Authors: Dan Chernenko
"I'm sorry," Sosia said quietly.
"Are you? Why should you be?" He lashed out at her - she was close and handy. "Your father's the
real
King of Avornis, the one who really can do things."
"Why should I be sorry?" She still didn't raise her voice. "Because I'm your wife. Because I don't want you to be unhappy."
"Whyever not?" Lanius asked, sarcastic still.
Sosia flushed. Lanius felt ashamed of himself. That didn't deserve a serious answer, and he knew it. But Sosia gave him one. "Why? Because I love you, that's why."
He stared at her. Of all the things she might have said, that was the last one he'd expected. They were married, of course. That hadn't been love, though; that had been Grus' orders, as much to Sosia as to Lanius. They'd tried to please each other in bed, yes. He didn't think that was necessarily love, either - more on the order of two polite people making the best of the situation in which they found themselves. And they had a son. When they lay with each other so regularly, that wasn't surprising. Lanius loved Crex. He knew Sosia did, too. But that she loved
him...
He started to answer,
I don't know what to say.
Just before he did, he realized that would be a mistake. There was only one thing he could possibly say, and he did. "I love you, too, Sosia. I have for a long time. I just didn't know if I ought to say so."
Did he mean it? He didn't know. But the way her face lit up made him glad he'd said it. "Why
wouldn't
you say so?" she asked.
Lanius hoped his resentment didn't show on his face. Now he had to come up with another answer! But, to his relief, he did, and he decided it was at least half true. "I was afraid to," he told her. "If I'd said something like that and then found out you didn't love me back - I don't think I could have stood that."
She set her hand on his. "That's funny," she said, her voice hardly above a whisper. "I was afraid of the same thing: That's why I stayed quiet so long, even after Crex was born. But I knew I had to say something now, or else we might never be able to trust each other again."
He took her in his arms. "Thank you," he said. Knowing he could trust someone ... He tried to remember the last time he'd been sure of that. For the life of him, he couldn't. He squeezed Sosia tighter. Maybe this
was
love. He still wasn't sure. How could he be, when he had no standard of comparison?
Avornis' green banners fluttering all around him, Grus rode out of the city of Avornis at the head of his army. When he looked back over his shoulder, he saw Queen Estrilda, Queen Sosia, and King Lanius on the battlements waving to him and the soldiers. A maidservant beside Sosia held Prince Crex. Grus waved to all of them. The adults waved back, even Lanius. Grus smiled. They were getting along better. That made everything easier.
Prince Ortalis wasn't there. Under other circumstances, that might have angered Grus. But he knew his son was out hunting. He knew both his sons were out hunting, as a matter of fact. He didn't care one way or the other about whether Anser hunted. His bastard was a good-natured youngster with or without the chase. But Ortalis ...
Grus aimed what might have been a prayer of thanks heavenward. Since starting to hunt, Ortalis hadn't outraged any maidservants. He'd had a long, fairly friendly affair with one of them, which was, for him, an all-time first. He was much easier to be around -
much less obnoxious,
Grus thought, coining closer to the real truth. He still took no interest in matters of state, but Grus was happy enough with the changes he had seen in his son to fret less about those he hadn't.
General Hirundo, who rode beside him, said something. Grus realized that, but had no idea what Hirundo had told him or asked. "I'm sorry," he said. "Try again, please? I was woolgathering."
"Happens to everybody, Your Majesty," Hirundo said with one of his ready smiles. "There are days I'm glad my head's stuck on good and tight, because I'd lose it if it weren't. What I said was, here's hoping the Thervings don't give us too much trouble this year."
"That would be nice," Grus agreed. "I'm not going to count on it, but it would be very nice indeed."
"How much longer can Dagipert live, do you suppose?" Hirundo wondered.
"He might drop dead tomorrow, or he might last another fifteen years," Grus said with a shrug. "He's still strong, worse luck. When the two of us fought a couple of years ago, he came closer to killing me than I did to killing him." He looked around and lowered his voice before adding, "I'm just glad the Menteshe haven't raised up a prince like him, or we'd have more trouble in the south than we do."
He couldn't help wondering if the Banished One was listening to him. That shouldn't have been possible. He knew as much. After Alca's sorcery, though, he also knew in his belly that no humanly recognizable limits applied to the Banished One.
If the great enemy of Avornis
was
listening, he gave no sign. Grus knew a certain amount of relief, but only a certain amount; the Banished One might be listening and saving up resentment for revenge years later. His scale of time also lay far beyond merely mortal ken.
Meanwhile, Grus enjoyed the fine spring day. Green waxed glorious on the meadows and fields and farms around the city of Avornis. Birds newly returned from the south sang from housetops, twittered in hedgerows, and snatched insects on the wing. Grus wondered why the birds chose to go down to the Banished One's domain for winter, but then realized they'd been flying south long before the gods cast the Banished One from the heavens. The birds weren't to blame.
Hirundo kept his mind more firmly fixed on the task ahead. "Seeing as we will have to face old Dagipert before too long, what do you suppose he'll be up to this campaigning season?"
"No good," Grus replied, which made the general laugh. Grus chuckled, too, but he hadn't been joking. He went on, "He'll do whatever he can to hurt Avornis. He's been doing it for years. Why should he change?"
"He's been doing it altogether too well, too," Hirundo said.
"I'm not the one to tell you you're wrong," Grus said, "but I'm sure Dagipert would say he hasn't done it well enough. If he had his way, after all, he'd be calling the shots in Avornis these days, and Lanius' children would be his grandchildren, not mine."
Not even the burgeoning growth of spring could mask all the depredations the Thervings had wrought over the past few years. Isolated farmhouses and barns still stood in gaunt, charred ruins. A hawk perched on a chimney that remained upright while the house of which it had been a part was only a memory. It stared at Grus and the oncoming soldiers out of great yellow eyes, then flew away. Weeds smothered what would have been - should have been - fields of wheat or barley or rye.
And country farmhouses weren't all that suffered. Whole villages and even fortified towns had vanished off the face of the earth. "We'll be years rebuilding this," Grus said, a gloomy thought that had occurred to him before.
Even before the army reached the Tuola River, Grus sent scouts out ahead of it and to either side. Unlike Count Corvus, he didn't intend to be taken by surprise.
But whether King Grus intended for it to happen or not, Dagipert did surprise him. The bridges over the Tuola remained down. Only ferryboats connected the western province with the rest of Avornis. That didn't keep Avornans from the west from fleeing over the river with news - the Thervings had marched into the western province as Grus was marching out of the city of Avornis.
One of the refugees said, "That's not our chief news, Your Majesty - that the Thervings are over the border, I mean." Another man standing behind him nodded. "I'm carrying a message from King Dagipert."
"Well, you'd better tell me what is, then," Grus answered. "Don't waste time, either."
The man from the far bank of the Tuola said, "Maybe you won't have to fight. Dagipert wants to talk to you face-to-face."
"Oh, he does, does he?" Grus said. "Someplace near a forest, I'd bet, where he can spring an ambush the first chance he sees."
"No, sir." The man shook his head. "He wants both sides to bridge out from the banks of the Tuola till their spans almost meet in the middle. He says they should stop just too far apart to let a murderer jump from one to the other. He swears by Olor and Quelea he'll go back to Thervingia in peace once you've met."
Grus felt men's eyes on him. He knew it might be a trap. Dagipert might want nothing more than time to solidify his position in the province west of the Tuola. Time would do him only so much good, though. The Avornans still controlled the river itself. They could use their ships to put an army across almost where they chose - near its headwaters, the Tuola did get too shallow for such games.
After half a minute's thought, Grus decided the chance to win a summer without war - it would be the first of his reign - was too good to pass up. "Will you go back to Dagipert?" he asked the man who'd spoken to him. When the fellow nodded, Grus said, "All right, then. Tell him I agree. We'll build where his ambassadors usually cross the river - he'll know the place."
He led his own army to the remains of the bridge that had stood in happier times. He didn't lead all of it there, though. He sent detachments to cover a couple of other likely crossings, in case Dagipert had some elaborate treachery in mind. But the King of Thervingia certainly seemed to have brought most if not all of his army to the other side of the crossing. Their tents, some of wool, others of leather, formed a sprawling, disorderly town there.
"I wonder how long they can stay in one spot before hunger and disease get loose among'em," Hirundo said in speculative tones.
"Yes." But Grus' agreement was halfhearted. He knew he could feed his own men for a long time. Disease, though ... Disease could break out any moment, as the gods willed. Fluxes of the bowels and smallpox sometimes did more to break up a campaign than anything the warriors on the other side might manage.
Avornan engineers built an elegant wooden span halfway across the Tuola. The Thervings' bridge was nowhere near as handsome. Grus doubted it would have held as much weight as the Avornan effort. But, for Dagipert and a few guardsmen, it served perfectly well. And it advanced at least as fast as the bridge the Avornans built.
In a couple of days, Avornans and Thervings who spoke Avornan were shouting back and forth across the narrowing stretch of river that separated them. They agreed Grus and Dagipert would meet at dawn the next morning.
Grus wore royal robes as he stepped out onto the bridge. Under them, he wore a mail shirt. His crown was a helmet with a gold circlet of rank. Several guardsmen with large shields accompanied him, to make sure the Thervings didn't shoot arrows at him while he was within easy range.
On the other side of the Tuola, King Dagipert's preparations looked similar. His royal robes were even gaudier than the Avornan ones they imitated. He wore a real crown over what looked like a brimless, close-fitting iron cap. His guards were enormous and burly men. They carried shields slightly smaller than those the Avornans used, but only slightly.
Dagipert himself had a bushy white beard and a long white braid that hung halfway down his back. His shoulders were stooped, perhaps from years, perhaps from the weight of a mail shirt of his own. As he got closer, Grus saw he had an engagingly ugly face. If he was going to die soon, he didn't know it. Remembering his father, Grus knew that didn't mean anything, but he wished Dagipert would have looked feebler.
Dagipert was studying him, too. In fluent Avornan, the King of Thervingia said, "I should have killed you when we met on the field a couple of years ago."
"And a good day to you, too, Your Majesty," Grus replied. That made Dagipert laugh. Grus went on, "I wouldn't have been sorry to stretch you out in the dirt, either, you know."
"Not the way you handle a horse," Dagipert said. "My grandmother had a better seat when she was eighty-five."
That stung. Grus didn't even think Dagipert was lying, which made it sting all the more. "Did you ask for this meeting so you could insult me?"
"Among other things," Dagipert answered. "You yoked your daughter to Lanius when he should have married mine. Arch-Hallow Bucco made the betrothal agreement."
"He didn't have the authority to do it. And he's dead. You may as well quit complaining about that, Dagipert, especially since Lanius' son" -
and my grandson,
Grus thought, though he didn't say that out loud - "will be one before long."
"Yes, Lanius has a son. You have a grandson," Dagipert said heavily. The King of Thervingia scowled from under bushy eyebrows, reminding Grus of a very old, very sly, very dangerous bear. "And, by the gods, I've made you pay for your thievery."
"Are you telling me you wouldn't have ravished Avornis if I weren't king, if Lanius hadn't wed Sosia?" Grus asked. "I don't believe it for a minute."
"Believe what you please," King Dagipert growled. "I'm telling you that you Avornans robbed me of what should have been mine." He drew himself up with touchy, affronted pride.
"You worship the same gods we do," Grus answered. "People say you give Olor and Quelea and the rest great respect, but you don't act like it. A godsless man, a man who'd sooner follow the Banished One, is the sort who kills and plunders innocents."
"Don't you say I have anything to do with the Banished One," Dagipert said hotly. "That's a foul lie!"
No one in Avornis had ever been sure. But aloud Grus replied, "I didn't say you did. I said you
acted
like a man who would sooner follow the Banished One."
"I'm no oath breaker," Dagipert snarled. "You Avornans are the ones who lie through your teeth."
"When have I ever lied to you?" Grus asked. "I had nothing to do with whatever Arch-Hallow Bucco did or didn't say. I'm not bound by it. No Avornan except Bucco ever thought we were bound by it."
"By King Olor's beard,
I
thought you were bound by it," Dagipert said.
I'll bet you did, because it suited you so well.
Grus went on with what he'd planned to say before Dagipert sidetracked him with talk of Bucco. "If you
do
honor the gods - and I think you do - stop unjustly plundering and killing the innocent. Make peace with us; we follow the same gods you do. Why should you stain your hands with the blood of those who believe as you do? You're a mortal, like any other man. When you die, the gods will judge you."