The Bastard King (4 page)

But even if the Banished One couldn't hold the Scepter in his fist, he kept the kings of Avornis from using it for the good of the kingdom. Mergus thought his distant predecessors had taken its power for granted. People often did, when they'd had something marvelous for a long time.

I wouldn't. If the Scepter of Mercy came to me, I'd do right by it.
He laughed a sad and bitter laugh. Surely every king of Avornis for the past four centuries had had that same thought. And how much good had it done any of them? Exactly none, as Mergus knew all too well.

"Fire beaqon!" Turnix called. The wizard pointed to a hilltop north of the Stura atop which, sure enough, a big bonfire had flared into life.

"I see it," Grus answered. "The Menteshe are loose, gods curse them."

Nicator also peered toward the north. "Now - let's see exactly whereabouts and how bad it is."

Three more, smaller, signal fires sprang to life to the west of the first one. "That way - a medium-sized raid," Grus said. Five would have meant a major invasion - a war. Grus pointed west. "We'll see what the next beacon tells us." He set a hand on Nicator's shoulder. "Pass out weapons to the rowers. Who knows what sort of fighting we'll be doing?"

"Right you are, Skipper," Nicator answered, and saw to it.

Propelled by sails and oars, the
Tigerfish
sped down the river toward the trouble. The next flaring fire beacon still urged it toward the west. "We're on the way to Anxa," Grus murmured, disquieted.

"And so?" his lieutenant said. Then, perhaps a moment slower than he should have, he caught on. "Oh. That thrall we handed over to the wizards there. Don't you think they should have figured out whether he was dangerous or not?"

"Yes, I think they should have," Grus told him. "Trouble is, I don't know whether they
did."

"Well, even if they didn't, how much trouble could one thrall cause?" Nicator asked.

"I don't know that, either. I hope nobody's finding out."

He watched anxiously for the smoke rising from the next beacon, which stood on a hill north of the riverside town. The smoke didn't always predict what the fires themselves would say, but he'd gotten good at gauging it. Even before he saw the flames showing that trouble lay due north hereabouts, the way the smoke rose made him think they would tell him that. He also spied smoke rising from places that did not hold fire beacons. The Menteshe burned for the sport of it.

Just before he came in to the town of Anxa (which, thanks to its wall, remained in Avornan hands), a young officer on horseback waved to him from the northern bank of the Stura. The sun glinted off the fellow's chain-mail shirt and conical helm. "Ahoy, the river galley!" he shouted.

Grus waved back to show he'd heard. "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?" he yelled back - the plumes of the officer's crest were dyed blue.

"We'll be driving the wild men back this way before long," the young officer answered. "Driving'em out of Avornis is one thing. Making sure they don't do this again ... that's something else, something a lot better."

"I like the way he thinks," Nicator said in a voice too low for the lieutenant to hear.

"So do I." Grus nodded, then cupped his hands to his mouth once more to shout over to the riverbank. "We'll do our best, Lieutenant. What's your name?"

"Hirundo. Who're you?"

"I'm Grus," Grus answered, adding, "Now we both know where to lay the blame if things go wrong."

Hirundo laughed. "Here's hoping we don't have to," he said. "Stay there, if you can. I'll do my best to push the Menteshe your way." Before Grus could reply, Hirundo wheeled his horse and rode away from the river, up toward the fighting.

"Think he can do it?" Nicator asked.

"You never can tell. A million things might go wrong," Grus said. "He might get an arrow in his face half an hour from now. But if he doesn't, I think he's got a pretty fair chance."

Nicator nodded. "I was thinking the same thing. Hirundo, eh? He's still wet behind the ears, but that might be a name worth remembering."

"Let's see how he does. That'll tell us more," Grus said. His lieutenant nodded again.

Before they found out what to make of the lieutenant, two more river galleys came rowing up the Stura toward the
Tigerfish.
Since Grus was on the scene first, they followed his lead. He spaced them out along the river to wait for the Menteshe, too. "How long are we going to wait?" one of their captains called.

"As long as we have to," Grus answered, which probably didn't make the other officer very happy. He had no better answer to give the fellow, though, for Hirundo had given him none.

They ended up dealing with their first Menteshe before Hirundo could have done anything at all about them. This little band of nomads had had enough looting and raping and killing in Avornis to satisfy them. They were ready to cross back over the Stura into their own country. They expected no trouble. Why should they have expected any? They'd had none coming into Avornis.

Grus saw them before they spotted the river galleys. He ordered the
Tigerfish
to pull back, in fact, so they'd be less likely to spot her. To his relief, the other captains did the same. The Menteshe and their horses boarded the rafts the nomads had hidden among riverside rushes and reeds and started paddling across the Stura.

"Forward!" Grus shouted when those rafts were well out into the stream. Forward the
Tigerfish
went, and the other galleys, too. How the Menteshe howled! They'd had it all their own way on land. They'd done just as they pleased. No more.

The
Tigerfish's
ram smashed up three rafts in quick succession. Menteshe and horses splashed into the water. Avornan sailors plied the nomads with arrows. The rest of the river galleys treated the other rafts just as rudely. Grus didn't think any Menteshe in that band made it to the far side of the river.

But the real herding of the nomads began the next afternoon. Avornan soldiers began pushing them back toward the Stura. By then, too, more than three galleys had arrived to dispute their passage. Now, with plenty of sailors on hand, Grus and his fellow captains handled things differently. The Menteshe couldn't get past their ships, which cruised close to the shore so their archers could hit the nomads on land. The Menteshe couldn't gallop out of range, either, for Avornan cavalry kept pushing more of them toward the riverbank.

Maybe they called on the Banished One to come to their aid. If they did, he failed to hearken to them. Caught between the hammer of the Avornan cavalry and the anvil of the river galleys, they were crushed. Not many got away.

When the fighting ebbed, Hirundo rode down to the river-bank and waved to Grus. "Good job!" he called.

"Same to you," Grus replied. "They didn't buy anything cheap on this raid."

"No, indeed." Hirundo sketched a salute. "I'd work with you again anytime, Captain."

Grus returned that salute. "And I with you, Lieutenant - and I'm afraid the Menteshe will give us the chance, too." He realized he hadn't had the chance to find out whether the escaped thrall he'd brought to Anxa had had anything to do with this raid.
Well, it's not that you weren't busy,
he told himself.
And even if he did, we hurt the Menteshe more than they hurt us.

This time.

Lanius' first memory was of humiliation. He couldn't have been more than three years old. He and his mother and father, all splendidly robed, left the palace in a gilded carriage to go to the great cathedral.

He hadn't been out of the palace very often. Riding in the carriage was a treat. He squealed with glee as the wheels bounced over cobblestones. "Whee!" he shouted. "Fun!"

He sat between his mother and father. They smiled at each other above his head. "I wish I thought this was fun," his father said.

"Why don't you, Papa?" Lanius asked in surprise. He couldn't imagine anything more delightful. Another jounce made him whoop again.

"My back," his father said.

His mother's smile faded. "It's the cobbles," she said quickly. "Shall I tell the driver to slow down?"

"No, don't bother," his father answered. He coughed wetly. "It's not the road. It's ... my back. I'm not a young man anymore."

His father had a white beard. Lanius had never thought anything about it. He didn't now, either. His father was simply his father, as much a fixture of the world as his favorite blanket or the sunshine that came through his window in the morning.

The carriage stopped. A soldier opened the door. His mother got down. "Come on, Lanius," she said. He slithered across the velvet. She caught him, swung him up in the air, and set him down on the bumpy stones of the street.

"Do it again, Mama!"

"Maybe later. We have to go to the cathedral first." His mother peered into the carriage, from which his father hadn't yet emerged. "Are you all right, dear?"

"I'm coming." His father sounded angry. Lanius knew the tone, and shrank from it. But his mother hadn't done anything to make King Mergus angry. Lanius didn't think he had, either. What did that leave? Could his father be angry at himself? Grunting a little, the king finally descended.

"Are you all right?" Lanius' mother asked again.

"I'll do," his father said testily. "It's just... my back. And my gods-cursed cough. Come on. Let's find out what Arch-Hallow Bucco does this time."

Lanius' mother steered him forward, her hand on his shoulder. He took a couple of steps. Then, all at once, the grandiose immensity of the cathedral ahead filled his sight, and he stopped and stared and stared and stared. Every single line leaped to the sky - pointed windows; tall, narrow arches; buttresses that seemed to fly; and spires, the highest of all crowned by a silver statue of Olor.

His mother let him gape for a moment or two, then urged him on again. That was when he noticed the man in the red silk robe standing in the gateway, backed by several others in robes of the same cut but of saffron yellow silk. The man in red carried a staff topped by a little silver statue just like the big one on the highest spire. Lanius liked that.

The man held the staff in front of him, across his body, now. "You may not pass, Your Majesty," he said - everybody but Lanius and his mother called his father that. "You know you may not pass. We have done this before. Neither you, nor your concubine, nor your bastard."

"Have a care, Bucco," Lanius' father growled. He was angry now; Lanius was sure of it. "If you insult my wife and my heir, I'll make you sorry for it."

"You have gone against the gods themselves," the arch-hallow said. "Where Olor contents himself with six, you have taken a seventh. It is sin. It is wickedness. It shall not stand. I have told you this each year when you brought the boy and the woman here." Behind him, the men in the yellow robes solemnly nodded.

"One of your priests thought different," King Mergus said. "He knew what would happen to Avornis without a proper successor to the throne. You'd know it, too, if you'd think a little." He coughed once more, and turned as red as Arch-Hallow Bucco's robe.

"No." Bucco sounded very certain. "Where you break a rule for the sake of convenience, there the Banished One shows his face." The priests in saffron silk nodded again, all in unison.

"They're funny, Father!" Lanius exclaimed.

"They're fools, Son," his father answered. "But, whether they're fools or not, this time we
are
going to worship here." He started forward, pushing Lanius and his mother along with him.

Clang!
Iron gates slammed shut, pushed to by more priests, these in blue robes.
Thud!
A bar slammed into place to make sure they stayed shut. From behind them, Bucco called, "You may not enter. The cathedral is closed to you. Begone, in the name of the gods!"

"Begone!" the other priests chorused, which made Lanius laugh.

His mother was not laughing. "They dare," she said.

"Fools dare all sorts of things," his father said grimly. He wasn't red anymore. He was white - with fury, or with pain? "It's what makes them fools."

Chain mail clanking, one of his guardsmen strode up to the king. "Your Majesty, we'd need about two companies' worth of men to storm the gates," he said. "Half an hour's work, no more."

King Mergus shook his head. "No. We'll go back to the palace. Let Arch-Hallow Bucco think he's won - for now. This time, though, he will pay."

Lanius started to cry when his father steered him back toward the carriage. "I want to go in there!" He pointed to the cathedral. "It's pretty in there!"

"They won't let us go in there," his mother told him. That made him cry harder than ever. He was used to getting what he wanted.

"Be quiet, Son," his father said, and his tone was such that Lanius
was
quiet. The king went on, "Bucco has had his day. He's truly a fool if he thinks I won't have mine." Lanius didn't understand that. He didn't understand anything except that they had to go back to the palace. It didn't seem fair at all.

Three days later, a palace servant bowed low to King Mergus. "Someone here to see you, Your Majesty."

"Ah?" Mergus' shaggy eyebrows rose. "Someone I'm expecting?" The servant nodded. Mergus' grin showed teeth yellow but still sharp. "Well, send him in, send him in."

In came Arch-Hallow Bucco, escorted - none too politely - by several palace guards. He did not wear his red silk robes now, only an ordinary shirt and pair of breeches. He looked more like a retired schoolmaster, say, than a man who dared thunder at kings. He also looked frightened, which was nothing less than Mergus had expected.

"Will you speak to me of bastards now, Bucco?" the king demanded.

One of the guards prodded the arch-hallow. Before speaking at all, Bucco bowed very low. "What - what is the meaning of this, Your Majesty?" he quavered.

"I am going to explain something to you, something that has to do with which of us is stronger in the kingdom," Mergus answered. "When you shut the gates in my face, you thought you were. I am here to tell you, you are wrong."

Arch-Hallow Bucco gathered himself, looking sternly at Mergus. "I did what I did because I had to do it, Your Majesty, not from hatred of you. I have told you that before, when you tried to flaunt your sin. If I did otherwise, I would not be worthy of the rank I hold."