Authors: Dan Chernenko
In Netta's arms, Crex started crying again. That reminded the king of the reason all this had gone on. "Let me see him," he told the midwife.
"Here." Before she handed him to Lanius, she said, "You've got to keep a hand or an arm under his neck. You'll need to do that for months yet, till his head's not all floppy anymore. But he looks fine - he's a good-sized boy."
He didn't look good-sized to Lanius; he was no bigger than a moncat. He weighed no more than one, either. His skin was reddish purple, his head squeezed almost into a cone, and his genitals absurdly large for his size. Netta had tied off and cut the umbilical cord; the stump still remained attached to what would become his navel.
He did have five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot. Lanius carefully counted them all. And, by the noise Crex was making, he had a fine set of lungs. "Are you sure this is how he's supposed to look?" the king asked nervously.
"I asked her the same thing," Sosia said.
"He's fine," the midwife repeated. "Almost all the mothers and fathers having their first one ask me that. He's got everything he should, just the way it ought to be." She sounded very certain. Estrilda nodded, so Lanius supposed it was true. Netta went on, "What he'll want now, I expect, is something to eat."
For a moment, Sosia didn't follow. Then she did. "Oh!" she said. "That means me, doesn't it?" She pushed down the blanket, baring her breasts. Awkwardly, Lanius set Crex on her. She didn't handle the baby much more smoothly than he did. But, though neither the king nor the queen quite knew what to do, the baby did. He rooted till he found Sosia's nipple and began to suck.
Netta smiled. "That's how it's supposed to work, all right."
"Yes," Lanius said softly. He'd done a lot of reading about magic. He'd seen some of what wizards and witches reckoned it to be. Here, though, looking down at his son, he understood the word in a way he never had before.
Some of General Hirundo's cavalrymen led a line of unhappy-looking Therving prisoners past King Grus. Grus nodded. "Send them back over the Tuola," he said. "We can get some useful work out of the ones King Dagipert doesn't bother ransoming."
"Right you are, Your Majesty," a cavalry captain replied. He added something in Thervingian. The prisoners shambled away.
Grus turned to Hirundo and said, "Somewhere else in this province, Dagipert is probably saying the same thing about some sorry Avornan captives his men have taken."
"I know," Hirundo answered. "There's no quit in that man. He's brought more and more men from Thervingia. He doesn't want us getting the notion we can beat him."
"No," Grus agreed. "Nothing comes easy against Dagipert. If he weren't so stubborn, we'd be fighting in Thervingia now - I'm sure of it."
With a sly smile, Hirundo answered, "He's bound to be saying the same kinds of things about you. He must be thinking that if it weren't for that miserable King Grus, he'd be laying siege to the city of Avornis again. Odds are he's right, too."
"Well, maybe," Grus said. "I like to think we can take care of ourselves well enough so that whoever's on top doesn't make all the difference." He liked to think that, but didn't know that it was true.
His horse's hooves thumping, a courier came into camp. "Your Majesty!" he called. "I've got news from the capital, Your Majesty!"
"What kind of news?" Grus asked. One obvious possibility was that he'd finally become a grandfather. That was the news he hoped for, the news he'd been expecting. The news he dreaded was that the Menteshe might have taken advantage of his war against the Thervings to swarm over the Stura River down in the south. It hadn't happened yet, but he knew all too well it could.
By the courier's grin, though, he bore news of the other sort. "Congratulations, Your Majesty!" he said loudly. "Queen Sosia and your grandson, Prince Crex, are both doing as well as anyone might hope."
Hirundo and all the soldiers who heard the fellow burst into cheers. They pressed forward to shake Grus' hand and pound him on the back. He said the first thing that came into his mind, which was, "But I'm too young to be a grandfather."
A grizzled sergeant said, "And it was only last week you were telling people you were too young to be a father, wasn't it?"
Amid laughter, Grus answered, "It certainly seems that way."
"Well, Your Majesty," the sergeant went on, "one of these days, I hope you get to tell everybody who'll listen to you that you're too young to be a great-grandfather." Hirundo and the grinning soldiers nodded and clapped their hands.
"I like the sound of that," Grus said. To show how much he liked it, he tossed the veteran a gold piece. As the sergeant bowed his thanks, Grus went on, "And let's whip the Thervings right out of their shoes, to make sure this province west of the Tuola belongs to little Prince Crex when he puts the crown on his head."
More cheers rang out. Grus knew how chancy things were, how many babies never lived to grow up. He didn't dwell on that thought, not now. Now he could let his hopes and dreams run free - though he didn't want to get too fanciful about ways and means of beating the Thervings. If he did, Dagipert would make him regret it in a hurry.
And Dagipert
did
make him regret it. Maybe the king of the Thervings had heard about little Prince Crex, too. As far as King Dagipert was concerned, Lanius should have been having children by Romilda, not Sosia. After all, Dagipert had spent the past couple of years ravaging northwestern Avornis because Lanius hadn't married his daughter. Before then, Grus supposed, the Thervings had ravaged northwestern Avornis just for the sport of it.
A company of Thervings assailed some of Hirundo's scouts ahead of the main force. Seeing the chance to make the enemy pay for coming out of the woods, Hirundo sent out more horsemen to cut off Dagipert's men. And so they did - till more Thervings, who'd been lurking just inside the trees, rushed out and turned the tables on them.
Some of the Avornans got away. King Dagipert's men cut down a lot of them, though, and then went back into the forest before the main body of Grus' army could come to the riders' rescue. Grus thought about throwing his men after the Thervings, but held back. For all he knew, Dagipert had another ambush waiting if he tried that.
Hirundo blamed himself, saying, "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. It's my fault, nobody else's. I thought I could make the Thervings pay, and Dagipert outsmarted me. That's what happened, no two ways about it."
"Don't get too upset," Grus told him. "Dagipert would have outsmarted me, too, because if you hadn't given those orders I was going to. Every once in a while, the other fellow gets a jump ahead of you, that's all."
"You'd better not let him stay that way, or else you're in trouble," Hirundo said.
"True enough," Grus said. "Now, Dagipert's going to expect us to try to lure him into some kind of ambush to pay him back."
"That's what I'd do," Hirundo declared.
"Then you'd let him stay a jump ahead of you," Grus pointed out. "I don't think he'd bite on any bait we threw him, so I'm not going to throw him any. I'm just going to keep on after him till we beat him and drive him back into Thervingia."
"If we can," General Hirundo said. .
Grus nodded. "That's right. If we can."
He sent riders out to knock down as many of Dagipert's scouts as they could find. If the Thervings' king didn't know what was going on around him, he might make a mistake. Dagipert responded by attacking viciously wherever the Avornan horsemen showed themselves in any numbers.
"
Now
maybe we can lure him into a trap," Grus said.
They sent the whole army after a band of horsemen who went up against another of the Thervings' outposts. As Grus had expected, Dagipert struck back at the riders hard, using more of his own men to try to drive off the Avornans. Grus and Hirundo threw the rest of the army into the fight, hoping to bag all those Thervings. But Dagipert had his own reserves waiting.
"We've got a big battle on our hands," Hirundo said. "What are we going to do?"
"I think we'd better fight it, don't you?" King Grus answered. Hirundo nodded. Neither of them had much wanted a full-scale battle there, but Grus saw no way to avoid it, not with his men and the Thervings both pouring into the engagement as fast as they could. It wasn't a proper trap - or, if it was, it had closed on both sides at once.
They hammered at each other all day, neither side giving much ground. Only at sunset did they draw apart. Even then, Grus thought they would clash again the next morning. He ordered his men into line of battle before the sun came up.
But when they went forward, they found that King Dagipert's army had left its position during the night and fallen back toward the west, toward Thervingia. Only then did Grus begin to think he might have won.
As King Lanius had the summer before, he greeted King Grus when Grus' army returned from the west. This time, the army didn't return in gaudy triumph. It had fought hard, and was badly battered. But the Thervings had gone back to their own kingdom. The previous summer, Grus' soldiers had seemed astonished and delighted to have driven off the enemy. This year, Lanius thought, it was more as though they had the Thervings' measure. Maybe that counted for more than a parade through the streets of the city of Avornis.
Lanius wanted to ask Grus what he thought of that, but Grus forestalled him, saying, "Where are Sosia and little Crex?"
"Back at the palace," Lanius answered.
Grus looked unhappy, but then nodded. "Yes, I suppose they would be. Don't want to put a new mother and a little baby through too much. How are they?"
"As well as anyone could hope," Lanius said. Grus smiled, which made him look like anything but a stern soldier. Lanius went on, "I like this business of being a father better than I thought I would. I think Crex looks like me."
"I don't suppose that's anything against the rules," Grus said. "Better he should look like you than me, anyhow. I'll never be what anybody calls handsome, though Sosia's lucky enough to favor her mother's side of the family."
He was right about that. Lanius had already seen how Anser looked more like Grus than either Sosia or Ortalis did. Thinking of Anser and Ortalis, Lanius said, "Your sons are both out hunting again today."
"Are they?" Grus said. "That's good, I think. I hope. Come on. Let's go to the palace."
When they got there, Grus kissed Queen Estrilda. Then he kissed Queen Sosia. And then, at last, he all but slobbered over his grandson. Crex stared up at him with the bemused look he wore a lot of the time. That look had bothered Lanius till he thought about it. It didn't anymore. He'd decided the world had to be a very confusing place for a baby. Everything, everyone, was new. Crex had to figure out what he liked, who his parents were - everything about the world around him, the world in which he suddenly found himself. He didn't even have any words to help him make sense of things. No wonder he looked confused.
To Lanius, Grus had always seemed a hardheaded, hardhearted man. Not here. Not now. The word that came to Lanius' mind was
sappy.
Grus looked up from Crex at last, a broad, foolish smile on his face. "He's wonderful," he said. "And you're right - I think he does look like you."
Estrilda asked him, "How does it feel, being a grandfather?"
"First thing I said was,'I'm too young,'" Grus answered. "But, now that I see what I've got here, I take it back. I like the whole business just fine. How about you, dear?"
"Me? Oh, I hate it. I can't stand it at all," his wife said. They both laughed.
"Congratulations on driving the Thervings back again," King Lanius said.
"Oh. The Thervings." Holding Crex, Grus might never have heard of Thervingia. He had to pause and think about Dagipert and the neighboring kingdom. The process was not only visible, it was funny to watch. When it ended, he looked more like the Grus who Lanius usually saw. "Thanks," he said. "Yes, we've bought a respite till the next campaigning season, anyhow. And Dagipert's an old man. One of these days, he'll finally drop dead."
"Prince Berto is a different sort," Lanius said. "I met him when he came here once. I was still a boy then. All he cared about were cathedrals."
"I hope he's still like that," Grus said. "Cathedrals are a very good thing for a King of Thervingia to care about. If he spends his time caring about cathedrals, maybe he won't have the chance to care about invading Avornis."
"That
would
be good," Lanius said. "We could use a few years of peace."
"So we could." When Grus looked down at Crex in his arms, his face softened into a smile once more. "And he could do with growing up in a city that doesn't stand siege every so often. Couldn't you, little one?"
Crex responded to that by screwing up his face and grunting. Estrilda laughed. "I know what he's done!" she said with a laugh.
Grus laughed, too. He sniffed. "Oh, yes - so do I. But one nice thing about being grandparents - and about being king and queen - is that we don't have to clean up the mess ourselves." He handed the baby to a serving woman. She went off to give Crex fresh linen.
"That
is
nice," Estrilda said. "That's very nice indeed."
Lanius took servants for granted. How could it be otherwise? He'd had them at his beck and call ever since he'd learned to talk - and before that, too, as the woman changing Crex attested. Now he eyed Estrilda in some surprise. Had she herself - and maybe Grus, too - changed Sosia and Ortalis? By the way she spoke, perhaps she had. She hadn't been royal all her life. She hadn't, but her grandson would be.
Grus' father, for whom the baby was named, had been a man off a farm in the provinces who'd done modestly well for himself as a guardsman.
His
father had been a peasant of no distinction whatever. And yet Grus ruled Avornis, Sosia was wed to the scion of the ancient dynasty, and little Crex shared that dynasty's blood. Not for the first time, Lanius thought about how different the world was likely to look to a peasant's grandson from the way it looked to him.