The Chernagor Pirates

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lanius had just finished telling Sosia the story of the moncat and the stolen silver dipper. It was an amusing story, and he knew he’d told it well. His wife listened politely enough, but when he was through she just sat in their bedchamber. She didn’t even smile. “Why did you tell me that?” she asked.

“Because I thought it was funny,” Lanius answered. “I hoped you would think it was funny, too. Evidently I was wrong.”

“Evidently you were,” Sosia said in a brittle voice. “You can tell me funny stories, but you can’t even tell me you’re sorry. Men!” She turned her back on him. “You’re worse than my father. At least my mother wasn’t around when he took up with somebody else.”

“Oh.” More slowly than it should have, a light went on in Lanius’ head. “You’re still angry about Cristata.” He was angry about Cristata, too—angry that Grus had paid her off and sent her away. Sosia had other reasons.

“Yes, I’m still angry about Cristata!” his wife blazed. Lanius blinked; he hadn’t realized how angry she was. “I loved you. I thought you loved me. And then you went and did that. How? Why?”

“I never stopped loving you. I still love you,” Lanius said, which was true—and which he would have been wiser to say sooner and more often. “It’s just… she was there, and then…” His voice trailed away, which it should have done sooner.

“She was there, and then you were there.” Sosia made a gesture boys used in the streets of the city of Avornis, one that left nothing to the imagination. “Is there anything else to say about that?”

“I suppose not,” Lanius answered. From Sosia’s point of view, what he’d done with Cristata didn’t seem so good. From his own… He sighed. He still missed the serving girl. “Kings of Avornis are allowed to have more than one wife,” he added sulkily.

“Yes—if they can talk their first one into it,” Sosia said. “You didn’t. You didn’t even try. You were having a good time screwing her, so you decided you’d marry her.”

“Well, what else but fun are wives after the first one for?” Lanius asked, he thought reasonably. “Oh, once in a while a king will be trying to find a woman who can bear him a son, the way my father was. But most of the time, those extra wives are just for amusement.”

“Maybe you were amused, but I wasn’t,” Sosia snapped. “And I thought I amused you. Was I wrong?”

Even Lanius, who didn’t always hear the subtleties in what other people said, got the point there. “No,” he said hastily. “Oh, no indeed.”

Sosia glared at him. “That’s what you say. Why am I supposed to believe you?”

He started to explain why he saw little point in lying to her, especially now that Cristata was gone. He didn’t get very far. That wasn’t the answer she was looking for. He needed another heartbeat or two to figure out the sort of answer she did want.

Some time later, he said, “There. Do you see now?” They were, by then, both naked and sweaty, though snow coated the windowsills. Sometimes answers didn’t need words.

“Maybe,” Sosia said grudgingly.

“Well, I’ll just have to show you again,” Lanius said, and he did.

After that second demonstration, he fell asleep very quickly. When he woke up, it was light. What woke him was Sosia getting out of bed. He yawned and stretched. She nodded without saying anything.

“Good morning,” he told her.

“Is it?” she asked.

“Well, I thought so.”

“Of course you did,” she said. “You got what you wanted last night.”

In some annoyance, Lanius said, “I wasn’t the only one.”

“No?” But Sosia saw that wouldn’t do. She shrugged. “One night’s not enough to set everything right between us.”

Lanius sighed. “What am I going to have to do now?”

“You’re not going to have to do anything,” Sosia said. “You need to show me there are things you want to do, the kinds of things people who care about each other do without thinking.”

Since Lanius hardly ever did anything without thinking, he almost asked her what she was talking about. He quickly decided not to. Show me you love me, was what she meant. Keep on showing me until I believe you.

Some of what he did would be an act. He knew that. Sosia undoubtedly knew it, too. She wanted a convincing act—an act good enough to convince him as well as her. If he kept doing those things, maybe he would convince himself. Maybe I won’t, too, he thought mulishly. But he would have to make the effort.

He did his best. He went out into the hall and spoke to a serving woman, who hurried off to the kitchens. She came back with a tray of poached eggs and pickled lamb’s tongue, Sosia’s favorite breakfast. Lanius preferred something simpler—bread and honey and a cup of wine suited him very well.

As Sosia sprinkled salt over the eggs, she smiled at Lanius. She’d noticed what he’d done. That was something, anyhow.

A snowstorm filled the air around the palace with soft, white silence. In the middle of that silence, King Grus and Hirundo tried to figure out what to do when sunshine and green leaves replaced snow and cold. “How many men do you want to leave behind to make sure the Chernagors don’t ravage the coast again?” Hirundo asked. “And if you leave that many behind, will we have enough left to go up into the land of the Chernagors and do something useful ourselves?”

Those were both good questions. Grus wished they weren’t quite so good. He said, “Part of that depends on how many ships Plegadis can build, and on whether we can fight off the pirates before they ever come ashore.”

“You’d know more about that than I do,” Hirundo answered. “All I know about ships is getting to the rail in a hurry.” He grinned and then stuck out his tongue. “Give me a horse any day.”

“You’re welcome to mine,” Grus said. The general laughed. More seriously, Grus went on, “I don’t know as much about these ships as I wish I did. No Avornan does. I don’t even know if they’ll be able to find the pirates on the sea and keep them from landing. We’ll find out, though.”

Hirundo nodded. “Oh, yes. The next question, of course, is when we’ll find out. Are the pirates going to keep us from getting up into the Chernagor country again?”

“No,” Grus declared. “No, by Olor’s beard. I’ll let the garrisons and the ships deal with the Chernagors in the south. It’s not just a question of throwing Prince Vasilko out on his ear. If it were, I wouldn’t worry so much. We have to drive the Banished One out of the land of the Chernagors.”

“When we started out in this fight, I wondered whether Vasilko or Vsevolod was the Banished One’s cat’s-paw,” Hirundo said.

“I spent a lot of time worrying about that, even though Vsevolod would probably want to strangle me with his big nobbly hands if he ever found out,” Grus said. “But there’s not much doubt anymore.”

Hirundo considered that. “Well,” he said, “no.”

Grus sent out orders for cavalrymen and foot soldiers to gather by the city of Avornis. He also sent out other orders this winter, strengthening the garrisons in the river towns near the Azanian Sea and moving the river-galley fleets toward the mouths of the Nine. That meant he would take a smaller force north with him this coming spring when he moved against Nishevatz. But it also meant—he hoped it meant— the Chernagors wouldn’t be able to pull off such a nasty surprise in the new campaigning season.

No sooner had his couriers ridden away from the capital than a blizzard rolled out of the north and dumped a foot and a half of snow on the city and the countryside. Grus tried to tell himself it was only a coincidence. The Banished One didn’t really have anything to do with it… did he?

The king thought about asking Pterocles, thought about it and then thought better of it. He’d asked that question of Alca once before, in an earlier harsh winter. He’d found out the Banished One had used the weather as a weapon against Avornis, but the deposed god had almost slain Alca and him and Lanius in the aftermath of the witch’s magic. Some knowledge came at too high a price.

Mild weather returned after this snowstorm finally blew itself out. That made Grus doubt the Banished One lay behind it. When he struck at Avornis, he sent blizzard after blizzard after blizzard. He was very strong, and reveled in his strength. Being so strong, he’d never had to worry much about subtlety. He left his foes in no doubt about what he was doing, and also in no doubt that they couldn’t hope to stop him.

Milvago. Had the Banished One been as overwhelmingly mighty in the heavens as he was here on earth? Perhaps not quite, or the gods he’d fathered would never have been able to cast him out, to cast him down to the material world. But Grus would have been astonished if they hadn’t used their sire’s strength against him. Maybe he’d been arrogant, thinking they couldn’t possibly challenge him.

He knew better than that now—one more thought Grus wished he hadn’t had.

Soldiers started coming up out of the south to gather for this year’s invasion of the land of the Chernagors. A new blizzard howled down on the capital once their encampment began to swell. By then, though, winter was dying. Even the Banished One had limits to what he could do to the weather… if he was doing anything. Grus still hoped he wasn’t.

He couldn’t stop the sun from climbing higher in the sky every day, couldn’t stop the days from getting longer and warmer, couldn’t stop the snow from melting. Even after it vanished from the ground, Grus had to wait a little longer, to let the roads dry out and keep his army from bogging down. As soon as he thought he could, he climbed aboard a horse—mounting with the same reluctance Hirundo showed at boarding a river galley—and set off for the north.

Every so often, he looked back over his shoulder, wondering if a messenger was galloping up behind the army with word of some new disaster elsewhere in Avornis that would make him turn around. Every time he saw no such messenger, he felt as though he’d won a victory. On went the army, too, toward the Chernagor country.

Each time Grus set out on campaign, Lanius waved farewell and wished him good fortune. And each time Grus set out on campaign, Lanius’ smile of farewell grew wider. With Grus off to or beyond the frontiers, power in the city of Avornis increasingly rested in Lanius’ hands.

Lanius thought he could rise against Grus with some hope of success. Thinking he could do it didn’t make him anxious to try, though. For one thing, he wasn’t a man to take many chances. For another, even success could only mean winning a civil war. He doubted there was any such thing as winning a civil war. If he and Grus fought—if they wasted Avornis’ men and wealth, who gained besides the Banished One? Nobody Lanius could see. And, though he didn’t like to admit it even to himself, having someone in place to handle those parts of kingship he didn’t care for wasn’t always the worst thing in the world. He was no campaigner, and never would be. Having authority in the palace was a different story.

As usual, Queen Sosia, Crex, Pitta, Queen Estrilda, and Arch-Hallow Anser came out beyond the walls of the capital to send Grus off and wish him well. Also as usual, Prince Ortalis stayed away.

That worried Lanius. The more he thought about it, the more it worried him. If Ortalis had to choose between Grus and the Banished One, which would he pick? Remembering what had happened in Nishevatz, remembering how Prince Vasilko had risen against his father and helped the Banished One enter his city-state, did nothing to give Lanius peace of mind.

Normally, he would have talked things over with Sosia and found out how worried she was. Ortalis was her brother, after all; she knew him better than Lanius did. But she was still touchy—which put it mildly—about Cristata, and so Lanius didn’t want to provoke her in any way.

He thought about hashing it out with Anser, too. But Anser wasn’t the right man to deal with such concerns. With his sunny nature, he had a hard time seeing the bad in anyone else. And he didn’t know enough about the true nature of the Banished One, nor did Lanius feel like instructing him.

With nobody to talk to about Ortalis, Lanius did his brooding in privacy on the way back to the royal palace. He was used to that. Once upon a time, he’d resented being so much alone. Now he took it for granted.

When he and the rest of the royal family returned to the palace, they found the servants in a commotion. “He’s done it! He’s gone and done it!” they exclaimed in ragged chorus.

That sounded inflammatory. It didn’t sound very informative. “Who’s gone and done what?” Lanius asked.

The servants looked at him as though he were an idiot for not knowing. “Why, Prince Ortalis, of course,” several of them answered, again all at once.

Lanius, Sosia, Estrilda, and Anser all looked at one another. Crex and Pitta were too small to worry about what their uncle did, and ran off to play. Lanius said, “All right, now we know who. What has Ortalis done?” He braced himself for almost any atrocity. Had Ortalis hurt another serving girl? Had he decided to have a couple of moncats served up in a stew? The king wouldn’t have put anything past him.

But the servants replied, “He’s gotten married.”

“He has?” Now the king, two queens, and the arch-hallow all cried out in astonishment. That wasn’t just news; that was an earthquake. Grus had been trying to find Ortalis a bride on and off for years. He hadn’t had any luck, either. Ortalis’ reputation was too ripe. Grus had sent Lepturus, the head of the royal bodyguards, to the Maze for refusing to let his granddaughter marry the prince. And now Ortalis had found himself a wife?

“To whom?” Lanius asked. “And how did this happen?”

“How did it happen without us hearing about it?” Sosia added.

Bubulcus knew all the details. Lanius might have guessed he would. “He’s married to Limosa, Your Majesty. You know, the daughter of Petrosus, the treasury minister.” He seemed to sneer at the king for being in the dark.

They deserve each other, was the first uncharitable thought that went through Lanius’ mind. But that wasn’t fair to Limosa, whom he’d met only a couple of times. He disliked her father, who was stingy and bad-tempered even for a man of his profession.

“How did it happen?” Sosia asked again. She might have been speaking of a flood or a fire or some other disaster, not a wedding.

“In the usual way, I’m sure,” Bubulcus replied. “They stood before a priest, and he said the proper words over them, and then they…” He leered.

“Don’t be a bigger fool than you can help,” Lanius snapped, and Bubulcus, knowing he’d gone too far, turned pale. Lanius added, “You know what Her Majesty meant.”

“And which priest who wed them?” Anser added, sounding very much like the man in charge of ecclesiastical affairs. “He did it without the king’s leave, and without mine. He’ll have more than a few questions to answer—you may be sure of that.”

Perdix, who’d wed King Mergus and Queen Certhia after Lanius was born, had had more than a few questions to answer, too. He’d prospered while Lanius’ father lived… and gone to the Maze not long after Mergus died. He was years dead now.

“Well, I don’t know the name of the priest, though I’m sure you can find out,” Bubulcus said, implying that, if he didn’t know it, it couldn’t possibly be important. “But I do know they were wed in some little temple at the edge of town, not in the cathedral.”

“I should hope not!” Lanius said. “Wouldn’t that be a scandal? A worse scandal, I mean. He shouldn’t have wed at all, not on his own. It’s not done in the royal family.” A dozen generations of kings spoke through him.

“It is now,” Queen Estrilda said. “And it’s not the worst match he could have made, even if he shouldn’t have made it himself.”

“What do you want to bet Petrosus proposed it?” said Sosia, who liked the treasury minister no better than Lanius did. “He’s likely eager to make any kind of connection with our family.”

“Does he… know about Ortalis?” Anser asked.

“How could he not know?” Lanius replied.

“If he does, how could he do that to the girl?” the arch-hallow wondered. “I hope she won’t be too unhappy.”

Hoping Limosa wouldn’t be too unhappy was the kindest thing anyone found to say about the marriage. Lanius had seen omens he liked better.

Grus had just gotten off his horse when a messenger from the south galloped into the Avornan army’s encampment shouting his name. “Here!” he called, and waved to show the rider where he was.

General Hirundo had just dismounted, too. “Can’t we get a couple of days out of the city of Avornis without having one of these excitable fellows come after us, riding like he’s got a fire under his backside?”

“No, that’s me.” Grus made as though to rub the afflicted parts. Up came the messenger, and thrust a rolled-up sheet of parchment at him. “Thanks—I suppose,” the king said, taking it. “What’s this?”

“Uh, Your Majesty, it speaks for itself,” the messenger replied. “I think it had better talk and I’d better keep quiet.”

“Don’t like the sound of that,” Hirundo remarked.

“Neither do I.” King Grus broke the seal, slid off the ribbon holding the parchment closed, unrolled the sheet, and read the letter, which was from King Lanius. When he was done, he muttered a curse that didn’t come close to satisfying him.

“What is it, Your Majesty?” Hirundo asked.

“My son,” Grus answered. “It seems Prince Ortalis has taken it into his head to marry Petrosus’ daughter, Limosa. He hasn’t just taken it into his head, in fact—he’s gone and done it.”

“Oh,” Hirundo said. Seldom had a man managed to pack more meaning into a single syllable.

“My thoughts exactly.” Grus wanted to doubt Lanius, but the other king, no matter how clever, would never have had the imagination to make that up.

“What will you do about it?” Hirundo asked.

The more Grus thought about that, the less he liked the answers that occurred to him. “I don’t see what I can do about it, except tell Anser to land on the priest who married them like a landslide,” he answered reluctantly. “The wedding’s legal, no doubt about it. I can’t break off this campaign to go back to the capital and try to set things right. But oh, I wish I could.” The only reason Petrosus could have dangled Limosa in front of Ortalis was to gain himself more influence. No one else around the palace had been willing to use a daughter in a gambit like that. If Petrosus thought it would work, he would have to think again before too long.

“Yes.” Hirundo didn’t say any of the things he might have, which proved him an unexpected master of diplomacy. But the expression on his face was eloquent. “Maybe it will turn out all right.” He didn’t sound as though he believed it.

“Yes, maybe it will.” Grus sounded even less convinced than Hirundo, which wasn’t easy. And I’m talking about my own son. That was a bitter pill. If he’d sounded any other way, though, he would have been hiding what he really felt. He sighed. “I have to go on. We have to go on. Whatever happens back at the capital is less important than what we do against the Chernagors.”

Hirundo inclined his head. “Yes, Your Majesty.” If the king said it, they would go on. Grus was sure the news of Ortalis’ wedding was spreading through the army with the usual speed of rumor. No one but Hirundo seemed to have the nerve to beard him about it. That suited him fine.

I almost wish a Chernagor fleet would strike our western coast hard enough to make me turn around, he thought, and then quick, in case gods or the Banished One somehow overheard that, I did say “almost.”

Except for the hunger for something nasty often smoldering in Ortalis’ eyes, there had never been anything wrong with his looks. And now even those low fires seemed banked, as they had when he was hunting regularly. The smile he gave King Lanius was just about everything a smile ought to be. The bow that followed was more in the way of formal politeness than Lanius had had from him in years. “Your Majesty,” Ortalis said, “let me present to you my wife, Princess Limosa.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Lanius said, as formally. He nodded to the treasury minister’s daughter. “We have met before. Let me welcome you to the royal family.” What else can I do? “I hope you will be very happy.” I don’t really believe you will, but anyone can hope. He also hoped none of what he was thinking showed on his face.

Evidently it didn’t, for Limosa smiled as she dropped him a curtsy and said, “Thank you very much, Your Majesty. I’m sure I will.” She gazed at Ortalis with stars in her dark eyes. She was a little on the plump side, with a round, pink face, curly brown hair with reddish glints in it, and a crooked front tooth. No one would have called her beautiful, but she was pleasant enough.

Sosia came into the dining room. Ortalis introduced Limosa again. As Lanius had, Sosia said all the right things. If she was insincere, as he was, he couldn’t hear it in her voice. He hoped that meant Ortalis and Limosa couldn’t, either.

To her brother, Sosia did say, “This was very sudden.”

“Well…” Was Ortalis blushing? Lanius wouldn’t have believed such a thing possible. The prince went on, “We found we suited each other, and so we did what we did.” Limosa turned even pinker, but she nodded.

Suited each other? What did that mean? Do I really want to know? Lanius wondered. Before he could find any way to ask, servants came in with bread and butter and honey and apples for breakfast. He and Sosia and Ortalis and his new bride settled down to eat. Lanius also wondered if Petrosus would wander in. But Limosa’s father did not put in an appearance. Being polite to Limosa was easy enough. Lanius would have had to work harder to stay polite to Petrosus.

Ortalis raised his cup of wine to Limosa’s lips. It was a pretty, romantic gesture—about the last thing Lanius would have expected from his brother-in-law. Cristata was happy with Ortalis at first, too, he reminded himself. She said so. Then look what happened.

Limosa said, “I hope the war against the Chernagors goes well.”

No one could argue with that. No one tried. Lanius said, “I hope your father keeps our allowance at something close to a reasonable level.”

She blushed again. “You mean he doesn’t always?” Lanius solemnly shook his head. Limosa said, “That’s terrible!”

“Yes, Sosia and I think so, too,” Lanius agreed, his voice dry. He wondered how much influence Limosa had on Petrosus. If she really thought it was terrible, and if she really had some influence…

But she said, “I’m sorry, but it’s not like he listens to me very much.” She’d understood Lanius’ hint, then. That didn’t surprise him. Petrosus had been a courtier for many years; why wouldn’t his daughter see that what seemed a comment was in fact a request for her to do something about it? Then Limosa added, “He didn’t even know we were going to get married until after the priest conducted the ceremony.”

“No?” Lanius said in surprise and disbelief.

Now she shook her head. So did Ortalis. Lanius glanced at Sosia. She looked as astonished as he was. If Limosa had asked her father whether he wanted her to wed Ortalis, what would he have said? What every other father and grandfather said when approached about it? That wouldn’t have surprised Lanius… too much. Petrosus might have been willing to sacrifice happiness for the sake of his own advancement. Or is that just my dislike for Petrosus coming out? Lanius wondered. Hard to be sure.

Sosia asked, “What does your father think about it now?”

“He’d better like it,” Ortalis growled before Limosa could answer. She seemed willing to let him speak for her. That was interesting. Someone new I’m going to have to try to learn to figure out, Lanius thought. Archives were much more tractable than living, breathing people. Even inscrutable moncats were easier to make sense of than people.

He lifted his cup of wine in salute. “I hope you’ll be… very happy together,” he said. He’d started to say, I hope you’ll be as happy as Sosia and I have been. Considering the jolt his affair with Cristata had given their happiness, those weren’t such favorable words as they would have been a little while before.

Ortalis and Limosa beamed. They must not have noticed the hesitation. Sosia had. Did she know what he’d almost said? He wouldn’t have been surprised. She knew him better than anyone else did—save perhaps her father. Lanius didn’t like admitting, even to himself, that Grus had a knack for getting inside his mind. But he didn’t like denying the truth, either.

He eyed Ortalis and Limosa again. How were they at facing up to the truth? Did the thought so much as cross their minds? He doubted it. Too bad for them, he thought.

“Come on,” Grus said. His horse trudged up toward the top of the pass that linked Avornis to the land of the Chernagors. He leaned forward in the saddle and squeezed the beast’s barrel with his knees. “Get up, there.” The horse went a little faster—not much, but a little.

Beside the king, Hirundo beamed. “You’re becoming a horseman after all, Your Majesty.”

“Go ahead—insult me,” Grus said. “If things had gone the way I wish they would have, I’d hardly ever need to get onto one of these miserable beasts.”

Hirundo didn’t seem to know what to make of that. Grus had hoped he wouldn’t. The king rode on. The army followed. Every so often, Grus looked back over his shoulder to see if a messenger was coming out of the south. He’d already had one. He spied no more this time. That either meant the Chernagors weren’t raiding the Avornan coast or that the Avornan garrisons and river galleys and new oceangoing ships were beating them back. Grus hoped it meant one of those two things, anyhow.

At the top of the pass, he looked back toward his own kingdom once more. He hadn’t thought he’d climbed all that high, but he could see a long way. The bright green of newly planted fields of wheat and barley and rye and oats contrasted with the darker tones of orchards and forests. Here and there, smoke plumes rose from towns and obscured the farmland beyond. Only very gradually did natural mist and haze blur the rest of the landscape.

When he looked ahead, the story was different. Fog rolling off the Northern Sea left the land of the Chernagors shrouded in mystery. But Grus didn’t need to see the Chernagor country to know what lay ahead—trouble. If the Chernagors weren’t going to cause trouble, he wouldn’t have had to come here and look out across their land.

He also looked around. There was Prince Vsevolod, hard-faced and grim, riding along at the head of a handful of retainers. Did he believe Grus could restore him as Prince of Nishevatz after two years in exile? Grus hoped he did; he might yet prove valuable to the Avornan cause.

And there rode Pterocles. In one sense, he wasn’t far from Prince Vsevolod. In another, he might have belonged to a different world. The wizard didn’t even seem to see Vsevolod and his kilted retainers. All his attention focused on the view ahead. He looked like a man riding into a battle he expected to lose—brave enough, but far from hopeful. Remembering what had happened to Pterocles in the Chernagor country a couple of years before, Grus didn’t suppose he could blame him.

Pterocles also stood out because of his bad riding. Next to the seasoned cavalry troopers, Grus wasn’t much of a rider. Next to Pterocles, he might have been a centaur. The wizard rode as though he’d never heard of riding before climbing aboard his mule. He was all knees and elbows and apprehension. Every slightest jounce took him by surprise, and threatened to pitch him out of the saddle and under the horse’s hoofs. Watching him made Grus nervous and sympathetic at the same time.

“You’re doing fine,” the king called to the wizard. “Relax a little, and everything will be all right.”

Pterocles eyed him as though he’d taken leave of his senses. “Relax a little, and I’ll be dead… Your Majesty,” he answered.

Grus wondered whether he was talking about the mule or about the sorcerous challenges ahead. After some thought, he decided he didn’t want to ask.

To Grus’ surprise, the Chernagors didn’t try to defend the fortress of Varazdin. They evacuated it instead, fleeing ahead of the advancing Avornans. Grus left a small garrison in it—enough men to make sure the Chernagors didn’t seize it again as soon as he’d gone on toward Nishevatz.

“This is a funny business,” Hirundo said as they headed for the coastal lowlands. “When the fellow commanding that fort was loyal to Prince Vsevolod, he fought us teeth and toenails. Now the man in charge of it gets his orders from Vasilko, and he runs off. Go figure.”

“Everything about the war with the Chernagors has been backward,” Grus said. “Why should this be any different?”

He hadn’t come very far into the Chernagor country before realizing he’d left Avornis behind. The look of the sky and the quality of the sunlight weren’t the same as they had been down in his own kingdom. A perpetual haze hung over the lowlands here. It turned the sunlight watery and the sky a color halfway between blue and gray. Drifting clouds had no sharp edges; they blurred into the sky behind them in a way they never would have in a land of bright sun and a sky of a respectable, genuine blue.

The landscape had a strange look, too. Roofs of thatch replaced those of red tiles. In this damp, dripping country, fire wasn’t the worry it would have been farther south. Even the haystacks were different here; they wore canvas covers on top to keep off the rain. Gliding gulls mewed and squawked overhead.

And the Northern Sea was nothing like the Azanian Sea. Gray and chilly-looking, it struck Grus as far from inviting. He knew the Chernagors thought otherwise. To them, it was the high road to trading— and raiding—riches. As far as he was concerned, they were welcome to it.

He and his army reached the sea sooner than he’d expected. Instead of offering battle away from Nishevatz, Prince Vasilko seemed intent on defending the city with everything he had. A few archers harassed the advancing Avornans, but only a few. They would shoot from ambush, then either rely on concealment or try to get away on fast horses. They would not stand and fight.

That mortified Prince Vsevolod. “Not enough my son should give self to Banished One,” he rumbled in disgust. “No, not enough. Also he show self coward. Better he should die.”

“Better he should surrender, so you can have your throne back and we can go home to Avornis.” Grus didn’t believe that would happen. Vasilko had something in mind. The king hoped discovering what it was wouldn’t prove too painful.

In any case, Vsevolod wasn’t listening to him. “Disgrace,” he muttered. “My son is disgrace.”

There was a feeling Grus knew all too well. He set a hand on Vsevolod’s shoulder. “Try not to blame yourself, Your Highness. I’m sure you did everything you could.” I did with Ortalis.

Vsevolod shrugged off the hand and shook his massive head. Grus didn’t like to think about his own quarrels with his son, either. And what would come of Ortalis’ marriage to Limosa? What besides trouble, anyhow?

A grandson who might be an heir, Grus thought. Of course, Crex was already a grandson who might be an heir. If having two grandsons who might be heirs wasn’t trouble, Grus had no idea what would fit the definition. How would things play out once he wasn’t there to make sure they went the way he wanted?

“Your Majesty!” A cavalry captain rode up to Grus. “Ask you a question, Your Majesty?”

“Go ahead,” Grus told him. Whatever questions a cavalry captain could come up with were bound to be less worrisome than thoughts of two grandsons going to war with each other over which one got to wear the crown.

“Well, Your Majesty, these fields are full—full to bursting, you might say—of cows and sheep, and I’d banquet off my boots if the sties aren’t full of pigs, too,” the officer said. “Now, I know we’re here to help His Highness the prince, but it would make things a lot easier if we could do some foraging, too.”

Grus didn’t have to think about that. He didn’t have to ask Prince Vsevolod, either. He said, “As far as we’re concerned, Captain, this is enemy country. Go ahead and forage to your heart’s content, and I hope you stuff yourself full of beefsteaks and mutton chops and roast pork. Right now, we worry about hurting Vasilko. Once we’ve cast him down, then we start worrying about helping Vsevolod. Or do you think I’m wrong?”

“Oh, no, sir!” the officer said quickly. Grus laughed at the naked hunger on his face. He went on, “We’ll forage, all right. We’ll take the war right to the Chernagors. Let ’em go hungry.” They wouldn’t go hungry enough, not when the other Chernagor city-states helped supply them by sea. Grus knew as much. But his own side would eat well. That counted, too.