“Something to that, I shouldn’t wonder,” Grus agreed. He’d spent a lot of time in the south. Taken all in all, the Menteshe were the most dangerous foes Avornis had. That would have been true even without the Banished One’s patronage, for only the Stura held them away from the rich farmlands in the wide, friendly valleys of the Nine Rivers. With the Banished One urging them on, aiding them…
A line carrying too much ice parted just then. The Pike’s mast swayed alarmingly. If it went over, the river galley might turn turtle—and who could last long with the Stura so cold and fierce?
Sailors hauled on other lines to keep the mast upright. A couple of men went to the length of mountain fir and hung on to it, literally for their lives. Still others, with Grus shouting orders, seized the wildly blowing length of line that had snapped, spliced it to a replacement for what had carried away, and made it fast to a belaying pin once more.
Only then did the mast stop groaning in its socket. Only then did Grus let out a sigh of relief the savage wind promptly blew away. “Never a dull moment,” he said at last. “I wonder if we ought to take the mast down, but I don’t want to try it in this weather. Too easy for something to carry away—”
“Like that line did,” Nicator broke in.
“Like that line, yes.” Grus nodded. “And if it happened at just the wrong time, the way those things usually happen, we’d be worse off than if we left it up.”
Nicator nodded, too. “Makes sense to me.”
Turnix came bustling up to them. With his robes blowing like wash on a line, the wizard looked about to blow away himself, but he’d proved tolerably surefooted. “Have you ever had an arrow go past your head, close enough to feel the wind of it?” he asked.
Grus and Nicator both nodded this time. Grus said, “Wish I hadn’t, but I have. Why? What’s the point?”
“I think… something just went past the Pike the same way, Commodore,” Turnix answered. “It was there and gone before I could even think to ward it. But it missed.”
“You may be right,” Grus said slowly. “I think you are, but I couldn’t prove it.”
“I’m not sure I could prove it, either,” Turnix said. “I’ll tell you this, though—if it was real, the way I think it was, I’m awfully glad it missed.” His laugh was shaky. “I wish I could claim credit for turning it aside—you’d like me better if I did. But the shooter missed. I didn’t block it.”
Grus nodded yet again. He had a brief vision of the Banished One’s beautiful yet terrible face, eyes narrowed and nostrils flared with frustration. When the vision faded, he was even gladder it had been brief than that the spell, if spell it was, had missed the Pike. A man wasn’t meant to look into those eyes for long—not if he hoped to stay sane afterward.
“Well, Your Majesty, when you’re an old man with a long white beard, you can tell your grandchildren you came through this winter,” Lepturus said. “Their eyes will get all big, and they’ll go, ‘Tell us some more, Granddad Your Majesty.’ ”
However clever Lanius was, he couldn’t imagine himself old and bent and with a long white beard. At twelve, he eagerly imagined himself with any sort of beard at all; as yet, his cheeks were bare even of what people called peach fuzz. More impatient than ever to become a man, he remained a boy in the eyes of the world.
But the commander of his bodyguards was right in general, if not in particular. He’d never seen a winter like this one before, and he didn’t expect to see another like this one even if he did become a bent old man with a long white beard. “Some people say the rivers are frozen clean to the bottom,” he remarked.
“I don’t know about that,” Lepturus said. “And I don’t think they can know anything about that, either. Have they been down to the river bottoms to see for themselves?”
“I don’t suppose so,” Lanius admitted. He filed that one away, as he did with thoughts every now and then. It boiled down to three words— what’s the evidence? But not even an interesting idea could keep him from going on, “There’s an awful lot of snow and ice, though, even if it doesn’t go clear to the bottom.”
“That there is. I said so myself, as a matter of fact,” Lepturus answered. “And the ice is mighty thick. I won’t argue about that, either. I’d bet you could stampede a herd of elephants across the rivers, and they wouldn’t come close to cracking it.”
“I wish we had a herd of elephants in the city of Avornis,” Lanius said. “That would be fun to try, if they didn’t freeze.”
“Yes—if,” Lepturus said. “But everything that stays out in the cold freezes this winter. If the weather were only a little better, I’d worry about King Dagipert laying siege to us, what with the rivers and the marshes frozen hard as iron. But I don’t think even Dagipert can get the Therving army from the mountains to here without losing most of his men, maybe all of ’em, on the way.”
“Even Dagipert?” Lanius said. “Does that mean Dagipert’s a good king?”
“A strong one, anyhow, and a cursed fine general,” Lepturus said. “That makes him a lot more dangerous to Avornis, to us, than he would be otherwise.”
Lanius hadn’t thought being a good king and being a strong king might differ. Everyone said King Mergus, his father, had been a strong King of Avornis. He’d assumed that made Mergus a good king, too.
He started to ask Lepturus, then changed his mind. Instead, he found a different question. “Does the city have enough in the way of supplies?”
“For now, Your Majesty,” the officer answered. “If you hadn’t said we ought to start laying in more when you did, we might not’ve, but you did and we did and we do. I think we’ll be all right no matter how long this cold weather lasts.”
“Even if it goes right on into summer?” Lanius’ eyes widened.
“Well, no,” Lepturus said. “Not if it does that. But I don’t see how it could do that, do you? Not even the Banished One could make it do that… I don’t think.”
“I don’t think he can, either,” Lanius said. “He’s never done anything like that, not in all the years since Olor cast him out of the heavens.” He sighed. “I’ve never thought it was fair for the gods to get rid of the Banished One and to inflict him on us poor mortals.”
“You don’t want to talk to me about that,” Lepturus said. “You want to talk to Arch-Hallow Bucco.”
“No, I don’t. I never want to talk to Arch-Hallow Bucco.” Lanius made a nasty face. “If Megadyptes wanted the job back, Bucco wouldn’t be arch-hallow anymore. But Megadyptes would rather spend his time praying than riding herd on unruly priests, and so…” He sighed again.
“Can’t say as I blame him,” Lepturus remarked. “You could ask some other priest, then, Your Majesty. It doesn’t have to be Bucco.”
“I’ve tried that, as a matter of fact.” Lanius screwed up his face again. “Do you know what they say when I do?”
The guards commander thought, but not for long. Then he intoned, “ ‘It’s a mystery,’ ” exactly as a priest would have—exactly as a couple of priests had when Lanius asked the question.
“That’s it! That’s the answer!” Lanius said. “It’s the answer, but it doesn’t help.”
“One thing you find out as you get older, Your Majesty,” Lepturus said. “Getting answers is easy. Getting answers that help is a whole different business.”
Winter went on and on. The Banished One might not have been able to make it stretch into summer, but he seemed to be doing his best. Blizzards kept roaring through the city of Avornis all the way through what should have been the beginning of spring. Right about what should have been the beginning of spring, Karajuk returned to the city.