The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  Lanius muttered. The older he got, the more complex his feelings toward his father-in-law became. Grus had stolen most of the royal power. He’d made Lanius marry his daughter. It hadn’t turned out to be an altogether loveless marriage, but it wasn’t the one Lanius would have made if he’d had a choice, either.

  Set against that were all the things Grus might have done but hadn’t. He might have taken Lanius’ head or packed him off to the Maze. He hadn’t. He might have become a fearsome tyrant, slaughtering anyone who presumed to disagree with him. Despite repeated revolts against his rule, he hadn’t. And he might have lost big pieces of Avornis to the Thervings, to the Menteshe, or to the Chernagor pirates. He hadn’t done that, either.

  He had raised a worthless son, and he had fathered a bastard or two. He had also done his best to keep Lanius too poor to cause trouble for him. Set against that, he had gotten the Banished One’s notice. If the Banished One took Grus seriously, Lanius didn’t see how he couldn’t.

  Grus gets the job done, Lanius thought reluctantly. Whatever he needs to do, he usually manages to do it. The other king had even found a way to keep nobles from turning Avornan peasants into their personal retainers. That was a problem Lanius hadn’t even noticed. Grus hadn’t just noticed it. He’d solved it.

  “He’s still a usurper,” Lanius murmured. That was true. It was also infuriating. But Grus could have been so much worse. Admitting it was even more infuriating for Lanius.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Rain dripped from a sky the color of dirty wool. King Grus squelched through the mud, heading from his pavilion toward the Avornan line around Nishevatz. He could hardly see the walls of the city through the shifting curtain of raindrops. Rain in the summertime came every now and again to the city of Avornis; down in the south, it was rare, rare enough to be a prodigy. Here in the Chernagor country, the weather did whatever it pleased.

  The mud tried to pull the boots right off Grus’ feet. Each step took an effort. Every so often, he would pause to kick gobs of muck from his boots, or to scrape them against rocks. He tried to imagine Lanius picking his way through this dirt pudding of a landscape. The image refused to form. There was more to Lanius than he’d thought when he first took the throne; he was willing to admit that much. But the other king was irrevocably a man of the palace. Put him in charge of a siege and he wouldn’t know what to do.

  Each cat his own rat, Grus thought. He knew he would have as much trouble in the archives as Lanius would here in front of Nishevatz. In his own province, Lanius was perfectly capable. Grus remained convinced that what he did was more important for Avornis.

  “Halt! Who comes!” A sentry who looked like a phantom called out the challenge.

  “Grus,” Grus answered.

  That phantom came to attention. “Advance and be recognized, uh, Your Majesty.” The king did. The sentry saluted. He wore a wool rain cape over a helmet and chainmail. He’d smeared the armor with grease and tallow, so that water beaded on it. Even so, when the weather finally dried—if it ever did—he and all the other Avornan soldiers would have plenty of polishing and scraping to do to keep rust from running rampant. With another salute, the sentry said, “Pass on, Your Majesty.”

  “I thank you.” Grus’ own helm and chainmail were gilded to mark his rank. That made the iron resist rust better, but he would have to do some polishing and scraping, too. He did not let servants tend to his armor, but cared for it himself. It protected him. How better to make sure it was as it should be than to tend it with his own eyes and hands?

  Another sentry, alert as could be, challenged him. Again, Grus advanced and was recognized. The sentry said, “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but where are your bodyguards?”

  “Back there somewhere,” Grus answered vaguely. He felt a small-boy pride at escaping them.

  The sentry clucked in disapproval. “You should let them keep an eye on you. How will you stay safe if they don’t?”

  “I can take care of myself,” Grus said. The sentry, being only a sentry, didn’t presume to argue. Grus went on. The farther he went, though, the more shame ate away at his pride. The man was right. He took good care of his armor and forgot his bodyguards, who might prove at least as important in keeping him alive.

  Promising himself he wouldn’t do that anymore, he pressed on now. He got away with it, too. When he found Hirundo, the general ordered half a dozen men to form up around him. Grus didn’t quarrel. Hirundo wagged a finger. “You’ve been naughty.”

  “No doubt.” The king’s tone was dry—the only thing in the dripping landscape that was. “What do you propose to do about it?”

  “Why, send you to bed without supper, Your Majesty,” Hirundo answered with a grin. “Oh, and keep you safe, if I can, since you don’t seem very interested in doing that for yourself.” Unlike the guard, he had rank enough to point out Grus’ folly.

  “Believe me, you’ve made your point,” Grus said. “I hope you’re not going to turn into one of those tedious people who keep banging on tent pegs after they’ve driven them into the ground.”

  “Me? I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.” Hirundo was the picture of soggy innocence. “I hope you’re not going to be one of those tedious tent pegs that keep coming loose no matter how you bang on them.”

  “Ha,” Grus said, and then, for good measure, “Ha, ha.” Hirundo bowed, unabashed as usual. The king pointed in the general direction of Nishevatz. “How would you like to try to attack the walls under cover of this rain?”

  “I will if you give the order, Your Majesty.” Hirundo turned serious on the instant. “If you give me a choice, though, I’d rather not. Archery is impossible in weather like this, and—”

  “For us and for them,” Grus broke in.

  “Oh, yes.” The general nodded. “But they don’t need to shoot much. They can just drop things on our heads while we’re coming up the ladders. We need archers more than they do, to keep their men on the walls busy ducking while we’re coming up. And planting scaling ladders in gooey muck isn’t really something I care to do, either.”

  “Oh,” Grus said. “I see.” To his disappointment, he did see. “You make more sense than I wish you did.”

  “Sorry, Your Majesty,” Hirundo replied. “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

  “A likely story,” Grus said. “All right, then. If you don’t want to attack in a rainstorm, what about one of the fogs that come off the Northern Sea? Do you think that would be any better?”

  Now Hirundo paused to think it over. “It might, yes, if you’ve given up on starving Vasilko out. Have you?”

  “Summer’s moving along,” Grus said, which both did and did not answer the question. He continued, “It won’t be easy for us to stay here through the winter, and who knows how long Vasilko can hold out?”

  “Something to that.” Hirundo sounded willing but not consumed by enthusiasm. “Well, I suppose we could get ready to try. No telling when another one of those fogs will roll in, you know. The more you want one, the longer you’re likely to wait.”

  “You’re probably right,” Grus agreed. “But let’s get ready. We’ll see how hard they really want to fight for Vasilko.” He hoped the answer was not very.

  How do we keep the Chernagor pirates from descending on our coasts? Lanius’ pen raced across the parchment. Since he’d started writing How to Be a King for Crex, he’d discovered he was good at posing broad, sweeping questions. Coming up with answers for them seemed much harder.

  He did his best here, as he’d done his best with every one of the questions he’d asked himself. He wrote about keeping the Chernagor city-states divided among themselves, about keeping trade with them strong so they wouldn’t want to send out raiders, and about the tall-masted ships Grus had ordered built to match those the men from the Chernagor country used. His pen faltered as he tried to describe those ships. He’d ordered them forth, but he’d never seen anything except river galleys and barges. I’ll have to ask Grus more when he
comes back from the north, he thought, and scribbled a note on the parchment to remind himself to do that.

  Once the note was written, the king paused, nibbling on the end of the reed pen. Some scribes used goose quills, but Lanius was better at cutting reeds, and was also convinced they held more ink. Besides, nibbling the end of a goose quill gave you nothing but a mouthful of soggy fluff.

  After a few minutes of thought, he came up with another good, broad, sweeping question, and wrote it down to make sure he didn’t forget it before he could put it on parchment. How do we deal with the thralls who may cross into Avornis from the lands of the Menteshe, and with those we may find in the lands the Menteshe rule?

  He almost scratched out the last half of the question. It struck him as optimism run wild. In the end, he left it there. He didn’t suppose he would have if the nomads weren’t fighting one another, but the civil war that had started among them after Prince Ulash died showed no signs of slowing down.

  With or without the second half, the question was plenty to keep him thoughtful for some little while. What would Crex or some king who came after him need to know? Lanius warned that, while some escaped thralls came across the Stura seeking freedom, others remained under the Banished One’s enchantments in spite of appearances to the contrary, and served as the exiled god’s spies. Or sometimes his assassins, Lanius thought with a shiver of memory.

  Lanius also warned Crex that spells for curing thralls were less reliable than everyone wished they were. Although, he wrote, lately it does seem as though these charms are attended with more success than was hitherto the case.

  The king hoped that was true. He looked at what he’d written. He decided he’d qualified it well enough. By the time Crex was old enough to want to look at something like How to Be a King, everyone would have a better idea of how effective Pterocles’ spells really were.

  After getting up and stretching, Lanius decided not to sit down again and go back to the book just then. Instead, he stored the parchment and pen and jar of ink in the cabinet he’d brought into the archives for them. At first, he’d been nervous each time he turned away from the book, wondering if he would be stubborn enough to come back to it later. By now, he’d gotten far enough into it to have some confidence he would keep returning and would, one day, finish, even if that day seemed a long way off.

  When he came out of the archives in his plain tunic and breeches, several palace servants walked past without paying him the least attention. That amused him. Clothes make the man, he thought. Without them, he seemed just another servant himself.

  When Bubulcus hurried past, oblivious to the rank of the nondescript fellow in the even more nondescript clothes, Lanius almost called him back. Showing the toplofty servant he didn’t know everything there was to know always tempted the king. But Lanius didn’t feel like listening to Bubulcus’ whined excuses—or to his claims that of course he’d known who Lanius was all along. Bubulcus, after all, had never made a mistake in his life, certainly not in his own mind.

  Otus, now, Otus was a different story. The former thrall liberated by Pterocles’ magic seemed glad to be alive, glad to know he was alive. If he made a mistake, he just laughed about it. And, when Lanius came to his guarded room, he knew who the king was. Bowing low, he murmured, “Your Majesty.”

  “Hello, Otus,” Lanius said. “How are you today?”

  The thrall straightened, a broad smile on his face. “I’m fine, thank you. Couldn’t be better. Isn’t it a good day?”

  To Lanius, it seemed a day no different from any other. But then, Lanius hadn’t lived almost his entire life under the shadow of thralldom. To Otus, today was different from most of the days he’d known, not least because he knew it so much more completely. Lanius said, “I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Go ahead,” Otus said. If he noticed the guards who flanked King Lanius, he gave no sign. Lanius still didn’t trust the magic that had lifted the dark veil of thralldom. Did something of the Banished One lurk beneath the freed thrall’s sunny exterior? There had been no sign of it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  Besides Otus’ behavior, there was other evidence against any lingering influence from the Banished One in him. The other thralls in the royal palace had calmly and quietly killed themselves before Pterocles could try his magic on them. Didn’t that argue that the Banished One feared its power? Probably. But was he ruthless enough and far-seeing enough to sacrifice a pair of thralls to leave his opponents thinking they’d gained an advantage they didn’t really have? Again, probably. And so … bodyguards.

  Lanius asked, “Do you really think we could free a lot of thralls using the spells that freed you?” Otus was the only one here who knew from the inside out what being a thrall was like. If his answer couldn’t be fully trusted, it had to be considered.

  “I sure hope so, Your Majesty,” Otus answered. Then he grinned sheepishly. “But that wasn’t what you asked, was it?”

  “Well, no,” Lanius admitted.

  Otus screwed up his face into a parody of deep thought. He finally shrugged and said, “I do think so. If it freed me, I expect it could free anybody. I’m nothing special.”

  “You are now,” Lanius told him. Otus laughed. The king was right. But the former thrall also had a point. The longer he was free, the more ordinary he seemed. These days, he sounded like anyone else—anyone from the south, for he did keep his accent. When first coming out of the shadows, he’d had only a thrall’s handful of words, and wouldn’t have known what to do with more if he had owned them. He truly must be cured, Lanius thought, but then, doubtfully, mustn’t he?

  Beloyuz came up to King Grus. He pointed toward the walls of Nishevatz. Bowing, the Chernagor nobleman—the Chernagor whom Grus now styled Prince of Nishevatz—asked, “Your Majesty, how long is this army going to do nothing but sit in front of my city-state?”

  Grus almost laughed in his face. He had to gnaw on the inside of his lower lip to keep from doing just that. Call Beloyuz the Prince of Nishevatz, and what did he do? Why, he started sounding just like Prince Vsevolod. After a few heartbeats, when Grus was sure he wouldn’t say anything outrageous or scandalous, he answered, “Well, Your Highness, we are working on that. We’re not ready to move yet, but we are working on it.”

  He waited to see if that would satisfy Beloyuz. The Chernagor frowned. He didn’t look as glum or disgusted as Vsevolod would have, but he didn’t miss by much, either. Suspicion clogging his voice, he said, “You are not just telling me this to make me go away and leave you alone?”

  “By King Olor’s beard, Your Highness, I am not,” Grus said.

  Now Beloyuz didn’t answer for a little while. “All right,” he said when he did speak. “I believe you. For now, I believe you.” He bowed to Grus once more and strode away.

  With a sigh, Grus walked down to the seashore. Guards flanked him. His shadow stretched out before him. It was longer than it would have been at high summer, and got longer still every day. He understood Beloyuz’s worries, for the campaigning season was slipping away like grains of sand through an hourglass. If Nishevatz didn’t fall on its own soon, he would have to move against it—either move, or try to press on with the siege through the winter, or give up and go back to Avornis. They were all unappetizing choices.

  The weather was as fine as he’d ever seen it up here in the north. He muttered a curse at that, tasting the irony of it. He hadn’t been lying to Beloyuz. He and Hirundo kept waiting for one of the famous fogs of the land of the Chernagors to come rolling in to conceal an attack on the walls: They waited and waited, while bright, clear day followed bright, clear day. The Chernagor country would have been a much more pleasant place if its summer days were like this all the time. Even so, Grus would gladly have traded this weather for the more usual murk.

  Shorebirds skittered along the beach. Some of them, little balls of gray and white fluff, scooted on short legs right at the edge of the lapping sea. They would poke their beaks down into
the sandy mud, every now and then coming away with a prize. Others, larger, waded on legs that made them look as though they were on stilts. Those had longer bills, too, some straight, some drooping down, and some, curiously, curving up.

  Grus eyed those last birds and scratched his head, wondering what a bill like that could be good for. He saw no use for it, but supposed it had to have some, or the wading birds would have looked different.

  Thanks to the clear weather, he could see a long way when he looked out to the Northern Sea. He spied none of the great ships the other Chernagor city-states had sent during the last siege of Nishevatz. They still feared Pterocles’ sorcery.

  That left Nishevatz to its own devices. Grus turned toward the gray stone walls that had defied his army for so long. They remained as sturdy as ever. Small in the distance, men moved along them. The Chernagors’ armor glinted in the unusually bright sunshine. How hard would Vasilko’s soldiers fight if he assailed those walls? He scowled. No sure way to know ahead of time. He would have to find out by experiment.

  Not today, Grus thought. Today the Chernagors could see whatever he did, just as he could watch them. If one of the swaddling fogs this coast could breed ever came … then, maybe. But no, not today.

  He and his guards weren’t the only men walking up the beach. That lean, angular shape could only belong to Pterocles. The wizard waved as he approached. “Good day, Your Majesty,” he called.

  “Too good a day, maybe,” Grus answered. “We could do with a spell of worse weather, if you want to know the truth.”

  Pterocles only shrugged. “Beware of any man who calls himself a weatherworker. He’s lying. No man can do much with the weather. It’s too big for a mere man to change. The Banished One … the Banished One is another story.”

  Grus suddenly saw the cloudless sky in a whole new light. “Are you saying the Banished One is to blame for this weather?” That gave him a different and more urgent reason for wanting fog.

  And his question worried Pterocles. “No, I don’t think so,” the wizard answered after a long pause. “I believe I would feel it if he were meddling with the weather, and I don’t. But he could, if he chose to. An ordinary sorcerer? No.”