The Menteshe twisted, trying to keep his horse under control and fight back at the same time. He turned one more slash from Grus, but the next caught him in the side of the neck, above the boiled-leather shirt and below the iron-plated cap on his head. Blood spurted, improbably red. The Menteshe yammered in pain. Grus struck him again, this time across the face. The nomad’s saber slipped from his hands. He slid off his horse and tumbled to the ground.
King Grus had a moment to look around. A few of the Menteshe had managed to break out. Even as he watched, an arrow caught one of them in the back. More were still fighting, trying to get away. And even more were down. He rode forward to help slay the ones yet on their horses.
“Surrender!” he shouted when only four or five Menteshe were left alive. “Surrender and we’ll spare your lives.”
He didn’t really expect them to. More often than not, fights between Avornans and Menteshe were fights to the death. But these nomads surprised him. Deciding they would rather live, they took off their iron-faced caps and hung them on the points of their sabers in token of surrender. “You not make us into thralls?” one of them asked in bad Avornan.
“No, by the gods. We don’t do that,” Grus replied.
“So you say,” the Menteshe said. He spoke to his comrades in their own language. By their tone, they didn’t believe Grus, either.
With a sigh compounded of weariness and relief, he turned to his own men. “Take charge of them. And gather up the bows the horses haven’t stepped on. We’d be better off if our bowyers could make weapons like those.”
They hurried to obey. They also rounded up the horses whose riders had fallen, and put out of their misery the animals too badly hurt to live. Some of them slew Menteshe too badly hurt to live, too, and Grus watched one man quietly cut the throat of an Avornan who’d taken an arrow in the belly and then been trampled. No one said a word to the soldier. By what Grus saw of the hurt man’s injuries, the fellow with the dagger had done him a favor.
Hirundo was grinning when he rode up to Grus. “Well, Your Majesty, here’s one lump of quicksilver that won’t trouble us anymore. And we didn’t have to pay too high a price to get rid of it, either.”
“That depends,” Grus said.
“What do you mean?” Hirundo asked. “They made a nice little charge at us, yes, but we killed a lot more of them than they did of us.”
“Well, so we did,” Grus said. “When you’re talking about the fight just now, you’re right, and I can’t tell you any different. But how many farmers did those Menteshe kill? How many houses and barns and fields did they burn? How many cows and horses and sheep did they run off or slaughter? Avornis has been paying ever since they crossed the Stura. We got some of our own back now, but is it enough?”
Hirundo gave him a curious look. “You think about all sorts of things, don’t you, Your Majesty? If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was talking to Lanius.”
“He does think about all sorts of things, doesn’t he?” Grus smiled, but soon grew serious again. “Do you know something, General? The longer I sit on the throne, the more I think that’s not such a bad thing to do.”
King Lanius was thinking of throwing something at Iron. He was trying to paint a portrait of the moncat, and Iron didn’t feel like holding still. Had Lanius wanted Iron to run around, the miserable beast undoubtedly would have frozen in place. As things were, the king couldn’t persuade the moncat to assume anything even close to the attitude it had held the day before, when he’d started the picture.
Instead of throwing something, he snapped his fingers. The sound made Iron look his way for a moment, but only for a moment, before scrambling up toward the ceiling. Lanius, for once, didn’t much care. “Bribery!” he said, a sudden grin on his face. “What kind of a king am I if I don’t think of bribery?”
He left Iron’s chamber and hurried to the kitchens. A cook gave him several chunks of mutton and, after some rummaging, a length of twine. “It’s something to do with those miserable foreign creatures, isn’t it, Your Majesty?” the man said.
“Don’t be silly, Colinus,” Lanius answered, his voice grave. “I just want to have fun with my food before I eat it.” Since the mutton was raw. what he’d said was most unlikely. On the other hand, he’d sounded altogether serious. Leaving the cook scratching his head, Lanius went back to Iron’s room.
All of a sudden, the moncat was much friendlier than it had been a few minutes before. The road to its heart definitely ran through its stomach. Lanius tied one of the pieces of mutton to the end of the twine and hung it so that, to reach it, Iron had to stretch into something close to the posture he wanted.
Stretch Iron did. While the moncat stretched, Lanius sketched. Before long, Iron finished the chunk of mutton. The beast turned toward Lanius and meowed pitifully. It was, no doubt, self-pity for not having more mutton; Iron could smell the meat Lanius hadn’t yet given.
Lanius doled out the mutton one piece at a time. By the time Iron finished all of it, the king had finished his sketch. He could add color and shading at his leisure, and work on them whenever he wanted. He was doing just that in the bedchamber when Sosia looked over his shoulder. “That’s very good,” she said.
He would have been happier if she hadn’t sounded so surprised, but he didn’t show that. “Thanks,” he said shortly.
His wife leaned down for a closer look. Her hair tickled his cheek. “That’s very good,” she repeated. “You can practically see him moving.”
“Thank you,” Lanius said again, this time in warmer tones. “That’s what I was trying to show.”
“Well, you’ve done it,” Sosia said. “If anyone wants to know what a pouncing moncat is like, all he has to do is look at this picture.”
Now Lanius smiled. In fact, he almost purred. “Do you really think it’s good?” he asked. He didn’t hear praise very often. When he did, he wanted to make the most of it.
“I think it’s wonderful,” Sosia told him. “Anybody who’d never seen a moncat and wanted to would pay good money for a painting like that.”
“Do you really think so?” Lanius knew he was repeating himself again, but couldn’t help it.
“I’m sure of it,” Sosia said firmly. She gave him a kiss, which somehow seemed to make what she said much more persuasive.
It might have ended as nothing but the sort of friendly praise a good wife would give to a husband she loved. It might have, but it didn’t. Lanius suddenly snapped his fingers and exclaimed, “Allocations!”
“What?” Not surprisingly, Sosia had no idea what he was talking about.
“Allocations.” And there he went, repeating himself yet again. “Remember when Petrosus wouldn’t give us any more money, and we had to let people go? If I can sell paintings, who cares what Petrosus gives us? He may be trying to keep me poor, but that doesn’t mean I have to let him.”
When he said Petrosus was trying to keep him poor, he meant Grus was trying to keep him poor. He didn’t say that, to keep from wounding Sosia’s feelings. Petrosus wouldn’t have denied him, though, without specific orders from King Grus. Lanius was as sure of that as of his own name.
Sosia said, “Could you really sell pictures like that? Has a King of Avornis ever done such a thing?”