The Bastard King

by Harry Turtledove

  The campfire crackled as a stick fell down when the smaller stick supporting it burned through. Off in the distance, an owl hooted mournfully. The Avornan army had extra sentries surrounding the encampment on all sides, and squadrons of horsemen ready to charge into battle at a moment’s notice. Grus felt only moderately safe even so.

  He said, “The Menteshe are like foxes. They sneak through the night.”

  “Foxes made of quicksilver,” Hirundo said helpfully.

  “I didn’t order you down here for literary criticism,” Grus said. “I wanted you to help me figure out how to beat Prince Evren’s men.”

  “Same way we always beat the nomads—when we do,” Hirundo said. “We need a bouncy young chap to drive them down to the river, and a clever captain of river galleys to make sure they don’t cross to the south bank.”

  “Where would we find officers like that?” Grus asked. They both laughed. The days when Hirundo had driven the Menteshe down to the Stura and Grus had kept them from crossing seemed very far away.

  As though to prove how distant they were, Grus had to climb onto the back of a horse the next day. He would have given a good deal to have the pitching, rolling deck of a river galley under him instead. He knew how to handle anything that might go wrong there. Even after all these years, his relationship with horses remained wary.

  And the relationship between Avornis and the Menteshe remained one of passionate mutual loathing. Hirundo’s men managed to surround a band of the nomads, catching them by surprise around their campfires. By the time the Menteshe realized they were in danger, the Avornans had cut off any hope of escape.

  For form’s sake, King Grus sent in an officer under flag of truce offering to spare the lives of Prince Evren’s men if they surrendered. For form’s sake, they sent him back alive. Then the killing started.

  Grus himself had never made more than an indifferent rider, as he knew to his chagrin. Many Avornans, though, excelled on horseback. To them, horses were friends and comrades, not merely conveniences for getting from here to there faster than a man could walk. Next to the Menteshe, though, they might all have had Grus’ attitude and skill. People said the nomads were born in the saddle. After what Grus saw in that fight, he wouldn’t have argued for a moment.

  The horses they rode were nothing much to look at: plains ponies that hardly reached the shoulders of the Avornans’ mounts. But those ponies were fast and strong and seemed never to tire. And what the nomads did from their backs … Grus was among the most sincere enemies the Menteshe had, but he knew better than to call them cowards.

  When the Avornans came toward them from all sides, they must have known they probably wouldn’t escape. Instead of waiting to be slaughtered, though, they galloped forward—straight toward Grus, whether by design or by chance. Although outnumbered eight or ten to one, by the way they came they might have been the ones with numbers on their side. Then they started shooting, and for a dreadful little while Grus wondered whether they were right to be so confident.

  He’d heard things about the archery of the Menteshe. He’d seen some of it in earlier fights here. But this … The nomads’ bows, backed with horn and sinew, outranged those of the Avornans. And the Menteshe shot faster than merely mortal men had any business doing. People told tales of clouds of arrows darkening the sun as they flew. As the volley from Evren’s men hissed through the air toward the Avornans, Grus understood for the first time how such tales were born. He threw his shield up to protect his face.

  Had one of those arrows bitten him, the shield probably would have done no good. The nomads’ bows gave their shafts not only great range but also great striking power. They pierced shields. They pierced chain mail. And they pierced flesh—the flesh of both men and horses. Men shrieked. Horses screamed and crashed to the ground, throwing or crushing their riders. Other horses tripped over them and went down, too.

  An arrow buzzed past Grus’ head, so close that the fletching stroked his beard. He didn’t even have time to be horrified, for the Menteshe galloped toward him, intent on cutting their way out through the gap they’d shot in the Avornan line. As they neared, they drew their sabers. The blades glittered in the morning sun.

  “We have to hold them!” Grus yelled. “We can’t let them break through!” Belatedly, he remembered to draw his own sword. He hoped enough men around and behind him remained to hold the Menteshe till the rest of his cavalrymen could close with them and finish them off.

  He also hoped, again belatedly, that he would live through the encounter. On the deck of a river galley, he would have had the edge over any nomad ever born. On horseback, though, the tables were turned. Here came one of Evren’s men, shouting something in his own language. He cut at Grus. Grus beat the blade aside and slashed at the Menteshe’s mount. His sword scored a bleeding line across its croup, not far in front of its tail.

  With the terrible cry of a horse in pain, the beast reared. The Menteshe clung to the saddle as burrs clung to the long hair of its tail. Grus cut at him from behind. The nomad wore a shirt of leather boiled in tallow—not as strong as chain mail, but much lighter. It proved strong enough to keep Grus’ blade from laying the fellow’s back open, though by his grunt of pain the blow still hurt. Grus understood that. He wore padding under his mail to keep swordstrokes from breaking ribs.

  The Menteshe twisted, trying to keep his horse under control and fight back at the same time. He turned one more slash from Grus, but the next caught him in the side of the neck, above the boiled-leather shirt and below the iron-plated cap on his head. Blood spurted, improbably red. The Menteshe yammered in pain. Grus struck him again, this time across the face. The nomad’s saber slipped from his hands. He slid off his horse and tumbled to the ground.

  King Grus had a moment to look around. A few of the Menteshe had managed to break out. Even as he watched, an arrow caught one of them in the back. More were still fighting, trying to get away. And even more were down. He rode forward to help slay the ones yet on their horses.

  “Surrender!” he shouted when only four or five Menteshe were left alive. “Surrender and we’ll spare your lives.”

  He didn’t really expect them to. More often than not, fights between Avornans and Menteshe were fights to the death. But these nomads surprised him. Deciding they would rather live, they took off their iron-faced caps and hung them on the points of their sabers in token of surrender. “You not make us into thralls?” one of them asked in bad Avornan.

  “No, by the gods. We don’t do that,” Grus replied.

  “So you say,” the Menteshe said. He spoke to his comrades in their own language. By their tone, they didn’t believe Grus, either.

  With a sigh compounded of weariness and relief, he turned to his own men. “Take charge of them. And gather up the bows the horses haven’t stepped on. We’d be better off if our bowyers could make weapons like those.”

  They hurried to obey. They also rounded up the horses whose riders had fallen, and put out of their misery the animals too badly hurt to live. Some of them slew Menteshe too badly hurt to live, too, and Grus watched one man quietly cut the throat of an Avornan who’d taken an arrow in the belly and then been trampled. No one said a word to the soldier. By what Grus saw of the hurt man’s injuries, the fellow with the dagger had done him a favor.

  Hirundo was grinning when he rode up to Grus. “Well, Your Majesty, here’s one lump of quicksilver that won’t trouble us anymore. And we didn’t have to pay too high a price to get rid of it, either.”

  “That depends,” Grus said.

  “What do you mean?” Hirundo asked. “They made a nice little charge at us, yes, but we killed a lot more of them than they did of us.”

  “Well, so we did,” Grus said. “When you’re talking about the fight just now, you’re right, and I can’t tell you any different. But how many farmers did those Menteshe kill? How many houses and barns and fields did they burn? How many cows and horses and sheep did they run off or slaughter? Avornis has be
en paying ever since they crossed the Stura. We got some of our own back now, but is it enough?”

  Hirundo gave him a curious look. “You think about all sorts of things, don’t you, Your Majesty? If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was talking to Lanius.”

  “He does think about all sorts of things, doesn’t he?” Grus smiled, but soon grew serious again. “Do you know something, General? The longer I sit on the throne, the more I think that’s not such a bad thing to do.”

  King Lanius was thinking of throwing something at Iron. He was trying to paint a portrait of the moncat, and Iron didn’t feel like holding still. Had Lanius wanted Iron to run around, the miserable beast undoubtedly would have frozen in place. As things were, the king couldn’t persuade the moncat to assume anything even close to the attitude it had held the day before, when he’d started the picture.

  Instead of throwing something, he snapped his fingers. The sound made Iron look his way for a moment, but only for a moment, before scrambling up toward the ceiling. Lanius, for once, didn’t much care. “Bribery!” he said, a sudden grin on his face. “What kind of a king am I if I don’t think of bribery?”

  He left Iron’s chamber and hurried to the kitchens. A cook gave him several chunks of mutton and, after some rummaging, a length of twine. “It’s something to do with those miserable foreign creatures, isn’t it, Your Majesty?” the man said.

  “Don’t be silly, Colinus,” Lanius answered, his voice grave. “I just want to have fun with my food before I eat it.” Since the mutton was raw, what he’d said was most unlikely. On the other hand, he’d sounded altogether serious. Leaving the cook scratching his head, Lanius went back to Iron’s room.

  All of a sudden, the moncat was much friendlier than it had been a few minutes before. The road to its heart definitely ran through its stomach. Lanius tied one of the pieces of mutton to the end of the twine and hung it so that, to reach it, Iron had to stretch into something close to the posture he wanted.

  Stretch Iron did. While the moncat stretched, Lanius sketched. Before long, Iron finished the chunk of mutton. The beast turned toward Lanius and meowed pitifully. It was, no doubt, self-pity for not having more mutton; Iron could smell the meat Lanius hadn’t yet given.

  Lanius doled out the mutton one piece at a time. By the time Iron finished all of it, the king had finished his sketch. He could add color and shading at his leisure, and work on them whenever he wanted. He was doing just that in the bedchamber when Sosia looked over his shoulder. “That’s very good,” she said.

  He would have been happier if she hadn’t sounded so surprised, but he didn’t show that. “Thanks,” he said shortly.

  His wife leaned down for a closer look. Her hair tickled his cheek. “That’s very good,” she repeated. “You can practically see him moving.”

  “Thank you,” Lanius said again, this time in warmer tones. “That’s what I was trying to show.”

  “Well, you’ve done it,” Sosia said. “If anyone wants to know what a pouncing moncat is like, all he has to do is look at this picture.”

  Now Lanius smiled. In fact, he almost purred. “Do you really think it’s good?” he asked. He didn’t hear praise very often. When he did, he wanted to make the most of it.

  “I think it’s wonderful,” Sosia told him. “Anybody who’d never seen a moncat and wanted to would pay good money for a painting like that.”

  “Do you really think so?” Lanius knew he was repeating himself again, but couldn’t help it.

  “I’m sure of it,” Sosia said firmly. She gave him a kiss, which somehow seemed to make what she said much more persuasive.

  It might have ended as nothing but the sort of friendly praise a good wife would give to a husband she loved. It might have, but it didn’t. Lanius suddenly snapped his fingers and exclaimed, “Allocations!”

  “What?” Not surprisingly, Sosia had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Allocations.” And there he went, repeating himself yet again. “Remember when Petrosus wouldn’t give us any more money, and we had to let people go? If I can sell paintings, who cares what Petrosus gives us? He may be trying to keep me poor, but that doesn’t mean I have to let him.”

  When he said Petrosus was trying to keep him poor, he meant Grus was trying to keep him poor. He didn’t say that, to keep from wounding Sosia’s feelings. Petrosus wouldn’t have denied him, though, without specific orders from King Grus. Lanius was as sure of that as of his own name.

  Sosia said, “Could you really sell pictures like that? Has a King of Avornis ever done such a thing?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lanius answered. “But then, I don’t think a King of Avornis has ever been poor before, either.”

  He didn’t see how a King of Avornis could have been poor. A king, after all, controlled the tax revenues and customs duties his officials collected. He could spend what he wanted on himself. Or most kings could. Grus certainly could now, even if he was moderate in personal habits. Lanius? He laughed. He knew better. He lived on whatever Grus doled out to him.

  Or he had. Now … Maybe things would be different. Maybe. “If I sell any paintings,” he said, “I want to sell them as paintings by an artist, not as paintings by the King of Avornis. Plenty of men would buy them in the hope they would be buying influence along with the canvas.”

  “You’d get more money if people knew the King of Avornis painted them.” Sosia spoke with firm practicality.

  “Well, maybe I would,” Lanius admitted. “The next question is, how much do I care?”

  “I can’t answer that—you have to,” his wife said. “How much do you want to make What’s-his-name—Petrosus—look like a fool?”

  That was the right question to ask. How much do I want to make Petrosus look like a fool? Lanius wondered. He remembered the haughty smile on the treasury minister’s face, and how much the fellow had enjoyed telling him no. How much do I want to make Petrosus look like a fool? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll sell them under my own name.”

  “Them?” Sosia raised an eyebrow. “You’ll do more?”

  Lanius nodded. “If I’m going to do this, I’m not going to do it halfway. And besides”—he wanted to show he could be practical as well as proud—“we need the money.”

  King Grus, naturally, made sure he kept up with what went on in the city of Avornis while he campaigned in the south. Lanius might get ideas, or Ortalis, or old Lepturus, or even Anser, or perhaps some other ambitious soul who saw the throne empty and thought his own backside ought to fill it.

  When he read in a letter what sort of ambition Lanius was showing, he blinked in bemusement. It must have been a pretty obvious blink, for Hirundo noticed it and asked, “What’s interesting, Your Majesty?”

  “That’s the word, all right,” Grus answered. “It seems King Lanius is setting up as an artist.”

  “An artist?” Hirundo blinked, too. “I didn’t know he had it in him. I mean to say, he’s a bright fellow and all, but … What kind of artist?”

  “A painter. A painter of moncats, of all things,” Grus said. “And he’s sold three pictures, now, for … preposterous prices.” He wasn’t sure he believed the sums his informant in the city of Avornis claimed. Who would pay that kind of money for a picture of an animal?

  Hirundo made him realize he’d asked himself the wrong question. “No price is too preposterous,” the general observed, “if you’re paying it to the King of Avornis. Well, to a King of Avornis, anyhow.” He inclined his head to Grus, an oddly courtly gesture when they were sitting in front of a fire roasting chunks of mutton on sticks after another long day chasing Menteshe.

  “Yes,” Grus said. “That’s so, isn’t it? I wonder how much influence changes hands with the money. I thought Lanius was above that sort of thing, but maybe I’m wrong.”

  “How good are the paintings?” Hirundo asked. “That will tell you something.”

  “Good question.” G
rus looked down to the letter. “From what it says here, they’re quite good. Who would have thought it?” He wondered if he ought to order Petrosus to cut back on Lanius’ allocation again. After some thought, he decided against it. It would be mean-spirited. If Lanius wanted to supplement what the treasury gave him—and if he’d found a way to do it—he could.

  Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf howled. Grus hoped it was a wolf, anyhow. For all he knew, it might have been a Menteshe signal. Or, as Hirundo put it, “There go Evren’s men, baying at the moon again.”

  “If they’re sensible, they won’t come north over the Stura for quite a while after this,” Grus said. “But who knows if they’re sensible?”

  “Who knows what the Banished One will have them do?” Hirundo said.

  Grus sighed. “Yes, there’s that, too, of course. They don’t always do what they want to do. They do what he wants them to do, or what suits his purposes.” He wondered what Alca could have learned about freeing thralls from the dark spells that clouded their lives if Evren’s invasion hadn’t made her turn her attention to helping protect the kingdom. He wouldn’t know for some time, if he ever did.

  Hirundo’s smile showed sharp teeth. “I hope his purposes include getting lots of them killed, because that’s what’s happening to them.”

  “I know,” Grus said. “And I don’t see how Evren can help knowing, too. What I wonder is why he keeps fighting for the Banished One—why all the Menteshe princes keep fighting for him—when that only brings trouble down on their heads.”

  With a laugh, Hirundo answered, “Well, if they didn’t line up with the Banished One, they’d have to line up with us instead, and they probably think that’s worse.”

  He might have been joking. No, he was joking. Even so, Grus thought he’d hit on an important truth. Like any men, the Menteshe assumed their enemies were wicked just because they were enemies. “They’re going to hate us,” he said, “but let’s make sure they’re afraid of us, too. We need to give them something to howl about.”