The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  “Then you’ll understand why we take no chances,” a guard answered.

  The man thought about that, shrugged, and finally nodded. “Smash ’em up!” he called to Grus. “Smash ’em all up, those horse-riding pigs!” He probably hadn’t been free very long—otherwise he would have come up with something juicier to call the Menteshe.

  Grus appreciated the sentiment even if it could have been expressed more forcefully. “That’s what I intend to do,” he said. “Tell your friends. Tell everybody you know.” He wasn’t keeping that a secret. The Menteshe had to know he was coming. When and how and exactly where—those were different questions.

  “I’ll do it,” the man said. “By the … gods in the heavens, I’ll do it.” Grus caught the brief hesitation. He knew what it meant. The local had almost sworn by the Fallen Star, the name the Menteshe gave the Banished One. If a thrall had any reason to think of a supernatural power, he thought of the Banished One, not the gods. But things were changing here.

  And if we lose, they’ll change back again, too, Grus reminded himself. Things had gone well so far. That didn’t mean they would keep on going well. One way to make sure they didn’t was to assume they would.

  “We need to talk,” the king told his general. “We need to figure out where we’re going once we cross the river, and where the Menteshe are likely to try to stop us.”

  “If we’re not going to Yozgat, Your Majesty, somebody’s been talking to you while I wasn’t looking,” Hirundo said. Grus sent him a severe look. Hirundo ignored it with the fortitude of a man who’d known worse—and he had.

  “How are we going to get there?” the king said, as patiently as he could. “What will we run into on the way?”

  “Menteshe?” Hirundo suggested. When Grus looked severe again, the general spread his hands in affable innocence. “You said so yourself.”

  “Well, so I did,” Grus answered with a sigh. “But where? How many? And what are they likely to try against us?”

  “We need to talk about that.” Hirundo sounded altogether serious. Grus didn’t pick up a rock and hit him over the head with it. That proved only one thing—years on the throne had given him much more tolerance than he’d ever imagined.

  Lanius nodded to Collurio. “Put him through his paces.”

  “That’s what I’m going to do, Your Majesty,” the animal trainer replied. They stood on the outer wall of the city slice Lanius had built out in the country. It was twenty-five or thirty feet high; Lanius could see for a long way. Above the stand of trees to the south was a smudge on the sky that marked where the city of Avornis lay.

  Collurio waved to his son, who’d come out to help him. The younger man was on the ground out beyond a dry ditch. The youth picked up a pole about as thick as his thumb. He swung it up and over the ditch until the end of it came to rest on top of the wall not far from Lanius and Collurio.

  Then Collurio’s son—his name was Crinitus—opened a door to a wooden cage by the base of the pole. Out came Pouncer. The moncat saw the pole and swarmed up it, holding on with all four clawed hands. No ordinary cat with ordinary feet could have done it. For the moncat, it was as easy and normal as walking along a palace corridor would have been for Lanius.

  Once at the top, Pouncer looked expectantly at the king and the trainer. Collurio gave the moncat a piece of meat. Lanius said, “This isn’t so good. Nobody will be around—nobody who would give Pouncer anything, anyway.”

  “We’ll take care of it, Your Majesty,” Collurio answered easily.

  He did, too. The next time Pouncer did the trick, the trainer and Lanius stood well away from that stretch of the wall. They’d left a reward behind, though. The moncat ate it and then looked around as though considering what to do next.

  Collurio smiled when he saw that. “He knows he’ll get something he wants if he does what we want him to do. He knows. You were right, Your Majesty. These are very clever animals.”

  “Is he clever enough, though?” Lanius said.

  “Clever enough for what?” Collurio asked.

  “For what you need to teach him,” the king answered.

  Collurio let out an exasperated breath. “I wish you would tell me more, Your Majesty.”

  For his part, Lanius wished he’d never told the trainer which city this was a slice of. “Do you? Do you really?” the king said. “Do you want more visits in the night from …?” He did not name the name.

  “This truly does have to do with that?” Collurio asked once more.

  “It truly does,” Lanius agreed with a sigh. “Do you think … he would have visited you if it didn’t? He is like the law in one way—he does not concern himself with trifles.”

  Shuddering, Collurio said, “In that case, I wish he wouldn’t concern himself with me. I was happy to be a small man, bothering no one and bothered by no one.”

  “We all wish he wouldn’t concern himself with us. We were all happier when he didn’t,” Lanius said gravely. “But wishes here have as much to do with what is as they usually do.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Collurio sounded no more delighted with the world. “I still sometimes wish I never stuck my big nose into this business.” He gave the organ in question a mournful tweak.

  He and Crinitus and the king worked with Pouncer until the moncat got tired or bored or full. Then they put Pouncer in the cage and took it back to the enclosure where the moncat stayed when it wasn’t working. Pouncer climbed up the poles they had in there, found a perch to its liking, and fell asleep.

  A few minutes later, a royal guardsman came up to Lanius and said, “Excuse me, Your Majesty, but Her Majesty the Queen has just arrived.”

  “Has she?” One of Lanius’ eyebrows rose. He’d invited Sosia to come out and look this place over. He hadn’t expected her to take him up on it, but here she was. He hadn’t started fooling around with any maidservants; no frightened washerwoman hid under the bed not overburdened with clothing. Sosia could prod and poke as much as she pleased. She wouldn’t find anything to complain about here.

  She barely greeted Lanius. She prowled through all the tents around the slice of city, then pointed to it. “Let me have a look in there, if you please.”

  “All right,” Lanius said. He had nothing female lurking inside.

  He walked her through it. Her expression got odder and odder the farther she went. “This really is what you said it was, isn’t it?” she said as the tour neared an end.

  “Nothing else,” Lanius answered.

  “But—what good is it?” the queen asked. “You’ve built something enormous for Pouncer to run around in. Couldn’t you have found something else to do with all that silver?”

  “You sound like your father,” Lanius said, and Sosia made a face at him. He went on, “Actually, your father knows what I’m doing here. He knows and he doesn’t mind.”

  “If he knows, then he knows more than I do,” Sosia said. “What are you doing here that’s important enough to impress my father?”

  “Staying out of his way and not causing trouble for anyone.” Lanius did his best to sound annoyed as he said that. Grus would have been happy to keep him on a shelf doing nothing, or nothing worthwhile. Only the urgencies of what the other king had set himself to do had let Lanius gain a little—and just a little—freedom of action of his own.

  The answer almost satisfied Sosia. When she said, “There has to be more to it than that,” she didn’t sound as though she believed it herself. “What a funny place this is,” she added, as much to herself as to him.

  “It’s—not the city,” Lanius said. “By the gods, I’m a city man, but even I like to get away once in a while. There isn’t smoke in the air all the time here. I think that’s part of the reason Anser likes to hunt. I’m—not all that fond of hunting, but I like it here myself.”

  His wife’s nod was slow and hesitant, as though she found herself yielding a point she hadn’t expected to. “I can see why,” she said.

  “I brought a good c
ook along, too,” Lanius said. “And the food couldn’t be any fresher. It doesn’t have to travel into the capital. It’s right here.”

  Supper proved that. The lamb they ate came from a farm only a few hundred yards away. The meat was so tender, it almost fell off the bone. The wine was a local vintage, too. Lanius had to admit he’d drunk better. But the finest wines came from special regions scattered across the kingdom, and this didn’t happen to be one of them. The stuff wasn’t dreadful. It just wasn’t of the best.

  If you drank enough of it, you stopped noticing it wasn’t of the best. Sosia looked around the inside of the pavilion. “You kept your promise,” she said.

  “I told you I would,” Lanius answered.

  She waved that aside, as though of no account. “You’ve told me all kinds of things,” she said. “Some of them are true. Some of them—” She stopped and shook her head. “I didn’t come here to quarrel with you—as long as I didn’t find you in bed with a milkmaid, anyhow.”

  “No milkmaids,” Lanius said solemnly.

  “I don’t see any, anyhow,” his wife said, which was not quite a ringing endorsement. But she shook her head again, this time apparently at herself. “You deserve a reward for keeping your word.”

  “A reward?” Lanius blinked. “What sort of reward?”

  She looked at him sidelong. “What would you like?”

  The cot in which he slept was crowded for two, but proved not too crowded. The reward left them both sweaty. “If we could give something like this to all the people in Avornis who do something good, we’d see a lot more done,” Lanius said.

  Sosia poked him in the ribs. He jerked; she’d hit a ticklish spot. Trying to keep her voice severe, she said, “This isn’t something the kingdom supplies. And besides, what would you give to women?”

  “Men?” he suggested. She poked him again. But she didn’t ask him anything more about why he’d brought Pouncer out here. As far as he was concerned, that was part of her reward for him, too.

  “Over the river!” Grus said triumphantly.

  “Did you have any doubts?” Hirundo asked him. “If you did, maybe we shouldn’t have started this campaign at all.”

  “Well, it’s nice to know we can still fool the Menteshe, anyhow,” Grus said. He’d used a familiar ploy to cross the Zabat—feinting a crossing at one place to draw the nomads there, then crossing somewhere else and hitting them from behind. A jug of wine sat on the folding table in his pavilion. He poured his cup full and added, “Now we get to find out how they can fool us.”

  “They didn’t have much luck last year.” Hirundo never lacked for confidence.

  Grus had drunk enough wine to make him melancholy. “They made us lay siege to Trabzun. They didn’t let us get all the way to Yozgat, the way I hoped they would.” Looking back on things, that had probably been wild-eyed optimism on his part before he set out from the city of Avornis, but still.…

  “We’ll get there,” Hirundo said—confidently.

  Menteshe horsemen shadowed the Avornan army when it started moving south the next day. Grus wondered whether they belonged to Korkut’s faction or Sanjar’s. He also wondered how much difference it made. If he penetrated deep enough into the Menteshe country, wouldn’t the nomads abandon their feuds and band together to attack his men? They didn’t last year, he thought, trying his best to be as hopeful as Hirundo.

  The air was warm and moist—sultry was the word that came to Grus’ mind. He nodded to himself. That seemed right, even if it wasn’t a word he got to use very often. He hadn’t gone far south of the Zabat before he saw trees that put him in mind of outsized feather dusters. Their trunks were long, bare columns, some straight, others gracefully curved. Leaves spread out fanlike only from the top.

  Hirundo and Pterocles stared at the curious growths along with the king. “Aren’t those the most peculiar things you ever set eyes on?” Pterocles said.

  “Not when we’re riding with you,” Hirundo told him, and the wizard sent the general a wounded look.

  “I know what they are,” Grus said suddenly, and Pterocles and Hirundo both turned toward him. “They’re palm trees!” he declared. “They have to be.”

  “They don’t have to be anything,” Pterocles said, which was bound to be true. He eyed the strange trees. “They don’t have to be anything, no, but I’d say they’re more likely to be palm trees than anything else.”

  “What good are they?” Hirundo asked.

  Grus wished Lanius were riding with them. The other king would have known what palm trees were good for if anybody did. Maybe they were nothing but overgrown ornaments. But then Pterocles said, “You get dates from them, don’t you?”

  “Personally?” Hirundo said. “No.”

  “I think he’s right,” Grus said. “I’ve heard of date palms, though I don’t know if that’s what these are.”

  “When we start freeing thralls, they’ll be able to tell us,” Pterocles said. “They’ll probably think we’re a pack of fools for needing to ask, but they’ll tell us. Do you feel like being laughed at by men three steps above idiot?”

  Before Hirundo could say anything, Grus coughed warningly. Hirundo kept his mouth shut. Grus felt as though the gods had doled out a miracle, if only a small one.

  And then a scout came back shouting frantically for his attention. “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

  “I’m here,” Grus called. “What do you need?”

  “Your Majesty, there’s an ambassador from the Banished One behind me.”

  “From … the Banished One, you say?” Grus got the words out through lips suddenly numb with alarm.

  “That’s right, Your Majesty.” The scout nodded. He didn’t sound particularly afraid. Why should he? Any envoy from the Banished One wasn’t his worry—not unless the whole army went down to ruin, anyway. “Will you see him, or shall we send him off with his tail between his legs?”

  “I’ll see him,” Grus answered after no more than a heartbeat’s hesitation. Avornis was at war with the Banished One and those who worshiped him, yes. But that didn’t mean the forms were forgotten. It didn’t mean insulting the exiled god in any small way wasn’t dangerous, either.

  The Banished One’s envoy rode up to Grus a few minutes later. He gave his name as Tutush son of Budak. “I speak for the Fallen Star, and he speaks through me,” he declared, and sounded proud that that was so.

  Grus could imagine no greater horror. He asked, “How do I know that you speak the truth?”

  Tutush looked at him—looked through him, really. “You will have dreamt of my master,” he said.

  Beside Grus, Pterocles inhaled sharply. The king had better self-control, but only barely. He no longer doubted Tutush. “Say on,” he told the Menteshe. The words were harsh in his mouth.

  “Hear the Fallen Star, then. Hear him and obey.” Tutush looked almost as arrogant as he sounded. He had a hawk’s proud face, with a scimitar of a nose and a slash of a mouth almost hidden by mustache and graying black beard. “The Fallen Star orders you from his lands. Go now, go in peace, and he will suffer you to leave unharmed.” The envoy spoke fluent, slightly old-fashioned Avornan. “Should you flout his will, though, you shall have only yourself to blame for your destruction.”

  “I’ll take the chance,” Grus replied. “The way it looks to me, the Banished One wants to scare me into leaving when he and his puppets haven’t been strong enough to make me leave. He knows where I’m going, and he knows why. I’m bound for Yozgat, and for the Scepter of Mercy. If Prince Korkut gives it to me, I will go home—or if Prince Sanjar does, for that matter.” Maybe he could make the Banished One suspect Ulash’s warring sons.

  Or maybe not. Tutush threw back his head and laughed uproariously, as if Grus had just made some rich joke. “Fool! Do you think holding the Scepter of Mercy will make you happy? Even if you should touch it—which you never will—you would remain nothing but a puny mortal man, soon doomed to die and be forgotten.”

  Grus
only shrugged. “I’ll take the chance,” he said again. “I’m not doing this for me—I’m doing it for Avornis, and for those who come after me.”

  Tutush laughed again, even more woundingly this time. “He who comes after you will never wield it—never, do you hear me? So says the Fallen Star, and he speaks the truth. So he says; so he swears. He would swear by the accursed so-called gods in the heavens that he speaks truth here.”

  “He can swear whatever he pleases, and take whatever oaths he pleases. That does not mean I would believe him, not when he is the fount from which all lies spring.” Grus tried to hide how startled he was. Had the Banished One ever sworn an oath like that? The king doubted it.

  “This being so, you see that it makes no sense for you to do anything but give up your vain and foolish adventure,” Tutush said, as though the king had not spoken. “If you go on, you will only bring ruin to your kingdom, your army, and yourself. Go back, then, and enjoy what the Fallen Star permits you to retain as your own.”

  The exiled god’s implacable arrogance came through in every one of his envoy’s words. It chilled Grus, but also angered him. “I’ll take my chances,” he said one more time. “And whoever comes after me will have to take his chances with the Scepter of Mercy. I don’t intend to worry about that. I want him to have the chance to take his chances.”

  “Do you presume to reject my master’s mercy?” Tutush sounded as though he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “I don’t think your master knows the meaning of the word,” Grus replied. “He can’t use the Scepter, after all. The only thing he can do is keep it away from people who can use it—and that does include the Kings of Avornis.”

  “You will live to regret this,” Tutush said angrily. “But you may not live long.”

  “So tell me,” Grus said, “who is the Banished One’s favorite in the civil war?”

  Tutush knew. Grus could see as much. And the ambassador started to answer. He started to, but he didn’t finish. Grus had hoped to catch him by surprise and learn something important, something he could have used against both Menteshe princes. But all Tutush said was, “You’ll find out—if you live so long. Good day.” He rode off. Grus thought the day was better because he was gone.