Authors: Dan Chernenko
And then, as they were drawing near the city of Avornis, the relay stations abruptly stopped. A peasant working in a muddy field laughed when Grus asked him where the next one was. "I'll tell you where, pal," he answered. "The other side of Count Corvus' lands, that's where. We ain't had nothing like that hereabouts since my granddad's day - and Corvus' granddad's, too."
"Why not?" Grus asked. "The kingdom needs them."
"Take it up with Corvus, if you care to," the peasant said. "It's none of my business, and it'll go right on being none of my business, on account of I want to keep my head attached to my neck." He went back to grubbing in the mud.
Grus and Nicator rode their sad, weary mounts across Count Corvus' lands. They rode past the great, frowning castle in which Corvus dwelt. Grus decided to ask the Count no questions after all. He didn't forget, though. To Nicator, he said, "Some of these nobles need reminding they aren't kings themselves."
"Only way you'd make'em remember is by dropping a rock on their heads," Nicator answered.
"I know." Grus looked around. "Where can I get my hands on a rock?" Nicator laughed. Grus didn't.
Arch-Hallow Bucco lifted up his hands in prayer. "From cold, from hunger, from flood, and from the wrath of our foes, deliver us, O ye gods!" he prayed.
Not even Lanius could quarrel with that. When the ice finally melted, the capital's drainage channels had faced a challenge as dangerous as any Therving siege. They'd guided away the floodwaters, and Lanius was glad to thank the gods that they had.
Standing next to him, though, his mother sniffed scornfully. "If Bucco said the day was sunny, I'd carry an umbrella," Queen Certhia remarked, not bothering to hold her voice down.
Lanius laughed. So did several other people who heard her. Bucco peered toward the noise. When he saw it centered on Certhia, his mouth tightened, but he went on with the service. He'd had his time in the sun, had it and not succeeded. Now Lanius' mother had her chance.
"We need to beat the Thervings again," she told Lanius after they returned to the palace. "We need to, and we will. And you" - she pointed at him - "you will stay in the city of Avornis while our armies go do it."
Sometimes even a king couldn't escape the hand of fate. Lanius recognized this as one of those times. "Yes, Mother," he said. If he'd been anxious to watch another battle, he might have made a bigger fuss - or he might not have, and quietly tried to arrange something with Lepturus instead. As things were, one introduction to the iron world of warfare would last him a lifetime.
"Everything should go well," Certhia said. Lanius wondered whether she was trying to convince him or herself. But she went on, "Corax is leading a band of Heruls across the mountains, and Corvus will command our army."
"And the Menteshe have been very quiet this spring," Lanius added. "We made the Banished One thoughtful when we came through his dreadful winter so well. He thinks we're strong, and so he doesn't want anything to do with us for a while."
Queen Certhia nodded. "Just so. I'm glad I thought to make sure the city was so well provisioned. Otherwise, who knows what might have happened?"
"Who knows?" Lanius echoed tonelessly. He raised an eyebrow as he eyed his mother. She looked back, smiling and candid. As far as he could tell, she really believed supplying the city of Avornis had been her idea. If she ever wrote her memoirs - something Lanius found unlikely, but even so - she would undoubtedly write that she'd had the idea to bring extra grain into the capital to ward against the harsh winter she'd seen coming. Later historians and chroniclers, believing her, would write the same thing. She might be remembered as Queen Certhia the Forethoughtful, or something of the sort.
Contemplating that made Lanius distrust every work of history he'd ever read. Were they all full of such foolishness? He would have to do more judging for himself. Plainly, he couldn't believe everything that was written down.
He saw no point in arguing with his mother about it. He wouldn't change her mind. He did ask, "Is it wise to have so much power resting in the hands of two brothers?"
"Corvus and Corax, you mean?" Certhia asked. Lanius nodded. His mother shrugged. "They're both good officers, and they both have splendid blood."
She waited for him to tell her,
Yes, Mother,
again. He didn't. He said, "Isn't that more likely to make them rebel, not less? Half the nobles in the kingdom think they deserve to be King of Avornis."
"But without nobles, we'd have hardly any officers," Queen Certhia pointed out - which, unfortunately, was also true. Certhia ruffled Lanius' hair. He hated that. She went on, "If you're looking for an officer who isn't a noble, Commodore Grus is in charge of the river galleys that will bring the Heruls into the Thervings' rear." She sniffed, as she had in the cathedral.
"His
father's called Crex the Unbearable, and I'm not sure even Crex himself knows who
his
father was."
"Grus has done well," Lanius said.
"Well, maybe he has, but even so ..." His mother sniffed yet again. "It's not as though he were a man to take seriously."
A serving girl came up to them with a tray of cakes and wine. Lanius took a cake - they were glazed with honey and full of raisins - and a cup of wine. The girl smiled at him. He smiled back. He didn't quite know how it had happened, but girls, lately, didn't revolt him nearly as much as they had when he was younger.
His mother had noticed that, too. Frost filled her voice as she said, "You may go now, Prinia."
"Yes, Your Royal Highness," the girl said, and hurried away.
"Why did you snap at her like that?" Lanius asked. "She didn't do anything wrong."
"Not yet," Queen Certhia said dryly.
"I don't understand," Lanius said.
"I know," his mother answered. "But you will. Very soon now, you will. And then life will get more complicated - though you may be having too much fun to think so."
Lanius scratched his head. Sometimes his mother made no sense at all.
"Another ship, another stretch of the Tuola River," Grus said with a sigh as he boarded the
Bream.
One river galley was much like another, but they weren't all identical. The
Bream
had seen better days. Her planking was pale with age. She seemed sound enough, but somehow didn't feel lucky. Grus eyed the sailors. They looked back at him and Nicator.
"We'll do our job here, and then they'll send us south to the Stura again," Nicator said. He muttered something under his breath that had to do with horses, then, "Thervings or Menteshe. Thervings or Menteshe ..."
"Gods grant we have an easy time for a change," Grus said.
"That would be nice," Nicator agreed. "What they've set us to
sounds
easy enough, anyhow. All we have to do is get Corax's band of Heruls down the river and onto our bank of it so they can go on and pitch into the Thervings from behind. Should be simple as you please, so long as everything goes like it's supposed to."
"If everything went the way it was supposed to, the King of Avornis wouldn't need to keep moving us around like pieces on the board," Grus said. "And remember, this is Count Corax, dear Count Corvus' brother."
Nicator walked over to the rail and spat into the swift-running, cold water of the Tuola.
"That
for dear Count Corvus, the cheap, power-grabbing bastard." He spat again. "And
that
for his gods-cursed, arrogant brother."
"As long as you're there, spit once for the Heruls, too," Grus said.
"Sure." Nicator did. "Now tell me why."
"Because I wouldn't give better than about even money that they go kick King Dagipert in the ass once they're on this side of the river," Grus answered. "They're liable to decide they'd have more fun murdering farmers and raping their wives and stealing their sheep."
"Or maybe stealing their wives and raping their sheep," Nicator suggested.
Grus rolled his eyes. "I don't know anything about that, and I'm cursed glad I don't. If you really want to find out, ask Count Corax."
The
Bream
served as flagship for a good-sized flotilla of river galleys, smaller boats, scows, and barges - not a flotilla that could do too much fighting on its own, but more than good enough for taking an army along the Tuola and moving it to the other side. When the
Bream's
oarmaster shouted out the command for them to leave the port where they were tied up, they all obeyed promptly enough to give Grus no reason to complain.
Their rendezvous with Count Corax lay downstream, and they would deliver the army farther downstream still. That showed good planning by those who'd put the flotilla together. Grus doubted whether a good many of the scows and barges could have gone upstream at anything faster than a crawl, if indeed they could have made headway against the current at all.
"What do you want to bet Count Corax and these savages aren't even there when we get where we're supposed to be?" Nicator said. "It'd be just like him to leave us stuck with nothing to do. He's a noble, after all. Why should he care if ordinary people have to sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for him?"
But when the flotilla rounded the last bend in the river, there on the northwestern bank sat the Heruls' encampment, large, messy, and unlovely. The wind wafted the stink of it to Grus' nostrils. He coughed and wrinkled his nose. He knew what camps were supposed to smell like. This was even worse.
"Oh, by the gods!" Nicator pointed. "Look at'em! They're pissing upstream from where they drink."
"Well, so they are," Grus said. "Corax didn't fetch them here because they were neat and tidy. He fetched them here because they could fight."
"They won't do much fighting if they all come down with the galloping shits," Nicator retorted. "And if they keep doing that, they bloody well will. Don't they know any better?" He answered his own question. "No, by the gods, of course they don't know any better. That's what being a barbarian's all about, isn't it?"
"I suppose so." Grus did some pointing of his own now. "There's the mighty Count Corax's banner, see? I suppose we ought to pick him up. Then we can ferry the Heruls downstream and across, and
then
we can hope they do some good."
He sent the
Bream's
boat to the far bank of the Tuola. Count Corax, now, wasn't grubby in furs and leather. He wore a golden circlet that wasn't quite a crown on his head and a cloth-of-gold robe more splendid than any Grus had ever seen adorning a King of Avornis. Nicator muttered something under his breath.
"What was that?" Grus asked.
"I said, now we know where all the money goes that Corvus and, looks like, Corax save by not keeping postal stations open on their lands."
"Oh," Grus said, and then, "Yes. He's got his own army there, and he's got his own raiment. When does he start stamping his own gold pieces and calling himself a king?"
"Pretty gods-cursed soon, by the look of him," Nicator replied.
"Or here's another question for you," Grus said. "When does he take these Heruls, move on the city of Avornis with them, and start calling himself
our
king?"
The boat pulled up to the
Bream.
"Let's see what Corax has to say for himself." From their brief acquaintance, and from Count Corax's being Corvus' brother, Grus was ready to dislike him for any reason or none.
Corax scrambled up onto the deck of the
Bream.
"Hello, Commodore," he said, striding back to greet Grus. "We meet again. Remind me of your name, if you'd be so kind."
"Grus, Your Excellency," Grus said tightly. He couldn't order Corax flung into the Tuola no matter how much he wanted to. But, aboard his own river galley, he didn't have to take that lying down - didn't have to, and didn't intend to. "Remind me of yours, if
you'd
be so kind."
"What?" Corax turned red. "If that's a joke, it's not funny, friend. Everybody knows who
I
am." The nobleman struck a pose.
"Not on the rivers," Grus told him. "The rivers have buried men more famous than you'll ever be."
That might have been true, but it wasn't calculated to endear Grus to Count Corax. From red, the Avornan nobleman went a dusky purple. "You had better hold your tongue, you insolent puppy, or I'll paddle your backside for piddling on my shoes. I am in command of that army yonder, and I ought to turn them loose on you."
"You're welcome to try, Your Excellency," Grus answered.
"I'm not used to having some jumped-up skipper from a fishing scow telling me what I can do and what I can't. By Olor's beard, I don't intend to stand for it, either." Corax set a hand on the hilt of his sword.
Nicator whistled shrilly. Several marines aboard the
Bream
nocked arrows and drew their bows back to the ear. The iron points on the arrowheads, all aimed at Corax, shone in the sun.
"You want to think about where you are and what you're doing, don't you, Your Excellency?" Nicator said.
The nobleman had nerve. He didn't let go of the sword right away. Grus had rarely seen an Avornan noble he would have called a coward. A lot of them, though, sadly lacked sense. Corax proved not to belong to that school.
"Oh, good," Grus said when Corax's hand did at last fall to his side. "I wouldn't want to see you all quilled like a hedgehog, Your Excellency, and blood's hard to scrub out of the timbers. It
will
stain."
"You are a funny man, aren't you?" Corax growled. "Let's see how funny you are when the King of Avornis sacks you."
"I'm not losing any sleep over that," Grus answered. "You're the one who's been robbing the king for years, not me."
"Why, you lying sack of turds!" Corax shouted.
"You're the liar, Your Excellency - you and your brigand of a brother." Grus made Corax's title of respect one of reproach. Corax gobbled and turned purple again. With savage relish, Grus went on, "I know the two of you don't keep up the royal post on your lands. When was the last time you sent any taxes to the capital?"