The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  A little while after that, Limosa said, “I do go on and on.”

  “No,” Lanius said, which wasn’t strictly true. In fact, she did go on and on, but he didn’t mind. “It’s very interesting.” That was true—she picked up most gossip before it got to him.

  “You’re kind to say so.” Limosa looked around. Lanius understood that glance, having used it a good many times himself—she was seeing whether any servants were close enough to overhear. Satisfied none was, she went on, “And you’re kind for not thinking me—stranger than I am.” Now her gaze went down to the mosaic tiles on the floor.

  “Stranger than you are?” For a moment, Lanius was puzzled. In every way he could think of but one, Limosa was ordinary enough. When he remembered the exception, of course, it made up for a lot of the rest. He felt like looking down at the floor himself. “Oh. That.”

  “Yes. That.” Limosa’s chin lifted defiantly. “Well, you are, because you don’t.” She paused as though sorting through whether that was what she really meant. Lanius needed to do the same thing. They both decided at about the same time that she had gotten it right. Relief in her voice, she went on, “You don’t act like you think I’m some sort of a monster or something.”

  “I don’t,” Lanius said, which was true. He would have said the same thing about Ortalis, and sounded just as sincere—and he would have been lying through his teeth. About Limosa, though, he did mean it. Despite her husband, despite her father, he had nothing at all against her. He tried to figure out why, and to put it into words. The best he could do was, “You just—like what you like, that’s all.”

  “Yes, that really is all.” Her eyes glowed. “You see? You do understand. Oh! I could just kiss you!”

  He could tell she meant it. And, if the look on her face meant what he thought it did, things could easily go on from there after a kiss. The idea of putting a cuckold’s horns on his unloving and unlovable brother-in-law had a certain delicious temptation to it. But Lanius was too relentlessly practical to take it any further than being tempted. An affair with a serving girl annoyed nobody but Sosia, and both he and the kingdom could deal with that. An affair with a princess carried much more baggage. Nor did he think Ortalis would wear horns gracefully. On the contrary.

  And so, as gently as he could, Lanius said, “I thank you for the thought, but that might not be a good idea.”

  Limosa’s eyes fell open. Maybe she saw for the first time where that kiss might lead. Her cheeks turned the color of iron just out of the forge. “Oh!” she said again, in an altogether different tone of voice. “You’re right. Maybe it isn’t.”

  Gently still, Lanius added, “Besides, what you like isn’t … what very many people like.”

  She turned redder yet, which he wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen it. In a faintly strangled voice, she said, “That isn’t all I like.”

  Lanius was willing to believe her. She wouldn’t have borne Capella and Marinus if she hadn’t done other things, and they were things she was likely to like if she did them. But exactly what she liked and didn’t like wasn’t really his business, or anyone’s except hers and perhaps Ortalis’.

  She must have realized that, too, because she squeaked, “Please excuse me,” and hurried away. Lanius stared after her. He sighed. Maybe they would be able to talk more openly with each other from now on. Or maybe they wouldn’t be able to talk at all. Time would tell, nothing else.

  “Time will tell.” Lanius said it out loud. It was true of so many things. He wanted to know whether Sosia would have a boy or a girl. Time would tell. He wanted to know how Grus’ army was doing down in the Menteshe country. Time would tell. He wanted to know if Grus would reclaim the Scepter of Mercy. Time would tell. He wanted to know what the Scepter could do in the hands of a King of Avornis. Time would—or might—tell.

  “But it won’t tell soon enough!” Lanius said that out loud, too. He wanted to know all those things now. He didn’t want to have to wait to find out. News from Grus might be only minutes away. Lanius hoped so. He surely wouldn’t have to wait more than days for that. With the others, though, he would have to be more patient.

  He’d had a lot of time to learn patience. Snaking through the archives had helped him acquire it. So had years of being altogether powerless. If he hadn’t been patient then, he might have gone mad. He laughed. Some of the people in the palace probably thought he had, although, he hoped, in a harmless way.

  And patience had paid. Now he had more power than he’d ever expected, more power than he’d ever dreamed of in those first few years after Grus put the crown on his own head.

  “Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”

  The call brought Lanius’ head up like a hunting hound’s. “I’m here,” he said. “What’s going on?” Good news? Bad news? Scandal? One thing was certain—it wasn’t Pouncer stealing a spoon from the kitchens. But had another moncat finally found Pouncer’s way out of the chamber?

  “A courier’s looking for you, Your Majesty,” a maidservant answered.

  “Well, bring him here, by the gods!” the king exclaimed. If this was news from the south, time would tell very soon indeed.

  When he saw the courier, he thought the man had news from Grus. The fellow had plainly ridden hard. But the message he gave Lanius had nothing—or rather, not much—to do with events south of the Stura. A plague had broken out in the town of Priene, on the coast. The city governor asked the king to send wizards to help put it down.

  “I can do that,” Lanius told the courier. “I will do that, as fast as I can.” Priene was an out-of-the-way place, a backwater where things happened slowly if they happened at all. The pestilence that had been such a worry along well-traveled routes during the winter was getting there only now.

  Lanius called for pen and ink and paper. He wrote a message to the people of Priene, telling them help was on the way. Then he wrote a message to Aedon the wizard, telling him either to go to Priene himself or to send another wizard familiar with the spell he’d used to cure Queen Estrilda. Knowing the inconvenience of this request, I promise the reward will be commensurate to it, he finished.

  Once both messages were on their way, Lanius started laughing again. Time would tell him what he wanted to know, all right, but at its pace, not his.

  “By the gods!” Grus said softly. “Will you look at that?”

  Hirundo looked south with him. The general spoke a word no Avornan general had ever used before in sight of the thing of which he spoke. “Yozgat.”

  “We’re here.” Grus shook his head in wonder. “We’re really here. I can hardly believe it.”

  “Well, you’d better, because it’s true. Now all we have to do is take the place.” Hirundo made it sound easy. Maybe it was, compared to advancing from the Stura all the way to Yozgat. Compared to anything else? Grus didn’t think so.

  They were still three or four miles from the city that held the Scepter of Mercy, the city that had been Prince Ulash’s capital for so long, the city that now belonged—however tenuously—to Prince Korkut. The drawbridge over the moat was down; the gates were open. Tiny in the distance, Menteshe horsemen were riding into Yozgat. The warriors inside had plenty of time to close the gates before the Avornans drew near enough to threaten the place.

  Grus got his first look at the fortifications he would face, and liked none of what he saw. Trabzun, the year before, hadn’t been easy. Yozgat, by all the signs, would be harder. Its walls were higher and better built; that was obvious even from a distance. Inside the city, tall towers would make formidable strongpoints even if the Avornans forced an entry. And the palace—on a hill near the center of the town—plainly doubled as a citadel. If what Lanius said was right, that citadel housed not only the reigning Menteshe prince, whoever he happened to be, but also the Scepter of Mercy.

  The king made himself smile. “If it were easy, somebody would have done it a long time ago. But we’ve already done a lot of hard things. One more? By now, one more hard thing shoul
d be easy for us.”

  He knew he was talking more to cheer up his men than for himself. He also knew he was making things simpler than they really were. Taking Yozgat wouldn’t be one hard thing to do. It would be scores, hundreds, thousands of hard things. They would have to surround the city, have to fend off whatever attacks Menteshe outside the walls made on them, have to force a breach in the walls, have to defeat the garrison, have to storm the citadel …

  “One more hard thing,” Hirundo said. “That’s just right.” The soldiers who heard him would believe him. Grus gave him a sharp look. If Hirundo hadn’t just said, You must be out of your mind, nobody ever had. But the general’s face was as innocent as that of a graying, bearded, scarred, lined, leathery child.

  “We’ll put some stone-throwers upstream along the river-bank,” Grus said. “Curse me if I want the Menteshe sneaking supplies in there by boat.”

  “Sounds reasonable. We ought to put some downstream, too, in case they try to row up against the current,” Hirundo said.

  “Olor’s beard!” Grus exclaimed. “All these years on horseback and I’ve finally learned to ride. And now here you are, thinking like a river-galley captain. What is this world coming to?”

  “Beats me. Whatever it’s coming to, I wish it would hurry up and get there,” Hirundo said.

  As the Avornan army neared Yozgat, the drawbridge rose. The heavy chains that drew it up rattled. After it rose, a massive iron portcullis thudded down in front of it. Grus muttered to himself. The city of Avornis had such fortifications, but he wished Yozgat didn’t.

  Not all the Menteshe outside Yozgat had gotten in before the defenders sealed off the city. Most of the ones left out there on the plain galloped off. A few rode at the Avornans and shot off the arrows they had in their quivers. Hirundo sent bands of scouts to outflank them. Some of them noticed and fled before the scouts could block their escape. Others, less lucky or less alert, didn’t get away.

  A herald with a flag of truce came up onto the wall when the Avornan army drew near enough for him to shout out over the moat. In good Avornan, he called, “Prince Korkut commands you to leave this city. If you leave it at once, you may go in peace. Otherwise, the full weight of his wrath, and of the Fallen Star’s, will fall on you.”

  Despite mutterings from his guardsmen—who did their best to make sure with their stout shields that no Menteshe could pick him off at long range—Grus rode up to the edge of the moat and shouted back. “Let Prince Korkut give me one present, and he is welcome to keep his city and his land. I will go home to the Kingdom of Avornis straightaway. I swear it in the names of King Olor and Queen Quelea and the rest of the gods in the heavens.”

  “We care nothing for those foolish, useless gods,” the herald replied. “But say your say. What would you have of His Highness?”

  “The Scepter of Mercy,” Grus said. Korkut had turned him down the year before. Then, though, the Avornans were far from Yozgat. Now they moved to surround it even as Grus parleyed with Korkut’s man.

  “He told me you would say this,” the herald shouted. “The answer is no, as it has always been, as it will always be.”

  “Then my answer is also no,” Grus said. “The fight will go on. When Sanjar is prince over Yozgat, he will show better sense.” That was probably untrue, but it should give Korkut something new and unpalatable to think about. Yozgat was being cut off from the outside world. The defenders couldn’t be sure Sanjar hadn’t made common cause with Grus.

  “You will be sorry,” the herald said, and ceremoniously lowered the flag of truce.

  “Get back, Your Majesty!” three guardsmen said at the same time, and with identical urgency in their voices. As soon as that flag of truce went down, the Menteshe did start shooting. Arrows thudded into shields near the king. One guard and one horse were wounded before Grus and his men got out of range.

  He wished that hadn’t happened, but he didn’t know what he could have done to stop it. If the Menteshe in Yozgat wanted to parley, he had no choice but to talk to them. There was a chance they would surrender the Scepter in exchange for his withdrawal. He had the feeling Korkut might have done it if he didn’t fear the Banished One.

  Well, let him, Grus thought. I’ll show him he’d better fear Avornis, too.

  Avornans shot back at the Menteshe on the walls of Yozgat. The Menteshe, with stronger bows and the advantage of height, had the better of that until Grus’ artisans got some dart-throwers in position and started skewering them. Korkut’s men did not seem to have any of those up on the walls.

  Hirundo said, “I think I’d better get the outer ditch and palisade made before the inner ones this time.”

  “Oh? Why is that?” Grus answered his own question, saying, “Because every nomad south of the Stura is liable to be heading this way just as fast as he can ride?”

  “Not every nomad, Your Majesty.” Hirundo pointed to the walls of Yozgat. “A lot of them are already here.”

  “So they are. That’s a relief, isn’t it?” Grus said. They both laughed. If they didn’t laugh, they would start worrying. Grus knew he would start worrying very soon anyhow. He looked toward Yozgat. “I wonder how much food they’ve got in there.”

  “Wonder how much we can scrounge off the countryside, too,” Hirundo said. “If we knew this stuff ahead of time, maybe we wouldn’t have to fight the battles. Since we don’t, we do.”

  Grus thought about that. After he worked it through, he nodded. “Right,” he said, and then, “I think.”

  “Don’t fret, Your Majesty.” Hirundo grinned at him. “Let Korkut fret. Let the Banished One fret. Do you think they’re not? You’d better think again if you do. When was the last time they had to figure out what to do with an Avornan army besieging Yozgat?”

  “If this isn’t a first for Korkut, he’s a lot older than I think he is,” Grus observed, which made Hirundo laugh. Grus added, “It’s been a long, long time for the Banished One, too. We’re giving him something to think about, anyway.”

  Korkut kept his archers busy on the walls, making things as hard as they could for the Avornans. That impressed Grus less than it might have. If he’d intended to try to storm Yozgat right away, a strong, aggressive defense would have mattered more. As things were, it just meant the Avornans set up their inner perimeter a little farther from the wall than they would have otherwise. Even so, soldiers and engineers went about their business with unflustered competence. This wasn’t the first siege for most of them.

  The king’s pavilion rose between the inner and outer perimeters. Hirundo’s tent and Pterocles’ went up nearby. So did the one that Otus shared with Fulca. The ex-thrall bowed to Grus. “It makes me happy to see the Menteshe beaten, Your Majesty,” he said. “For so long, I did not know they could be.”

  “For a long time, I didn’t know they could be, either, not south of the Stura,” Grus said. “You have Pterocles to thank for that.”

  “I have Pterocles to thank for me,” Otus said. “I have Pterocles to thank for my woman—even if she does tell me what to do.”

  “That can happen,” Grus said. “Do you tell her what to do, too?” When Otus nodded, the king clapped him on the back. “Then things are pretty near even, sounds like. That’s about how they ought to be.”

  He was glad to go to bed that night. He liked staying in one spot more and more as he got older. Not having to break camp and travel in the morning had a strong attraction for him. Even a siege camp could come to resemble a home as he spent time there.

  But he was anything but glad when, sometime in the night, the Banished One appeared before him in all his fearful majesty. “You will not enter Yozgat. You shall never set foot in Yozgat. This I tell you, and tell you truly,” the exiled god said.

  When that bell-like voice resounded inside Grus’ head, not believing it was almost impossible. Grus did his best. “I’ll take my chances,” he replied.

  “They will bring you sorrow.” Again, the Banished One left no room for doubt or
disagreement.

  Instead of disagreeing, Grus tried to deflect. “Life is full of sorrow. Facing sorrow is part of what makes a man.”

  The Banished One’s laughter might have been a lash of ice. “What do you know of sorrow, wretched mortal? I was cast down from the heavens to this accursed place. Shall I rejoice in it? When you know exile, you will understand—as much as a flea understands a dog.”

  “I don’t intend to be exiled, thank you very much.” Grus managed such defiance as he could.

  All he won was more scorn from the Banished One. “As though what a man intends matters! It will be as I say it will, not as you intend.”

  Grus woke then, with the usual shudders after confronting the Banished One. The exiled god had sounded even more certain than usual. His certainty was part of what made him so terrible—and so terrifying. He’s lying. He wants to confuse me. He wants to trick me. Telling himself that was easy for Grus. Believing it? Believing it came ever so much harder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The dispatch rider handed Lanius the letter from his waxed-leather message tube, then bowed and departed. Lanius broke the seal and began to read. As usual, Grus came straight to the point. Your Majesty, he wrote, We have surrounded Yozgat, and we are laying siege to it. All goes as well as possible. With the gods’ help, the Scepter of Mercy will soon be in Avornan hands once more.

  “We have surrounded Yozgat.” Lanius read the phrases aloud so he could savor them. “We are laying siege to it. Soon to be in Avornan hands.”

  He had been waiting to hear those phrases ever since Prince Ulash’s sons squared off against each other. That seemed a long time now—until he thought about how long the kingdom had been waiting for them. Four hundred years. A long, long wait, but one finally over.

  Lanius shook his head. The wait was almost at an end. When a King of Avornis actually took up the Scepter of Mercy, then it would be over. Not until then. He had no trouble imagining all the things that still might go wrong.