The Scepter's return

CHAPTER NINE

Much of the dirt dug out of the tunnel approaching Trabzun went to strengthen the inner and outer fieldworks surrounding the town. That was Hirundo's idea, and King Grus liked it very much. It gave the Avornans somewhere inconspicuous to conceal the spoil from the mine. As the amount of dirt dug out grew greater and greater, that became ever more important.

After being beaten back once, the Menteshe outside Trabzun did not return for another attack on the besiegers. That relieved Grus, and also rather surprised him. One evening, he remarked, "I hope they've gone back to fighting their civil war again."

"That would be nice," Hirundo agreed. He fanned himself with the palm of his hand. "I'll tell you something else that would be nice — it would be nice if it got cooler around here."

"So it would," Grus said. The air was still and breathless. Things farther than a few hundred yards away shimmered in a heat haze. A drop of sweat tickled as it trickled through his beard. A bird called. Even the noise seemed flat and dispirited — or maybe that was Grus' imagination, as overheated as everything else that had to do with Trabzun. He went on, "Don't expect anything different, though, not till summer finally decides to let up."

"Oh, I don't. I've seen what the weather's like around here." Hirundo swatted at a bug that landed on his bare arm. He killed it, and wiped his hand on his tunic. "Knowing it doesn't mean I have to like it."

"No, I suppose not. I don't much like it myself." Grus snapped his fingers. "Did I tell you? No, of course I didn't, because it just happened today. I got a plan of the streets inside Trabzun."

"Did you, by the gods?" The general beamed. "That's good news. Where did you get it from? Did Pterocles pull a new spell out of his belt pouch?"

Grus shook his head. "No. He was just as surprised as you are. I got it from Lanius. He found it in the archives back at the palace."

Hirundo laughed so loud, several soldiers stared at him. "He's all the way back there, and we're here, and he knows more about this stinking place than we do? That's funny, is what that is." He paused. "That plan will be older than dirt, if he pulled it out of the archives. D'you think it's still good?"

"Funny you should ask. He warned me about that. He said he didn't know what the buildings were like in there, but the way the streets ran shouldn't have changed much."

"That does make sense," Hirundo allowed. "His Majesty thought of everything, didn't he?"

"So it seems. He has a way of doing that." Grus heard the edge in his own voice. He'd been happy to have Lanius excavate the archives. If the other king played with things from long-ago and far-off days, he wouldn't worry about other things — like power for himself, for instance. But Lanius, not for the first time, had found a way to make the past matter here and now. And if he could do that, then he wasn't so disconnected from the real world after all, was he? As though I need more things to worry about, Grus thought.

"He certainly does. He's a clever fellow, King Lanius is." Hirundo, by contrast, sounded enthusiastic. And why not? He would keep on being a general no matter who gave him his orders. Not only that, he'd never shown the least interest in the throne himself. That alone would have been plenty to keep him a general regardless of who wore the crown. Capable soldiers without undue ambition were worth their weight in gold.

"I'll have my secretaries copy out the street plan so our officers can use it when they break into Trabzun," Grus said. "No matter how old it is, it'll come in handy."

"Fair enough," Hirundo said. "The timing was good. The way these things usually work, we would have gotten it two days after we fired the mine."

"I know, I know." Grus nodded, and then asked, "How much longer before the diggers get under the wall?"

"Another few days," the general answered. "The engineers have some way of figuring out when they're in the right place, or maybe it's the wizards who know. I don't worry my head about that kind of thing too much. I suppose it's a little more complicated than unrolling a ball of string till you've gone far enough."

"Probably. Most of the time, things do turn out more complicated than you wish they would. If they were easy all the time, just about everybody could do just about anything. I suppose that's why people in songs and stories can do whatever they want so easily — if you're listening to that kind of thing, you think you can do anything."

Hirundo gave him a wide-eyed, innocent stare. "You mean I can't, Your Majesty?" He looked as though he were about to break into tears.

Grus laughed. "With you, nothing would surprise me."

"Me? What about you?" Hirundo pointed at him. "Am I the fellow who made Dagipert of Thervingia leave us alone? Am I the fellow who taught the Chernagors respect? Am I the fellow who took an Avornan army south of the Stura for the first time in gods only know how many years?" He paused. "Well, I suppose King Lanius would know how many years, too."

"Yes, I suppose he would." Grus was sure the other king would know not just the year but to the hour. That was Lanius' way. And if he talked about Lanius, he didn't have to talk about himself.

But his general wouldn't let him get away with modesty. "What do you aim to do when you grab the Scepter of Mercy?" Hirundo asked.

Bash you over the head with it, was the first thing that came to Grus' mind. Hirundo was a cheerful soul who didn't worry about things as much as he should. "Don't talk about that, please," Grus said. "I may not be the only one listening."

"What? There's nobody else around. Oh." Another pause from the general. "You mean the Banished One? This for the Banished One." Hirundo snapped his fingers.

He'd never had the exiled god come to him in dreams. He'd never started up in bed after one of those dreams, heart pounding, eyes staring, cold sweat and gooseflesh all over his body. He didn't know how lucky he was. "For my sake if not your own, please — please! — don't mention him again," Grus said carefully.

"Sure, Your Majesty." Hirundo was nothing if not agreeable. "How come, though?"

"Because he really might be listening," Grus answered, and let it go at that. Most of the time, a man learned only by experience. Hirundo had no experience. Grus wished he didn't, either.

A mug flew past Lanius' head and shattered against the wall behind him. "You — You slimy thing, you!" Sosia shouted, and looked for something else to throw.

"Oh, dear," Lanius said unhappily. He knew what sparked fury like that in his wife. Knowing, he tried to pretend he didn't. "What's wrong, dear?"

"You are, that's what. You're wrong if you think you can bed any cute little chit of a serving girl and have me sit still for it. Not even Queen Quelea would put up with the trouble you give me." Sosia scaled the tray the mug had sat on at him. He sidestepped more nimbly than he'd thought he could. The tray slammed into the wall with a noise like a thunderclap.

No servants came running to see what the trouble was. When the servants heard shouts and bangs like that, they already had a good idea what the trouble was. They were likely to interfere only if they saw blood dribbling out under the doorway to the royal bedchamber.

Sosia went on, "Well, you won't be bedding Oissa again, by the gods! I sent her packing — you can bet on that."

"Oh, dear," Lanius said again. He'd have to find out where Sosia had sent Oissa. Was she still in the city of Avornis, or had Sosia exiled her to the provinces? The provinces, probably; the queen didn't do those things by halves. Wherever she was, Lanius knew he would have to find a quiet way to make sure she stayed comfortable. That was only fair. He was, in his own way, scrupulous about such things.

"What have you got to say for yourself?" Sosia snarled. " 'Oh, dear' doesn't do the job, believe you me it doesn't."

She wouldn't believe him if he called Oissa a liar. The next best thing was to plead for mercy. He tried that, spreading his hands placatingly and saying, "I'm sorry."

She laughed in his face. "How many times have you told me that? How many times have I believed it? How many times have I been a fool? The only thing you're sorry about is that I found out again."

"I am sorry," Lanius insisted. "I don't want to make you unhappy." That was true. He also noticed Sosia was careful not to say she'd never let him into her bed again. If she said that, what was to keep him from going out and looking for another serving woman? If the King of Avornis looked, he wouldn't have to look very far, either. They both knew that.

"If you don't want to make me unhappy, why do you do things like this?" Sosia demanded. "You don't fall in love with them, not anymore."

"I only did that once," Lanius said. Sosia rolled her eyes. Lanius' cheeks heated. No matter how embarrassing, what he'd said was true. Only his first affair had turned into what he thought was love.

"Why?" Sosia asked once more.

That had but one possible answer, the obvious one: Because it's fun. The trouble with that answer was equally obvious — Sosia wouldn't want to hear it. That being so, Lanius looked around for something else. "I don't know," he said at last. "I just do."

"You certainly do," his wife agreed bitterly. "You can't resist a pretty face, can you?" Face wasn't exactly the word she meant.

Lanius felt himself flush again. "I am sorry," he repeated. She went right on glaring at him. "That doesn't mean you don't want to keep on doing it. It only means you don't want me to find out about it. Pretty soon, there'll be banished serving girls in every country town in the kingdom."

"How can I make it up to you?" Lanius said.

"You could start by not dropping your drawers whenever you walk into a linen closet," Sosia snapped. That was more precise information than he'd thought she would have. Somebody had been spying on him.

"I'll… do my best," Lanius said — a promise that was not a promise.

Sosia knew perfectly well that it wasn't a promise, too. She looked no happier. "If you were somebody ordinary, I could walk away from you and try my luck somewhere

else. But I can't even do that, can I?"

"No," Lanius said, thinking, And neither can I. He compensated for it by sporting with the maidservants. If Sosia tried turning the tables on him that way, the scandal would be enormous. It probably wasn't fair, which didn't mean it wasn't true. He sighed once more. "We are what we are, and one of the things we are is, uh, left with each other." He'd almost said stuck with each other, which was true but less polite.

His wife sent him yet another furious glance. This one said she had no trouble reading between the lines. She looked around. He thought it was for something else to throw. He got ready to duck. Instead, she burst into tears and stormed out of the bedchamber. She slammed the door behind her — one more punctuation mark on the quarrel.

"Is… Is everything all right, Your Majesty?" a servant asked him when he too left the bedchamber.

"These things happen," Lanius answered vaguely. That he and Sosia had fought would be all over the palace by now. Before long, all the intimate details of the fight would be blown so out of proportion that the two people who actually knew the truth would never recognize them. Such things were all too familiar to the king. They'd happened before; they would happen again. What a depressing idea, he thought.

King Grus stood by the entrance to the mine the Avornan soldiers had dug under the walls of Trabzun. A last couple of men came out of the shaft. They'd filled the end of it with wood and brush — the hurdles the Menteshe had used to bridge the ditch in front of the palisade were now playing a new role — and then drenched all that with oil. An oil-soaked rope led from the entrance to the mass of waiting fuel.

A captain handed Grus a lighted torch. "Would you care to do the honors, Your Majesty?" the man asked.

"I'd be delighted," Grus replied, matching courtesy with courtesy. He stooped and touched the flame to the rope. It caught at once. Fire snaked down it and out of sight. Grus asked, "How long will we have to wait?"

"Shouldn't be long," the captain said. "If smoke doesn't start pouring out of the hole pretty soon, something's gone wrong in there." The corners of his mouth turned down. "In that case, somebody has to go down in there and start things up again."

"Who?" Grus asked. That struck him as an unenviable job, especially if the break was very close to the brush and wood that would become a conflagration as soon as flames reached them.

"Who?" the captain echoed. "Me." No wonder he looked unhappy.

Pterocles stood close by. He and the other wizards had been maintaining the masking spell ever since the digging started. Now he asked, "Your Majesty, may I lift the spell when the smoke bursts forth?"

"That depends. Can the Menteshe work any kind of magic to foil the mine in the time between when they see the smoke and things start falling down?" If things do start falling down, the king thought; mining was an imperfect art.

"I can't imagine how," Pterocles answered.

"Then go ahead," Grus said.

He waited. So did the captain, apprehensively. So did Pterocles, who looked pleased he was about to be relieved of a burden. Just when Grus began to wonder whether something had gone wrong, thick black smoke began billowing from the hole. Coughing, Grus stepped upwind of it. So did the captain, his face now wreathed in smiles. Pterocles had had sense enough to stay upwind from the beginning.

Grus wondered how long the fire would take to consume the supports that had kept the mine from collapsing under the weight of earth and stone above it. He started to ask the officer, then held his tongue. He would find out as soon as anyone did.

Avornan soldiers waited near the shaft. When the moment came — if it came — wooden gangplanks would take them over the ditch and let them charge to the attack. On the wall, Menteshe pointed out toward the rapidly swelling column of smoke. The motions were tiny in the distance, but Grus saw them distinctly. What did the defenders think? Were they hoping something had gone wrong within the Avornan lines? Or did they realize the very stones on which they stood were liable to come tumbling down at any moment?

The question had hardly occurred to Grus before the stones under the feet of the Menteshe must have begun to tremble and shake. The defenders began to run this way and that. Thin and attenuated, their shouts of alarm came to the king's ears. And then those shouts were lost in a great rumbling roar as a long stretch of Trabzun's wall crumbled into min. The ground beneath Grus' feet also shook, as though from an earthquake.

But the gods sent earthquakes. This collapse was man-made. Grus and Pterocles and the captain who hadn't had to go down into the mine all whooped and clapped their hands. They pounded one another on the back and embraced like a band of brothers.

A great cloud of dust rose from the shattered wall. Smoke rose, too, as rents in the ground exposed the fire down below. How many men lay crushed and maimed among the tumbled blocks of stone?

They are the enemy, Grus reminded himself. They stand between us and the Scepter of Mercy, between us and a crushing defeat for the Banished One. A Menteshe who caught him would have cut his throat right away — or else cut his throat after torturing him first. He knew that full well. The men who reverenced the Banished One had chosen evil. Grus knew that, too. But they were still men, and he flinched a little, imagining their suffering.

Homs bellowed within the Avornan lines. Like long tongues, the gangplanks stuck out over the ditch. Soldiers ran across them. Cheering, the men rushed toward the downfallen length of wall. They scrambled over and through the rubble and into Trabzun.

Not all the city's defenders had perished, of course. Most of the wall and most of the garrison remained intact. But then, most of a man remained intact after a spear pierced his chest. He was likely to die even so. And Trabzun, with its defenses breached, was likely to fall.

Menteshe from the undamaged stretches of the wall rushed to try to push back the Avornans. Seeing that, more Avornans went forward all around the city. Now scaling ladders could thud into place against the walls. Now soldiers could rush up them to gain the battlements. Some of the ladders went over. With the defenders so distracted, though, more of them stayed in place. Avornans atop the wall waved banners so the besiegers could see they'd won their lodgements.

Everywhere in Trabzun, Avornans who could speak a little of the Menteshe language shouted, "Surrender! We take prisoners!" Scrawny defenders, their hands in the air and dismay naked on their faces, began stumbling out of the city, herded along by Avornans.

When Trabzun's main gate swung open, Grus whooped again. He thumped Pterocles almost hard enough to knock him flat. "It's ours!" he shouted. "Trabzun is ours!"

"Uh, yes, Your Majesty. So it is." The wizard straightened up. "A good thing, too. If they'd thrown us back, you probably would have murdered me."

"Don't tempt me." Grus sounded as though he was joking, which he was. Pterocles flinched even so. Grus felt ashamed of himself. If a king felt like murdering someone, he could. Who would punish him? Avornis had known its share of bloody-handed tyrants. He didn't care to be remembered as another one. Setting a hand — gently — on Pterocles' shoulder, he said, "I'm sorry."

A king might murder with impunity. Apologizing looked to be something else again. Pterocles stared at him as though he'd said something in some exotic tongue. "I didn't mean anything by it, Your Majesty," the wizard said. He might have been the one at fault.

"I don't think either of us did." Grus laughed at himself; he'd just reduced their conversation to meaninglessness.

His guards weren't laughing when he decided to go into Trabzun late that afternoon. Only spatters of fighting were left in the city by then, but they didn't like it anyhow. "Too many places for enemy soldiers to hide," one of them said. "We won't have the place cleaned out for days. If one of those buggers lets fly with a bow…"

"That's what you people are for, isn't it?" Grus asked mildly.

"Yes, Your Majesty, but there's such a thing as taking chances when you don't have to," the royal guardsman insisted. Grus muttered to himself. The man had a better point than he cared to admit.

Grus finally entered Trabzun two days later. The guards were still unhappy, and so was he. He supposed that made for a reasonable compromise. He went in through the main gate, not over the tumbled masonry the mine had brought down.

Most of the people left in the city were desperately thin. By then, the Avornans had taken the men from the garrison out of Trabzun. They had been in reasonably good shape. They'd kept most of the food for themselves, leaving the civilians — especially the women and children — just enough to sustain life.

"Will you feed us?" a man called in Avornan. By his hazel eyes and light brown hair, he was descended from the folk who'd lived here when Trabzun was Avornan Trapezus. By his hollow cheeks and broomstick forearms, he needed feeding.

"We'll do everything we can," Grus said. It wasn't quite a promise, as he was uncomfortably aware. He had plenty to keep his soldiers fed. His soldiers and the folk of Trabzun? He wasn't so sure.

A woman even skinnier than the man who'd called held a baby in her arms. The baby's belly stuck out, not because it was plump but on account of starvation. Grus had seen children like that in districts where the crops failed and famine set in. The baby, too listless even to wail, stared at him with dull eyes.

Grus shouted for a quartermaster. When the officer came up to him, he said, "Find out how much the granaries here hold. Feed these people with it. They're going to start dying soon."

"Yes, Your Majesty." The man sketched a salute and hurried away.

So much to do, Grus thought. Getting the fallen part of the wall into defensible shape would keep his engineers busy. He'd have to garrison Trabzun if he didn't want to lose it as soon as he moved on. The Menteshe would try to take it back. He didn't intend to let them. How much was in the granaries? Enough to feed the locals and his army, too? That would be good. It would mean he wouldn't have to bring so much down from the north. How much farther could he push on in this campaigning season? Could he hold everything his army had taken?

Behind all those questions — every one of them important — lay another, one that seemed to shrink them into insignificance. What would the Banished One do now that the Kingdom of Avornis had succeeded south of the Stura for the first time in centuries? What would he do? What could he do?

The king stared south. We'll find out, he thought, and hoped learning the answer wouldn't prove too expensive.

Ceremony dictated that the king and queen of Avornis should eat together. Lanius and Sosia bent ceremony as far as they could. He didn't mind her company — he never had — but she wanted nothing to do with him. She couldn't get all of what she wanted, though. Sometimes, as at supper one evening, they found themselves at the same table.

Sosia looked daggers at him. By the way she eyed the knife beside her plate, she might have been thinking of using it as a dagger. "How are you today?" he asked, doing his best to pretend everything was fine.

"I was all right," she said pointedly, and sent him another poisonous stare.

"I had a letter from your father this afternoon," Lanius said.

"Did you?" A little interest stirred in Sosia's voice. That could be important. Of course, she wasn't altogether happy with Grus, either, for he had as much trouble staying faithful to her mother as Lanius did to her. Grudgingly, she asked, "What did he say?"

Before Lanius could answer, the servants brought in the meal — roast mutton with cabbage and parsnips. The spicy scent of crushed mint leaves rose from the mutton. Some sort of cheese sauce covered the parsnips. The cabbage was what it was. A servant splashed sweet red wine into Lanius' goblet, and into Sosia's. At the king's gesture, the servants withdrew.

Lanius raised his silver goblet to Sosia. "Your health," he said.

"What did the letter say?" she asked again, instead of pledging him in return.

Biting his lip, he answered, "Trabzun has fallen." Even good news fell flat when delivered to such a hostile audience.

"Well, good, I suppose," Sosia said. "Does he tell you whether he's found a new lady friend down there, too?"

"Oh, no," Lanius replied. "Do you have to make this as hard as you can?"

"Why not? You did. It was plenty hard with Oissa, wasn't it?"

Air hissed out between Lanius' teeth. That hit below the belt. "You can't say I've ignored you," he said, which was true enough.

True or not, it didn't help. "Oh, good. I got your leftovers," Sosia said sardonically.

"That… isn't how it worked." Lanius said no more than that. Explaining that Oissa had gotten Sosia's leftovers would also have been true. He hadn't made love with the serving girl when he thought Sosia would soon expect him to make love with her. Somehow, he doubted his wife would appreciate the details of how he'd managed his affair.

He was right to be dubious, too. Even the one sentence proved too much. "Huzzah for you," she told him. "You must be very proud of yourself."

Lanius had a bite of mutton in his mouth. He knew that. All the same, it tasted uncommonly like crow. "You're not making this easy, you know," he said.

"Should I? Should I smile and say, 'Oh, yes, dear, sleep with all the pretty women you want. I don't mind'? Should I say that?" Tears ran down Sosia's face. "I don't see how, because I do mind. I've done everything I know how to do to make you happy. I bore your son, by the gods. And this is the thanks I get?" She left the table very suddenly.

Lanius finished supper by himself. Yes, it definitely tasted of crow. Even the wine tasted of crow, which was probably an all-time first. He declined dessert. The servant who'd proposed it gave him a reproachful look. "The kitchens worked hard on the tarts, Your Majesty," he said.

The king didn't want to think what Sosia would have done with that line. Not least to keep from thinking about it, he said, "I hope the cooks enjoy them, then."

That was an uncommon bounty. "Are you sure, Your Majesty?" the servant asked. The king nodded.

After the servant left, Lanius walked out into the garden. A nightjar called plaintively. He'd heard the night birds many times. He didn't think he'd ever seen them.

Something fluttered past his face. That wasn't a nightjar — it was a bat, skittering wildly through the air. He looked up into the sky. The stars spilled across the darkness like tiny jewels on velvet. How many of them there were! And yet, as he'd seen when he spent a night in the woods with Anser and Ortalis, more stars shone than he could see from the city of Avornis. Smoke from uncounted hearths and lamps and candles smudged the sky over the capital. The glare from all those candles and lamps and other open flames also robbed the heavens of some of their luster.

Lanius sighed. Sosia wouldn't have mocked him for wondering about bats and nightjars and stars, but she wouldn't have understood, either. She didn't have that sort of curiosity herself, or the one that drove him to poke through the archives. But she was better with people than he would be if he lived a hundred years.

He sighed again. He knew he would have to patch things up with her. Jewelry might help, if it wasn't too obviously a bribe. That had done some good before. Staying away from serving girls would be bound to help, too. It would, if he could. Could he? One more sigh burst from him. He doubted it. He couldn't spend all his time in the archives — not alone in the archives, anyhow.

Grus looked back over his shoulder, in the direction of Trabzun. His soldiers stood on the walls there now. The Menteshe who hadn't died in the fall of the city were on their way up to Avornis now. Their labor would do something to repair all the harm they'd worked in their invasion of his kingdom — not enough, not nearly enough, but something.

Sweat rivered down Grus' face. He felt as though he were being steamed inside his mailshirt. He swigged from a jar of water mixed with wine. Standing orders were for soldiers to drink as much as they could hold. Some of them ignored standing orders, as some soldiers ignored standing orders of any kind. Telling who ignored orders here was easy. The miscreants were the ones who toppled from the saddle with heatstroke. Several men had died. Grus would have thought that might give the others a hint. But men went right on not drinking enough and collapsing because they didn't.

Hirundo brought his horse up alongside Grus'. "How much farther do you plan on going this campaigning season, Your Majesty?" the general asked.

"I'd like to go to Yozgat," the king answered.

"I'd like a lot of things I'm not going to get. I'd like to lose twenty years, for instance," Hirundo said. "I didn't ask what you'd like. I asked what you planned. You're one of the people who know the difference — or I hope you are."

"I hope so, too," Grus said. "I really had hoped to get there before the season ended. But you're right — it won't happen. We ought to take what we can get and do our best to see that the Menteshe don't take it back."

"Sounds good to me." By the relief in Hirundo's voice, it sounded very good to him. "I did want to make sure you weren't getting carried away."

"Tempting, but no." Grus sounded dry enough to make Hirundo laugh. He went on, "I'm not falling in love for the first time, you know. I've gone along this kind of road before. I won't let a pretty face fool me."

That got another chuckle from the general. "Fine. In that case, how does stopping at the next river line sound?"

"Terrible," Grus answered, and Hirundo's face fell. The king continued, "But we'll do it anyhow. I know how thin we're stretched. I know how much work we still have to do behind the line, too. Gods only know how many thralls still need freeing. And we have more forts to set up — otherwise the Menteshe will start nipping in to chew up our supply wagons. We have a thousand other things to take care of besides those, I know, but they're the most important. Or am I missing something?"

"I don't think so, Your Majesty," Hirundo said. "You might ask Pterocles what he thinks, though." "I'll do that," Grus promised.

But I won't do it just yet, he thought. He had accomplished more south of the Stura than any Avornan king since the loss of the Scepter of Mercy. By that standard, the campaign was an outstanding success. He hadn't done as much as he'd hoped he would. Did that make it a failure?

With some hesitation, he shook his head. It just meant he would need longer to get what he wanted. So he told himself, anyhow.

Looking south, he swore softly. Prince Korkut would have the coming winter to try to figure out what to do when the war resumed come spring. So would Prince Sanjar. They would also have the winter to try to figure out what to do about each other.

And the Banished One would have the winter to work out his next moves against Avornis. Grus liked giving him a breathing space even less than he liked giving one to the Menteshe princes. But going too far too fast would be worse… he supposed.