“Everything about the war with the Chernagors has been backward,” Grus said. “Why should this be any different?”
He hadn’t come very far into the Chernagor country before realizing he’d left Avornis behind. The look of the sky and the quality of the sunlight weren’t the same as they had been down in his own kingdom. A perpetual haze hung over the lowlands here. It turned the sunlight watery and the sky a color halfway between blue and gray. Drifting clouds had no sharp edges; they blurred into the sky behind them in a way they never would have in a land of bright sun and a sky of a respectable, genuine blue.
The landscape had a strange look, too. Roofs of thatch replaced those of red tiles. In this damp, dripping country, fire wasn’t the worry it would have been farther south. Even the haystacks were different here; they wore canvas covers on top to keep off the rain. Gliding gulls mewed and squawked overhead.
And the Northern Sea was nothing like the Azanian Sea. Gray and chilly-looking, it struck Grus as far from inviting. He knew the Chernagors thought otherwise. To them, it was the high road to trading— and raiding—riches. As far as he was concerned, they were welcome to it.
He and his army reached the sea sooner than he’d expected. Instead of offering battle away from Nishevatz, Prince Vasilko seemed intent on defending the city with everything he had. A few archers harassed the advancing Avornans, but only a few. They would shoot from ambush, then either rely on concealment or try to get away on fast horses. They would not stand and fight.
That mortified Prince Vsevolod. “Not enough my son should give self to Banished One,” he rumbled in disgust. “No, not enough. Also he show self coward. Better he should die.”
“Better he should surrender, so you can have your throne back and we can go home to Avornis.” Grus didn’t believe that would happen. Vasilko had something in mind. The king hoped discovering what it was wouldn’t prove too painful.
In any case, Vsevolod wasn’t listening to him. “Disgrace,” he muttered. “My son is disgrace.”
There was a feeling Grus knew all too well. He set a hand on Vsevolod’s shoulder. “Try not to blame yourself, Your Highness. I’m sure you did everything you could.” I did with Ortalis.
Vsevolod shrugged off the hand and shook his massive head. Grus didn’t like to think about his own quarrels with his son, either. And what would come of Ortalis’ marriage to Limosa? What besides trouble, anyhow?
A grandson who might be an heir, Grus thought. Of course, Crex was already a grandson who might be an heir. If having two grandsons who might be heirs wasn’t trouble, Grus had no idea what would fit the definition. How would things play out once he wasn’t there to make sure they went the way he wanted?
“Your Majesty!” A cavalry captain rode up to Grus. “Ask you a question, Your Majesty?”
“Go ahead,” Grus told him. Whatever questions a cavalry captain could come up with were bound to be less worrisome than thoughts of two grandsons going to war with each other over which one got to wear the crown.
“Well, Your Majesty, these fields are full—full to bursting, you might say—of cows and sheep, and I’d banquet off my boots if the sties aren’t full of pigs, too,” the officer said. “Now, I know we’re here to help His Highness the prince, but it would make things a lot easier if we could do some foraging, too.”
Grus didn’t have to think about that. He didn’t have to ask Prince Vsevolod, either. He said, “As far as we’re concerned, Captain, this is enemy country. Go ahead and forage to your heart’s content, and I hope you stuff yourself full of beefsteaks and mutton chops and roast pork. Right now, we worry about hurting Vasilko. Once we’ve cast him down, then we start worrying about helping Vsevolod. Or do you think I’m wrong?”
“Oh, no, sir!” the officer said quickly. Grus laughed at the naked hunger on his face. He went on, “We’ll forage, all right. We’ll take the war right to the Chernagors. Let ’em go hungry.” They wouldn’t go hungry enough, not when the other Chernagor city-states helped supply them by sea. Grus knew as much. But his own side would eat well. That counted, too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
King Lanius looked at the moncat, and the moncat looked at Lanius. “How did you get out?” the king demanded. Bubulcus wasn’t the only servant who denied having anything to do with Pouncer’s latest escape. Had it found some way out of the chamber all by itself? If it had, none of the other animals in here had proved smart enough to use it.
What did that mean? Did it mean anything? Could one moncat be so much smarter and sneakier than the rest that it kept an escape route a secret? Lanius didn’t know. He would have liked to ask Pouncer with some hope of getting back an answer he could understand. That failing, he would have liked to catch the beast in the act of escaping.
Neither seemed likely. Moncats were sneaky enough—and enough like ordinary cats—not to do something while a lowly human being was watching. And, to a moncat, even a King of Avornis counted as a lowly human being.
“Mrowr,” Pouncer said, staring at Grus out of large amber eyes. Then it scampered up the scaffolding of branches and poles that did duty for a forest canopy. Its retractile claws, always sharp, bit into the wood. Moncats climbed even better than monkeys.
He still wondered which were smarter, moncats or monkeys. Moncats were more self-centered and perverse; of that he had no doubt. Monkeys thought more along the lines of human intelligence. That made them seem smarter, at least at first glance. But Lanius remained unconvinced they really were.
Try as he would, he couldn’t think of any way to test the animals that would prove anything. If the moncats didn’t feel like playing along, they simply wouldn’t. What did that prove? Were they stupid, or just willful? Or would he be the stupid one for trying to get them to do things they weren’t inclined to do?
As things stood now, he certainly felt like the stupid one. He eyed the moncat he’d twice encountered in the archives. Maybe the servants were lying, and someone had opened a door that second time, as Bubulcus had the first time. If they weren’t, though, Pouncer did have a secret it wasn’t telling.
“If you come to the archives again, I’ll…” Lanius’ voice trailed away. What would he do to Pouncer if it escaped again? Punish it? Congratulate it? Both at once? If the moncat didn’t already think so, that would convince it human beings were crazy.
Reluctantly, he left the moncats’ chamber. He wasn’t going to find out what he wanted to know there. He wondered if a wizard could figure out what Pouncer was doing. But plenty of more important things needed wizards. What a moncat was up to didn’t. Odds were it wouldn’t—couldn’t—do it again anyway.
So Lanius told himself. All the same, the first few times he went back to the archives, he kept looking around at every small noise he imagined he heard. He waited for the moncat to meow and to emerge from concealment brandishing something it had stolen from the kitchens.
He waited, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. He decided those small noises really were figments of his imagination. When he stopped worrying about them, he got more work done than he had for weeks. He turned up several parchments touching on how Avornis had ruled the provinces south of the Stura River before the Menteshe—and the Banished One—took them from the kingdom.
Would those ever really matter again? Every time Avornis tried to reclaim the lost provinces, disaster had followed. No King of Avornis for the past two centuries and more had dared do any serious campaigning south of the Stura. And yet Grus talked about going after the Scepter of Mercy in a way that suggested he was serious and would do it if he got the chance. Lanius would have been more likely to take that as bluster if the Banished One hadn’t stirred up so much trouble for Avornis far from the Stura. Didn’t that suggest he was worried about what might happen if the Avornans did try once more to reclaim the Scepter and their lost lands?