“Really? Then how did we happen to capture you?” Grus asked in mild tones.
With a blithe shrug—surprisingly blithe, considering that he was a captive—the fellow answered, “I made a mistake. It happens to all of us. You, for instance”—he pointed at Grus—“do not bow before the Fallen Star. You will pay for your mistake, and worse than I have paid for mine.”
“Oh?” Grus said. “Suppose I kill you now?”
Another shrug. “Even then.” As far as Grus could tell, that wasn’t bravado. The Menteshe meant it. Scowling, the king gestured to the guards who surrounded the prisoner. They took him away. But his confidence lingered. It worried Grus. As far as he could tell, all the nomads felt that way. It made them more dangerous than they would have been if they’d had the same sort of doubts he did.
And yet, no matter how confident they were, he’d driven them back a long way and inflicted some stinging defeats on them. As soon as he cleared them from the valley of the Anapus, he could move down to the Stura and drive them off Avornan soil altogether. He hoped he would be able to do that before winter ended campaigning. He didn’t want the Menteshe lingering in Avornis until spring. That would be a disaster, nothing less.
What they’d already done was disastrous enough. Because of their devastation, crops here in the south were going to be only a fraction of normal. Pelagonia wasn’t the only city liable to see hunger this winter— far from it. And how were farmers supposed to pay their taxes when they had no crops to sell for cash? The government of Avornis would see hunger this winter, too.
And all that said nothing about men killed, women violated, children orphaned, livestock slaughtered. Every time he thought about it, he seethed. What he wanted to do was go after the Menteshe south of the Stura, take the fighting to them, and let them see how they liked it.
What he wanted to do and what he could do were two different things. Until he had—until Avornis had—some reliable way to cure thralls and to keep men from being made into thralls, he didn’t dare cross the river. Defeat would turn into catastrophe if he did. And then his son and his son-in-law would fight over who succeeded him. That would be another catastrophe, no matter who won. Grus had his own opinion about who would, had it and refused to dwell on it.
The guards brought up another prisoner. This one blustered, saying, “I do not care how you torture me. I am Prince Ulash’s man, and the Fallen Star’s.”
“Who said anything about torturing you?” Grus asked.
“Avornans do that,” the Menteshe said. “Everyone knows it.”
“Oh? How many prisoners whom we’ve tortured have you met?” King Grus knew Avornans sometimes did torture prisoners, when they were trying to pull out something the captive didn’t want to say. But his folk didn’t do it regularly, as the Menteshe did.
“Everyone knows you do it,” the nomad repeated.
“How do you know?” Grus said again. “Who told you? Did you meet prisoners who told you what we did to them?” If the man had, he was out of luck.
But the Menteshe shook his head. “There is no need. Our chieftains have said it. If they say it, it must be true.”
Grus sent him away. It was either that or go to work on him with ropes and knives and heated iron. Nothing short of torture would persuade him what his chieftains said was untrue—and torture, here, would only prove it was true. The king muttered to himself, most discontented. The nomad had won that round.
He muttered more when his army crossed the Anapus. Devastation on the southern side of the river was even worse than it had been in the north. The Menteshe might have had trouble crossing the Anapus. They’d spent more time below it, and found more ways to amuse themselves while they were there. Grus began to wonder what things would be like in the valley of the Stura. Could they be worse than what he was seeing here? He didn’t know how, but did know the Menteshe were liable to instruct him.
Before he could worry too much about the valley of the Stura, he had to finish clearing Prince Ulash’s men from the valley of the Anapus. The Menteshe on the southern side of the river didn’t try to make a stand. Instead, after shooting arrows at his army as it landed, they scattered. That left him with a familiar dilemma—how small were the chunks into which he could break up his army as he pursued? If he divided it up into many small ones, he ran the risk of having the Menteshe ambush and destroy some of them. Remembering what had happened to the troop farther north, he wasn’t eager to risk that.
Eager or not, he did. Getting rid of the Menteshe came first. This time, things went the way he wanted them to. The nomads didn’t linger and fight. They fled over the hills to the south, toward the valley of the Stura.
As Grus reassembled his army to go after them, he said, “I wonder if they’ll fight hard down there, or if they’ll see they’re beaten and go back to their own side of the river.”
“That’s why we’re going down there, Your Majesty,” Hirundo answered. “To find out what they’ll do, I mean.”
“No.” The king shook his head. “That’s not why. We’re going down there to make sure they do what we want.”
The general thought it over. He nodded. “Well, I can’t tell you you’re wrong. Of course, if I tried you’d probably send me to the Maze.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Grus shook his head again. “I have a worse punishment than that in mind.” Hirundo raised a questioning eyebrow. Grus went on, “I’ll leave you right here, in command against the cursed Menteshe.”
“No wonder people say you’re a cruel, hard king!” Hirundo quailed in artfully simulated terror.
Even though he was joking, what he said touched a nerve. “Do people say that?” Grus asked. “It’s not what I try to be.” He sounded wistful, even a little—maybe more than a little—plaintive.
“I know, Your Majesty,” Hirundo said quickly.
Grus stayed thoughtful and not very happy the rest of the day. He knew he’d given people reason to curse his name. He’d sent more than a few men to the Maze. He reckoned that merciful; he could have killed them instead. But they and their families would still find him cruel and hard, as Hirundo had said. And he hadn’t given towns ravaged by the Menteshe as much help as they would have liked. He didn’t think he could afford to. Still… He wished he could do all the things the people of Avornis wanted him to do. He also wished none of those people spent any time plotting against him. That would have made his life easier. It would have, yes, but he feared he couldn’t hold his breath waiting for it to happen.
What could he do? “Go on,” he muttered to himself. Seeing nothing else, he turned back to Hirundo. “Let’s finish cleaning the Menteshe out of this valley, and then we’ll go on to the next.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. Ahh…” The general paused, then said, “If you want to push on to the Stura, and to leave garrisons in the passes to keep Ulash’s men from getting through, our second-line soldiers could probably finish hunting down the nomads left behind. Or don’t you think so?”
Grus paused, too. Then he nodded. “Yes. That’s good, Hirundo. Thank you. We’ll do it. Farther north, I wouldn’t have, but here? You bet I will. It lets me get down to the border faster, and we may be able to give the Menteshe a surprise when we show up there sooner than they expect us to.”
He set things in motion the next day. Some of the armed peasants and townsmen and the river-galley marines he ordered out against the Menteshe would probably get mauled. But he would be getting the best use out of his soldiers, and that mattered more. Hirundo had done what a good general was supposed to do when he made his suggestions.
From the top of the pass the army took down into the valley of the Stura, Grus eyed the pillars of black smoke rising into the sky here and there. They spoke of the destruction Ulash’s men were working, but they also told him where the Menteshe were busy. He pointed to the closest one. “Let’s go hunting.”