The Chernagor Pirates

by Harry Turtledove

  Sometimes starving turned out to be the better idea.

  Otus rode close to King Grus. The former thrall stared at the countryside with wide eyes, as he had ever since leaving the capital. “This land is so rich,” he said.

  “Here? By the gods, no!” Grus shook his head. “What we saw farther north, that was fine country. This used to be. It will be again, once people finish getting over the latest invasion. But it’s nothing special now.”

  “Even the way it is, it’s better than you’ll find on the other side of the river.” Otus pointed south. “Farmers who care work this land. They do everything they can with it, even when that is not so much. Over there”—he pointed again—“you might as well have so many cattle tilling the soil. Nobody does anything but what he has to. The people—the thralls, I mean—don’t see half of what they ought to do.”

  If things went wrong on the far side of the Stura, the whole army—or however much of it was left alive after the Menteshe got through with it—would probably be made into thralls. It had happened before. A King of Avornis had lived out his days dead of soul in a little peasant hut somewhere between the Stura and Yozgat. After that, no Avornan army had presumed to cross the last river … until now.

  Was the Banished One laughing and rubbing his hands together, looking forward to another easy triumph? Had everything that had happened over the past few years, including the civil strife among the Menteshe, been nothing but a ruse to lure Grus and the Avornan army down over the Stura? Could the Banished One see that far ahead? Could he move the pieces on the board so precisely? Was Pterocles’ thrall-freeing sorcery all part of the ruse?

  Grus shook his head. If the exiled god could do all that, there was no hope of resisting him. But if he could do all that, he would have crushed Avornis centuries earlier. Whatever he’d been in the heavens, he had limits in the material world. He could be opposed. He could be beaten. Otherwise, the Chernagors would bow down to him as the Fallen Star, the way the Menteshe did. Grus’ campaigns in the north had made sure that wouldn’t happen.

  Sunlight glinted off water in the distance. A smudge of smoke near the Stura marked the city of Anna. The king knew the town well from his days as a river-galley captain. It hadn’t fallen to the nomads, even when things seemed blackest for Avornis. Lying on the broad river, it depended less on nearby fields for food than towns farther from the Stura. And archers and catapults on river galleys had taken their toll on the Menteshe who ventured too close to the bank.

  Anna was used to soldiers and sailors. It was always heavily garrisoned. Any king with eyes to see knew the border towns stood as bulwarks against trouble from the south. A great flotilla of river galleys patrolled the Stura now. The river had tributaries that flowed in from the south as well as from the north. They hadn’t seen Avornan ships on them for many, many years. Soon they would again.

  Along with Hirundo, Grus stood on Anna’s riverfront wall, peering south into the land where no Avornan soldiers had willingly set foot for so very long. It looked little different from the country on this side of the Stura. Off in the distance stood a peasant village. It was full of thralls, of course. From this distance, it looked the same as an ordinary Avornan village in spite of what Otus said. No matter how it looked, the difference was there—for now. With luck, it wouldn’t be there much longer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  King Lanius liked the archives for all kinds of reasons. Where Arch-Hallow Anser took pleasure from hunting deer and wild boar, Lanius enjoyed running facts to earth, and the archives were the best place to do it. The thrill of the chase was every bit as real for him as it was for Anser. Centuries of clerks had stored documents not immediately useful in the archives. Very few of them had used any system beyond throwing the parchments and papers into crates or buckets or barrels or cases or whatever else seemed handy at the moment. Finding any one parchment in particular was an adventure at best, impossible at worst.

  Even when Lanius didn’t have anything special in mind, he enjoyed the hunt for its own sake. He never knew what he would come across going through documents at random. Tax records could be stuffed next to accounts of controversies in some provincial town’s temples or next to the tales of travelers who’d gone to distant lands and written out descriptions of what they saw and did. Until you looked, you couldn’t tell.

  And the king enjoyed going to the archives for their own sake. When he closed the heavy doors behind him, he closed away the world. Servants hardly ever came and bothered him while he was there. From when he was very young, he’d made it plain to everyone that that was his place, and he wasn’t to be disturbed.

  Sunlight sifted in through windows set in the ceiling that somehow never came clean. Dust motes danced in those tired sunbeams. If the archives held one thing besides documents, it was dust. The air smelled of it, and of old parchment, and of old wood, and of other things Lanius always recognized but never could have named. It was just the smell of the archives, an indispensable part of the place.

  Quiet was also an indispensable part of the place. Those heavy doors muffled the usual noises that filled the palace—rattling and banging and shouting from the kitchens, servants’ shrill squabbles in the hallways, carpenters or masons hammering and chiseling as they repaired this or rebuilt that. Peace was where you found it, and Lanius found it there.

  Along with peace went privacy, which a king always had trouble getting and keeping. Every once in a while, Lanius would bring a maidservant into the archives. The women often giggled at his choice of a trysting place, but no one was likely to interrupt him there. No one ever had, not when he was in there with company.

  This morning, he was there by himself. He knew the document he wanted—a traveler’s tale—was in there somewhere. He’d read it once, years before. How many thousands of tales and receipts and records of all sorts had he looked at since? He was a most precise man, but he had no idea. He also had no sure idea where in that mad maze of documents and crates and tables and cases lay the parchment he wanted.

  Had it been by the far wall? Or had he found it in that dark corner? Even if he had, had he put it back where he got it? He’d tried to convince his children to do that, with indifferent success. Had he had any better luck with himself?

  He shrugged and started to laugh. If he couldn’t remember where he’d found that parchment written in old-fashioned Avornan, he couldn’t very well blame himself for putting it back in the wrong place, could he?

  When he sniffed again, he frowned. Somewhere mixed in with the odors of dust and old parchment was the small, sour stink of mouse droppings. Mice and damp were the worst enemies documents had. Who could guess how much history, how much knowledge, had vanished beneath the ever-gnawing front teeth of mice? Maybe they’d gotten to the traveler’s tale he needed. He shivered, though the archives were warm enough. If that tale was gone forever, he would have to trust his memory. It was very good, but he didn’t think it was good enough.

  Here? No, these were tax registers from his father’s reign. He didn’t remember his father well; King Mergus had died when he was a little boy. What he remembered was how things changed after Mergus died. He’d gone from being everyone’s darling to a lousy bastard the instant Mergus’ younger brother, Scolopax, put on the crown. Lanius still bristled at the word. It wasn’t his fault his mother had been his father’s seventh wife, no matter what the priests had to say about it. Avornans were allowed only six, no matter what. To get a son, a legitimate son, Mergus broke the rule. But they had wed. If that didn’t make him legitimate, what did?

  Plenty of people had said nothing did. Over the years, the fuss and feathers about that had died down. Some priests had been forced into exile in the Maze—the swamps and marshes not far from the city of Avornis—on account of it, though, and a few were still there. Others preached in small towns in out-of-the-way parts of the kingdom, and would never be welcome in the capital again.

  Lanius went on to another case he thought likely. It held the pay
records and action reports from a border war against the Thervings just before his dynasty took the throne—somewhere close to three hundred years ago now. The war seemed to have been a draw. Considering how fierce the Thervings could be, that wasn’t bad. One King of Thervingia—Lanius couldn’t remember which—had had a luckless Avornan general’s skull covered in gold leaf and made into a drinking cup.

  Lanius suddenly realized he’d wasted half an hour poking through the action reports. They weren’t what he wanted, which didn’t mean they weren’t interesting. He put them back on their shelf, not without a twinge of regret.

  Here? No, these were new. The shipwrights who’d built deep-bellied, tall-masted ships like the ones the Chernagor pirates sailed across the sea had sent King Grus reports on their progress. Grus, a sailor himself, had no doubt appreciated the papers. To Lanius, they might have been written in guttural Thervingian for all the sense they made. When Grus comes back to the palace, I’ll have to ask him about them, he thought.

  He was squandering more time. He muttered to himself. The trouble was, everything in the archives interested him. He had to make himself put aside one set of documents to go on to the next. Sometimes—often—he didn’t want to.

  The sunbeams slipping through those ever-dusty skylights slid across the jumble of the archives. Lanius found himself blinking in mild astonishment. How had it gotten to be late afternoon? Surely he’d gone in just a little while before.… But he hadn’t. His belly was growling, and all at once he noticed he desperately needed to piss.

  Sosia was going to be angry at him. He hadn’t intended to spend the whole day in here. He hardly ever intended to. It just … happened. And he still had no idea where that miserable traveler’s tale was.

  Grus, Hirundo, Pterocles, and Otus all solemnly looked at one another on the walls of Anna. Grus peered across the Stura toward the southern bank. It still didn’t look any different from the land on this side of the river. But it was. Oh, yes. It was. No King of Avornis had set foot on the far bank of the Stura for a couple of hundred years. The last king who’d tried invading the lands the Menteshe claimed as their own hadn’t come back again.

  That could happen to me, Grus thought. That will happen to me unless Pterocles’ magic really works—and I can’t find out for sure whether it works till we cross, the river and start trying it on thralls.

  “Well, gentlemen, this is going to be an interesting campaigning season.” By the way Hirundo said it, he might have been talking about training exercises on the meadows outside the city of Avornis.

  “We can do it.” That wasn’t Grus—it was Otus. The escaped thrall sounded confident. The trouble was, he would also sound confident if the Banished One still lurked somewhere deep inside his mind. He would want to lead the Avornans on so the Menteshe and his dark master could have their way with them. He continued, “This land should be free. It deserves to be free.”

  “We’ll do our best,” Grus said. Suddenly, harshly, he waved to the trumpeters who waited nearby. They raised long brass horns to their lips and blared out a command.

  River galleys raced across the Stura. Marines leaped out of them and rushed forward, bows at the ready. No more than a few Menteshe riders had trotted back and forth south of the river. The nomads were—or seemed to be—too caught up in their civil war to care much what the Avornans were up to. Grus hoped they would go right on’ feeling that way. He hoped so, but he didn’t count on it.

  Barges followed the river galleys. Riders led horses onto the riverbank, then swung aboard them. They joined the perimeter the marines had formed. Most of the cavalrymen were archers, too. Anyone who tried to fight the Menteshe without plenty of archers would end up in trouble.

  The royal guards came next. They were lancers, armored head to foot. The Menteshe couldn’t hope to stand against them. But then, the Menteshe seldom stood and fought. They were riders almost by instinct. Grus hoped he could pin them down and make them try to hold their ground. If he could, the royal guards would make them pay. If not … He refused to think about if not.

  Instead of thinking about it, he nodded to the general, the wizard, and the man who’d lived most of his life on the far side of the Stura. “Our turn now,” he said.

  They descended from the wall. Grus’ boots scuffed on the gray-brown stone of the stairs. Out through the river gate he and his comrades went, out onto the piers, and aboard the Pike, the river galley that would take them over the Stura. The captain raised an eyebrow to Grus. The king waved back, urging the skipper to go ahead at his own pace.

  “Cast off!” the captain shouted. The ropes that held the Pike to the quay thudded down onto the ship’s deck. As Grus had waved to the captain, so the captain waved to the oarmaster. The oarmaster set the stroke with a small drum. The rowers strained on their benches. The oars dug into the water. The Pike began to move, slowly at first, then ever swifter. Soon, very soon, she lived up to her name, gliding over the chop with impressive speed and agility. “She’s going to beach,” Grus said, bracing himself against the coming jolt. His companions, lubbers all, lurched and almost fell when the pike went aground. Grus had all he could do not to laugh at them. “I told you that would happen.”

  “You didn’t say what it meant, Your Majesty.” Otus sounded reproachful.

  “Well, now you know,” Grus said. “The next time I tell you, you’ll be ready.” Or maybe you won’t. Making a sailor takes time.

  At the skipper’s shouted orders, sailors lowered a gangplank from the river galley’s side. It thudded down onto the muddy bank. With a courtier’s bow, Hirundo waved for Grus to descend first. The king did. He took the last step from the gangplank to the ground very carefully—he didn’t want to stumble or, worse, to fall. That would set the whole army babbling about bad omens.

  There. He stood on the southern bank of the Stura, and he stood on his own two feet. No one said anything about omens. He knew everybody who could see him was watching, though. “We’ve started,” he called.

  Up at the top of the gangplank, Pterocles and Hirundo argued about who should go next. Each wanted the other to have the honor. At last, with a shrug, the wizard came down by Grus. “Just standing here doesn’t feel any different,” Pterocles murmured. “I wondered if it would.”

  It felt no different to Grus, either, but the wizard could sense things the king couldn’t. Hirundo descended, and then Otus. The ex-thrall still had no special rank, but everyone who did was convinced of his importance. By the look on his face, he too was trying to tell any difference from what he’d known before. He found only one. “Now I’m here as a whole man,” he said. “I hope all the thralls get to see this country the way I do.”

  Attendants led up horses for Grus and Hirundo, mules for Pterocles and Otus. Sailors sprang out of the Pike and shoved the river galley back into its proper element. Grus mounted his gelding. He looked back across the Stura toward Anna. The Avornan town seemed very far away. The barges on the river—some full of men, others with horses, still others carrying wagons loaded with supplies—were less reassuring than he’d thought they would be.

  He looked south again. He’d advanced less than half a mile from Anna’s walls. Suddenly, as though he’d gone in the other direction, everything in the Menteshe country seemed much farther away than it had.

  Several sessions of sifting through the archives hadn’t yielded the traveler’s tale Lanius wanted. He refused to let himself get angry or worried. If the mice hadn’t gotten it, it had to be in there somewhere. Sooner or later, it would turn up. It wasn’t anything he needed right this minute.

  He had other things on his mind, too. When Grus left the capital, Lanius turned into the real King of Avornis. All the little things Grus worried about while he was here fell into Lanius’ lap now. As he had more than once before, Lanius wished Grus were here to take care of those little things. Grus was not only better at dealing with them but also more conscientious about it. Lanius wanted them to go away so he could get on with things he r
eally cared about.

  The treasury minister was a lean, hook-nosed, nearsighted man named Euplectes. Unlike Petrosus, his predecessor, he didn’t try to cut the funds that supported Lanius. (Petrosus was in the Maze these days, but not for that—he’d married his daughter to Prince Ortalis. Ambition was a worse crime than keeping a king on short commons; he’d surely had Grus’ support in that.)

  Peering at Lanius and blinking as though to bring him into better focus, Euplectes said, “I really do believe, Your Majesty, that increasing the hearth tax is necessary. War is an expensive business, and we cannot pull silver from the sky.”

  “If we increase the tax, how much money will we raise?” Lanius asked. “How many townsmen and peasants will try to evade the increase and cost us silver instead? How many nobles will try to take advantage of unrest and rebel? What will that cost?”

  Euplectes did some more blinking—maybe from his bad eyesight, maybe from surprise. “I can give you the first of those with no trouble. Knowing the number of hearths in the kingdom and the size of the increase, the calculation is elementary. The other questions do not have such well-defined answers.”

  “Suppose you go figure out your best guesses to what those answers would be,” Lanius said. “When you have them, bring them back to me, and I’ll decide whether the extra money is worth the trouble it costs.”

  “King Grus will not be pleased if the campaign against the Menteshe encounters difficulties due to lack of funds,” Euplectes warned.

  Lanius nodded. “I understand that. He won’t be pleased about an uprising behind his back, either. How much do you think the chances go up after a tax increase?”

  “I will … do what I can to try to calculate that, but only the gods truly know the future,” Euplectes said.