The soldiers nodded. By their confidence, they expected the same thing. The man who’d first spoken with the king grinned and said, “There’s one thing more. We know Otus wants to be alone with Calypte, not if she wants to be alone with him.”
“True enough. We don’t,” Lanius said. “But I’ll tell you this much— I think Otus has earned the chance to find out. Don’t you?” The guardsmen looked at one another as they considered. Then, in better unison than they’d shown a moment earlier, they nodded once more.
King Grus had overthrown Prince Vasilko and reverence for the Banished One in Nishevatz. He’d persuaded Prince Lazutin in Hisardzik that backing the Banished One and joining in attacks against Avornis wasn’t the smartest thing Lazutin could have done—persuaded him expensively, a way a man who was a merchant when he couldn’t get away with piracy would remember. Now Grus led the Avornan army east toward Jobuka, which had also joined in raids along the Avornan coast. He wanted all the Chernagors to learn they could not hairy their southern neighbor with impunity.
As the army moved east, Grus kept a wary eye on the weather and on the crops ripening in the fields. When the harvest was done, the army wouldn’t be able to live off the land anymore and he would have to go home, and he wanted to remind not only Jobuka but also Hrvace, which lay farther east still, of his existence.
Ravno, which ruled the land between Hisardzik and Jobuka, was unfriendly to both of them, and had not sent ships to join the raiders who’d ravaged the eastern coast of Avornis. Grus ordered his men not to plunder the countryside as they traveled through Ravno’s territory. In gratitude, Prince Osen, who ruled the city-state, sent supply wagons to the Avornan army. Along with the wagons still coming up from Avornis itself, they kept Grus’ men well supplied with grain.
“I know what we ought to do,” Hirundo said as the army encamped one evening. The setting sun streaked his gilded helmet and mailshirt with blood. “We ought to set up as bakers.”
“As bakers?” Grus echoed, eyeing the grizzled streaks in the general’s beard. They’d both been young officers when they first met, Hirundo the younger. Hirundo was still younger than Grus, of course, but neither of them was a young man anymore. Where did all the years go? Grus wondered. Wherever they were, he wouldn’t get them back.
Hirundo, meanwhile, bubbled with enthusiasm. “Yes, bakers, by Olor’s beard. We’ve got all this wheat. We can bake bread and sell it cheaper than anybody in the Chernagor city-states. We’ll outdicker all the merchants, leave ’em gnashing their teeth, and go home rich.” He beamed at Grus.
Grus smiled back. You couldn’t help smiling when Hirundo beamed. “Do you know what?” Grus said. Still beaming, Hirundo shook his head. “You’re out of your mind,” Grus told him.
With a bow, the general said, “Why, thank you very much, Your Majesty.” Grus threw his hands in the air. Some days, you were going to lose if you argued with Hirundo.
Jobuka wasn’t as strongly situated as either Nishevatz or Hisardzik. To make up for that, the Avornans who’d built the town and the Chernagors who’d held it for centuries had lavished endless ingenuity on its walls. A wide, fetid moat kept would-be attackers from even reaching those walls until they had drained it, and the defenders could punish them while they were working on that. Grus would not have wanted to try to storm the town.
But, as at Hisardzik, he didn’t have to. He needed to appear, to scare the city-state’s army inside the walls, and then to position himself to devastate the countryside if Prince Gleb paid him no attention. That all proved surprisingly easy. If the Chernagors didn’t care to meet his men in the open field—and they made it very plain they didn’t—what choice did they have but falling back into their fortress? None Grus could see. And once they did fall back, that left the countryside wide open.
Instead of starting to burn and plunder right away, Grus sent a man under a flag of truce up to the moat—the drawbridge over it that led to the main gate had been raised. The herald bawled out that Grus wanted to speak with Prince Gleb, who led Jobuka, and that he wouldn’t stay patient forever if Gleb chose not to speak to him. That done, the Avornan tramped back to the army.
Gleb came out the next day, also under a flag of truce. He didn’t lower the drawbridge, but emerged from a postern gate and crossed the moat in a small boat. One guard accompanied him. “He is a symbol only,” the Prince of Jobuka said in good Avornan. “I know I could not bring enough men to keep me safe in your midst.”
“He is welcome, as you are welcome,” Grus replied, trying to size Gleb up. The prince was older than Lazutin, older than Vasilko— not as old as I am, Grus thought sadly. Gleb looked much more ordinary than the clever, saturnine Lazutin. His beard needing combing and his nose, though large, had no particular shape. His eyebrows were dark and luxuriant.
He brought them down into a frown now. “What are you doing on my land?” he demanded. “You have no business here, curse it.”
“What were your ships doing raiding my coast a few years ago?” Grus asked in turn.
“That’s different,” Gleb said.
“Yes, it is, by the gods, and I know how,” Grus said. “The difference is, you never thought I’d come here to pay you back.”
Gleb scowled. He didn’t try to deny it, from which Grus concluded that he couldn’t. All he said was, “Well, now that you are here, what do I have to do to get rid of you?”
“Wait.” Grus held up a hand. “Don’t go so fast. We’re not done with this bit yet. What were your men doing helping Vasilko against Prince Vsevolod? What were they doing helping the Banished One against the gods in the heavens? Do you still bend the knee to the Banished One, Your Highness?”
“I never did.” Gleb sounded indignant.
“No? Then what were you doing helping Vasilko? I already asked you once, and you didn’t answer.”
“What was I doing? You Avornans invaded the land of the Chernagors. What was I supposed to do, let you have your way here? If I could hurt you, I would.”
Now Grus was the one who scowled. He’d had Chernagors tell him that before. He could understand it, even believe it. But it also made such a handy excuse. “And you’re telling me you had no idea Vasilko had abandoned the gods in the heavens, and that the Banished One backed him? Do you expect me to believe you?”
“I don’t care what you believe,” Gleb said.
“No?” Grus said. “Are you sure of that? Are you very sure? Because if you are, I am going to ravage your countryside. Being a friend to other Chernagors is one thing. Being a friend to the Banished One is something else again.”
Prince Gleb opened his mouth. Then he closed it again without saying anything. After an obvious pause for thought, he tried again. “I told you once, I do not worship the Banished One. I give reverence to King Olor and Queen Quelea and the rest of the gods in the heavens. I always have. So have my people.”
Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe. Grus said, “Whether that’s so or not, you are still going to pay for raiding our coasts. You don’t care for Avornis in the Chernagor country. We don’t like Chernagors plundering Avornis.”
Again, Gleb started to speak. Grus could make a good guess about what he was going to say—something like, Well, what makes you any better than we are? But the answer to that was so obvious, Gleb again fell silent. An Avornan army camped outside of Jobuka gave Grus a potent argument. The Chernagor prince’s sour stare said he knew as much. Sullenly, he asked, “How much are you going to squeeze out of me?”
Grus told him the same thing as he’d told Prince Lazutin. He wondered how Gleb would go about haggling. The only thing he was sure of was that Gleb would.