Authors: Dan Chernenko
"Oh," Lepturus said, and then, "Me, I don't have a whole lot of book learning."
"It's all I have," Lanius said. "How could I have anything else, when I've never been out of the city of Avornis before?"
"Now that you are out, what do you think of the countryside?" the guards commander asked.
"Not much," Lanius answered. "I like the royal palace a lot better."
Lepturus threw back his head and laughed. "Well, you're honest about it, anyway."
"Why shouldn't I be?" Lanius asked.
"No reason, Your Majesty. No reason at - " Before Lepturus could finish, horns blared and men started shouting his name. He hurried out of the royal pavilion. Over his shoulder, he said, "Sorry to go like this, but sounds like somebody just dropped a pot. I get to pick up the pieces." The tent flap fell behind him. He was gone.
With his mother still talking things over with Count Corax, there was no one to tell Lanius he couldn't step outside his pavilion and see what was going on. Horsemen and foot soldiers hurried north and west in a steady stream. The guards by his tent, though, didn't leave. If they had, it would have been treason. Lanius asked one of them, "Where are all the soldiers going?"
"Off to fight, Your Majesty. Off to fight," the guardsman answered.
"Are the Thervings over there, then?"
"That's right," the fellow said. "But we'll lick'em. You can count on that."
Lanius didn't just want to count on it. He wanted to see it for himself. If he hadn't come here to see a battle, what was the point to this long, dull, uncomfortable journey? He pointed in the direction the soldiers were going. "Fetch my pony," he told the guards. "I'm heading that way myself."
Queen Certhia would have said no. (Actually, Lanius was sure his mother would have had hysterics before saying no.) Lepturus would have said no, too. But Certhia was busy with Corax, and Lepturus was busy with the army. That left it up to the bodyguards. They were young men themselves. When they grinned at one another, Lanius knew he had a chance. When one of them hurried off to get the pony, he knew he'd won his gamble.
He was on the pony's back and riding in the direction everyone else was going in less time than it takes to tell about it. The guardsmen clustered round him. They hadn't forgotten their duty, even if they'd interpreted it in a way that would have made his mother blanch.
"The king! The king! Look, it's the king! He's come to fight along with us!" Soldiers stared at Lanius and pointed his way. Then they began to cheer. The cheers spread through the whole army, getting louder and deeper as they did.
By then, Lanius was only a little way behind the battle line that was taking shape on what looked to have been a field of barley. "I think this here's just about far enough," one of his bodyguards said. The others nodded. It was high ground. Beyond the Avornan soldiers, Lanius watched another line of battle forming. The sun glinted from the Thervings' helmets and spear-points. Their horn signals, thin in the distance, sounded not much different from those Avornan trumpeters used.
"What are you doing here?" someone behind Lanius demanded: Lepturus.
"That's,'What are you doing here, Your Majesty?'" Lanius replied in his haughtiest tones.
Those tones didn't work. "Don't get smart with me, sonny, or you'll find you're not too big to get your bottom warmed," Lepturus said. "Now answer me - what are you doing here?"
"I came to see the battle," Lanius said, much more quietly.
The guard commander's gaze raked the men who'd let Lanius come so far from the pavilion. They all looked as though they wished they could disappear. "I'll deal with you later,"
Lepturus said, and they looked unhappier yet. Lepturus turned back to King Lanius. "This isn't a game, Your Majesty. The men who die will stay dead when it's over. The men who hurt will go on hurting. The same goes for the horses. It's worse for them, I think - they have no idea why these things happen to them, and all the loot they can hope for is a few mouthfuls of grass."
"I understand that," Lanius said, though he wasn't sure he did. "I want to see it."
As he had back at the pavilion, Lepturus got interrupted, this time by roars first from the Thervings and then from the Avornans. The two armies started moving toward each other. Lepturus looked very unhappy indeed. "Well, you're going to get your wish, Your Majesty, on account of I haven't got time to deal with you right now. But I'll tell you something - if you get killed, I'm going to be very annoyed at you." He hurried away, leaving Lanius to chew on that.
"Don't you worry none, Your Majesty," said one of the guardsmen who'd brought him forward. "Nothing's going to happen to you. We'll make sure of that."
His comrades nodded. Lanius wondered what would happen to a bodyguard who let something happen to him. Nothing pretty, he suspected.
Less than a quarter of a mile ahead, the Avornan army collided with King Dagipert's Thervings. Lanius hadn't expected the noise to be so dreadful. It sounded as though a hundred palace servants had dropped trays full of bowls and goblets and all started screaming about it at once. But it didn't end in a matter of moments, as dropped trays would have done. It went on and on and on.
An Avornan came staggering back out of the fighting. Blood splashed his coat of mail and his breeches. More blood dribbled out through his left hand, which was clenched around his right. In eerily conversational tones, he said, "Two fingers gone. Just like that, two fingers gone."
Lanius gulped. His belly churned. He'd come out to see the Avornan army triumph. Watching a mutilated man, standing close enough to smell the hot, metallic odor of the blood the fellow was losing, wasn't what he'd had in mind.
I will not be sick,
he told himself sternly.
By Olor's beard, I won't.
One of his guards pointed toward the surgeons. The wounded soldier stumbled away. He still sounded as though he couldn't believe what had happened to him. Lanius wished he couldn't believe it, either.
The fighting came closer. The Thervings were pushing the royal army back. An arrow thudded into the ground about twenty feet in front of Lanius. A guard said, "Beg your pardon, Your Majesty, but if them bastards - uh, beg your pardon again - get any nearer, we're going to have to move you back."
"All right," Lanius said, and all the guards looked relieved. He didn't want to fall into Dagipert's hands. The idea of marrying Romilda terrified him. He was much more afraid of that than of getting hurt or killed. Death wasn't real to him. Injury hadn't been - not till he saw the man with the ruined hand. But having to spend the rest of his life with a
girl
- if that wasn't horror, he didn't know what was.
More bloodied Avornans came back past him, some under their own power, others helped by friends. A few of them, seeing who he was, saluted or called out his name. Most, lost in a private wilderness of pain, paid him no attention.
Lightning struck from a clear sky, right in the middle of the Thervings' line. The thunderclap staggered Lanius. Lurid purple afterimages danced in front of his eyes when he blinked. A guardsman said, "Oh, good! Our wizards aren't asleep after all."
Another bolt struck, and another. The Thervings staggered back. The Avornans surged forward after them. "King Lanius!" they shouted. "King Lanius and victory!"
"How's that, Your Majesty?" a bodyguard asked.
It was heady, sure enough. Queen Certhia kept an eye on what Lanius ate and drank, but every once in a while he got enough wine to feel a little drunk. This reminded him of that, but even better. Still, he couldn't help asking a question of his own. "What will the Thervings' wizards do?"
He didn't have to wait long to find out. Flames shot up from the ground. As Lanius had heard soldiers calling out his name, so he also heard them scream as the fire engulfed them. To his relief, they didn't scream long.
"That's a foul magic," one of the guardsmen said. "If lightning hits you, you're gone, just like that." He snapped his fingers. "But fire? Fire makes you suffer."
All at once, the flames died. Another bodyguard said, "Our wizards
are
awake today." Still shouting Lanius' name, Avornan soldiers forced their way forward again.
The Thervings fought stubbornly. From everything Lanius had read about them, they usually did. No matter how stubbornly they fought, they had to give ground. At last, with the sun halfway down the sky in the west, they withdrew from the field. A fierce rear guard kept the Avornans from turning a victory into a rout.
But it was a victory. Soldiers gathered around King Lanius, cheering till they were hoarse. Lepturus came up and asked him, "What do you think of that? Plenty of grown men, they'd give their left nut to have people shout for'em this way."
Lanius beckoned to the commander of his bodyguards. Lepturus obediently leaned close. In a low voice, Lanius said, "I think I'd sooner be back at the palace."
Lepturus laughed. "Well, Your Majesty, can't say I'm too surprised. But we won, so it was worthwhile."
Ravens and vultures had already started squabbling over the corpses lying on the field. Wounded men's groans rose into the air. Dejected Therving prisoners, hands bound, stood under guard. Relatives might ransom a few nobles. The others faced hard labor the rest of their lives. "Was it?" Lanius asked.
"Yes, Your Majesty," Lepturus answered. "Bad as this is, it'd be four times worse if we'd done our best and the Thervings licked us anyway."
After some thought, Lanius sighed. "Maybe," he said, and then, "What did Count Corax tell my mother? Will the Heruls bother King Dagipert, too?"
"I think so." Lepturus looked up. "But here she comes. You can ask her yourself."
Queen Certhia didn't give Lanius the chance. She came up to him and hugged him. Under cover of that hug, she whispered, "You don't know how foolish you were, or how much danger you were in there."
"It worked out all right, Mother," Lanius answered. "We won."
"You didn't know we were going to," his mother said. "You should never have come on this campaign in the first place."
"But I did," Lanius said. "I did, and we won."
Oars rose and fell in smooth unison as the
Otter
fought her way upstream on the Tuola. Commodore Grus had several lookouts posted. A few Therving raiders had crossed the river under cover of darkness. Now, hunted by Avornan soldiers, their main army turned back two weeks earlier, they were desperate to escape.
"Been a while since we won a battle against Dagipert," Grus remarked.
"So it has," Nicator agreed. "I wonder how long it'll be till we win another one, too."
"Who knows?" Grus said. "Maybe he'll be so surprised we won this one, he'll keel over and die of shock."
"Too much to hope for," Nicator said. "When have you known a Therving to be so considerate to his neighbors?"
"Funny," Grus said. "A year ago, Dagipert must have thought he was on top of the world. He was sitting right outside the city of Avornis with his whole army. Arch-Hallow Bucco'd just pledged King Lanius to his daughter. He would've been the King of Avornis' father-in-law, and grandfather to Lanius' heir. Now - " He snapped his fingers. "That's all he's got left."
"Don't count him out," Nicator answered. "Like I say, when's the last time you saw a Therving make things easy for Avornis?"
Grus had no good reply to that. Even had he had one, he wouldn't have gotten to use it. The
Otter
rounded a bend in the river, and two lookouts started yelling at the same time. "Thervings!" one shouted. "Dead ahead!" the other one added.
There they were, only a couple of hundred yards in front of the river galley, more than a dozen men crammed into a rowboat that should have held half as many. They saw the
Otter,
too - saw it and knew how much trouble they were in. Their cries of dismay came clearly across the water. They tried to row harder, to get across the Tuola before the
Otter
could reach them. They weren't rivermen by training; all they succeeded in doing was fouling one another. A couple of them drew bows and started shooting at the
Otter,
a gesture both brave and futile.
"Up the stroke!" Grus commanded. The professionals aboard the river galley followed the rhythm the drummer beat out. The
Otter
seemed to leap ahead. Grus hurried to the stern and seized the rudder from the steersman. He wanted to make the kill himself.
As though aiming an arrow at a running stag, he pointed the
Otter's
bow at the place where the rowboat would be when the river galley met it. An arrow, once shot, was gone. Here, he could and did correct his aim all the way up to the instant of impact.
Before then, archers on the
Otter
were shooting at the luckless Thervings. "Brace yourselves!" Grus cried just before the ram struck home.
The
Otter
hit the rowboat amidships, exactly as he'd hoped. He staggered at the collision. One archer fell into the Tuola. The fellow grabbed at an oar and held on. The river galley rode up and over the boat full of Thervings.
"That'll be the end of that," Nicator said with no small satisfaction.
"We'll stop to make sure - and to pick up the poor bastard who went over the side," Grus answered. He raised his voice. "Rowers, rest on your oars."
As the
Otter
glided to a stop, Grus felt a tug on the rudder. He wondered if it had caught on a snag. But it wasn't a snag, as he discovered when he looked down. A Therving clung to the rudder. Grus yanked out his sword. "Come up," he called.
"Come up and we'll spare your life." He added gestures in case the Therving spoke no Avornan.
He was strong enough, that was certain. Hanging on to the rudder with one hand, he got the other one on the rail. Then he hauled himself up into the
Otter
and stood there for a moment. With his soaked clothes and long hair, with water dripping from his stubbly chin, he looked as much like a river god as a man.
"Take his blade," Grus told a couple of soldiers who'd hurried back to the stern. "I don't want him doing anything stupid."