The Chernagor Pirates (60 page)

“Gods grant it be so,” Grus said. He and the Avornan army had spent weeks waiting through what passed for a heat wave in the Chernagor country. Now the usual mists were back, with a vengeance. Grus hoped the vengeance wouldn't be excessive.

“Your Majesty?”

That was Pterocles' voice. “I'm here,” Grus said, and the wizard blundered forward until they bumped into each other. “Can you guide the men to Nishevatz?” Grus asked. “And can you keep the Chernagors from hearing them as they come?”

“Well, Your Majesty, if we all splash into the Northern Sea, you'll know something has gone wrong,” the wizard replied.

“Heh,” Grus said. “You
will
be able to do it?”

A glow that somehow pierced the fog where nothing else would illuminated Pterocles' hands. “I will.”

“Good.” Grus hesitated. “Uh—I hope the Chernagors on the walls won't be able to see your sorcery.”

“So do I,” Pterocles said cheerfully. “And yes, I just might be able to muffle things, too.” Grus gave up. Either the wizard was teasing him or the whole campaign would unravel in the next few minutes. Grus chose to believe Pterocles was joking.
One way or the other, I'll find out soon,
the king thought.

“There's the light.” At least a dozen Avornan officers, spying Pterocles' glowing hands, said the same thing at the same time. They all sounded relieved, too, no matter how the fog muffled their voices.

“Let's go,” Pterocles said. “Nishevatz is … that way.” He pointed with a gleaming forefinger. Grus wondered how he could have any idea of the direction in which Nishevatz lay. Looking down, the king couldn't even see his own feet. As far as he could tell, he disappeared from the knees down.

But Pterocles spoke with perfect confidence. And when he moved out in the direction he thought right, the Avornan soldiers followed him. They could see his hands through the fog. A party of men carrying a scaling ladder almost ran over Grus. He heard no cries from the walls of the city. Evidently, the Chernagors really couldn't see Pterocles.

Or maybe he's going the wrong way.
Grus wished that hadn't occurred to him. He was committed now. He had to rely on Pterocles. If, for instance, the Banished One was fooling the wizard … Grus wished that hadn't occurred to him, too.

“Guards!” he called.

“Here, Your Majesty.” The answer came in a chorus from all around him.

“Let's go forward,” Grus said.

The guardsmen formed up in a tight knot, completely surrounding the king. They seemed under the impression that if they didn't, he would yank out his sword and swarm up a scaling ladder ahead of every ordinary Avornan soldier. He was glad they were under that impression. He'd done a lot of fighting in his time. By now, though, he was coming up against soldiers who weren't just half his age but a third his age. He knew more than a little pride that he could still hold his own when he had to, but he wasn't such an eager warrior anymore.

Not only the guards but Grus himself stumbled more than once on the way to the walls of Nishevatz. They might see Pterocles' sorcerously glowing hands, but they couldn't see rocks and holes in the ground under their own feet. Low-voiced curses and occasional thumps from all around said they weren't the only ones with that trouble.

Grus craned his neck to one side, trying to listen for shouts of alarm from Vasilko's men. He still heard none. His hopes began to rise. Maybe this would work after all. Maybe …

Then he did hear the unmistakable thud of a scaling ladder going up against a wall. Soldiers rushed toward the top of the ladder. Someone up on the wall called out in the Chernagor language—a challenge, Grus supposed. Pterocles hadn't managed to hide that noise. The answer came back in the Chernagor tongue, for Hirundo had thought to put some of the men who'd stayed loyal to Prince Vsevolod at the head of the storming party.

Whatever the response meant, it quieted the defender who'd challenged. That meant the Avornans got onto the wall without any trouble. Then more shouts rang out, and the clash of blade on blade. But Grus knew Vasilko's men were in trouble. If the attackers managed to seize a portion of the wall, they had an enormous advantage on the men trying to hold them off.

“Up!” shouted officers at the base of the wall. “Up, up, up! Quick! Quick!” They sounded like parents trying to keep unruly three-year-olds in line. No child took seriously something said only once. Repeat it and it might possibly sink in. Soldiers were often the same way.

Men cursed and grunted as they swarmed up toward the battlements of Nishevatz. More curses and screams rang out up above on those battlements. So did the sound of running feet as the Chernagors rushed to the threatened part of the wall. Then frightened shouts came from another part of the works around Nishevatz. Grus whooped. He knew what that had to mean—the Avornans had gotten up there, too.

A body thudded to earth at the king's feet. It was a Chernagor; the black-bearded officer had gear too fine for a common soldier. He writhed feebly and moaned in pain. One of Grus' guardsmen raised a spear to finish the man off. “Wait,” Grus said. “Maybe the healers can save him. He's no danger to us, and we may learn something from him.”

The guard said, “Whatever you want, Your Majesty, but I don't think you're doing him any favor by keeping him alive.”

Blood ran from the Chernagor's mouth. One of his arms and both legs splayed out at unnatural angles. Grus decided the guardsman was right. “Go ahead,” he said. The Avornan drove the spear into the injured man's throat. It was over quickly after that.

Up on the wall, the Chernagors began to sound desperate, while the Avornans' shouts grew ever more excited. “We're going into the city!” someone yelled in Avornan. That was even better than a foothold on the wall. If the Avornans could cut Vasilko's men off from their last citadels inside Nishevatz …

Grus felt his way to a scaling ladder. “I'm going up,” he told his guards. “Some of you can go up before me if you like, but I'm going up now.” He'd known the guards would protest, and they did. But the king managed to have his way. Half a dozen guardsmen did precede him up the wall, but he went.

Two Chernagors and an Avornan lay dead in a great pool of blood in front of the top of the ladder. More bodies came into view through the fog as Grus walked along the wall. All the Chernagors he saw were dead. Some Avornans were only wounded. One or two of them gave him feeble cheers.

His guards were as nervous as a mother watching a child take its first steps. “Be careful, Your Majesty!” they said, and, “Look out, Your Majesty!” and any number of things intended to keep the king away from the fighting.

“I do want to see what's going on, as best I can with the fog,” he said.

They didn't want to listen to him. He hadn't really thought they would. Somewhere not far away, iron beat on iron—the Chernagors were still trying to hold off the Avornans and even to drive them back. Grus' bodyguards got between him and the sound of fighting, as though the ring of sword against sword were as deadly as point or edge.

In spite of the guardsmen, Grus saw a good deal. By now, long stretches of the walls were in Avornan hands. The only Chernagors left in these parts were dead, wounded, or disarmed and taken prisoner. The captives had the stunned look of men for whom disaster had come from out of the blue—or, here, out of the gray. One moment, they'd felt secure enough on the works that had held out for so long. The next, they saw their comrades bleeding while they themselves faced an uncertain fate. No wonder they looked as though they'd just, and just barely, survived an earthquake.

And, as the day advanced toward midmorning, the sun finally began to thin the fog—not to burn it off, but at least to thin it to the point where Grus could see farther than his own knees. He got his first real look inside Nishevatz. Most of the buildings had plastered fronts painted in various bright colors and steeply pitched slate roofs to shed the winter snow.

Parties of Avornans and Chernagors ran through the narrow, muddy streets, pausing every so often to exchange sword strokes or shoot arrows. Grus watched a shrieking Chernagor go down, beset by two Avornans who thrust their blades into him again and again until at last he stopped moving. It took a sickeningly long time.

One of the guardsmen pointed deeper into the city than Grus had been looking. “See, Your Majesty?” the guard said in pleased tones. “There's the first fire. Now they'll have to worry about putting that out along with fighting us.”

“So they will,” Grus agreed. This was what he'd been trying to accomplish for years. Now that he'd finally done it, he was reminded of the cost. His soldiers and Vasilko's weren't the only actors in the drama. Old men hobbled on sticks, trying to escape both foes and flames. Women and children ran screaming through the streets, fearing what fate had in store for them—and well they might.

A Chernagor archer saw Grus peering down from the wall. The man set an arrow to his bowstring and let fly. The shaft hissed past the king's face. Before the Chernagor could shoot again, Grus' guards pulled him back from the edge of the wall. “You see, Your Majesty?” one of them said. “It's not safe up here.”

“Not safe anywhere,” Grus answered. He shook off the guards and peered into Nishevatz again. “I wonder where Vasilko is and what he's doing.”

“Quaking in his boots, most likely,” a guardsman said. “This place is going to fall now, and he's got to know it.” As though to prove his point, what had to be a regiment's worth of Avornans surged out from the wall, driving the Chernagor who'd shot at Grus and his comrades back toward the center of Nishevatz.

Another guard said, “They're shouting your name, Your Majesty.”

“I hear them,” Grus said. When he first wore the crown, hearing soldiers use his name as a battle cry had been thrilling. Now it was just something that happened.
I'm getting old
—
or older, anyhow,
he thought.

He also heard shouts of “Vasilko!” He wondered whether Vsevolod's son still enjoyed hearing soldiers shouting his name. With a little luck, that wouldn't matter much longer.

“Where can we get into the city from the wall?” Grus asked his guardsmen. That made them look unhappy all over again, but they couldn't very well pretend they hadn't heard him, however much they might have wanted to. Instead, they fussed all the way to a staircase and all the way down. Even after Grus came down inside Nishevatz, his bodyguards still grumbled and fumed.

Avornan soldiers with spears led out long columns of Chernagor prisoners—grim-faced men who tramped along with empty hands raised high over their heads or tied behind their backs. Somewhere not far away, women wailed. Grus winced, knowing they were all too likely to have reason to wail. His own men were only … men, a lot of them no better than they had to be.

“Where is the prince's palace?” he asked. “Chances are, that's where Vasilko will make his stand.” He stopped and snapped his fingers. “Wait—I have a map of the town as it was, anyhow.” Maybe Lanius' gift would do him some good after all.

A captain said, “I don't know if we can get anywhere in Nishevatz very easily. Do you see? The fire is starting to take hold.”

So it was. Grus wondered if anyone in Nishevatz would ever see clearly again. Even as the fog thinned and the sun struggled to break through, thick clouds of black smoke began filling the streets of the city. A building fell down with a rending crash. New flames leaped up from the ruins. How long before most of Nishevatz was gutted? If it was, would Beloyuz thank him? He doubted that. If Beloyuz proved like most princes, he would stay grateful until Vasilko was dead or captive, and not much longer.

Grus suddenly stared. Was that part of the fire coming his way through the smoke and fog all on its own? A moment later, he realized it was Pterocles, whose hands still glowed brightly. “You can take off your spell now,” the king called.

The wizard looked down at himself. “Oh,” he said sheepishly. “I forgot all about that.” He muttered in a low voice. His hands once more became no more than ordinary flesh and blood.

“Can you lead me past the worst of the fires to Vasilko's stronghold?” Grus asked.

“If someone will tell me where Vasilko's stronghold is, I'll try to take you there,” Pterocles answered.

That proved more complicated than Grus had expected. None of the Avornans nearby had been inside Nishevatz until that morning. None of the Chernagor captives seemed willing to understand Avornan. At last, the Avornans rounded up a noble named Pozvizd, who had escaped with Vsevolod and Beloyuz. He understood Avornan—after a fashion. “Yes, I take you,” he said, and started off at a brisk pace. Grus, Pterocles, and a host of guardsmen followed in his wake.

If he'd known just where he was going, all would have been well. But he promptly got lost. Smoke and fire confused him. No doubt, so did being away from Nishevatz for several years. And when he did know the way for a brief stretch, he often couldn't use what he knew because of battling Chernagors and Avornans.

“We get there,” he said over his shoulder. “Soon or late, we get there.”

“Huzzah,” Grus said. “If we can, I'd like to get there before everyone involved in the fighting dies of old age.”

Several of his guards grinned. Pterocles giggled, which was most unprofessional of him. And Pozvizd either hadn't heard all of that or didn't understand all of it, for he just kept smiling back over his shoulder and saying, “We get there. Yes, we get there soon.”

And after a while—not soon enough to suit Grus, but not quite slowly enough to drive him altogether mad—they did get there. Most of Nishevatz had its own look, different from anything Grus would have seen in Avornis. When he came to Vasilko's stronghold, though, he felt a distinct shock of recognition. This building, plainly, had begun life as an Avornan noble's home. The lines were unmistakable, undeniable—and it was right where the map Lanius had given him said the city governor's residence should be. But, just as plainly, it had been serving different needs for a long, long time.