The Scepter's return

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Quite a few Menteshe moving around in front of us, Your Majesty," a scout reported to King Grus. "Don't know what they're up to, but they aren't likely to be there because they like the weather."

"No, I wouldn't think so." Grus turned to Hirundo. "This is — what? — the fourth such report that we've gotten this morning. They're getting ready to hit us."

"Did you expect they'd just blow us a kiss and wave us on to Yozgat?" the general replied. "We both figured they had another fight left in them after we beat them the last time. Now we get to see what their great General Bori-Bars has learned — and what we've learned, too. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

To hear him talk about it, it almost did. Grus said, "I'd sooner they'd run away, if you want to know the truth. Anything that makes this whole business easier is fine with me."

"I don't think they're going to run away, worse luck," Hirundo said.

"I don't, either." Grus' gaze sharpened. "In that case, why don't we run away instead?" Hirundo stared at him. He spent some little while explaining. When he was done, he asked, "Do you think we can bring that off?"

"We'll have to hurry if we want to try." Hirundo started to laugh. "Things will get lively if we do — I'll tell you that." Grus nodded. Hirundo asked. "Do you want me to give the orders?"

"If you'd be so kind," Grus said. Hirundo started yelling.

Horns started blaring. Avornans started riding and marching in what seemed like every direction at once. Such apparent chaos usually had order behind it. Grus hoped it did here.

He assumed it did, and called for Pterocles. Getting the wizard's attention in the midst of the commotion Hirundo was stirring up took some doing, but the king managed. He said, "I want you to block any unmasking spells the Menteshe throw this way."

"I'll do my best, Your Majesty, but we haven't set out any masking spells," Pterocles said, puzzlement in his voice.

"You know that, and I know that, but I don't want the nomads finding out," Grus said. "Send back whatever they aim at us. That will give them something to think about, eh?"

"I'll do my best, but this business doesn't come with a guarantee," Pterocles said. "Some of their wizards know what they're doing. That little affair by the river not long ago could have been much worse than it was."

"If they realize you're blocking them, they'll concentrate on beating down what you're doing, won't they?" Grus asked.

"That's what I'd do, anyhow," Pterocles replied.

"So would I. Let's hope they do, too," Grus said. Pterocles scratched his head. If his own wizard was confused, the king could hope the shamans serving Bori-Bars or whoever was in charge of the Menteshe would be, too.

Along with Hirundo and some of the royal guardsmen, he rode forward in the center of the Avornan battle line. Avornan outriders returned to the main body, driven back by the nomads. Roiling dust ahead hid the main force of the Menteshe. Before long, Grus could make out horsemen through the dust they stirred up. "They haven't lost their spirit — that's plain enough," he said.

"They wouldn't be so much trouble if they didn't have nerve," Hirundo said. "But we've already given them two good beatings this summer. If we can manage one more.."

"We'll know pretty soon," Grus said.

Before long, arrows began to fly. The Menteshe shouted their ferocious war cries. The Avornans yelled back, roaring out their kingdom's name and King Grus'. Grus didn't know if that raised their spirits, but it never failed to lift his.

A Menteshe arrow hissed past his ear. Behind him, somebody groaned. That could have been me, he thought, and shuddered. Even in the best-planned battles, so many things could go wrong. Do I care if we win if I'm not there to see it? Well, I hope we do, but I'm afraid this campaign will fall to pieces without me.

He didn't have time to wonder whether that was his vanity talking. The Menteshe seemed to have forgotten the Avornans had trounced them twice in recent weeks. By the way they pressed forward, they might have been the ones who'd done all the winning lately.

And the Avornans, who seemed taken aback by the nomads' aggressiveness, began to drift toward the rear. After shouting and cursing at them, Hirundo turned to Grus and said, "Your Majesty, looks like it's time to retreat."

"It does, doesn't it?" Grus said. "Falling back from the Menteshe.. They're going to push us hard. They'll want to see if they can break us."

"They'd better not," Hirundo said. "That would be downright embarrassing." It would be worse than embarrassing, but Hirundo always looked on the bright side of things.

Grus guided his gelding back to the north. More and more Avornans were riding in that direction. The Menteshe shouted louder and more ferociously than ever. They pressed the Avornans harder — and Grus' men retreated faster. That encouraged the nomads to press them harder still.

Retreat turned into something that looked a lot like rout. Only a stubborn rear guard kept the Menteshe from smashing the Avornan army to pieces. Even the men in the rear guard kept on retreating for all they were worth. The Menteshe, having lost their earlier fights with the Avornans, pushed hard now, intent on doing the hated foes in front of them as much harm as they could. Any soldiers worthy of their weapons would have done the same.

It mined them.

Because they had an enemy in front of them, they paid no attention to what lay off to the side — until the stone-throwers and dart-throwers sitting in the shadows cast by a grove of olive trees all opened up at once, throwing them into confusion.

Before the Menteshe had a chance to recover, most of the heavily armored royal guardsmen — who'd waited patiently in the olive grove — set spurs to their horses and thundered forward.

Horn calls rang out through what had been the retreating Avornan army, and the Avornans retreated no more, but went over to the attack. When they did, Grus and Hirundo, who were riding side by side, reached out at the same time and clasped hands with each other. A deliberate retreat was one of the hardest things in war to bring off. When an army pretended to fall back, it all too often started falling back in earnest. But the Avornans turned around and struck as fiercely as Grus could have hoped.

The Menteshe broke. Caught with a blow at their flank and suddenly and unexpectedly assailed from the front as well, they fled in all directions. Escape was the only thing that seemed to matter to them. If they could get away..

A lot of them couldn't. A lot of them went down to the guardsmen's lances or were hacked out of the saddle by their swords. At close quarters, Avornan archers could hold their own with the Menteshe, too, and they filled the air with shafts, shooting as fast as they could.

Nomads threw down their weapons and did their best to surrender. As on any battlefield, giving up was a risky business. With their fighting blood up, not all Avornans felt like taking prisoners. And a few Menteshe pretended to surrender and then started fighting again, which did neither them nor their comrades any good.

"Bori-Bars!" The shout went up not too far from Grus. "We have Bori-Bars!"

Grinning, the king clasped hands with Hirundo again. That was one of the things he'd most hoped for. Capturing the able general weakened the nomads. And now the Avornans would be able to question him. Who was his commander? Korkut? Sanjar? The Banished One?

Pterocles pointed at Grus. "I know what you were doing."

"Do you?" Grus said. "I often wonder myself."

"You can't get away with being coy, not this time," the wizard said. "You wanted me to fight the Menteshe so they'd do everything they could to break through my spells — and so they wouldn't do anything else." "Who, me?" Grus said.

"Yes, you." Pterocles did his best to look severe. "And they were pounding on me, and I was doing everything I could to fend them off, and that only made them pound harder. But we weren't really masking anything after all."

"They never found that out, did they?" Grus asked. Pterocles shook his head. The king grinned again. "That was what I had in mind."

"You know how to get what you want, don't you?"

"I'm not sure yet," Grus answered, the grin slipping as fast as it appeared. "We'll know better as this campaign wears along, won't we?"

Before Pterocles could say anything, a soldier called, "Your Majesty, here's Bori-Bars!" The Menteshe general was still mounted on his rough-coated little horse. His hands were tied in front of him, his feet tied together under the horse's belly. He had a cut over one eye that splashed his swarthy face with blood and an expression that said he wished he were dead.

"Do you speak Avornan?" Grus asked. Reluctantly, Bori-Bars nodded. The king said, "You make a dangerous foe."

"So do you, Your Majesty." The Menteshe scowled. "I hoped you would be the one with ropes." He raised his hands a little.

"Life doesn't always give us what we hope," Grus said, and Bori-Bars nodded again. Leaning forward in the saddle, Grus asked, "Who is your master?"

"At the moment, you are," Bori-Bars answered sourly.

Grus bowed in the saddle. "Well, so I am. But who gave you the orders to attack my army?"

"No one did," Bori-Bars said. "My scouts spotted your men. It looked to be a good place to hit you. It was a good place to hit you. But you turned out to be sneakier than I expected. You fought that battle the way one of my folk might. Who would have looked for such a thing from an Avornan?"

"For which I thank you." Grus bowed in the saddle again. "But for whom did you command that army? Who is your superior?"

"I reckon no man my superior." Pride rang in Bori-Bars' voice.

"You are being difficult." Grus exhaled in exasperation. "I will point out to you — once — that you are in a poor position to be difficult. Now then — does that army you commanded owe allegiance to Korkut, or to Sanjar, or to the Banished One?"

"We all owe allegiance to the Fallen Star. Him I will reckon my superior." Bori-Bars still sounded proud. Grus did not understand that and did not particularly want to understand it — it struck him as being proud one was a slave — but he had also seen it from other Menteshe.

It was one more thing he would have to think about another time. "Do you also follow Korkut, or do you also follow Sanjar?"

"I follow the Fallen Star," Bori-Bars said.

"And no one else?" Grus asked. The captured general repeated himself. "If that's yes, then I know of Menteshe who don't like it," Grus told him. "I know of Menteshe who are working against the sorcery that makes it so. I know of Menteshe who want to follow their own will first, and who don't care to be sent halfway to thralldom."

That got through to Bori-Bars. His eyes flashed. "You know of my folk who would turn against the Fallen Star? I say you lie."

"I say you don't know what you're talking about," Grus replied. "I could name names. They would be names you know. But what would be the point? The names will do you no good, not after I send you back to Avornis. You have many, many more questions to answer." He nodded to the men who'd captured Bori-Bars. "Take him away. Put him in the compound with the rest of the captured Menteshe officers, but don't let him speak to them or they to him."

"Yes, Your Majesty," they chorused.

Away went the Menteshe general. Grus summoned the Avornan officer in charge of that compound. He was a stolid, middle-aged fellow named Lagopus. He blinked several times when Grus told him, "I want you to let Bori-Bars escape tonight."

"Your Majesty?" Lagopus dug a finger in his ear, as though wondering if he could have heard right.

"Let him escape. Don't be obvious about it — don't let him know you're letting him — but do it," Grus said. "He knows some things now that will make the Menteshe quarrel among themselves, but only if he gets away. He's the sort who will be looking for a chance. Make sure you give him one."

"Yes, Your Majesty. Just as you say." Lagopus was nothing if not dutiful. He saluted and went back to that compound. He would do as Grus told him. Bori-Bars would get away. And then… they would see what they would see.

Princess Limosa curtsied to King Lanius when she came up to him in a palace hallway. The serving woman behind Limosa carried little Prince Marinus. "Hello, Your Majesty," Limosa said. "How are you today?"

"Pretty well, thanks," Lanius answered. "Yourself?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm very pleased you and the queen are going to have another baby." She really did sound as though she meant it. Maybe she was blind to the politics all around her. Or maybe she just thought that, with Prince Crex, the succession — at least if it passed through Lanius — was already assured.

"Thank you. So am I. Of course, Sosia will have to do the work," Lanius said.

Limosa laughed. "That's the truth!" she exclaimed. "I think women forget how hard it is after every birth. If they didn't, they wouldn't have more than one baby, and then where would we be?"

"Gone," Lanius said, which made Limosa laugh again. He walked past her and held out his arms. "Let me see Marinus."

The maidservant put the baby in his arms. Marinus stared up at him. The baby was at the age when he smiled at anything and everything. By the way he looked up at Lanius; the king made him the happiest baby in the world just by existing. His little pink hands reached out…

Lanius jerked his head back in a hurry. "Oh, no, you don't, you little rascal! You're not going to get a handful of my beard. My children have already done that, and I know how much it hurts." Everything he said around Limosa could turn awkward, even something as innocuous as that. She relished pain. Hastily, he went on, "I think he looks more like you than like Ortalis."

"Yes, I do, too," Limosa answered. If the other thought occurred to her, she gave no sign of it. She went on, "Ortalis isn't so sure. He thinks Marinus has his nose."

Lanius looked down. The baby's nose was the small, mostly shapeless blob common to about eight babies in ten. "Where's the rest of it, in that case?" the king inquired, which sent both Limosa and the serving woman into a fit of the giggles.

"I'll take him back if you like, Your Majesty," the woman said. He handed her Marinus. The baby's face clouded up. He started to cry. Lanius didn't think that was a testimony to his own personality. Marinus sounded fussy and cranky. The maidservant began rocking him in her arms. Sure enough, his eyelids started to sag. "I'll wait until he's sound asleep, then put him in his cradle," the woman told Limosa.

"That will be fine, Pica," Limosa said.

She and Lanius chatted. She did most of the chatting, as the king wasn't overburdened with small talk. He didn't mind; most people did more talking than he did. After a couple of minutes, Pica carried Marinus away. By then, the baby wouldn't have noticed anything short of the ceiling dropping on him.

A little while after that, Limosa said, "I do go on and on."

"No," Lanius said, which wasn't strictly true. In fact, she did go on and on, but he didn't mind. "It's very interesting." That was true — she picked up most gossip before it got to him.

"You're kind to say so." Limosa looked around. Lanius understood that glance, having used it a good many times himself — she was seeing whether any servants were close enough to overhear. Satisfied none was, she went on, "And you're kind for not thinking me — stranger than I am." Now her gaze went down to the mosaic tiles on the floor.

"Stranger than you are?" For a moment, Lanius was puzzled. In every way he could think of but one, Limosa was ordinary enough. When he remembered the exception, of course, it made up for a lot of the rest. He felt like looking down at the floor himself. "Oh. That."

"Yes. That." Limosa's chin lifted defiantly. "Well, you are, because you don't." She paused as though sorting through whether that was what she really meant. Lanius needed to do the same thing. They both decided at about the same time that she had gotten it right. Relief in her voice, she went on, "You don't act like you think I'm some sort of a monster or something."

"I don't," Lanius said, which was true. He would have said the same thing about Ortalis, and sounded just as sincere — and he would have been lying through his teeth. About Limosa, though, he did mean it. Despite her husband, despite her father, he had nothing at all against her. He tried to figure out why, and to put it into words. The best he could do was, "You just — like what you like, that's all."

"Yes, that really is all." Her eyes glowed. "You see? You do understand. Oh! I could just kiss you!"

He could tell she meant it. And, if the look on her face meant what he thought it did, things could easily go on from there after a kiss. The idea of putting a cuckold's horns on his unloving and unlovable brother-in-law had a certain delicious temptation to it. But Lanius was too relentlessly practical to take it any further than being tempted. An affair with a serving girl annoyed nobody but Sosia, and both he and the kingdom could deal with that. An affair with a princess carried much more baggage. Nor did he think Ortalis would wear horns gracefully. On the contrary.

And so, as gently as he could, Lanius said, "I thank you for the thought, but that might not be a good idea."

Limosa's eyes fell open. Maybe she saw for the first time where that kiss might lead. Her cheeks turned the color of iron just out of the forge. "Oh!" she said again, in an altogether different tone of voice. "You're right. Maybe it isn't."

Gently still, Lanius added, "Besides, what you like isn't… what very many people like."

She turned redder yet, which he wouldn't have believed if he hadn't seen it. In a faintly strangled voice, she said, "That isn't all I like."

Lanius was willing to believe her. She wouldn't have borne Capella and Marinus if she hadn't done other things, and they were things she was likely to like if she did them. But exactly what she liked and didn't like wasn't really his business, or anyone's except hers and perhaps Ortalis'.

She must have realized that, too, because she squeaked, "Please excuse me," and hurried away. Lanius stared after her. He sighed. Maybe they would be able to talk more openly with each other from now on. Or maybe they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Time would tell, nothing else.

"Time will tell." Lanius said it out loud. It was true of so many things. He wanted to know whether Sosia would have a boy or a girl. Time would tell. He wanted to know how Grus' army was doing down in the Menteshe country. Time would tell. He wanted to know if Grus would reclaim the Scepter of Mercy. Time would tell. He wanted to know what the Scepter could do in the hands of a King of Avornis. Time would — or might — tell.

"But it won't tell soon enough!" Lanius said that out loud, too. He wanted to know all those things now. He didn't want to have to wait to find out. News from Grus might be only minutes away. Lanius hoped so. He surely wouldn't have to wait more than days for that. With the others, though, he would have to be more patient.

He'd had a lot of time to learn patience. Snaking through the archives had helped him acquire it. So had years of being altogether powerless. If he hadn't been patient then, he might have gone mad. He laughed. Some of the people in the palace probably thought he had, although, he hoped, in a harmless way.

And patience had paid. Now he had more power than he'd ever expected, more power than he'd ever dreamed of in those first few years after Grus put the crown on his own head.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"

The call brought Lanius' head up like a hunting hound's. "I'm here," he said. "What's going on?" Good news? Bad news? Scandal? One thing was certain — it wasn't Pouncer stealing a spoon from the kitchens. But had another moncat finally found Pouncer's way out of the chamber?

"A courier's looking for you, Your Majesty," a maidservant answered.

"Well, bring him here, by the gods!" the king exclaimed. If this was news from the south, time would tell very soon indeed.

When he saw the courier, he thought the man had news from Grus. The fellow had plainly ridden hard. But the message he gave Lanius had nothing — or rather, not much — to do with events south of the Stura. A plague had broken out in the town of Priene, on the coast. The city governor asked the king to send wizards to help put it down.

"I can do that," Lanius told the courier. "I will do that, as fast as I can." Priene was an out-of-the-way place, a backwater where things happened slowly if they happened at all. The pestilence that had been such a worry along well-traveled routes during the winter was getting there only now.

Lanius called for pen and ink and paper. He wrote a message to the people of Priene, telling them help was on the way. Then he wrote a message to Aedon the wizard, telling him either to go to Priene himself or to send another wizard familiar with the spell he'd used to cure Queen Estrilda. Knowing the inconvenience of this request, I promise the reward will be commensurate to it, he finished.

Once both messages were on their way, Lanius started laughing again. Time would tell him what he wanted to know, all right, but at its pace, not his.

"By the gods!" Grus said softly. "Will you look at that?"

Hirundo looked south with him. The general spoke a word no Avornan general had ever used before in sight of the thing of which he spoke. "Yozgat."

"We're here." Grus shook his head in wonder. "We're really here. I can hardly believe it."

"Well, you'd better, because it's true. Now all we have to do is take the place." Hirundo made it sound easy. Maybe it was, compared to advancing from the Stura all the way to Yozgat. Compared to anything else? Grus didn't think so.

They were still three or four miles from the city that held the Scepter of Mercy, the city that had been Prince Ulash's capital for so long, the city that now belonged — however tenuously — to Prince Korkut. The drawbridge over the moat was down; the gates were open. Tiny in the distance, Menteshe horsemen were riding into Yozgat. The warriors inside had plenty of time to close the gates before the Avornans drew near enough to threaten the place.

Grus got his first look at the fortifications he would face, and liked none of what he saw. Trabzun, the year before, hadn't been easy. Yozgat, by all the signs, would be harder. Its walls were higher and better built; that was obvious even from a distance. Inside the city, tall towers would make formidable strongpoints even if the Avornans forced an entry. And the palace — on a hill near the center of the town — plainly doubled as a citadel. If what Lanius said was right, that citadel housed not only the reigning Menteshe prince, whoever he happened to be, but also the Scepter of Mercy.

The king made himself smile. "If it were easy, somebody would have done it a long time ago. But we've already done a lot of hard things. One more? By now, one more hard thing should be easy for us."

He knew he was talking more to cheer up his men than for himself. He also knew he was making things simpler than they really were. Taking Yozgat wouldn't be one hard thing to do. It would be scores, hundreds, thousands of hard things. They would have to surround the city, have to fend off whatever attacks Menteshe outside the walls made on them, have to force a breach in the walls, have to defeat the garrison, have to storm the citadel…

"One more hard thing," Hirundo said. "That's just right." The soldiers who heard him would believe him. Grus gave him a sharp look. If Hirundo hadn't just said, You must be out of your mind, nobody ever had. But the general's face was as innocent as that of a graying, bearded, scarred, lined, leathery child.

"We'll put some stone-throwers upstream along the river-bank," Grus said. "Curse me if I want the Menteshe sneaking supplies in there by boat."

"Sounds reasonable. We ought to put some downstream, too, in case they try to row up against the current," Hirundo said.

"Olor's beard!" Grus exclaimed. "All these years on horseback and I've finally learned to ride. And now here you are, thinking like a river-galley captain. What is this world coming to?"

"Beats me. Whatever it's coming to, I wish it would hurry up and get there," Hirundo said.

As the Avornan army neared Yozgat, the drawbridge rose. The heavy chains that drew it up rattled. After it rose, a massive iron portcullis thudded down in front of it. Grus muttered to himself. The city of Avornis had such fortifications, but he wished Yozgat didn't.

Not all the Menteshe outside Yozgat had gotten in before the defenders sealed off the city. Most of the ones left out there on the plain galloped off. A few rode at the Avornans and shot off the arrows they had in their quivers. Hirundo sent bands of scouts to outflank them. Some of them noticed and fled before the scouts could block their escape. Others, less lucky or less alert, didn't get away.

A herald with a flag of truce came up onto the wall when the Avornan army drew near enough for him to shout out over the moat. In good Avornan, he called, "Prince Korkut commands you to leave this city. If you leave it at once, you may go in peace. Otherwise, the full weight of his wrath, and of the Fallen Star's, will fall on you."

Despite mutterings from his guardsmen — who did their best to make sure with their stout shields that no Menteshe could pick him off at long range — Grus rode up to the edge of the moat and shouted back. "Let Prince Korkut give me one present, and he is welcome to keep his city and his land. I will go home to the Kingdom of Avornis straightaway. I swear it in the names of King Olor and Queen Quelea and the rest of the gods in the heavens."

"We care nothing for those foolish, useless gods," the herald replied. "But say your say. What would you have of His Highness?"

"The Scepter of Mercy," Grus said. Korkut had turned him down the year before. Then, though, the Avornans were far from Yozgat. Now they moved to surround it even as Grus parleyed with Korkut's man.

"He told me you would say this," the herald shouted. "The answer is no, as it has always been, as it will always be."

'Then my answer is also no," Grus said. "The fight will go on. When Sanjar is prince over Yozgat, he will show better sense." That was probably untrue, but it should give Korkut something new and unpalatable to think about. Yozgat was being cut off from the outside world. The defenders couldn't be sure Sanjar hadn't made common cause with Grus.

"You will be sorry," the herald said, and ceremoniously lowered the flag of truce.

"Get back, Your Majesty!" three guardsmen said at the same time, and with identical urgency in their voices. As soon as that flag of truce went down, the Menteshe did start shooting. Arrows thudded into shields near the king. One guard and one horse were wounded before Grus and his men got out of range.

He wished that hadn't happened, but he didn't know what he could have done to stop it. If the Menteshe in Yozgat wanted to parley, he had no choice but to talk to them. There was a chance they would surrender the Scepter in exchange for his withdrawal. He had the feeling Korkut might have done it if he didn't fear the Banished One.

Well, let him, Grus thought. I'll show him he'd better fear Avornis, too.

Avornans shot back at the Menteshe on the walls of Yozgat. The Menteshe, with stronger bows and the advantage of height, had the better of that until Grus' artisans got some dart-throwers in position and started skewering them. Korkut's men did not seem to have any of those up on the walls.

Hirundo said, "I think I'd better get the outer ditch and palisade made before the inner ones this time."

"Oh? Why is that?" Grus answered his own question, saying, "Because every nomad south of the Stura is liable to be heading this way just as fast as he can ride?"

"Not every nomad, Your Majesty." Hirundo pointed to the walls of Yozgat. "A lot of them are already here."

"So they are. That's a relief, isn't it?" Grus said. They both laughed. If they didn't laugh, they would start worrying. Grus knew he would start worrying very soon anyhow. He looked toward Yozgat. "I wonder how much food they've got in there."

"Wonder how much we can scrounge off the countryside, too," Hirundo said. "If we knew this stuff ahead of time, maybe we wouldn't have to fight the battles. Since we don't, we do."

Grus thought about that. After he worked it through, he nodded. "Right," he said, and then, "I think."

"Don't fret, Your Majesty." Hirundo grinned at him. "Let Korkut fret. Let the Banished One fret. Do you think they're not? You'd better think again if you do. When was the last time they had to figure out what to do with an Avornan army besieging Yozgat?"

"If this isn't a first for Korkut, he's a lot older than I think he is," Grus observed, which made Hirundo laugh. Grus added, "It's been a long, long time for the Banished One, too. We're giving him something to think about, anyway."

Korkut kept his archers busy on the walls, making things as hard as they could for the Avornans. That impressed Grus less than it might have. If he'd intended to try to storm Yozgat right away, a strong, aggressive defense would have mattered more. As things were, it just meant the Avornans set up their inner perimeter a little farther from the wall than they would have otherwise. Even so, soldiers and engineers went about their business with unflustered competence. This wasn't the first siege for most of them.

The king's pavilion rose between the inner and outer perimeters. Hirundo's tent and Pterocles' went up nearby. So did the one that Otus shared with Fulca. The ex-thrall bowed to Grus. "It makes me happy to see the Menteshe beaten, Your Majesty," he said. "For so long, I did not know they could be."

"For a long time, I didn't know they could be, either, not south of the Stura," Grus said. "You have Pterocles to thank for that."

"I have Pterocles to thank for me," Otus said. "I have Pterocles to thank for my woman — even if she does tell me what to do."

"That can happen," Grus said. "Do you tell her what to do, too?" When Otus nodded, the king clapped him on the back.

"Then things are pretty near even, sounds like. That's about how they ought to be."

He was glad to go to bed that night. He liked staying in one spot more and more as he got older. Not having to break camp and travel in the morning had a strong attraction for him. Even a siege camp could come to resemble a home as he spent time there.

But he was anything but glad when, sometime in the night, the Banished One appeared before him in all his fearful majesty. "You will not enter Yozgat. You shall never set foot in Yozgat. This I tell you, and tell you truly," the exiled god said.

When that bell-like voice resounded inside Grus' head, not believing it was almost impossible. Grus did his best. "I'll take my chances," he replied.

"They will bring you sorrow." Again, the Banished One left no room for doubt or disagreement.

Instead of disagreeing, Grus tried to deflect. "Life is full of sorrow. Facing sorrow is part of what makes a man."

The Banished One's laughter might have been a lash of ice. "What do you know of sorrow, wretched mortal? I was cast down from the heavens to this accursed place. Shall I rejoice in it? When you know exile, you will understand — as much as a flea understands a dog."

"I don't intend to be exiled, thank you very much." Grus managed such defiance as he could.

All he won was more scorn from the Banished One. "As though what a man intends matters! It will be as I say it will, not as you intend."

Grus woke then, with the usual shudders after confronting the Banished One. The exiled god had sounded even more certain than usual. His certainty was part of what made him so terrible — and so terrifying. He's lying. He wants to confuse me. He wants to trick me. Telling himself that was easy for Grus. Believing it? Believing it came ever so much harder.