The Bastard King tsom-1

by Dan Chernenko

  But the commander of his bodyguards was right in general, if not in particular. He’d never seen a winter like this one before, and he didn’t expect to see another like this one even if he did become a bent old man with a long white beard. “Some people say the rivers are frozen clean to the bottom,” he remarked.

  “I don’t know about that,” Lepturus said. “And I don’t think they can know anything about that, either. Have they been down to the river bottoms to see for themselves?”

  “I don’t suppose so,” Lanius admitted. He filed that one away, as he did with thoughts every now and then. It boiled down to three words— what’s the evidence? But not even an interesting idea could keep him from going on, “There’s an awful lot of snow and ice, though, even if it doesn’t go clear to the bottom.”

  “That there is. I said so myself, as a matter of fact,” Lepturus answered. “And the ice is mighty thick. I won’t argue about that, either. I’d bet you could stampede a herd of elephants across the rivers, and they wouldn’t come close to cracking it.”

  “I wish we had a herd of elephants in the city of Avornis,” Lanius said. “That would be fun to try, if they didn’t freeze.”

  “Yes—if,” Lepturus said. “But everything that stays out in the cold freezes this winter. If the weather were only a little better, I’d worry about King Dagipert laying siege to us, what with the rivers and the marshes frozen hard as iron. But I don’t think even Dagipert can get the Therving army from the mountains to here without losing most of his men, maybe all of ’em, on the way.”

  “Even Dagipert?” Lanius said. “Does that mean Dagipert’s a good king?”

  “A strong one, anyhow, and a cursed fine general,” Lepturus said. “That makes him a lot more dangerous to Avornis, to us, than he would be otherwise.”

  Lanius hadn’t thought being a good king and being a strong king might differ. Everyone said King Mergus, his father, had been a strong King of Avornis. He’d assumed that made Mergus a good king, too.

  He started to ask Lepturus, then changed his mind. Instead, he found a different question. “Does the city have enough in the way of supplies?”

  “For now, Your Majesty,” the officer answered. “If you hadn’t said we ought to start laying in more when you did, we might not’ve, but you did and we did and we do. I think we’ll be all right no matter how long this cold weather lasts.”

  “Even if it goes right on into summer?” Lanius’ eyes widened.

  “Well, no,” Lepturus said. “Not if it does that. But I don’t see how it could do that, do you? Not even the Banished One could make it do that… I don’t think.”

  “I don’t think he can, either,” Lanius said. “He’s never done anything like that, not in all the years since Olor cast him out of the heavens.” He sighed. “I’ve never thought it was fair for the gods to get rid of the Banished One and to inflict him on us poor mortals.”

  “You don’t want to talk to me about that,” Lepturus said. “You want to talk to Arch-Hallow Bucco.”

  “No, I don’t. I never want to talk to Arch-Hallow Bucco.” Lanius made a nasty face. “If Megadyptes wanted the job back, Bucco wouldn’t be arch-hallow anymore. But Megadyptes would rather spend his time praying than riding herd on unruly priests, and so…” He sighed again.

  “Can’t say as I blame him,” Lepturus remarked. “You could ask some other priest, then, Your Majesty. It doesn’t have to be Bucco.”

  “I’ve tried that, as a matter of fact.” Lanius screwed up his face again. “Do you know what they say when I do?”

  The guards commander thought, but not for long. Then he intoned, “ ‘It’s a mystery,’ ” exactly as a priest would have—exactly as a couple of priests had when Lanius asked the question.

  “That’s it! That’s the answer!” Lanius said. “It’s the answer, but it doesn’t help.”

  “One thing you find out as you get older, Your Majesty,” Lepturus said. “Getting answers is easy. Getting answers that help is a whole different business.”

  Winter went on and on. The Banished One might not have been able to make it stretch into summer, but he seemed to be doing his best. Blizzards kept roaring through the city of Avornis all the way through what should have been the beginning of spring. Right about what should have been the beginning of spring, Karajuk returned to the city.

  As before, Lanius ascended to the Diamond Throne. As before, Queen Certhia sat at his right hand. As before, Lepturus stood at his left. “How now?” he asked when Karajuk and what looked like the same four henchmen made their bows before him.

  “My Master asks if you are ready to do his bidding now that you have had a taste of winter and hunger,” Karajuk said.

  “It has been a cold winter, hasn’t it?” Lanius said, as though he hadn’t particularly noticed till the Menteshe reminded him. “But there is no special hunger here—no worse than any other winter, anyhow.”

  Karajuk’s narrow eyes widened. In that moment, Lanius was sure he saw the Banished One looking out through his envoy. “You lie,” the Menteshe hissed.

  “You mind your tongue, wretch,” Lepturus rumbled, “or we’ll send you back to your vile Master with it in your pocket.”

  Lanius raised his hand. “It’s all right, Lepturus. He’s a barbarian, and knows no better.” As he’d been sure it would, that angered Karajuk all over again. “But what I said is true. No one starves here in the city of Avornis. By all the gods, I swear it.”

  That was also calculated to infuriate Karajuk, who served one no longer, or not quite, a god. “With this winter?” the Menteshe growled. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you please,” Lanius said politely. “If you like, after you leave the palace our soldiers will escort you through the city so you can see for yourself whether I am telling the truth.”

  “Do you take me for a little boy?” Karajuk could be insulting, too. “Your soldiers will show me what Avornis wants me to see.”

  “No.” When Lanius shook his head, he felt the weight of the crown. “Go where you will in the city of Avornis. The guards will protect you. Folk do not love the Banished One here. You need protection in the city.”

  Karajuk and his henchmen put their heads together. When he turned back to Lanius, he said, “I will take you up on your generous offer.” Irony dripped from his words. “I think you are bluffing. I think you are lying.”

  Not only Lepturus but several of the bodyguards growled at that. Lanius said, “I think you are rude and serve a bad Master. After you go through the city, we can see who is right. For now, you are dismissed.”

  “You had better be careful, bastard boy who calls himself king,” Karajuk said. “If my Master—”

  “You are dismissed,” Lanius said again. Karajuk, scowling blacker than the storm clouds outside, had to withdraw. Lanius might not rule on his own yet, but he had discovered that the king got the last word.

  Karajuk and the Banished One’s lesser servants took their tour the next day. Along with ordinary guardsmen, Lepturus sent a couple of wizards with them. Lanius didn’t know what the ambassador and his henchmen might do in the way of magic, but he agreed with the commander of the bodyguard— better not to have to find out the hard way.

  When Karajuk and his followers returned to the throne room after going through the city, the Menteshe looked less happy than ever. “I still say it’s some sort of a trick,” he ground out.

  “You may think what you like, of course,” Lanius said. “We here in Avornis have a word in our language for someone who will not believe what his eyes tell him.” He’d pulled that gibe from an ancient book of japes. He’d hoped he would get the chance to use it. He didn’t smile at Karajuk, but he felt like it.

  The Banished One’s ambassador said, “You will regret this.” He turned and stalked out of the throne room without waiting to be dismissed. The other Menteshe, as always, followed him. They might have been puppies trailing after their mother.

  “Nicely done, Your
Majesty,” Lepturus said when they were gone.

  “Maybe,” Lanius answered. “We’ll have trouble once good weather finally comes again.”

  His guards commander only shrugged. “Name a year when we haven’t had trouble.” Try as he might, Lanius couldn’t.

  Resentfully, sullenly, six weeks after it should have, winter finally left Avornis. “Now we’ll have floods, on account of all the melting snow,” Nicator predicted.

  “I hope not,” Grus said, fearing his friend was right.

  “As soon as things thaw out and dry out, we’re going to have the Menteshe on our backs, too,” Nicator said. “And the Thervings—you mark my words. Dagipert’s still got to be steaming because we held him last summer.”

  “Well, in that case we ought to get a call to come back to the north before too long,” Grus said. “We’ve gone back and forth between the Stura and the city of Avornis so often, I’m actually starting to know what to do on horseback.”

  “Me, I don’t fall off so much anymore,” Nicator said. “That’ll do.”

  “What worries me is what we’ll do if the Thervings come down out of the mountains and the Menteshe boil up from the south at the same time.”

  “Yes, that’d be bad, all right,” Nicator agreed.

  “Here’s hoping it doesn’t happen.” Grus made the finger sign to repel bad luck. He went on, “You know, there’s one good argument that King Dagipert isn’t the Banished One’s creature.”

  “What’s that, Skipper?”

  “Well, if he were, the Thervings and the Menteshe would move against us together more often than they do,” Grus answered. “Since they don’t, odds are Dagipert’s his own man.”

  “His own miserable old dragon, you mean,” Nicator said. Grus laughed. Nicator went on, “He couldn’t have caused Avornis any more grief if he were the Banished One’s mother-in-law.”

  That probably wasn’t true. Peasants on lands the Menteshe conquered were lost to true humanity forever. Peasants on lands the Thervings overran just started working for them instead of for their own kingdom. In one way, the difference was profound. In another, though, it wasn’t. No matter who took them away or what happened to them, they were still lost to Avornis.

  Before very long, the message the two river-galley officers had expected proved to be waiting for them in a little town alongside the Stura. Grus read the parchment a watch officer handed him, then nodded to Nicator: “We’re ordered to return to the city of Avornis as fast as we can get there. That means by horseback.”

  “Of course it does,” Nicator said gloomily. “If they could stick us in a catapult and shoot us from hither to yon, they’d do that instead.”

  “And you’d like it better, too, wouldn’t you?” Grus asked with a sly smile.

  “Who, me? I might, by the gods. I don’t know for sure. I wouldn’t get saddle sore, anyhow, I’ll tell you that.”

  “No, but you’d like coming down from getting flung a lot less than you like dismounting from a horse.”

  “I might,” Nicator said. “But then again, I might not, too. You never can tell.” Grus snorted. Nicator let out a rumbling chuckle.

  They rode north on a couple of horses the royal post lent them. The royal post of Avornis was supposed to be able to get anywhere in the Kingdom of Avornis in a hurry. If it relied on horses like those first two it furnished Grus and Nicator, Grus had trouble seeing how it did its job. He’d never ridden a more lethargic beast, and Nicator’s was no livelier. “They’ve got two gaits,” Grus said after another vain try at coaxing a canter, let alone a gallop, from his mount. “One’s a walk—”

  “And so’s the other,” Nicator said.

  Grus made a face at him. “If stepping on your commander’s jokes isn’t mutiny, it ought to be.”

  “If you call that a joke, Skipper, it deserves stepping on,” Nicator replied. They both laughed, and rode on at the best speed the sorry horses would give them.

  When they came to the next relay station, they changed mounts. The horses they got there were a little livelier than the ones they’d had before, but not much. They kept heading north, changing horses every station or two. Sometimes they got bad horses, sometimes indifferent ones. If the royal post owned any good horses, it hid them very well.

  And then, as they were drawing near the city of Avornis, the relay stations abruptly stopped. A peasant working in a muddy field laughed when Grus asked him where the next one was. “I’ll tell you where, pal,” he answered. “The other side of Count Corvus’ lands, that’s where. We ain’t had nothing like that hereabouts since my granddad’s day—and Corvus’ granddad’s, too.”

  “Why not?” Grus asked. “The kingdom needs them.”

  “Take it up with Corvus, if you care to,” the peasant said. “It’s none of my business, and it’ll go right on being none of my business, on account of I want to keep my head attached to my neck.” He went back to grubbing in the mud.

  Grus and Nicator rode their sad, weary mounts across Count Corvus’ lands. They rode past the great, frowning castle in which Corvus dwelt. Grus decided to ask the Count no questions after all. He didn’t forget, though. To Nicator, he said, “Some of these nobles need reminding they aren’t kings themselves.”

  “Only way you’d make ’em remember is by dropping a rock on their heads,” Nicator answered.

  “I know.” Grus looked around. “Where can I get my hands on a rock?” Nicator laughed. Grus didn’t.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Arch-Hallow Bucco lifted up his hands in prayer. “From cold, from hunger, from flood, and from the wrath of our foes, deliver us, O ye gods!” he prayed.

  Not even Lanius could quarrel with that. When the ice finally melted, the capital’s drainage channels had faced a challenge as dangerous as any Therving siege. They’d guided away the floodwaters, and Lanius was glad to thank the gods that they had.

  Standing next to him, though, his mother sniffed scornfully. “If Bucco said the day was sunny, I’d carry an umbrella,” Queen Certhia remarked, not bothering to hold her voice down.

  Lanius laughed. So did several other people who heard her. Bucco peered toward the noise. When he saw it centered on Certhia, his mouth tightened, but he went on with the service. He’d had his time in the sun, had it and not succeeded. Now Lanius’ mother had her chance.

  “We need to beat the Thervings again,” she told Lanius after they returned to the palace. “We need to, and we will. And you”—she pointed at him—“you will stay in the city of Avornis while our armies go do it.”

  Sometimes even a king couldn’t escape the hand of fate. Lanius recognized this as one of those times. “Yes, Mother,” he said. If he’d been anxious to watch another battle, he might have made a bigger fuss—or he might not have, and quietly tried to arrange something with Lepturus instead. As things were, one introduction to the iron world of warfare would last him a lifetime.

  “Everything should go well,” Certhia said. Lanius wondered whether she was trying to convince him or herself. But she went on, “Corax is leading a band of Heruls across the mountains, and Corvus will command our army.”

  “And the Menteshe have been very quiet this spring,” Lanius added. “We made the Banished One thoughtful when we came through his dreadful winter so well. He thinks we’re strong, and so he doesn’t want anything to do with us for a while.”

  Queen Certhia nodded. “Just so. I’m glad I thought to make sure the city was so well provisioned. Otherwise, who knows what might have happened?”

  “Who knows?” Lanius echoed tonelessly. He raised an eyebrow as he eyed his mother. She looked back, smiling and candid. As far as he could tell, she really believed supplying the city of Avornis had been her idea. If she ever wrote her memoirs— something Lanius found unlikely, but even so—she would undoubtedly write that she’d had the idea to bring extra grain into the capital to ward against the harsh winter she’d seen coming. Later historians and chroniclers, believing her, would write the same thing.
She might be remembered as Queen Certhia the Forethoughtful, or something of the sort.

  Contemplating that made Lanius distrust every work of history he’d ever read. Were they all full of such foolishness? He would have to do more judging for himself. Plainly, he couldn’t believe everything that was written down.

  He saw no point in arguing with his mother about it. He wouldn’t change her mind. He did ask, “Is it wise to have so much power resting in the hands of two brothers?”

  “Corvus and Corax, you mean?” Certhia asked. Lanius nodded. His mother shrugged. “They’re both good officers, and they both have splendid blood.”

  She waited for him to tell her, Yes, Mother, again. He didn’t. He said, “Isn’t that more likely to make them rebel, not less? Half the nobles in the kingdom think they deserve to be King of Avornis.”

  “But without nobles, we’d have hardly any officers,” Queen Certhia pointed out—which, unfortunately, was also true. Certhia ruffled Lanius’ hair. He hated that. She went on, “If you’re looking for an officer who isn’t a noble, Commodore Grus is in charge of the river galleys that will bring the Heruls into the Thervings’ rear.” She sniffed, as she had in the cathedral. “His father’s called Crex the Unbearable, and I’m not sure even Crex himself knows who his father was.”

  “Grus has done well,” Lanius said.

  “Well, maybe he has, but even so…” His mother sniffed yet again. “It’s not as though he were a man to take seriously.”

  A serving girl came up to them with a tray of cakes and wine. Lanius took a cake—they were glazed with honey and full of raisins—and a cup of wine. The girl smiled at him. He smiled back. He didn’t quite know how it had happened, but girls, lately, didn’t revolt him nearly as much as they had when he was younger.

  His mother had noticed that, too. Frost filled her voice as she said, “You may go now, Prinia.”

  “Yes, Your Royal Highness,” the girl said, and hurried away.

  “Why did you snap at her like that?” Lanius asked. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”