Mother, maybe I could—”

“No,” Queen‘ Certhia said yet again. “Bedding serving girls is one thing.” Lanius looked all around again, his face heating with embarrassment. His mother went on, “Taking a queen is something else again, and I will not have the Therving as your father-in-law. I’ve made mistakes, but I won’t sell Avornis to Thervingia. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mother.” Lanius didn’t always think his mother ran Avornis wisely—which meant she didn’t always do things the way he would have, had he been of age. Here, though, he couldn’t quarrel with Certhia’s choice. Marrying him to Romilda meant marrying Avornis to Thervingia, and he knew which partner would rule the roost.

“All right, then,” his mother said. “Dagipert can’t break in here. We’ve seen that—and if he does, everything’s over anyway, so there’s no point worrying about what to do next. Sooner or later, his men have to run short of food. The way they’re tearing up the countryside, it’ll probably be sooner. Once they start getting hungry, what can they do but go home?”

“Nothing, I suppose,” Lanius said. “Still, I wish they’d go home sooner than that.”

“So do I,” Certhia said. “But I don’t know how to make them do it. Do you? If you think you do, I’ll be glad to listen.”

She sounded as though she meant it. Lanius pondered. At last, scowling because he couldn’t come up with a right answer when he needed one most, he shook his head. “No, Mother. I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

“Well, well. What have we here?” Grus said.

“What have we here?” Nicator repeated, his voice rising in excitement. “We have us a chance to grab Dagipert’s balls and give ’em a good squeeze, that’s what.”

“So we do,” Grus agreed. “But that’s what it is—a chance, nothing more. We’ve got to make the most of it.”

He turned and looked back over the Crocodile’s stern. River galleys and small boats coming up the Asopus from the south had finally brought enough soldiers so that, added in with the flotilla’s marines, they might be able to give Dagipert and the Thervings a hard time. He hoped so. Up till now, the invaders had had everything go their way since breaking into Avornis.

Nicator said, “The Thervings’ll still have more men all told than we do.”

“I know.” Grus nodded. “But we can put ours right where we want them, and we can pick them up and take them somewhere else if they get in trouble.” He scuffed his foot across the decking. “When we’re fighting foes who haven’t got any ships of their own, this is a floating fortress—nothing else but.”

“It had better be,” Nicator said. “After the knife that stinking Corvus stuck in our hopes, it’s not like we’ve got a lot of room for mistakes.”

Grus wished he could have argued with that, but it was plainly true. He called out to the oarmaster: “Quicken the stroke. We’re going up toward the capital.” And to the boatswain: “Run up the Follow me pennant.”

The Thervings had learned part of their lesson. They didn’t camp right alongside the Asopus anymore, or next to any other navigable stream. But Thervingia was landlocked and mountainous. Its rivers weren’t navigable. They didn’t realize just what a flotilla could do. Grus was determined to show them.

He spotted a band of Thervings—about a regiment’s worth of men—marching back toward their main encampment under the walls of the city of Avornis. They trudged along in loose order. Why not? Who would challenge their right to rule this country? No one they’d met lately.

Boats took some Avornans ashore. River galleys scraped keels on mud and gravel close to the bank so more men could scramble down and rush toward the invaders.

Shouts of surprise rose from the Thervings. They weren’t shouts of alarm; Dagipert’s warriors had often beaten Avornans in the open field, and no doubt thought they could go right on doing it. Grus hoped they were wrong. He wasn’t sure, but he hoped so. One thing he knew—he was about to find out.

Slower than they should have, the Thervings formed a battle line perhaps a quarter of a mile from the Asopus. At that range, soldiers and marines might fight them, but the river galleys themselves couldn’t.

“Don’t you want to be a hero?” Nicator made cut-and-thrust motions. “Charge the Thervings and chop them into steaks?”

“I’ll fight as much as I have to,” Grus answered. “But I’m a sailor first, not a soldier. If I don’t have to, I won’t mix it up that much myself.” He pointed to Nicator. “I don’t see you charging the Thervings, either.”

“Me? I’m an old man,” Nicator said, which was on the way to being true but hadn’t gotten there yet. He was also good enough with a sword in his hands. Even so, he added, “I don’t care about being a hero. That’s your job, Skipper—you’re the commodore.”

“If the soldiers and marines beat the Thervings, I’m a hero, all right,” Grus answered. “If they don’t, I’m just another gods-cursed fool.”

The Avornans formed their own line of battle. They advanced on King Dagipert’s men. They outnumbered the Thervings, and their lines overlapped the foe to both left and right. The enemy soldiers spread themselves thinner to keep from getting outflanked. That did them little good; many of them found themselves attacked by two or more Avornans at the same time.

When their line unraveled, it came undone all at once. They stopped trying to hold back the Avornans, and ran for whatever shelter and safety they could find. They found very little. Howling like wolves, the men from the flotilla gave chase, cutting them down from behind. Few Thervings outran their pursuers or got to the shelter of the woods farther from the river.

“Blow Recall!” Grus told the trumpeter. “I don’t want them running into a Therving ambush.”

As the notes rang out, horns from the other ships of the flotilla echoing them, Grus hoped the Avornans would heed the call. If their blood was up, they might keep going, and run headlong into trouble. More than once, armies had thrown away victories doing that.

Not here, though. Grus made a fist and pounded it against his thigh in silent celebration as the Avornan sailors and marines started back toward the Asopus. “Well done!” he shouted to them when they got close enough for his voice to carry. “Now we go on up the river and hit them again.”

The Avornans raised a cheer coming back. They hadn’t had much to cheer about lately. They boarded boats and river galleys with more spirit than Grus had seen for a long time. He waved to the oarmaster, who bawled, “Back oars!” The Crocodile freed herself and started up the Asopus once more. Grus scanned the riverbank for Thervings.

Later that afternoon, he ordered the soldiers and marines ashore again. Again, they rushed at a startled band of Thervings who’d been tramping through the Avornan countryside without the slightest notion they might have to fight. Again, they punished the Thervings and then returned to Grus’ flotilla.

“This is fun,” Nicator said. “We can do it as often as we want.”

“Yes, for a while we can,” Grus agreed. “Sooner or later, though, they’ll figure out what’s going on.”

That took longer than he’d expected. He sent the Avornans forth against King Dagipert’s men twice more the next day, and won another couple of quick, easy victories. The morning after that, he spotted yet another band of Thervings out in the open close by the river, apparently going about their business without a care in the world.

“Shall we hit ’em again. Skipper?” Nicator asked.

Grus shook his head. Nicator blinked in surprise. But Grus pointed to the trees on either side of the clearing where those Thervings displayed themselves. “What do you want to bet those woods are full of archers?” he said. “That’s how Dagipert ruined Corvus. If it worked once, why wouldn’t it work again?”

Nicator plucked at his beard as he thought that over. “You may have something there,” he said at last. “We leave ’em alone, then?”

“I intend to,” Grus answered. “Maybe we waste a chance. But we’re just here to harass the Thervings, anyhow. We can’t conquer them, not with what we’ve got—and we can’t afford to waste more men in an ambush, either. Better safe.” Nicator thought some more, then nodded.