At last, sullenly, the rest of the Chernagors withdrew from the field. It was a victory, of sorts. Grus thought about ordering a pursuit. He thought about it, looked at how exhausted and battered his own men were, and changed his mind. Hirundo rode up to him and dismounted. The general looked as weary as Grus felt. “Well, Your Majesty, we threw ’em back,” he said. “Threw ’em back twice, as a matter of fact.”
Grus nodded. The motion made some bones in his neck pop like cracking knuckles. “Yes, we did,” he said, and yawned enormously. “King Olor’s beard, but I’m worn.”
“Me, too,” Hirundo said. “We did everything we could do there, though.”
“Yes,” Grus said again. He wished he weren’t agreeing. They’d done everything they could, and they were no closer to ousting Vasilko from Nishevatz or restoring Vsevolod. Grus looked around for the rightful Prince of Nishevatz, but didn’t see him.
“Now the next interesting question,” Hirundo said, “is whether the Chernagors will come back at us tomorrow, or whether they’ve had enough.”
“Interesting,” Grus repeated. “Well, that’s one way to put it. What do you think?”
“Hard to say,” Hirundo answered. “I wouldn’t care to send this army forward to attack them tomorrow, and we had the better of it today. But you never can tell. Some generals are like goats—they just keep butting.”
“Would one more Chernagor attack be likelier to ruin them or us?” Grus asked.
“Another good question,” his general replied. “I think it’s likelier to ruin them, but you don’t know until the fight starts. For that matter, another fight where everybody’s torn up could ruin both sides.”
“You’re full of cheery notions, aren’t you?”
Hirundo bowed. Something in his back creaked, too. “I’m supposed to think about these things. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t.”
“I know.” Grus looked around for Vsevolod again. When he didn’t see him, he yelled for a messenger. “Find out if the prince is hale,” he told the young man. “If he is, tell him I’d like to see him when he gets the chance.”
Nodding, the youngster hurried off. A few minutes later, Prince Vsevolod joined Grus. The ousted lord of Nishevatz wasn’t perfectly hale. He had a bloody bandage wrapped around his head. Even so, he waved aside Grus’ worried questions. “You should see man who did this to me,” he said. “Somewhere now, ravens pick out his eyes.”
“Good,” Grus said. “I have a question for you.”
“Ask,” Vsevolod said.
“How likely is it that we’ll see more Chernagor armies that don’t want us in this country anymore?”
Vsevolod frowned. Even before donning the bandage, he’d had a face made for frowning. With it, he looked like a man contemplating his own doom and not liking what he saw. “It could be,” he said at last. “Yes, it could be.”
“How likely do you think it is?” Grus persisted.
Now Prince Vsevolod looked as though he hated him. “If I were prince in another city-state, I would lead forth my warriors,” he said.
“I was afraid of that,” Grus said. “We don’t have the men here to fight off every Chernagor breathing, you know.”
“What will you do, then?” Vsevolod asked in turn. “Will you say you are beaten? Will you run back to Avornis with tail between your legs?”
He’s trying to make me ashamed, Grus realized. He’s trying to embarrass me into staying up here and going on with the war. Grus understood why the Prince of Nishevatz was doing that. Had he worn Vsevolod’s boots, he wouldn’t have wanted his ally to give up the fight, either. Being who and what he was, though, he didn’t want to risk throwing away his whole army. And so, regretfully, he said, “Yes.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Coming back here to the capital?” Lanius asked Grus’ messenger. “Are you sure?” “Yes, Your Majesty.” The young man sounded offended Lanius should doubt him. “Didn’t he tell me with his own mouth? Didn’t he give me the letter you’re holding?”
Lanius hadn’t read the letter yet. He’d enjoyed being King of Avornis in something more than name for a little while—he’d discovered he could run the kingdom, something he’d never been sure of before. Now he would go back to being nothing in fancy robes and crown. Grasping at straws, he asked, “How soon will he return?”
“It’s in the letter, Your Majesty. Everything is in the letter,” the messenger replied. When Lanius gave no sign he wanted to open the letter, the fellow sighed and went on, “They should be back inside of a month—less than that if they don’t have to fight their way out.”
“Oh.” Lanius didn’t much want to read the letter—seeing Grus’ hand reminded him how much more power the other king held. Talking to the courier made him the stronger one. “How has the fighting gone?”
“We’re better than they are. One of us is worth more than one of them,” the messenger said. “But there are more of them than there are of us, and so…” He shrugged. “What can you do?” He didn’t seem downcast at pulling back from the land of the Chernagors. Did that mean Grus wasn’t, or did it only mean he’d done a good job of persuading his men he wasn’t? Lanius couldn’t tell.
Even after dismissing the messenger and reading his father-in-law’s letter, he still wasn’t sure. Grus presented the withdrawal as the only thing he could do, and as one step in what looked like a long struggle. The Banished One will not do with the Chernagors as he has done in the south, he wrote. Whatever we have to do to stop him, we will.
He wasn’t wrong about how important keeping the Banished One from dominating the land of the Chernagors was. Lanius saw that, too. But, when he read Grus’ letter, he wondered if his father-in-law was saying everything he had in mind. Was he leaving the north country to make sure Lanius didn’t decide he could rule Avornis all by himself? Again, Lanius couldn’t tell.
Would I throw Grus out of the palace if I had the chance? As usual, Lanius found himself torn. Part of him insisted that, as scion of a dynasty going back a dozen generations, he ought to rule as well as reign. That was his pride talking. But, now that he’d had a taste of running the kingdom day by day, he found he would sooner spend time with his animals and in the archives. If Grus wanted to handle things as they came up, wasn’t he welcome to the job?
All things considered, Lanius was inclined to answer yes to that. Another question also sprang to mind. If I try to get rid of Grus and fail, the way I likely would, won’t he kill me to make sure I don’t try it again? Lanius was inclined to answer to that, too. Maybe—probably—the present arrangement was best after all.
No sooner had he decided, yet again, to let things go on as they were going than another messenger came before him. This one thrust a letter at him, murmured, “I’m very sorry, Your Majesty,” and withdrew before Lanius could even ask him why he was sorry.
The king stared at the letter. It gave no obvious clues; he didn’t even recognize the seal that helped hold it closed or the hand that addressed it to him. Shrugging, he broke the seal, slid off the ribbon around the letter, unrolled it, and began to read.
It was, he discovered, from the abbess of a convent dedicated to preserving the memory of a holy woman who’d died several hundred years before. For a moment—for more than a moment—the convent’s name meant nothing to him. He couldn’t have said where in Avornis it lay, whether in the capital or over in the west near the border with Thervingia or in the middle of the fertile southern plains. Then, abrupt as stubbing a toe, he remembered. The convent stood in the middle of the swamps and bogs of the Maze, not far from the city of Avornis as the crow flies but a million miles away in terms of everything that mattered. It had held his mother ever since she’d tried and failed to slay Grus by sorcery.