The Chernagor Pirates (18 page)

Hesitantly, Lanius nodded. “I sent an order to river-galley skippers along the Nine Rivers to head for the coast and fight the invaders. That doesn't count the ships here by the capital. I told them to stay put because I thought your army would need them.” He waited. If he'd made a botch of things, Grus would come down on him like a rockslide.

His father-in-law exhaled again, but on a different note—relief, not exasperation. “Gods be praised. You did it right. You did it just right. I couldn't have done better if I'd been here myself.”

“You mean that?” Lanius asked. Praise had always been slow heading his way. He had trouble believing it even when he got it.

But Grus nodded solemnly. “We can't do anything without men and ships. The faster they get to the coast, the better.” His laugh held little mirth. “A year ago, I was wondering how the Chernagors' oceangoing ships would measure up against our river galleys. This isn't how I wanted to find out.”

“Yes, it should be interesting, shouldn't it?” To Lanius, the confrontation was abstract, not quite real.

“You don't understand, do you?” Grus was testy now, not handing out praise. “If we lose, they'll ravage our coast all year long. They'll go up the rivers as far as they like, and they'll keep on plundering the riverside cities, too. This isn't a game, Your Majesty.” He turned the royal title into one of reproach. “The kingdom hasn't seen anything like this since the Chernagors first settled down in this part of the world, however many years ago that was.”

Lanius knew, but it didn't matter right this minute. He nodded. “All right. I do take your point.”

“Good.” Grus, to his relief, stopped growling. “You must, really, or you wouldn't have done such a nice job setting things up so we'll be able to get at the Chernagors in a hurry.”

For a moment, that praise warmed Lanius, too. Then he looked at it with the critical eye he used when deciding how much truth a chronicle or a letter held. Wasn't Grus just buttering him up to make him feel better? Lanius almost called him on it, but held his peace. What was even worse than Grus trying to keep him happy? The answer came to mind at once—Grus not bothering to keep him happy.

Three days later, Lanius was able to stop worrying about whether Grus kept him happy. The other king had loaded his men aboard river galleys and as much other shipping around the capital as Lanius had commandeered. The army's horses stood nervously on barges and rafts. Lanius watched from the wall as the force departed with as little ceremony as it had arrived.

One vessel after another, the fleet slid around a bend in the river. A grove of walnuts hid the ships from sight from the capital. Lanius didn't wait for the last one to disappear. As soon as the river galley that held Grus glided around that bend, he turned away. Bodyguards came to stiff attention. They formed a hollow square around him to escort him back to the palace.

He was about halfway there, passing through a marketplace full of honking geese and pungent porkers, when he suddenly started to laugh. “What's so funny, Your Majesty?” a guardsman asked.

“Nothing, really,” Lanius answered. He wasn't about to tell the soldier that he'd suddenly realized the city of Avornis was
his
again. Grus had taken it back in his brief, tumultuous stay. He would reclaim it again after this campaigning season ended. But for now, as it had the past summer, the royal capital belonged to Lanius.

If the king said that to the guard, it might reach the other king. Unpleasant things might happen if it did. Lanius had learned a courtier's rules of survival ever since he'd stopped making messes on the floor. One of the most basic was saying nothing that would land you in trouble if you could avoid it. He still remembered, and used, it.

The doors to the palace were thrown wide to let in light and air. That almost let Lanius ignore how massive they were, how strong and heavy their hinges, how immense the iron bar that could help hold them closed. They weren't saying anything they didn't have to, either. For now, they seemed innocent and innocuous and not especially strong.

But they really are,
he thought.
Am I?

Hirundo looked faintly—maybe more than faintly—green. To Grus, the deck of a river galley was the most natural thing in the world. “Now you know how I feel on horseback,” the king said.

His general managed a faint smile. “Your Majesty, if you fall off a horse, you're not likely to drown,” he observed, and then gulped. Yes, he was more than faintly green.

“Horses don't come with rails,” Grus said. “And if you need to give back breakfast there, kindly lean out over the one the galley has. The sailors won't love you if you get it on the deck.”

“If I need to heave it up, I won't much care what the sailors think,” Hirundo replied with dignity. Grus gave him a severe look. Puking on the deck proved a man a lubber as surely as trying to mount from the right side of the horse proved a man no rider. Under the force of that look, Hirundo grudged a nod. “All right, Your Majesty. I'll try.”

Grus knew he would have to be content with that. A weak stomach could prove stronger than good intentions. That thought made the king wonder how Pterocles was taking the journey. As far as Grus knew, the wizard hadn't traveled far on the Nine Rivers.

Pterocles stood near the port rail. He wasn't hanging on to it, and he didn't seem especially uncomfortable. As he looked out at the fields and apple and pear orchards sliding by, the expression on his face was more … distant than anything else. King Grus nodded to himself. That was the word, all right. Pterocles had never quite been himself after the Chernagor wizard—or
had
it been the Banished One himself?—struck him down outside of Nishevatz. Something was missing … from his spirit? From his will? Grus had a hard time pinpointing where the trouble lay, but he feared it was serious.

Prince Vsevolod had stayed behind in the city of Avornis. Nothing he could say would be likely to make the Chernagor pirates change their minds. Grus didn't miss him.
Lanius likes being king,
he thought.
Let him put up with Vsevolod. That'll teach him.

Before long, groves of olives and almonds would replace the fruit trees that grew here. The fleet wasn't very far south or east of the capital; they'd just emerged from the confusing tangle of streams in the Maze the day before. Down farther south, farmers would grow only wheat and barley; rye and oats would disappear. Before long, though, vineyards would take the place of some of the grainfields.

The Granicus ran down toward the Azanian Sea through the middle of a wide, broad valley. The hills to the north and south were low and weathered, so low they hardly deserved the name. But smaller streams flowed into the Granicus from those hills to either side. Beyond the watersheds, the streams ran into neighbors from among the Nine Rivers.

I sent Alca to a riverside town,
Grus thought, and hoped none of the pirates had come to Pelagonia. This was the first time he'd come to the south himself since sending her away from the capital. But Pelagonia did not lie along the Granicus, and the king had other things on his mind besides the witch he'd once loved—still loved, though he hadn't let himself think that while he was anywhere near Estrilda.

As day followed day and Grus' fleet sped down the Granicus, he spent more and more time peering ahead, looking for smoke to warn him he was drawing near the Chernagors. Once he saw some rising into the air, but it proved only a grass fire in a field. It might have been a catastrophe for the farmer the field belonged to. To Grus, it was just a distraction.

And then, a day later, lookouts—and, very soon, Grus himself—spied another black column of smoke. Grus had a good idea of where they were along the Granicus, though he hadn't traveled the river for several years. To make sure, he asked the steersman, “That's Araxus up ahead, isn't it?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The man at the steering oar nodded. “When we round this next bend in the river, we'll be able to see the place.”

He proved not quite right. When they rounded the bend, all they could see was the smoke spilling out from the gutted town. Of Araxus itself there was no sign. But Grus pointed to the ships tied up at the quays. “No one in Avornis ever built those.”

“How can you tell, Your Majesty?” Hirundo asked.

Grus gaped. His general
was
a lubber, and no more a judge of ships than Grus was of horseflesh. “By looking,” the king answered. “They're bigger and beamier than anything we build, and see those masts?”

“They're ships,” Hirundo said.

“Yes, and we're going to sink them.” Grus turned to the oarmaster. “Step up the stroke. Let's hurry.” As the man nodded and got the rowers working harder, Grus told the trumpeter, “Signal the rest of the fleet to up the stroke, too. We don't want to waste any time.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The man raised the trumpet to his lips and sent the signal to the other ships close by. Their trumpets passed it along to the rest of the fleet.

The Chernagors ravaging Araxus were alert. They spotted the Avornan fleet as soon as it rounded the bend in the river. Grus couldn't see the pirates in the town itself, but he saw them when they came out and ran for their ships. He wondered what they would do once they had them manned. The wind blew out of the east, from the direction of the sea. That had let them sail up the Granicus to Araxus. But the only way they could flee down the river, away from the galleys, was by drifting with the current. If they tried that, the oar-powered Avornan ships would catch them in short order.

Grus wondered what he would have done if caught in a like predicament. No sooner had the thought,
Make the best fight I could,
crossed his mind than the Chernagor ships put on their full spread of sail—a stunning spread, by Avornan standards—and started
up
the Granicus toward the river galleys.

“Now I see it. They
are
bigger than we are.” Hirundo sounded nervous. “Can we beat them?”

“If we can't, we'd have done better to stay back in the city of Avornis, don't you think?” Grus asked. Hirundo grinned. Grus knew he had to seem confident. In truth, he had no idea what would happen next. How long had it been since the Chernagors and Avornans squared off against each other on the water? He had no idea. Lanius had tried to tell him, but he hadn't let the other king finish.

He wished things happened quicker aboard ship, but no help for that. The Chernagor pirates had to claw their way upstream against the current. More than a quarter of an hour passed between their weighing anchor and the first arrows splashing into the Granicus. The pirates had only half a dozen ships, but they were all jammed full of men. And with their high freeboard, getting Avornan warriors into them from the lower galleys wouldn't have been easy even if they hadn't been.

“Ram the bastards!” Grus shouted. Without his giving the order to the trumpeter, the man sent it on—cleansed of the curse by his mellow notes—to the rest of the fleet. To his own crew, Grus called, “'Ware boarders! If we stick fast when we ram, they'll swarm down onto us.”

More and more arrows flew from the pirate ships. Grus had never had to worry about so many in a river battle; he might almost have been fighting on land. A couple of rowers were hit. That fouled the stroke. The oarmaster screamed curses until the wounded men were dragged from their benches and replaced. Archers at the bows of the river galleys were shooting along with the Chernagors, emptying their quivers as fast as they could. A pirate threw up his hands and splashed into the Granicus, an arrow through his throat.

The oarmaster upped the stroke again, this time without waiting for a command from Grus. The steersman aimed the bronze-tipped ram at the planking just to port of the bow of a pirate ship. Where everything had seemed to move slowly before, all at once the pirate ship swelled enormously.

“Brace yourselves!” Grus shouted just before the collision.

Crunch!
The ram bit. Grus staggered but kept his feet. “Back oars!” the oarmaster screamed. The rowers did, with all the strength they had in them. If the ram did stick fast in the pirate's timbers, the Chernagors would board and slaughter them.

“Olor be praised!” Grus gasped when the river galley pulled free. The pointed ram had torn a hole two feet wide in the pirate ship, just below the waterline. The Granicus flooded in. The extra weight, growing every moment, slowed the ship to a crawl.

“Ram 'em again, sir?” the steersman asked.

Grus shook his head. “No. We got enough of what we needed.” He would have done far more damage striking another river galley. The Chernagor ships, built to withstand long voyages and pounding ocean waves, were even more strongly made than he'd expected.

He looked around to see how the rest of the fight was going. One pirate ship had ridden up and over the luckless river galley that tried to ram it. Avornans, some clutching oars, splashed in the Granicus. Another Chernagor ship traded archery with three river galleys. Two more pirate ships besides the one Grus had struck had been rammed, and were taking on Water. One pirate ship was afire. A river galley burned, too—the Chernagors had flung jars of oil lit with wicks down onto its deck. More Avornans went into the river. So did Chernagors from the northerners' burning ship. Grus wondered whether they'd set themselves ablaze. Savagely, he hoped so.

He pointed to the ship that had defeated one ramming attempt. “Turn about!” he called to the steersman. “We'll get 'em in the rear.”

“Right!” The steersman threw back his head and laughed. “Just what they deserve, too, Your Majesty.”

How the Chernagors on the pirate ship howled as the sharp-beaked river galley sped toward its stern! They sent a blizzard of arrows at Grus, who wished he wore something less conspicuous. He wanted to go below, but that would have made him look like a coward in front of his men.
The things we do for pride,
he thought as an arrow stood thrilling in the river galley's deck a few inches in front of his boot.