The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  King Lanius looked at the moncat, and the moncat looked at Lanius. “How did you get out?” the king demanded. Bubulcus wasn’t the only servant who denied having anything to do with Pouncer’s latest escape. Had it found some way out of the chamber all by itself? If it had, none of the other animals in here had proved smart enough to use it.

  What did that mean? Did it mean anything? Could one moncat be so much smarter and sneakier than the rest that it kept an escape route a secret? Lanius didn’t know. He would have liked to ask Pouncer with some hope of getting back an answer he could understand. That failing, he would have liked to catch the beast in the act of escaping.

  Neither seemed likely. Moncats were sneaky enough—and enough like ordinary cats—not to do something while a lowly human being was watching. And, to a moncat, even a King of Avornis counted as a lowly human being.

  “Mrowr,” Pouncer said, staring at Grus out of large amber eyes. Then it scampered up the scaffolding of branches and poles that did duty for a forest canopy. Its retractile claws, always sharp, bit into the wood. Moncats climbed even better than monkeys.

  He still wondered which were smarter, moncats or monkeys. Moncats were more self-centered and perverse; of that he had no doubt. Monkeys thought more along the lines of human intelligence. That made them seem smarter, at least at first glance. But Lanius remained unconvinced they really were.

  Try as he would, he couldn’t think of any way to test the animals that would prove anything. If the moncats didn’t feel like playing along, they simply wouldn’t. What did that prove? Were they stupid, or just willful? Or would he be the stupid one for trying to get them to do things they weren’t inclined to do?

  As things stood now, he certainly felt like the stupid one. He eyed the moncat he’d twice encountered in the archives. Maybe the servants were lying, and someone had opened a door that second time, as Bubulcus had the first time. If they weren’t, though, Pouncer did have a secret it wasn’t telling.

  “If you come to the archives again, I’ll …” Lanius’ voice trailed away. What would he do to Pouncer if it escaped again? Punish it? Congratulate it? Both at once? If the moncat didn’t already think so, that would convince it human beings were crazy.

  Reluctantly, he left the moncats’ chamber. He wasn’t going to find out what he wanted to know there. He wondered if a wizard could figure out what Pouncer was doing. But plenty of more important things needed wizards. What a moncat was up to didn’t. Odds were it wouldn’t—couldn’t—do it again anyway.

  So Lanius told himself. All the same, the first few times he went back to the archives, he kept looking around at every small noise he imagined he heard. He waited for the moncat to meow and to emerge from concealment brandishing something it had stolen from the kitchens.

  He waited, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. He decided those small noises really were figments of his imagination. When he stopped worrying about them, he got more work done than he had for weeks. He turned up several parchments touching on how Avornis had ruled the provinces south of the Stura River before the Menteshe—and the Banished One—took them from the kingdom.

  Would those ever really matter again? Every time Avornis tried to reclaim the lost provinces, disaster had followed. No King of Avornis for the past two centuries and more had dared do any serious campaigning south of the Stura. And yet Grus talked about going after the Scepter of Mercy in a way that suggested he was serious and would do it if he got the chance. Lanius would have been more likely to take that as bluster if the Banished One hadn’t stirred up so much trouble for Avornis far from the Stura. Didn’t that suggest he was worried about what might happen if the Avornans did try once more to reclaim the Scepter and their lost lands?

  Didn’t it? Or did it? How could a mere mortal know? Maybe the outcast god was stirring up trouble elsewhere for its own sake. Or maybe he was laying an uncommonly deep trap, building up belief in their chances so he could do a better job of cutting them down.

  That troubled Lanius enough to drive him out of the royal archives—and over to the great cathedral and the ecclesiastical archives. He’d seen they held more about the Banished One than the royal archives did. The expelled deity had been a theological problem even before he became a political problem.

  Lanius paid his respects to Arch-Hallow Anser. Then he called on Ixoreus. The green-robed priest held no high rank. But what he didn’t know of the archives under the cathedral, no man living did.

  After a moment’s thought, the king wondered about that. As he and the white-bearded archivist went downstairs, Lanius asked, as casually as he could, “Have you ever run across the name Milvago in all these parchments?”

  Ixoreus stopped. His eyes widened slightly—no, more than slightly. “Oh, yes, Your Majesty,” he said in a low voice. “I have run across that name. I didn’t know you had.”

  “I often wish I hadn’t,” Lanius said. “Do you know what that name means?”

  “Oh, yes,” the archivist repeated. “But I have never told a living soul of it. Have you?”

  “One,” Lanius answered. “I told Grus. He had to know.”

  Ixoreus considered. At last, with some reluctance, he nodded. “Yes, I suppose he did. But can he keep his mouth shut?” He spoke of the other king with a casual lack of respect. Lanius was suddenly sure the old man spoke about him the same way when he was out of earshot.

  “Yes,” he said. “Grus and I don’t always get along, but he can hold a secret.”

  “I suppose so,” Ixoreus said. “He hasn’t told the arch-hallow. I’m sure of that—and Anser is his own flesh and blood. I never told anybody—not Arch-Hallow Bucco, not King Mergus, not King Scolopax—gods, no!—not anybody. And I wouldn’t have told you, either, if you hadn’t found out for yourself.”

  Considering what this secret was … “Good,” Lanius told the priest.

  The gray stone walls of Nishevatz frowned down on the Avornan army encamped in front of them. Grus studied the formidable stonework. “Here we are again,” he said to Hirundo. “How do we do better this time than we did two years ago?”

  “Yes, here we are again,” the general agreed lightly. “How do we do better? Taking the city would be good, don’t you think?”

  “Now that you mention it, yes.” King Grus matched him dry for dry. “And how do we go about that, if you’d be so kind?”

  They stood not far from the outer opening of the tunnel Prince Vsevolod had used to escape from Nishevatz, the tunnel Avornan and Chernagor soldiers had entered to sneak into the town … and from which, by all appearances, they’d never emerged. Hirundo’s eyes flicked in the direction of that opening. “One thing we’d better not do,” he said, “and that’s try going underground again.”

  “True,” Grus said. “That means we have to go over the wall—or through it.”

  He and Hirundo both looked toward Nishevatz’s works. From behind battlements, Chernagor fighting men in iron helmets and mail-shirts looked back. Two years earlier, Grus had seen how well they could fight defending one of their towns. He had no reason to believe they’d gone soft in those two years. That meant breaking into Nishevatz wouldn’t be easy.

  “Do you think the wizard can do us any good?” Hirundo asked.

  “I don’t know,” Grus answered. “We’d better find out, though, eh?”

  Pterocles looked his usual haggard self. Grus could hardly blame him. The last time he’d looked at these walls, he’d almost died. Now, though, he managed a nod. “I’ll do what I can, Your Majesty.”

  “How much do you think that will be?” Grus asked. “If you can’t help us, tell me now so I can try to make other plans.”

  “I think I can,” the wizard said. “I don’t feel anything of the presence that beat me the last time. That makes me think it was the Banished One, and that now he’s busy somewhere else.”

  Was that good news? Grus wasn’t altogether sure. “Do you know where? Can you sense what he’s doing?”

  “No, Yo
ur Majesty,” Pterocles replied. “I don’t feel him at all. That’s all I can tell you.” He paused. “No. It’s not. I’m not sorry not to feel him, either.”

  Grus pointed north, toward the sea. “Without a sorcerous foe here, can you do anything about the supply ships that are keeping Nishevatz fed? If the grain doesn’t come in, this turns into a real siege, one we can win without trying to storm the walls.”

  “I don’t know.” Pterocles looked dubious. “I can try, but magic doesn’t usually travel well over water—not unless you’re the Banished One, of course. He can do things ordinary wizards only dream of.”

  There are reasons for that, too, Grus thought; he knew more of them than even Pterocles did. Since he couldn’t tell the wizard what he knew, he said, “It’s not the water we want to aim the magic at. It’s those ships.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” Pterocles said impatiently. “I’m not altogether an idiot, you know.”

  “Well, good,” Grus murmured. “I do like to have that reassurance.” As he’d hoped, Pterocles sent him a dirty look. An angry wizard, he thought, would do a better job than one just going through the motions. He hoped so, anyhow.

  Ships full of grain kept getting into Nishevatz for the next few days. Grus could watch them put in at quays beyond the reach of his catapults. He could watch men haul sacks of grain into the Chernagor town on their backs and load more sacks into carts and wagons that donkeys and horses took inside the walls. As far as he could tell, Prince Vasilko’s soldiers were eating better than his own men. And he couldn’t do anything about it.

  He couldn’t—but maybe Pterocles could. The wizard didn’t show his face for some time. Grus checked on him once, and found him sitting with his chin in his hands staring down at a grimoire on a folding table in front of him. Pterocles didn’t look up. He didn’t seem to notice the king was there. Grus silently withdrew. If Pterocles was getting ready to do something large and important, Grus didn’t want to interfere. If, on the other hand, the wizard was just sitting there …

  If that’s all he’s doing, he’ll be very sorry, Grus thought. I’ll make sure he’s very sorry.

  In due course, Pterocles emerged. He looked pale but determined. He always looked pale. Determination often seemed harder to come by. Nodding to Grus, the wizard said, “I’m ready, Your Majesty.”

  Grus nodded. “Good. So are we. Gods grant you good fortune.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty. What I can do, I will.” Pterocles brought out a basin filled with water. On it floated toy ships made of chips of wood, with stick masts and scraps of cloth for sails. Pointing to the basin, he told Grus, “It’s filled with seawater from the Northern Sea.”

  To him, the point of that seemed clear. To Grus, it was opaque. The king asked, “Why?”

  “To make it more closely resemble that which is real,” the wizard replied. “The more closely the magical and the real correspond, the better the result of the spell is likely to be.”

  “You know your business,” Grus said. I hope you know your business.

  Pterocles got down to it as though he knew his business. He began to chant in a dialect of Avornan even older than the one priests used to celebrate the sacred liturgies in temples and cathedrals. When a cloud drifted close to the sun, he pointed a finger at it and spoke in threatening tones, though the dialect was so old-fashioned, Grus couldn’t make out exactly what he said. The cloud slid past without covering the sun. Maybe the wind would have taken it that way anyhow. Grus didn’t think so, not with the direction in which it was blowing, but maybe. Still, mortal wizards had trouble manipulating the weather, so maybe not, too.

  The king wondered why Pterocles wanted to preserve the sunshine, which was about as bright as it ever got in the misty Chernagor country. He soon found out. The wizard drew from his leather belt pouch what Grus first took to be a crystal ball. Then he saw it was considerably wider than it was thick, though still curved on top and bottom.

  Chanting still, Pterocles held the crystal a few inches above one of the miniature ships floating in the basin. A brilliant point of light appeared on the toy ship’s deck. To Grus’ amazement, smoke began to rise. A moment later, the toy ship burst into flame. Pterocles shouted out what was plainly a command.

  And then Grus shouted, too, in triumph. He pointed out to sea. One of the real ships there had also caught fire. A thick plume of black smoke rose high into the sky. Pterocles never turned his head to look. He went right on with his spell, poising the crystal over another ship.

  Before long, that second toy also burned. When it did, another Chernagor ship bound for Nishevatz also caught fire. “Well done!” Grus cried. “By Olor’s beard, Pterocles, well done!”

  Pterocles, for once, refused to be distracted. For all the difference the king’s shout made to his magic, Grus might as well have kept quiet. A third miniature ship caught fire. A third real ship out on the Northern Sea burst into flame.

  That was enough for the rest of the Chernagor skippers. They put about and fled from Nishevatz as fast as the wind would take them. That wasn’t fast enough to keep another tall-masted ship from catching fire and burning. The survivors fled faster yet.

  Pterocles might have burned even more ships, but the strain of what he was doing caught up with him. He swayed like a tall tree in a high wind. Then his eyes rolled up in his head and he toppled over in a faint. Grus caught him before he hit his head on the ground, easing him down.

  Once Pterocles wasn’t working magic anymore, he soon recovered. His eyes opened. “Did I do it, Your Majesty?” he asked.

  “See for yourself.” Grus pointed out toward the Northern Sea, and toward the smoke rising from the burning ships upon it.

  The wizard made a fist and smacked it softly into the open palm of his other hand. “Yes!” he said, one quiet word with more triumph in it than most of the shouts the king had heard.

  “Well done. More than well done, by the gods.” Grus gave Pterocles all the praise he could. “You had a hard time when you were in the Chernagor country a couple of years ago, but now you’re making our foes pay.”

  “This was … much easier than what I did year before last,” Pterocles replied. “Then …” He shook his head, plainly not wanting to remember. “Well, you saw what happened to me then. Now … Now I feel as though I’m not fighting somebody three times as tall as I am, and ten times as strong.”

  Grus wondered what that meant. Probably that, as he’d thought, the Banished One wasn’t watching Nishevatz as closely as he had then, and didn’t land on Pterocles like a landslide when the wizard threatened to do something inconvenient. When that first occurred to him, Grus knew nothing but relief. But it quickly spawned another obvious question. If the Banished One wasn’t concentrating on the land of the Chernagors these days, where was he concentrating, and why?

  When Grus asked the worrisome question out loud, Pterocles said, “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but I have no way of learning that.”

  “I know you don’t—not until the Banished One shows all of us,” the king said. “Meanwhile, though, all we can do is keep on here. If we can turn this into a real siege, we’ll starve Vasilko into yielding up Nishevatz.”

  Pterocles nodded. “Yes,” he repeated, even more low-voiced than before. It wasn’t triumphant this time—he’d seen how uncertain war could be. But it held as much anticipation as Grus felt himself.

  Little by little, Lanius had resigned himself to Cristata’s being gone. He wouldn’t see her again. He wouldn’t hold her again. He’d made peace with Sosia. He’d never stopped caring for his wife. Maybe she finally believed that. Or maybe she’d decided showing she didn’t believe it wasn’t a good idea.

  But Lanius also began to notice that the serving women in the palace looked on him with new eyes these days. Before he slept with Cristata, they’d seemed to think he wouldn’t do anything like that. Now they knew he might. And they knew how much they might gain if he did—with them. They straightened up whenever he came by. The
y batted their eyes. They swung their hips. Their voices got lower and throatier. They leaped to obey his every request. It was all very enjoyable, and all very distracting.

  Sosia also noticed. She didn’t find it enjoyable. “They’re a pack of sluts,” she told Lanius. “I hope you can see that, too.”

  “Oh, yes. I see it,” he said. That seemed to satisfy Sosia. He’d hoped it would. He’d even meant it. That didn’t mean he didn’t go on enjoying. Few men fail to enjoy pretty women finding them attractive, regardless of whether they intend to do anything about it.

  Lanius hadn’t particularly intended to do anything about it. He understood that some—a lot—of the serving women’s new interest was mercenary. As things worked out, though, his eyes didn’t ruin his good intentions. His nose did.

  He was going down the corridor that led to the royal archives when he suddenly stopped and sniffed. The scent was sweet and thick and spicy. He’d never smelled it before, or at least never noticed it before. He noticed it now. He couldn’t have noticed it much more if he’d been hit over the head.

  “What is that perfume?” he said.

  “It’s called sandalwood, Your Majesty.” The maidservant’s name, Lanius recalled, was Zenaida. She was from the south, with wavy midnight hair, black eyes, and a delicately arched nose. When she smiled at the king, her lips seemed redder and fuller and softer than ever before. “Do you like it?”

  “Very much,” Lanius answered. “It … suits you.”

  “Thank you.” Zenaida smiled again, without any coyness about what she had in mind. “And what would suit you, Your Majesty?”

  Not even Lanius, who often failed to notice hints, could misunderstand that. He coughed once or twice. If not for the perfume, he might have passed it off with a joke or pretended not to hear. But the fragrance unlocked gates in his defenses before he even realized the citadel was under attack. Up until now, he’d hardly noticed Zenaida. He wondered why not.

  “What would suit me?” he murmured. The answer came without hesitation. “Come along,” he told Zenaida. Smiling once more—a woman’s secret smile of victory—she stepped up by his side.