Authors: Dan Chernenko
Not even Estrilda had an easy time disliking Anser. "He's ... sweet," she admitted grudgingly.
"He is, isn't he?" Grus said. "And the other thing is, with any luck at all, I won't have to worry about who's arch-hallow and whether he'll give me trouble for the next twenty or thirty years." He liked fixing things so they stayed fixed.
He wished he could fix things with the Thervings as readily as he'd fixed the arch-hallowdom. But Anser was cooperative. Fierce old King Dagipert wasn't. With the coming of spring came another invasion from the west.
Lanius said, "Last year, you told me you couldn't fight Dagipert with all your strength because of Corvus' rebellion. There's no rebellion now. Will you fight him with everything we have?"
Grus didn't want to fight Dagipert with everything he had. He feared the Thervings would thrash the Avornan army, as they'd already thrashed it too many times. He needed a force that could stand up against them. He was building it, yes, but he knew the job was far from over.
But he didn't want to look like a coward before his fellow king - or before all of Avornis, either. So he answered, "I'll do everything I can, Your Majesty, to keep the Thervings from ravaging us the way they've done before."
Lanius was harder to satisfy with a bland generality than he might have been. He asked, "What exactly does that mean?"
Since Grus didn't know exactly what it meant, he answered, "You'll see. Part of what we do - part of what we're able to do - will depend on what King Dagipert does, you know."
He didn't think that completely satisfied the younger man, either. But Lanius held his peace.
He's seeing how much rope I've given myself,
Grus judged. For the kingdom's sake as well as his own, he hoped he could make good on what he'd promised.
To General Hirundo, he said, "When you move against the Thervings, do your best to keep them on land where they've already gone pillaging two years in a row. The sooner they get hungry, the sooner they'll start thinking about going home."
"I'll try," Hirundo said. "They don't have much in the way of a supply train, and that's a fact."
"No, they don't," Grus agreed. "They keep themselves going by eating the countryside bare, like any locusts."
Hirundo laughed. "That's funny."
Grus shook his head. "Maybe it would be, if the Thervings weren't so dangerous. But they are, worse luck."
"We beat'em last year." The general sounded confident enough. "I don't see any reason why we can't do it again."
"I see one," Grus said, "and that is that we
did
beat them last year."
"I don't follow you." Hirundo frowned, perhaps to show how much he didn't follow. "Now that we have beaten them, the men will know they can do it. They should have an easier time, not a harder one."
"Maybe you're right. I hope you're right," Grus said. "But the other thing you have to remember is, Dagipert's trouble. He knows we beat his Thervings last year, too, and you can bet he's had steam coming out of his ears ever since. He's smart and he's tricky and he's nasty. If he hasn't spent all winter trying to come up with some sneaky way of making us pay for what we did to him last year, I'd be amazed."
"Ah." Now Hirundo nodded. He seemed to decide nodding wasn't enough, so he bowed, too. "You're pretty smart and tricky and nasty yourself, Your Majesty. Trying to figure out what the other bastard's going to do before he does it is always a good idea, but how often do people really sit down and think that through?"
"They ought to," Grus said. There, he was sure, Lanius would agree with him. He wished he and the young king could find more things to agree about.
Hirundo, meanwhile, let out a scornful snort. "How often do people do what they ought to do? If they did, what would clerics use for sermons?"
"A point. A distinct point," Grus admitted.
"Maybe you ought to take the field again, Your Majesty," Hirundo said. "If anybody can outthink Dagipert, you're the one."
Grus hadn't intended to. At the suggestion, though, he stroked his beard in thought. "Maybe I will," he said at last. "I hadn't planned on it, but maybe I will."
Sosia beside him, King Lanius watched King Grus ride out of the city of Avornis at the head of his army, hurrying off to fight the Thervings. "I hope he'll be all right," Sosia said anxiously.
"So do I," Lanius said. His wife hoped Grus would be all right because Grus was her father and she loved him. Lanius hoped Grus would be all right because, if he weren't, some disaster would have come down on the army he led, and on the Kingdom of Avornis. Lanius didn't love Grus. He didn't think he ever would. He'd acquired some - well, more than some - reluctant respect for his father-in-law's brains and nerve, but love? He shook his head. Not likely.
He glanced over toward Sosia. Her arms were folded across her belly. They lay there more easily than they would have not long before. She had more belly than she'd had not long before. The more she bulged, the more the reality that she was going to have a baby sank in for Lanius.
Let it be a son,
he thought.
Let the dynasty go on. I'll worry about Ortalis after my son is born.
Soldiers closed the great gates of the city after Grus' army passed out of it. A carriage took Lanius and Sosia back to the palace. Another one took Estrilda and Ortalis. Lanius got on well enough with his mother-in-law, but he was glad not to travel in the same carriage as Ortalis.
At the palace, Sosia and Estrilda started chattering. Ortalis went off to do whatever he did. Whatever it was, Lanius didn't want to know. He himself went looking for Marshal Lepturus.
"Hello, Your Majesty," the commander of the royal bodyguards said when Lanius found him just coming out of the palace steam bath. "Trying to warm up my old bones, see if they'll move a little smoother."
Lanius started to say,
You're not old.
The words died unspoken. They wouldn't do, even for a polite compliment. Lepturus had commanded the bodyguards when Lanius' father ruled Avornis, and he'd been commanding them for some time before King Mergus died. He remained sturdy, but his wrinkled, age-blotched skin, bald head, and snowy beard told him their own tale. Lanius wondered uncomfortably if the same thing would happen to
him
one day. He shivered, as though winter had suddenly run an icy finger along the ridge of his spine.
"Here." Marshal Lepturus' joints creaked and crackled as he sat down on a marble bench outside the door to the steam bath. "What can I do for you?"
Lanius sat down beside him. He looked around before he answered. No servants were in sight. He spoke in a low voice - fortunately, Lepturus' ears, unlike Nicator's, still worked fine. "Now that Grus has left the city, I want your help with something."
The guards commander leaned toward him. "What have you got in mind? I'm listening." He too spoke so quietly, no one but Lanius could possibly have heard him.
"I want to bring my mother back from the Maze," Lanius said.
Marshal Lepturus looked at him for a long time before answering, softly and sadly but very definitely, "No."
"What?" Lanius couldn't remember the last time Lepturus had said that to him, certainly not on anything this important. "In the name of the gods, why not?"
"Do you aim to fight your own civil war against King Grus, Your Majesty?" Lepturus asked. "We've been over that ground before, you know."
"Civil war? No, of course not," Lanius said. "All I want to do is set my mother free."
"That may be all you want, but that's not all you'd get." Lepturus spoke with mournful certainty. "What's Grus going to do when he hears Queen Certhia's back in the royal palace, eh? She
did
try to kill him, you know. He's bound to figure she'll try it again, first chance she gets. Wouldn't you, in his boots?"
"It could be all right," Lanius said. "It really could. He's King Grus now. Nobody would try to take that away from him. Things aren't the same as they were before."
He was trying to convince himself as well as Lepturus. He believed what he was saying. Lepturus, plainly, didn't. "If you bring your mother back, one of two things happens. Either she ends up dead - and maybe you along with her, depending on how it all works out - or Grus ends up dead. Those are your choices. I know which way I'd bet, too."
"Wouldn't
you
back me?" Lanius yelped. Lepturus' saying no shook him to the core.
"I shouldn't, not if you go ahead and try anything that stupid," Lepturus said. "I won't help you get your mother. I'll tell you that right now, straight out. If you do somehow get her here without my help... you'd be a gods-cursed fool. My help wouldn't do you any good, anyhow. You'd still lose. Certhia'd end up dead, you'd likely end up dead, and I'd likely end up dead, too. Happy day."
"Is this the thanks I give her for giving me life?" Lanius asked bitterly. "Do I let her get old in a convent in the Maze?"
He'd meant it for a rhetorical question. But, to his surprise, Lepturus nodded. "I'm afraid it is, Your Majesty. It's the
best
thanks you can give her. If you bring her out of the Maze, she
won't
get old. That's what I was telling you."
"Yes." Lanius tried a different tack. "Don't you think
she'd
want to take the chance?"
Marshal Lepturus surprised him again, this time by smiling. "Yes, I think she would. I'd bet money on it, matter of fact. She's got nerve - and to spare, your mother does." He sounded very fond - and very knowing. Lanius suddenly wondered if the two of them had been lovers after King Mergus died. He'd never wondered anything like that about his mother before. If they had been lovers, they'd kept quiet about it; there'd never been the faintest whisper of scandal, and people had always been ready to do more than whisper - they'd been ready to shout.
Before Lanius could wonder how to ask or even whether to ask, Lepturus went on, "But that's why you've got to have the sense to leave her where she is. If you bring her out of the Maze - if you bring her back to the city of Avornis - odds are you'll just get her killed. Is that what you want?"
"Of course not. Don't you think I could win? Don't you think
we
could win?"
"You watched Grus against Corvus and Corax. What do you think?"
Lanius winced. While he'd watched Grus against the rebels, he'd been convinced he would lose if he tried to rise up against his father-in-law. When Grus had let him go back to the city of Avornis while besieging Corvus, he hadn't tried to hold the capital against Sosia's father. For one thing, Nicator and a good-sized host of marines had come back to the city of Avornis with him. But, for another, he simply hadn't dared. He'd been too sure he would lose.
Why did he think differently now? Only one answer occurred to him - he would have his mother at his side. Would having Queen Certhia with him make enough difference to let him beat Grus? When he looked at that with his heart, he felt it would. When he looked at it with his head, he knew it wouldn't.
And when he looked at Lepturus ... The guards commander hadn't quite answered his question before. He asked it again. "You wouldn't help, would you?"
Regretfully, Lepturus shook his head. "I want you to stay alive, and I want Certhia to stay alive, and I've got this low, sneaking yen to stay alive a while longer myself."
"Curse you, Lepturus," King Lanius said wearily. Lepturus bowed his head, as though Lanius had praised him. Maybe, in the end, Lanius had, though he would never have admitted that even to himself. He made a fist and slammed it down on his thigh, again and again. "All right. All right. I'll leave it alone."
"Thank you, Your Majesty. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You won't be sorry."
"No? I'm sorry already." Lanius rose from the marble bench and hurried away. No one, not even a man who'd known him his whole life long, should have to see a king cry.
* * *
"We beat the Thervings last year," Grus told his men. "We beat them when we had a civil war simmering, too. This year, our back is safe. When we meet them again, let's beat them again."
The soldiers raised a cheer. Grus nodded approval. They weren't where he wanted them to be as far as fighting strength went, but they didn't quake in their boots at the prospect of facing King Dagipert's men, either. That would do.
General Hirundo said, "We're gaining, Your Majesty."
"Just what I was thinking, as a matter of fact," Grus answered. "If we can keep from getting overrun and massacred, we'll have ourselves a pretty fair army in a couple of years."
"Er... yes." Hirundo gave him a curious look. "That's a cheery thought you had there." He pretended to shiver to show just how cheery he thought it.
"We're going out against the Thervings. We're not staying behind the walls of the city of Avornis," Grus said. "Year before last, we'd have waited for him to quit tearing up the countryside and go away, and we'd have hoped he didn't do
too
much harm while he was tearing things up. So, yes, it is a cheery thought if you look at it the right way."
"Well, I'd rather look at it like that than think of the Thervings overrunning us, I will say," Hirundo replied. "Thinking about that for too long puts a crimp in your day."
"If we think about it, we can think about ways to keep it from happening," Grus said. "That's what I want to do. If we don't think about it... If we don't think about it, then we might as well bring Corvus out of the Maze and put him in charge of the army again."
"No, thanks, Your Majesty," Hirundo said. "We tried that once, and it didn't work out very well." He waved. "We can still see just how well it worked."
"I know," Grus said. Here, not far from the Tuola River, the Thervings had done a lot of burning and looting. They hadn't come so far east this year, but the land remained empty, almost barren. They'd killed a lot of the farmers who'd worked it, and carried others back to Thervingia with them. One of these days, when things were safer, Grus knew he would have to try to resettle this land. But not yet. First, he'd have to work to make things safer. And he had a lot of work ahead of him.