The Bastard King

by Harry Turtledove

  “What kind of help?” Lanius asked. “I just proved I’m no soldier myself.” He remembered his own recent reflections on what he might have done if Grus hadn’t come back from his campaign against King Dagipert. And, eyeing his fellow sovereign, he added, “Besides, didn’t your pet witch show you I’m not to be trusted?”

  “Alca’s not my pet. Alca’s not anybody’s pet, and you’d be smart not to call her that to her face,” Grus replied. Lanius decided he was probably right. Grus continued, “And she didn’t show me I couldn’t trust you. She only showed me you didn’t like me. I already knew that.”

  He didn’t sound angry. He didn’t sound amused, which would have made Lanius angry. He might have been talking about the weather. On that dispassionate note, Lanius had no trouble dealing with him. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “Come along with me when I move against Corvus and Corax,” Grus told him. “When the time comes, show you’re with me and want me to win. That will make the men fighting for the gods-cursed nobles know they’ve picked the wrong side.”

  But the right side is mine, not yours, Lanius thought. Grus waited. Lanius made himself ask another question. Is Grus’ side better or worse than Corvus’? He sighed. However much he wished he did, he didn’t need to think very long before finding an answer there. “I’ll come with you,” he said.

  Back in the city of Avornis, people spoke of the Maze as though it were impassable, as though a man who once set foot in it were certain never to come out again. No doubt the Kings of Avornis had encouraged that view of the marshes and swamps behind the capital. When they exiled foes to the Maze, they didn’t want them emerging again. They didn’t want people thinking they could help exiles emerge again, either.

  The truth was less simple, as truth had a way of being.

  Grus had no qualms about moving an army through the Maze. There were streams that traversed the entire region. He’d learned about some of them while still commodore of Avornis’ river galleys. Others were known to the folk who dwelt in the Maze without being exiles—fishermen, hunters, trappers. River galleys couldn’t make the whole journey. They drew too much water. Flat-bottomed barges, on the other hand …

  Despite that, he hadn’t been in the Maze very long before he started to wonder whether he’d made a ghastly mistake. That had nothing to do with the barges. A breeze even meant they could move by sail. The men who poled and rowed them along rested easy for the time being. Everything was going as well as it could. Grus still worried. The more he looked at Lanius, the more he worried, too.

  Lanius kept looking now this way, now that. It wasn’t curiosity, of which Grus had seen he owned an uncommon share. The more he stared around the Maze, the paler and quieter he got. His lips thinned. His jaw set. He kept sneaking glances at Grus. Grus didn’t like those glances. He knew looks couldn’t kill. If he hadn’t known that, he would have feared falling over dead.

  Here, at least, he thought he knew what the trouble was. When King Lanius looked out into the Maze and then glowered at him yet again, he decided to strike first, before things got even worse. “Are you looking for your mother’s convent?” he asked.

  Lanius started. Grus hid a smile. Lanius hadn’t thought he was so obvious. Grus didn’t think he had. After a moment, the young king nodded. “Yes, I am,” he said with as much defiance as he could muster.

  “It’s over that way, I believe,” Grus told him, pointing southeast. “I’m sorry she’s there. You can believe that or not, just as you please, but it happens to be true. If she hadn’t tried to kill me, she’d still be in the city of Avornis. I’d like to hope you believe that’s true.”

  He waited. Lanius said nothing for a long, long time. At last, though, he nodded. “I suppose it may be. But it doesn’t make things any easier for me.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not true. It doesn’t make things much easier for me.”

  “All right, Your Majesty,” Grus replied. “I don’t ask that you love me, even if one of the other things I hope is that you’ll come to love my daughter one of these days. But I do wish you’d try to be fair to me.”

  He waited again. Lanius looked like a man doing his best to hate him. After another pause, the youth said, “I suppose even the Banished One deserves that much. I’ll give it to you, if I can.”

  “Thank you so much.” Grus didn’t try to hide the sarcasm. Lanius turned red. Grus went on, “The gods gave the Banished One what they thought he deserved. Now they’re rid of him, and they don’t have to worry about him anymore. We still do. Kings of Avornis have tried to be fair to him, or what they reckoned fair to him, before. You’d know more about that than I do, wouldn’t you?”

  “Probably.” Lanius didn’t notice how arrogant he sounded.

  “Fine,” Grus said. Odds were Lanius did know much more about it. But Grus knew what counted. “It’s never worked, has it? The only thing the Banished One calls fair is everything for him and nothing for us—not even all of our souls. Am I right about that, or am I wrong?”

  “Oh, you’re right.” Lanius was willing—more than willing, even eager—to talk seriously about something abstract and intellectual. He went on, “The best explanation for it that I’ve read is that he reckons the gods his equals, and might deal fairly with them if they would deal with him at all. But we’re only people. He doesn’t see much more point to fair dealings with us than we would to fair dealings with so many sheep.”

  He wasn’t stupid. He was, in fact, anything but stupid. “That’s interesting—makes a lot of sense, too, I think.” Grus sighed. “But it doesn’t make dealing with the Banished One any easier.”

  “No,” Lanius agreed. “I don’t think anything will ever make dealing with the Banished One much easier. Even if we could get the Scepter of Mercy back, that wouldn’t make him want to deal with us. It would just make him worry about us more.”

  “The way we’d worry about a sheep that could shoot a bow,” Grus suggested. Lanius nodded. Then he snickered. He didn’t laugh very often, and Grus felt a prick of pleasure at teasing mirth out of him.

  Then he felt a prick of a different sort, and another, and another. The marshes and puddles and swamps and tussocks of the Maze bred mosquitoes and flies and midges and gnats in swarming, buzzing profusion. Lanius was slapping and muttering, too. On a nearby barge, horses’ tails switched back and forth, back and forth. The animals’ ears twitched. On yet another barge, a sailor fell into the water because he kept on swatting bugs without noticing he was walking off the stern. The air smelled wet and stagnant.

  Here and there in the Maze, willows and elms and swamp oaks and other water-loving trees created little forests amidst the grasses and bushes and reeds and cattails and water lilies that covered most of the region. Kingfishers shrieked. Dippers chirped. Sun-dappled shadows danced. The trees marked higher ground—not high ground, for there was none hereabouts, but higher, and drier. People lived on that higher ground, those who made their living from what the Maze gave them and those who got sent there for what they’d done in the wider world.

  Grus knew just where Queen Certhia’s convent lay. He said not a word as the barge passed within half a mile of it. Instead, he listened to the chirping frogs, pointed out a swimming water snake to Lanius, laughed when half a dozen turtles leaped off a floating log into the stream, and thought about fair dealing with the Banished One. “Baaa!” he said softly. I may be a sheep to him. One day, I’d like to be a sheep with a bow.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The last time Lanius had been so far from home was on Lepturus’ campaign against the Thervings. He’d still been a boy then. He’d told himself then that he never wanted to become a general. Moving against Corvus and Corax did nothing to change his mind. In fact, that they were no less Avornan than he only made the fight harder to bear.

  He kept an eye on Grus. If the former commodore worried about fighting his countrymen, he didn’t let it show. He went after the two rebel counts as ferociously as he might have attac
ked the Menteshe if they’d irrupted into Avornis.

  Seeing that finally made Lanius remark on it. Grus gave him a long, slow, thoughtful look and said, “Your Majesty, if you think I like fighting a civil war, you’re wrong. But there’s only one thing worse than fighting a civil war—fighting it and losing it.”

  That gave Lanius something to look thoughtful about. Having thought, he found he couldn’t criticize Grus on the grounds of how hard he fought. I’ll have to look for something else, went through his mind. When his fellow king at last led them from the Maze—where no one could move fast even if he wanted to—they swarmed south, toward Corvus’ crag-mounted castle. “Do you plan to get there before Corvus knows you’re coming?” Lanius asked him.

  “Too much to hope for, even though it’d be very nice,” Grus answered. “Getting between his army and his castle would be all right, though.”

  “How do you propose to manage that?” Lanius inquired. As he put the question to Grus, their horses trampled swaths through a field of ripening barley. Corvus’ men wouldn’t harvest it this year. Neither would any other Avornans.

  “Well, Your Majesty, you may have noticed that I didn’t bring my whole strength through the Maze,” Grus said mildly.

  As a matter of fact, Lanius hadn’t noticed that. How could he have, when Grus’ army was split up among so many barges? But he nodded wisely, as though he had. “Yes, of course,” he said, even if it wasn’t of course at all. And then, because Grus seemed to expect something more, he asked, “Where’s the rest of it?”

  By the way Grus beamed, that was the right question. “Very good, Your Majesty,” Grus said. “That’s what you need to know, sure enough. The rest of it’s with Hirundo. He marched out on dry land, just as openly as you please. Corvus and Corax didn’t have any doubts at all that he was coming.”

  “No, eh?” Lanius said, and Grus solemnly shook his head. He waited to see what Lanius would make of that. Lanius didn’t need long. “Then the rebels went forth to fight Hirundo!” he exclaimed. “No wonder no one’s come out to try to stop us!”

  “No wonder at all, and I hope so,” Grus answered. “Hard to pay attention to the Maze, anyhow. Nobody ever expects anything to come out of it. And if you happen to be looking the other way when something does—well, too bad for you.”

  He didn’t get very excited. He didn’t brag or boast. That, Lanius had seen, was not his style. But he had ways of doing the job. In all the history of Avornis, had anyone just settled down and done the job so well? Lanius had read a lot of that history. He had his doubts. Grus might have been the best.

  Corvus was also trying to do his job. Only a couple of days after Grus’ army burst out of the Maze, horsemen began shadowing-it. They weren’t there in any numbers; they couldn’t have hoped to beat back the army or even slow it down. They simply hung off its flank and kept an eye on it. Lanius presumed they reported to Corvus or to Corax or to both of the brothers together.

  Grus presumed the same thing. He asked Lanius, “Are you ready to do what I asked of you, Your Majesty?”

  Lanius sighed. “I suppose so,” he answered.

  Grus laughed at his hesitation. That was, Lanius supposed, better than having Grus get angry. Grus said, “Do try to conceal your enthusiasm. Otherwise it might sweep me off my feet altogether.”

  “Er—yes,” Lanius said, not sure what to make of Grus in a sportive mood.

  To his relief, Grus didn’t stick around. He just went on tending to his business. Riders loyal to him went out and skirmished with Corvus’ scouts. They drove the scouts back, killed a few of them, and captured two or three. The captives they brought before Lanius.

  Those captives looked scared to death. That was almost literally true. They had to expect their heads to go up on pikes as soon as Lanius finished gloating over them. He did take a certain amount of pleasure in letting them know that wouldn’t happen. “Hear me, and you’ll be free to go,” he told them. Their eyes widened. They didn’t trust him or believe him. He went on, “All you have to do is take word back to everyone who follows Corvus and Corax that King Grus is my legitimate co-ruler, and that Corvus and Corax are enemies to Avornis and deserve whatever happens to them. No matter what they say, they aren’t for me. They’re against me. Their rebellion is bound to fail.”

  Calling Grus a legitimate king left a bad taste in his mouth. The rest of it? To his own surprise, he discovered he meant the rest of it. One of Corvus’ riders said, “Grus is making you say that. Tell us the truth.”

  “I am telling you the truth,” Lanius said—and, on the whole, he meant that, too. When he added, “The nobles you follow are the ones who’ve lied to you,” he thought that was the truth. He repeated, “Go back to your friends. Tell them what I told you. Tell them there’s safe-conduct and amnesty for anyone who leaves the rebels’ army. And tell them whoever doesn’t leave it will be very sorry.”

  The riders seemed surprised when they got their horses back. They seemed amazed when they got their sabers and bows back. Escorted by Grus’ troopers, the rebels rode out of the camp. They kicked up a small cloud of dust as they trotted off after their fellows who’d escaped.

  Now, who will believe them? Lanius wondered. Then he wondered how much of human affairs everywhere turned on that question.

  Scouts came galloping back toward King Grus. “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” they cried, and pointed westward. “The rebels’ army is over there, less than a day’s ride away.”

  “Ah,” Grus said, a sound full of eagerness, and then, “Do they know you’ve been shadowing them?”

  “Probably,” one of the riders answered, while two or three more shrugged and nodded. The fellow who’d spoken added, “You know how it is.”

  “Oh, yes.” Grus nodded, too. “I know how it is. Now we’re going to show Corvus and Corax how it is, eh?” The scouts grinned. Grus asked, “Any sign of Hirundo’s army?”

  “No, Your Majesty,” the men chorused.

  “Too bad,” Grus said. “If I knew what he was doing—if I could get hold of him—we’d smash the rebels between us. Well, maybe scouts from the band he leads will show up here before too long.” He made himself sound hopeful.

  A rider said, “If you like, Your Majesty, we could go out to the west again, ride around the rebels, and see if we could join up with him.”

  Grus shook his head. “Not you boys personally. You’ve already been working hard. Take a rest. You’ve earned it. I’ll send some other men out to the fellows who’ll be shadowing the rebels. Some of them can try riding around Corvus’ army to see if they can find Hirundo.”

  A couple of the horsemen looked disappointed. A couple of others looked relieved at not having to gallop straight out again. Grus had expected both reactions. He sent the scouts away. None of them looked sorry at the prospect of dismounting, getting some food, and maybe even grabbing a little rest.

  “Trumpeters!” Grus called. When the men with the long brass horns looked his way, he added, “Blow Column left. We’re going straight after the rebels.” The soldiers who heard him raised a cheer.

  He rode over to King Lanius. To his younger colleague, he said, “Well, Your Majesty, we’ve found them.”

  “A good thing, too, seeing that they’d already found us,” Lanius remarked.

  “Uh, yes,” Grus said. Sometimes Lanius, though still a youth, could make him feel he was running in circles. He tried again. “Before we go into battle with the rebels, I’ll want you to ride out in front of the army and tell the lot of them what you told those scouts.”

  “Oh, you will, will you?” Lanius said tonelessly. His head pointed toward Grus, but, whatever he was looking at, it wasn’t his fellow king. After half a moment, he seemed to remember where he was. He deigned to give Grus one word. “No.”

  “But, Your Majesty, this is why I asked you to come along,” Grus reminded him. “Or do you want the rebels to win?” How good was Alca’s wizardry? he wondered. What is lurking in Lanius’ heart?


  “No, I don’t,” Lanius said. “But no, I won’t go up in front of the army before a battle, either.” He sounded very determined.

  “By the gods, why not?” Grus exclaimed.

  “I’ve seen one battle up close. That was enough to last me a lifetime. I never want to see another one like that.”

  So many young men were pantingly eager to blood themselves in the field. Grus almost asked Lanius if he were a coward, but something in the young king’s eyes made him hold back. Whatever troubled him, Grus didn’t think cowardice was it. He sighed and said, “Tell me more.”

  “There’s nothing more to tell. If you want to bring enemy prisoners before me and then turn them loose, I’ll tell them I’d sooner have you as my protector than Corvus. That’s the truth. It would be the truth even if I weren’t married to your daughter. But maybe you can make me go out in front of your army. Once you’ve made me do what I truly don’t want to do, though, can you be sure what I’ll say?”

  Grus eyed him. Yes, Lanius looked very determined. Did he mean what he said, or was he bluffing? Can you afford to take the chance? Grus asked himself. He’d expected the young king to be a puppet, not a bargainer. He’s growing up. That realization startled him almost as much as it had about his own children.

  “All right, Your Majesty.” This one time, he let irony seep into his use of Lanius’ title. “Have it your way, since that’s what you’re bound to do.”

  “I … will.” Lanius was relieved, and still young enough to show it.

  “Have it your way,” Grus repeated. “Just remember, having it your way means giving Corvus a better chance to beat me.”

  Lanius grimaced. But after a moment’s pause, he said, “If I weren’t confident in you as a general, would I want you for my protector?”

  If that didn’t make a deadlock, Grus didn’t know what could. He sketched a salute to Lanius, then rode off. He didn’t look back at his son-in-law, not even once.