The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  The Avornans had already taken a good defensive position on a ridgeline when the Chernagor army came over the last low rise to the east. The Chernagors roared like bears when they saw Grus’ men drawn up before them. They were big and blocky and hairy like bears, too. Most of them wore iron helmets, but a good many had no coats of mail, only tunics and knee-length kilts. They carried axes and swords—Grus didn’t see many bows, not in proportion to their numbers.

  His eyes kept flicking toward Nishevatz. If he could see the oncoming Chernagors, so could the men besieged in the city. Were they hoping the relieving army could do the job without them having to sally? Grus thought they were wildly optimistic if they did. But that was their business, not his.

  Roaring still, the Chernagors from the east swarmed toward Grus’ men, whose line held steady. But pipes skirled as the foes came near, and they drew up out of bowshot. “Come fight us, heroes!” yelled men who spoke Avornan.

  “You come fight us!” Grus’ men shouted back. A few of them had picked up some words of the Chernagor language. They used those words, which were less than complimentary. The Chernagors cursed back.

  They did more than curse, too. They surged forward toward the Avornan line. Grus had all he could do not to cheer. He hadn’t thought they would be so foolish. His men held the high ground, and they had lots of arrows. They started shooting at the Chernagors as soon as the kilted attackers came into range. In fact, a lot of them started shooting before the Chernagors came into range, but that happened in every battle.

  Of course, the Chernagors started shooting back at the same time. But they had fewer archers to begin with, and they were moving into position, while the Avornans were already where they wanted to be. Also, the Chernagors were shooting uphill, the Avornans downhill, which gave Grus’ men another advantage.

  Onrushing Chernagors crumpled, some of them clutching at their wounds and howling while others lay very still. Here and there, an Avornan fell, too, but more Avornans wore armor than their foes. King Grus would not have wanted to be one of those squat, blocky, pigtailed foot soldiers trying to close with opponents who could hurt him while he couldn’t hit back.

  Grus hoped the withering blast of archery would stop the Chernagors before they closed with his men, but no such luck. They had courage, no doubt of that. And, no matter how fast the Avornans shot, they could not put enough arrows in the air to knock down all the enemies between the time when the Chernagors first came into range and when they got close enough to strike with spears and axes.

  Just as the Avornan foot soldiers were stronger in archery, the Chernagors had the edge on them when the fighting came to close quarters. The men of the north had their cavalry on the wings to protect their foot from the Avornans on horseback. Grus didn’t think the Chernagors had nearly enough in the way of cavalry to bring that off. He turned to Hirundo and asked, “Now?”

  “Yes, I think so,” his general answered. “Right about now.”

  Hirundo and Grus both waved to the trumpeters, who blared out the signal for the Avornan cavalry to advance. Grus urged his horse forward. He drew his sword. All those young Chernagors would be hoping to bring down the King of Avornis. They would get their chance.

  The Chernagor horsemen spurred toward the Avornans. The Chernagors rode big, strong, heavy beasts. The Avornans outmaneuvered them as readily as the Menteshe outrode Avornans down in the south. The results were about the same as they often were down in the south, too. Beset from several directions at once, the Chernagor riders could not make the most of what they had. Before long, it was either flee or stay and be cut to pieces. They were brave. Most of them held their ground as long as they could. And most of them went down holding it.

  “Keep moving forward!” Grus shouted to his men. “We need to help our foot soldiers.”

  The Avornan cavalry crashed into the flank of the Chernagor force. Grus slashed at a Chernagor axman. His blade bit into the fellow’s shoulder. The Chernagor shrieked. Grus never found out what happened to him. Battles were like that. As often as not, you had no idea how badly you’d hurt your foe. Sometimes, you didn’t know if you’d hurt him at all.

  Grus cut again. A shield turned his stroke. A Chernagor chopped at him with an ax. He got his own shield in front of the blow. He felt it all the way up to his shoulder, and knew his left arm would have a bruise. He counted himself lucky the ax hadn’t split the shield. He counted himself even luckier that the Chernagor swinging the ax had time for only one stroke before the battle swept the two of them apart.

  He didn’t get to do too much more fighting after that encounter. For one thing, his own horsemen got between him and the Chernagors. They hadn’t done things like that when his beard had less gray in it. Try as he would, he had a tough time getting angry at them on account of it. And the Chernagors, who had failed to break the Avornan line, who had taken a lot of punishment from the Avornan archers before they ever reached it, and who were taken in the flank by Avornan cavalry, did not fight hard for long. They began streaming back toward the east as soon as they became convinced they could not hope to win, which they soon did.

  “After them!” Grus shouted. “Don’t let them get away thinking they almost beat us. Make sure they know we’re stronger than they are.”

  “We don’t want to go too far,” Hirundo said. “If Vasilko does sally …”

  “He hasn’t done it yet,” Grus said. “If he wouldn’t do it before he knew we’d win, why should he try it now?” Hirundo had no answer for him. The Avornan cavalry pushed the retreating Chernagors hard until sunset, killing many and capturing more. Vasilko kept his men on the walls of Nishevatz, and did not dare to venture beyond them. Seeing what he’d done to the Chernagors from the east, Grus nodded in sober satisfaction and said, “Now we can get on with our business here.”

  Pouncer prowled through a small room. Carpenters and masons had assured King Lanius the moncat couldn’t escape. Of course, those same carpenters and masons hadn’t been able to figure out how Pouncer was escaping from the chamber where he spent most of his time, so Lanius didn’t fully trust them. Still, Pouncer had shown no signs of disappearing over the past hour.

  Lanius lay down on his back on the floor in the bare little room. Had any of his subjects seen him, they would have been sure he’d lost his mind. With the door closed and barred behind him, nobody could see him but Pouncer. That suited him fine.

  He thumped on his chest with the palm of his right hand, as though he were playing himself like a drum. Pouncer stopped prowling, came over to him, and climbed up onto his belly.

  “What a good boy!” Lanius praised the moncat and scratched and stroked it and gave it a piece of meat as a reward. Pouncer held the meat in one clawed hand before devouring it. The moncat scrambled down from Lanius a minute or two later.

  The king got to his feet. He watched Pouncer for a little while, then lay down again. He thumped his chest once more. Pouncer hurried over, climbed up onto his belly, and waited expectantly. He gave the moncat another tasty reward.

  He wondered if he could have taught an ordinary cat the same trick. He supposed so, though it might have taken longer. Moncats were clever beasts, especially where their self-interest was concerned.

  Training moncats, he thought. Is that a job for a King of Avornis? He’d trained them. He’d painted their pictures. He’d learned to paw through the royal archives and those under the great cathedral. Had he been an ordinary man instead of King of Avornis, none of that would have kept him from starving to death. As king, he had a lot of worries. Starving, fortunately, wasn’t one of them.

  He picked Pouncer up and carried the moncat back to the room where it spent most of its time, the room with most of the other moncats. Pouncer kept wiggling, maybe trying to get away, maybe hoping to see if he had any more treats it might steal. When he hung on to it, it snapped at him.

  “Don’t you bite me!” He tapped it on the nose with a forefinger. The moncat subsided. It knew it wasn’t supposed to bit
e. It forgot every once in a while, and needed to be reminded.

  When he opened the door to the moncats’ chamber, Lanius had to be careful none of them got out. They knew the open door meant they had a chance, so they crowded toward it. He had to drive them back, flapping his robe and making loud, horrible noises, before they would retreat.

  On leaving the chamber, he made sure he barred the door from the outside. No matter how clever the moncats were, that had defeated them. It defeated human prisoners all over Avornis, and no doubt in Thervingia and the Chernagor country and the lands the Menteshe ruled, too. He just had to make sure he did it every single time.

  The king was pleased with himself. Teaching any cat a trick felt like a triumph. As tricks went, this one was pretty simple. Anyone who trained dogs wouldn’t have thought much of it. Still, it made Lanius wonder what else Pouncer could learn. A moncat that could manage more complicated tricks might be entertaining.

  Nodding to himself, Lanius walked on down the corridor. After he got the idea, he shoved it down to the back of his mind. He didn’t forget about it, but it wasn’t anything he had to worry about right away. Pouncer wouldn’t learn a new trick tomorrow.

  That night, the Banished One visited him in a dream. The exiled god’s perfectly handsome, perfectly chilly visage stared at—stared through—Lanius with what seemed to be even more contempt than usual. “So,” the Banished One said, “you seek to trifle with me again.”

  Lanius kept quiet. If the Banished One had only just now learned Otus was truly cured, the king did not intend to tell him anything more.

  Silence helped less than it would against a human opponent, for the Banished One’s words cut like whips even in a dream. “You will fail,” he said. “You will fail, and you will die.”

  “All men die,” Lanius said with such courage as he could muster.

  “All men die, yes, and all beasts, too,” the Banished One snarled. “Some, though, sooner than others.”

  At that, Lanius woke up, his heart pounding. He didn’t forget the dream; he never forgot a dream where the Banished One came calling. He did not forget, but he did not understand, either.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Somewhere in the world, there was probably something that seemed more progress-free than a long siege. Grus supposed snail races might fill the bill. Other than a field of mollusks languidly gliding along eyestalk to eyestalk, nothing even came close. So the king felt outside of Nishevatz, anyhow.

  Day followed day. Vasilko’s men on the walls hurled insults at the Avornans who surrounded the city. When the Avornans came too close to the wall, the Chernagors would shoot at them. Every once in a while, somebody got hurt. Despite the occasional casualties, though, it hardly seemed like war.

  When Grus grumbled about that, Hirundo laughed at him. “It could be a lot worse,” the general said. “They could be sallying every day, trying to break out. They could have ships trying to bring in more supplies. We could have a pestilence start. They could have hit us from east and west at the same time, and the army that did hit us from the east could have shown more in the way of staying power. Are those the sorts of things you’d rather see, Your Majesty?”

  Laughing, Grus shook his head. “Now that you mention it, no. All at once, I’m happy enough to be bored.”

  “Good for you,” Hirundo said. “They’re not bored inside Nishevatz—I promise you that. They’ve got plenty to think about. How to break our ring around the place tops their list, if I’m any judge.”

  Whatever Vasilko and his henchmen were thinking, they gave no sign of it. Spring waned. Summer came on. Here in the north, summer days were noticeably longer than at the city of Avornis—a good deal longer than they were down by the Stura, where Grus had spent so much time before becoming king. The weather grew mild, sometimes even fairly warm. For the Chernagor country, it doubtless counted as a savage heat wave.

  Couriers from the capital brought news of the civil war among the Meriteshe. Grus avidly read those. The more the nomads squabbled, the happier he was. King Lanius wrote that he’d taught a moncat to do tricks. That amused Grus, anyhow, and livened up what would have been a dull day. Besides, if Lanius stayed busy with his moncats, he probably wasn’t planning anything too nefarious.

  One day, a letter came up to Nishevatz that hadn’t started or gone through the city of Avornis. That in itself was interesting enough to make Grus open it right away. When he’d read it, he smiled to himself and then put it aside.

  One of the advantages of being King of Avornis was that nobody presumed to ask him what he was smiling about. He didn’t go around bragging, either, even if part of him felt like it. But if he advertised having a new bastard boy, word would get to Estrilda sooner than if he kept quiet. He wanted to put off that evil day as long as possible—forever, if he could.

  Alauda had named the baby Nivalis. It wasn’t a name Grus would have chosen, but he’d been up here in the north, and hadn’t had any say in it. “Nivalis.” He tasted the sound of it. It wasn’t so bad, not after he thought about it. From what the letter said, both the baby and Alauda were doing well. That mattered more than the name. New mothers and infants died too easily.

  Pterocles answered the king’s smiles with smiles of his own. Did the wizard use his sorcerous powers to divine why Grus was so pleased with himself? Or did he just remember that Alauda had been pregnant and would be having her baby about now? Grus didn’t ask him. How much difference did it make, one way or the other?

  Hirundo kept his usually smiling face serious. He had to remember Alauda, too. But he, unlike Pterocles, had affairs of his own wherever he found willing women. He understood discretion. Whatever questions or congratulations he might have had, he kept them to himself.

  Grateful for that, Grus asked, “How hungry do you think they’re getting in there?”

  “They’re not at the end of their tether,” Hirundo replied at once. “If they were, they’d be slipping down over the wall just to get fed. But they can’t be in the best of shape, either.”

  That marched well with what Grus thought himself. He’d hoped Hirundo would tell him something more optimistic. But Hirundo, however discreet, would not say something was so when he thought otherwise. That would get men who might otherwise live killed, and he was too good a soldier to do any such thing.

  “Fair enough,” Grus said, eyeing the battlements of Nishevatz. Chernagors on the walls looked out at the army hemming them in. The king pointed their way. “They aren’t going anywhere. We’ve made sure of that.”

  The pyre that rose on the burning grounds was relatively modest. The white-bearded priest lying atop it wore only a green robe; he had never advanced to the yellow of the upper clergy. And yet, not only had the Arch-Hallow of Avornis come to say farewell to him, so had King Lanius.

  After the usual prayers, the priest in charge of the service touched a torch to the oil-soaked wood. It caught at once and burned strongly, swallowing Ixoreus’ mortal remains. “May his spirit rise with the smoke to the heavens,” the priest intoned.

  “May it be so,” the mourners murmured. The small crowd began to break up. Most of the people there were priests who’d served with Ixoreus in the great cathedral. By all appearances, he’d had few real friends.

  That saddened Lanius, but did not surprise him, Arch-Hallow Anser came up to him and clasped his hand, saying, “It was good of you to come.”

  “A lot of knowledge died with him.” Lanius wondered if Anser had any idea how much. The king doubted it. Anser knew more—and cared more—about the hunt than about matters ecclesiastical. To his credit, he’d never pretended otherwise. Lanius went on, “You will never find another archivist who comes close to matching him.”

  To his surprise, Anser smiled, shook his head, and replied, “Oh, I don’t know about that, Your Majesty.”

  Lanius had some notion of the abilities of Ixoreus’ assistants, and a low opinion of them. “Who?” he demanded.

  “Why, you, of course,” t
he arch-hallow said.

  “Me?” The king blinked. “You do me too much credit, I think. I know the royal archives tolerably well, but Ixoreus was always my guide to the ones under the cathedral.” And now one person fewer knows the name Milvago. That may be just as well.

  “You could do the job,” Anser said. “If you had no other, I mean.”

  Not so long before, Lanius had wondered how he might have earned his bread if he weren’t king. Now he bowed. “If I had no other, maybe I could.” Anser meant well. Anser never meant less than well. But the job Lanius had, that of King of Avornis, was less, much less, than it might have been, which was the fault of one man and one man only—Anser’s father, King Grus. Lanius brooded on that less than he had in years gone by, but he knew it was true. Still, he made himself smile and said, “As I told you before, you flatter me.”

  “I don’t think so,” Anser said. “It’s in your blood, the way it was in Ixoreus’, and you can’t tell me any different. These other fellows, they’ll do it, but they’ll do it because someone tells them to. If it fell to you, you’d do it right.”

  Given a choice, Lanius might well have preferred being an archivist to wearing the crown. His blood did not give him that choice. He nodded to the arch-hallow. “You may be right. But you at least had one good archivist. At the palace, I’ve spent years sifting through chaos.”

  “Before long, you may have to do that with our records, too,” Anser said.

  “I hope not,” Lanius said. And yet, if the ancient document that named Milvago and told what he was were to be lost for a few more generations, would he be unhappy? He knew perfectly well he would be anything but.

  His guardsmen fell in around him as he made his way back to the royal palace. The priests who’d come to Ixoreus’ cremation stared at him as he left. They had to be wondering why he’d chosen to pay his personal respects to an old man good for nothing but shuffling through parchments. He always found what he was looking for? So what?