The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  The beaters fanned out into the woods. Anser’s men vanished silently among the trees. Lanius’ guards were noisy enough to make the arch-hallow’s followers smile. But they did no more than smile. The two groups had tangled after earlier hunts. Lanius’ guards came out on top in tavern brawls.

  Anser chose a spot oh the edge of a clearing. Before long, a stag bounded out into the open space. The arch-hallow let fly. He cursed more or less good-naturedly when his arrow hissed past the deer’s head. The stag sprang away.

  “Well, you won’t do worse than I did, anyhow,” Anser said to Lanius.

  “No,” the king agreed. He’d never had the nerve to tell Anser he always shot to miss. He enjoyed eating venison, but not enough to enjoy killing animals himself so he could have it. He wouldn’t have wanted to be a butcher, either. He recognized the inconsistency without worrying about reconciling it.

  Half an hour passed with no new game in the clearing. Lanius, who didn’t mind, said nothing. Anser, who did, grumbled. Then another stag, smaller and less splendid than the first, trotted out into the open space. It stopped not fifteen yards in front of Lanius and Anser.

  “Your shot, Your Majesty,” Anser whispered.

  Awkwardly, with unpracticed fingers, Lanius fit an arrow to the bowstring. Here was his dilemma, big as life, for he knew he could hit the stag if he but shot straight. Wouldn’t it have an easier death if he shot it than if it died under the ripping fangs of wolves or from some slow, cruel disease?

  He drew the bow, let fly … and the arrow zoomed high, well over the stag’s back. The animal fled.

  “Oh … too bad, Your Majesty,” Anser said, doing his good-natured best not to show how annoyed he was.

  “I told you before—I’m hopeless,” Lanius answered. As a matter of fact, he was rather proud of himself.

  Out on the Northern Sea, a ship made for Nishevatz, its great spread of sail shining white in the spring sun. On the shore, a tiny ship made from a scrap of wood, a twig, and a rag bobbed in a bowl of seawater. The spring sun shone on it, too. Hundreds of defenders on the walls of Nishevatz anxiously eyed the real ship. King Grus and Pterocles paid more attention to the toy in the bowl.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” the king said.

  “Now is as good a time as any,” Pterocles replied. He held his curved bit of crystal above the toy ship. A brilliant spot of light appeared on the toy. Grus wondered how the crystal did that. He had ever since he first saw this sorcery. Now was not the time, though, to ask for an explanation.

  Pterocles began a spell—a chant mixed with passes that pointed from the little ship in the bowl to the big one on the sea. On and on he went, until smoke began to rise from the toy ship. More and more smoke came from it, and then it burst into flame. Pterocles cried out commandingly and pointed once more to the tall-masted ship on the Northern Sea.

  Grus’ eye went that way, too. The ship still lay some distance offshore, but Grus could spot the smoke rising from it. Before long, that smoke turned to flickering red-yellow flame, too. “Well done!” he exclaimed.

  A loud groan rose from the walls of Nishevatz. The defenders must have hoped the supply ship would be able to get through, even though they had found no counterspell against Pterocles’ charm. If it had, the siege would have become much more difficult. As things were, the Avornans held on to the advantage.

  A longtime sailor himself, Grus knew a certain amount of sympathy for the Chernagors aboard that burning ship. Nothing afloat could be a worse horror than fire. That had to be doubly true on the long seagoing voyages the northern men, formidable traders and formidable pirates, often undertook. And these flames, springing from magic as they did, would be all the harder to fight.

  The sailors soon gave up trying to fight them. Instead, they went over the side and made for Nishevatz in boats while the ship burned. The boats could not hold all the men. Maybe more clung to lines trailing behind them. Grus hoped so. He wanted to stop the grain the ship carried, but had nothing special against the sailors.

  Another Chernagor ship had come up over the horizon while Pterocles was casting his spell. When smoke and flame burst from the vessel nearing Nishevatz, the other ship hastily put about and sailed away from the besieged city-state. Pointing to it, Pterocles asked, “Do you want me to see if I can set that one afire, too, Your Majesty?”

  “No,” Grus said. The wizard looked surprised. The king explained, “Let that crew go. They’ll spread the word that our magic still works. That will make the rest of the Chernagors not want to come to Nishevatz. I hope it will, anyhow.”

  “Ah.” Pterocles nodded. “Yes, now that you point it out to me, I can see how that might be so. If the other ship had kept coming …”

  Grus nodded, too. “That’s right. If it had kept coming, I would have told you to do your best to sink it. This way, though, better not. Bad news isn’t bad news unless someone’s left to bring it.”

  “I’ll be ready in case the Chernagors try again,” the wizard said. “If they come at night, I can use real fire to kindle my symbolic ships. The spell isn’t as elegant that way, but it should still work. It did the last time.”

  “Working is all I worry about,” Grus said. “I know you sorcerers sweat for elegance, but it doesn’t matter a bit to me.”

  “It should,” Pterocles said. “The more elegant a spell is, the harder the time wizards on the other side have of picking it to pieces.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that,” Grus admitted. “Still, though, the Chernagor wizards haven’t had any luck trying to cope with this spell. Doesn’t that mean they won’t be able to no matter what?”

  “I wish it did.” Pterocles’ smile was distinctly weary. “All it really means, though, is that they haven’t figured out how yet. They may work out a counterspell tomorrow. If they do”—he shrugged—“then that means I have to come up with something new. And it means Nishevatz gets fed.”

  He was frank. He was, perhaps, more frank than Grus would have liked. After a moment’s thought, the king shook his head. Pterocles had told him what he needed to know. “Thank you,” Grus said. “If they do find a counterspell, I know you’ll do your best to get around it.” You’d better do your best. Otherwise, we’ll have to try storming the place, and I don’t know if we can. I don’t want to have to find out, either.

  That evening, Prince Vsevolod came up to him and asked him to do exactly that. “Sooner we are in Nishevatz, sooner we punish Vasilko,” Vsevolod boomed.

  “Well, yes, Your Highness, if we get into Nishevatz,” Grus said. “If the men on the walls throw us back, I don’t know if we’ll be able to go on with the siege afterwards. That would depend on how bad they hurt us.”

  “You do not want to fight,” Vsevolod said in accusing tones.

  “I want to win,” Grus said. “If I can win without throwing away a lot of my men, I want that most of all.”

  For all Prince Vsevolod followed that, the king might as well have spoken in the language of the Menteshe. Vsevolod said, “You do not want to fight,” again. Then he turned his back and stalked away without giving Grus a chance to reply.

  Grus was tempted—sorely tempted—to fling Vsevolod into chains for the insult. With a mournful sigh, he decided he couldn’t. It was too likely to cause trouble not only with the Chernagors who’d accompanied the prince to Nishevatz but also with those inside the city. Grus let out a grunt also redolent of regret. No matter what his good sense said, the temptation lingered.

  Grus would never have made a poet or a historian, but he did get the essential facts where they belonged. Lanius had come to rely on that. So far, everything seemed to be going as the other king hoped. Experience had taught Lanius not to get too excited about such things. The end of the campaign—if it didn’t have to break off in the middle—would be the place to judge.

  Other reports came up from the south—reports of the fighting between Sanjar and Korkut. Lanius enjoyed every word of those. Each account of another bloody battle betwee
n Prince Ulash’s unloving sons made his smile wider. The more the Menteshe hurt one another, the harder the time they would have hurting Avornis.

  Before the spring was very old, other news came up from the south, news that the Menteshe to the east and west of what had been Ulash’s realm were sweeping in to seize what they could from it. In the same way, ravens and vultures that would never harm a live bear snatched fragments from its carcass once the beast was dead. Again, the more those Menteshe stole, the happier Lanius got.

  And what made him more cheerful yet was hearing no news at all from the east. News from that direction, news from the shore of the Azanian Sea, was unlikely to be good. If the Chernagors sent a fleet to harry the coast, cries for help would fly back to the city of Avornis. So far … none.

  That left Lanius in an unusually good mood. Even if Sosia had had nothing to do with causing it, she responded to it, and seemed to forgive him for amusing himself with Zenaida. He gratefully accepted that.

  But the king’s exuberance also made the serving women pay more attention to him than they did when he was his usual sobersided self. “You’re so—bouncy, Your Majesty!” exclaimed a plump but pretty maidservant named Flammea.

  No one in all of Lanius’ life up until that moment had ever called him bouncy—or anything like bouncy. He managed a smile that, if not bouncy, might at least be taken as friendly. Flammea smiled back. Lanius patted her in an experimental way. If she’d ignored him and gone about her business, he would have shrugged and forgotten about her. Instead, she giggled. He took that as a promising sign.

  One thing led to another—led quite quickly to another, as a matter of fact. “Oh, Your Majesty!” Flammea gasped, an oddly formal salute at that particular moment. Lanius was too busy to be much inclined to literary criticism.

  Afterwards, the maidservant looked smug. Did that mean she was going to brag to all her friends? If she did, she would be sorry. Of course, if she did, Sosia would find out, and then Lanius would be sorry, too.

  “Don’t worry, Your Majesty,” she said as she got back into her clothes. “I don’t blab.”

  “Well, good.” Lanius hoped she meant it. If she didn’t, he—and Sosia, too—would make her regret it.

  Flammea slipped out of the little storeroom where they’d gone. A minute or so later, so did Lanius. Another serving woman—a gray-haired, severely plain serving woman—was coming up the hallway when he did. She gave him a curious look, or possibly a dubious look. He nodded back, as imperturbably as he could, and went on his way. Behind him, the serving woman opened the door to the storeroom. Lanius smiled to himself. She wouldn’t learn anything that way.

  The king’s smile slipped when he wondered what would happen if Flammea found herself pregnant. Grus had coped well enough, but Anser was born long before Grus became king. Lanius laughed at himself. He might be thinking about making a child with Flammea now, but he hadn’t worried about it one bit before lying down with her. What man ever did?

  Day followed day. Sosia didn’t throw any more crockery at his head. From that, he concluded Flammea could indeed keep her mouth shut. She also didn’t make a nuisance of herself when they saw each other. They did contrive to go off by themselves again not too long after the first time. Lanius enjoyed that as much as he had earlier on. If Flammea didn’t, she pretended well.

  “You are in a good humor,” Sosia said that evening. “The Menteshe should have civil wars more often. They agree with you.”

  Lanius didn’t choke on his soup. If that didn’t prove something about his powers of restraint, he couldn’t imagine what would. “The Menteshe should have civil wars more often,” he agreed gravely. “Avornis would be better off if they did.”

  His wife was a queen, the wife of one king and the daughter of another (even if Lanius thought Grus as illegitimate a king as a lot of Avornis had once reckoned him). She said, “How do we make the Menteshe fight among themselves?”

  “If I knew the answer to that, I’d do it,” Lanius said. “The way things are, I’m happy enough to try to take advantage of it when it happens.” He was also happy Sosia thought his good cheer came from policy. Raising his wine cup, he said, “Here’s to more civil war among the Menteshe.”

  Sosia drank with him.

  Beloyuz came up to Grus as the King of Avornis eyed the walls of Nishevatz early one misty morning. “May I speak to you, Your Majesty?” the Chernagor noble asked.

  “If I say no now, you’re a man in trouble, for you just did,” Grus answered. Beloyuz stared at him in puzzlement. Grus swallowed a sigh. None of the nobles who followed Prince Vsevolod had much in the way of humor. The king went on, “Say what you will.”

  “I thank you, Your Majesty. “Last night, a peasant came to me.” He paused portentously. Grus nodded and waved for him to continue. The exiles would have been of small use if they didn’t have connections with folk of their own land. Beloyuz said, “An army is coming—so this man hears from a man of Durdevatz.”

  A man of Durdevatz? Grus thought. Maybe the city-state really was showing its gratitude. That would be a pleasant novelty. “From which direction is it coming?” he asked.

  The Chernagor noble pointed to the east. “So he said.”

  Durdevatz lay to the east, so the Chernagors there would be in a position to know what their neighbors were doing. Grus said, “All right. Thank you. I’ll send scouts out that way.” He also intended to send scouts to the west, in case the peasant had lied to Beloyuz or the man from Durdevatz had lied to the peasant. He didn’t say a word about that, not wanting to insult the noble by making him think he wasn’t believed. That wasn’t how Grus thought about it, though. To him, it was more on the order of not taking chances.

  Out went the scouts, in both directions. Grus cursed the fog, being unable to do anything else about it. His riders were liable to find the Chernagor army by tripping over it instead of seeing it at some distance.

  He summoned Hirundo, told him what was likely to happen next, and asked, “Can we keep the men of Nishevatz from sallying while we beat back whatever comes at us from the east?” If it is the east, he added silently to himself.

  “We managed it a few years ago, if you’ll recall,” Hirundo answered. “Well, they did sally, but we beat ’em back. I think we can do it again. We have a tighter, stronger line around Nishevatz now than we did then. We can hold it with fewer men, and that will leave more to fight the relieving force.”

  “Good. Make ready to hold it with as few as you can, then,” Grus told him. “Free up the others and have them ready to defend our position against the Chernagors whenever they get the word.”

  “Right you are.” The general nodded and started to turn away, but then checked himself. “Ah … what happens if the Chernagors don’t come?”

  “In that case, someone’s been lying to Beloyuz, or lying to someone who’s gone to Beloyuz,” Grus said. “It’s possible. But we have to be ready just the same.” Hirundo thought that over, nodded, saluted, and briskly went off to do what needed doing.

  Grus made sure his own horse was ready to mount. His place, of course, was at the van. He’d finally become a tolerable rider—just about at the time when his years were starting to make him something less than a tolerable warrior. He would have appreciated the irony more if it weren’t of the sort that might get him killed.

  Little by little, the mist burned off. The sky went from watery gray to watery blue. Grus peered this way and that, but spied no telltale cloud of dust to east or west to warn of the Chernagor army. He wasn’t sure how much that meant, or whether it meant anything. There had been enough mist and drizzle lately to lay a lot of dust.

  The day dragged on. Grus began to believe the Chernagor peasant had come to Beloyuz for no better reason than to make him jump. But in that case, how had he known of Durdevatz? About halfway through the afternoon, two Avornan horsemen came galloping back to the camp—sure enough, from the east. “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” they called.

  “I’m
here.” Grus waved to let them see him, though they were already making for the royal pavilion. “What news?”

  “Chernagors, Your Majesty, a lot of Chernagors,” they answered in ragged chorus. The man in the lead went on, “They’re about an hour away. Most of them are foot soldiers—only a few riders.”

  “Well, well. Isn’t that interesting?” The peasant—or the emissary from Durdevatz who’d talked to the peasant (or posed as a peasant?)—had gotten it straight after all. And the scouts had smelled out the attack before it could turn into a nasty surprise. “Thank you, friends,” the king said. “I think we’ll be able to deal with them.” He shouted for Hirundo.

  “Yes, Your Majesty?” the general said. “So they really are coming after all?” Grus nodded. Hirundo clucked mournfully. “Well, better late than never. I expect we’ll make a good many of them later still.” His smile held a certain sharp-toothed anticipation.

  “Good. That’s what I hoped you’d tell me.” Grus pointed toward the walls of Nishevatz. “And if Vasilko’s men make their sally?”

  “They’re welcome to try,” Hirundo said. “I hope they do, in fact. Maybe we can take the city away from them when they have to retreat back into it.”

  He didn’t lack for confidence. Grus clapped him on the back. “Good enough. Make sure we’re ready to receive whatever attack the Chernagors can deliver. I’m not charging out against them. If they want me, they can attack on ground of my choosing, by the gods.”

  Hirundo nodded and hurried away. Grus knew he might have to move out against the Chernagors whether he wanted to or not. If they started ravaging the countryside so his army couldn’t feed itself, he’d have to try to stop them. But if they’d had something like that in mind, wouldn’t they have brought fewer foot soldiers and more horsemen? He would have; he knew that.

  He donned his gilded mailshirt and helm. Even in the cool, damp air of the Chernagor country, the quilted padding he wore under the chainmail and helmet made sweat spring out on his forehead. He swung up onto his horse. Cavalrymen hurrying to take their places in line gave him a cheer. He waved to them. The mailshirt clinked musically as he raised his arm.