The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  “No doubt,” Grus said, doubting. How often did the gods in the heavens pay any attention to what went on down here in the material world? Not often enough. But, even if Grus had trouble staying confident in them, he didn’t want to damage the other man’s faith, so he let it go at that.

  He opened the message tube and drew out the letter inside. Another sheet came out with it. Grus unrolled that one first. It was a sketch of a town, as seen from outside. Grus blinked. He’d known Lanius could draw, but he hadn’t had any idea the other king was this good.

  He started to give his attention to the letter, then looked back at the sketch again. From that sketch, his eyes snapped to the walls of Yozgat. “By the gods!” he muttered. Lanius was not only better than he’d thought, but much better than he’d thought. There could be no doubt about it—the other king had produced an outstanding portrait of a city he’d never seen.

  Lanius had made mistakes. The texture of the stone didn’t quite match that of Yozgat’s walls, and the proportions of the towers were subtly off. But it was unmistakably Yozgat.

  More than a little reluctantly, Grus rolled up the sketch and broke the seal on the letter. When he finished reading it, he shook his head in reluctant admiration and respect. The letter was as precise as the sketch—and, like it, had a few details that weren’t quite the way they were supposed to be.

  As with the sketch, those didn’t worry Grus. They just reminded him that Lanius was human—for all his cleverness, he didn’t see everything there was to see. Noting as much relieved Grus. He decided there might still be some point after all to his having a share of the crown.

  And, here, he saw very clearly what needed doing. He went over to Pterocles’ tent and stuck his head inside. “Oh, good,” he said. “You’re here.”

  “No, not really,” the wizard answered. “But I do expect to get back pretty soon.”

  “Er—right,” Grus said. “You were wondering how we would get the Scepter of Mercy out of Yozgat.”

  “Something like that had occurred to me, yes,” Pterocles agreed. “You told me it was none of my business, though.” Resentment stuck up all over him, like spines on a hedgehog.

  “Well, it may be after all.” Grus thrust Lanius’ letter at him. “Here—read this and tell me what you think.”

  Pterocles obeyed. The more he read, the more astonished he looked. When he was finished, he blurted, “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard of.”

  “Just what I said when King Lanius told me about it last winter,” Grus replied. “Suppose we forget it’s crazy, though. Suppose we look at what chance it has of working. More than a little, wouldn’t you say? Here, look at this, too.” He showed Pterocles Lanius’ sketch of Yozgat.

  “Olor’s beard!” the wizard exclaimed, recognizing it at once. “That’s—amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty much so,” Grus said. “He’s never even gone as far as the Stura, let alone anywhere near here.”

  “He’s got it down, though. Every place where it matters, he’s got it down,” Pterocles said, and Grus nodded. Pterocles asked, “Where do I come into all this?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but I’ll tell you what I had in mind,” Grus said, and he did.

  Pterocles stared, then burst out laughing. “Yes, I can do that,” he said, laughing still. “Come to think of it, you don’t need me to do that. The clumsiest, most fumble-fingered drunken excuse for a wizard in the world could do that.”

  “Well, I don’t know the clumsiest, most fumble-fingered drunken excuse for a wizard in the world, and I do know you,” Grus said reasonably. “I still think you’d do a better job than he would, too.”

  “For this? You might be surprised,” Pterocles told him.

  “Maybe I might be, but I’d better not be, if you know what I mean.” When Grus wanted to, he could sound every inch a king.

  Pterocles bowed in acquiescence. “Yes, Your Majesty. Let me know when.”

  “I will. Obviously, not yet,” Grus said.

  “Yes. Obviously.” Pterocles started a chuckle, but this time didn’t quite finish it. His voice was altogether serious as he said, “You know, Your Majesty, I’m a little surprised—maybe more than a little surprised—that letter and that sketch made it down here safely. They had to cross an awful lot of ground the Menteshe can raid before they did.”

  “Funny you should say that.” Grus told him the story of the courier’s narrow escape from the nomads.

  “That’s … interesting,” Pterocles said thoughtfully. “And it’s even more interesting that the two bands of Menteshe should have squabbled with each other, don’t you think?”

  “I did, as a matter of fact,” Grus answered. “When I heard that, it made me wonder whether Sanjar’s wizards really had worked out a spell to keep the Banished One from taking control of them. That envoy said they were going to try it, but I would be lying if I said I’d believed him.”

  “A possibility. Definitely a possibility.”

  By the way Pterocles said it, it wasn’t a possibility he took seriously. “What were you thinking?” Grus asked him.

  “Well, it did occur to me … If the gods in the heavens were going to meddle in the affairs of the material world, that’s the way they might go about it. A little bit of confusion at just the right time would go a long way, and who could prove anything afterwards? Not even—him.” The wizard looked south, toward the Argolid Mountains.

  So did Grus. Was the Banished One gnashing his teeth down there because his henchmen hadn’t caught that courier? It did seem possible. Did it seem likely? Grus pointed at Pterocles. “If—he—can’t prove anything, you can’t, either.”

  “Oh, I know that, Your Majesty,” Pterocles said cheerfully. “But it does give us something to think about, doesn’t it?”

  Grus’ wave encompassed the palisade surrounding Yozgat. “I’ve already got plenty to think about, thank you very much.” He paused. “It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it, to believe the gods in the heavens were paying a little bit of attention—just a little bit, mind you—to what’s going on down here?”

  “We’ll see how things turn out,” Pterocles said. “That may tell us something, one way or the other.”

  “Yes, it may,” Grus said. “Question is, will it tell us anything we want to hear?”

  “We’ll find out,” Pterocles said.

  “Very good.” Grus laughed and bowed. “As long as you stick to that, you can prophesy about anything.”

  “Being patient is a good start to the secret of all wisdom,” Pterocles said.

  “No doubt you’re right. It’s also one of the hardest things for most people to manage.” Grus shook his head. “No—that’s wrong. Most people can’t manage it. Take me—I can hardly wait until I get to go on.” He looked down at the sketch Lanius had sent. “I know what I can do in the meantime. I can go around Yozgat until I find the place where this matches up best with what I really see.”

  “Good,” Pterocles said. “Then you’ll be ready, or as ready as you can be. I didn’t know the king—uh, the other king—could draw so well.”

  “Neither did I,” Grus admitted. “Lanius … will surprise you every now and then.”

  He set out on a circuit of the Avornan lines, carrying the sketch and looking from it to the walls and the city beyond them every fifty paces or so. The other king said in his letter that he’d been as precise as he knew how. Grus believed him. Lanius was precise even when he didn’t particularly aim to be. When he did, he was bound to be very precise indeed.

  He was bound to be—and he was. Grus looked up from the sketch to the walls after another few steps, then slowly nodded to himself. He rolled up the sketch again. He needed to go no farther. “Here,” he said. “Right here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Lanius paced through the palace in an agony of anxiety. Every time a courier came in, he met the man and snatched the message tube out of his hands. Every time the message turned out to be something ordin
ary from the provinces, the king snarled in frustration. Lanius was not usually given to snarling. People sent him odd, even frightened, looks.

  Rumors didn’t take long to start swirling. People talked about him when they didn’t think he was listening. Sometimes, though, he was just around a corner in the corridor. Some of the servants thought he and Sosia had had another fight.

  Other servants were convinced he’d either quarreled with a new mistress or gotten her pregnant. Since he didn’t have a mistress at the moment, that wasn’t true, either. If they’d known he was worrying about whether a letter and a sketch had gotten down to Yozgat safely, they would have been convinced he’d lost his wits.

  But Lanius couldn’t help being snappish. The servants walked softly around him. Had his temper been of a different sort, he might have enjoyed stirring up alarm in the palace and punishing people when they did anything wrong, no matter how small. As things were, he regretted their fear when he noticed it.

  Three days later, the letter he’d been waiting for finally came. He all but tackled the courier who handed him the message tube. When he recognized the royal seal on the letter, he whooped. When he broke the seal and unrolled the letter and recognized Grus’ strong, simple script, he whooped again.

  Your Majesty, with the gods’ help I have your letter and your sketch, the other king wrote. I may even mean that instead of sticking it in for the sake of padding or decoration. The sketch is quite good, good enough to be used for its intended purpose. When all else is in readiness, we shall go forward. And, because the gods watched over what you last sent me, I dare hope they will go on looking out for our endeavors. His signature was a hasty scrawl nothing like the rest of his handwriting.

  “Ha!” Lanius said, and then, “Ha!” again.

  “Is the news good, Your Majesty?” the courier asked.

  “The news is very good,” Lanius answered. “Yes, by Olor’s beard, very good indeed.” He fumbled in his belt pouch. As usual, he never knew what in the way of money he would find there. A handful of silver seemed to do the job. He pressed it on the courier, saying, “And this for the good news.”

  “I thank you, Your Majesty.” The man bowed and left.

  For a little while, Lanius was as happy as he had been anxious. Some of the serving women exclaimed among themselves, guessing—wrongly—why he seemed so pleased. However mistaken, their guesses were funny and lewd, and Lanius once more had trouble not laughing out loud when he overheard them.

  But his worries came back sooner than he would have liked. Grus had gotten his letter and the sketch that went with it—good. The other king would have had a harder time going forward without them. But, by themselves, they weren’t enough to let him go forward. Until Lanius knew he could … well, what was there to do but worry?

  Grus eyed the newcomers to the siege line around Yozgat with no small curiosity. The two men closely resembled each other, but for a generation’s difference in age. Each of them had a long face and a big nose. The older man’s mustache was shot with gray, the younger one’s just losing the downy look of youth. They even stood alike. They both had a slightly stagy manner, as though they never stopped performing.

  And, at the moment, they both put down cups of wine as fast as they could. The older man said, “Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but if we’d known the trip down here would be the way it was, I don’t think you could have found enough gold in the world to get us to make it.”

  “Why is that, Collurio?” Grus asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

  The animal trainer drained his cup before replying. He filled it again from the jar of wine in Grus’ pavilion. “Why?” he repeated. “I’ll tell you why—because I thought we were going to get killed a dozen times, that’s why.”

  “Only a dozen?” his son murmured.

  “Well, I don’t know. Host track after a while,” Collurio said. “It all started when a log hit the boat we were in while we were crossing the Stura and almost pitched us into the river. By the gods in the heavens, I don’t know what I would have done—I never learned to swim.”

  “Ah?” Grus said. “How were you saved?”

  “Well, the rowers pulled like madmen, and the log swung a little right at the last instant, so it smacked into the very back of the boat—”

  “You mean the stern,” Grus said, thinking, Landlubber.

  “Whatever you call it.” Collurio wasn’t inclined to be fussy. “Anyhow, the log just glanced off, you might say, and swung us around, but it didn’t tip us over.”

  He’d had no reason ever to learn the word capsize. Grus didn’t suppose he would want a vocabulary lesson now. The king didn’t think that log had come sliding down the Stura by accident. He hoped it hadn’t swerved at the last instant by accident, either. “What happened next?” he asked.

  Collurio nudged his son. “You tell it, Crinitus.”

  “All right,” the younger man said. “That was when the wagon had to run for a fort about half a bounce ahead of the Menteshe.”

  “That was the first time, you mean,” Collurio said.

  “Well, yes.” Crinitus nodded. “The first time. But a few lancers rode out from the fort, and for some reason the nomads didn’t keep coming after us. They must have thought the soldiers were going to pitch into them. It didn’t look to me like there were enough Avornans for that, but I’m not going to complain, believe me.”

  “Neither will I,” Collurio said. He looked at Grus. “I thought the same thing my son did. It was nothing but Queen Quelea’s mercy that saved us.”

  I hope you’re right, Grus thought. What he said was, “I gather you had some other narrow escapes?”

  “A wagonload of ’em,” Collurio said, and laughed at his own wit. “Some of the riders and drivers we talked to said those kinds of things happen all the time. If they do, though, I don’t see how anything ever gets here, and that’s the truth.”

  “Sometimes things don’t,” Grus said. “I’m glad the two of you did. And, meaning no offense to you, I’m even gladder the moncat did.”

  Collurio scratched his plowshare of a nose. “King Lanius kept going on and on about how the beast was more important than I understood. I would have told him he was daft if he wasn’t the king—I probably shouldn’t say that to you, should I, eh, Your Majesty?”

  “I’ve had the same thought about King Lanius now and again,” Grus replied, “but I have to admit I’ve been wrong more than I’ve been right.”

  “It could be. Yes, it could be,” Collurio replied, pouring more wine for himself and Crinitus. He and his son would be drunk in short order if they kept that up. He went on, “Other thing besides him being king that made me keep my fool mouth shut was those dreams. You know about those dreams, Your Majesty? King Lanius said you did.”

  “Oh, yes.” Grus raised his own winecup in salute to the animal trainer. “I do know about those dreams, and I know who sends them, too. Welcome to the club. There aren’t very many of us. We’re the people who worry him.” He looked south, toward the Argolid Mountains.

  Collurio shuddered. “His Majesty—His other Majesty, I mean—told me the same thing. I’ll tell you what I told him—I could do without the honor.”

  “I wish I had one of those dreams.” Crinitus sounded resentful at being left out.

  “Don’t.” Grus and Collurio said the same word at the same time. Grus went on, “With a little luck—and I think with only a little luck now, not the great slabs of it we would have needed a while ago—with a little luck, I say, he won’t have much chance to trouble us like that anymore.”

  “How’s that, Your Majesty?” Collurio sounded like a sorely perplexed man. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but I just can’t cipher it out. Why did we fetch the moncat down to the walls of Yozgat?”

  If Collurio couldn’t see it, then—with that little bit of luck—the Banished One wouldn’t see it, either. Pterocles had been taken by surprise when Grus explained it. Pterocles, in fact, had been compl
etely astonished. “Why?” the king said. “I’ll tell you why.”

  “Please!” This time, Collurio and Crinitus spoke together.

  “To take the Scepter of Mercy, that’s why,” Grus said.

  The two animal trainers, middle-aged and young, looked at him with identical expressions. Their faces both said, Your Majesty, you’re out of your mind. Grus’ biggest worry was that they were liable—indeed, were much too likely—to be absolutely right.

  Again, Lanius waited anxiously for word from the south. He wanted to be sure that Pouncer (and, not quite incidentally, Collurio and Crinitus) had reached the Avornan works surrounding Yozgat. Unless he was wrong, and unless the Banished One and the Menteshe were better fooled than he thought, they would do everything they could to stop the moncat and its trainers. If they did …

  If they do, I’ll start over with a different beast—and with different trainers, the king thought. No, I’ll start over with several moncats, and send them down separately.

  That was a good idea. The more he looked at it, the more he wished he would have done it this time instead of letting everything rest on Pouncer’s furry shoulders. But Pouncer had advantages over all the others. They would have taken longer to learn what they needed to know—what he hoped they needed to know.

  If something went wrong this campaigning season, though, would he ever have the chance to send more moncats south of the Stura? Would Grus be able to lay siege to Yozgat again? Lanius couldn’t be sure. All the same, he had the feeling this was Avornis’ best chance, maybe Avornis’ only chance.

  Having that feeling only left him more anxious to learn what was going on down there in the south.

  Even if Pouncer had gotten to Yozgat safely, that was no guarantee the moncat would succeed. Lanius was acutely conscious of how old the descriptions of the city he’d used were. He couldn’t do anything about that; they were the newest ones he had. If not for the archives, he wouldn’t have had any. Street plans changed little, even after the Menteshe held a town for many years. He’d seen that proved after the siege of Trabzun. He had to believe it held true for Yozgat as well.