After half an hour or so, their spirit began to fail. Grus was surprised they’d held out even that long, being both outnumbered and outfought—not in terms of courage, but in terms of strategy. A few at a time, Pandion’s men started slipping out of the line of battle and trying to get away. Some of them made it. Grus’ riders cut down more from behind.
And then, all at once, the whole rebel line gave way. Pandion’s soldiers scattered, throwing away weapons and helmets to flee the faster. The castle opened its gates. Many of the fugitives made for that shelter, but Grus’ men came hard on their heels. Grus wondered if enough of his men would get in along with Pandion’s to let them seize the fortress from the inside. He vastly preferred that to besieging it.
But he hadn’t even ridden up to inspect the castle at close range before a shout rose from his horsemen. “Pandion!” they cried. For a moment, he feared some few of them, or maybe more than some few, had gone over to the baron. Then he realized they’d captured Pandion.
The fortress kept Grus’ soldiers out by slamming the gates shut on many of the rebels. The men who couldn’t get in threw down swords and spears—those who hadn’t already—threw their hands up, and surrendered in droves.
Grus waited till Pandion was hauled before him. The baron was blockily built, with a fuzzy gray beard. Several different kinds of fear warred on his face as he stared at Grus. “You wizard!” he burst out. “How did you get here so fast, with so godscursed many men? You’re supposed to be fighting the Thervings!”
“Life is full of surprises, isn’t it?” Grus plucked at his own beard. “Now, what am I going to do with you?”
“Take my head—what else?” Pandion owned a certain bleak courage, or perhaps just knew he had nothing to lose.
“Maybe not,” Grus said. Watching hope fight not to come back to the baron’s face was like watching a youth trying not to look at a girl with whom he was desperately, hopelessly, in love. The king went on, “If you order your stronghold to open its gates and yield to me, I’ll send you to the Maze instead. You can keep Corvus company. Of course, if they don’t listen to you in there… Well, that would be too bad. For you.”
“I’ll persuade them,” Pandion said quickly.
He did, too. Grus had expected that he could. His men wouldn’t have followed him into rebellion if they weren’t in the habit of obeying him. The sun was still an hour above the western horizon when Grus’ men marched into the fortress. They disarmed the soldiers who’d fought for the baron and sent them back to their farms. The peasants were almost wild with relief; they’d been sure they would be massacred if they lost.
“That’s how kings does things,” one of them said in Grus’ hearing. But this wasn’t Grus’ first round of civil war. He’d seen how Avornis was wounded no matter which side won the fighting. Being as moderate as he could helped.
“Will you let me bring my wives along?” Pandion asked after the castle yielded.
“They can go to the Maze with you, if they want,” Grus answered. “They’ll go to convents, as you’re off to be a cleric. Or they can stay in the world and find new husbands. I won’t tell them what to do.”
Neither of Pandion’s wives seemed the least interested in abandoning the world for his sake. That left the baron affronted and gloomy. He got even gloomier when Grus ordered his two eldest sons—youths not far from Ortalis and Lanius’ age—into the Maze with him. So did the youngsters. Grus was unyielding.
“You all have another choice, if you really want one,” he told Pandion and his sons.
“What’s that?” the baron asked. Grus folded his arms across his chest and waited. Pandion didn’t need long to figure out why. “Uh, Your Majesty?” he added.
“Your heads can go up over the gate of your castle here,” Grus said. “That’s as much of a choice as you get. This is not a friendly chat we’re having here, remember. You tried to rise up against me. You lost. Now you’re going to pay the price.” He gestured to the soldiers who had charge of the baron and his sons. “Take them away. I think they’ve made up their minds.”
Pandion didn’t tell him he was wrong.
Nicator said, “Well, Your Majesty, that was a very pretty little campaign. Very pretty indeed, matter of fact.”
Grus surveyed the field. Ravens and crows hopped from one corpse to the next, pecking at eyes and tongues and other such dainties. Vultures spiraled down out of the sky to join them at the bounteous feast people had laid out. The wounded from both sides has been gathered up, but they still moaned or sometimes screamed as surgeons and wizards tried to repair what edged and pointed metal had done to them. The odors of blood and dung hung in the air.
“Yes, very pretty,” Grus said tonelessly, “and may we never see an ugly one.”
Sosia said, “I’m going to have another baby.”
“I thought so,” Lanius answered. “Your courses didn’t come, and you’ve been sleepy all the time lately…” He chuckled. “I know the signs now.”
“You’d better,” his wife said. “If you’d forgotten, I’d be angry.”
He gave her a kiss. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“No, I know you wouldn’t,” Sosia agreed. “I could say this, that, or the other thing about you, but you don’t forget much. Once you notice something, it’s yours forevermore. Getting you to notice… Sometimes that’s a different story.”
“What do you mean?” Lanius asked, more than a little indignantly. He didn’t like to think of himself as missing anything.
“Never mind,” Sosia said, which was not at all what he wanted to hear.
Quarreling with his wife over a trifle would have been foolish, though, especially when she’d given him news like that. He kissed her again. In a pear tree outside the bedroom window, a cuckoo called. The day was breathlessly hot, with not a breeze stirring. The bird called again, then fell silent, as though even song were too much effort.
After a few more minutes, the cuckoo did call once more. Lanius laughed as a new thought crossed his mind. “I wonder what the moncats are doing right now,” he said.
Sosia laughed, too. “Why do you wonder? They’re trying to get the bird. If one of them can find a way out through a window, he’ll do it, too.”
“I know,” Lanius said. “We’ve made sure the bars are too narrow to let them get out, but the moncats keep working away anyhow.”
“They’re stubborner than ordinary cats,” Sosia said.
“I don’t know whether they’re stubborner or just wilder,” Lanius said. “They do keep working at it, as you say.” He put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “And so do we.”
“Yes, we do.” She smiled. “I wonder if we don’t get along better than my father ever thought we would.”
“That had occurred to me, too,” Lanius said slowly. “I didn’t want to say anything, for fear of making you angry—and maybe making him angry, too—but it had crossed my mind. I won’t try to tell you any differently.”
“It doesn’t really matter, you know,” Sosia said.
“Oh, yes. Whether you’re on your father’s side or mine, what King Grus wants is what Avornis is going to get. I know that. I’d better know it. He’s rubbed my nose in it often enough.”
He bred moncats and helped the mothers raise the kittens. He went into the archives almost every day, soaking up more lore from the ancient days of Avornis. Without false modesty, he knew he’d learned as much about the past of the city and the kingdom as any man living.