The Bastard King

by Harry Turtledove

  “That’ll be the end of that,” Nicator said with no small satisfaction.

  “We’ll stop to make sure—and to pick up the poor bastard who went over the side,” Grus answered. He raised his voice. “Rowers, rest on your oars.”

  As the Otter glided to a stop, Grus felt a tug on the rudder. He wondered if it had caught on a snag. But it wasn’t a snag, as he discovered when he looked down. A Therving clung to the rudder. Grus yanked out his sword. “Come up,” he called. “Come up and we’ll spare your life.” He added gestures in case the Therving spoke no Avornan.

  He was strong enough, that was certain. Hanging on to the rudder with one hand, he got the other one on the rail. Then he hauled himself up into the Otter and stood there for a moment. With his soaked clothes and long hair, with water dripping from his stubbly chin, he looked as much like a river god as a man.

  “Take his blade,” Grus told a couple of soldiers who’d hurried back to the stern. “I don’t want him doing anything stupid.”

  “Right you are, sir,” one of them said. They advanced on the Therving together.

  Maybe he thought they were coming to kill him. Maybe he’d been one of the men who’d shot hopeless arrows at the Otter as the river galley bore down on the rowboat, and still didn’t feel like giving up. Maybe he’d intended to sell his life dear from the moment he grabbed the rudder. Whatever the reason, his blade leaped free with a wet hiss of metal. He sprang past the startled sailors and straight at Grus.

  Only because Grus had half expected the Therving to do something foolish did he keep from getting cut down in the first moments of the fight. The enemy warrior was bigger, stronger, and younger than he was, and fought as though he didn’t care whether he lived or died. Had a half-mindless thrall from the southern lands under the Banished One’s sway been able to fight at all, he might have fought like that. But thralls mostly lacked the wit to fight at all.

  Grus gave ground. It was that or be hacked down where he stood. The Therving was utterly without fear. Killing seemed the only thing that mattered to him.

  Thunk! An arrow sprouted in his side, as though it had grown there. He grimaced when it struck home, but kept right on trying to slay Grus. Thunk! Thunk!—one in the side, one in the chest. The Therving grunted. Blood began to run from his nostrils and from the corner of his mouth, but he fought on.

  Thunk! Another arrow, this one right in the middle of his chest. Swaying, he nodded to Grus as though to an old friend. “He still remembers you,” he said in excellent Avornan. Only then did he topple.

  “Tough bugger,” a sailor remarked, more in praise than otherwise. “You all right, Skipper?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Grus answered, panting. “Tough bugger is right. I had all I could do to keep him from carving me.”

  Sailors picked up the Therving’s body and flung it over the rail into the Tuola. As it splashed into the river, one of them asked, “What was that he meant, sir, about somebody remembering you?”

  “I don’t know. He was dying. And he didn’t have any idea who I was, anyhow,” Grus said. “How could he?”

  The sailor shrugged and went about his business. Grus wished he could do the same. For him, though, it wasn’t so easy. He had a pretty good idea whom the Therving might have meant. There was only one being who had ever taken note of him. And, just for a moment, he’d thought the Banished One stared out through the dying warrior’s eyes.

  He tried to tell himself he’d been imagining things. He tried and tried, but couldn’t make himself believe it.

  Winter in the city of Avornis was a slow time, a time to spend with friends and family. Rain and snow made travel outside the city difficult, sometimes impossible. Even travel inside the city often wasn’t easy. Without the rivers that came together at or near it, the place never could have grown bigger than an average provincial town. But in a hard winter, the rivers froze, and could stay frozen for weeks at a time. Poor people went hungry then, and the poorest starved. In a very hard winter, the kind that came once or twice in a hundred years, even people not so very poor starved.

  At first, King Lanius didn’t worry about the snow that fell day after dreary day. He enjoyed playing in it and throwing snowballs as much as any other boy his age. Servants’ children could throw snowballs at him without fear of arrest for treason.

  Lepturus was the one who began worrying out loud a couple of weeks before the winter solstice. “We’ve had a lot of snow already this year, Your Majesty,” he said.

  “I know that,” Lanius answered. He knew it quite well. He’d had some of that snow delivered, with considerable force, just in front of his left ear, not long before coming back into the palace.

  But Lepturus persisted. “If it keeps up like this, it’s going to be a nasty one. I think the rivers will freeze, and I think they’ll stay frozen too cursed long.”

  Lanius frowned. He’d come across accounts of such hard times in his reading. “That could be very bad.”

  “You’re right. It could.” Lepturus drummed his fingers on his thigh. “When I was your age, or maybe even smaller, my granddad used to tell me stories about a hard, hard winter that had happened when he was small. He said it got so bad, some people had to turn cannibal to get by. It was as though the Banished One prowled through the streets of the city. We don’t want times like those coming back.”

  “Gods forbid!” Lanius exclaimed. But then, wistfully, he asked, “What was it like—having a grandfather, I mean? I hardly knew my own father, and both my grandfathers died years before I was born.”

  “My granddad was an old man who liked wine a bit too much and talked and talked when he got tiddly,” the commander of his bodyguards said with a reminiscent smile. “But you need to think about the city of Avornis now, and—”

  “Bring in as much grain as we can while the rivers are still passable?” Lanius broke in.

  Lepturus looked at him and clicked his tongue between his teeth. “You’re getting ahead of me, Your Majesty,” he said, almost reproachfully. “Yes, I think that’s what we ought to do, and the sooner the better.”

  “Go tell my mother, then,” Lanius said. “Tell her I think it’s a good idea, too.” His mouth twisted. “Or maybe you’d better not. She doesn’t seem to want to heed anything I say these days.”

  “You’re not that far from coming of age, Your Majesty,” Lepturus said. “Your mother … likes heading the regency.”

  “And so she doesn’t like it when I show I know what I’m doing?” Lanius asked. The guards commander nodded. Lanius sighed. “That’s silly. I’d come of age even if I didn’t know what I was doing. Would she like that better?”

  “You’d have to ask her that,” Lepturus said. “Me, I’ll take her what you said, and I hope she pays attention.”

  He strode out of King Lanius’ chamber. Not too many days passed before palace servants reported to Lanius that a lot more barges and boats than usual were stopping at the docks. All were full of wheat and barley and rye. He nodded, pleased with himself. Nobody out there in the city is likely to know it, but I’ve done something right, he thought.

  And not long after that, an embassy from the south came up into the city of Avornis. The princes of the Menteshe treated with Avornis as did King Dagipert and the lords of the cities of the Chernagors. This embassy was different. It wasn’t a mission from the Menteshe, but from their overlord—from the Banished One himself.

  His envoy was a Menteshe, of course, a round, swarthy man named Karajuk. The Banished One hadn’t spoken this directly with Avornis in almost a century. Queen Certhia kept Karajuk and his henchmen outside the walls of the city for a couple of days while secretaries pawed through musty scrolls to make sure they received him as their forefathers had received the Banished One’s last embassy. More than any mere mortal, the Banished One had a long memory. He would not overlook a slight, even an inadvertent one.

  Because the reigning King of Avornis had received his last embassy, Lanius had to sit on the Diamond T
hrone to receive this one. Loremasters worried that having Karajuk come before Queen Certhia would be reckoned an insult, even if she did head the regency council. Certhia fretted. “What if he does something to you?”

  “I’ll have wizards warding me,” Lanius answered patiently. “It will be all right. If he wanted to kill me, he’d use an assassin, not an ambassador.”

  “Is there a difference to the Banished One?” his mother asked bleakly.

  Lanius had no good answer for that. The Banished One was a law—or rather, no law—unto himself. But one of the protocol experts said, “We dare not offend him, Your Royal Highness,” and Certhia had to yield to his advice.

  Thus Lanius sat enthroned in his heaviest, most gorgeous robe, the spiked crown of Avornis heavy on his head, as Karajuk and four followers—there had been four a hundred years ago, so there were four now—approached. The envoy wore a wolfskin hat, a snow-leopard jacket, and deerskin trousers. His supporters had a similar style with less rich garments.

  Karajuk bowed low to Lanius. “I greet you, Your Majesty, in the name of my Master.” He spoke excellent, unaccented Avornan. Something glittered in his dark eyes as he added, “One day soon, maybe, he will come forth to greet you in person.”

  Not for nothing had Lanius looked through the old documents the loremasters had unearthed. He said, “The Banished One’s last emissary said the same thing on his visit. He himself has not come yet.”

  Karajuk studied him. “Yesss,” the Menteshe murmured, drawing the word out into a long hiss. “Your Majesty, my Master bids me say, you are not so clever as you think you are.”

  “Neither is he,” Lanius replied. “If he were, he would still live with the other gods.”

  Behind Karajuk, his henchmen muttered in their own language. If the gibe sank deep, the ambassador did not show it. He looked at Lanius once more. Were those his own eyes boring into the King of Avornis, or did the Banished One look out through them? Lanius didn’t know. He wondered if Karajuk did.

  “You had better listen to me, Your Majesty,” Karajuk said. “You had better hear the words of my Master.”

  Queen Certhia, who sat below and to the right of the throne, and Lepturus, who stood below and to the left, both stirred angrily. Lanius just looked down at the Menteshe, as though he’d found him on the bottom of his sandal. “Say on,” he said.

  “Good. Maybe you have good sense after all,” Karajuk said. “My Master asks, how bad will this winter be? How long will this winter last?”

  “The gods know that,” Lanius answered. “No one else does.”

  Karajuk smiled a singularly nasty smile. Since being cast forth from the heavens, the Banished One wasn’t exactly a god. On the other hand, he wasn’t exactly not a god, either. Could he know things like that? Lanius wasn’t sure. Another question occurred to him, one he wished he hadn’t thought of. Could the Banished One influence things like that? Lanius wasn’t sure there, either, and wished he were.

  By his smile, Karajuk suggested an answer. Of course, he would have suggested that answer regardless of whether it was true. He said, “Do you really want to find out, Your Majesty? You will. Oh, indeed you will. And when ice grips your rivers in the cold fingers of death, how will you feed your people?”

  Certhia stirred again. She looked up to Lanius. Ever so slightly, he shook his head. He didn’t want the Banished One’s envoy hearing he’d already started bringing extra provisions into the city of Avornis. If Karajuk—if his Master—learned that, a different threat might come next—one he wasn’t so well able to meet.

  He said, “You tell me the Banished One will ease the winter if I do what he wants? What is his price?”

  “Yes, my Master will do that,” the Menteshe answered. He didn’t call the Banished One by that name. As far as the Banished One was concerned, he’d done nothing to deserve being ousted from the heavens. Master pleased him much better. Karajuk went on, “What do you have to do? You have to yield up the province of Perusia, north of the Stura. Set Perusia in my Master’s hands and you will pass through this winter untroubled by his wrath.”

  “Yes—this winter. But what of next winter, or the winter after that?” Lanius shook his head. “You may tell the Banished One no. I will take my chances. My city will take its chances.”

  “On your head shall it be,” Karajuk said. “I tell you—I tell you in my Master’s mighty name—you will regret your foolishness.”

  “I will take my chances. The city of Avornis will take its chances,” Lanius replied. “You are dismissed. Go back to him with my words.”

  “I will,” the Menteshe said. “You have already heard his words. Soon you will see how he keeps his promise.” He bowed and left the throne room. His henchmen glared back over their shoulders at Lanius as they followed him.

  After the Menteshe had departed, Lepturus turned and nodded up at Lanius. The King of Avornis only shrugged by way of reply. He had no idea whether he’d done the right thing. I’ll find out, he thought, and then shook his head. Come what might, he would have plenty to eat. The city of Avornis would find out. An icy storm whipped the waters of the Stura up into whitecaps. Sleet and flurries of snow blew almost horizontally. Icicles hung from the Pike’s rigging and from the river galley’s yard. Little icicles also clung to Grus’ beard and mustache. “Isn’t this a bastard?” he shouted to Nicator.

  “Never seen anything like it in all my born days,” the veteran captain answered. “Never once. And down here, where the weather’s supposed to be good. Gods only know what it’s like up by the city of Avornis, places like that. Got to be pretty foul, though. Only stands to reason.”

  “Yes, it does,” Grus agreed, and shivered. “Somebody ashore told me the Banished One’s embassy to the king came back with one unhappy envoy.”

  “Oh, too bad.” Nicator’s voice dripped false distress. “That breaks my heart, that does. Tears me all in two, yes indeed.”

  “I can tell,” Grus said dryly. “But do you think the one has got anything to do with the other?”

  “Don’t know.” Now Nicator sounded thoughtful. “Who can say for sure what the Banished One’s full powers are? Curse me if I’m certain he knows himself.”

  “Something to that, I shouldn’t wonder,” Grus agreed. He’d spent a lot of time in the south. Taken all in all, the Menteshe were the most dangerous foes Avornis had. That would have been true even without the Banished One’s patronage, for only the Stura held them away from the rich farmlands in the wide, friendly valleys of the Nine Rivers. With the Banished One urging them on, aiding them …

  A line carrying too much ice parted just then. The Pike’s mast swayed alarmingly. If it went over, the river galley might turn turtle—and who could last long with the Stura so cold and fierce?

  Sailors hauled on other lines to keep the mast upright. A couple of men went to the length of mountain fir and hung on to it, literally for their lives. Still others, with Grus shouting orders, seized the wildly blowing length of line that had snapped, spliced it to a replacement for what had carried away, and made it fast to a belaying pin once more.

  Only then did the mast stop groaning in its socket. Only then did Grus let out a sigh of relief the savage wind promptly blew away. “Never a dull moment,” he said at last. “I wonder if we ought to take the mast down, but I don’t want to try it in this weather. Too easy for something to carry away—”

  “Like that line did,” Nicator broke in.

  “Like that line, yes.” Grus nodded. “And if it happened at just the wrong time, the way those things usually happen, we’d be worse off than if we left it up.”

  Nicator nodded, too. “Makes sense to me.”

  Turnix came bustling up to them. With his robes blowing like wash on a line, the wizard looked about to blow away himself, but he’d proved tolerably surefooted. “Have you ever had an arrow go past your head, close enough to feel the wind of it?” he asked.

  Grus and Nicator both nodded this time. Grus said, “Wish I hadn’t,
but I have. Why? What’s the point?”

  “I think … something just went past the Pike the same way, Commodore,” Turnix answered. “It was there and gone before I could even think to ward it. But it missed.”

  “You may be right,” Grus said slowly. “I think you are, but I couldn’t prove it.”

  “I’m not sure I could prove it, either,” Turnix said. “I’ll tell you this, though—if it was real, the way I think it was, I’m awfully glad it missed.” His laugh was shaky. “I wish I could claim credit for turning it aside—you’d like me better if I did. But the shooter missed. I didn’t block it.”

  Grus nodded yet again. He had a brief vision of the Banished One’s beautiful yet terrible face, eyes narrowed and nostrils flared with frustration. When the vision faded, he was even gladder it had been brief than that the spell, if spell it was, had missed the Pike. A man wasn’t meant to look into those eyes for long—not if he hoped to stay sane afterward.

  “Well, Your Majesty, when you’re an old man with a long white beard, you can tell your grandchildren you came through this winter,” Lepturus said. “Their eyes will get all big, and they’ll go, ‘Tell us some more, Granddad Your Majesty.’”

  However clever Lanius was, he couldn’t imagine himself old and bent and with a long white beard. At twelve, he eagerly imagined himself with any sort of beard at all; as yet, his cheeks were bare even of what people called peach fuzz. More impatient than ever to become a man, he remained a boy in the eyes of the world.

  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?”