“Believe what you please,” King Dagipert growled. “I’m telling you that you Avornans robbed me of what should have been mine.” He drew himself up with touchy, affronted pride.
“You worship the same gods we do,” Grus answered. “People say you give Olor and Quelea and the rest great respect, but you don’t act like it. A godsless man, a man who’d sooner follow the Banished One, is the sort who kills and plunders innocents.”
“Don’t you say I have anything to do with the Banished One,” Dagipert said hotly. “That’s a foul lie!”
No one in Avornis had ever been sure. But aloud Grus replied, “I didn’t say you did. I said you acted like a man who would sooner follow the Banished One.”
“I’m no oath breaker,” Dagipert snarled. “You Avornans are the ones who lie through your teeth.”
“When have I ever lied to you?” Grus asked. “I had nothing to do with whatever Arch-Hallow Bucco did or didn’t say. I’m not bound by it. No Avornan except Bucco ever thought we were bound by it.”
“By King Olor’s beard, I thought you were bound by it,” Dagipert said.
I’ll bet you did, because it suited you so well. Grus went on with what he’d planned to say before Dagipert sidetracked him with talk of Bucco. “If you do honor the gods—and I think you do—stop unjustly plundering and killing the innocent. Make peace with us; we follow the same gods you do. Why should you stain your hands with the blood of those who believe as you do? You’re a mortal, like any other man. When you die, the gods will judge you.”
“They’ll judge you, too,” Dagipert said.
“I know.” Grus tried not to worry about what would happen after he died. With King Dagipert’s white hairs, the Therving had to think about what would come next. Grus went on, “Today you live; tomorrow you’re dust. One fever will quench any man’s pride. What will you say about all your murders in Avornis when you come before the gods?”
“I’ll say they had it coming.” The King of Thervingia was a tough customer. But he couldn’t keep a small wobble from his voice.
“How will you face those terrible and just judges?” Grus continued. “Will you tell them you did it for wealth? Haven’t you stolen enough to satisfy you? Isn’t it about time to welcome peace? Live a bloodless and untroubled life from now on, so neither side slaughters fellow believers anymore. What could be worse than that?”
Dagipert glared at him across the gap between the two incomplete spans. “Oh, you’re a serpent, you are, and you slay with your tongue,” the Therving said.
Grus shrugged. “You were the one who wanted this talk. Can you listen, too?”
“How can I do anything else, the way you blather on?” Dagipert said. “I ought to start the war up again.”
“Go ahead,” Grus answered. “You haven’t had everything your own way these past few years. You won’t this time, either.”
“Another lie,” Dagipert jeered.
“You know better,” Grus told him. “Besides, how much harm are you doing to Thervingia with these endless campaigns of yours? You can see what you do to us, but what about to your own people? How many men don’t come home? How many smiths and potters and carpenters don’t ply their trades? How many crippled men do you try to care for?”
“As though you care for what happens to Thervingia,” King Dagipert said.
“I care about Avornis,” Grus replied. “I expect you care about Thervingia the same way. Can’t you see you’re not going to win this war? What point to fighting over and over again across the same stretch of ground?”
Dagipert’s face twisted. “What point? To make sure you gods-cursed Avornans don’t think you can take my kingdom and me lightly, that’s what.”
“You’ve made that point,” Grus said. And yet, in another sense, Dagipert hadn’t, couldn’t, and never would. Avornis was an old, old land—a land with a long, proud past. Other tribes had crossed over the Bantian Mountains from the plains to the west and set up their kingdoms on her borders before the Thervings. After Thervingia fell in ruins, others likely would again. And Avornis? Avornis would endure. When Grus had spoken to Dagipert of passing to dust, he hadn’t just meant the King of Thervingia. He’d meant his kingdom, too, and Dagipert knew it.
“You sneery, scoffing, scornful, snooty… Avornan,” King Dagipert said bitterly. He turned on his heel and walked back toward the west bank of the Tuola. His guards fell in behind him, protecting him with their bodies as well as their shields.
Grus also withdrew. His men started knocking down his segment of bridge. The Thervings did the same. Grus wondered if the talks had accomplished anything or simply infuriated Dagipert even more. He sent his army on the way southeast, to a place where he could cross the Tuola with protections from archers aboard Avoman river galleys.
Before he reached the crossing place, though, word came that the Thervings were moving back, away from the river. Soon it became clear they were going back to Thervingia.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Two messengers came into the city of Avornis only hours apart. The first was from the plains of the south—an announcement that a baron named Pandion had rebelled against King Grus and announced that he was King Lanius’ rightful protector. “How can he say that?” Lanius asked the messenger, a cavalry captain who’d stayed loyal to Grus. “I’ve never met him. I wouldn’t take oath I’ve ever even heard of him.”
“How much sleep do you suppose he’ll lose about that, Your Majesty?” the captain replied. “With King Grus busy against the Thervings, Pandion figures he’ll make hay while the sun shines—get as strong as he can before Grus is able to do much about it. That’s how it looks to me, anyhow.”
It looked that way to Lanius, too. He praised the officer and dismissed him. He couldn’t do anything about Pandion’s revolt. Not a soldier outside the royal bodyguard would obey his orders. The uprising was Grus’ worry, not his.
The second messenger announced that the Thervings were withdrawing from Avornan soil and Grus was on his way back to the city of Avornis.
Lanius laughed till he cried. “I don’t think it’s that funny,” Sosia said.
“No?” Lanius answered. “I do, by the gods. Baron Pandion may have started the worst-timed rebellion in all the history of Avornis.”
His wife thought about that. Then she smiled, too. “Oh,” she said. “I see.” A bird flew by their bedroom window. Sosia went on, “You ought to send the man who brought word from the south to my father. He should know what’s happened there as soon as he can.”
Now it was Lanius’ turn to think. He didn’t need long before he nodded. “You’re right. I wouldn’t want your father thinking I tried to conceal anything like that from him.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Sosia said. “He trusts you more than you think.”
Was that praise or faint praise? Lanius wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out, either. He said, “I’ll attend to it.” And he did.
King Grus came back to the city of Avornis a few days later. He met Lanius outside the palace and said, “So this Pandion bastard thinks he can play games with me, does he? I’m going to teach him he hasn’t even started to figure out the rules.”
“Speaking of games and rules, how did you make Dagipert withdraw so very quickly?” Lanius asked.
“That’s the funny thing, Your Majesty—I didn’t,” Grus answered. “He did it himself.” He explained how he and the King of Thervingia had met in the middle of the Tuola, and how Dagipert had pulled back from Avornan soil not long afterward.