The Bastard King

CHAPTER SEVEN

Oars rose and fell in smooth unison as the Otter fought her way upstream on the Tuola. Commodore Grus had several lookouts posted. A few Therving raiders had crossed the river under cover of darkness. Now, hunted by Avornan soldiers, their main army turned back two weeks earlier, they were desperate to escape.

“Been a while since we won a battle against Dagipert,” Grus remarked.

“So it has,” Nicator agreed. “I wonder how long it’ll be till we win another one, too.”

“Who knows?” Grus said. “Maybe he’ll be so surprised we won this one, he’ll keel over and die of shock.”

“Too much to hope for,” Nicator said. “When have you known a Therving to be so considerate to his neighbors?”

“Funny,” Grus said. “A year ago, Dagipert must have thought he was on top of the world. He was sitting right outside the city of Avornis with his whole army. Arch-Hallow Bucco’d just pledged King Lanius to his daughter. He would’ve been the King of Avornis’ father-in-law, and grandfather to Lanius’ heir. Now—” He snapped his fingers. “That’s all he’s got left.”

“Don’t count him out,” Nicator answered. “Like I say, when’s the last time you saw a Therving make things easy for Avornis?”

Grus had no good reply to that. Even had he had one, he wouldn’t have gotten to use it. The Otter rounded a bend in the river, and two lookouts started yelling at the same time. “Thervings!” one shouted. “Dead ahead!” the other one added.

There they were, only a couple of hundred yards in front of the river galley, more than a dozen men crammed into a rowboat that should have held half as many. They saw the Otter, too— saw it and knew how much trouble they were in. Their cries of dismay came clearly across the water. They tried to row harder, to get across the Tuola before the Otter could reach them. They weren’t rivermen by training; all they succeeded in doing was fouling one another. A couple of them drew bows and started shooting at the Otter, a gesture both brave and futile.

“Up the stroke!” Grus commanded. The professionals aboard the river galley followed the rhythm the drummer beat out. The Otter seemed to leap ahead. Grus hurried to the stern and seized the rudder from the steersman. He wanted to make the kill himself.

As though aiming an arrow at a running stag, he pointed the Otter’s bow at the place where the rowboat would be when the river galley met it. An arrow, once shot, was gone. Here, he could and did correct his aim all the way up to the instant of impact.

Before then, archers on the Otter were shooting at the luckless Thervings. “Brace yourselves!” Grus cried just before the ram struck home.

The Otter hit the rowboat amidships, exactly as he’d hoped. He staggered at the collision. One archer fell into the Tuola. The fellow grabbed at an oar and held on. The river galley rode up and over the boat full of Thervings.

“That’ll be the end of that,” Nicator said with no small satisfaction.

“We’ll stop to make sure—and to pick up the poor bastard who went over the side,” Grus answered. He raised his voice. “Rowers, rest on your oars.”

As the Otter glided to a stop, Grus felt a tug on the rudder. He wondered if it had caught on a snag. But it wasn’t a snag, as he discovered when he looked down. A Therving clung to the rudder. Grus yanked out his sword. “Come up,” he called.

“Come up and we’ll spare your life.” He added gestures in case the Therving spoke no Avornan.

He was strong enough, that was certain. Hanging on to the rudder with one hand, he got the other one on the rail. Then he hauled himself up into the Otter and stood there for a moment. With his soaked clothes and long hair, with water dripping from his stubbly chin, he looked as much like a river god as a man.

“Take his blade,” Grus told a couple of soldiers who’d hurried back to the stern. “I don’t want him doing anything stupid.”

“Right you are, sir,” one of them said. They advanced on the Therving together.

Maybe he thought they were coming to kill him. Maybe he’d been one of the men who’d shot hopeless arrows at the Otter as the river galley bore down on the rowboat, and still didn’t feel like giving up. Maybe he’d intended to sell his life dear from the moment he grabbed the rudder. Whatever the reason, his blade leaped free with a wet hiss of metal. He sprang past the startled sailors and straight at Grus.

Only because Grus had half expected the Therving to do something foolish did he keep from getting cut down in the first moments of the fight. The enemy warrior was bigger, stronger, and younger than he was, and fought as though he didn’t care whether he lived or died. Had a half-mindless thrall from the southern lands under the Banished One’s sway been able to fight at all, he might have fought like that. But thralls mostly lacked the wit to fight at all.

Grus gave ground. It was that or be hacked down where he stood. The Therving was utterly without fear. Killing seemed the only thing that mattered to him.

Thunk! An arrow sprouted in his side, as though it had grown there. He grimaced when it struck home, but kept right on trying to slay Grus. Thunk! Thunk!—one in the side, one in the chest. The Therving grunted. Blood began to run from his nostrils and from the corner of his mouth, but he fought on.

Thunk! Another arrow, this one right in the middle of his chest. Swaying, he nodded to Grus as though to an old friend. “He still remembers you,” he said in excellent Avornan. Only then did he topple.

“Tough bugger,” a sailor remarked, more in praise than otherwise. “You all right, Skipper?”

“Yes, I think so,” Grus answered, panting. “Tough bugger is right. I had all I could do to keep him from carving me.”

Sailors picked up the Therving’s body and flung it over the rail into the Tuola. As it splashed into the river, one of them asked, “What was that he meant, sir, about somebody remembering you?”

“I don’t know. He was dying. And he didn’t have any idea who I was, anyhow,” Grus said. “How could he?”

The sailor shrugged and went about his business. Grus wished he could do the same. For him, though, it wasn’t so easy. He had a pretty good idea whom the Therving might have meant. There was only one being who had ever taken note of him. And, just for a moment, he’d thought the Banished One stared out through the dying warrior’s eyes.

He tried to tell himself he’d been imagining things. He tried and tried, but couldn’t make himself believe it.

Winter in the city of Avornis was a slow time, a time to spend with friends and family. Rain and snow made travel outside the city difficult, sometimes impossible. Even travel inside the city often wasn’t easy. Without the rivers that came together at or near it, the place never could have grown bigger than an average provincial town. But in a hard winter, the rivers froze, and could stay frozen for weeks at a time. Poor people went hungry then, and the poorest starved. In a very hard winter, the kind that came once or twice in a hundred years, even people not so very poor starved.

At first, King Lanius didn’t worry about the snow that fell day after dreary day. He enjoyed playing in it and throwing snowballs as much as any other boy his age. Servants’ children could throw snowballs at him without fear of arrest for treason.

Lepturus was the one who began worrying out loud a couple of weeks before the winter solstice. “We’ve had a lot of snow already this year, Your Majesty,” he said.

“I know that,” Lanius answered. He knew it quite well. He’d had some of that snow delivered, with considerable force, just in front of his left ear, not long before coming back into the palace.

But Lepturus persisted. “If it keeps up like this, it’s going to be a nasty one. I think the rivers will freeze, and I think they’ll stay frozen too cursed long.”

Lanius frowned. He’d come across accounts of such hard times in his reading. “That could be very bad.”

“You’re right. It could.” Lepturus drummed his fingers on his thigh. “When I was your age, or maybe even smaller, my granddad used to tell me stories about a hard, hard winter that had happened when he was small. He said it got so bad, some people had to turn cannibal to get by. It was as though the Banished One prowled through the streets of the city. We don’t want times like those coming back.”

“Gods forbid!” Lanius exclaimed. But then, wistfully, he asked, “What was it like—having a grandfather, I mean? I hardly knew my own father, and both my grandfathers died years before I was born.”

“My granddad was an old man who liked wine a bit too much and talked and talked when he got tiddly,” the commander of his bodyguards said with a reminiscent smile. “But you need to think about the city of Avornis now, and—”

“Bring in as much grain as we can while the rivers are still passable?” Lanius broke in.

Lepturus looked at him and clicked his tongue between his teeth. “You’re getting ahead of me, Your Majesty,” he said, almost reproachfully. “Yes, I think that’s what we ought to do, and the sooner the better.”

“Go tell my mother, then,” Lanius said. “Tell her I think it’s a good idea, too.” His mouth twisted. “Or maybe you’d better not. She doesn’t seem to want to heed anything I say these days.”

“You’re not that far from coming of age, Your Majesty,” Lepturus said. “Your mother… likes heading the regency.”

“And so she doesn’t like it when I show I know what I’m doing?” Lanius asked. The guards commander nodded. Lanius sighed. “That’s silly. I’d come of age even if I didn’t know what I was doing. Would she like that better?”

“You’d have to ask her that,” Lepturus said. “Me, I’ll take her what you said, and I hope she pays attention.”

He strode out of King Lanius’ chamber. Not too many days passed before palace servants reported to Lanius that a lot more barges and boats than usual were stopping at the docks. All were full of wheat and barley and rye. He nodded, pleased with himself. Nobody out there in the city is likely to know it, but I’ve done something right, he thought.

And not long after that, an embassy from the south came up into the city of Avornis. The princes of the Menteshe treated with Avornis as did King Dagipert and the lords of the cities of the Chernagors. This embassy was different. It wasn’t a mission from the Menteshe, but from their overlord—from the Banished One himself.

His envoy was a Menteshe, of course, a round, swarthy man named Karajuk. The Banished One hadn’t spoken this directly with Avornis in almost a century. Queen Certhia kept Karajuk and his henchmen outside the walls of the city for a couple of days while secretaries pawed through musty scrolls to make sure they received him as their forefathers had received the Banished One’s last embassy. More than any mere mortal, the Banished One had a long memory. He would not overlook a slight, even an inadvertent one.

Because the reigning King of Avornis had received his last embassy, Lanius had to sit on the Diamond Throne to receive this one. Loremasters worried that having Karajuk come before Queen Certhia would be reckoned an insult, even if she did head the regency council. Certhia fretted. “What if he does something to you?”

“I’ll have wizards warding me,” Lanius answered patiently. “It will be all right. If he wanted to kill me, he’d use an assassin, not an ambassador.”

“Is there a difference to the Banished One?” his mother asked bleakly.

Lanius had no good answer for that. The Banished One was a law—or rather, no law—unto himself. But one of the protocol experts said, “We dare not offend him, Your Royal Highness,” and Certhia had to yield to his advice.

Thus Lanius sat enthroned in his heaviest, most gorgeous robe, the spiked crown of Avornis heavy on his head, as Karajuk and four followers—there had been four a hundred years ago, so there were four now—approached. The envoy wore a wolfskin hat, a snow-leopard jacket, and deerskin trousers. His supporters had a similar style with less rich garments.

Karajuk bowed low to Lanius. “I greet you, Your Majesty, in the name of my Master.” He spoke excellent, unaccented Avornan. Something glittered in his dark eyes as he added, “One day soon, maybe, he will come forth to greet you in person.”

Not for nothing had Lanius looked through the old documents the loremasters had unearthed. He said, “The Banished One’s last emissary said the same thing on his visit. He himself has not come yet.”

Karajuk studied him. “Yesss,” the Menteshe murmured, drawing the word out into a long hiss. “Your Majesty, my Master bids me say, you are not so clever as you think you are.”

“Neither is he,” Lanius replied. “If he were, he would still live with the other gods.”

Behind Karajuk, his henchmen muttered in their own language. If the gibe sank deep, the ambassador did not show it. He looked at Lanius once more. Were those his own eyes boring into the King of Avornis, or did the Banished One look out through them? Lanius didn’t know. He wondered if Karajuk did.

“You had better listen to me, Your Majesty,” Karajuk said. “You had better hear the words of my Master.”

Queen Certhia, who sat below and to the right of the throne, and Lepturus, who stood below and to the left, both stirred angrily. Lanius just looked down at the Menteshe, as though he’d found him on the bottom of his sandal. “Say on,” he said.

“Good. Maybe you have good sense after all,” Karajuk said. “My Master asks, how bad will this winter be? How long will this winter last?”

“The gods know that,” Lanius answered. “No one else does.”

Karajuk smiled a singularly nasty smile. Since being cast forth from the heavens, the Banished One wasn’t exactly a god. On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly not a god, either. Could he know things like that? Lanius wasn’t sure. Another question occurred to him, one he wished he hadn’t thought of. Could the Banished One influence things like that? Lanius wasn’t sure there, either, and wished he were.

By his smile, Karajuk suggested an answer. Of course, he would have suggested that answer regardless of whether it was true. He said, “Do you really want to find out, Your Majesty? You will. Oh, indeed you will. And when ice grips your rivers in the cold fingers of death, how will you feed your people?”

Certhia stirred again. She looked up to Lanius. Ever so slightly, he shook his head. He didn’t want the Banished One’s envoy hearing he’d already started bringing extra provisions into the city of Avornis. If Karajuk—if his Master—learned that, a different threat might come next—one he wasn’t so well able to meet.

He said, “You tell me the Banished One will ease the winter if I do what he wants? What is his price?”

“Yes, my Master will do that,” the Menteshe answered. He didn’t call the Banished One by that name. As far as the Banished One was concerned, he’d done nothing to deserve being ousted from the heavens. Master pleased him much better. Karajuk went on, “What do you have to do? You have to yield up the province of Perusia, north of the Stura. Set Perusia in my Master’s hands and you will pass through this winter untroubled by his wrath.”

“Yes—this winter. But what of next winter, or the winter after that?” Lanius shook his head. “You may tell the Banished One no. I will take my chances. My city will take its chances.”

“On your head shall it be,” Karajuk said. “I tell you—I tell you in my Master’s mighty name—you will regret your foolishness.”

“I will take my chances. The city of Avornis will take its chances,” Lanius replied. “You are dismissed. Go back to him with my words.”

“I will,” the Menteshe said. “You have already heard his words. Soon you will see how he keeps his promise.” He bowed and left the throne room. His henchmen glared back over their shoulders at Lanius as they followed him.

After the Menteshe had departed, Lepturus turned and nodded up at Lanius. The King of Avornis only shrugged by way of reply. He had no idea whether he’d done the right thing. I’ll find out, he thought, and then shook his head. Come what might, he would have plenty to eat. The city of Avornis would find out.

An icy storm whipped the waters of the Stura up into whitecaps. Sleet and flurries of snow blew almost horizontally. Icicles hung from the Pike’s rigging and from the river galley’s yard. Little icicles also clung to Grus’ beard and mustache. “Isn’t this a bastard?” he shouted to Nicator.

“Never seen anything like it in all my born days,” the veteran captain answered. “Never once. And down here, where the weather’s supposed to be good. Gods only know what it’s like up by the city of Avornis, places like that. Got to be pretty foul, though. Only stands to reason.”

“Yes, it does,” Grus agreed, and shivered. “Somebody ashore told me the Banished One’s embassy to the king came back with one unhappy envoy.”

“Oh, too bad.” Nicator’s voice dripped false distress. “That breaks my heart, that does. Tears me all in two, yes indeed.”

“I can tell,” Grus said dryly. “But do you think the one has got anything to do with the other?”

“Don’t know.” Now Nicator sounded thoughtful. “Who can say for sure what the Banished One’s full powers are? Curse me if I’m certain he knows himself.”

“Something to that, I shouldn’t wonder,” Grus agreed. He’d spent a lot of time in the south. Taken all in all, the Menteshe were the most dangerous foes Avornis had. That would have been true even without the Banished One’s patronage, for only the Stura held them away from the rich farmlands in the wide, friendly valleys of the Nine Rivers. With the Banished One urging them on, aiding them…

A line carrying too much ice parted just then. The Pike’s mast swayed alarmingly. If it went over, the river galley might turn turtle—and who could last long with the Stura so cold and fierce?

Sailors hauled on other lines to keep the mast upright. A couple of men went to the length of mountain fir and hung on to it, literally for their lives. Still others, with Grus shouting orders, seized the wildly blowing length of line that had snapped, spliced it to a replacement for what had carried away, and made it fast to a belaying pin once more.

Only then did the mast stop groaning in its socket. Only then did Grus let out a sigh of relief the savage wind promptly blew away. “Never a dull moment,” he said at last. “I wonder if we ought to take the mast down, but I don’t want to try it in this weather. Too easy for something to carry away—”

“Like that line did,” Nicator broke in.

“Like that line, yes.” Grus nodded. “And if it happened at just the wrong time, the way those things usually happen, we’d be worse off than if we left it up.”

Nicator nodded, too. “Makes sense to me.”

Turnix came bustling up to them. With his robes blowing like wash on a line, the wizard looked about to blow away himself, but he’d proved tolerably surefooted. “Have you ever had an arrow go past your head, close enough to feel the wind of it?” he asked.

Grus and Nicator both nodded this time. Grus said, “Wish I hadn’t, but I have. Why? What’s the point?”

“I think… something just went past the Pike the same way, Commodore,” Turnix answered. “It was there and gone before I could even think to ward it. But it missed.”

“You may be right,” Grus said slowly. “I think you are, but I couldn’t prove it.”

“I’m not sure I could prove it, either,” Turnix said. “I’ll tell you this, though—if it was real, the way I think it was, I’m awfully glad it missed.” His laugh was shaky. “I wish I could claim credit for turning it aside—you’d like me better if I did. But the shooter missed. I didn’t block it.”

Grus nodded yet again. He had a brief vision of the Banished One’s beautiful yet terrible face, eyes narrowed and nostrils flared with frustration. When the vision faded, he was even gladder it had been brief than that the spell, if spell it was, had missed the Pike. A man wasn’t meant to look into those eyes for long—not if he hoped to stay sane afterward.

“Well, Your Majesty, when you’re an old man with a long white beard, you can tell your grandchildren you came through this winter,” Lepturus said. “Their eyes will get all big, and they’ll go, ‘Tell us some more, Granddad Your Majesty.’ ”

However clever Lanius was, he couldn’t imagine himself old and bent and with a long white beard. At twelve, he eagerly imagined himself with any sort of beard at all; as yet, his cheeks were bare even of what people called peach fuzz. More impatient than ever to become a man, he remained a boy in the eyes of the world.

But the commander of his bodyguards was right in general, if not in particular. He’d never seen a winter like this one before, and he didn’t expect to see another like this one even if he did become a bent old man with a long white beard. “Some people say the rivers are frozen clean to the bottom,” he remarked.

“I don’t know about that,” Lepturus said. “And I don’t think they can know anything about that, either. Have they been down to the river bottoms to see for themselves?”

“I don’t suppose so,” Lanius admitted. He filed that one away, as he did with thoughts every now and then. It boiled down to three words— what’s the evidence? But not even an interesting idea could keep him from going on, “There’s an awful lot of snow and ice, though, even if it doesn’t go clear to the bottom.”

“That there is. I said so myself, as a matter of fact,” Lepturus answered. “And the ice is mighty thick. I won’t argue about that, either. I’d bet you could stampede a herd of elephants across the rivers, and they wouldn’t come close to cracking it.”

“I wish we had a herd of elephants in the city of Avornis,” Lanius said. “That would be fun to try, if they didn’t freeze.”

“Yes—if,” Lepturus said. “But everything that stays out in the cold freezes this winter. If the weather were only a little better, I’d worry about King Dagipert laying siege to us, what with the rivers and the marshes frozen hard as iron. But I don’t think even Dagipert can get the Therving army from the mountains to here without losing most of his men, maybe all of ’em, on the way.”

“Even Dagipert?” Lanius said. “Does that mean Dagipert’s a good king?”

“A strong one, anyhow, and a cursed fine general,” Lepturus said. “That makes him a lot more dangerous to Avornis, to us, than he would be otherwise.”

Lanius hadn’t thought being a good king and being a strong king might differ. Everyone said King Mergus, his father, had been a strong King of Avornis. He’d assumed that made Mergus a good king, too.

He started to ask Lepturus, then changed his mind. Instead, he found a different question. “Does the city have enough in the way of supplies?”

“For now, Your Majesty,” the officer answered. “If you hadn’t said we ought to start laying in more when you did, we might not’ve, but you did and we did and we do. I think we’ll be all right no matter how long this cold weather lasts.”

“Even if it goes right on into summer?” Lanius’ eyes widened.

“Well, no,” Lepturus said. “Not if it does that. But I don’t see how it could do that, do you? Not even the Banished One could make it do that… I don’t think.”

“I don’t think he can, either,” Lanius said. “He’s never done anything like that, not in all the years since Olor cast him out of the heavens.” He sighed. “I’ve never thought it was fair for the gods to get rid of the Banished One and to inflict him on us poor mortals.”

“You don’t want to talk to me about that,” Lepturus said. “You want to talk to Arch-Hallow Bucco.”

“No, I don’t. I never want to talk to Arch-Hallow Bucco.” Lanius made a nasty face. “If Megadyptes wanted the job back, Bucco wouldn’t be arch-hallow anymore. But Megadyptes would rather spend his time praying than riding herd on unruly priests, and so…” He sighed again.

“Can’t say as I blame him,” Lepturus remarked. “You could ask some other priest, then, Your Majesty. It doesn’t have to be Bucco.”

“I’ve tried that, as a matter of fact.” Lanius screwed up his face again. “Do you know what they say when I do?”

The guards commander thought, but not for long. Then he intoned, “ ‘It’s a mystery,’ ” exactly as a priest would have—exactly as a couple of priests had when Lanius asked the question.

“That’s it! That’s the answer!” Lanius said. “It’s the answer, but it doesn’t help.”

“One thing you find out as you get older, Your Majesty,” Lepturus said. “Getting answers is easy. Getting answers that help is a whole different business.”

Winter went on and on. The Banished One might not have been able to make it stretch into summer, but he seemed to be doing his best. Blizzards kept roaring through the city of Avornis all the way through what should have been the beginning of spring. Right about what should have been the beginning of spring, Karajuk returned to the city.

As before, Lanius ascended to the Diamond Throne. As before, Queen Certhia sat at his right hand. As before, Lepturus stood at his left. “How now?” he asked when Karajuk and what looked like the same four henchmen made their bows before him.

“My Master asks if you are ready to do his bidding now that you have had a taste of winter and hunger,” Karajuk said.

“It has been a cold winter, hasn’t it?” Lanius said, as though he hadn’t particularly noticed till the Menteshe reminded him. “But there is no special hunger here—no worse than any other winter, anyhow.”

Karajuk’s narrow eyes widened. In that moment, Lanius was sure he saw the Banished One looking out through his envoy. “You lie,” the Menteshe hissed.

“You mind your tongue, wretch,” Lepturus rumbled, “or we’ll send you back to your vile Master with it in your pocket.”

Lanius raised his hand. “It’s all right, Lepturus. He’s a barbarian, and knows no better.” As he’d been sure it would, that angered Karajuk all over again. “But what I said is true. No one starves here in the city of Avornis. By all the gods, I swear it.”

That was also calculated to infuriate Karajuk, who served one no longer, or not quite, a god. “With this winter?” the Menteshe growled. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you please,” Lanius said politely. “If you like, after you leave the palace our soldiers will escort you through the city so you can see for yourself whether I am telling the truth.”

“Do you take me for a little boy?” Karajuk could be insulting, too. “Your soldiers will show me what Avornis wants me to see.”

“No.” When Lanius shook his head, he felt the weight of the crown. “Go where you will in the city of Avornis. The guards will protect you. Folk do not love the Banished One here. You need protection in the city.”

Karajuk and his henchmen put their heads together. When he turned back to Lanius, he said, “I will take you up on your generous offer.” Irony dripped from his words. “I think you are bluffing. I think you are lying.”

Not only Lepturus but several of the bodyguards growled at that. Lanius said, “I think you are rude and serve a bad Master. After you go through the city, we can see who is right. For now, you are dismissed.”

“You had better be careful, bastard boy who calls himself king,” Karajuk said. “If my Master—”

“You are dismissed,” Lanius said again. Karajuk, scowling blacker than the storm clouds outside, had to withdraw. Lanius might not rule on his own yet, but he had discovered that the king got the last word.

Karajuk and the Banished One’s lesser servants took their tour the next day. Along with ordinary guardsmen, Lepturus sent a couple of wizards with them. Lanius didn’t know what the ambassador and his henchmen might do in the way of magic, but he agreed with the commander of the bodyguard— better not to have to find out the hard way.

When Karajuk and his followers returned to the throne room after going through the city, the Menteshe looked less happy than ever. “I still say it’s some sort of a trick,” he ground out.

“You may think what you like, of course,” Lanius said. “We here in Avornis have a word in our language for someone who will not believe what his eyes tell him.” He’d pulled that gibe from an ancient book of japes. He’d hoped he would get the chance to use it. He didn’t smile at Karajuk, but he felt like it.

The Banished One’s ambassador said, “You will regret this.” He turned and stalked out of the throne room without waiting to be dismissed. The other Menteshe, as always, followed him. They might have been puppies trailing after their mother.

“Nicely done, Your Majesty,” Lepturus said when they were gone.

“Maybe,” Lanius answered. “We’ll have trouble once good weather finally comes again.”

His guards commander only shrugged. “Name a year when we haven’t had trouble.” Try as he might, Lanius couldn’t.

Resentfully, sullenly, six weeks after it should have, winter finally left Avornis. “Now we’ll have floods, on account of all the melting snow,” Nicator predicted.

“I hope not,” Grus said, fearing his friend was right.

“As soon as things thaw out and dry out, we’re going to have the Menteshe on our backs, too,” Nicator said. “And the Thervings—you mark my words. Dagipert’s still got to be steaming because we held him last summer.”

“Well, in that case we ought to get a call to come back to the north before too long,” Grus said. “We’ve gone back and forth between the Stura and the city of Avornis so often, I’m actually starting to know what to do on horseback.”

“Me, I don’t fall off so much anymore,” Nicator said. “That’ll do.”

“What worries me is what we’ll do if the Thervings come down out of the mountains and the Menteshe boil up from the south at the same time.”

“Yes, that’d be bad, all right,” Nicator agreed.

“Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen.” Grus made the finger sign to repel bad luck. He went on, “You know, there’s one good argument that King Dagipert isn’t the Banished One’s creature.”

“What’s that, Skipper?”

“Well, if he were, the Thervings and the Menteshe would move against us together more often than they do,” Grus answered. “Since they don’t, odds are Dagipert’s his own man.”

“His own miserable old dragon, you mean,” Nicator said. Grus laughed. Nicator went on, “He couldn’t have caused Avornis any more grief if he were the Banished One’s mother-in-law.”

That probably wasn’t true. Peasants on lands the Menteshe conquered were lost to true humanity forever. Peasants on lands the Thervings overran just started working for them instead of for their own kingdom. In one way, the difference was profound. In another, though, it wasn’t. No matter who took them away or what happened to them, they were still lost to Avornis.

Before very long, the message the two river-galley officers had expected proved to be waiting for them in a little town alongside the Stura. Grus read the parchment a watch officer handed him, then nodded to Nicator: “We’re ordered to return to the city of Avornis as fast as we can get there. That means by horseback.”

“Of course it does,” Nicator said gloomily. “If they could stick us in a catapult and shoot us from hither to yon, they’d do that instead.”

“And you’d like it better, too, wouldn’t you?” Grus asked with a sly smile.

“Who, me? I might, by the gods. I don’t know for sure. I wouldn’t get saddle sore, anyhow, I’ll tell you that.”

“No, but you’d like coming down from getting flung a lot less than you like dismounting from a horse.”

“I might,” Nicator said. “But then again, I might not, too. You never can tell.” Grus snorted. Nicator let out a rumbling chuckle.

They rode north on a couple of horses the royal post lent them. The royal post of Avornis was supposed to be able to get anywhere in the Kingdom of Avornis in a hurry. If it relied on horses like those first two it furnished Grus and Nicator, Grus had trouble seeing how it did its job. He’d never ridden a more lethargic beast, and Nicator’s was no livelier. “They’ve got two gaits,” Grus said after another vain try at coaxing a canter, let alone a gallop, from his mount. “One’s a walk—”

“And so’s the other,” Nicator said.

Grus made a face at him. “If stepping on your commander’s jokes isn’t mutiny, it ought to be.”

“If you call that a joke, Skipper, it deserves stepping on,” Nicator replied. They both laughed, and rode on at the best speed the sorry horses would give them.

When they came to the next relay station, they changed mounts. The horses they got there were a little livelier than the ones they’d had before, but not much. They kept heading north, changing horses every station or two. Sometimes they got bad horses, sometimes indifferent ones. If the royal post owned any good horses, it hid them very well.

And then, as they were drawing near the city of Avornis, the relay stations abruptly stopped. A peasant working in a muddy field laughed when Grus asked him where the next one was. “I’ll tell you where, pal,” he answered. “The other side of Count Corvus’ lands, that’s where. We ain’t had nothing like that hereabouts since my granddad’s day—and Corvus’ granddad’s, too.”

“Why not?” Grus asked. “The kingdom needs them.”

“Take it up with Corvus, if you care to,” the peasant said. “It’s none of my business, and it’ll go right on being none of my business, on account of I want to keep my head attached to my neck.” He went back to grubbing in the mud.

Grus and Nicator rode their sad, weary mounts across Count Corvus’ lands. They rode past the great, frowning castle in which Corvus dwelt. Grus decided to ask the Count no questions after all. He didn’t forget, though. To Nicator, he said, “Some of these nobles need reminding they aren’t kings themselves.”

“Only way you’d make ’em remember is by dropping a rock on their heads,” Nicator answered.

“I know.” Grus looked around. “Where can I get my hands on a rock?” Nicator laughed. Grus didn’t.