“We’ll do our job here, and then they’ll send us south to the Stura again,” Nicator said. He muttered something under his breath that had to do with horses, then, “Thervings or Menteshe. Thervings or Menteshe …”
“Gods grant we have an easy time for a change,” Grus said.
“That would be nice,” Nicator agreed. “What they’ve set us to sounds easy enough, anyhow. All we have to do is get Corax’s band of Heruls down the river and onto our bank of it so they can go on and pitch into the Thervings from behind. Should be simple as you please, so long as everything goes like it’s supposed to.”
“If everything went the way it was supposed to, the King of Avornis wouldn’t need to keep moving us around like pieces on the board,” Grus said. “And remember, this is Count Corax, dear Count Corvus’ brother.”
Nicator walked over to the rail and spat into the swift-running, cold water of the Tuola. “That for dear Count Corvus, the cheap, power-grabbing bastard.” He spat again. “And that for his gods-cursed, arrogant brother.”
“As long as you’re there, spit once for the Heruls, too,” Grus said.
“Sure.” Nicator did. “Now tell me why.”
“Because I wouldn’t give better than about even money that they go kick King Dagipert in the ass once they’re on this side of the river,” Grus answered. “They’re liable to decide they’d have more fun murdering farmers and raping their wives and stealing their sheep.”
“Or maybe stealing their wives and raping their sheep,” Nicator suggested.
Grus rolled his eyes. “I don’t know anything about that, and I’m cursed glad I don’t. If you really want to find out, ask Count Corax.”
The Bream served as flagship for a good-sized flotilla of river galleys, smaller boats, scows, and barges—not a flotilla that could do too much fighting on its own, but more than good enough for taking an army along the Tuola and moving it to the other side. When the Bream’s oarmaster shouted out the command for them to leave the port where they were tied up, they all obeyed promptly enough to give Grus no reason to complain.
Their rendezvous with Count Corax lay downstream, and they would deliver the army farther downstream still. That showed good planning by those who’d put the flotilla together. Grus doubted whether a good many of the scows and barges could have gone upstream at anything faster than a crawl, if indeed they could have made headway against the current at all.
“What do you want to bet Count Corax and these savages aren’t even there when we get where we’re supposed to be?” Nicator said. “It’d be just like him to leave us stuck with nothing to do. He’s a noble, after all. Why should he care if ordinary people have to sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for him?”
But when the flotilla rounded the last bend in the river, there on the northwestern bank sat the Heruls’ encampment, large, messy, and unlovely. The wind wafted the stink of it to Grus’ nostrils. He coughed and wrinkled his nose. He knew what camps were supposed to smell like. This was even worse.
“Oh, by the gods!” Nicator pointed. “Look at ’em! They’re pissing upstream from where they drink.”
“Well, so they are,” Grus said. “Corax didn’t fetch them here because they were neat and tidy. He fetched them here because they could fight.”
“They won’t do much fighting if they all come down with the galloping shits,” Nicator retorted. “And if they keep doing that, they bloody well will. Don’t they know any better?” He answered his own question. “No, by the gods, of course they don’t know any better. That’s what being a barbarian’s all about, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” Grus did some pointing of his own now. “There’s the mighty Count Corax’s banner, see? I suppose we ought to pick him up. Then we can ferry the Heruls downstream and across, and then we can hope they do some good.”
He sent the Bream’s boat to the far bank of the Tuola. Count Corax, now, wasn’t grubby in furs and leather. He wore a golden circlet that wasn’t quite a crown on his head and a cloth-of-gold robe more splendid than any Grus had ever seen adorning a King of Avornis. Nicator muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?” Grus asked.
“I said, now we know where all the money goes that Corvus and, looks like, Corax save by not keeping postal stations open on their lands.”
“Oh,” Grus said, and then, “Yes. He’s got his own army there, and he’s got his own raiment. When does he start stamping his own gold pieces and calling himself a king?”
“Pretty gods-cursed soon, by the look of him,” Nicator replied.
“Or here’s another question for you,” Grus said. “When does he take these Heruls, move on the city of Avornis with them, and start calling himself our king?”
The boat pulled up to the Bream. “Let’s see what Corax has to say for himself.” From their brief acquaintance, and from Count Corax’s being Corvus’ brother, Grus was ready to dislike him for any reason or none.
Corax scrambled up onto the deck of the Bream. “Hello, Commodore,” he said, striding back to greet Grus. “We meet again. Remind me of your name, if you’d be so kind.”
“Grus, Your Excellency,” Grus said tightly. He couldn’t order Corax flung into the Tuola no matter how much he wanted to. But, aboard his own river galley, he didn’t have to take that lying down—didn’t have to, and didn’t intend to. “Remind me of yours, if you’d be so kind.”
“What?” Corax turned red. “If that’s a joke, it’s not funny, friend. Everybody knows who I am.” The nobleman struck a pose.
“Not on the rivers,” Grus told him. “The rivers have buried men more famous than you’ll ever be.”
That might have been true, but it wasn’t calculated to endear Grus to Count Corax. From red, the Avornan nobleman went a dusky purple. “You had better hold your tongue, you insolent puppy, or I’ll paddle your backside for piddling on my shoes. I am in command of that army yonder, and I ought to turn them loose on you.”
“You’re welcome to try, Your Excellency,” Grus answered.
“I’m not used to having some jumped-up skipper from a fishing scow telling me what I can do and what I can’t. By Olor’s beard, I don’t intend to stand for it, either.” Corax set a hand on the hilt of his sword.
Nicator whistled shrilly. Several marines aboard the Bream nocked arrows and drew their bows back to the ear. The iron points on the arrowheads, all aimed at Corax, shone in the sun. “You want to think about where you are and what you’re doing, don’t you, Your Excellency?” Nicator said.
The nobleman had nerve. He didn’t let go of the sword right away. Grus had rarely seen an Avornan noble he would have called a coward. A lot of them, though, sadly lacked sense. Corax proved not to belong to that school.
“Oh, good,” Grus said when Corax’s hand did at last fall to his side. “I wouldn’t want to see you all quilled like a hedgehog, Your Excellency, and blood’s hard to scrub out of the timbers. It will stain.”
“You are a funny man, aren’t you?” Corax growled. “Let’s see how funny you are when the King of Avornis sacks you.”
“I’m not losing any sleep over that,” Grus answered. “You’re the one who’s been robbing the king for years, not me.”
“Why, you lying sack of turds!” Corax shouted.
“You’re the liar, Your Excellency—you and your brigand of a brother.” Grus made Corax’s title of respect one of reproach. Corax gobbled and turned purple again. With savage relish, Grus went on, “I know the two of you don’t keep up the royal post on your lands. When was the last time you sent any taxes to the capital?”
“Taxes?” Corax’s gesture of contempt was, in its own way, magnificent. “You gods-cursed fool, taxes are for peasants!”
“Do you suppose the king would say the same?” By the king, Grus meant Queen Certhia and the rest of the regents, as Corax no doubt had before.
“You swine!” Corax yelled. “You rustic oaf! You—you enema syringe! You brawling, disobedi
ent lump of guts! You pus-filled, poxy villain! You hairy-assed son of a whore! I piss on you!” He started to undo his fly.
“If he comes out, you’ll sing soprano the rest of his days,” Grus said through clenched teeth. Again, Corax stopped with the motion half complete. Grus gestured to the sailors and marines. “Take this foul-mouthed fool back to the barbarians. They seem to suit him well. May he have joy of them.”
“Yes, Commodore,” the men chorused. Heedless of Corax’s bellows, they bundled him back into the boat. When they got back to the northwestern bank of the Tuola, they showed what they thought by dumping him into the middle of a mudflat and letting him make his filthy, dripping way back to the Heruls.
“What do we do now, Skipper?” Nicator asked.
“I’ll stay here for a few days,” Grus answered, still seething. “If he shows any sign—any sign at all—of acting like a civilized human being, I’ll ferry him and the Heruls across the river.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“If he doesn’t? A pox on him and a plague on the barbarians, that’s what.”
“What about the fight with the Thervings?”
“Well, what about it?” Grus returned. “Do you think I should be the only one worrying about it? Let’s see if Corax cares about the kingdom, or if the only thing in the whole world Corax cares about is Corax.”
“Something’s gone wrong somewhere,” Lepturus said.
“What do you propose to do about it?” Queen Certhia demanded, blue eyes flashing fire.
The guards commander sent King Lanius an annoyed glance. He might have been saying, Pretty soon you’ll be old enough to rule on your own, and I won’t have to put up with this nonsense from your mother. That often worked well for him—often, but not always. And not today, for Lanius wanted to know exactly what was going on, too. “What do you propose to do about it?” he asked.
Lepturus sighed. “I don’t know just what I can do about it, Your Majesty,” he said. “All I know is, the Heruls didn’t cross the Tuola the way they were supposed to. You know what that means as well as I do. It means our army’s going to have to fight the Thervings without any help. Count Corvus keeps telling everybody what a great general he is. Pretty soon we find out if he’s right.”
He didn’t sound as though he believed Corvus were such a great general. He sounded as though he doubted whether the nobleman could find the fingers at the ends of his hands without a map. And he managed that without a word of open reproach for Count Corvus. Lanius admired him; he was used to more direct insults.
“But Corax is Corvus’ brother,” Queen Certhia said. “He’d come to his aid if he possibly could.”
“Maybe.” Lepturus didn’t sound as though he had much use for Corax, either.
“I think it’s Commodore Grus’ fault,” Certhia said. “I think he should come to the city of Avornis at once, and explain his disgraceful conduct.”
“For one thing, we don’t know it’s disgraceful, Your Majesty,” the guards commander said patiently. “Why don’t we wait and see how the campaign goes before we start throwing blame around like it was mud?”
Certhia fumed. “I am going to give orders that Grus come to the city of Avornis at once. At once, do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Your Royal Highness,” Lepturus answered wearily.
“Well, I am,” Certhia said, and hurried out of the chamber where the three of them were meeting.
“You don’t think that’s a good idea?” Lanius asked.
Lepturus shook his head. “No, I don’t. Too soon to start blaming. You ought to wait till a campaign’s over before you do that. Try doing it in the middle and you’re liable to end up looking like a first-class fool—meaning no disrespect to the lady your mother, of course.”
“Ah, of course,” Lanius said. Lepturus was better than anyone he knew at getting his point across by denying he had any point to get across. Lanius asked, “How do you think the campaign will turn out, Lepturus?”
“If you want to know ahead of time how things’ll turn out, Your Majesty, you talk to wizards or witches, not to soldiers,” the commander of his bodyguards replied. “They’ll be glad to tell you. Sometimes they’ll even be right.”
“I’m talking to you right now, Lepturus.” Lanius put an edge in his voice. “Do you think it will turn out well?”
Lepturus looked at him for a long time, then said, “No.”
“Well, Skipper, what are you going to do with that?” Nicator pointed to the parchment Grus held.
Grus read the parchment one more time. Then he crumpled it and tossed it into the Tuola. “There. That takes care of that. They never sent it. I never got it.”
“Commodore, that’s mutiny!” Turnix exclaimed.
“No.” Grus shook his head. “If I ordered every river galley on all the Nine Rivers to make for the city of Avornis and throw little King Lanius out of the royal palace on his backside, that would be mutiny. I don’t intend to do any such thing.”
“But you’re disobeying an order.” The wizard, at times—the most inconvenient times, generally—showed a remorselessly literal mind.
“How can I disobey an order I never got?” Grus asked.
“But they’ll find out you did, and then you’ll be in even more trouble,” Turnix said.
“That won’t be for a while. I’ll worry about it later,” Grus said. Turnix threw his hands in the air and walked up the deck of the Bream toward the bow.
Nicator said, “Skipper, if you did order all the river galleys to make for the capital, do you suppose their captains would do it?”
“I don’t know,” Grus answered. “I don’t want to find out. I don’t want to have to find out.”
“Well, no,” his captain admitted. “But if you did, I think they might. You’ve won victories, and the blue-blooded generals mostly haven’t. It’d make all those blue bloods who look down their pointy snoots at the navy think twice, eh? You just bet it would.”
He was right, Grus knew. The Avornan navy was and always had been a stepchild. It was there. It was sometimes useful. But it wasn’t where careers were made. It wasn’t where heroes were made. The cavalry came first, then the foot. River galleys? A long way after either. A man with a father called Crex the Unbearable could never have risen to high rank on land, as Grus had in the lesser service.
“I hope it never comes to that,” Grus said. “And I hope they hang Corax from the tallest tree they can find. But he’s the one who wants to be King of Avornis, not me.”
“All right, Skipper. All right.” Nicator nodded. “I know why you have to talk like that. But like I said, if you ever did give the order, I bet the other captains would follow it.”
“Who knows? I’m not going to give it, so what’s the point of wondering?” He had to say that, too.
But river galleys had one advantage over foot soldiers and even horsemen. They were swift, swift, swift. If he ever chose to move against the capital—and if his captains chose to move with him—he could move fast. He rubbed his chin. He could …
He’d never wanted to strike for the royal power. Only in the past couple of years had he realized he might strike for it, it might be within his grasp. Yes, he was the son of Crex the Unbearable. Yes, he was only a commodore, not a general—not even an admiral, since the Avornan navy rarely gave out such an exalted rank. But if he seized the capital, if he seized the palace, who could stop him from putting the crown on his own head? Nobody, not so far as he could see.
“What happens if you get another letter that says you have to go to the city of Avornis?” Nicator asked.
“I don’t know,” Grus said. “Maybe I’ll lose that one, too. I won’t worry unless they try to take my command away.”
“What do you think will happen to Corvus’ army without Corax and the Heruls coming along to give it a hand?”
“I don’t know that, either.” Grus shrugged. “You’re just full of inconvenient questions today, aren’t you?”
“I
don’t think Commodore Grus is coming to the palace,” Lanius remarked to Lepturus.
“I don’t think he is, either,” the commander of the royal bodyguards replied. “If I were him, I don’t think I would have.”
“But doesn’t that turn him into a traitor?” Lanius asked. “Mother heads the regency council, after all. Till I come of age, she rules Avornis.”
Lepturus coughed. “If your mother goes and pushes things, she can probably make Commodore Grus into a traitor, make him a rebel. If she doesn’t, he’s just an officer who had a quarrel with another officer and fears the other fellow has more clout than he does.”
“What’s the difference?” Lanius asked.
“I’ll tell you what the difference is, Your Majesty. If he’s somebody who’s had a quarrel with another officer, he’ll go on obeying any orders he gets that don’t put him straight into danger from his own side. If he’s a traitor, he won’t. He’ll rebel. What with King Dagipert and the Thervings marching on us, we don’t really want to have to fight a rebel, too.”
“Oh.” Lanius pondered that, and then reluctantly nodded. “Yes, I suppose you make sense there.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Lepturus said. “I’m not good for much—especially these days, on account of I’m getting old.” His eyebrows waggled. Sure enough, those hairy caterpillars had gray in them that hadn’t been there a couple of years earlier. “But I’ve always had pretty fair luck at making sense, and I’m glad you think I do even yet.”
King Lanius eyed him. “That’s the oddest sort of modesty I think I’ve ever heard.” Lepturus snorted and spluttered. The king went on, “How well will Count Corvus do—how well can Count Corvus do—fighting the Thervings without Corax and this army of Heruls that was supposed to attack them from the rear?”
“We drove them back last summer, you know,” Lepturus said.
“Yes, but Corvus wasn’t commanding our army then. You were,” Lanius said.
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