The Scepter's return

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Grus munched on dates candied in honey. He couldn't decide if they were the most delicious things he'd ever eaten or just the most cloying. Hirundo and Pterocles both licked honey and sticky bits of date from their fingers. Grus hesitated only a moment before imitating them. He didn't know what local manners said about eating dates, but he did know his fingers were sticking together.

"We ought to import these," Pterocles said — he evidently liked them.

"Now maybe we will," Grus answered. "Have to think up a fancier name than 'dates,' " Hirundo said. "Have to think up a name that really makes people want to go out and spend their silver. How about something like 'sugarfruit'?"

"How about 'winefruit'?" Pterocles said. "They do make wine from them."

"Have you tasted it?" Grus made a face. "It's thick and it's sweet and it's nasty."

"I didn't mind it that much," the wizard said. "I don't think it's up to what we make from grapes, but it's not bad." His sweet tooth had to be stronger than Grus'.

"And even if date wine is the foulest stuff this side of mule piss, who cares?" Hirundo said cheerfully. "Nobody north of the Stura's going to know. A lot of the time, what things seem like is more important than what they really are."

"I don't know about that," Grus said.

"Any wizard will tell you it's true," Pterocles said. "Illusion, appearance, belief.. They're the things that matter. How can you say for sure what's real, anyhow?"

"Hrmm,'' Grus said — a discontented rumble down deep in his throat. The flickering lamplight and the smell of hot olive oil from the lamps inside his pavilion were real. So was the buzz of the mosquitoes that got in despite the netting in front of the flap. So were the pressure on his backside from the stool where he perched and the ache in his thighs from another day in the saddle. He ate another date and spat out the seed. The taste was real, too, and so was the way the honey coated the inside of his mouth.

But then Hirundo said, "A lot of spells are nothing but illusion, aren't they?"

"Not quite nothing but," Pterocles answered, "but illusion's no small part of them. A lot of spells make illusions turn real."

"How can you say for sure what's real?" Grus enjoyed throwing Pterocles' words back at him. He enjoyed it even more when the wizard turned red and spluttered and didn't answer.

"I'll tell you what I want to be real," Hirundo said. "I want one more good victory against the Menteshe to be real before we get to Yozgat. If we beat them again — do a proper job of beating them, I mean — they won't be so hot to come breathing down our necks."

"Do you want to provoke them into attacking us, then?" Grus asked. "Can we set an ambush for them?"

"I'd love to try," Hirundo said. "I'll laugh if we can bring it off, too. It's what the cursed nomads always try on us. By the gods, paying them back in their own coin would be sweet."

"Yes, by the gods. By the gods in the heavens," Grus said. They hadn't been invoked much in these parts lately. "Not by…" He let that hang. Hirundo nodded. He understood what Grus wasn't saying. Grus went on, "Let's look for a chance to do that and see how it goes."

"No guarantees," Hirundo said. "A lot will depend on the terrain and the weather and how we bump into the nomads or they bump into us."

"I understand. It's always that way," Grus said, and the general nodded again. Grus wished Hirundo hadn't mentioned the weather. So far this campaigning season, it had been good. Hirundo reminded him it didn't have to stay that way.

He worried about summertime rain. That could turn the roads to porridge and slow the Avornans to a crawl. Summer rain this far south wasn't just unseasonable; it would be the next thing to miraculous. Of course, that didn't necessarily stop the Banished One.

Rain, though, wasn't what the army met a few days later. A hot wind blew out of the south, a hot wind full of clouds of dust and sand. The grit got into Grus' eyes. He tied a scarf over his mouth and nose to keep from swallowing and breathing so much of it. That helped, but less than he wished it would have.

All through the army, men were doing the same thing. Some of them tried to tie cloths over the animals' mouths and nostrils, too. The horses and mules didn't like that. Neither did the oxen drawing the supply wagons.

Grus thought about asking Pterocles whether the sandstorm was natural or came from the Banished One. He shrugged, coughing as he did so. What was the point? Natural or not, the army had to go through it. Pterocles couldn't do anything about the weather.

It went on and on and on. Swirling dust blotted the sun from the sky. From blue, the dome overhead went an ugly grayish yellow. Hirundo finally had to order the army to halt. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty," he shouted above the howl of the wind, "but I don't have any idea which way south is anymore."

"Neither do I," Grus admitted. "I just hope this dust isn't going to bury us."

"You're full of cheerful ideas, aren't you?" Hirundo said.

"Cheerful?" Grus echoed. "Yes, of course." He rubbed at his eyes, not that it did much good.

The storm was still roaring when the sun set. It got darker, but not a lot. The soldiers did what they could for themselves and their animals, settling down to make the best night of it they could. Grus would have liked to get inside his pavilion, but he wasn't sure it would stay up in the gale. He swaddled himself in a blanket and hoped for the best. When he fell asleep, he surprised himself.

He woke up some time in the middle of the night. He needed a moment to figure out why. Something was missing — the wind wasn't ravening like a hungry wild thing. "Gods be praised," he muttered, even if he doubted they'd had anything to do with it. He yawned, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

Light the color of blood and molten gold pried his eyelids open. If this wasn't the most spectacular sunrise he'd ever seen, he had no idea which one from years gone by would top it. And the brighter it grew, the stranger grew the landscape it showed. Dust and grit lay over everything, smoothing outlines and dulling colors. The world might have been reduced to yellow-gray.

When he got to his feet, dust spilled off him and made a little cloud around him. Soldiers were stirring, and stirring up the dust. Grus coughed. He spat — and spat brown. He felt as though he were covered with bugs. He might have been, but suspected it was grit and dust instead.

Hirundo uncocooned himself from his blanket and looked around. Even though he'd been entirely wrapped up, his face and beard were the same yellow-gray that filled the rest of the landscape. Seeing that, Grus suspected he was also the color of dirt — almost the color of a corpse.

As Grus had, Hirundo spat. He looked revolted when his spittle too proved brown. "Well," he said in tones of forced — and false — gaiety, " that was fun."

"Wasn't it just?" Grus said. "A little more, and it would have swallowed us up."

"Not the way I plan to go." Hirundo coughed again. Dust spurted from his nostrils when he did.

"And how do you plan to go?" Grus inquired. The inside of his mouth tasted like dirt. He swigged from the canteen of watered wine he wore on his belt, then spat again. Even after that, his mouth still felt gritty.

"Me?" Hirundo grinned. "I intend to be murdered by an outraged husband at the age of a hundred and three. It will be a great scandal, I promise." He sounded as though he looked forward to it.

"There are worse ways to go," Grus said. "I'll help spread the gossip after it happens, I promise."

"Oh, who'd listen to you?" Hirundo said scornfully. "You'd be nothing but an old man."

They both laughed. Part of the laughter was relief. They'd brushed up against disaster with the sandstorm, and they both knew it. Grus stared south. The haze and dust still floating in the air hid the Argolid Mountains. Was the Banished One pleased with what he'd just accomplished, or was he disappointed he hadn't managed more? He still might manage more, of course (Grus assumed the storm was his, for it seemed too nasty to have been natural). He might send more wind and dust and sand. Or…

"We'll need scouts out," Grus said. "The Menteshe may try to pay us an early morning visit."

"So they may," Hirundo agreed. "Don't worry, Your Majesty. I'll take care of it."

By then, lots of Avornans were coughing and spitting and rubbing their eyes and cursing the storm and putting more dust in the air every time they moved. When scouts trotted off to take their positions all around the army, their horses kicked up more dust still. "How will we see the Menteshe even if they're there?" Grus wondered.

"I don't know." Hirundo didn't sound worried. "We'll see them the same way they see us, I expect."

"The same way..? Oh," Grus said. Any nomads close enough to attack would also have been close enough to get caught in the storm themselves.

Still more dust surrounded the soldiers as they began to move. They went right on grumbling and coughing and wheezing. Grus wondered what the storm had done to the crops growing around here. True, grain came up in the winter in these parts, to take advantage of what rain fell. But vines and olives and almonds grew through the summertime. Could they ripen the way they should if they were covered in dust? Could livestock find enough to eat if sand and dust buried grass? He didn't know. Before long, he would start finding out.

Pterocles had a similar thought. Steering his mule up close to Grus' horse, the wizard said, "I wonder what the thralls make of all this."

"Probably about what their cattle do," Grus answered. "You're talking about the ones that hadn't been freed?"

"Well, yes," Pterocles said. "The others are just… people."

"Just people," Grus repeated. It wasn't that Pterocles was wrong. It was, in fact, that he was right, and that being right was so important. "Who would have thought a couple of years ago that we would have freed thralls by the thousands? You've done something marvelous, you and all the other wizards."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Pterocles said. "Up in the Chernagor country, the Banished One tried his best to make sure I never got the chance to do anything ever again. What I've done here — what we've done here — is the best way I know to pay him back."

"It's good, all right," Grus agreed. "But I can think of one thing better still." He looked south toward Yozgat as he spoke.

Surrounded by beaters and royal guardsmen, Lanius and Arch-Hallow Anser rode to the hunt. Lanius said, "I hope everything is all right with Ortalis. I worry when he doesn't feel like hunting."

"I think it's just us he doesn't feel like hunting with today," Anser said. "He went out with some friends of his own the other day."

"Did he? I didn't know that," Lanius said. The idea that Ortalis might have friends faintly bemused him. "Who were they? Do you know?"

"Not exactly," Anser replied. "I can't name names, if that's what you mean. Guard officers — nobody too important, though."

"Isn't that interesting," Lanius said, which was normally polite and neutral and nothing more. It was still polite and neutral, but it also was interesting. Maybe a fondness for hunting explained why Ortalis congregated with some guard officers and not others.

Then Anser said, "I didn't even know some of them liked to hunt."

Lanius scratched his head. In that case, he didn't know what Ortalis' choice of companions meant. Did that make it more interesting, or less? One more thing the king didn't know. It gave him something to think about.

A bird somewhere up in an oak tree screeched. "That's a jay,"

"So it is," Anser agreed. "You wouldn't have known what it was before we started hunting."

"I've learned quite a bit," Lanius said, which was also true and polite.

It turned out not to be polite enough. Chuckling, Anser said, "Some of the things you've learned, you probably wish you hadn't. But that's all right — Ortalis isn't with us today."

If even Anser joked about his half brother… "What must the servants think?" Lanius said.

"Servants never think anything good about you." If Ortalis had said that, he would have sounded angry — but then, Ortalis often sounded angry. Anser just thought it was funny. He went on, "You know what they say — nobody's a hero to his own servants."

"No, I suppose not." What do the servants think of me? Lanius wondered.

He knew he was fairly mild, fairly easygoing. Grus was stricter; by what some of the servants who'd been around the palace forever said, his own father had been much stricter. But what did they really think of the way he spent so much time in the archives and with his animals? Even more to the point, what did they really think of the way he took mistresses from among their ranks? What did they say about him behind his back?

Well, he's nice to them, mostly. He doesn't hurt them, the way Ortalis would. That's something, anyhow. And when he gets tired of them or his wife finds out, he doesn't leave 'em flat. He could be worse, I expect.

The king heard an imaginary servant inside his own head so vividly, he turned to see if a real one were in earshot. Of course he didn't see anyone of the sort, so he felt foolish. But his best guess about the servants' gossip had seemed impressively real. He didn't think he was very far wrong, anyway. He could be worse. Servants could say worse things.

Anser had been chasing the same game, but down a different track. "Do you want the help complaining that you never bring any meat back to the palace, Your Majesty?" he said with a sly smile. "If you don't, maybe you ought to learn to shoot a little straighten"

Did the people in the palace, and especially the people in the kitchens, complain or laugh because Lanius came home empty-handed so often? That hadn't occurred to him, either, but odds were they did. "Oh, well," he said. "If I have to be an archer to lead Avornis, the kingdom is in trouble."

The king and the arch-hallow teased each other until they got to the woods. Lanius would have been happy to go on joking there, but Anser took hunting much more seriously than he took his ecclesiastical post. He wore the red robe because Grus wanted him to, but he went after deer because he wanted to.

Silent as usual, the beaters vanished among the oaks and beeches. Anser headed for the edge of a familiar clearing. Lanius followed. He would have to do some shooting before too long, and, as usual, he didn't look forward to it. You can condemn a man to death and then go off and eat supper without a second thought. Why can't you shoot a stag? The stag hasn't done anything wrong. And I don't have to kill the man myself, he thought. Were those reasons enough? Evidently.

"Are you going to try to hit something this time, Your Majesty?" Anser asked, his voice quiet and amused.

Lanius felt almost as embarrassed as he had when Sosia first found out about his affairs with serving girls. "How long have you known?" the king asked.

"Quite a while now," Anser told him. "Nobody could be quite as bad a shot as you are unless he did it on purpose. It just isn't possible. How did you kill that one stag?"

"I didn't mean to." Confession felt oddly liberating to Lanius. "He — ran into my arrow, I guess you'd say."

"Why do you come out if you don't want to shoot anything?" the arch-hallow inquired.

"Must be the company I keep," Lanius replied.

Anser looked sharply at him, suspecting irony. Finding none, he said, "You don't need to do that, Your Majesty. I'd still like you if you didn't."

"Thank you." Lanius meant it from the bottom of his heart. "But haven't you ever gone out of the way for a friend?"

"I don't know that I've ever gone that far out of the way," Anser said thoughtfully. "You don't ask me to go pawing through the archives with you."

"It's different," said Lanius, who would not have wanted Grus' bastard — or anyone else except maybe the late Ixoreus, who'd loved them as much as he did — pawing through the archives with him. "You wouldn't have a good time in the archives because you don't care what's in them. I can enjoy the woods whether I shoot anything or not. It's nice out here. It's just dusty in the archives."

The arch-hallow laughed. "All right, Your Majesty. I'll take your word for it — and I won't tell Ortalis, either. Do you want to bother shooting at all?"

After a moment's thought, Lanius nodded. "Yes, I think I'd better. Otherwise the guards and the beaters would talk, and that wouldn't be so good. You can go on giving me a hard time when I miss, too."

"All right. I will." Anser laughed again. Then, genuine curiosity in his voice, he asked, "How bad a shot are you really?"

"I don't know," Lanius answered. "I'm not very good, but I'm not as bad as I pretend to be, either. It's not something I need to know how to do, you know."

"No, I suppose not. Things stay in one place in the archives, don't they? You don't have to put arrows in them to make them hold still."

Remembering how some of the documents he'd looked for hadn't stayed where he thought they belonged, Lanius wondered about that. But he said, "I suppose not." The documents hadn't gone wandering. His attention had.

A stag bounded into the clearing. "Your shot, Your Majesty," Anser sang out, as though they hadn't been talking about Lanius' fraudulent hunting. The king nocked an arrow and let fly. The arrow — what a surprise! — went wide. The stag dashed off. "Oh, too bad, Your Majesty!" Anser exclaimed. He was a good actor.

"You shoot first the next time." Lanius did his best to seem disappointed. "Maybe you'll have better luck."

"Maybe I will. I can hope so, anyhow." Anser sounded amused.

He killed a stag about an hour later, and butchered it as it lay on the ground. He did a good, careful job, but showed none of the relish for it that raised Lanius' hackles when Ortalis had a knife in his hand. One of the beaters started a small fire. Anser roasted and ate the mountain oysters himself, but shared the liver, kidneys, sweetbreads, and heart with Lanius and the beaters and guardsmen.

Lanius couldn't deny that very fresh meat cooked over open flames was, in its way, better than most of what the cooks made. These slices needed only a little salt to bring out their full flavor. A lot of the palace dishes were spicy enough to make someone's eyes water. Partly that was because spices were expensive, and so suited to a king's table. And partly it was because those spices helped disguise the taste of meat that was starting to go off.

And then there was a crashing in the woods, and a loud, deep grunt, and a shout of, "Boar! Boar!"

The hunters all leaped to their feet and grabbed for their weapons. Wild boar were the most dangerous beasts in the woods. Their tusks could gut a man as easily as a knife gutted a deer. Some of the guards had boar spears, with a crosspiece on the shaft to keep a boar from running up it and savaging the spearman despite being wounded.

More yells said the beaters were trying to head off the boar and keep it away from Lanius and Anser. But the crashing came closer with terrifying speed. The boar sounded like an angry common pig when it squealed, or what a common pig would have sounded like if it were much larger and fiercer than it really was.

And then, fast as a stone flung from a catapult, the boar was upon them. An arrow stood in its shoulder, but seemed only to enrage it. Its little eyes were red as blood. Its head swung until it aimed straight at Lanius. Then it charged.

Two guards managed to spring between the boar and the king. One of the men went down. The boar lowered its head and slashed at him with its tusks. The other guardsman drove his spear home and hung on for dear life. The boar screamed and kept trying to break free.

Anser put an arrow into it, then another and another. Lanius nocked a shaft and let fly, too. This time, he wasn't trying to miss. Anything to make that bellowing, sharp-toothed horror lie down and never move again!

Blood ran from the boar's mouth. The flow choked its bellows. Slowly, struggling to the end, it yielded to death.

"Olor's beard!" Anser exclaimed. "That was more exciting than I really wanted."

"I should say so," Lanius agreed shakily. "Why would anyone want to hunt a monster like that?" He turned to the guardsman the boar had savaged. He wasn't sure he wanted to look at what the animal had done to the man, but the guard was sitting up and getting to his feet. "Are you all right?" Lanius asked in amazement.

"A little trampled, Your Majesty, but not too bad," the guardsman answered. "The mailshirt kept him from opening me up."

"Let's see your beaters say that about the leather they wear," Lanius told Anser.

"They can't," the arch-hallow admitted. "I'm glad the guardsmen managed to slow that beast down. The miserable thing was coming right at you."

Lanius had noticed that, too. "Yes, it was, wasn't it?" he said, as calmly as he could. Was the Banished One able to take over a boar's mind the way he could take over a thrall's mind? Had he used this boar as a weapon against someone who was giving him trouble? Or is my imagination running away with me? Lanius wondered. He doubted he would ever know.

I hope I'm giving the Banished One trouble, anyhow, he thought, and wondered if he would ever know the answer to that.

"Another river to cross," Grus said, staring across a stream shrunken in the summer drought. A few Menteshe rode back and forth on the other side, not far from the southern bank. Right now, the river wasn't anywhere close to a bowshot wide. The nomads stayed out of range of Avornan archers.

Hirundo looked across the river, too. "Now the question is, how many of those bastards aren't we seeing? How many of them are waiting somewhere not too far away to hit us when we cross?"

Grus shaded his eyes with the palm of his hand. "Doesn't look like country where you could hide anything much bigger than a dragonfly." Several of them danced in the air above the river. They had blue bodies so bright they almost glowed and wings of a dusky brown. Grus didn't remember seeing any like them farther north.

The general nodded. "No, it doesn't," he agreed. "But how much aren't we seeing? Do they have wizards hiding a forest — and a swarm of Menteshe inside it?"

"Good question," Grus said, and shouted for Pterocles.

"You need something, Your Majesty?" the wizard asked.

"Who, me?" The king shook his head. "No, I was just yelling because I like to hear myself make noise." Pterocles blinked, not sure what to make of such royal irony. Grus went on, "Are the Menteshe on the far side of the river using magic to hide an ambush?"

"Ah. Now that's an intriguing question, isn't it?" Pterocles said. "I'll see if I can find out." Before, he hadn't seemed to care one way or the other what lay on the far side of the river. Now he looked over there with fresh interest. "Where would be the best place for them to hide their men, if they're doing that?"

"Hirundo?" Grus said. He had his own ideas, but the general knew — or was supposed to know — more about such things than he did.

Hirundo stroked his neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. "Well, I can't say for certain, mind," he warned, and Grus and Pterocles both nodded. Hirundo pointed east. "If I were in charge of the Menteshe, that's where I'd put them. They can strike at our flank from a position like that, do us a lot of harm."

"Why not the other flank?" Pterocles pointed west.

"Well, they could," Hirundo said, "but that's not how I'd do it. The ground is better the other way. They'd be coming downhill at us — do you see? — not trying to climb. It makes a difference."

"I suppose it would." Pterocles plainly didn't see how.

Patient as a father teaching his son to swim, Hirundo said, "You want to have the ground with you if you can. Either mounted or on foot, a charge uphill is harder than the other kind. Arrows don't go as far when you're shooting them up a slope, either."

"Oh." Pterocles nodded, perhaps in wisdom. "All right."

Grus, who agreed with his general, set a hand on the wizard's shoulder. "Every trade has its tricks and its secrets. Hirundo and I wouldn't have any idea what to do if we needed to cast a spell, but we've tried to learn a thing or two about soldiering."

"All right," Pterocles said again. "I'll take your word for it, then, and I'll stick to things I know a little something about myself." He took from his belt pouch an amulet made from a brown, shiny stone pierced and penetrated by a duller, darker one. "Chalcedony and emery," the wizard explained. "Together, they are proof against all manner of fantastical illusions."

"Good," Grus said. "But don't use them yet." Pterocles, who had clutched the amulet and was about to start a spell, stopped in surprise. The king went on, "If you find there are trees there and the Menteshe are lurking in among them, or something like that, you ought to be able to make them sorry they ever decided to try to attack us."

"I can try," Pterocles said doubtfully.

Hirundo snapped his fingers. "What about that spell you used against the Chernagor ships that were trying to bring grain into Nishevatz? You know — the one where you set them on fire when they were still out on the ocean. If they're hiding in a forest or an olive grove, say, you could roast 'em easy as you please."

"If roasting them were as easy as you make it sound, I wouldn't have any trouble — that's true enough." Now Pterocles' voice was tart. He rummaged some more in his belt pouch, and finally pulled out a clear disk of rock crystal thicker at the center than the edges. "I can try that spell, anyhow," he said. "One thing's sure — the sun is stronger here than it was up in the Chernagor country. I'll need some greenery — with luck, some twigs torn from trees — to work the spell if I turn out to need it."

Grus sent some of his guardsmen off. They came back with olive branches, twigs from almond trees, and fragrant orange and lemon boughs. No doubt the thralls who watched them would be puzzled — if puzzlement could soak into the sorry wits of thralls. When Pterocles had the greenery piled in front of his feet, Grus said, "Now, if you please."

"Certainly, Your Majesty." The wizard had a knack for being most exasperating when he was most polite. He gave a bow that struck Grus as more sardonic than sincere, then clutched the amulet in his left hand and looked east and south. He pointed in that direction with his right forefinger. Grus wished he hadn't; any watching Menteshe would get a good idea of what he was doing. But maybe there was no help for it. The king kept quiet.

Pterocles began a chant that started softly but grew louder and more insistent as it went on. Grus peered in the direction of the wizard's outthrust forefinger. He waited to see if the landscape would change. If it did, he would deal with whatever the nomads were hiding. If it didn't… well, better safe than sorry.

He and Hirundo and Pterocles all exclaimed at the same time. The sere, dun, dry landscape on the far side of the river wavered and rippled, as though it were being seen through running water. And then, quite suddenly, an almond grove that hadn't been there — or hadn't seemed to be there — appeared out of nowhere. Menteshe horsemen — Grus couldn't see how many — waited in the shade of the trees. There were plenty to cause his army trouble; he was sure of that.

He got only a brief glimpse of the grove before it vanished again. A woman whose skirt was flipped up by the wind might have yanked it down again that fast, leaving him with only a memory of her legs. Sometimes a memory would do, though. "Use your spell now," the king told Pterocles. "They know you've gotten through theirs."

"I'm already doing it," the wizard said. And, sure enough, he was separating almond twigs out of the greenery the guardsmen had set at his feet. "I hope the Menteshe don't have a counterspell handy. The Chernagors never did figure out what to do about this one, but the nomads have more worry about fire than the northerners did, because they live in a hot, dry country. Well, we'll see before long."

He held the crystal disk perhaps a palm's breadth above the bits from the almond branches. A bright spot of sunlight — it almost seemed a miniature sun — sprang into being on a twig. Grus wondered what magic lay in the crystal to make it do such a thing. Whatever the cause, that bright spot of sunlight seemed hot as a miniature sun, too. Smoke rose from the twig. A moment later, it burst into flame.

Pterocles chanted and pointed, sending his fire where he wanted it to go. For some little while, nothing — or nothing visible — happened. Then the illusion on the far side of the river wavered again, wavered and winked out. Pterocles wasn't attacking it now, not directly. But the Menteshe sorcerers abandoned it because they had other things that needed their power more.

Smoke streamed up into the sky. The leafy tops of the almond trees were on fire. Even from that distance, Grus could hear the nomads' horses screaming in terror and panic. The Menteshe had no chance to keep their mounts under control, not with flames above their heads and burning leaves and branches falling down on them. The horses galloped off in all directions, carrying their riders with them.

Grus nudged Hirundo. "Get our men across the river now, before the nomads can pull themselves together."

"Right." The general started shouting orders.

Pterocles looked as happy as a six-year-old with a brand-new wooden sword. "They haven't got a counterspell for that one, either," he said, grinning widely. "I always did think it was a pretty piece of magic, and it's done some good things for us."

"I should say so." Grus remembered tall-masted Chemagor ships catching fire out in the Northern Sea, where he could have reached them in no other way than through magic. He looked at the burning trees. Now he had another memory to go with that one. He slapped Pterocles on the back. "Nicely done."

"I'll have to thank Hirundo when he's done yelling his head off," Pterocles said. "That might not have occurred to me if he hadn't suggested it."

"It seems to be working pretty well," Grus said. "Hard on the almonds, but nothing we can do about that."

Avornan soldiers formed a perimeter on the far bank of the river. A few Menteshe rode toward them, but only a few — not nearly enough to keep them from making the crossing. And, at Hirundo's orders, the Avornans had brought some stone- and dart-throwers over the river with them. The missiles they flung discouraged the nomads from getting too close. Before long, even the handful of Menteshe who'd tried to oppose Grus' army wheeled their horses and trotted away.

"We took care of that," Pterocles said.

"They aren't gone for good," Grus said. "They'll try to give us trouble somewhere else. But they won't give us trouble here, and that's what I was worried about." He grinned at the wizard. "Thank you."

"My pleasure, Your Majesty, and I mean every word of that," Pterocles answered. "Every time we set another thrall village free, I'm getting some of my own back against…" He did not say the name, but looked south. Grus nodded, understanding whom he meant. Pterocles went on, "Every time I do something like this, I'm getting some back, too."

"All of Avornis owes… him a lot," Grus said. "If this campaign goes the way we hope, we'll get to pay a lot of it back. We'll have.. something he's kept for a long time."

If they got to Yozgat, if they got the Scepter of Mercy — what then? Grus didn't know, but oh, how he wanted to find out!