That hadn’t crossed Grus’ mind. It was plainly a good idea, though. A squadron of bodyguards surrounded him as he rode with the officer toward… what?
Coming up over the swell of a low rise, he first saw, from perhaps a quarter of a mile, that the first squadron of scouts and their horses were down, with some of the would-be rescuers still by them. He was braced for that much of a disaster. He hadn’t thought he’d lose a whole squadron of scouts, but it seemed to have happened. “The Menteshe caught them?” he asked.
“Yes.” The captain managed a ghastly nod. “The Menteshe caught them, Your Majesty.”
As Grus rode closer, he began to get a better look at how the scouts—and their horses—had died, and how their bodies had been used after they were dead… or while they were dying. “No,” he said, as though someone had told him about it and he didn’t believe the fellow. “No one would do that.” But his eyes, his treacherous, truth-telling eyes, insisted someone had. That they’d been mutilated was bad enough. That the dead men had also been violated…
“You see, Your Majesty,” the Avornan officer said heavily. “I’ve seen, and I wish I hadn’t.”
Grus didn’t answer. He rode through that scene of horror and torture. He felt he needed to see it all. He learned more about cruel ingenuity in those few minutes than he’d ever known, or ever wanted to know. At last, he said, “I didn’t think even the Menteshe did things like this.”
“They usually don’t,” the officer replied. “I’ve served in the south for years. This…” He turned his head away. “There are no words for this.”
“The Banished One,” Grus said in a voice like iron. “This is his doing. He’s trying to put us in fear.”
With a laugh on the ragged edge of hysteria, the Avornan captain said, “He knows how to get what he wants, doesn’t he?”
But Grus shook his head. “No. This—shakes me, but it doesn’t make me afraid. It makes me angry. I want revenge.” He paused. Did that mean paying back the Menteshe in their own coin? Could he stomach ordering his men to do something like this to their foes? If he did that, didn’t he invite the Banished One to take up residence in Avornis? “The best revenge I know is whipping them out of the kingdom.”
“What do we do about… this, Your Majesty?”
“We make pyres. We burn the dead. We’re all equal in the flames.” Grus paused again, then added, “This time, we burn the horses, too. They deserved what the Menteshe did even less than our troopers. They weren’t enemies, just animals.”
As he ordered, so it was done. The smoke of the great pyre mingled with the smoke from burning fields. To his relief, the men who made the pyres and laid the dead on them seemed to feel as he did. The bodies inspired horror and rage, but not fear. “We’ve got to whip the sons of whores who did this,” a soldier said. “We owe it to the dead.”
“We’ll give the Menteshe everything we owe,” Grus promised. “Everything.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
To Lanius’ surprise, he found himself missing King Grus. Yes, he’d chafed when Grus spent his time in the city of Avornis and held the kingdom in his own hands. With Grus down in the south fighting the Menteshe, Lanius pulled a lot of strings himself— but they were mostly the uninteresting strings. He’d wanted to administer Avornis… until he did it for a while. That made him decide Grus was welcome to the day-to-day drudgery.
But Grus was at war, which meant Lanius was stuck with it. He knew he was less diligent about it than Grus. It embarrassed him, even shamed him, to get a reminder from the provinces about something he should have dealt with the first time, weeks earlier. But he didn’t seem able to do anything about such mishaps.
He knew why, too. If he’d given administering Avornis all the time it needed, he wouldn’t have been able to dive into the archives or watch his monkeys or try to figure out how Pouncer kept getting out of its room and into the kitchens. Those were more enjoyable pastimes, and he had trouble thinking of them as less important.
He also would have had less time for amusing himself with maidservants. Keeping track of the kingdom was more important than that, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun. So far, Sosia hadn’t found out about his sport—or rather, hadn’t found out that he’d kept on with it after Grus sent Cristata away. That his wife hadn’t found out helped keep the sport pleasurable.
And he would have had less time for talks with Prince Vsevolod.
Having less time to talk with the Prince of Nishevatz, however, wouldn’t have broken his heart. He’d learned less about the Chernagors than he wanted to, and more about the way Vsevolod thought.
“When will war in south be over?” the Prince asked in his blunt, throaty Avornan. He cared nothing about fighting in the war in the south himself, only about how it affected things in the north—things that mattered to him.
“I don’t know, Your Highness,” Lanius answered. “I wish I did. I wish someone did.”
Vsevolod scowled. To Lanius, he looked more than ever like a scrawny old vulture. “He will win war?”
“By the gods, I hope so!” Lanius exclaimed.
“He will win war by wintertime?”
“I told you, Your Highness—I don’t know that. I don’t think anyone can. If the gods in the heavens let him do it, he will.” As usual, Lanius said nothing about the Banished One, who had been Milvago. As usual, the not-quite-god who no longer dwelt in the heavens wasn’t far from his mind.
“If Grus does not win war this winter, he fights again in south when spring comes?” Vsevolod persisted.
“I don’t know,” Lanius replied, his patience beginning to unravel. “I wouldn’t be surprised, though. Would you?”
“No. Not surprised,” the prince said darkly. “He cares nothing for Nishevatz, not really. All lies.” He turned away.
Lanius was tempted to kick him in the rear. The king didn’t, but the temptation lingered. If Vsevolod wasn’t the most self-centered man in the world, who was? All he cared about was Nishevatz, regardless of what Avornis needed. More testily than Lanius had expected to, he said, “We’ve been invaded, you know.”
“Yes, you are invaded. Yes, I know. And what of me? I am robbed. I am exiled,” Vsevolod said. “I live in strange place, eat strange food, talk strange, ugly language, with no one to care if I live or die.”
“We do care,” Lanius insisted, though he would have had trouble saying he cared very much himself. “But we have to drive the invaders from our own realm before we can worry about anyone else’s.”
Prince Vsevolod might not even have heard him. “I will die in exile,” he said gloomily. “My city-state will go down to ruin under accursed Vasilko, my own son. I cannot save it. Life is bitter. Life is hard.”
He’s powerless, Lanius realized. He’s powerless, and he hates it, the way I bated it for so long under Grus. And he’s old. He’s used to power, and can’t change his ways now that he doesn’t have it anymore. I’d never had it. I kept wondering what it was like, the way a boy will before his first woman.
“We’ll do all we can for you, Your Highness.” Lanius’ voice was as gentle as he could make it. “Don’t worry. We’ll get Nishevatz back for you. By the gods in the heavens, I swear it.”
“The gods in the heavens are—” Vsevolod violently shook his head. “No. If I say that, if I think that, I am Vasilko. This I never do.” He got to his feet and stomped away, as though angry at Lanius for making him think things he didn’t want to think.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t, Lanius thought. Only he can turn his mind one way or another. Did Vsevolod wonder if the Banished One were more powerful than the gods in the heavens? The king wouldn’t have been surprised. He would have had trouble blaming the exiled Prince of Nishevatz. It still worried him.