Authors: Dan Chernenko
Sosia said,
"Could
you really sell pictures like that? Has a King of Avornis ever done such a thing?"
"No, I don't think so," Lanius answered. "But then, I don't think a King of Avornis has ever been poor before, either."
He didn't see how a King of Avornis could have been poor. A king, after all, controlled the tax revenues and customs duties his officials collected. He could spend what he wanted on himself. Or most kings could. Grus certainly could now, even if he was moderate in personal habits. Lanius? He laughed. He knew better. He lived on whatever Grus doled out to him.
Or he had. Now... Maybe things would be different. Maybe. "If I sell any paintings," he said, "I want to sell them as paintings by an artist, not as paintings by the King of Avornis. Plenty of men would buy them in the hope they would be buying influence along with the canvas."
"You'd get more money if people knew the King of Avornis painted them." Sosia spoke with firm practicality.
"Well, maybe I would," Lanius admitted. "The next question is, how much do I care?"
"I can't answer that - you have to," his wife said. "How much do you want to make What's-his-name - Petrosus - look like a fool?"
That was the right question to ask.
How much
do
I want to make Petrosus look like a fool?
Lanius wondered. He remembered the haughty smile on the treasury minister's face, and how much the fellow had enjoyed telling him no.
How much do I want to make Petrosus look like a fool? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact.
"All right," he said. "I'll sell them under my own name."
"Them?" Sosia raised an eyebrow. "You'll do more?"
Lanius nodded. "If I'm going to do this, I'm not going to do it halfway. And besides" - he wanted to show he could be practical as well as proud - "we need the money."
King Grus, naturally, made sure he kept up with what went on in the city of Avornis while he campaigned in the south. Lanius might get ideas, or Ortalis, or old Lepturus, or even Anser, or perhaps some other ambitious soul who saw the throne empty and thought his own backside ought to fill it.
When he read in a letter what sort of ambition Lanius was showing, he blinked in bemusement. It must have been a pretty obvious blink, for Hirundo noticed it and asked, "What's interesting, Your Majesty?"
"That's the word, all right," Grus answered. "It seems King Lanius is setting up as an artist."
"An artist?" Hirundo blinked, too. "I didn't know he had it in him. I mean to say, he's a bright fellow and all, but... What kind of artist?"
"A painter. A painter of moncats, of all things," Grus said. "And he's sold three pictures, now, for ... preposterous prices." He wasn't sure he believed the sums his informant in the city of Avornis claimed. Who would pay that kind of money for a picture of an animal?
Hirundo made him realize he'd asked himself the wrong question. "No price is too preposterous," the general observed, "if you're paying it to the King of Avornis. Well, to
a
King of Avornis, anyhow." He inclined his head to Grus, an oddly courtly gesture when they were sitting in front of a fire roasting chunks of mutton on sticks after another long day chasing Menteshe.
"Yes," Grus said. "That's so, isn't it? I wonder how much influence changes hands with the money. I thought Lanius was above that sort of thing, but maybe I'm wrong."
"How good are the paintings?" Hirundo asked. "That will tell you something."
"Good question." Grus looked down to the letter. "From what it says here, they're quite good. Who
would
have thought it?" He wondered if he ought to order Petrosus to cut back on Lanius' allocation again. After some thought, he decided against it. It would be mean-spirited. If Lanius wanted to supplement what the treasury gave him - and if he'd found a way to do it - he could.
Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf howled. Grus hoped it was a wolf, anyhow. For all he knew, it might have been a Menteshe signal. Or, as Hirundo put it, "There go Evren's men, baying at the moon again."
"If they're sensible, they won't come north over the Stura for quite a while after this," Grus said. "But who knows if they're sensible?"
"Who knows what the Banished One will have them do?" Hirundo said.
Grus sighed. "Yes, there's that, too, of course. They don't always do what they want to do. They do what he wants them to do, or what suits his purposes." He wondered what Alca could have learned about freeing thralls from the dark spells that clouded their lives if Evren's invasion hadn't made her turn her attention to helping protect the kingdom. He wouldn't know for some time, if he ever did.
Hirundo's smile showed sharp teeth. "I hope his purposes include getting lots of them killed, because that's what's happening to them."
"I know," Grus said. "And I don't see how Evren can help knowing, too. What I wonder is why he keeps fighting for the Banished One - why all the Menteshe princes keep fighting for him - when that only brings trouble down on their heads."
With a laugh, Hirundo answered, "Well, if they didn't line up with the Banished One, they'd have to line up with us instead, and they probably think that's worse."
He might have been joking. No, he
was
joking. Even so, Grus thought he'd hit on an important truth. Like any men, the Menteshe assumed their enemies were wicked just because they were enemies. "They're going to hate us," he said, "but let's make sure they're afraid of us, too. We need to give them something to howl about."
They got their chance the next morning. Scouts came galloping in, reporting a large band of Menteshe not far away. At Grus' shouted orders, horns blared in the Avornan camp. Whooping men flung themselves into the saddle. Before throwing them at the foe, though, Grus sent out more scouts in all directions.
"That's good," Hirundo said. "That's very good. We don't want any nasty surprises."
"We certainly don't," Grus agreed. "Count Corvus was a first-class bastard, but he taught me a good lesson there. If he'd paid attention to what he was doing against the Thervings, odds are he'd be King of Avornis today."
"Good thing he didn't, then," Hirundo said, which made Grus grin.
He grinned again a few minutes later, when a scout came back with news that the Menteshe had hidden a couple of hundred horsemen in an almond grove not far from the plain where most of them camped. "Did they see you?" Grus asked.
"I don't think so, Your Majesty," the scout answered.
"All right," Grus said. "We'll go on with the attack on their main body, just as though we didn't have the slightest idea that outflanking party was around. But when they come out of the trees to give us a surprise, we'll give them one instead. Hirundo!"
"Yes, Your Majesty?" the general said.
"See that our men on that flank know Evren's riders are going to burst out and try to throw them into disorder. I want to make sure that doesn't happen. But I also want to make sure we don't make things too obvious over there. Do you understand me?"
"I think so." Hirundo said. "You want them to try to bring off their ambush, and you want to smash them when they do."
"That's it exactly." King Grus slapped him on the back. "Now let's go see if we're as smart as we think we are."
Grus was starting to feel a little more comfortable on horseback, which he found alarming - it proved he was spending too much time in the saddle. He scarcely noticed the weight of chain mail anymore. As long as he rode a horse that wasn't too spirited - this one was the gelding he'd used while fighting the rebellious baron, Pandion - he did reasonably well.
His men shouted when the Menteshe came into sight. The nomads shouted, too. They were already in a loose line of battle; they must have spotted the dust the Avornan cavalry kicked up. The Menteshe started shooting before the Avornans came close enough for their bows to bite. And then, instead of rushing forward to mix it up with swords, Evren's men rode away, shooting over their shoulders as they went.
That struck Grus as unfair and unsporting. Ineffective? He wished it were. Avornans tumbled out of the saddle one after another. Hardly any Menteshe went down. The nomads weren't doing enough damage to make Grus worry about his army, but they weren't taking any damage at all.
And then, with wild whoops and shouts, the Menteshe who'd hidden in the almond grove burst from cover and thundered after the Avornans. At the same time, the nomads ahead stopped retreating before their foes and charged at them, also shouting in their hissing, incomprehensible language.
If the Avornan scout hadn't spotted the Menteshe lurking in the grove, it might have gone hard for Grus and his men. As things were, Grus shouted, "Forward! Now we have the chance to close with them!" and spurred toward the Menteshe in front of him. He trusted - he bet his life - that the riders at the Avornan left flank and rear would keep the ambushers from throwing his men into chaos.
He knew he would never make a mounted archer. All he could do was draw his sword and wait for the two lines to smash together - if they did; if the Menteshe didn't turn and flee once more.
Evren's men didn't. The nomads in front must have been sure the ambush party from the grove would do its job. By the time they realized the Avornans were neither panic-stricken nor beaten, it was too late for them to break off. Grus and his followers were right on top of them.
"For King Olor and Queen Quelea!" Grus yelled, slashing at a nomad. At closer quarters, the Avornans had the advantage. Their horses were bigger than Menteshe ponies, their chain mail better protection than the treated leather with which Evren's men armored themselves. Now Grus' men, also shouting the names of their gods, hacked Menteshe out of the saddle and took revenge for the long-range punishment their enemies had given them.
A nomad cut at Grus' head. The stroke missed, the Menteshe's blade hissing past less than a hand's breadth in front of Grus' face. The king slashed back. The nomad turned the blow. Sparks flew as his blade and Grus' grated against each other. Before the Menteshe could strike again, another Avornan laid his cheek open with a backhand cut. He howled and sprayed blood and clutched at himself, all else forgotten in his pain. Grus' next stroke made him slide off his horse into the dust.
Grus risked a look back over his shoulder. His men had turned on the warriors who'd burst from the almond grove. He breathed a little easier, seeing that the nomads weren't going to do to him what the Thervings had done to Count Corvus.
All at once, the Menteshe decided they'd had as much of this fight as they wanted. When they galloped off this time, the flight was real, not feigned. One proof the Menteshe truly were running was that they loosed far fewer over-the-shoulder shots at their foes than they had before.
A long pursuit was hopeless. Grus looked around for a trumpeter and, for a wonder, found one. At his order, the fellow blew
Rein in.
Watching the Menteshe run away was one of the most satisfying things an Avornan army could do.
General Hirundo rode up to Grus. "Well, Your Majesty, they're paying for everything they're getting on this side of the river," he said.
"That's true." But Grus had to point out the other side of the coin, as he had before. "They're making us pay, too."
"I know," Hirundo said. "But we can afford it longer than they can."
"Can we? I wonder," Grus said. "This farmland they've ravaged will take years to get back to what it should be. The same for the lands the Thervings plundered again and again. We have to eat, you know. And without farmers to make soldiers and pay taxes, what are we? In trouble, that's what."
Hirundo pointed at him. "So
that's
why you've made such a fuss about nobles who take over small farmers' lands."
"Of course," Grus said, only to realize it wasn't
of course
to Hirundo. "Either I'm King of Avornis, or all these barons and counts get to set up as petty kings inside the kingdom. I don't intend to let that happen." He looked south, toward the cloud of dust that veiled the Menteshe from sight. "I don't intend to let those savages - or their master - ruin Avornis, either."
"You can stop the nomads, especially if you fight as smart a battle as you did here," Hirundo said. "But how do you propose to stop the Banished One?"
Grus started to answer. He stopped without saying a word, though, for he realized he hadn't the least idea.
King Lanius nodded to the green-robed priest who worked out of a tiny room stuck in a back corner of the arch-hallow's residence. Ixoreus had no ecclesiastical rank to speak of. His white beard said he never would, and that he didn't care. Lanius felt more at home with him than with most people, though. The two of them shared a restless, relentless urge to
know.
The arch-hallow's secretary returned the nod with the air of one equal replying to another. "So you want to go into the archives, do you?" he said.
"That's right." Lanius nodded. "I'm interested in finding out how our prayers and services have changed since earliest times."
Ixoreus blinked at him. Most old men had trouble reading, while they could still see things clearly at a distance. By the way Ixoreus leaned forward, he had trouble with making out things farther away from him - a lucky infirmity in a man who'd devoted his life to books. "Yes, that could be interesting, couldn't it?" he said.
"I think so." Lanius didn't say he was trying to learn what sort of god the Banished One had been before his banishment. He had the feeling that the less he said about the Banished One, the better off he - and Avornis - would be.
"Let's see what we can do, then," Ixoreus said, slowly getting to his feet. His back was stooped; he leaned on a stick. His walk was a shuffle a tortoise might have outsped. Lanius followed without a word, without even a thought, of complaint. The priest, after all, was taking him where he wanted to go. He would have accompanied a willing, pretty girl with hardly more eagerness.
Not far from the altar in the great cathedral was a stairway Lanius had noticed before but never really thought about. He'd assumed it let priests come up more conveniently to attend the altar. And so, no doubt, it did, but that proved to be anything but its main purpose.