The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” they chorused. Grus had to fight down a laugh. They were both big, gruff fighting men, but they sounded like a couple of youths impatient with an overly fussy mother.

  The men they would lead waited behind them—Avornans in pants and kilted Chernagors, their chainmail shirts clanking now and again as they shifted from foot to foot. They were all big, gruff fighting men, too, and all volunteers. “Gods go with you, then,” Grus said. “When you seize the gate near the other end of the tunnel, we’ll come in and take the city. You don’t need to hold it long. We’ll be there to help as soon as it opens.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Calcarius and Malk spoke at the same time once more. They smiled at each other. They acted like a couple of impatient youths, too—youths eager to be off on a lark. Calcarius looked around and asked, “Is it dark enough yet? Can we start?”

  “Another half hour,” Grus said after looking around. Color had faded out of the air, but shape remained. Not only the officers in charge of the storming party but all the men who would go on it pouted and fumed. Grus wagged a finger at them. “You hush, every one of you, or I’ll send you to bed without supper.”

  They jeered at him. Some of the Chernagors translated what he’d said into their language for those who didn’t speak Avornan. Some of the burly men in kilts said things that didn’t sound as though they would do with being translated back into Avornan.

  Time crawled past. It might have gone on hands and knees. The stars came out. They grew brighter as twilight ebbed. They too crawled—across the sky. Grus used them to judge both the time and the darkness. At last, he slapped Calcarius on his mailed shoulder and said, “Now.”

  Even in the darkness, the Avornan officer’s face lit up. “See you soon, Your Majesty.”

  The tunnel by which Prince Vsevolod had emerged from Nishevatz opened from behind a boulder, which let an escapee leave it without drawing attention from the walls of the city. He’d covered the trapdoor with dirt once more after coming out. By all the signs his spies and Grus’ could gather, and by everything Pterocles’ wizardry and that of the Chernagors showed, Prince Vasilko and his henchmen in the city still didn’t know how Vsevolod had gotten away. Grus hoped the spies and the wizards knew what they were talking about. If they didn’t … Grus shook his head. He’d made up his mind that they did. He would—he had to—believe that until and unless it turned out not to be so.

  Two soldiers with spades uncovered the doorway Vsevolod had buried. When it was mostly clear of dirt, one of them stooped and seized the heavy bronze ring mounted on the tarred timbers. Iron might have rusted to uselessness; not so, bronze. Grunting, the soldier—he was a Chernagor, and immensely broad through the shoulders—pulled up the trap door. A deeper darkness appeared, a hole in the night. Calcarius vanished into it first—vanished as though he had never been. Malk followed. Starlight glittered for an instant on the honed edge of his sword. Then the black swallowed him, too.

  One by one—now an Avornan, now a Chernagor, now a clump of one folk, now of the other—the warriors in the storming party disappeared into the tunnel. After what seemed a very short time, the last man was gone.

  Grus found Hirundo and asked, “We are ready to move when the signal comes and the gate opens?”

  “Oh, yes, Your Majesty,” the general answered. “And once we get inside Nishevatz, it’s ours. I don’t care what Vasilko has in there. If his men can’t use the walls to save themselves, we’ll whip them.”

  “Good. That’s what I wanted you to tell me.” Grus cocked his head toward the gate the attackers aimed to seize. “We ought to hear the fight start pretty soon, eh?”

  Hirundo nodded in the darkness. “I’d certainly think so, unless all the Chernagors in there are sleeping and there is no fight. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Grus said. “I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

  Whether he minded or not, he didn’t believe that would happen. Prince Vasilko wasn’t—Grus hoped Vasilko wasn’t—expecting attack through the secret passage. But the new master of Nishevatz did know the Avornan army was out there. The men who followed him needed to stay alert.

  “How long do you think our men will need to get through the tunnel?” Grus asked Hirundo.

  “Well, I don’t exactly know, Your Majesty, but I don’t suppose it will take very long,” Hirundo replied. “It can’t stretch for more than a quarter of a mile.”

  “No, I wouldn’t think so,” Grus agreed. He called to a servant. The man hurried off and returned with a cup of wine for him. He sipped and waited. His fingers drummed on his thigh. A quarter of a mile—even a quarter of a mile in darkness absolute, through a tunnel shored up with planks with dirt sifting down between the planks and falling on the back of a soldier’s neck when he least expected it … that was surely a matter of minutes, and only a few of them.

  He waited. He would know—the whole army would know—when the fighting inside the city started. Things might go wrong. If they did, the marauders might not carry the gate. But no one would be in any doubt about when things began.

  Hirundo said, “Won’t be long now.” Grus nodded. The general had thought along with him. That Hirundo often thought along with him was one reason they worked well together.

  More time passed. Now Grus was the one who said, “Can’t be long now,” and Hirundo the one who nodded. Grus got up and started to pace. It should have started already. He knew as much. He tried to convince himself he didn’t.

  “Something’s not right.” Hirundo spoke in a low voice, as though he wanted to be able to pretend he’d never said any such thing in case he happened to be mistaken.

  King Grus nodded. He stopped pacing, stopped pretending. “Pterocles!” he called, pitching his voice to carry.

  “Yes, Your Majesty?” The wizard hurried up to him. “What do you need?”

  “What can you tell me about the men in the tunnel?” Grus tried to hide his exasperation. Alca would have known what he wanted without asking. If the men went into the tunnel and didn’t come out when they were supposed to, what was he likely to need but some notion of what had happened to them?

  “I’ll do my best, Your Majesty.” Pterocles was willing enough. Grus only wished he were more aggressive.

  The wizard got to work. He peered through crystals and lit braziers fueled with leaves and twigs that produced odd-scented smokes, some spicy, others nasty. He cast powders onto the flames, which flared up blue or crimson or green. His hands twisted in intricate passes. He chanted in Avornan, and in other languages the king neither knew nor recognized.

  Grus kept hoping the fighting would break out while Pterocles was in the middle of a conjuration. That might make the wizard seem foolish, but it would show all the worry had been over nothing. No matter what Grus hoped, it didn’t happen. The spells went on and on. So did the peaceful, hateful silence inside Nishevatz.

  At last, unwillingly, the wizard shook his head. “I can establish no mystical bond with the men, Your Majesty.”

  “What does that mean?” Grus asked harshly.

  “It may mean they are not there—” Pterocles began.

  “What? What are you talking about? You saw them go. Where else would they be, could they be, but in Nishevatz?”

  “I do not know, Your Majesty,” Pterocles said. “The other possibility is that they are dead.” He winced. Maybe he hadn’t intended to say that. Whether he had or not, it seemed hideously probable.

  “What could have happened? What could have gone wrong?” Grus demanded.

  “I don’t know that, either,” Pterocles said miserably.

  “Can you find out?” What Grus wanted to say was, What good are you? He didn’t, but holding back wasn’t easy. It got harder when Prince Vsevolod, who’d also had men go into the tunnel, came over and glowered at Pterocles. Vsevolod had a face made for glowering; in the firelight, he looked like an ancient, wattled vulture with glittering eyes.

  Looking more flustered by
having two sovereigns watch him than he had with only one, Pterocles got to work again. He was in the middle of a spell when he suddenly stiffened, gasped out, “Oh, no!”—and toppled to the ground, unconscious or worse. At Grus’ shout, healers tried to rouse him. But, whatever had befallen him, whatever he had seen, he was far past rousing.

  And when morning came the next day, not a sound had been heard from Nishevatz.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” A servant chased Lanius down the corridors of the royal palace.

  “What is it, Bubulcus?” Lanius asked apprehensively. When any servant called in that tone of voice, something had gone wrong somewhere. When Bubulcus called in that tone of voice, something dreadful had gone horribly wrong, and he’d had something to do with it.

  And, sure enough, now that he had Lanius’ attention, he didn’t seem to want it anymore. Looking down at the mosaic flooring, he mumbled, “Well, Your Majesty, a couple of those moncats have gotten loose.”

  He made it sound as though the animals had done it all by themselves. That probably wasn’t impossible, but it certainly wasn’t likely. If they had done it all by themselves, Bubulcus wouldn’t have seemed so nervous, either. “And how did the moncats get loose?” Lanius inquired with what he hoped was ominous calm.

  Bubulcus flinched, which surprised the king not at all. The palace servant said, “Well, it was when I went into one of their rooms for a minute, and—”

  “Are you supposed to do that?” Lanius asked gently. None of the servants was supposed to do that. Even when powerless over the rest of Avornis, Lanius had ruled the rooms where his animals dwelt. He’d laid down that law after the last time one of Bubulcus’ visits let a moncat escape.

  Angrily defensive, Bubulcus said, “Which I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t thought you were in there.” He made his lapse sound as though it were Lanius’ fault.

  “You’re not supposed to go into one of those rooms whether you think I’m there or not,” Lanius snapped. Bubulcus only glared at him. Nothing would convince the servant that what he’d done was his fault. Still angry, Lanius demanded, “Which moncats got away?”

  Bubulcus threw his hands in the air. “How am I supposed to know? You never let anybody but you into those miserable rooms, so who but you can tell one of those miserable creatures from the next? All I know is, there were two of ’em. They scooted out fast as an arrow from a bow. If I hadn’t slammed the door, more would’ve gotten loose.” Instead of being embarrassed at letting any of the animals escape, he seemed proud it hadn’t been worse.

  “If you hadn’t slammed the door, Bubulcus, you’d be on your way to the Maze right now,” Lanius said.

  Where nothing else had, that got through to Bubulcus. Kings of Avornis had exiled people who dissatisfied them to the swamps and marshes east of the capital for years uncounted. The servant’s smile tried to seem ingratiating, but came out frightened. “Your Majesty is joking,” he said, sounding as though he hoped to convince himself.

  “My Majesty is doing no such thing,” Lanius replied. “Do you want to see if I’m joking?” Bubulcus shook his head, looking more frightened than ever. This is the power Grus knows all the time, Lanius thought. Am I jealous? He didn’t need to wonder long. Yes, I’m jealous. But that too would have to wait. “Where did the moncats go?”

  “Out of that room—that’s all I can tell you,” Bubulcus answered, as self-righteous as ever. “Nobody could keep track of those … things once they get moving. They aren’t natural, you ask me.”

  Lanius wished he knew which moncats had gotten out. Maybe his special calls would have helped lure them back. Or maybe not; moncats could be as willful and perverse as ordinary felines. As things were, elegant solutions would have to fly straight out the window. “Go to the kitchens,” he told Bubulcus.

  “To the kitchens?” the servant echoed. “Why should I do that?”

  “To get some raw flesh for me to use to catch the moncats.” Lanius suddenly looked as fierce as he knew how. “Or would you rather have me carve some raw flesh from your carcass?”

  Bubulcus fled.

  When he got back, he had some lovely beef that would probably have gone on the royal table tonight. And he proved to be capable of thought on his own, for he also carried a couple of dead mice by the tail. “Good,” Lanius murmured. “Maybe I won’t have to carve you after all.”

  He walked through palace hallways near the moncats’ room, clucking as though it were general feeding time and holding up the meat and the mice. Only when servants’ eyes went big did he stop to reflect that this was a curious thing for a King of Avornis to do. Having reflected, he then quit letting it bother him. He’d done all sorts of curious things. What was one more?

  As he walked, he eyed wall niches and candelabra hanging from the ceiling. Unlike ordinary cats, moncats climbed at any excuse or none; they lived their lives in the trees. That made them especially delightful to catch when they got loose. It was also the reason Lanius had told his servants not to come into the animals’ rooms—not that Bubulcus bothered remembering anything so trivial as a royal order.

  A woman saw the meat in Lanius’ hand and waved to him. “Your Majesty, one of those funny animals of yours is around that corner over there. It hissed at me, the nasty thing.”

  “Thank you, Parula. You’ll have a reward,” Lanius said. He glowered at Bubulcus. “What you’ll have …”

  “I didn’t do anything, Your Majesty.” Bubulcus sounded affronted. The next time he did do something wrong would be the first, as far as he was concerned.

  Lanius hurried around the corner at which Parula had pointed. Sure enough, the moncat was there. It was trying to get out a window. Since the royal palace was also a citadel, the windows were narrow and set with iron bars. The moncat couldn’t get out that way, though it might have dashed out a door.

  “Rusty!” Lanius called.

  “How can you tell one of the miserable creatures from another?” asked Bubulcus, who’d trailed along behind him.

  “How?” Lanius shrugged. “I can, that’s all.” From then on, he ignored Bubulcus. Dangling one of the dead mice by the tail, he called the moncat’s name again.

  Rusty turned large green eyes his way. Moncats were smarter than ordinary cats; they did come to learn the names Lanius called them. And the offer of a mouse would have tempted any feline small enough to care about such a morsel. Rusty dropped down from the window and hurried over to the king.

  He gave the moncat the mouse. Rusty held the treat in its hind feet—whose first toes did duty as thumbs—and used the claws of its front feet and sharp teeth to butcher it. The moncat ate the mouse in chunks. It didn’t scratch or bite when Lanius picked it up and carried it off to the room from which it had escaped.

  “There. That’s all taken care of,” Bubulcus said happily, as though he’d caught the moncat instead of letting it escape.

  “No.” Lanius shook his head. “This is one moncat. Two got away, you said. If the other one isn’t caught soon, you will be very, very sorry. Do you understand me?” He sounded like a king who ruled as well as reigned. Bubulcus looked unhappy enough to make Lanius feel like that kind of king, too.

  King Grus stared up at the frowning walls of Nishevatz. He still had no sure notion of what had happened to the Avornans and Chernagors he’d tried to sneak into the city. Prince Vasilko hadn’t gloated about them from the wall or shot their heads out of catapults or anything of the sort. He gave no sign of knowing they’d tried to enter Nishevatz. In a way, that silence was more intimidating than anything blatant he might have done. What had his men done to them? Or, worse, what were they doing to them?

  Not knowing gnawed at Grus. Still, he had to go on. With one effort a failure, he tried another. An interpreter, a squad of guards, and Prince Vsevolod at his side, he approached the Chernagor fortress.

  “Here is your rightful prince!” he called, and pointed to Vsevolod. The interpreter turned his words into those of
the throaty Chernagor tongue.

  Faces, pale dots in the distance, peered down at Grus from the top of the frowning wall. Here and there, the sun sparkled off an iron helmet, or perhaps a sword blade. No one on the wall said a word. The wind blew cold and salty off the gray sea beyond the city-state.

  “Here is your rightful prince!” Grus said again. “Cast down the ungrateful, unnatural son who has stolen your throne. Do you want the servants of the Banished One loose in your land? That is what Vasilko will give you.”

  Vsevolod strode forward. Despite his years, he still stood very straight, very erect. He looked every inch a prince. He shouted up at the warriors on the wall. He surely knew a lot of them as men, not merely as Chernagors.

  “What does he say?” Grus asked the interpreter.

  “He says he will not punish them if they yield up Vasilko to him,” the Chernagor answered. “He says he knows they were fooled. He says he will not even kill Vasilko. He says he will send him into exile in Avornis, where he can learn the error of his ways.”

  “Hmm.” Grus wondered how Vsevolod had meant that. He didn’t much want Vasilko in his kingdom, not even in the Maze. But he supposed Vsevolod was doing the best he could. If the old man had promised to torture his son to death the minute he got his throne back, which of them was really likely to have fallen under the influence of the Banished One?

  That thought brought on another. How do I know Vasilko really is the man the Banished One backs? Grus wondered. He sent Vsevolod a sudden hard stare. He’d always believed the old lord of Nishevatz. Why would Vsevolod have summoned him up to the Chernagor country, if not to fight the forces of the Banished One? Why? What if the answer is, to lure me into a danger I can’t hope to escape?

  “He is calling on them to open the gates,” the interpreter said. Grus knew he’d missed a couple of sentences. That jolt of suspicion had driven everything else out of his mind for a moment. The older he got, the more complicated life looked. He eyed Vsevolod again. By the time he got that old, how would things seem? Would he be able to find any straight paths at all, or would every choice twist back on itself like a snake with indigestion? The interpreter added, “He says he will not harm any of them, if they return to his side now. He also says you Avornans will go home then.”