The Bastard King (21 page)

Only as the sun set behind the Bantian Mountains did the din abate. A last messenger came to the palace. "Olor be praised," he said simply. "We've thrown'em back."

Even then, though, King Dagipert refused to withdraw. Instead, he went back to ruining the Avornan countryside. Trapped within the capital, all Lanius could do was watch the smoke rise. After a week, Dagipert sent a messenger up to the walls under flag of truce. "Hear my master's terms," the Therving shouted in good Avornan.

Lepturus let him enter through a postern gate and sent him to the palace. There he bowed to Queen Certhia and, a little less deeply, to Lanius himself. "King Dagipert must see he can't break into the city of Avornis," Certhia said. "What do we have to give him to make him go away?"

"You Avornans must see you cannot drive King Dagipert from your land," said the envoy, whose name was Claffo. "He says, Thervingia and Avornis should not have to fight anymore. He says, we should make them one, to keep it from happening again. He says, let King Lanius wed Princess Romilda, as was agreed once before."

Lanius no longer looked at the idea with automatic horror, as he had a few years earlier. If Romilda had a pretty face and a nice shape, he was willing to think about it. But his mother spoke only one word, and that was "No."

"King Dagipert says he will make you sorry if you refuse," Claffo warned.

"No," Certhia repeated. "Tell Dagipert he cannot make me as sorry as I would be if that wedding went forward."

"I will tell him," Claffo said mournfully. "But you will regret this."

After he'd gone, Lanius said, "Mother, maybe I could - "

"No," Queen' Certhia said yet again. "Bedding serving girls is one thing." Lanius looked all around again, his face heating with embarrassment. His mother went on, "Taking a queen is something else again, and I will not have the Therving as your father-in-law. I've made mistakes, but I won't sell Avornis to Thervingia. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Mother." Lanius didn't always think his mother ran Avornis wisely - which meant she didn't always do things the way he would have, had he been of age. Here, though, he couldn't quarrel with Certhia's choice. Marrying him to Romilda meant marrying Avornis to Thervingia, and he knew which partner would rule the roost.

"All right, then," his mother said. "Dagipert can't break in here. We've seen that - and if he does, everything's over anyway, so there's no point worrying about what to do next. Sooner or later, his men have to run short of food. The way they're tearing up the countryside, it'll probably be sooner. Once they start getting hungry, what can they do but go home?"

"Nothing, I suppose," Lanius said. "Still, I wish they'd go home sooner than that."

"So do I," Certhia said. "But I don't know how to make them do it. Do you? If you think you do, I'll be glad to listen."

She sounded as though she meant it. Lanius pondered. At last, scowling because he couldn't come up with a right answer when he needed one most, he shook his head. "No, Mother. I'm sorry. I wish I did."

"Well, well. What have we here?" Grus said.

"What have we here?" Nicator repeated, his voice rising in excitement. "We have us a chance to grab Dagipert's balls and give'em a good squeeze, that's what."

"So we do," Grus agreed. "But that's what it is - a chance, nothing more. We've got to make the most of it."

He turned and looked back over the
Crocodile's
stern. River galleys and small boats coming up the Asopus from the south had finally brought enough soldiers so that, added in with the flotilla's marines, they might be able to give Dagipert and the Thervings a hard time. He hoped so. Up till now, the invaders had had everything go their way since breaking into Avornis.

Nicator said, "The Thervings'll still have more men all told than we do."

"I know." Grus nodded. "But we can put ours right where we want them, and we can pick them up and take them somewhere else if they get in trouble." He scuffed his foot across the decking. "When we're fighting foes who haven't got any ships of their own, this is a floating fortress - nothing else but."

"It had better be," Nicator said. "After the knife that stinking Corvus stuck in our hopes, it's not like we've got a lot of room for mistakes."

Grus wished he could have argued with that, but it was plainly true. He called out to the oarmaster: "Quicken the stroke. We're going up toward the capital." And to the boatswain: "Run up the
Follow me
pennant."

The Thervings had learned part of their lesson. They didn't camp right alongside the Asopus anymore, or next to any other navigable stream. But Thervingia was landlocked and mountainous. Its rivers weren't navigable. They didn't realize just what a flotilla could do. Grus was determined to show them.

He spotted a band of Thervings - about a regiment's worth of men - marching back toward their main encampment under the walls of the city of Avornis. They trudged along in loose order. Why not? Who would challenge their right to rule this country? No one they'd met lately.

Boats took some Avornans ashore. River galleys scraped keels on mud and gravel close to the bank so more men could scramble down and rush toward the invaders.

Shouts of surprise rose from the Thervings. They weren't shouts of alarm; Dagipert's warriors had often beaten Avornans in the open field, and no doubt thought they could go right on doing it. Grus hoped they were wrong. He wasn't sure, but he hoped so. One thing he knew - he was about to find out.

Slower than they should have, the Thervings formed a battle line perhaps a quarter of a mile from the Asopus. At that range, soldiers and marines might fight them, but the river galleys themselves couldn't.

"Don't you want to be a hero?" Nicator made cut-and-thrust motions. "Charge the Thervings and chop them into steaks?"

"I'll fight as much as I have to," Grus answered. "But I'm a sailor first, not a soldier. If I don't have to, I won't mix it up that much myself." He pointed to Nicator. "I don't see you charging the Thervings, either."

"Me? I'm an old man," Nicator said, which was on the way to being true but hadn't gotten there yet. He was also good enough with a sword in his hands. Even so, he added, "I don't care about being a hero. That's your job, Skipper - you're the commodore."

"If the soldiers and marines beat the Thervings, I'm a hero, all right," Grus answered. "If they don't, I'm just another gods-cursed fool."

The Avornans formed their own line of battle. They advanced on King Dagipert's men. They outnumbered the Thervings, and their lines overlapped the foe to both left and right. The enemy soldiers spread themselves thinner to keep from getting outflanked. That did them little good; many of them found themselves attacked by two or more Avornans at the same time.

When their line unraveled, it came undone all at once. They stopped trying to hold back the Avornans, and ran for whatever shelter and safety they could find. They found very little. Howling like wolves, the men from the flotilla gave chase, cutting them down from behind. Few Thervings outran their pursuers or got to the shelter of the woods farther from the river.

"Blow
Recall!"
Grus told the trumpeter. "I don't want them running into a Therving ambush."

As the notes rang out, horns from the other ships of the flotilla echoing them, Grus hoped the Avornans would heed the call. If their blood was up, they might keep going, and run headlong into trouble. More than once, armies had thrown away victories doing that.

Not here, though. Grus made a fist and pounded it against his thigh in silent celebration as the Avornan sailors and marines started back toward the Asopus. "Well done!" he shouted to them when they got close enough for his voice to carry. "Now we go on up the river and hit them again."

The Avornans raised a cheer coming back. They hadn't had much to cheer about lately. They boarded boats and river galleys with more spirit than Grus had seen for a long time. He waved to the oarmaster, who bawled, "Back oars!" The
Crocodile
freed herself and started up the Asopus once more. Grus scanned the riverbank for Thervings.

Later that afternoon, he ordered the soldiers and marines ashore again. Again, they rushed at a startled band of Thervings who'd been tramping through the Avornan countryside without the slightest notion they might have to fight. Again, they punished the Thervings and then returned to Grus' flotilla.

"This is fun," Nicator said. "We can do it as often as we want."

"Yes, for a while we can," Grus agreed. "Sooner or later, though, they'll figure out what's going on."

That took longer than he'd expected. He sent the Avornans forth against King Dagipert's men twice more the next day, and won another couple of quick, easy victories. The morning after that, he spotted yet another band of Thervings out in the open close by the river, apparently going about their business without a care in the world.

"Shall we hit'em again. Skipper?" Nicator asked.

Grus shook his head. Nicator blinked in surprise. But Grus pointed to the trees on either side of the clearing where those Thervings displayed themselves. "What do you want to bet those woods are full of archers?" he said. "That's how Dagipert ruined Corvus. If it worked once, why wouldn't it work again?"

Nicator plucked at his beard as he thought that over. "You may have something there," he said at last. "We leave'em alone, then?"

"I intend to," Grus answered. "Maybe we waste a chance. But we're just here to harass the Thervings, anyhow. We can't conquer them, not with what we've got - and we can't afford to waste more men in an ambush, either. Better safe." Nicator thought some more, then nodded.

King Lanius looked out from one of the towers of the royal palace. "They really are pulling back this time," he remarked.

"Yes, Your Majesty, I do believe they are," Lepturus agreed. "And about time, too."

"They couldn't take the city," Lanius said with a certain amount of pride.

The guards commander nodded, but his eyes, as usual, were somber. "No, that's true - they couldn't," he said. "But they've taken just about everything else - taken it or wrecked it or burned it. The northwest is going to be a long time getting over this - and so will the army."

"That's Corvus' fault," Lanius said, "his and Corax's."

"And Grus'," Lepturus added.

"Yes, and Grus', I suppose." Lanius nodded. "If he hadn't quarreled with Corax - " He kicked at the gray stone under his sandals. "From everything I've seen and heard, Corax is pretty easy to quarrel with."

"Something to that," the head of the bodyguards said. "And Grus did hurt the Thervings once they'd besieged us."

"That's more than you can say Corvus did after he got back to the city of Avornis," Lanius remarked. "All he did was grumble and make stupid suggestions."

Lepturus spoke in meditative tones. "As long as he's here in the city of Avornis, it might not be the worst thing in the world if he stayed here awhile."

"Hmm," Lanius said. "You're right - it might not be. He's caused the kingdom a lot of trouble. Not much point to giving him the chance to make more, is there? See to it, Lepturus."

"I'll take care of it right now, Your Majesty." Lepturus vanished down into the palace. Lanius watched him go, nodding approval at his broad back. From what he'd seen in his not very many years, most people promised to do something, then forgot all about it as they went off to do what they wanted to do instead. Not Lepturus. When he said he'd take care of something, he took care of it.

Except, this time, he didn't. He sent a guardsman who found Lanius a couple of hours later, after the young king had come down from the tower and was working his way through some interesting - well, interesting to him - parchments he'd found in the archives. "Marshal Lepturus humbly begs your pardon, Your Majesty - " the bodyguard began.

That was plenty to get Lanius' nose out of the old tax documents. "What's gone wrong now?" he asked.

"We can't arrest Count Corvus, on account of he isn't in the city of Avornis anymore," the bodyguard said. "Seems he went south as soon as the Thervings went west and left him a way home. Lepturus says it'd mean civil war to try to seize him there. Is it worth it to you?"

"No," Lanius said. "Let him go." At the time, he thought the decision made good sense. Corvus hadn't actually moved against the Kingdom of Avornis. All he'd done - all! - was lose a battle he might not have fought, or might have won if he'd paid closer attention. That was bad, but it wasn't really treasonous.

So Lanius calculated then. Lepturus didn't try to change his mind. Later, they both had plenty of chances to wonder if they'd chosen rightly.

A few days afterward, Lanius rode out of the city of Avornis to look at the devastation the Thervings had caused and to promise people he and the royal government would do everything they could to make losses good. The promises made peasants look happier. Lanius knew too well they weren't intended to do anything else. The royal government paid the soldiers who protected peasants from invaders - or, sometimes, didn't protect them - but couldn't do much more than that.

"It'll be good when you come of age, Your Majesty," Lanius heard at least a dozen times. "High time we had a man's hand on things again."

Like Arch-Hallow Bucco's?
Lanius wanted to ask. The cleric had made a worse hash of things than Queen Certhia, by far. Lanius was impatient to come of age, too, but not because he thought his mother had done a particularly bad job of ruling Avornis.

When he returned to the capital, he mentioned to Certhia what he'd heard. His mother's mouth tightened. "Yes, I've heard the same," she said, no small bitterness in her voice. "And it's not from farmers who haven't bathed since spring before last, either. It's from people whose opinions carry weight and whose frowns are like a wasting sickness to my hopes. Corvus was a prop, but he knocked himself out from under me when he failed."

"What will you do now?" Lanius asked.

"Find another prop, I suppose," Queen Certhia answered. "But who?"