The Chernagor Pirates

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

When Grus breathed in, he felt as though he’d fallen into a vat of cold soup. The sky had gone from black to gray, but he still couldn’t see a hand in front of his face. The fog felt as thick and smothering—though not nearly as warm—as wool batting.

“Hirundo!” he called softly. “Are you there?”

“Right here, Your Majesty,” the general answered, almost at his elbow. Grus had to lean forward and peer to see him at all. Chuckling, Hirundo said, “Our prayers are answered, aren’t they?”

“Too well, maybe,” Grus said. Hirundo laughed again, though the king wasn’t at all sure he’d been joking. Fog was fog, and this was excessive. It seemed like the boiled-down essence of every fog Grus had ever seen in all his life. “By the gods, we’ll be lucky to find the walls of Nishevatz, let alone storm them.”

“We may have fun finding them—true enough,” Hirundo said, though fun was the last word Grus would have used. “But just think how much fun Vasilko and the Chernagors will have trying to keep us out once we do get up on the battlements. We’ll have a whole great lodgement before they even realize we’re anywhere close by.”

“Gods grant it be so,” Grus said. He and the Avornan army had spent weeks waiting through what passed for a heat wave in the Chernagor country. Now the usual mists were back, with a vengeance. Grus hoped the vengeance wouldn’t be excessive.

“Your Majesty?”

That was Pterocles’ voice. “I’m here,” Grus said, and the wizard blundered forward until they bumped into each other. “Can you guide the men to Nishevatz?” Grus asked. “And can you keep the Chernagors from hearing them as they come?”

“Well, Your Majesty, if we all splash into the Northern Sea, you’ll know something has gone wrong,” the wizard replied.

“Heh,” Grus said. “You will be, able to do it?”

A glow that somehow pierced the fog where nothing else would illuminated Pterocles’ hands. “I will.”

“Good.” Grus hesitated. “Uh—I hope the Chernagors on the walls won’t be able to see your sorcery.”

“So do I,” Pterocles said cheerfully. “And yes, I just might be able to muffle things, too.” Grus gave up. Either the wizard was teasing him or the whole campaign would unravel in the next few minutes. Grus chose to believe Pterocles was joking. One way or the other, I’ll find out soon, the king thought.

“There’s the light.” At least a dozen Avornan officers, spying Pterocles’ glowing hands, said the same thing at the same time. They all sounded relieved, too, no matter how the fog muffled their voices.

“Let’s go,” Pterocles said. “Nishevatz is… that way.” He pointed with a gleaming forefinger. Grus wondered how he could have any idea of the direction in which Nishevatz lay. Looking down, the king couldn’t even see his own feet. As far as he could tell, he disappeared from the knees down.

But Pterocles spoke with perfect confidence. And when he moved out in the direction he thought right, the Avornan soldiers followed him. They could see his hands through the fog. A party of men carrying a scaling ladder almost ran over Grus. He heard no cries from the walls of the city. Evidently, the Chernagors really couldn’t see Pterocles.

Or maybe he’s going the wrong way. Grus wished that hadn’t occurred to him. He was committed now. He had to rely on Pterocles. If, for instance, the Banished One was fooling the wizard… Grus wished that hadn’t occurred to him, too.

“Guards!” he called.

“Here, Your Majesty.” The answer came in a chorus from all around him.

“Let’s go forward,” Grus said.

The guardsmen formed up in a tight knot, completely surrounding the king. They seemed under the impression that if they didn’t, he would yank out his sword and swarm up a scaling ladder ahead of every ordinary Avornan soldier. He was glad they were under that impression. He’d done a lot of fighting in his time. By now, though, he was coming up against soldiers who weren’t just half his age but a third his age. He knew more than a little pride that he could still hold his own when he had to, but he wasn’t such an eager warrior anymore.

Not only the guards but Grus himself stumbled more than once on the way to the walls of Nishevatz. They might see Pterocles’ sorcerously glowing hands, but they couldn’t see rocks and holes in the ground under their own feet. Low-voiced curses and occasional thumps from all around said they weren’t the only ones with that trouble.

Grus craned his neck to one side, trying to listen for shouts of alarm from Vasilko’s men. He still heard none. His hopes began to rise. Maybe this would work after all. Maybe…

Then he did hear the unmistakable thud of a scaling ladder going up against a wall. Soldiers rushed toward the top of the ladder. Someone up on the wall called out in the Chernagor language—a challenge, Grus supposed. Pterocles hadn’t managed to hide that noise. The answer came back in the Chernagor tongue, for Hirundo had thought to put some of the men who’d stayed loyal to Prince Vsevolod at the head of the storming party.

Whatever the response meant, it quieted the defender who’d challenged. That meant the Avornans got onto the wall without any trouble. Then more shouts rang out, and the clash of blade on blade. But Grus knew Vasilko’s men were in trouble. If the attackers managed to seize a portion of the wall, they had an enormous advantage on the men trying to hold them off.

“Up!” shouted officers at the base of the wall. “Up, up, up! Quick! Quick!” They sounded like parents trying to keep unruly three-year-olds in line. No child took seriously something said only once. Repeat it and it might possibly sink in. Soldiers were often the same way.

Men cursed and grunted as they swarmed up toward the battlements of Nishevatz. More curses and screams rang out up above on those battlements. So did the sound of running feet as the Chernagors rushed to the threatened part of the wall. Then frightened shouts came from another part of the works around Nishevatz. Grus whooped. He knew what that had to mean—the Avornans had gotten up there, too.

A body thudded to earth at the kings feet. It was a Chernagor; the black-bearded officer had gear too fine for a common soldier. He writhed feebly and moaned in pain. One of Grus’ guardsmen raised a spear to finish the man off. “Wait,” Grus said. “Maybe the healers can save him. He’s no danger to us, and we may learn something from him.”

The guard said, “Whatever you want, Your Majesty, but I don’t think you’re doing him any favor by keeping him alive.”

Blood ran from the Chernagor’s mouth. One of his arms and both legs splayed out at unnatural angles. Grus decided the guardsman was right. “Go ahead,” he said. The Avornan drove the spear into the injured man’s throat. It was over quickly after that.

Up on the wall, the Chernagors began to sound desperate, while the Avornans’ shouts grew ever more excited. “We’re going into the city!” someone yelled in Avornan. That was even better than a foothold on the wall. If the Avornans could cut Vasilko’s men off from their last citadels inside Nishevatz…

Grus felt his way to a scaling ladder. “I’m going up,” he told his guards. “Some of you can go up before me if you like, but I’m going up now.” He’d known the guards would protest, and they did. But the king managed to have his way. Half a dozen guardsmen did precede him up the wall, but he went.

Two Chernagors and an Avornan lay dead in a great pool of blood in front of the top of the ladder. More bodies came into view through the fog as Grus walked along the wall. All the Chernagors he saw were dead. Some Avornans were only wounded. One or two of them gave him feeble cheers.

His guards were as nervous as a mother watching a child take its first steps. “Be careful, Your Majesty!” they said, and, “Look out, Your Majesty!” and any number of things intended to keep the king away from the fighting.

“I do want to see what’s going on, as best I can with the fog,” he said.

They didn’t want to listen to him. He hadn’t really thought they would. Somewhere not far away, iron beat on iron—the Chernagors were still trying to hold off the Avornans and even to drive them back. Grus’ bodyguards got between him and the sound of fighting, as though the ring of sword against sword were as deadly as point or edge.

In spite of the guardsmen, Grus saw a good deal. By now, long stretches of the walls were in Avornan hands. The only Chernagors left in these parts were dead, wounded, or disarmed and taken prisoner. The captives had the stunned look of men for whom disaster had come from out of the blue—or, here, out of the gray. One moment, they’d felt secure enough on the works that had held out for so long. The next, they saw their comrades bleeding while they themselves faced an uncertain fate. No wonder they looked as though they’d just, and just barely, survived an earthquake.

And, as the day advanced toward midmorning, the sun finally began to thin the fog—not to burn it off, but at least to thin it to the point where Grus could see farther than his own knees. He got his first real look inside Nishevatz. Most of the buildings had plastered fronts painted in various bright colors and steeply pitched slate roofs to shed the winter snow.

Parties of Avornans and Chernagors ran through the narrow, muddy streets, pausing every so often to exchange sword strokes or shoot arrows. Grus watched a shrieking Chernagor go down, beset by two Avornans who thrust their blades into him again and again until at last he stopped moving. It took a sickeningly long time.

One of the guardsmen pointed deeper into the city than Grus had been looking. “See, Your Majesty?” the guard said in pleased tones. “There’s the first fire. Now they’ll have to worry about putting that out along with fighting us.”

“So they will,” Grus agreed. This was what he’d been trying to accomplish for years. Now that he’d finally done it, he was reminded of the cost. His soldiers and Vasilko’s weren’t the only actors in the drama. Old men hobbled on sticks, trying to escape both foes and flames. Women and children ran screaming through the streets, fearing what fate had in store for them—and well they might.

A Chernagor archer saw Grus peering down from the wall. The man set an arrow to his bowstring and let fly. The shaft hissed past the king’s face. Before the Chernagor could shoot again, Grus’ guards pulled him back from the edge of the wall. “You see, Your Majesty?” one of them said. “It’s not safe up here.”

“Not safe anywhere,” Grus answered. He shook off the guards and peered into Nishevatz again. “I wonder where Vasilko is and what he’s doing.”

“Quaking in his boots, most likely,” a guardsman said. “This place is going to fall now, and he’s got to know it.” As though to prove his point, what had to be a regiment’s worth of Avornans surged out from the wall, driving the Chernagor who’d shot at Grus and his comrades back toward the center of Nishevatz.

Another guard said, “They’re shouting your name, Your Majesty,”

“I hear them,” Grus said. When he first wore the crown, hearing soldiers use his name as a battle cry had been thrilling. Now it was just something that happened. I’m getting old — or older, anyhow, he thought.

He also heard shouts of “Vasilko!” He wondered whether Vsevolod’s son still enjoyed hearing soldiers shouting his name. With a little luck, that wouldn’t matter much longer.

“Where can we get into the city from the wall?” Grus asked his guardsmen. That made them look unhappy all over again, but they couldn’t very well pretend they hadn’t heard him, however much they might have wanted to. Instead, they fussed all the way to a staircase and all the way down. Even after Grus came down inside Nishevatz, his bodyguards still grumbled and fumed.

Avornan soldiers with spears led out long columns of Chernagor prisoners—grim-faced men who tramped along with empty hands raised high over their heads or tied behind their backs. Somewhere not far away, women wailed. Grus winced, knowing they were all too likely to have reason to wail. His own men were only… men, a lot of them no better than they had to be.

“Where is the prince’s palace?” he asked. “Chances are, that’s where Vasilko will make his stand.” He stopped and snapped his fingers. “Wait—I have a map of the town as it was, anyhow.” Maybe Lanius’ gift would do him some good after all.

A captain said, “I don’t know if we can get anywhere in Nishevatz very easily. Do you see? The fire is starting to take hold.”

So it was. Grus wondered if anyone in Nishevatz would ever see clearly again. Even as the fog thinned and the sun struggled to break through, thick clouds of black smoke began filling the streets of the city. A building fell down with a rending crash. New flames leaped up from the ruins. How long before most of Nishevatz was gutted? If it was, would Beloyuz thank him? He doubted that. If Beloyuz proved like most princes, he would stay grateful until Vasilko was dead or captive, and not much longer.

Grus suddenly stared. Was that part of the fire coming his way through the smoke and fog all on its own? A moment later, he realized it was Pterocles, whose hands still glowed brightly. “You can take off your spell now,” the king called.

The wizard looked down at himself. “Oh,” he said sheepishly. “I forgot all about that.” He muttered in a low voice. His hands once more became no more than ordinary flesh and blood.

“Can you lead me past the worst of the fires to Vasilkos stronghold?” Grus asked.

“If someone will tell me where Vasilkos stronghold is, I’ll try to take you there,” Pterocles answered.

That proved more complicated than Grus had expected. None of the Avornans nearby had been inside Nishevatz until that morning. None of the Chernagor captives seemed willing to understand Avornan. At last, the Avornans rounded up a noble named Pozvizd, who had escaped with Vsevolod and Beloyuz. He understood Avornan—after a fashion. “Yes, I take you,” he said, and started off at a brisk pace. Grus, Pterocles, and a host of guardsmen followed in his wake.

If he’d known just where he was going, all would have been well. But he promptly got lost. Smoke and fire confused him. No doubt, so did being away from Nishevatz for several years. And when he did know the way for a brief stretch, he often couldn’t use what he knew because of battling Chernagors and Avornans.

“We get there,” he said over his shoulder. “Soon or late, we get there.”

“Huzzah,” Grus said. “If we can, I’d like to get there before everyone involved in the fighting dies of old age.”

Several of his guards grinned. Pterocles giggled, which was most unprofessional of him. And Pozvizd either hadn’t heard all of that or didn’t understand all of it, for he just kept smiling back over his shoulder and saying, “We get there. Yes, we get there soon.”

And after a while—not soon enough to suit Grus, but not quite slowly enough to drive him altogether mad—they did get there. Most of Nishevatz had its own look, different from anything Grus would have seen in Avornis. When he came to Vasilkos stronghold, though, he felt a distinct shock of recognition. This building, plainly, had begun life as an Avornan noble’s home. The lines were unmistakable, undeniable—and it was right where the map Lanius had given him said the city governor’s residence should be. But, just as plainly, it had been serving different needs for a long, long time.

Heavy iron grills covered all the windows. Thick ironbound gates warded the entranceways. Towers full of archers rose from the roofs. “We’ll have to knock it down with catapults or burn it down,” Grus said in dismay. “Just taking it won’t be too easy.”

From inside, someone was shouting furiously. Pozvizd pointed. “That Vasilko,” he said. “He yell for more soldiers. He say, somebody pay, he not get more.”

“I hope he’ll be the one who pays,” Grus said.

Another voice came from the residence-turned-citadel—one not as loud, but full of authority. Pterocles stiffened. “That is a wizard,” he said. “I know the serpent by its fangs. That man has power—some of his own, and some he can call upon from… elsewhere.”

The Banished One. He means the Banished One, even if he doesn’t care to say the name, Grus thought. Quietly, he asked, “Can you meet him?”

Pterocles shrugged. “We’ll find out, won’t we? Right now, he hardly seems aware of me. He’s worried about how to keep Nishevatz from falling.”

“A little late for that, wouldn’t you say?” Grus asked.

“I think so,” Pterocles answered, “but I know more about what’s going on inside the city than… he does.” The wizard stiffened. He pointed to a second-story window. “There he is!”

He didn’t mean the Banished One now. He meant the Chernagor wizard. Grus couldn’t have told the sorcerer from any other Chernagor—a burly, bearded man in a mailshirt. He wasn’t even sure he was looking in the right window. But Pterocles seemed very sure. He flung up an arm and gasped out a counterspell.

“Are you all right?” Grus asked.

“He’s strong,” the wizard answered. “He’s very strong. And he’s drawing on more power than he owns. It’s… him, sure enough.”

“Him? Oh,” Grus said. Pterocles had confused him for a moment. The Banished One hadn’t paid much attention to the siege of Nishevatz. The civil war between Korkut and Sanjar had kept him occupied closer to home. How much could he do, intervening at the last minute? We’re going to find out, Grus thought.

Pterocles staggered, as though someone had hit him hard. He used another counterspell. This one sounded more potent—or more desperate—than the first. If he could do nothing but defend… How long until he couldn’t defend anymore, until the Chernagor sorcerer, aided by power from the Banished One, emptied and crushed him yet again?

“Hang on,” Grus said. “I’ll find a way out of this for you.”

“How do you propose to manage that?” Pterocles panted. “Will you call down the gods from the heavens to fight on my side?”

“No, but I’ll come up with something else,” Grus said. The wizard snorted, obviously not believing a word of that. For a moment, Grus didn’t know what he could do to make good on his promise. Then he shouted for a squadron of archers. He pointed to the window where the Chernagor wizard looked out. “Kill me that man!” he said. “Second story, third window from the left.”

The bowmen didn’t ask questions. They just said, “Yes, Your Majesty,” took arrows from their quivers, and let fly. Not content with one shot apiece, they kept at it, sending scores of shafts at the window. A man with even an ordinary sense of self-preservation would have moved away from his dangerous position as soon as the arrows started flying. Infused with force from the Banished One, Vasilko’s sorcerer stayed where he was. To him, destroying Pterocles must have seemed more important than anything else, even life itself.

But then he staggered back not because he wanted to but because he had to. A pair of arrows had struck him in the chest, less than a hands breadth apart. “Well done!” Grus shouted. “You’ll all have a reward for that!”

Pterocles, who had been bending like a sapling in a gale, suddenly straightened. “He stopped, Your Majesty,” the wizard said, more than a little amazement in his voice. “He just… stopped. How did you do that? You’re no sorcerer.”

“Maybe not, but I know one magic trick,” Grus replied. “Shoot a man a couple of times, and he’s a lot less interested in wizardry than he was before.”

Pterocles took a moment to think that over and, very visibly, to gather strength. “I see,” he said at last. “That’s—a less elegant solution than I would have come up with, I think.”

Lanius would have said the same thing, Grus thought. Some people are perfectionists. As for me… “I don’t care whether it’s elegant or not. All I care about is whether it works, and you can’t very well argue about that.”

“No, Your Majesty, that’s true.” Pterocles seemed to realize something more might be called for. “And thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” the king answered. “I presume that was Vasilko’s best wizard. Now we have to find out whether he has any others the Banished One wants to try to use.”

“Yes.” Pterocles looked as though he wished Grus hadn’t thought of that.

Meanwhile, though, more and more Avornan soldiers flooded into the square around the building Vasilko was using for a citadel. Grus didn’t think it could hold out too much longer. Even with the additions and improvements the Chernagors had made to it, it hadn’t been built as a fortress. Sooner or later, the Avornans would find a way to break in or to set it afire—and that would be the end for Prince Vsevolod’s unloving and unloved son.

But then the entrance to the stronghold flew open. Out burst a swarm of Chernagors. They were roaring like lions, some wordlessly, others bawling out Prince Vasilko’s name. The Avornans rushed to meet them. Vasilko must have seen the same thing Grus had—his citadel would not hold. Since it would not, why not sally forth to conquer or die?

That made a certain amount of sense in the abstract. Grus had perhaps half a dozen heartbeats to think of it in the abstract. Then he realized that swarm of Chernagors, Prince Vasilko at their head, was rushing straight toward him. If he went down under their swords and spears, he wouldn’t much care what happened in the rest of the fight for Nishevatz. No, that wasn’t true—if he went down, he wouldn’t care at all.

“Rally to me!” he shouted to the Avornans in the square. “Rally to me and throw them back. We can do it!” He pulled his sword from its scabbard.

So did Pterocles beside him. The wizard probably had only the vaguest idea what to do with an unsorcerous weapon. Eyeing the Chernagors and how young and fresh and fierce they looked, Grus remembered every one of his own years, too. How long can I last against an onslaught like this?

He didn’t have to find out on the instant, for his guardsmen sprang out in front of him and took the brunt of the Chernagor onslaught. Several of them fell, but they also brought down even more of Vasilko’s men. Yet still more Chernagors pushed forward. Yelling and cursing, the surviving bodyguards met them head-on. By then, Grus was in the fight, too, slashing at a Chernagor who had more ferocity than skill.

The king’s blade bit. The Chernagor reeled back with a shriek, clutching a gashed forearm. Grus knew a certain somber pride. He could still hold his own against a younger foe. For a while he could, anyhow. But the younger men could keep on going long after he flagged.

“Vasilko!” roared the Chernagors.

“Grus!” the royal guardsmen shouted back. Pterocles took a roundhouse swipe at one of Vasilko’s men. He missed. But then he tackled the Chernagor. Grus’ sword came down on the man’s neck. Blood fountained. The Chernagors body convulsed, then went limp.

“Are you all right?” Grus asked Pterocles, hauling him to his feet.

“I—think so,” the wizard answered shakily. Then they were both fighting for their lives, too busy and too desperate to talk.

More Avornan soldiers rushed up to reinforce the bodyguards. The archers who’d hit the Chernagor wizard poured volley after volley into Vasilkos henchmen. The Chernagors had few archers with whom to reply. Those whistling shafts tore the heart out of their charge. Their shouts changed to cries of despair as they realized they weren’t going to be able to break free.

There was Vasilko himself, swinging a two-handed sword as though it were a willow wand. He spotted Grus and hacked his way toward him. “I may die,” Vsevolod’s son shouted in Avornan, “but I’ll make the Fallen Star a present of your soul!”

“By the gods in the heavens, you won’t!” Grus rushed toward Vasilko. Only later did he wonder whether that was a good idea. At the time, he didn’t seem able to do anything else.

Vasilkos first cut almost knocked Grus’ sword out of his hand. Vsevolod had been a big, strong man, and his son was no smaller, but the power Vasilko displayed hardly seemed natural. The Banished One had lent the Chernagor wizard one kind of strength. Could he give Vasilko a different sort? Grus had no idea whether that was possible, but he thought so by the way the usurping prince handled his big, heavy blade.

Grus managed to beat the slash aside, and answered with a cut of his own. Vasilko parried with contemptuous ease; by the way he handled it, that two-handed sword might have weighed nothing at all. His next attack again jolted Grus from both speed and power. Am I getting old that fast? the king wondered.

“Steal my throne, will you?” Vasilko shouted. Even his voice seemed louder and deeper than a man’s voice had any business being.

“You stole it to begin with,” Grus panted.

Vasilko showered him with what had to be curses in the Chernagor language. He swung his sword again with that same superhuman strength. Grus’ blade went flying. Vasilko roared in triumph. He brought up the two-handed sword to finish the king. Grus leaped close and seized his right wrist with both hands. It was like grappling with a bronze statue that had come to ferocious, malevolent life. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold on long, and knew he would be sorry when he could hold on no more.

Then Pterocles pointed his index finger at Vasilko and shouted out a hasty spell. Vasilko shouted, too, in shock and fury. All of a sudden, his voice was no more than a man’s. All of a sudden, the wrist Grus fought desperately to hold might have been made from flesh and blood, not animate metal.

Pterocles grabbed Vasilko around the knees. The usurping Prince of Nishevatz fell to the cobbles. Grus hadn’t been sure Vasilko could fall. He kicked the Chernagor in the head. When Vasilko kept on wrestling with Pterocles after Grus kicked him the first time, he did it again. Pain shot through his foot. Bleeding from the temple and the nose, Vasilko groaned and went limp.

“Thanks again, Your Majesty,” Pterocles said, scrambling to his feet.

“Thank you,” Grus answered. “I thought I was gone there. What did you do?”

“Blocked the extra strength the Banished One was feeding Vasilko,” the wizard said. “Let’s get him tied up—or chained, better still. I don’t know how long the spell will hold. I wasn’t sure it would hold at all, but I thought I’d better try it.” He looked down at Vasilko. “Scrambling his brains there will probably stretch it out a bit.”

“Good!” Grus exclaimed. “He was going to do worse than that to me. Now let’s see what the rest of these bastards feel like doing.”

With their leader captive, most of the Chernagors who’d sallied from the citadel threw down their weapons and raised their hands in surrender. A stubborn handful fought to the end. They shouted something in their own language, over and over again.

Before long, Grus found a Chernagor who admitted to speaking Avornan. “What are they yelling about?” he asked.

“They cry for Fallen Star,” the Chernagor answered. “You know who is Fallen Star?”

“Oh, yes. I know who the Fallen Star is,” Grus said grimly. “The Menteshe give the Banished One that name, too. But the Menteshe have always followed him. You Chernagors know the worship of the gods in the heavens.”

The prisoner shrugged. “Fallen Star is strong power. We stay with strong power.”

“Not strong enough,” Grus said. The Chernagor shrugged again. Grus pointed at him. “If the Banished One is so strong and the gods in the heavens are so weak, how did we take Nishevatz?”

“Luck,” the Chernagor said with another shrug. Grus almost hit him. There were none so stubborn as those who would not see. But then the king saw how troubled the man who had followed Vasilko looked. Maybe the Chernagor wouldn’t admit it, but Grus thought his question had struck home.

He jerked a thumb at the guards who’d brought the prisoner before him. “Take this fellow away and put him back with his friends,” The Avornans led off the Chernagor, none too gently. Grus hoped the captive would infect his countrymen with doubt.

Hirundo came up to Grus and saluted. “Well, Your Majesty, we’ve got this town,” he said, and paused to dab at a cut on his cheeks with a rag as grimy as the hand that held it. Looking around, he made a sour face. “Now that I’m actually inside, I’m not so sure why we ever wanted it in the first place.”

“We wanted it because the Banished One had it, and because he could make a nuisance of himself if he hung on to it. Now we’ve got it, and we’ve got Vasilko”—the king pointed to the deposed usurper, who wore enough chains to hold down a horse—“and I may have a broken toe.”

“A broken toe? I don’t follow,” Hirundo said. “And what’s Vasilko’s problem? He looks like he can’t tell yesterday from turnips.”

Vasilko had regained consciousness, but he did indeed look as though he didn’t know what to do with it now that he had it. “Maybe I kicked him in the head too hard,” Grus answered. “That’s how I hurt my toe, too—kicking him in the head.”

“Well, if you had to do it, you did it for a good reason,” Hirundo observed.

“Easy for you to say,” Grus snapped. “And do you know what the healers will do for me? Not a thing, that’s what. I broke a toe once, years ago, trying to walk through a door instead of a doorway. They told me, ‘If we put a splint on it, it will heal in six weeks. If we don’t, it will take a month and a half And so they didn’t—and they won’t.”

“Lucky you,” Hirundo said, still with something less than perfect sympathy.

Aside from his toe, Grus did feel pretty lucky. The Avornans had taken Nishevatz, and hadn’t suffered too badly doing it. The Banished One would be cast out here. And, looking at Vasilko, Grus thought his wits remained too scrambled to do him much good.

The king waved to Pterocles. “Any sign the Banished One is trying to feed strength into this fellow again?”

“Let me check,” the wizard answered. What followed wasn’t exactly a spell. It seemed more as though Pterocles were listening intently than anything else. After a bit, he shook his head. “No, Your Majesty. If the Banished One is doing that, I can’t tell he’s doing it, and believe me, I would be able to.”

“I have to believe you,” Grus said. He glanced toward Vasilko again. If Vsevolod’s son had any more working brains than a thrall right now, Grus would have been amazed. “I have to believe you, and I do.” He turned back to Hirundo. “Where’s Beloyuz? Prince Beloyuz, I ought to say?”

“He’s somewhere in Nishevatz,” the general answered. “I know he came up a ladder. What happened to him afterwards, I couldn’t tell you.”

“We’d better find him. It’s time for him to start being the prince, if you know what I mean,” Grus said. “I hope nothing’s happened to him. That would be bad for us—as far as the Chernagors who stayed with Vsevolod go, he’s far and away the best of the lot. He’s one of the younger ones, and he’s one of the more sensible ones, too.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Hirundo started shouting for soldiers. They came running. He ordered them to fan out through Nishevatz calling Beloyuz’s name. The general also made sure they knew what the Chernagor nobleman looked like. Turning to Grus, he said, “For all we know, every fifth man in Nishevatz is named Beloyuz. We don’t want a crowd of them; we want one in particular.”

“True,” Grus said. There weren’t a whole flock of Avornans who bore his name, but he was sure there were some. The same could easily hold true for the Chernagor.

Escorted by one of Hirundo’s soldiers, Beloyuz strode into the square by the citadel about half an hour later. The new Prince of Nishevatz’s face was as soot-streaked as anyone else’s. But the tracks of Beloyuz’s tears cut cleanly through the filth. “My poor city!” he cried to Grus. “Did you have to do this to take it?”

“It’s war, Your Highness,” Grus said. “Haven’t you ever seen a sack before? It could have been a lot worse, believe me.”

Beloyuz didn’t answer, not directly. Instead, he threw his arms wide and wailed, “But this is Nishevatz!”

Grus put an arm around his shoulder. “It’s the way I’d feel if someone sacked the city of Avornis. But you can set this to rights. Believe me, you can. Most of the city is still standing, and most of the people are still breathing. In five years or so, no one who comes here a stranger will have any idea what Nishevatz went through.”

“Easy enough for you to say,” Beloyuz retorted, as Grus had to Hirundo. “You are not the one who will have to rebuild this city.”

“No, not this city,” Grus replied. “But what do you think I’ll be doing down in southern Avornis? The Menteshe have sacked a lot of towns there, and what they’ve done to the farmlands makes the way we behaved here look like a kiss on the cheek. You’re not the only one with worries like this, Your Highness.”

Beloyuz grunted. He cared nothing for cities in southern Avornis. In that, he was much like the late, not particularly lamented (at least by Grus) Prince Vsevolod. He said, “And what of Durdevatz and Ravno? When they see how weak we are, they will want to steal our lands.”

“Well, do you want me to leave an Avornan garrison behind?” Grus asked. Beloyuz quickly shook his head. “I didn’t think so,” Grus told him. “If I did leave one, people would say I wanted to steal your lands, and I don’t.”

“Why did I let you talk me into being prince?” Beloyuz said.

“Someone has to. Who would be better? Vsevolod’s dead.” Grus wasn’t at all convinced Vsevolod had been better, but passed over that in silence. He pointed to Vasilko instead. “Him?” Beloyuz shook his head again. “Do you have anyone else in mind?” Grus asked. Another headshake from the Chernagor. Grus spread his hands. “Well, then, Your Highness—welcome to the job.”

“I’ll try.” Beloyuz very visibly gathered himself. He might have been taking the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Yes, I’ll try.”