The Chernagor Pirates (40 page)

The guards brought up another prisoner. This one blustered, saying, “I do not care how you torture me. I am Prince Ulash's man, and the Fallen Star's.”

“Who said anything about torturing you?” Grus asked.

“Avornans do that,” the Menteshe said. “Everyone knows it.”

“Oh? How many prisoners whom we've tortured have you met?” King Grus knew Avornans sometimes
did
torture prisoners, when they were trying to pull out something the captive didn't want to say. But his folk didn't do it regularly, as the Menteshe did.

“Everyone knows you do it,” the nomad repeated.

“How do you know?” Grus said again. “Who told you? Did you meet prisoners who told you what we did to them?” If the man had, he was out of luck.

But the Menteshe shook his head. “There is no need. Our chieftains have said it. If they say it, it must be true.”

Grus sent him away. It was either that or go to work on him with ropes and knives and heated iron. Nothing short of torture would persuade him what his chieftains said was untrue—and torture, here, would only prove it was true. The king muttered to himself, most discontented. The nomad had won that round.

He muttered more when his army crossed the Anapus. Devastation on the southern side of the river was even worse than it had been in the north. The Menteshe might have had trouble crossing the Anapus. They'd spent more time below it, and found more ways to amuse themselves while they were there. Grus began to wonder what things would be like in the valley of the Stura. Could they be worse than what he was seeing here? He didn't know how, but did know the Menteshe were liable to instruct him.

Before he could worry too much about the valley of the Stura, he had to finish clearing Prince Ulash's men from the valley of the Anapus. The Menteshe on the southern side of the river didn't try to make a stand. Instead, after shooting arrows at his army as it landed, they scattered. That left him with a familiar dilemma—how small were the chunks into which he could break up his army as he pursued? If he divided it up into many small ones, he ran the risk of having the Menteshe ambush and destroy some of them. Remembering what had happened to the troop farther north, he wasn't eager to risk that.

Eager or not, he did. Getting rid of the Menteshe came first. This time, things went the way he wanted them to. The nomads didn't linger and fight. They fled over the hills to the south, toward the valley of the Stura.

As Grus reassembled his army to go after them, he said, “I wonder if they'll fight hard down there, or if they'll see they're beaten and go back to their own side of the river.”

“That's why we're going down there, Your Majesty,” Hirundo answered. “To find out what they'll do, I mean.”

“No.” The king shook his head. “That's not why. We're going down there to make sure they do what we want.”

The general thought it over. He nodded. “Well, I can't tell you you're wrong. Of course, if I tried you'd probably send me to the Maze.”

“No, I wouldn't.” Grus shook his head again. “I have a worse punishment than that in mind.” Hirundo raised a questioning eyebrow. Grus went on, “I'll leave you right here, in command against the cursed Menteshe.”

“No wonder people say you're a cruel, hard king!” Hirundo quailed in artfully simulated terror.

Even though he was joking, what he said touched a nerve. “Do people say that?” Grus asked. “It's not what I try to be.” He sounded wistful, even a little—maybe more than a little—plaintive.

“I know, Your Majesty,” Hirundo said quickly.

Grus stayed thoughtful and not very happy the rest of the day. He knew he'd given people reason to curse his name. He'd sent more than a few men to the Maze. He reckoned that merciful; he could have killed them instead. But they and their families would still find him cruel and hard, as Hirundo had said. And he hadn't given towns ravaged by the Menteshe as much help as they would have liked. He didn't think he could afford to. Still … He wished he could do all the things the people of Avornis wanted him to do. He also wished none of those people spent any time plotting against him. That would have made his life easier. It would have, yes, but he feared he couldn't hold his breath waiting for it to happen.

What
could
he do? “Go on,” he muttered to himself. Seeing nothing else, he turned back to Hirundo. “Let's finish cleaning the Menteshe out of this valley, and then we'll go on to the next.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Ahh …” The general paused, then said, “If you want to push on to the Stura, and to leave garrisons in the passes to keep Ulash's men from getting through, our second-line soldiers could probably finish hunting down the nomads left behind. Or don't you think so?”

Grus paused, too. Then he nodded. “Yes. That's good, Hirundo. Thank you. We'll do it. Farther north, I wouldn't have, but here? You bet I will. It lets me get down to the border faster, and we may be able to give the Menteshe a surprise when we show up there sooner than they expect us to.”

He set things in motion the next day. Some of the armed peasants and townsmen and the river-galley marines he ordered out against the Menteshe would probably get mauled. But he would be getting the best use out of his soldiers, and that mattered more. Hirundo had done what a good general was supposed to do when he made his suggestions.

From the top of the pass the army took down into the valley of the Stura, Grus eyed the pillars of black smoke rising into the sky here and there. They spoke of the destruction Ulash's men were working, but they also told him where the Menteshe were busy. He pointed to the closest one. “Let's go hunting.”

Hunt they did. They didn't have the bag Grus would have wanted, for Prince Ulash's riders fled before them. Here, though, the ground through which the Menteshe could flee was narrow—unless, of course, they crossed the Stura and left Avornis altogether. Grus would sooner have wiped them off the face of the earth than seen them get away, but he would sooner have seen them get away than go on ravaging his kingdom.

Not all of the men who tried to get away succeeded. Avornan river galleys slid along the Stura. As Grus had, their skippers enjoyed nothing more than ramming and sinking the small boats the Menteshe used to cross the river. But here the Avornans didn't have everything their own way, as they had farther north. Ulash had river galleys in the Stura, too. When Grus first saw them come forth and assail his ships, he cursed and grinned at the same time. Yes, the Menteshe could cause trouble on the river. But they could also
find
trouble there, and he hoped they would.

Before long, they did. The Menteshe had galleys in the Stura, true, but their crews weren't and never had been a match for the Avornans. After Grus' countrymen sank several galleys full of nomads and lost none themselves, the Menteshe stopped challenging them.

“Too bad,” Grus said. “They're trouble on land. On the water?” He shook his head, then waved toward Hirundo. “They make you look like a good sailor.”

“Then they
must
be hopeless,” Hirundo declared.

“Maybe they are,” Grus said. “Now if only they were horsemen like me, too.”

That the Menteshe weren't. They shot up a squadron of Avornan cavalry who pursued them too enthusiastically, then delivered a charge with the scimitar that sent Grus' men, or those who survived, reeling off in headlong retreat. It was a bold exploit, especially since the Menteshe had spent so long falling back before the Avornans. Grus would have admired it more if the nomads hadn't hacked up the corpses of the men they'd slain.

“We think, when we die, we die dead,” a captured Menteshe told him. “Only when the Fallen Star regains his place do we live on after death. But you foolish Avornans, you think you last forever. We treat bodies so to show you what is true—for now, you are nothing but flesh, the same as us.”

He spoke excellent Avornan, with conviction chilling enough to make Grus shiver. If this life was all a man had, why
not
do whatever pleased at the moment? What would stop you, except brute force here on earth? How could a man sure he was trapped in one brief life show any signs of conscience? By all the evidence from the Menteshe, he couldn't. And no wonder the nomads clung so strongly to the Banished One. If they thought his triumph was their only hope for life after death …

If they thought that, Grus was convinced they were wrong. “The gods in the heavens are stronger,” he told the nomad. “They cast the Banished One out, and he will never return.”

“Yes, he will,” the Menteshe answered. “Once he rules the world, he will take back the heavens, too. The ones you call gods were jealous of the Fallen Star. They tricked him, and so they cast him down.”

Grus wondered how much truth that held. Only the gods in the heavens and the Banished One, the one who had been Milvago, knew for sure. Grus feared the Banished One would send him a dream where the exiled god set forth his side of the story, as he must have for the Menteshe. But no dream came. At first, that relieved the king. Then he wondered what else the Banished One was doing, what left him too busy to strike fear into the heart of a foe. Imagining some of the possibilities, he felt plenty of fear even without a dream.

Limosa bowed low before King Lanius. “Your Majesty, may I ask a favor of you?” she said.

“You may always ask, Your Highness,” Lanius said. “But until I hear what the favor is, I make no promises.”

Ortalis' wife nodded. “I understand. No doubt you are wise. The favor I ask is simple enough, though. Could you please bring my father out of the Maze?”

“You asked that before. I told you no then. Why do you think anything is different now? King Grus sent Petrosus to the Maze. He is the one who would have to bring him out.”

“Why do I think things are different? Because you have more power than I thought you did,” Princess Limosa answered. “Because King Grus is far away. You
can
do this, if you care to.”

She might well have been right. Grus would fume, but would he do anything more than fume? Lanius wondered, especially when Ortalis and Limosa did seem happy together. And yet … Lanius knew one of the reasons he was allowed power was that he used it alongside the power Grus wielded. Up until now, he'd never tried going dead against Grus' wishes.

What would happen if he did? Grus was distracted by the war against the Menteshe, yes. Even so, he would surely hear from someone in the capital that Petrosus had come back. If he didn't like the idea, Lanius would have thrown away years of patient effort—and all on account of a man he didn't like.

Caution prevailed. “Here's what I'll do,” the king said. “I'll write a letter to Grus, urging that he think again in the light of everything that's happened since you married Prince Ortalis. I'm sorry, but that's about as far as I can go.”

“As far as you dare go, you mean,” Limosa said.

No doubt she meant it for an insult. But it was simple truth. “You're right—that is as far as I dare to go,” Lanius answered. “If Ortalis writes at the same time as I do, it might help change Grus' mind.”

Limosa went off with her nose in the air. The day was hot and sticky, one of those late summer days made bearable only by thinking fall would come soon. Even so, she wore a high-necked, long-sleeved tunic.
What
do
she and Ortalis do together?
Lanius wondered.
Do I really want to know?
He shook his head. No, he didn't think so.

He did write the letter. He had trouble sounding enthusiastic, but felt he could honestly say,
I do not believe Petrosus will prove a danger to you, especially if you leave him without a position on his return to the city of Avornis.

He also wrote to Grus of an order he'd given the day before, an order sending four of Avornis' new tall-masted ships from the west coast north to Durdevatz. He hadn't stripped the coast of all the new ships, but he had done what he thought he could for Kolovrat and Prince Ratibor.

When he gave the letter to a southbound courier, he asked the man if Ortalis had also given him one to send to Grus. The fellow shook his head. “No, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you,” Lanius said. Did Ortalis want nothing to do with his father, even for his father-in-law's sake? Was Ortalis one of those people who never got around to writing, no matter what? Or did he dislike Petrosus, no matter what he felt about Limosa?

Here, for once, was a topic that failed to rouse Lanius' curiosity.
None of my business,
the king thought,
and a good thing, too.
He'd gone as far as he intended to go for Petrosus.

He didn't have long to wait for Grus' reply. It came back to the capital amazingly fast, especially considering how far south the other king had traveled. It was also very much to the point.
Petrosus will stay a monk,
Grus wrote.
Petrosus will also stay in the Maze.
Then he added two more sentences.
As for the other, I approve. In those circumstances, what else could you do?

Relieved Grus was not angry at him for his move with the ships, Lanius read the other part of the note to Limosa. “I'm sorry, Your Highness,” he lied. “I don't think I'd better go against King Grus' will when he makes it so clear.” That last was true.

Petrosus' daughter scowled. “You haven't got the nerve.”

That was also true. Lanius shrugged. “I'm sorry,” he said again. “Maybe you and Ortalis can persuade him with letters. For your sake, I hope you do.”

“For
my
sake,” Limosa said bitterly. “As far as
you're
concerned, my father can stay in the Maze until he rots.”

And
that
was true, no matter how little Lanius felt like coming out and saying so. He shrugged again. “If Grus wants to let your father out, he will. I won't say a word about it. But he has to be the one to do it.”