The Chernagor Pirates (11 page)

Grus hauled Pterocles to his feet. The wizard's face was a mask of pain. Grus shook him. “Do something!” he shouted. “Don't just sound like a wheel that needs grease.
Do
something!”

“I can't.” Pterocles didn't just sound like an ungreased wheel. He sounded like a man who might be about to die, and who knew it. “I can't, Your Majesty. He's too strong. What happened to me before, this is ten times worse—a hundred times. Whoever's in there, he's too strong for me.” Tears ran down his cheeks. Grus didn't think he knew he shed them.

The king shook the wizard again. “You have to try. By the gods, Pterocles, the soldiers are depending on you. The kingdom is depending on you.”

“I can't,” Pterocles whispered, but from somewhere he found strength. He straightened. Grus let go of him. He still swayed, but he stayed on his feet. “I'll try,” he said, even more quietly than before. “I don't know what will happen to me, but I'll try.”

Before Grus could even praise him, he exploded into motion. He had a long, angular frame, and every separate part of him seemed to be moving in a different direction. Grus had never seen a wizard incant so furiously. It was as though Pterocles were taking pieces of his pain and flinging them back into Nishevatz. His magic didn't seemed aimed at the Chernagor soldiers on the walls anymore. Whatever he was doing, he was doing against—doing to—the wizard who'd come so close to killing him moments before.

“Take that!” he shouted again and again. “Take
that,
and see how you like it!”

Vsevolod nudged Grus. “He is mad,” the old Chernagor said, and tapped the side of his head with a forefinger.

“Sometimes, with a wizard, it helps,” Grus said. But he wondered exactly whom Pterocles was fighting. Was it some Chernagor wizard who, like Vasilko, had abandoned the gods and turned to the Banished One, or was it the being the Menteshe called the Fallen Star himself, in his own person? If it was the Banished One himself, could any merely mortal wizard stand against him?

Before Grus got even a hint of an answer, Hirundo distracted him. The general was bleeding from a cut over one eye. His gilded helmet had a dent in it, and was jammed down over one ear, which also bled. He seemed unaware of the small wounds. “Your Majesty, we can't get over the wall,” he said without preamble. “You're just throwing more men away if you keep trying.”

“No hope?” Grus asked.

“None. Not a bit. No chance.” Hirundo sounded absolutely certain.

“All right. Pull them back,” Grus said. The general bowed and hurried away. Vsevolod made a wordless noise full of fury and pain. He turned his back on Grus. Grus started to tell him he was sorry, but checked himself. If Vsevolod couldn't figure that out without being told, too bad.

“Take that!” Pterocles shouted again, and laughed a wild, crazy laugh. “Ha! See how you like it this time!”

He thought he was getting home against whoever or whatever his foe was. And the more confident he grew, the harder and quicker came the spells he cast. Maybe—probably—it was madness, but it was inspired madness.

And then, like a man who'd been hit square in the jaw, Pterocles toppled, right in the middle of an incantation. All his bones might have turned to water. When Grus stooped beside him, he was sure the wizard was dead. But, to his surprise, Pterocles went on breathing and still had a pulse. Grus slapped him in the face, none too gently, to try to bring him around. He stirred and muttered, but would not wake.

“Will he have any mind when he rouses?” Vsevolod asked.

Grus could only shrug. “We'll have to see, that's all. I just hope he
does
wake up. Something bigger than he was hit him there.”

“It is mark of Banished One,” the Prince of Nishevatz declared. Grus found himself nodding. He didn't see what else it could be, either.

Hirundo, meanwhile, pulled the Avornans back from the walls of the city-state where Vsevolod had ruled for so long. Many of them limped and bled. More than a few helped wounded comrades escape the rain of stones and arrows from the battlements.

“What now?” Vsevolod asked.

The last time Grus had faced that question, he'd decided to try to storm Nishevatz. Now he'd not only tried that, he'd also seen how thoroughly it didn't work. He gave the man who'd asked for his help the only answer he could—a shrug. “Your Highness, right now I just don't know what to tell you.”

He waited for Vsevolod to get angry. Instead, the Chernagor nodded in dour approval. “At least you do not give me opium in honey sauce. This is something. You make no fog of pretty, sweet-smelling promises to lull me to sleep and make me not notice you say nothing.”

“No. I come right out and say nothing,” Grus replied.

“Is better.” Prince Vsevolod sounded certain. Grus had his doubts.

King Lanius read the letter aloud to Queen Sosia, Queen Estrilda, Prince Ortalis, and Arch-Hallow Anser—Grus' daughter, wife, legitimate son, and bastard. “‘And so we were repulsed from the walls of Nishevatz,' Grus writes,” he said. “‘I should never have tried to storm them, but looking back is always easier than looking forward.'”

“What will he do now?” The question, which should have come from Ortalis' lips if he had the least bit of interest in ruling Avornis, instead came from Estrilda's.

“I'm just getting to that,” Lanius answered. “He writes, ‘I do not know what I'll do next. I think I will stay in front of the city and see what happens next inside of it. Maybe Vasilko will make himself hated enough to spark an uprising against him. I can hope, anyhow.'”

He would have written a much more formal, much more detailed account of the campaign than Grus had. But Grus' letter had an interest, an appeal, of its own.
If it were three hundred years old and I'd found it in the archives, I'd be delighted,
Lanius thought.
It makes me feel I'm there.

Anser asked, “What happened to the wizard?”

“To Pterocles? That's farther down. Here, this is what he says. ‘Pterocles started coming back to himself the morning after he lost the magical fight with the wizard in Nishevatz—or with the wizard's Master. He knows who he is, and where, but he is not yet strong enough to try sorcery. This gives me one more reason to wait and see what happens here.'”

“He's probably doing the smart thing by not charging ahead with the war,” Sosia said.

“Yes, probably,” Lanius agreed. “But if we can't take Nishevatz with our soldiers or with our magic, what are we doing there?”

His wife had no answer for that. Lanius had none, either. He wondered if Grus did. He also wondered whether to write to the other King of Avornis and ask him. But he didn't need long to decide not to. Grus would be suspicious because Lanius had ordered soldiers to the south. If he also wrote a letter questioning what Grus was doing up in the Chernagor country, the other king might suspect him of ambitions he didn't have. Even more dangerous, Grus might suspect him of ambitions he
did
have.

Sosia said, “You're right—if we aren't doing anything worthwhile up there, our men ought to come back to Avornis.”

“If Grus decides he needs to do that, I expect he will,” Lanius answered, and wondered if Grus would have the sense to cut his losses. The other king was usually a man who saw what needed doing and did it.

Less than a week later, Captain Icterus rode back into the city of Avornis and reported to Lanius. The grin on the officer's face told the king most of what he needed to know before Icterus started talking. When he did speak, he got his message into one sentence. “You don't need to worry about Baron Clamator anymore, Your Majesty.”

“That's good news, Captain,” Lanius said. “And how did it happen that I don't?”

Icterus' grin got wider. “We happened to ride past him as he was on his way to drink with the baron who lives the next castle to the west. We scooped him up smooth as you please, and he was on his way to the Maze before his people even knew he was missing.”

“Well done, Colonel!” Lanius said, and Icterus' smile got bigger and brighter still. Lanius hadn't thought it could.

The good news kept the king happy the rest of the morning. But he went back to worrying about the north as he examined tax records from the provinces later in the day. Almost in spite of himself, he was learning how the kingdom was administered. The numbers were all they should have been—better than Lanius had expected, in fact. But that let him worry more about the land of the Chernagors. Had Pterocles met a powerful wizard who inclined toward the Banished One? Or had the Banished One himself reached out from the far south to smite the Avornan wizard? Maybe it didn't matter. With the Banished One, though—with Milvago that was—how could any man say for certain?

And then Lanius got distracted again, this time much more pleasantly. A serving woman stuck her head into the chamber where he was working and said, “I beg pardon, Your Majesty, but may I speak to you for a moment?”

“Yes, of course,” Lanius answered. “What do you want—uh—?” He couldn't come up with her name.

“I'm Cristata, Your Majesty,” she said. She was a few years younger than Lanius—say, about twenty—with light brown hair, green eyes, a pert nose, and everything else a girl of about twenty should have. But she looked so nervous and fearful, the king almost didn't notice how pretty she was.

“Say whatever you want, Cristata,” he told her now. “Whatever it is, I promise it won't land you in trouble.”

That visibly lifted her spirits; the smile she gave him was dazzling enough to lift his, too. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” she breathed, but then looked worried again. She asked, “Even if it's about … someone in the royal family?”

Lanius grimaced. He had a fear of his own now—that he knew what sort of thing Cristata was going to talk about. He had to answer quickly, to make her see he had no second thoughts. “Even then.” He made his voice as firm as he could.

“Will you swear by the gods?” He hadn't satisfied her.

“By the gods,” he declared. “By all the gods in the heavens.” That left Milvago—the Banished One—out.

“All right, then,” Cristata said. “This has to do with Prince Ortalis, Your Majesty. Remember, you swore.”

“I remember.” Lanius started to tell her he'd heard stories about Ortalis before. But the words never passed his lips. That wasn't fair to Grus' legitimate son. What he'd heard before could have been lies. He didn't think so, but it could have been. And, for that matter, what Cristata was about to tell him might be a lie, too. Lying about a prince to a king was a risky business for a servant, yet who could say for certain? Ortalis might—no, Ortalis was bound to—have enemies who could use her as a tool. With a sigh, Lanius said, “Go ahead.”

Cristata did. The way she told her story made Lanius think it was likely true. Ortalis' good looks and his status had both drawn her. That seemed plausible—and even had Ortalis been wizened and homely, a serving girl would have taken a chance if she said no when he beckoned. That wasn't fair. It probably wasn't right. But it was the way life worked. Lanius had taken advantage of it himself, back in the days before he was married.

Everything between Ortalis and Cristata seemed to have started well. He'd been sweet. He'd given her presents. She didn't try to hide that she'd said yes for reasons partly mercenary, which again made Lanius more inclined to believe her.

Little by little, things had gone wrong. Cristata had trouble saying exactly when. Some of what later seemed dreadful had been exciting at the time … at first, anyhow. But when she did begin to get alarmed, she found herself in too deep to get away easily. Her voice became bitter. “By then, I was just a piece of meat for him, a piece of meat that had the right kind of holes. Before long, he even stopped caring about those.”

She paused. Lanius didn't know what to say. Not knowing, he made a questioning noise.

It must have meant something to Cristata. Nodding as though he'd just made a clever comment, she said, “I can show you some of it. I can show you all of it if you like, but some will do.” Her linen tunic fit loosely. As she turned her back on Lanius, she slipped it down off one shoulder, baring what should have been soft, smooth skin.

“Oh,” he said, and involuntarily closed his eyes. He didn't think anyone with a grudge against Ortalis could have persuaded her to go through with … that for money.

She quickly set her tunic to rights again. “At least it did heal,” she said matter-of-factly. “And he gave me … something for it afterwards. I thought about just taking that and keeping quiet. But is it right, Your Majesty, when somebody can just take somebody else and use her for a toy? What would he have done if he'd killed me? He could have, easy enough. Some of the girls who've left the court … Did they really leave, or did they disappear a different way?”

Lanius had wondered the same thing. But no one had ever found anything connecting Ortalis to those disappearances—except for the couple of maidservants who'd gone back to the provinces well rewarded for keeping their mouths shut afterwards. Cristata, evidently, didn't want to go that way. Lanius asked her, “What do you think I should do?”

“Punish him,” she said at once. “You're the king, aren't you?”

The real answer to that question was,
yes and no.
He reigned, but he hardly ruled. Explaining his own troubles, though, would do Cristata no good. He said, “King Grus would be a better one to do that than I am.”

Cristata sent him a look he was more used to feeling on his own face than to seeing on someone else's. The look said,
My, you're not as smart as I thought you were, are you?
Cristata herself said, carefully, “Prince Ortalis is His Majesty's son.” Sure enough, she might have been speaking to an idiot child.