The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  “All right. That eases my mind a bit.” Grus turned and looked toward the south. His mind’s eye leaped across the land of the Chernagors and across all of Avornis to the Menteshe country south of the Stura River. By all the dispatches that came up from Avornis, Sanjar and Korkut were still clawing away at each other. The princes to either side of what had been Ulash’s realm were still tearing meat off its bones, too. By all the signs, the Banished One’s attention remained focused on the strife among the people who had chosen him for their overlord.

  They aren’t thralls, though. They’re men, Grus thought. They might be the Banished One’s servants, but they weren’t his mindless puppets, weren’t his slaves. They worshiped him, but they had their own concerns, their own interests, as well. And, for the moment, those counted for more among them.

  That had to infuriate the exiled god. So far, though, the Menteshe seemed to be doing as they pleased in their wars, not as the Banished One would have commanded. His eyes on them, he forgot about Nishevatz, about Vasilko.

  “If the Menteshe make peace, or if one of them wins outright …” Grus began.

  Pterocles nodded, following his thought perfectly. “If that happens, the Banished One could well look this way again.”

  “Frightening to think we depend on strife among our foes,” Grus said.

  “At least we have it,” Pterocles replied. “And since we have it, we’d better make the most of it.”

  “We will,” Grus said. “I don’t think we’re going to starve them out before we start running low on food ourselves. I hoped we would, but it doesn’t look that way. If we want Nishevatz, we’ll have to take it. I intend to try to take it. But I need fog, to let me move men forward without being seen.”

  “If I could give it to you, I would,” Pterocles said. “Since I can’t, I’ll hope with you that it comes soon.”

  “When I didn’t want them, we had plenty of fogs,” Grus said. “Now that I do, what do we get? Weather the city of Avornis wouldn’t be ashamed of. The best weather I’ve ever seen in the Chernagor country, by the gods—the best, and the worst.”

  “The gods can give you fog, if they will,” Pterocles said.

  “Yes. If they will.” Grus said no more than that. If the Banished One had power over wind and weather, surely the gods in the heavens did, too. Come on, Grus thought in their direction. It wasn’t a prayer—more like an annoyed nudge. You can make things harder for the Banished One.

  Were they listening? Grus laughed at himself. How could he tell? If they didn’t pay some attention to it, though, they could earn an eternity’s worth of regrets. With the world in his hands, the Banished One might find a way back to the heavens. Grus tried to see beyond the sky. He couldn’t—he was only a man. But the gods could do whatever they pleased. Olor could take six wives and still keep Quelea contented. If that wasn’t a miracle, Grus didn’t know what would be.

  If he didn’t believe in the power of the gods, what other power was there left to believe in? That of the Banished One. Nobody could deny his power. Yielding to it, worshiping it, was something else again.

  “Fog,” Grus said. “We need fog.”

  Fog filled the streets of the city of Avornis, rolling off the river, sliding silently over the walls, muffling life in the capital. The silence struck Lanius as almost eerie. Did the thick mist really swallow sound, or was it so quiet because people didn’t care to go out and try to find their way around in the murk? The question seemed easier to ask than to answer.

  When the king stepped out of the royal palace, it grew indistinct, ghostly, behind him. If I walk back toward it, he thought, will it really be there? Or will it disappear or recede before me like a will-o’-the-wisp?

  Lanius exhaled. His own breath added to the fog swirling all around him. From what he had read, such smothering, obliterating fogs were far commoner in the land of the Chernagors than they were here. He hoped Grus kept his army alert through them, and didn’t let Vasilko’s men launch a surprise attack against the Avornan lines.

  He walked a little farther from the palace. Even his footsteps seemed softer than they should have. Was that his imagination? He didn’t think so, but he supposed it could have been.

  “Your Majesty?” a guard called from behind him. The man sounded anxious. When Lanius looked back, he saw why. Or, better, he didn’t see why, for the guardsman had disappeared altogether. “Your Majesty?” the fellow called again, something close to panic in his voice. “Where are you, Your Majesty?”

  “I’m here,” Lanius answered, and walked back toward the sound of the guardsman’s voice. With each step, the royal palace became more decidedly real. The king nodded to the worried bodyguard. “Thick out there today, isn’t it?”

  “Thick as porridge,” the guard said. “I’m glad you came back, Your Majesty. I would have gone after you in another moment, and the mist might have swallowed me whole. You never can tell.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Lanius hid a smile. But it faded after a couple of heartbeats. The Banished One could do things with the weather no ordinary sorcerer could hope to match. If he had sent the fog, and if someone—or something—lurked in it … Lanius’ shiver had nothing to do with the clammy weather. By way of apology, he said, “I was foolish to wander off in it myself.”

  The guardsman nodded. He would never have presumed to criticize the king. If the king criticized himself, the guard would not presume to disagree.

  Lanius went back inside the palace. His cheeks and beard were beaded with moisture. He hadn’t noticed it in the fog, where everything was damp, but he did once he came inside. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his royal robe. A servant coming up the hallway sent him a scandalized stare. His cheeks heated, as though he’d been caught picking his nose in public.

  At least it wasn’t Bubulcus, the king thought. Bubulcus would have made him feel guilty about it for the rest of his days.

  “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” That call echoing down the corridor came not from a guardsman but from a maidservant.

  “I’m here,” Lanius called back. “What’s gone wrong now?” By the shrill note of hysteria in the woman’s voice, something certainly had.

  She came around the corner and saw him. “Come quick, Your Majesty!”

  “I’m coming,” Lanius said. “What is it?”

  “It’s the prince,” she said. Terror gripped Lanius’ heart—had something happened to Crex? Then the serving woman added, “He’s done something truly dreadful this time,” and Lanius’ panic eased. Crex wasn’t old enough to do anything dreadful enough to raise this kind of horror in a grown woman. Which meant …

  “Ortalis?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the woman said.

  “Oh, by the gods!” Lanius said. “What has he done?” Which serving girl has he outraged, and how badly? was what he meant.

  But this serving woman answered, “Why, he went and killed a man. Poor Bubulcus.” She started to cry.

  “Bubulcus!” Lanius exclaimed. “I was just thinking about him.”

  “That’s all anybody will do from now on,” the serving woman said. “He had a wife and children, too. Queen Quelea’s mercy on them, for they’ll need it.”

  “How did it happen?” Lanius asked in helpless astonishment. The woman only shrugged. Lanius spread his hands. “You were going to take me to him. You’d better do that.”

  She did. They had to push through a growing crowd of servants to get to Ortalis, who still stood over Bubulcus’ body. A whip lay on the floor behind the prince. Blood soaked the servant’s tunic. It pooled beneath him. His eyes stared up sightlessly. His mouth, Lanius was not surprised to find, was open. In character to the last, the king thought.

  The bloody knife in Ortalis’ right hand was a small one, such as he might have used for cutting up fruit. It had sufficed for nastier work as well.

  “What happened here?” Lanius demanded as he shoved his way to the front of the crowd. “And put that cursed thing down, Ortalis,” h
e added sharply. “You certainly don’t need it now.”

  Grus’ son let the knife fall. “He insulted me,” he said in a distant—almost a dazed—voice. “He insulted me, and I hit him, and he jeered at me again—said his mother could hit harder than that. And the next thing I knew … The next thing I knew, there he was on the floor.”

  Lanius looked around. “Did anyone see this? Did anyone hear it?”

  “I did, Your Majesty,” said a sweeper with a grizzled beard. “You know how Bubulcus always likes—liked—to show how clever he was, to see how close to the edge he could come.”

  “Oh, yes,” Lanius said. “I had noticed that.”

  “Well,” the sweeper said, “he sees that there whip in His Highness’ hand—”

  “I’d just come in from a ride,” Ortalis said quickly.

  “In this horrible fog?” Lanius said. He wished he had the words back as soon as they were gone. He could guess what Ortalis had really been doing with the whip. With whom, and did she like it? he wondered, feeling a little sick.

  “Anyways,” the sweeper went on, “Bubulcus asks him if that’s the whip he uses to hit little Princess Capella. And that’s when His Highness smacked him.”

  “I … see,” Lanius said slowly. Had he been in Ortalis’ boots, he thought he would have hit Bubulcus for that, too. Using a whip on a willing woman was one thing. Limosa thinks Ortalis is wonderful, Lanius reminded himself, gulping. Using the same whip on a baby girl was something else again. Not even Ortalis would do such a thing—Lanius devoutly hoped.

  If Ortalis had let it go there, Lanius didn’t see how anyone could have said anything much. But Bubulcus had had to make one more crack, and then … “After that,” the sweeper said, “His Highness punctured him right and proper, he did.”

  Chastising an offensive servant and killing him were also two different things. Lanius’ sole relief was that Ortalis didn’t seem to have done it for his own amusement. Again, killing in a fit of rage was different from killing for the sport of it.

  A servant who killed in a fit of rage would be punished. He might lose his head. King Grus’ son, Lanius knew, wouldn’t lose his head for slaying Bubulcus. But Ortalis shouldn’t get off scot-free, either. For all Bubulcus’ faults—which Lanius knew as well as anybody—he hadn’t deserved to die for a crude joke or two.

  “Hear me, Ortalis,” Lanius said, his tone more for the benefit of the murmuring servants than for his brother-in-law. “When you killed Bubulcus, you went beyond what was proper.”

  “So did he,” Ortalis muttered, but he didn’t try to deny that he’d transgressed. That helped.

  “Hear me,” Lanius repeated. “Because you went beyond what was proper, I order you to settle on Bubulcus’ widow enough silver to let her and her children live comfortably for the rest of their lives. That will repair some of what you have done.”

  He waited. Two things could go wrong with his judgment. Ortalis might prove arrogant enough to reject it out of hand, or the servants might decide it wasn’t enough.

  Ortalis did some more muttering, but he finally said, “Oh, all right. Fool should have known when to shut up, though.” That struck Lanius as the most fitting epitaph Bubulcus would get.

  The king’s gaze swung to the servants. None of them said anything right away; they were gauging what he’d done: After a bit, one of the men said, “I expect most of us wanted to pop Bubulcus one time or another.” Slowly, one after another, they began to nod.

  Lanius let out a small sigh. He seemed to have gotten away with it on both counts. “Take the body away and clean up the mess,” he said. The scarlet pool under Bubulcus’ corpse unpleasantly reminded him how much blood a body held. “Let Bubulcus’ wife—his widow—know what happened. And let her know Prince Ortalis will also pay for the funeral pyre.”

  Ortalis stirred, but again did not protest. Most of the servants drifted away. A few remained to carry out Lanius’ orders. One of them said, “You took care of that pretty well, Your Majesty.” A couple of other men nodded.

  “My thanks,” Lanius said. “Some of these things, you only wish they never would have happened in the first place.”

  Even Ortalis nodded. “That’s true. If he’d just kept quiet …” He still didn’t sound sorry Bubulcus was dead. Expecting him to was probably asking too much. And the servants had seemed satisfied that he would pay compensation. It could have turned out worse.

  Then Lanius realized it wasn’t over yet. I have to write Grus and let him know what his sons done now. He would almost rather have gone under a dentist’s forceps than set pen to parchment for that. No help for it, though. Grus would surely hear. Better he should hear from someone who had the story straight.

  Two men carried Bubulcus’ body away. Women went to work on the pool of blood. Ortalis scowled at Lanius. “How much silver will you steal from me to pay for that wretch’s worthless life?”

  “However much it is, you can afford it better than he can afford what you took from him.” Lanius sighed. “I know he could drive a man mad. More than once, I almost sent him to the Maze. Now I wish I would have. In the Maze, he’d still be breathing.”

  “If he made you angry, he was too big a fool to hope to live very long,” Ortalis said. “You’re too soft for your own good.”

  “Am I?” Lanius said.

  His brother-in-law nodded. “You let the servants get away with murder.”

  No, you’ve just gotten away with murder, Lanius thought. No ordinary man would have come off so lightly. But Ortalis wasn’t an ordinary man, not when it came to his family connections. That he’d paid any price at all probably surprised the palace servants.

  Grus’ son stooped and picked up the knife he’d used to stab Bubulcus. “What will you do with that thing?” Lanius asked. If Ortalis wanted to keep it for a souvenir, he would have to change his mind. The king made up his mind to be very firm about that.

  But Ortalis answered, “I’m going to throw it away. I’ve got no more use for it now.” He strode down the hallway. Lanius stared after him. Ortalis still didn’t see that he’d done much out of the ordinary. Lanius sighed again. Bubulcus, could anyone have asked him, would have had a different opinion.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  When Grus breathed in, he felt as though he’d fallen into a vat of cold soup. The sky had gone from black to gray, but he still couldn’t see a hand in front of his face. The fog felt as thick and smothering—though not nearly as warm—as wool batting.

  “Hirundo!” he called softly. “Are you there?”

  “Right here, Your Majesty,” the general answered, almost at his elbow. Grus had to lean forward and peer to see him at all. Chuckling, Hirundo said, “Our prayers are answered, aren’t they?”

  “Too well, maybe,” Grus said. Hirundo laughed again, though the king wasn’t at all sure he’d been joking. Fog was fog, and this was excessive. It seemed like the boiled-down essence of every fog Grus had ever seen in all his life. “By the gods, we’ll be lucky to find the walls of Nishevatz, let alone storm them.”

  “We may have fun finding them—true enough,” Hirundo said, though fun was the last word Grus would have used. “But just think how much fun Vasilko and the Chernagors will have trying to keep us out once we do get up on the battlements. We’ll have a whole great lodgement before they even realize we’re anywhere close by.”

  “Gods grant it be so,” Grus said. He and the Avornan army had spent weeks waiting through what passed for a heat wave in the Chernagor country. Now the usual mists were back, with a vengeance. Grus hoped the vengeance wouldn’t be excessive.

  “Your Majesty?”

  That was Pterocles’ voice. “I’m here,” Grus said, and the wizard blundered forward until they bumped into each other. “Can you guide the men to Nishevatz?” Grus asked. “And can you keep the Chernagors from hearing them as they come?”

  “Well, Your Majesty, if we all splash into the Northern Sea, you’ll know something has gone wrong,” the wizard re
plied.

  “Heh,” Grus said. “You will be able to do it?”

  A glow that somehow pierced the fog where nothing else would illuminated Pterocles’ hands. “I will.”

  “Good.” Grus hesitated. “Uh—I hope the Chernagors on the walls won’t be able to see your sorcery.”

  “So do I,” Pterocles said cheerfully. “And yes, I just might be able to muffle things, too.” Grus gave up. Either the wizard was teasing him or the whole campaign would unravel in the next few minutes. Grus chose to believe Pterocles was joking. One way or the other, I’ll find out soon, the king thought.

  “There’s the light.” At least a dozen Avornan officers, spying Pterocles’ glowing hands, said the same thing at the same time. They all sounded relieved, too, no matter how the fog muffled their voices.

  “Let’s go,” Pterocles said. “Nishevatz is … that way.” He pointed with a gleaming forefinger. Grus wondered how he could have any idea of the direction in which Nishevatz lay. Looking down, the king couldn’t even see his own feet. As far as he could tell, he disappeared from the knees down.

  But Pterocles spoke with perfect confidence. And when he moved out in the direction he thought right, the Avornan soldiers followed him. They could see his hands through the fog. A party of men carrying a scaling ladder almost ran over Grus. He heard no cries from the walls of the city. Evidently, the Chernagors really couldn’t see Pterocles.

  Or maybe he’s going the wrong way. Grus wished that hadn’t occurred to him. He was committed now. He had to rely on Pterocles. If, for instance, the Banished One was fooling the wizard … Grus wished that hadn’t occurred to him, too.

  “Guards!” he called.

  “Here, Your Majesty.” The answer came in a chorus from all around him.

  “Let’s go forward,” Grus said.

  The guardsmen formed up in a tight knot, completely surrounding the king. They seemed under the impression that if they didn’t, he would yank out his sword and swarm up a scaling ladder ahead of every ordinary Avornan soldier. He was glad they were under that impression. He’d done a lot of fighting in his time. By now, though, he was coming up against soldiers who weren’t just half his age but a third his age. He knew more than a little pride that he could still hold his own when he had to, but he wasn’t such an eager warrior anymore.