“I hope Anxa hasn’t fallen,” he said.
“It better not have!” Nicator said.
“I know,” Gras answered. “But there’s a lot of smoke down in the south. That means a lot of Menteshe running around loose.”
How right he was, he and his companion found out a couple of hours later. They’d just passed a burnt-out farm when a couple of horsemen came up the road toward them. Those weren’t Avornans in mail shirts—they were Menteshe, tough little men on tough little ponies. Seeing Gras and Nicator, they yanked sabers from scabbards and spurred their ponies forward.
Gras wished he were wearing chain mail. He had a helmet on his head, but no other armor. His own sword came out. So did Nicator’s. He booted his horse toward the enemy. With horses as with river galleys, you didn’t want to be standing still while the other fellow charged.
“King, uh, Lanius!” Grus shouted—a feeble war cry if ever there was one. What would the king have done if he’d been there? He was a little boy. He would have gotten killed, and in short order, too.
One of the nomads chose Grus; the other, Nicator. How do I keep from getting killed in short order? he wondered. He wasn’t so bad on horseback as Nicator had said, but he wasn’t good, either. This wasn’t his chosen way to fight. By the way his foe rode, the nomad might have been born in the saddle. Up came his saber.
Iron belled on iron as Grus parried the Menteshe’s cut. Sparks flew. The nomad cut again, backhand this time. Again, Grus parried. He tried a cut of his own. The Menteshe beat it aside and slashed at his horse. Grus kept the foeman’s blade away from the beast. He couldn’t stop the next cut, not altogether, but he deflected it enough to make it slide off his helmet instead of laying his face open.
The longer he fought, the more the lessons his father and a couple of implacable swordmasters had given him came back. The Menteshe howled a curse at him. The nomad must have expected sport, not work.
A moment later, the Menteshe howled again, in pain. Blood ran down his leather sleeve—a cut of Grus’ had gotten home. The nomad wheeled his pony and booted the animal up into a gallop toward the south.
Instead of going after him, Grus turned to see how Nicator was doing. The other river-galley captain traded sword strokes with his enemy. Neither seemed to have much of an edge. Nicator bled from a cut on his cheek. The very tip of the Menteshe’s left little finger also poured blood. That had to hurt, but it would do the nomad no great harm.
Grus rode up to the fight. The nomad was so hotly engaged with Nicator, he didn’t realize he had a new foe till too late. Grus’ sword slammed into the side of his neck. Blood sprayed, then rivered out of him. He gave a gurgling cry of pain. His sword flew from his hand. He tried to ride south, as his comrade had. But he stayed in the saddle only a furlong or so. After he slid to the ground, his horse slowed to a walk.
“Thank you kindly, Skipper,” Nicator said, dabbing at his cut with a scrap of rag. “That was a pretty bit of work.”
“Only goes to show I’m good for something on land,” Grus answered. “I wouldn’t have bet on it, if you want to know the truth.”
“Let’s round up that pony. We can sell it,” Nicator said. “And who knows what that Menteshe bastard’s got on him?”
“All right,” Grus said. “We’re just lucky we didn’t run into archers. They would have filled us full of holes, and we couldn’t have done much about it.”
“That’s what the nomads say when we catch their rafts on the water in our galleys.” Nicator grinned fiercely. “Here’s hoping they say it plenty.”
The Menteshe’s sword would bring something, too. Grus got off his horse to pick it up and stow it in a saddlebag. Then he mounted once more and went after his friend. When Nicator dismounted, he squatted beside the dead Menteshe. He cut the nomad’s pouch from his belt. Hefting it, he whistled. “Nice and heavy.” He opened it and looked inside. “Silver, with a little gold.”
“Make two piles,” Grus told him. “If there’s an odd coin, you take it. I’ve got his saber.”
“Sounds fair,” Nicator agreed, and did it. “Only thing I feel bad about is knowing he probably stole it from Avornans.”
“He paid a bigger price than money,” Grus answered. “What’s that he’s got around his neck?”
“One of their amulets, I expect, on a cord.” Nicator drew it out and scowled. “A nasty one.”
Grus nodded. “I’ll say it is.” The main ingredient of the amulet was the skull of some small animal with sharp teeth—a weasel, perhaps. What bothered him most was that the eye sockets, though empty, kept giving him the feeling they were looking at him. “Take it off the bastard. Let’s get rid of it.”
“Right.” Nicator cut the rawhide loop that held the amulet in place. When he reached for the skull, he jerked back his hand with a startled curse. “Shit! It bit me!” Sure enough, blood dripped from his thumb.
“I’ll take care of it.” Grus used his sword to flick the amulet away from the dead Menteshe. Its teeth clicked on the blade, too, but uselessly. He stomped on it, hard. It shattered under his boot heel. Even then, he felt a tingling jolt of power. The hair on his legs and arms and at the back of his neck stood up for a moment. Then the sensation ebbed. “There. That’s done it.”
Nicator bandaged his thumb. “Hurrah,” he said sourly.
“Come on. Let’s get down to the river,” Grus said. “As long as we meet them on land, we’re playing their game. But once their miserable little boats start trying to sneak back over the Stura, they’re playing ours.” His smile showed teeth almost as sharp as the amulet’s as he went on, “And their river galleys aren’t worth much. They can make thralls row, but they’re even worse on the water than people like us are on land.”
“Right,” Nicator said again. He held up his hand. The bandage was turning red. “I want to have a wizard look at this anyway. It’s liable to fester.”
“Don’t worry about it, Your Majesty,” Arch-Hallow Bucco said, reaching out to pat Lanius on the head. “The other regents and I have everything well in hand.”
The King of Avornis was only nine, but Bucco couldn’t have taken a worse tack with him if he’d tried for a year. “Really?” Lanius said. “Then why are the Menteshe tormenting the south while the Thervings arm for war? Do you not think you made some bad choices there?”
Bucco stared at him. Lanius had said such things before, but they never failed to surprise the grown-up on the receiving end. “Your Majesty, you are, ah, misinformed,” the arch-hallow said slowly.
That was also a mistake. Lanius knew what he knew. And, as he had since he was a baby, he cherished facts. He could rely on them, unlike people, not to desert him. “Oh? How?” he said now. “Do you mean the Menteshe didn’t raid us? Or do you mean the Thervings aren’t arming for war? What exactly do you mean?”
“Isn’t it… time for your lessons?” Bucco asked. He ran a finger around the neck opening of the silk shirt he wore under his red robe. It hadn’t grown too tight, but it felt as though it had.
“Yes. I will go to them,” Lanius answered. “Don’t you have some lessons you could go to, so you could do a better job of running this kingdom?”
Arch-Hallow Bucco muttered to himself as he went away. Lanius didn’t understand why. He’d told the man the truth. He had no trouble seeing it. Why was it so hard for the arch-hallow?
His lessons should have been boring. Grammar and arithmetic and history horrified students in Avornis no less than anywhere else. Like any other tutor, Lanius’ carried a switch to make sure the lessons took hold. But he hadn’t had to use it for a long time. Lanius loved lessons—loved them enough to alarm the man who taught him, though the tutor never let on.