The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  Lanius sighed and shook his head. Who but another archivist could possibly appreciate what an archivist did? Not even Anser really understood it. He’d come because he liked Ixoreus. But then, he liked everybody, just as much as everybody liked him, so how much did that prove?

  On the way back to the palace, one of the guardsmen asked, “Your Majesty, what’s the point of even keeping old parchments, let alone going through them?”

  By the way he said it, he plainly expected the king to have no good answer for him. Several of the other guards craned their necks toward Lanius to hear what he would say. The last thing he wanted was to seem a fool in front of them. He thought for several paces before asking a question of his own. “Do you read and write, Carbo?”

  “Me, Your Majesty?” Carbo laughed. “Not likely!”

  “All right. Have you ever gotten into an argument with the paymaster about what he gives you every fortnight?” Lanius asked. To his relief, Carbo nodded at that. Lanius said, “You know how he settled things, then. He went through the parchments that said how much pay you get and when you got it last. That’s what the archives are—they’re like the pay records for the whole kingdom, as far back as anybody can remember. No matter what kind of question you ask about how things were a long time ago, the answer’s in there—if the mice haven’t chewed up the parchment where it was hiding.”

  “But why would you care about what happened before anybody who’s alive now was born?” Carbo asked.

  “So in case the kingdom gets into a kind of trouble it’s seen before, I’ll know how it fixed things a long time ago,” Lanius answered. Carbo could see that that made sense. But no matter how much sense it made, it was only part of the truth. The main reasons Lanius liked to go exploring in the archives were that he was interested in the past for its own sake and that people hardly ever bothered him while he was poking through old parchments.

  And Carbo didn’t bother him the rest of the way back to the palace. Another triumph for the archives, he thought.

  Three Chernagors stood nervously before King Grus. They’d escaped from Nishevatz with a rope they’d let down from the wall. All three were hollow-cheeked and scrawny. Through Beloyuz, Grus asked them, “How bad off for food is Nishevatz?”

  They all tried to talk at once. Beloyuz pointed to the man in the middle, the tallest of the three. He spewed forth a mouthful of gutturals. “He says the city is hungry,” Beloyuz told Grus. “He says to look at him, to look at these fellows with him. He says they were strapping men when this siege started. They might as well be ghosts now, he says.”

  They were, to Grus’ eye, rather substantial ghosts even now. The king asked, “How hard will the Chernagors fight if we attack them?”

  Again, all three talked at once. This time, they began to argue. Beloyuz said, “One of them says Vasilko’s men will strike a blow or two for appearance’s sake and then give up. The others say they will fight hard.”

  “I heard Prince Vsevolod’s name in there,” Grus said. “What did they say about him?”

  Vsevolod’s name in Grus’ mouth was plenty to start the Chernagors talking. Whatever they said, it sounded impassioned. Beloyuz let them go on for a while before observing, “They do not think well of His Highness, Your Majesty.”

  “I would have guessed that,” Grus said—an understatement, if anything. “But what do they think of fighting on the same side as the Banished One?”

  When Beloyuz translated that into the Chernagor tongue, the three escapees began arguing again. Without a word of the language, Grus had no trouble figuring that out. One of them said something that touched a nerve, too, for Beloyuz shouted angrily at him. He shouted back. Before long, all four Chernagors were yelling at the top of their lungs.

  “What do they say?” Grus asked. Beloyuz paid him no attention. “What do they say?” he asked again. Still no response. “What do they say?” he roared in a voice that might have carried across a battlefield.

  For a heartbeat, he didn’t think even that would remind Beloyuz he was there. Then, reluctantly, the noble broke away from the other Chernagors. “They say vile things, insulting things, Your Majesty,” he said, his voice full of indignation. “One of them, the vile dog, says better the Banished One than Vsevolod. You ought to burn a man who says things like that.”

  “No, the Banished One burns men who don’t agree with him, burns them or makes them into thralls,” Grus said. “They will be free of a bad master once he is gone from Nishevatz. Tell them that, Beloyuz.”

  The nobleman spoke. The Chernagors who’d escaped from the besieged city spoke, too. Beloyuz scowled. Reluctantly, he turned back to the king and returned to Avornan. “They say Nishevatz will be free of one bad master, but it will have another one if Vsevolod takes it.”

  Grus muttered to himself. He’d known the people of Nishevatz disliked Prince Vsevolod. He could hardly have helped knowing it. But somehow he had managed to avoid realizing how much they despised Vsevolod. If they thought him no different from the Banished One … If they thought that, no wonder they put up with Vasilko even if he followed the exiled god.

  “Send them away,” Grus told Beloyuz, pointing to the men who had come out of Nishevatz. “Feed them. Keep them under guard. Then come back to me.”

  “Just as you say, Your Majesty, so shall it be.” Beloyuz went off with the other three Chernagors. When he returned a few minutes later, curiosity filled his features. “What do you want, Your Majesty?”

  “How would you like to be Prince of Nishevatz once we take the place?” Grus came straight out with what he had in mind.

  Beloyuz stared. “You ask me to … to betray my prince?”

  “No,” Grus said. Yes, he thought. Aloud, he went on, “How can Vsevolod be Prince of Nishevatz if everybody in the place hates him? If we have to kill everyone in the city to set him back on the throne, what kind of city-state will he rule? And if we have to kill everyone in Nishevatz to set him back on the throne, and decide to do it, how are we different from the Banished One? Whose will do we really work?”

  “I think you use this for an excuse to do what you want to do anyhow because you do not like Prince Vsevolod,” Beloyuz said. “You ask me to betray my prince, when I went into exile for him.”

  That set Grus to muttering again. Beloyuz was right—he didn’t like Vsevolod. By all appearances, next to nobody could stand Vsevolod. The three Chernagors who’d gotten out of Nishevatz had had no use for him. From what they’d said, the rest of the people on the walls and behind them felt the same way. It was just Grus’ luck to want to replace the unpleasant exiled Prince of Nishevatz with one of the few men who actually thought well of him.

  With a sigh, the king said, “Well, Your Excellency, I won’t ask you to do anything that goes against your conscience. Still, you ought to think about what’s best for you and what’s best for Nishevatz.”

  “What is best for Nishevatz is Prince Vsevolod. What is best for me is Prince Vsevolod.” Beloyuz bowed and strode off.

  What Grus muttered this time made two or three of his guardsmen gape. He’d said worse while a river-galley captain, but not since taking the crown. He knew what would happen next, too. Beloyuz would tell Vsevolod about the usurpation he’d tried to arrange, and Vsevolod would throw a fit. Grus’ head started to ache just thinking about that.

  But Vsevolod didn’t come to bother him. Day followed day, and the King of Avornis didn’t meet the Prince of Nishevatz. He didn’t ask where Vsevolod was or what he was doing, either. He didn’t care.

  Then one of the Avornans who guarded Vsevolod and his followers came to Grus and said, “Your Majesty, I think you’d better go see the prince.”

  “Why?” Even to himself, Grus sounded like a boy told to take a bath he didn’t want.

  “He’s … not well,” the guard answered.

  “Oh.” Grus made a sour face. “All right, in that case.”

  When he went to Vsevolod’s tent, he went with two squads of his own guardsmen
. He assumed Beloyuz would have told the other Chernagors who’d left Nishevatz with Vsevolod about his proposal. He also assumed they wouldn’t like the idea, and wouldn’t like him on account of it.

  Beloyuz saw him coming, and walked up to greet him with three or four other refugee Chernagor noblemen. “So you have heard, then,” Beloyuz said.

  “Yes, Your Excellency, I’ve heard,” Grus said, though he hadn’t heard very much. He asked, “How is His Highness this morning?” With a little luck, that would tell him more than he already knew.

  But Beloyuz only shrugged and answered, “About the same. He has been about the same since it happened.” Grus nodded as though he understood what the Chernagor meant. Beloyuz went on, “I suppose you want to see him.”

  “That is why I’m here, yes.” The king nodded.

  Beloyuz didn’t argue. He and the other exiles simply stood aside. Surrounded by his bodyguards, Grus went on to Vsevolod’s tent. He felt like scratching his head. The Chernagors seemed more resigned than furious. Were they finally fed up with Vsevolod, too? If they were, why had Beloyuz refused to supplant the prince? Things didn’t add up.

  And then, as soon as Grus got a glimpse of Vsevolod, they did. The Prince of Nishevatz lay on a cot much like the one in which Grus slept. He recognized Grus. The king could see it in his eyes—or rather, in his right eye. His left eye was half closed. The whole left side of his face was slack. The left corner of his mouth hung down in an altogether involuntary frown. He raised his right hand to wag a finger at Grus. The left side of his body seemed not to be under the control of his will anymore.

  He tried to speak. Only gibberish came out of his mouth. Grus couldn’t even tell if it was meant for the Chernagor language or Avornan. One of his guardsmen muttered, “Gods spare me from such a fate.”

  The guard was young and vigorous. Grus remained vigorous, but he was no longer young. Every now and then, his body reminded him it wouldn’t last forever. But this … He shivered. This was like looking at living death. He completely agreed with the guard. Next to this, simply falling over dead was a mercy. “Gods spare me indeed,” he said, and left the tent in a hurry.

  “You see,” Beloyuz said when Grus came out into the sunshine again.

  “I see,” Grus said heavily. “When did it happen?”

  “After I told him what you wanted from me,” Beloyuz replied. “He was angry, as you would guess. He was furious, in fact. But then, in the middle of his cursing, he said his head ached fit to burst. And he fell down, and he has been like—that—ever since.”

  “Has a healer seen him?” Grus asked.

  “Yes.” Beloyuz nodded. “He said he could do nothing. He also said the prince was not a young man, and it could have happened at any time. It could have.”

  He did not sound as though he believed it. But he also did not come right out and blame Grus to his face, as he easily might have. The king was grateful for his forbearance; he hadn’t expected even that much. “I will send for my chief wizard,” Grus said. “I don’t know how much help he can give, but we ought to find out, eh?”

  “Thank you.” Now Beloyuz was the one who sounded surprised. “If I had thought you would do this, I would have come to you sooner. I thought you would say, ‘Let him suffer. Let him die.’”

  “That’s what the Banished One does,” Grus replied. “By the gods in the heavens, Beloyuz, I would not wish this on Vsevolod. I woud not wish this on anyone. It’s the people of Nishevatz who don’t want him as their prince, but that’s a different story. You should not be angry with me for trying to get around it.”

  The Chernagor noble didn’t answer. Grus sent one of his guardsmen to find Pterocles. The wizard came to Prince Vsevolod’s tent a few minutes later. Grus told him what had happened to the prince. “You want me to cure him?” Pterocles asked. “I don’t know if I can do anything like that.”

  “Do your best, whatever it turns out to be,” Grus said. “Whatever it is, I don’t think you’ll hurt Vsevolod.” He turned to Beloyuz. “If you want to say anything different, go ahead.”

  “No, not I,” Beloyuz answered. “I say, thank you. I say, gods be with you.”

  Pterocles ducked his way into Vsevolod’s tent. Grus heard the stricken prince yammering wordlessly. He also heard Pterocles begin a soft, low-voiced incantation. Vsevolod fell silent. After a little while, the rhythm of Pterocles’ spell changed. When the wizard came out of the tent, his face was grave.

  “What did you do?” Grus asked.

  “Not as much as I would have liked,” Pterocles answered. “Something is … broken inside his head. I don’t know how to put it any better than that. I can’t fix it any more than the healer could. The spell I used will make him more comfortable, but that’s all. I’m sorry.”

  “Even this is better than nothing,” Beloyuz said, and bowed to the wizard. “Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do enough to make it worth your while to thank me,” Pterocles said. “I only wish I could have.” He bowed, too, and walked away kicking at the dirt.

  Grus and Beloyuz looked at each other. After a moment, the king said, “You know what I’m going to ask, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Beloyuz looked even less happy than Pterocles had. “It makes me feel like a carrion crow, like a vulture.”

  “I understand that,” Grus said. “But can you tell me it isn’t needful? Nishevatz will need a prince who isn’t Vasilko. Who better than you?”

  “Vsevolod,” the nobleman said at once.

  “I told you no to that before,” Grus answered. “You thought I was wrong then. You can’t very well say I’m wrong now.”

  Beloyuz’s face twisted. “I need to think this over,” he said.

  “Don’t take too long,” Grus warned.

  Three days later, Vsevolod died. After that, Beloyuz had no excuses left.

  Most of the time, Lanius was content being who and what he was. He had seen a battlefield when he was still a boy, and he never wanted to see another one. He never wanted to hear another one, either, nor to smell one. Every so often, that particular stink showed up in his nightmares.

  But he sometimes had moments when he wished he could be, if not in the action, then closer to it than he was while staying in the royal palace and the city of Avornis. Those moments came most often when the latest dispatch from Grus in the Chernagor country or from the officers in the south reached the capital.

  He didn’t want to go into the field. But he wanted to know more about what went on there than he could find out from reading reports in the comfortable shelter of the palace. He would sometimes question the couriers who brought them. Some of the men who came down from the north had actually seen the things Grus was talking about. They helped make them seem real for Lanius.

  The king had less luck with the dispatch riders who brought word of the civil war among the Menteshe up from the south. One of them said, “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but we have to piece this together ourselves. We don’t have our own people down by Yozgat watching the battles. We wait until word comes up to our side of the river, and then we try to figure out who’s lying and who isn’t.”

  “How do you go about doing that?” Lanius asked.

  “Carefully,” the courier answered, which made the king laugh. The other man went on, “I wasn’t joking, Your Majesty. All sorts of rumors bubble up about what’s going on between Sanjar and Korkut. We try to pop the bubbles and see which ones leave nothing but a bad smell behind.”

  “Shame Avornis can’t do more,” Lanius remarked. Very seriously, the courier shook his head. “We’re ordered not to favor either one of the Menteshe princes. If we did, the fellow we showed we didn’t like would use that to rally the rest of the nomads to his side. We don’t want to give either one of them that edge. Let them smash away at each other for as long as they please.”

  That gray wisdom sounded like Grus. “All right,” Lanius said. “Just my impatience talking, I suppose.”

  His brother-in-law had a
different sort of impatience driving him. “I can’t wait for Limosa to have her baby,” Ortalis said one hot summer afternoon.

  “Ah?” Lanius said. If Ortalis started going on about how much he wanted a son, Lanius intended to find an excuse to disappear. He didn’t want to hear about a baby that might prove a threat to his own son’s position.

  But that wasn’t what was on his brother-in-law’s mind. Ortalis nodded like a hungry wolf thinking about meat. “That’s right,” he said. “There are things you can’t do when a woman’s carrying a child.”

  “Ah?” Lanius said again. “Such as what?” Certain postures had been awkward after Sosia’s belly bulged, but they’d gone on making love until not long before she bore Crex and Pitta.

  “Things,” Ortalis repeated, and declined to elaborate.

  This time, Lanius didn’t say, “Ah.” He said, “Oh.” He recalled the kinds of things his brother-in-law enjoyed. Cristata’s scarred back, and the way the ruined skin had felt under his fingers, leaped vividly to mind. What would happen if you did that sort of thing with—to—a pregnant woman? After a moment’s thought, he shook his head. Maybe it was squeamish of him, but he didn’t really want to know.

  What he was thinking must have shown on his face. Prince Ortalis turned red. “Don’t get all high and mighty with me,” he said. “I’m not the only one who does things like that.”

  “I didn’t say you were.” Lanius didn’t want another quarrel with Ortalis; they’d had too many already. But he didn’t want Grus’ legitimate son to think he liked Ortalis’ ideas of fun, either. Picking his words with care, he said, “There’s enough pain in the world as is: I don’t much see the point of adding more on purpose.” He nearly added, It seems like something the Banished One would do. At the last instant, he swallowed that. If Ortalis didn’t have ideas about the Banished One, why give them to him?

  All Ortalis did now was make an exasperated noise. “You don’t understand,” he said.

  “You’re right.” Lanius nodded emphatic agreement. “I don’t.”