"Just keep doing it," the king said. "If it's so easy it offends your dignity, well, maybe I'll have you do something harder next time, that's all."
Pterocles repeated the spell again and again. Piece after piece of mutton disappeared. By the wizard's murmured comments, Grus gathered that each one was going deeper into Yozgat. Collurio and Crinitus knew just where in the model of the city Pouncer was accustomed to getting his rewards as he went through his routine. As closely as Pterocles could, he was putting mutton in spots that corresponded to those.
The wizard started the spell yet again, then paused. "Your Majesty, this one will go close to the citadel. There are sorcerous wards in place. If I penetrate them, I may alert the wizard who set them. Shall I put the meat there anyhow?"
"No!" Grus wasn't sure he was right, but he didn't hesitate. "The moncat will go on anyhow, I think, and I don't want to alert the Menteshe. No matter what, I don't want to alert the Menteshe. We may have to try this again, and surprise will help if we do."
"As you wish." Pterocles accepted his decision. A big part of what made a king a king was getting people to accept his choices. Of course, if they accepted too many that were wrong…
"I think this is good. I hope it is," Collurio said. "The moncat is a clever beast. Even if some rewards are missing, it will usually go on, expecting to find the rest. I have seen as much."
"Thank you," Grus told him. But he'd made his choice for reasons mostly different from the one the trainer had given. He thought he would have made it even if Collurio had told him something else.
"I'll place these other bits on the way back, then," Pterocles said. "I wish I knew just where in Yozgat Pouncer is now."
"Nothing we can do but wait," Grus said. However true that was, he didn't like it. Sooner or later, the Menteshe were bound to notice his companions and him, to say nothing of the pole that led up to the wall.. weren't they? Alert men should have noticed them already. Maybe, just maybe, the gods were helping to keep the defenders from noticing what was going on under their noses. Or maybe the Menteshe weren't alert because they didn't think the Avornans could put men on the walls without their knowing it.
And they were right. The Avornans couldn't sneak men up onto the walls of Yozgat. But the Menteshe hadn't thought about moncats. They'd probably never heard of them. What they didn't know.. might give them a surprise.
Off on the other side of the city, the sounds of skirmishing went on. Grus heard a sharp thud as a stone smacked into the wall. Distant shouts said the Menteshe didn't like that. But the walls were well made. Stone-throwers could pound them for a long time — maybe forever — without knocking them down.
Bats and nightjars came into sight every now and then when they swooped close to torches to snatch insects out of the air. They paid the fighting no attention; it meant no more to them than the taste of a moth meant to Grus. He wondered whether he ought to envy them.
It was the dark of the moon. Nothing but starlight would be in the sky until the sun came up. Even though Grus knew as much, he found himself looking toward the east. That was nothing but foolishness; if his senses hadn't told him dawn was still far away, the positions of the stars as they wheeled through the sky would have.
"How much longer?" Crinitus asked.
"However long it takes," Grus answered. "Until the moncat comes back, or until we're sure it won't."
Collurio pointed not east but south. "What's that?"
For a moment, Grus thought it was a red star he hadn't spied before, throbbing down there just above the southern horizon. As he'd moved from the Stura to Yozgat, northern constellations hung lower in the sky, while southern ones climbed higher and a few stars he'd never seen before came into view. But then he realized this wasn't a star. He thought of a great leaping flame, but that didn't seem quite right, either. "I don't know what it is," he said at last.
Pterocles looked at the pulsing point of scarlet light, too. "Isn't that about where… he's supposed to have his lair in the Argolid Mountains?"
Grus considered. "Yes, I think it is," he said at last. "But why can we see it now? It's never lit up like that before."
"Maybe he's never had anything much to worry about up until now," Pterocles said. "Maybe…"
"Olor's beard," Grus whispered, awe in his voice. If Pouncer had penetrated the defenses that would have stopped the boldest human thief far from his goal… Oh, if Pouncer had.!
No sooner had the thought crossed Grus' mind than Yozgat went wild. It seemed as though all the Menteshe in the town started shouting at one another at once. All Grus could see was the top of the wall. That made him grind his teeth in frustration, for it meant he could get only the vaguest idea of what was going on down in Yozgat itself.
Things on the wall were lively enough. Menteshe ran this way and that. They were all yelling at the top of their lungs. Some of them carried torches; others didn't. He got to see one spectacular pratfall, as a plainsman with a torch tripped over someone or something. The man fell with a splat. His torch flew out and down and hissed into extinction in the moat.
That, luckily, was some way down the wall from where the King of Avornis, the animal trainers, and the wizard stood. Not even the falling torch threw much light on them. None of the Menteshe seemed to have any idea they were there. None of the plainsmen seemed the least bit interested in what was happening outside of Yozgat. All their attention focused on whatever had gone wrong within the walls. That the commotion inside might be connected to the Avornans outside didn't look to have crossed their minds.
"I wish somebody had told me the city would go crazy while the moncat was inside it," Collurio said worriedly. "I would have trained the beast to be used to the noise and the fuss. This way, it may scare him out of doing what he's learned."
That was the last thing Grus wanted to hear. Lanius, you thought of everything else. Why didn't you think of this, too? But he didn't — he couldn't — really blame the other king. Lanius had taken an idea no one else would have come up with and made it real. And so have I, by the gods. So have I, Grus thought. "We've come this far," he said. "With any luck at all, we'll be able to go as much further as we need."
More shouts rang out inside Yozgat. Somebody bellowed what was plainly an order. Someone else yelled what was just as plainly defiance. Iron clanged on iron. Wounded men shrieked. Did they have any idea why they were fighting one another? Grus wouldn't have bet on it.
That wasn't his worry. It was theirs — and the Banished One's. His worry was Pouncer. Where was the moncat? What was it doing? Was it doing anything past hiding from the chaos all around or maybe chasing a tasty-smelling southern mouse? Grus didn't know. He couldn't know, even if he could guess and hope. Not knowing gnawed at him.
The base of the pole stirred, there in the dirt by the edge of the moat. Pterocles and Crinitus both grabbed it, both steadied it. Either the Menteshe had found the other end at the edge of the wall and were starting to pull it up or…
Grus peered toward the top of Yozgat's works. "There's Pouncer!" he said — as joyous a whisper as he'd ever used.
Down came the moncat, quick and graceful as ever. Was it holding something in one of its clawed hands? Lanius had grumbled when it stole spoons from the kitchens in the palace. What had it stolen now, and from where?
"Mrow," the moncat said as it left the pole for solid ground. It glared at Collurio. He took a piece of mutton from Pterocles.
"No, let me," King Grus said, and solemnly handed out the last reward. And, as Pouncer ate, Grus took the Scepter of Mercy into his own hands.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE