The Bastard King

by Harry Turtledove

  With a sly smile, Hirundo answered, “He’s bound to be saying the same kinds of things about you. He must be thinking that if it weren’t for that miserable King Grus, he’d be laying siege to the city of Avornis again. Odds are he’s right, too.”

  “Well, maybe,” Grus said. “I like to think we can take care of ourselves well enough so that whoever’s on top doesn’t make all the difference.” He liked to think that, but didn’t know that it was true.

  His horse’s hooves thumping, a courier came into camp. “Your Majesty!” he called. “I’ve got news from the capital, Your Majesty!”

  “What kind of news?” Grus asked. One obvious possibility was that he’d finally become a grandfather. That was the news he hoped for, the news he’d been expecting. The news he dreaded was that the Menteshe might have taken advantage of his war against the Thervings to swarm over the Stura River down in the south. It hadn’t happened yet, but he knew all too well it could.

  By the courier’s grin, though, he bore news of the other sort. “Congratulations, Your Majesty!” he said loudly. “Queen Sosia and your grandson, Prince Crex, are both doing as well as anyone might hope.”

  Hirundo and all the soldiers who heard the fellow burst into cheers. They pressed forward to shake Grus’ hand and pound him on the back. He said the first thing that came into his mind, which was, “But I’m too young to be a grandfather.”

  A grizzled sergeant said, “And it was only last week you were telling people you were too young to be a father, wasn’t it?”

  Amid laughter, Grus answered, “It certainly seems that way.”

  “Well, Your Majesty,” the sergeant went on, “one of these days, I hope you get to tell everybody who’ll listen to you that you’re too young to be a great-grandfather.” Hirundo and the grinning soldiers nodded and clapped their hands.

  “I like the sound of that,” Grus said. To show how much he liked it, he tossed the veteran a gold piece. As the sergeant bowed his thanks, Grus went on, “And let’s whip the Thervings right out of their shoes, to make sure this province west of the Tuola belongs to little Prince Crex when he puts the crown on his head.”

  More cheers rang out. Grus knew how chancy things were, how many babies never lived to grow up. He didn’t dwell on that thought, not now. Now he could let his hopes and dreams run free—though he didn’t want to get too fanciful about ways and means of beating the Thervings. If he did, Dagipert would make him regret it in a hurry.

  And Dagipert did make him regret it. Maybe the king of the Thervings had heard about little Prince Crex, too. As far as King Dagipert was concerned, Lanius should have been having children by Romilda, not Sosia. After all, Dagipert had spent the past couple of years ravaging northwestern Avornis because Lanius hadn’t married his daughter. Before then, Grus supposed, the Thervings had ravaged northwestern Avornis just for the sport of it.

  A company of Thervings assailed some of Hirundo’s scouts ahead of the main force. Seeing the chance to make the enemy pay for coming out of the woods, Hirundo sent out more horsemen to cut off Dagipert’s men. And so they did—till more Thervings, who’d been lurking just inside the trees, rushed out and turned the tables on them.

  Some of the Avornans got away. King Dagipert’s men cut down a lot of them, though, and then went back into the forest before the main body of Grus’ army could come to the riders’ rescue. Grus thought about throwing his men after the Thervings, but held back. For all he knew, Dagipert had another ambush waiting if he tried that.

  Hirundo blamed himself, saying, “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. It’s my fault, nobody else’s. I thought I could make the Thervings pay, and Dagipert outsmarted me. That’s what happened, no two ways about it.”

  “Don’t get too upset,” Grus told him. “Dagipert would have outsmarted me, too, because if you hadn’t given those orders I was going to. Every once in a while, the other fellow gets a jump ahead of you, that’s all.”

  “You’d better not let him stay that way, or else you’re in trouble,” Hirundo said.

  “True enough,” Grus said. “Now, Dagipert’s going to expect us to try to lure him into some kind of ambush to pay him back.”

  “That’s what I’d do,” Hirundo declared.

  “Then you’d let him stay a jump ahead of you,” Grus pointed out. “I don’t think he’d bite on any bait we threw him, so I’m not going to throw him any. I’m just going to keep on after him till we beat him and drive him back into Thervingia.”

  “If we can,” General Hirundo said.

  Grus nodded. “That’s right. If we can.”

  He sent riders out to knock down as many of Dagipert’s scouts as they could find. If the Thervings’ king didn’t know what was going on around him, he might make a mistake. Dagipert responded by attacking viciously wherever the Avornan horsemen showed themselves in any numbers.

  “Now maybe we can lure him into a trap,” Grus said.

  They sent the whole army after a band of horsemen who went up against another of the Thervings’ outposts. As Grus had expected, Dagipert struck back at the riders hard, using more of his own men to try to drive off the Avornans. Grus and Hirundo threw the rest of the army into the fight, hoping to bag all those Thervings. But Dagipert had his own reserves waiting.

  “We’ve got a big battle on our hands,” Hirundo said. “What are we going to do?”

  “I think we’d better fight it, don’t you?” King Grus answered. Hirundo nodded. Neither of them had much wanted a full-scale battle there, but Grus saw no way to avoid it, not with his men and the Thervings both pouring into the engagement as fast as they could. It wasn’t a proper trap—or, if it was, it had closed on both sides at once.

  They hammered at each other all day, neither side giving much ground. Only at sunset did they draw apart. Even then, Grus thought they would clash again the next morning. He ordered his men into line of battle before the sun came up.

  But when they went forward, they found that King Dagipert’s army had left its position during the night and fallen back toward the west, toward Thervingia. Only then did Grus begin to think he might have won.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  As King Lanius had the summer before, he greeted King Grus when Grus’ army returned from the west. This time, the army didn’t return in gaudy triumph. It had fought hard, and was badly battered. But the Thervings had gone back to their own kingdom. The previous summer, Grus’ soldiers had seemed astonished and delighted to have driven off the enemy. This year, Lanius thought, it was more as though they had the Thervings’ measure. Maybe that counted for more than a parade through the streets of the city of Avornis.

  Lanius wanted to ask Grus what he thought of that, but Grus forestalled him, saying, “Where are Sosia and little Crex?”

  “Back at the palace,” Lanius answered.

  Grus looked unhappy, but then nodded. “Yes, I suppose they would be. Don’t want to put a new mother and a little baby through too much. How are they?”

  “As well as anyone could hope,” Lanius said. Grus smiled, which made him look like anything but a stern soldier. Lanius went on, “I like this business of being a father better than I thought I would. I think Crex looks like me.”

  “I don’t suppose that’s anything against the rules,” Grus said. “Better he should look like you than me, anyhow. I’ll never be what anybody calls handsome, though Sosia’s lucky enough to favor her mother’s side of the family.”

  He was right about that. Lanius had already seen how Anser looked more like Grus than either Sosia or Ortalis did. Thinking of Anser and Ortalis, Lanius said, “Your sons are both out hunting again today.”

  “Are they?” Grus said. “That’s good, I think. I hope. Come on. Let’s go to the palace.”

  When they got there, Grus kissed Queen Estrilda. Then he kissed Queen Sosia. And then, at last, he all but slobbered over his grandson. Crex stared up at him with the bemused look he wore a lot of the time. That look had bothered Lanius till he thought about it.
It didn’t anymore. He’d decided the world had to be a very confusing place for a baby. Everything, everyone, was new. Crex had to figure out what he liked, who his parents were—everything about the world around him, the world in which he suddenly found himself. He didn’t even have any words to help him make sense of things. No wonder he looked confused.

  To Lanius, Grus had always seemed a hardheaded, hardhearted man. Not here. Not now. The word that came to Lanius’ mind was sappy. Grus looked up from Crex at last, a broad, foolish smile on his face. “He’s wonderful,” he said. “And you’re right—I think he does look like you.”

  Estrilda asked him, “How does it feel, being a grandfather?”

  “First thing I said was, ‘I’m too young,’” Grus answered. “But, now that I see what I’ve got here, I take it back. I like the whole business just fine. How about you, dear?”

  “Me? Oh, I hate it. I can’t stand it at all,” his wife said. They both laughed.

  “Congratulations on driving the Thervings back again,” King Lanius said.

  “Oh. The Thervings.” Holding Crex, Grus might never have heard of Thervingia. He had to pause and think about Dagipert and the neighboring kingdom. The process was not only visible, it was funny to watch. When it ended, he looked more like the Grus who Lanius usually saw. “Thanks,” he said. “Yes, we’ve bought a respite till the next campaigning season, anyhow. And Dagipert’s an old man. One of these days, he’ll finally drop dead.”

  “Prince Berto is a different sort,” Lanius said. “I met him when he came here once. I was still a boy then. All he cared about were cathedrals.”

  “I hope he’s still like that,” Grus said. “Cathedrals are a very good thing for a King of Thervingia to care about. If he spends his time caring about cathedrals, maybe he won’t have the chance to care about invading Avornis.”

  “That would be good,” Lanius said. “We could use a few years of peace.”

  “So we could.” When Grus looked down at Crex in his arms, his face softened into a smile once more. “And he could do with growing up in a city that doesn’t stand siege every so often. Couldn’t you, little one?”

  Crex responded to that by screwing up his face and grunting. Estrilda laughed. “I know what he’s done!” she said with a laugh.

  Grus laughed, too. He sniffed. “Oh, yes—so do I. But one nice thing about being grandparents—and about being king and queen—is that we don’t have to clean up the mess ourselves.” He handed the baby to a serving woman. She went off to give Crex fresh linen.

  “That is nice,” Estrilda said. “That’s very nice indeed.”

  Lanius took servants for granted. How could it be otherwise? He’d had them at his beck and call ever since he’d learned to talk—and before that, too, as the woman changing Crex attested. Now he eyed Estrilda in some surprise. Had she herself—and maybe Grus, too—changed Sosia and Ortalis? By the way she spoke, perhaps she had. She hadn’t been royal all her life. She hadn’t, but her grandson would be.

  Grus’ father, for whom the baby was named, had been a man off a farm in the provinces who’d done modestly well for himself as a guardsman. His father had been a peasant of no distinction whatever. And yet Grus ruled Avornis, Sosia was wed to the scion of the ancient dynasty, and little Crex shared that dynasty’s blood. Not for the first time, Lanius thought about how different the world was likely to look to a peasant’s grandson from the way it looked to him.

  Having thought about it, he eyed Grus with a good deal more respect. He himself took the kingship for granted. Why not, when he was the dozenth of his line to hold it? But to Grus, gaining the crown had to feel like climbing a mountain covered with nails and thorns and nettles. And yet he hadn’t murdered his way to the throne. He hadn’t slain Lanius, and he hadn’t even slain Lanius’ mother, who’d done her best to kill him.

  “Thank you,” Lanius said suddenly, out of the blue.

  Grus looked back at him as though knowing exactly what he was thinking. And maybe the older man did, for he nodded, set a hand on Lanius’ shoulder, and said, “You’re welcome.” Lanius nodded back. He still wasn’t sure he would ever like his overbearing father-in-law, but the beginning of understanding brought with it the beginning of respect.

  The peasant bowed low before King Grus. He looked nervous. In fact, he looked scared to death, as any peasant coming before the King of Avornis was liable to look. “It’s all right, Dacelo,” Grus reassured him. “By King Olor’s beard, I promise nothing will happen to you, regardless of whether I decide to do anything to your baron. But I want to hear from your own lips what Fuscus is up to.”

  “All right,” Dacelo said, his tone suggesting it was anything but. “He’s buying up our plots of land on the cheap, turning us from freeholders into his tenants. Some men let him, and sell out. Some hold their land as long as they can. And some, like me, figure it’s no good either way there and try to make our living somewhere else.”

  “That’s why you came to the city of Avornis?” Grus asked.

  “Sure is, sir,” Dacelo answered. A secretary taking notes of the conversation coughed. Dacelo turned red. “Uh, Your Majesty,” he amended.

  “It’s all right.” Here, Grus was more interested in finding out what was going on than in standing on ceremony. “You know Baron Fuscus was breaking the law I put out after Corvus and Corax rebelled against me?”

  Dacelo nodded. “Yes, sir—Your Majesty.” He caught himself this time.

  “Did anyone in his barony point this out to him?” Grus asked.

  “One fellow did,” Dacelo replied, and then, after a pregnant pause, “He’s dead now.”

  “Is that so?” the king said, and the peasant nodded again. Grus scowled. “I don’t like seeing my laws flouted. Do you suppose Baron Fuscus breaks them because he thinks I don’t mean them, or just because he thinks they’re wrong?”

  “Sir, I think he breaks ’em because he thinks he can get away with it,” Dacelo said.

  “I think you’re dead right, Dacelo,” Grus said. “And I think I’m going to have to show Baron Fuscus he’s dead wrong.”

  Despite his bold words, he didn’t want to start another civil war on the heels of the last one. He reflected on the old saw about different ways to kill flies, and sent Fuscus an elaborately formal invitation to the royal palace “so that I might gain the benefit of your wisdom.”

  “Why on earth are you telling him that?” King Lanius demanded. “You don’t care what he thinks. You only want to land on him with both feet.”

  Grus smiled. In a way, seeing his fellow king so naive was reassuring. He wondered whether explaining would be wise. In the end, he decided to, and said, “If I tell him I want to land on him with both feet, Your Majesty, he won’t come. If I say nice things to him, maybe he will—and then I’ll land on him.”

  Once Lanius understood, he nodded. He might be naive, but he was anything but stupid. “I see,” he said. “And if he says he won’t come after an invitation like that, he’s put himself in the wrong and declared that he’s a rebel.”

  “Just so.” Grus nodded, too.

  And Baron Fuscus not only came to the city of Avornis, he brought his whole family with him. They rented a large house near the royal palace, as though Fuscus had not the smallest doubt that Grus would want his advice for a long time to come. He had a few bodyguards with him, but only a few, and he left them behind when Grus summoned him to the palace.

  “At your service, Your Majesty,” Fuscus said after making his bows. He was in his early forties—not far from Grus’ age—with a handsome, fleshy face and an unconscious arrogance about him. “You tell me what needs doing, and I’ll tell you how to do it.” By the way he made it sound, Grus had no hope of doing anything without him.

  Hiding annoyance, Grus said, “Well, one problem I have is getting the nobles in the provinces to pay their taxes and to leave their farmers alone.”

  “Yes, they’re a wicked lot, aren’t they?” Fuscus said.

 
“Some of them are,” Grus agreed. “You know, I’ve made laws against that sort of thing.”

  “Laws are no good,” Fuscus told him. “Who pays attention to laws? The weak and the fearful, nobody else. A strong man ignores useless laws and does what he needs—or else what he pleases.”

  “You enlighten me,” Grus said, and Baron Fuscus preened. The king went on, “Is that why you’ve ignored my laws, Your Excellency?”

  Fuscus opened his mouth to answer before realizing just what the question was. He looked around. All of a sudden, he seemed to realize he had no guards of his own, and that Grus’ men—all of them ex-marines, and thoroughly loyal to their sovereign—surrounded him. His mouth slowly closed.

  “You don’t say anything,” Grus remarked.

  “I—I don’t really know what you’re talking about, Your Majesty.” Fuscus no longer sounded so self-assured. He sounded like someone who was lying, and not doing such a good job of it.

  “What about the man who reminded you of my laws, the man who’s no longer among the living?” Grus asked.

  Fuscus went pale. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, a little more conviction—or perhaps desperation—in his voice this time.

  “I’d like to believe that,” Grus said. Fuscus looked relieved. Then Grus continued, “I’d like to, but I can’t.” He unfolded the parchment on which the secretary had written down Dacelo’s charges and read them out in detail, finishing, “What do you have to say about that, Your Excellency?”

  “That it’s all a pack of lies, Your Majesty,” Fuscus declared.

  “Then you haven’t bought up lands from the farmers around your estates? Then no one who tried not to sell to you suddenly lost his life in strange circumstances?”

  “Of course not,” the baron said.

  “Then if I checked here in the city of Avornis, I wouldn’t find any peasants you’d bought out for next to nothing, peasants who sold you their land and came here because they knew something nasty would happen to them if they didn’t?” Grus persisted. “I wouldn’t find anybody else who knew about this fellow who was murdered by ruffians?”