The Stolen Throne tot-1

by Harry Turtledove

  Sharbaraz thrashed on the floor, wrestling with something he could see and Abivard could not. Abivard sprang to his aid. Guided by the motions of Sharbaraz's grasping hands, he tried to pull away the King of Kings' foe, even though that foe was invisible to him.

  But his hands passed through the space between himself and Sharbaraz as if that space held only the empty air his eyes perceived. The same was manifestly not true for Sharbaraz. He writhed and twisted and kicked and punched, and when his blows landed, they sounded as if they struck flesh.

  "By the God," Abivard cried, "what is this madness?"

  When he spoke the God's name, he heard a groan that did not spring from his lips or Sharbaraz's, as if it pained the invisible attacker. That did not stop the thing, whatever it was, from keeping up its assault on Sharbaraz. It started to choke him; struggling like a madman, the rightful King of Kings tore its-hands? — from his throat.

  "By the God," Abivard said again. This time he noted no effect, maybe because he was deliberately using the God's name as a weapon rather than invoking his deity out of need. Watching the King of Kings fight for his life and being unable to aid him brought back the dreadful helplessness Abivard had known when, afoot, he had watched Peroz and the flower of the Makuraner army tumble into the trench the Khamorth had dug.

  "Lord Abivard? Your Majesty?"

  Never had Abivard been so glad to hear an old man's quavering voice. "In here, Tanshar, and quickly!" he cried.

  Tanshar burst into the King of Kings' tent, panting from having hurried from his own resting place. The fortune-teller stared at the spectacle of Sharbaraz struggling for his life against a foe imperceptible to others. He burst out with the same ejaculation Abivard had used, the same any Makuraner would have used: "By the God!"

  Where the attacker had groaned when Abivard called on the God, he screamed now, as if beaten with red-hot pokers. He still grappled with Sharbaraz, but now, as they rolled over and over, the King of Kings was on top as often as his assailant.

  Tanshar wasted no time with another invocation of the God. Instead, he snatched a vial of powder from the pouch he wore on his belt and sprinkled it over both Sharbaraz and whatever he was fighting with. No, not whatever-the powder let Abivard make out the faint outline of a naked, heavily muscled man.

  "Strike!" Tanshar cried. "What you can see, you can slay."

  Abivard jerked his sword from its scabbard and slashed at the still-misty figure Sharbaraz was fighting. This time he understood why the would-be assassin cried out with pain; the blood the fellow shed was plainly visible. He cut again and again; Sharbaraz got a grip on his opponent's throat. They knew they had slain their foe when, all at once, his body became fully visible to Abivard for the first time.

  Sharbaraz stared down at the blood-splashed face of the man who had tried to assassinate him. Turning to Abivard, he said, "Wasn't he one of the warriors who rode with Inshushinak?"

  "Majesty, I couldn't say for certain," Abivard answered. "A mail veil doesn't show much of a man's face-and besides, I paid most attention to the men who were talking. But if you say it, I wouldn't presume to disagree."

  "You'd better not-I'm the King of Kings." Sharbaraz's laugh was shaky. He felt at his neck. "The wretch was strong as a bear; I must be bruised. I never saw him, either, till he seized me by the throat."

  "Nor I, Majesty." Abivard's face went hot with shame. "He must have walked past me and into your tent while I was outside sending for Tanshar here."

  Sharbaraz shook his head, then winced; his neck was sore. "Don't blame yourself. Magic defeated your vigilance-how can you be expected to see through a mage's charm? Besides, what you say doesn't have to be true. For all we know, he could have been lurking here, pretending to be a piece of air like any other, until you went outside and he found the chance to strike."

  "It could be so," Abivard agreed gratefully. "As long as he lived, only Tanshar's magic powder let me see him and fight him."

  The fortune-teller's laugh ran raucous in the tent. "Your Majesty, lord, I used no magic powder, for I had none. That was just finely ground salt for my meat, nothing more."

  Abivard stared. "Then how did we defeat the spell from Smerdis' sorcerer?"

  "I have no idea whether you defeated the spell," Tanshar answered. "You defeated the man on whom it lay, and that sufficed."

  "But-" Abivard struggled to put his thought into words. "When I called on the God, and then again when you did, this whoreson was plainly hurt. How do you explain that, if not by magic?"

  "That probably was magic," Tanshar said. "When we called on the God, we disturbed the link-the evil link, evidently-through which Smerdis' mage controlled the sorcery he had set in motion. Perhaps we deformed the nature of the spell: not enough to destroy its effectiveness, but enough to cause this fellow pain as the mage regained or retained his power. I am but guessing, you must understand, for such magic is far beyond my power."

  "Yet you helped defeat it, just as, against all odds, you helped me get free from Nalgis Crag stronghold," Sharbaraz said. "I think you give yourself too little credit. I shall not make the same mistake. When Mashiz is mine once more, you have but to name your reward."

  "Majesty, you cannot give me back thirty years, nor yet the sight in this eye," Tanshar said, raising a finger to point at the one a cataract had dimmed. "I have no great needs, and I've seen enough years go by that I have no great desires, either."

  "I wonder whether I should pity you or be bitterly jealous," Sharbaraz observed. "Have it as you will, then, but know that my ear is yours should you ever find any service I can perform for you."

  Tanshar bowed. "Your Majesty is generous beyond my deserts. For now, if you will but grant me leave to return to my tent-" The fortune-teller waited for Sharbaraz to nod, then bowed again and slipped out into the night.

  When he was gone, Sharbaraz abandoned some of the brave front he had kept up. Prodding the body of his assailant with one foot, he said, "Pour me some wine, brother-in-law of mine, if you'd be so kind. This son of a thousand fathers came far too close to killing me."

  "Aye, Majesty." A jar and some cups sat on a folding table that somehow had not gone over during the fight. Abivard poured two cups full, handed one to the rightful King of Kings. The other he held high in salute. "To your safety."

  "A good toast, and one I'll gladly drink to." Sharbaraz raised the cup to his lips. He winced when he swallowed. "That hurts. This cursed murderer-" He prodded the body again, "-was strong as a mule, and I think his hands were as hard as Ganzak the smith's."

  Abivard had his doubts about that but held most of them from his reply: "The metal Ganzak pounds is harder than your neck."

  "Can't argue with that." Sharbaraz drank again, more cautiously this time, but winced again anyhow. Wheezing a little, he said, "That's three times you've saved me now. But for you, Smerdis would be sitting comfortably on the throne, and I–I expect I'd be heading toward madness, locked up inside Nalgis Crag stronghold."

  "To serve the King of Kings is an honor," Abivard said.

  "You've earned honor, that's certain." Sharbaraz emptied the cup and held it out to Abivard. "Fill it up again, and drain your own so you can fill that, too. By the God, I've earned the right to drink deep tonight even if it sets my throat on fire, and I don't care to do it by myself."

  "Let me drag this carrion out first." Abivard seized the assassin by the feet and hauled him out of the King of Kings' tent. The camp had quieted for the night; no one exclaimed at the sight of a corpse. Returning, Abivard said, "We can leave him there for the dogs and the crows to eat."

  "A fine notion. Now pour me that wine, if you please."

  The two of them were on their fourth or fifth cups-since Abivard was having trouble keeping track, probably their fifth-when riders came pounding into the camp. "Majesty! Majesty!" The cry rose above the thunder of hoofbeats and probably woke a good many men who had already gone to sleep.

  Sharbaraz reached for his sword. "Have to-defend mysel
f-if those aren't my scouts coming back." His speech was thick. Abivard suspected he would be more dangerous to himself with that blade than to any foes. He yanked out his own sword. He had already slain one would-be killer with it tonight. Why not another? The wine that made his movements slow and fumbling eloquently put forward its opinion.

  Side by side, the King of Kings and Abivard went out to meet the approaching horsemen. In the moonlight, Abivard recognized the officer who had reported the arrival of Smerdis' embassy. The man saw Sharbaraz. "Majesty," he exclaimed, "we've rid you of a scorpion's nest of traitors."

  Sharbaraz and Abivard exchanged glances. "That's-hic! — wonderful," the rightful King of Kings said. "Tell me at once what happened." To Abivard he whispered, "He'd better tell me at once; I have to piss fit to burst."

  The scout, luckily, didn't hear that. He said, "We rode out until we found the camp where that Inshushinak, the God drop him into the Void, had paused with his henchmen for the night. Outside the camp, at a distance where they could watch and not be seen, we also found the two men you sent to keep an eye on the embassy."

  "Why didn't one of them report back here as ordered?" Sharbaraz demanded.

  A scout broke in. "Majesty, they was frozen stiff."

  "Near enough," the officer agreed. "They were warm and breathing, but otherwise they might as well have been turned to stone. One of the men Inshushinak had with him, he must have been a wizard."

  "We found that out for ourselves, as a matter of fact," Sharbaraz said dryly.

  "But this is your tale; pray go on with it."

  "Aye, Majesty," the scout leader answered, curiosity in his voice. "Well, when we got a good look at what the son of a serpent had done to poor Tyardut and Andegan, we were so angry we couldn't even see. We got back on our horses and charged straight for the camp. Some of us probably feared the wizard would do to us what he'd done to our friends, but not a man hung back, and that's a fact."

  "Whether you know it or not, charging with rage in your hearts likely was the best thing you could have done," Abivard said. "Sorcery won't bite on a man who's full of passion; that's why love magic and battle magic are such chancy things." He knew he was giving back Tanshar's words, but if Tanshar didn't understand how sorcery worked, who did?

  "However that may be, lord," the scout said. "Anyhow, we came down on the camp like wolves jumping on an antelope they've cut out of the herd. Nothing alive there now, just carrion. We had a couple of men hurt, neither one bad, it looks like. And hear this, too-when we started back, we found the scouts had come back to life. Killing that wizard must have broken the spell that held them."

  Sharbaraz sighed. "Now Smerdis will curse me for having slain an embassy. And do you know what, brother-in-law of mine? I shan't lose a moment's sleep over it, not when he tried to slay me by sorcery under cover of that embassy."

  "Majesty, the only thing concerning me there is that, while you know what you say is true, the rest of the realm may not know it," Abivard said.

  Sharbaraz waved scornfully to show how little he cared for what the rest of the realm knew or didn't know. "Soon enough all Makuran will be mine. Then it will know what I wish it to know."

  * * *

  The peaks of the Dilbat Mountains petered out into low, rolling foothills after Sharbaraz's army rode south for another few days. Getting through the mountains then was no longer a matter of forcing a narrow, heavily defended pass but simply heading east and then turning north.

  Abivard found the change disconcerting the very first day. "I'm used to watching the sun rise out of the mountains, not set behind them," he said.

  "I've seen both," Sharbaraz said. "One's the same as the other, as far as I'm concerned. What I want to see is Mashiz." Restless hunger stalked along his voice.

  "How long till we reach it?" Abivard asked. He wanted to see Mashiz, too, not just because entering the capital would mean victory but also because he was curious about what a real city was like. Some of the towns that sheltered under strongholds in the south of Makuran were a good deal larger and busier than the one in his own domain, but basically of the same type. He wanted to find out how different Mashiz would be.

  "Ten or twelve days from here," Sharbaraz answered. "That's if we do nothing but ride, mind you. I expect we'll see some fighting, though. If Smerdis doesn't throw everything he has at me now, he loses."

  "May he lose any which way," Abivard said, to which the King of Kings nodded. Neither of them spoke as much of Smerdis' men deserting as they had when the campaign was new and their enthusiasm unchallenged. Abivard had concluded that most of the men who followed Smerdis were going to keep right on following him. If Sharbaraz was to win, he would have to do it with the forces that had begun the fight on his side. That didn't make it impossible, but it didn't make things any easier, either.

  "As long as we keep winning, we're fine," Sharbaraz said. Maybe he was trying not to think about the desertions that hadn't happened, too. Once his army left the northwest, he had stopped sweeping in whole strongholdsful of recruits. If he ousted Smerdis with what he had, Abivard expected the whole realm to acknowledge him as its ruler. If he didn't… Abivard tried not to think about that.

  Three days after Sharbaraz's host turned north, they met another of Smerdis' armies. This time the scouts were laughing as they came back to bring the news to Sharbaraz. "Smerdis must be running out of horses, Majesty," one of them said, "for half his men are foot soldiers, maybe more."

  "The men of the Thousand Cities," Abivard said.

  Sharbaraz nodded. "Aye, no doubt. We'll smash straight through them and scatter them like chaff; one such lesson and they'll know better than to fight for the usurper ever again."

  Peroz's son indeed, Abivard thought. Aloud he said, "Wouldn't we be wiser to try to flank them out of their position? We can move faster than they, and if we hit them while they're trying to shift to keep up with us, we stand a better chance of striking the deadly blow you want."

  But the rightful King of Kings shook his head and waved to the east, saying, "That's still desert out there; we aren't yet up to the Tutub and the Tib. We'd have a hard time keeping ourselves in fodder for the animals and water for them and us both. Besides, I don't want to be seen as sidestepping Smerdis. I want to show the realm my men are bolder and fiercer than his."

  "I hope that's so, Majesty," Abivard said, as close to direct criticism as he dared come. Sharbaraz glared at him, then shouted for Zal and his other captains and began giving orders for the direct assault. No one contradicted him or showed any misgivings.

  At the end, he turned to Abivard and said, "Will you do us the honor of accompanying the attack?"

  "Certainly, Majesty. May the God grant you success, and may he know I wish it for you," Abivard said. However much he tried to ignore it, Sharbaraz's sardonic question stung. He did not think his sovereign was making the right choice, but how was he supposed to tell that to Sharbaraz when he would not listen? He found no way. All that was left, then, was to go forward and hope the rightful King of Kings was right.

  Martial music ordered the men into line of battle. Word that they were facing infantry raced up and down the line. They seemed confident, even contemptuous.

  "We'll squash 'em flat for you, lord," one of the horsemen said, and all the troopers around him nodded. Abivard's worries eased. Confidence counted a great deal in war. If the soldiers thought they couldn't be beaten, maybe they couldn't.

  Smerdis' men came into sight. As the scout had said, they were infantry and cavalry both, the horse on the flanks, the foot in the center. Abivard shouted Sharbaraz's name. The war cry rose from the whole army. Smerdis' soldiers shouted back. A great din rose to the blue sky.

  Horns belled the charge. Abivard swung down his lance and spurred his horse. The pound of the beast's hooves, and of all those around him, filled him like a quicker, stronger pulse. The enemy horsemen moved forward from their position on the wings to engage Sharbaraz's riders.

  Smerdis' infantry
held its ground. As Abivard drew nearer, he saw it sheltered behind a barricade of thorny brush. Through thundering hoofbeats, through the clamor of war cries, the clear, pure note of reed whistles rang out. Abivard scowled under his mail visor; that was no signal he knew. But it meant something to the infantry. In an instant, arrows filled the air, one flight, then another and another. They whistled, too, loud enough to drown out the call that had set them flying. Graceful as birds, they curved high into the sky-then fell on the charging horsemen.

  Sharbaraz had archers, too, and they shot back at the foot soldiers, but not with so many arrows so steadily discharged. Men and horses crumpled, and when they fell they fouled others just behind them. The attack faltered.

  An arrow slammed into Abivard's upraised shield and stood, thrumming. A palm's breadth to one side and it would have pierced his leg instead. The brush barricade was very close now. His horse pushed against it. The animal's body was armored, but the thorns on the brush still tore the tender skin of its legs. It hesitated, whinnying in protest.

  Abivard kicked it in the ribs with his boots, inflicting worse pain to force it to obey his will. "Forward, the God curse you!" he yelled. The horse pushed forward, but hesitantly. Abivard got a good look at the foot soldiers on the far side of the barrier: dark, stocky men in leather jerkins, their long, black hair bound in a club at the nape of their necks. Some of them shouted insults in harshly accented Makuraner, others yelled what did not sound like pleasantries in their own guttural language. And all of them kept shooting arrows. Along with the quivers on their backs, they had others at their feet.

  Had the brush been stiffened with stakes, it would have made a worse obstacle. As it was, the barrier broke here and there, letting trickles of Sharbaraz's men in among the enemy. They worked a fearful slaughter; but for their bows, the foot soldiers had only knives and clubs to defend themselves.

  Abivard thrust his lance over the brush at an archer at the same instant the archer let fly at him. Maybe the two men frightened each other, for they both missed. They stared across the brush, the archer's face tired and worried, Abivard's hidden from the eyes down by chainmail. They both nodded, if not with joint respect, then at least with recognition of their joint humanity. By unspoken common consent, they chose other foes after that.