The Chernagor Pirates

I almost wish a Chernagor fleet would strike our western coast hard enough to make me turn around, he thought, and then quick, in case gods or the Banished One somehow overheard that, I did say “almost.”

Except for the hunger for something nasty often smoldering in Ortalis’ eyes, there had never been anything wrong with his looks. And now even those low fires seemed banked, as they had when he was hunting regularly. The smile he gave King Lanius was just about everything a smile ought to be. The bow that followed was more in the way of formal politeness than Lanius had had from him in years. “Your Majesty,” Ortalis said, “let me present to you my wife, Princess Limosa.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Lanius said, as formally. He nodded to the treasury minister’s daughter. “We have met before. Let me welcome you to the royal family.” What else can I do? “I hope you will be very happy.” I don’t really believe you will, but anyone can hope. He also hoped none of what he was thinking showed on his face.

Evidently it didn’t, for Limosa smiled as she dropped him a curtsy and said, “Thank you very much, Your Majesty. I’m sure I will.” She gazed at Ortalis with stars in her dark eyes. She was a little on the plump side, with a round, pink face, curly brown hair with reddish glints in it, and a crooked front tooth. No one would have called her beautiful, but she was pleasant enough.

Sosia came into the dining room. Ortalis introduced Limosa again. As Lanius had, Sosia said all the right things. If she was insincere, as he was, he couldn’t hear it in her voice. He hoped that meant Ortalis and Limosa couldn’t, either.

To her brother, Sosia did say, “This was very sudden.”

“Well…” Was Ortalis blushing? Lanius wouldn’t have believed such a thing possible. The prince went on, “We found we suited each other, and so we did what we did.” Limosa turned even pinker, but she nodded.

Suited each other? What did that mean? Do I really want to know? Lanius wondered. Before he could find any way to ask, servants came in with bread and butter and honey and apples for breakfast. He and Sosia and Ortalis and his new bride settled down to eat. Lanius also wondered if Petrosus would wander in. But Limosa’s father did not put in an appearance. Being polite to Limosa was easy enough. Lanius would have had to work harder to stay polite to Petrosus.

Ortalis raised his cup of wine to Limosa’s lips. It was a pretty, romantic gesture—about the last thing Lanius would have expected from his brother-in-law. Cristata was happy with Ortalis at first, too, he reminded himself. She said so. Then look what happened.

Limosa said, “I hope the war against the Chernagors goes well.”

No one could argue with that. No one tried. Lanius said, “I hope your father keeps our allowance at something close to a reasonable level.”

She blushed again. “You mean he doesn’t always?” Lanius solemnly shook his head. Limosa said, “That’s terrible!”

“Yes, Sosia and I think so, too,” Lanius agreed, his voice dry. He wondered how much influence Limosa had on Petrosus. If she really thought it was terrible, and if she really had some influence…

But she said, “I’m sorry, but it’s not like he listens to me very much.” She’d understood Lanius’ hint, then. That didn’t surprise him. Petrosus had been a courtier for many years; why wouldn’t his daughter see that what seemed a comment was in fact a request for her to do something about it? Then Limosa added, “He didn’t even know we were going to get married until after the priest conducted the ceremony.”

“No?” Lanius said in surprise and disbelief.

Now she shook her head. So did Ortalis. Lanius glanced at Sosia. She looked as astonished as he was. If Limosa had asked her father whether he wanted her to wed Ortalis, what would he have said? What every other father and grandfather said when approached about it? That wouldn’t have surprised Lanius… too much. Petrosus might have been willing to sacrifice happiness for the sake of his own advancement. Or is that just my dislike for Petrosus coming out? Lanius wondered. Hard to be sure.

Sosia asked, “What does your father think about it now?”

“He’d better like it,” Ortalis growled before Limosa could answer. She seemed willing to let him speak for her. That was interesting. Someone new I’m going to have to try to learn to figure out, Lanius thought. Archives were much more tractable than living, breathing people. Even inscrutable moncats were easier to make sense of than people.

He lifted his cup of wine in salute. “I hope you’ll be… very happy together,” he said. He’d started to say, I hope you’ll be as happy as Sosia and I have been. Considering the jolt his affair with Cristata had given their happiness, those weren’t such favorable words as they would have been a little while before.

Ortalis and Limosa beamed. They must not have noticed the hesitation. Sosia had. Did she know what he’d almost said? He wouldn’t have been surprised. She knew him better than anyone else did—save perhaps her father. Lanius didn’t like admitting, even to himself, that Grus had a knack for getting inside his mind. But he didn’t like denying the truth, either.

He eyed Ortalis and Limosa again. How were they at facing up to the truth? Did the thought so much as cross their minds? He doubted it. Too bad for them, he thought.

“Come on,” Grus said. His horse trudged up toward the top of the pass that linked Avornis to the land of the Chernagors. He leaned forward in the saddle and squeezed the beast’s barrel with his knees. “Get up, there.” The horse went a little faster—not much, but a little.

Beside the king, Hirundo beamed. “You’re becoming a horseman after all, Your Majesty.”

“Go ahead—insult me,” Grus said. “If things had gone the way I wish they would have, I’d hardly ever need to get onto one of these miserable beasts.”

Hirundo didn’t seem to know what to make of that. Grus had hoped he wouldn’t. The king rode on. The army followed. Every so often, Grus looked back over his shoulder to see if a messenger was coming out of the south. He’d already had one. He spied no more this time. That either meant the Chernagors weren’t raiding the Avornan coast or that the Avornan garrisons and river galleys and new oceangoing ships were beating them back. Grus hoped it meant one of those two things, anyhow.

At the top of the pass, he looked back toward his own kingdom once more. He hadn’t thought he’d climbed all that high, but he could see a long way. The bright green of newly planted fields of wheat and barley and rye and oats contrasted with the darker tones of orchards and forests. Here and there, smoke plumes rose from towns and obscured the farmland beyond. Only very gradually did natural mist and haze blur the rest of the landscape.

When he looked ahead, the story was different. Fog rolling off the Northern Sea left the land of the Chernagors shrouded in mystery. But Grus didn’t need to see the Chernagor country to know what lay ahead— trouble. If the Chernagors weren’t going to cause trouble, he wouldn’t have had to come here and look out across their land.

He also looked around. There was Prince Vsevolod, hard-faced and grim, riding along at the head of a handful of retainers. Did he believe Grus could restore him as Prince of Nishevatz after two years in exile? Grus hoped he did; he might yet prove valuable to the Avornan cause.

And there rode Pterocles. In one sense, he wasn’t far from Prince Vsevolod. In another, he might have belonged to a different world. The wizard didn’t even seem to see Vsevolod and his kilted retainers. All his attention focused on the view ahead. He looked like a man riding into a battle he expected to lose—brave enough, but far from hopeful. Remembering what had happened to Pterocles in the Chernagor country a couple of years before, Grus didn’t suppose he could blame him.

Pterocles also stood out because of his bad riding. Next to the seasoned cavalry troopers, Grus wasn’t much of a rider. Next to Pterocles, he might have been a centaur. The wizard rode as though he’d never heard of riding before climbing aboard his mule. He was all knees and elbows and apprehension. Every slightest jounce took him by surprise, and threatened to pitch him out of the saddle and under the horse’s hoofs. Watching him made Grus nervous and sympathetic at the same time.

“You’re doing fine,” the king called to the wizard. “Relax a little, and everything will be all right.”