The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  Yes, this is what it’s like to be a real King, Lanius thought happily. His sphere was no longer limited to the royal chambers, the archives, and the rooms where his moncats and monkeys lived. With Grus away from the capital, his reach stretched over the whole kingdom.

  It did, at least, until he wrote to the other king to justify what he’d done. Writing the letter made him want to go wash afterwards. It wasn’t merely the most abject thing he’d ever written. It was, far and away, the most abject thing he’d ever imagined. It had to be. He knew that. Grus would not take kindly to his behaving like a real king. But reading the words on parchment once he’d set them down … He couldn’t stomach it. He sealed the letter without going through it a second time.

  Sosia said, “I’m proud of you. You did what needed doing.”

  “I think so,” Lanius said. “I’m glad you do, too. But what will your father think?”

  “He can’t stand nobles who take peasants under their own wing and away from Avornis,” his wife answered. “He won’t complain about whatever you do to stop them. You’re not about to overthrow him.”

  “No, of course not,” Lanius said quickly. He would have denied it even if—especially if—it were true. But it wasn’t. He didn’t want to try to oust Grus. For one thing, his father-in-law was much too likely to win if they measured themselves against each other. And, for another, this little taste of ruling Lanius was getting convinced him that Grus was welcome to most of it. When it came to animals or to ancient manuscripts, Lanius was patience personified; the smallest details fascinated him. When it came to the day-to-day work of governing, he had to fight back yawns. He also knew he would never make a great, or even a good, general. Grus was welcome to all of that.

  Sosia said, “I wish things were going better up in the Chernagor country. Then Father could come home.”

  “I wish things were going better up in the Chernagor country, too,” Lanius said. “The only reason they aren’t going so well is that the Banished One must be stronger up there than we thought.”

  “That’s not good,” Sosia said.

  “No, it isn’t.” Lanius said no more than that.

  Sosia asked, “Can we do anything here to make things easier for Father up there? Would it be worth our while to start trouble with the Menteshe, to make the Banished One have to pay attention to two places at once?”

  Lanius looked at her with admiration. She thought as though she were King of Avornis. He answered, “The only trouble I can see with that is, we’d have to pay attention to two places at once, too. Would it work a bigger hardship on the Banished One or on us? I don’t know, not offhand. One more thing to go into a letter to your father.”

  “One more thing?” Sosia cocked her head to one side. “What’s Ortalis gone and done now?”

  “I don’t know that he’s done anything since the last time,” Lanius said. They both made sour faces. Saying he didn’t know that Ortalis had done anything new and dreadful wasn’t the same as saying Sosia’s brother hadn’t done any such thing. How much had Ortalis done that nobody but he knew about?

  Lanius shook his head. Whenever Ortalis did such things, somebody else knew about it. But how many of those somebodies weren’t around anymore to tell their stories? Only Ortalis knew that.

  “He should start hunting again,” Sosia said. Something must have changed on Lanius’ face. Quickly, his wife added, “Hunting bear and boar and birds and deer and rabbits—things like that.”

  “I suppose so.” Lanius wished he could sound more cheerful. For a while, Ortalis had seemed … almost civilized. Hunting and killing animals had let him satiate his lust for blood and hurt in a way no one much minded. If only it hadn’t lost the power to satisfy him.

  Sosia said, “I wish things were simpler.”

  “Wish for the moon while you’re at it,” Lanius said. “The older I get, the more complicated everything looks.” He was married to the daughter of the man who’d exiled his mother to the Maze. Not only that, he loved her. If that wasn’t complicated enough for any ordinary use, what could be?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  King Grus looked from Hirundo to Pterocles to Vsevolod, then back again. They nodded, one after another. Grus’ eyes went to the walls of Nishevatz. They frowned down at him, as they had ever since the Avornan army came before them. “We are agreed?” Grus said. “This is the only thing we have left to do?”

  The general, the wizard, and the deposed Prince of Nishevatz all nodded again. Hirundo said, “If we didn’t come to fight, why did we come?”

  “I haven’t got an answer for that,” Grus said. But oh, how I wish I did! Since he didn’t, he also nodded, brusquely. “All right, then. We’ll see what happens. Go to your places. I know you’ll all do everything you can.”

  Hirundo and Pterocles hurried away. Vsevolod’s place was by Grus. “I thank you for this,” he said in his ponderous Avornan. “I will do, my folk will do, all things possible to do to help.”

  “I know.” Grus turned away. He thought Vsevolod meant well, but still had other things on his mind. A trumpeter stood by, face tense and alert. Grus pointed to him. “Signal the attack.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” The trumpeter raised the horn to his lips. Martial music rang out. Only for a moment did it come from one trumpet alone. Then every horn player in the Avornan army blared forth the identical call.

  Cheering Avornan soldiers swarmed forward. Grus wouldn’t have cheered, not attacking a place like Nishevatz. Maybe the common soldiers didn’t realize what they were up against. Some of them came within arrow range of that formidable wall and started shooting at the defenders on top of it, trying to make them keep their heads down. Others carried scaling ladders that they leaned up against the gray stone blocks. More Avornans—and some Chernagors, too—raced up the ladders toward the top of the wall.

  “Come on!” Grus muttered, watching them through the clouds of dust the assault kicked up. “Come on, you mad bastards! You can do it! You can!”

  He blinked. Beside him, King Vsevolod exclaimed in his own guttural language. Vsevolod grabbed Grus’ arm, hard enough to hurt. The old man still had strength. “What is that?” he said. “I see ladders. Then I see no ladders.”

  Pterocles was doing his job. “I hope Prince Vasilko’s men don’t see them, either,” Grus said. “If the men can get to the top of the wall, get down into Nishevatz …”

  “Yes,” Vsevolod said. “Then to my son I have some things to say.” His big, gnarled hands opened and closed, opened and closed. Grus hadn’t cared to be caught in that grip, and didn’t think Vasilko would, either.

  Even from so far away, the din was tremendous, deafening. Men shouted and screamed. Armor clattered. Dart-throwing engines bucked and snapped. Stones crashed down on soldiers storming up—the wizard’s magic wasn’t perfect. Ladders went over or broke, spilling soldiers off them.

  And, much closer than the walls of Nishevatz, Pterocles suddenly howled like a wounded wolf. “Noooo!” he cried, his voice getting higher and shriller every instant. All at once, every siege ladder became fully visible again. The ladders started toppling one after another when that happened. Pterocles also toppled, still wailing.

  Vsevolod said something in his own language that sounded incandescent. Grus said the foulest things he knew how to say in Avornan. None of their curses did any good. It quickly grew plain the assault on the wall wouldn’t do any good, either.

  Grus hauled Pterocles to his feet. The wizard’s face was a mask of pain. Grus shook him. “Do something!” he shouted. “Don’t just sound like a wheel that needs grease. Do something!”

  “I can’t.” Pterocles didn’t just sound like an ungreased wheel. He sounded like a man who might be about to die, and who knew it. “I can’t, Your Majesty. He’s too strong. What happened to me before, this is ten times worse—a hundred times. Whoever’s in there, he’s too strong for me.” Tears ran down his cheeks. Grus didn’t think he knew he shed them.

  The king shoo
k the wizard again. “You have to try. By the gods, Pterocles, the soldiers are depending on you. The kingdom is depending on you.”

  “I can’t,” Pterocles whispered, but from somewhere he found strength. He straightened. Grus let go of him. He still swayed, but he stayed on his feet. “I’ll try,” he said, even more quietly than before. “I don’t know what will happen to me, but I’ll try.”

  Before Grus could even praise him, he exploded into motion. He had a long, angular frame, and every separate part of him seemed to be moving in a different direction. Grus had never seen a wizard incant so furiously. It was as though Pterocles were taking pieces of his pain and flinging them back into Nishevatz. His magic didn’t seemed aimed at the Chernagor soldiers on the walls anymore. Whatever he was doing, he was doing against—doing to—the wizard who’d come so close to killing him moments before.

  “Take that!” he shouted again and again. “Take that, and see how you like it!”

  Vsevolod nudged Grus. “He is mad,” the old Chernagor said, and tapped the side of his head with a forefinger.

  “Sometimes, with a wizard, it helps,” Grus said. But he wondered exactly whom Pterocles was fighting. Was it some Chernagor wizard who, like Vasilko, had abandoned the gods and turned to the Banished One, or was it the being the Menteshe called the Fallen Star himself, in his own person? If it was the Banished One himself, could any merely mortal wizard stand against him?

  Before Grus got even a hint of an answer, Hirundo distracted him. The general was bleeding from a cut over one eye. His gilded helmet had a dent in it, and was jammed down over one ear, which also bled. He seemed unaware of the small wounds. “Your Majesty, we can’t get over the wall,” he said without preamble. “You’re just throwing more men away if you keep trying.”

  “No hope?” Grus asked.

  “None. Not a bit. No chance.” Hirundo sounded absolutely certain.

  “All right. Pull them back,” Grus said. The general bowed and hurried away. Vsevolod made a wordless noise full of fury and pain. He turned his back on Grus. Grus started to tell him he was sorry, but checked himself. If Vsevolod couldn’t figure that out without being told, too bad.

  “Take that!” Pterocles shouted again, and laughed a wild, crazy laugh. “Ha! See how you like it this time!”

  He thought he was getting home against whoever or whatever his foe was. And the more confident he grew, the harder and quicker came the spells he cast. Maybe—probably—it was madness, but it was inspired madness.

  And then, like a man who’d been hit square in the jaw, Pterocles toppled, right in the middle of an incantation. All his bones might have turned to water. When Grus stooped beside him, he was sure the wizard was dead. But, to his surprise, Pterocles went on breathing and still had a pulse. Grus slapped him in the face, none too gently, to try to bring him around. He stirred and muttered, but would not wake.

  “Will he have any mind when he rouses?” Vsevolod asked.

  Grus could only shrug. “We’ll have to see, that’s all. I just hope he does wake up. Something bigger than he was hit him there.”

  “It is mark of Banished One,” the Prince of Nishevatz declared. Grus found himself nodding. He didn’t see what else it could be, either.

  Hirundo, meanwhile, pulled the Avornans back from the walls of the city-state where Vsevolod had ruled for so long. Many of them limped and bled. More than a few helped wounded comrades escape the rain of stones and arrows from the battlements.

  “What now?” Vsevolod asked.

  The last time Grus had faced that question, he’d decided to try to storm Nishevatz. Now he’d not only tried that, he’d also seen how thoroughly it didn’t work. He gave the man who’d asked for his help the only answer he could—a shrug. “Your Highness, right now I just don’t know what to tell you.”

  He waited for Vsevolod to get angry. Instead, the Chernagor nodded in dour approval. “At least you do not give me opium in honey sauce. This is something. You make no fog of pretty, sweet-smelling promises to lull me to sleep and make me not notice you say nothing.”

  “No. I come right out and say nothing,” Grus replied.

  “Is better.” Prince Vsevolod sounded certain. Grus had his doubts.

  King Lanius read the letter aloud to Queen Sosia, Queen Estrilda, Prince Ortalis, and Arch-Hallow Anser—Grus’ daughter, wife, legitimate son, and bastard. “‘And so we were repulsed from the walls of Nishevatz,’ Grus writes,” he said. “‘I should never have tried to storm them, but looking back is always easier than looking forward.’”

  “What will he do now?” The question, which should have come from Ortalis’ lips if he had the least bit of interest in ruling Avornis, instead came from Estrilda’s.

  “I’m just getting to that,” Lanius answered. “He writes, ‘I do not know what I’ll do next. I think I will stay in front of the city and see what happens next inside of it. Maybe Vasilko will make himself hated enough to spark an uprising against him. I can hope, anyhow.’”

  He would have written a much more formal, much more detailed account of the campaign than Grus had. But Grus’ letter had an interest, an appeal, of its own. If it were three hundred years old and I’d found it in the archives, I’d be delighted, Lanius thought. It makes me feel I’m there.

  Anser asked, “What happened to the wizard?”

  “To Pterocles? That’s farther down. Here, this is what he says. ‘Pterocles started coming back to himself the morning after he lost the magical fight with the wizard in Nishevatz—or with the wizard’s Master. He knows who he is, and where, but he is not yet strong enough to try sorcery. This gives me one more reason to wait and see what happens here.’”

  “He’s probably doing the smart thing by not charging ahead with the war,” Sosia said.

  “Yes, probably,” Lanius agreed. “But if we can’t take Nishevatz with our soldiers or with our magic, what are we doing there?”

  His wife had no answer for that. Lanius had none, either. He wondered if Grus did. He also wondered whether to write to the other King of Avornis and ask him. But he didn’t need long to decide not to. Grus would be suspicious because Lanius had ordered soldiers to the south. If he also wrote a letter questioning what Grus was doing up in the Chernagor country, the other king might suspect him of ambitions he didn’t have. Even more dangerous, Grus might suspect him of ambitions he did have.

  Sosia said, “You’re right—if we aren’t doing anything worthwhile up there, our men ought to come back to Avornis.”

  “If Grus decides he needs to do that, I expect he will,” Lanius answered, and wondered if Grus would have the sense to cut his losses. The other king was usually a man who saw what needed doing and did it.

  Less than a week later, Captain Icterus rode back into the city of Avornis and reported to Lanius. The grin on the officer’s face told the king most of what he needed to know before Icterus started talking. When he did speak, he got his message into one sentence. “You don’t need to worry about Baron Clamator anymore, Your Majesty.”

  “That’s good news, Captain,” Lanius said. “And how did it happen that I don’t?”

  Icterus’ grin got wider. “We happened to ride past him as he was on his way to drink with the baron who lives the next castle to the west. We scooped him up smooth as you please, and he was on his way to the Maze before his people even knew he was missing.”

  “Well done, Colonel!” Lanius said, and Icterus’ smile got bigger and brighter still. Lanius hadn’t thought it could.

  The good news kept the king happy the rest of the morning. But he went back to worrying about the north as he examined tax records from the provinces later in the day. Almost in spite of himself, he was learning how the kingdom was administered. The numbers were all they should have been—better than Lanius had expected, in fact. But that let him worry more about the land of the Chernagors. Had Pterocles met a powerful wizard who inclined toward the Banished One? Or had the Banished One himself reached out from the far south
to smite the Avornan wizard? Maybe it didn’t matter. With the Banished One, though—with Milvago that was—how could any man say for certain?

  And then Lanius got distracted again, this time much more pleasantly. A serving woman stuck her head into the chamber where he was working and said, “I beg pardon, Your Majesty, but may I speak to you for a moment?”

  “Yes, of course,” Lanius answered. “What do you want—uh—?” He couldn’t come up with her name.

  “I’m Cristata, Your Majesty,” she said. She was a few years younger than Lanius—say, about twenty—with light brown hair, green eyes, a pert nose, and everything else a girl of about twenty should have. But she looked so nervous and fearful, the king almost didn’t notice how pretty she was.

  “Say whatever you want, Cristata,” he told her now. “Whatever it is, I promise it won’t land you in trouble.”

  That visibly lifted her spirits; the smile she gave him was dazzling enough to lift his, too. “Thank you, Your Majesty,” she breathed, but then looked worried again. She asked, “Even if it’s about … someone in the royal family?”

  Lanius grimaced. He had a fear of his own now—that he knew what sort of thing Cristata was going to talk about. He had to answer quickly, to make her see he had no second thoughts. “Even then.” He made his voice as firm as he could.

  “Will you swear by the gods?” He hadn’t satisfied her.

  “By the gods,” he declared. “By all the gods in the heavens.” That left Milvago—the Banished One—out.

  “All right, then,” Cristata said. “This has to do with Prince Ortalis, Your Majesty. Remember, you swore.”

  “I remember.” Lanius started to tell her he’d heard stories about Ortalis before. But the words never passed his lips. That wasn’t fair to Grus’ legitimate son. What he’d heard before could have been lies. He didn’t think so, but it could have been. And, for that matter, what Cristata was about to tell him might be a lie, too. Lying about a prince to a king was a risky business for a servant, yet who could say for certain? Ortalis might—no, Ortalis was bound to—have enemies who could use her as a tool. With a sigh, Lanius said, “Go ahead.”