The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  “Promising? No. Hopeful? Maybe,” Pterocles replied. “After all, as I’ve said, I’ve been … emptied myself. So have thralls. I know more about that than any other Avornan wizard ever born.” His laugh had a distinctly hollow note. “I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

  “What about the suggestions Alca the witch sent me?” Grus asked once more.

  With a sigh, the wizard answered, “We’ve been over this ground before, Your Majesty. I don’t deny the witch is clever, but what she says is not to the point. She doesn’t understand what being a thrall means.”

  “And you do?” Grus asked with heavy sarcasm.

  “As well as any man who isn’t a thrall can, yes,” Pterocles replied. “I’ve told you that before. Will you please listen?”

  “No matter how well you say you understand, you haven’t come up with anything that looks like a cure,” Grus said. “If you do, I’ll believe you. If you don’t, if you don’t show me you have ideas of your own, I am going to order you to use Alca’s for the sake of doing something.”

  “Even if it’s wrong,” Pterocles jeered.

  “Even if it is,” Grus said stubbornly. “From all I’ve seen, doing something is better than doing nothing. Something may work. Nothing never will.”

  “If you think I’m doing nothing, Your Majesty, you had better find yourself another wizard,” Pterocles said. “Then I will go off and do nothing with a clear conscience, and you can see what happens after that.”

  If he’d spoken threateningly, Grus might have sacked him on the spot. Instead, he sounded more like a man delivering a prophecy. That gave the king pause. Too many strange things had happened for him to ignore that tone of voice. And Pterocles, like Alca, had dreamed of the Banished One—the only sign Grus had that the Banished One took a mortal opponent seriously. Where would he find another wizard who had seen that coldly magnificent countenance?

  “If you think you’re smarter than Alca, you’d better be right,” he said heavily.

  “I don’t think anything of the sort,” Pterocles said. “I told you she was clever. I meant it. But I’ve been through things she hasn’t. A fool who’s dropped a brick on his toe knows better why he’d better not do that again than a clever fellow who hasn’t.”

  That made sense. It would have made more sense if the wizard had done anything much with what he knew. “All right, then. I know you’re pregnant,” Grus said. “I still want to see the baby one of these days before too long.”

  “If the baby lives, you’ll see it,” Pterocles said. “You don’t want it to come too soon, though, do you? They’re never healthy if they do.”

  Grus began to wish he hadn’t used that particular figure of speech. Even so, he said, “If you miscarry with your notions in spite of what you think now, I want you to try Alca’s.”

  He waited. Pterocles frowned. Obviously, he was looking for one more comment along the lines he’d been using. When the wizard’s eyes lit up, Grus knew he’d found one. Pterocles said, “Very well, Your Majesty, though that would be the first time a woman ever got a man pregnant.”

  After a—pregnant—pause, Grus groaned and said, “Are you wizard enough to make yourself disappear?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Pterocles said, and did.

  His mulishness still annoyed Grus. But he had a twinkle in his eye again, and he was getting back the ability to joke. Grus thought—Grus hoped—that meant he was recovering from the sorcerous pounding he’d taken outside of Nishevatz. Maybe the baby—if it ever came—would be worth seeing after all.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lanius had just finished telling Sosia the story of the moncat and the stolen silver dipper. It was an amusing story, and he knew he’d told it well. His wife listened politely enough, but when he was through she just sat in their bedchamber. She didn’t even smile. “Why did you tell me that?” she asked.

  “Because I thought it was funny,” Lanius answered. “I hoped you would think it was funny, too. Evidently I was wrong.”

  “Evidently you were,” Sosia said in a brittle voice. “You can tell me funny stories, but you can’t even tell me you’re sorry. Men!” She turned her back on him. “You’re worse than my father. At least my mother wasn’t around when he took up with somebody else.”

  “Oh.” More slowly than it should have, a light went on in Lanius’ head. “You’re still angry about Cristata.” He was angry about Cristata, too—angry that Grus had paid her off and sent her away. Sosia had other reasons.

  “Yes, I’m still angry about Cristata!” his wife blazed. Lanius blinked; he hadn’t realized how angry she was. “I loved you. I thought you loved me. And then you went and did that. How? Why?”

  “I never stopped loving you. I still love you,” Lanius said, which was true—and which he would have been wiser to say sooner and more often. “It’s just … she was there, and then …” His voice trailed away, which it should have done sooner.

  “She was there, and then you were there.” Sosia made a gesture boys used in the streets of the city of Avornis, one that left nothing to the imagination. “Is there anything else to say about that?”

  “I suppose not,” Lanius answered. From Sosia’s point of view, what he’d done with Cristata didn’t seem so good. From his own … He sighed. He still missed the serving girl. “Kings of Avornis are allowed to have more than one wife,” he added sulkily.

  “Yes—if they can talk their first one into it,” Sosia said. “You didn’t. You didn’t even try. You were having a good time screwing her, so you decided you’d marry her.”

  “Well, what else but fun are wives after the first one for?” Lanius asked, he thought reasonably. “Oh, once in a while a king will be trying to find a woman who can bear him a son, the way my father was. But most of the time, those extra wives are just for amusement.”

  “Maybe you were amused, but I wasn’t,” Sosia snapped. “And I thought I amused you. Was I wrong?”

  Even Lanius, who didn’t always hear the subtleties in what other people said, got the point there. “No,” he said hastily. “Oh, no indeed.”

  Sosia glared at him. “That’s what you say. Why am I supposed to believe you?”

  He started to explain why he saw little point in lying to her, especially now that Cristata was gone. He didn’t get very far. That wasn’t the answer she was looking for. He needed another heartbeat or two to figure out the sort of answer she did want.

  Some time later, he said, “There. Do you see now?” They were, by then, both naked and sweaty, though snow coated the windowsills. Sometimes answers didn’t need words.

  “Maybe,” Sosia said grudgingly.

  “Well, I’ll just have to show you again,” Lanius said, and he did.

  After that second demonstration, he fell asleep very quickly. When he woke up, it was light. What woke him was Sosia getting out of bed. He yawned and stretched. She nodded without saying anything.

  “Good morning,” he told her.

  “Is it?” she asked.

  “Well, I thought so.”

  “Of course you did,” she said. “You got what you wanted last night.”

  In some annoyance, Lanius said, “I wasn’t the only one.”

  “No?” But Sosia saw that wouldn’t do. She shrugged. “One night’s not enough to set everything right between us.”

  Lanius sighed. “What am I going to have to do now?”

  “You’re not going to have to do anything,” Sosia said. “You need to show me there are things you want to do, the kinds of things people who care about each other do without thinking.”

  Since Lanius hardly ever did anything without thinking, he almost asked her what she was talking about. He quickly decided not to. Show me you love me, was what she meant. Keep on showing me until I believe you.

  Some of what he did would be an act. He knew that. Sosia undoubtedly knew it, too. She wanted a convincing act—an act good enough to convince him as well as her. If he kept doing those things, maybe he would convi
nce himself. Maybe I won’t, too, he thought mulishly. But he would have to make the effort.

  He did his best. He went out into the hall and spoke to a serving woman, who hurried off to the kitchens. She came back with a tray of poached eggs and pickled lamb’s tongue, Sosia’s favorite breakfast. Lanius preferred something simpler—bread and honey and a cup of wine suited him very well.

  As Sosia sprinkled salt over the eggs, she smiled at Lanius. She’d noticed what he’d done. That was something, anyhow.

  A snowstorm filled the air around the palace with soft, white silence. In the middle of that silence, King Grus and Hirundo tried to figure out what to do when sunshine and green leaves replaced snow and cold. “How many men do you want to leave behind to make sure the Chernagors don’t ravage the coast again?” Hirundo asked. “And if you leave that many behind, will we have enough left to go up into the land of the Chernagors and do something useful ourselves?”

  Those were both good questions. Grus wished they weren’t quite so good. He said, “Part of that depends on how many ships Plegadis can build, and on whether we can fight off the pirates before they ever come ashore.”

  “You’d know more about that than I do,” Hirundo answered. “All I know about ships is getting to the rail in a hurry.” He grinned and then stuck out his tongue. “Give me a horse any day.”

  “You’re welcome to mine,” Grus said. The general laughed. More seriously, Grus went on, “I don’t know as much about these ships as I wish I did. No Avornan does. I don’t even know if they’ll be able to find the pirates on the sea and keep them from landing. We’ll find out, though.”

  Hirundo nodded. “Oh, yes. The next question, of course, is when we’ll find out. Are the pirates going to keep us from getting up into the Chernagor country again?”

  “No,” Grus declared. “No, by Olor’s beard. I’ll let the garrisons and the ships deal with the Chernagors in the south. It’s not just a question of throwing Prince Vasilko out on his ear. If it were, I wouldn’t worry so much. We have to drive the Banished One out of the land of the Chernagors.”

  “When we started out in this fight, I wondered whether Vasilko or Vsevolod was the Banished One’s cat’s-paw,” Hirundo said.

  “I spent a lot of time worrying about that, even though Vsevolod would probably want to strangle me with his big nobbly hands if he ever found out,” Grus said. “But there’s not much doubt anymore.”

  Hirundo considered that. “Well,” he said, “no.”

  Grus sent out orders for cavalrymen and foot soldiers to gather by the city of Avornis. He also sent out other orders this winter, strengthening the garrisons in the river towns near the Azanian Sea and moving the river-galley fleets toward the mouths of the Nine. That meant he would take a smaller force north with him this coming spring when he moved against Nishevatz. But it also meant—he hoped it meant—the Chernagors wouldn’t be able to pull off such a nasty surprise in the new campaigning season.

  No sooner had his couriers ridden away from the capital than a blizzard rolled out of the north and dumped a foot and a half of snow on the city and the countryside. Grus tried to tell himself it was only a coincidence. The Banished One didn’t really have anything to do with it … did he?

  The king thought about asking Pterocles, thought about it and then thought better of it. He’d asked that question of Alca once before, in an earlier harsh winter. He’d found out the Banished One had used the weather as a weapon against Avornis, but the deposed god had almost slain Alca and him and Lanius in the aftermath of the witch’s magic. Some knowledge came at too high a price.

  Mild weather returned after this snowstorm finally blew itself out. That made Grus doubt the Banished One lay behind it. When he struck at Avornis, he sent blizzard after blizzard after blizzard. He was very strong, and reveled in his strength. Being so strong, he’d never had to worry much about subtlety. He left his foes in no doubt about what he was doing, and also in no doubt that they couldn’t hope to stop him.

  Milvago. Had the Banished One been as overwhelmingly mighty in the heavens as he was here on earth? Perhaps not quite, or the gods he’d fathered would never have been able to cast him out, to cast him down to the material world. But Grus would have been astonished if they hadn’t used their sire’s strength against him. Maybe he’d been arrogant, thinking they couldn’t possibly challenge him.

  He knew better than that now—one more thought Grus wished he hadn’t had.

  Soldiers started coming up out of the south to gather for this year’s invasion of the land of the Chernagors. A new blizzard howled down on the capital once their encampment began to swell. By then, though, winter was dying. Even the Banished One had limits to what he could do to the weather … if he was doing anything. Grus still hoped he wasn’t.

  He couldn’t stop the sun from climbing higher in the sky every day, couldn’t stop the days from getting longer and warmer, couldn’t stop the snow from melting. Even after it vanished from the ground, Grus had to wait a little longer, to let the roads dry out and keep his army from bogging down. As soon as he thought he could, he climbed aboard a horse—mounting with the same reluctance Hirundo showed at boarding a river galley—and set off for the north.

  Every so often, he looked back over his shoulder, wondering if a messenger was galloping up behind the army with word of some new disaster elsewhere in Avornis that would make him turn around. Every time he saw no such messenger, he felt as though he’d won a victory. On went the army, too, toward the Chernagor country.

  Each time Grus set out on campaign, Lanius waved farewell and wished him good fortune. And each time Grus set out on campaign, Lanius’ smile of farewell grew wider. With Grus off to or beyond the frontiers, power in the city of Avornis increasingly rested in Lanius’ hands.

  Lanius thought he could rise against. Grus with some hope of success. Thinking he could do it didn’t make him anxious to try, though. For one thing, he wasn’t a man to take many chances. For another, even success could only mean winning a civil war. He doubted there was any such thing as winning a civil war. If he and Grus fought—if they wasted Avornis’ men and wealth, who gained besides the Banished One? Nobody Lanius could see. And, though he didn’t like to admit it even to himself, having someone in place to handle those parts of kingship he didn’t care for wasn’t always the worst thing in the world. He was no campaigner, and never would be. Having authority in the palace was a different story.

  As usual, Queen Sosia, Crex, Pitta, Queen Estrilda, and Arch-Hallow Anser came out beyond the walls of the capital to send Grus off and wish him well. Also as usual, Prince Ortalis stayed away.

  That worried Lanius. The more he thought about it, the more it worried him. If Ortalis had to choose between Grus and the Banished One, which would he pick? Remembering what had happened in Nishevatz, remembering how Prince Vasilko had risen against his father and helped the Banished One enter his city-state, did nothing to give Lanius peace of mind.

  Normally, he would have talked things over with Sosia and found out how worried she was. Ortalis was her brother, after all; she knew him better than Lanius did. But she was still touchy—which put it mildly—about Cristata, and so Lanius didn’t want to provoke her in any way.

  He thought about hashing it out with Anser, too. But Anser wasn’t the right man to deal with such concerns. With his sunny nature, he had a hard time seeing the bad in anyone else. And he didn’t know enough about the true nature of the Banished One, nor did Lanius feel like instructing him.

  With nobody to talk to about Ortalis, Lanius did his brooding in privacy on the way back to the royal palace. He was used to that. Once upon a time, he’d resented being so much alone. Now he took it for granted.

  When he and the rest of the royal family returned to the palace, they found the servants in a commotion. “He’s done it! He’s gone and done it!” they exclaimed in ragged chorus.

  That sounded inflammatory. It didn’t sound very informative. “Who’s gone and done w
hat?” Lanius asked.

  The servants looked at him as though he were an idiot for not knowing. “Why, Prince Ortalis, of course,” several of them answered, again all at once.

  Lanius, Sosia, Estrilda, and Anser all looked at one another. Crex and Pitta were too small to worry about what their uncle did, and ran off to play. Lanius said, “All right, now we know who. What has Ortalis done?” He braced himself for almost any atrocity. Had Ortalis hurt another serving girl? Had he decided to have a couple of moncats served up in a stew? The king wouldn’t have put anything past him.

  But the servants replied, “He’s gotten married.”

  “He has?” Now the king, two queens, and the arch-hallow all cried out in astonishment. That wasn’t just news; that was an earthquake. Grus had been trying to find Ortalis a bride on and off for years. He hadn’t had any luck, either. Ortalis’ reputation was too ripe. Grus had sent Lepturus, the head of the royal bodyguards, to the Maze for refusing to let his granddaughter marry the prince. And now Ortalis had found himself a wife?

  “To whom?” Lanius asked. “And how did this happen?”

  “How did it happen without us hearing about it?” Sosia added.

  Bubulcus knew all the details. Lanius might have guessed he would. “He’s married to Limosa, Your Majesty. You know, the daughter of Petrosus, the treasury minister.” He seemed to sneer at the king for being in the dark.

  They deserve each other, was the first uncharitable thought that went through Lanius’ mind. But that wasn’t fair to Limosa, whom he’d met only a couple of times. He disliked her father, who was stingy and bad-tempered even for a man of his profession.

  “How did it happen?” Sosia asked again. She might have been speaking of a flood or a fire or some other disaster, not a wedding.

  “In the usual way, I’m sure,” Bubulcus replied. “They stood before a priest, and he said the proper words over them, and then they …” He leered.

  “Don’t be a bigger fool than you can help,” Lanius snapped, and Bubulcus, knowing he’d gone too far, turned pale. Lanius added, “You know what Her Majesty meant.”