of thrill Ortalis got from chasing deer). And, like Anser, they got to devour their quarry at the end of a successful hunt.
Lanius suddenly imagined the arch-hallow, in full ecclesiastical regalia, with a still-twitching lizard tail hanging from the corner of his mouth. He started laughing so hard, he frightened the moncats and made servants out in the hallway pound on the door and ask what was wrong.
“Nothing,” he called back, feeling like a little boy whose parents demanded out of the blue what he was doing when it was something naughty.
“Then what’s that racket, Your Majesty?” The voice on the other side of the door sounded suspicious, even accusing. Was that Bubulcus out there in the hallway? Lanius thought so, but couldn’t be sure.
Whether it was Bubulcus or not, the king knew he had to say, “Nothing,” again, and he did. He couldn’t expect the servants to find that blasphemous image funny. He was more than a little scandalized that he found it funny himself, but he did, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
“Are you
“I’m positive,” Lanius answered. “One of the moncats did something foolish, and I was laughing, that’s all.” That wasn’t quite what had happened, but it came close enough.
“Huh,” came from the corridor. That made Lanius more nearly certain it was Bubulcus out there. Whoever it was, he went away; the king listened with no small relief to receding footsteps. When Lanius came out of the moncats’ room, no one asked him any more questions. That suited him fine.
Two days later, the hot spell broke. Clouds rolled down from the north. When morning came, the city of Avornis found itself wrapped in chilly mist. Lanius hurried down to the monkeys’ room and lit the fire that he’d allowed to die over the past few days. They needed defense against the cold once more, and he made sure they got it.
It started to rain that afternoon. To his horror, Lanius discovered a leak in the roof of the royal archives. He sent men up there to fix it, or at least to cover it, in spite of the rain. There were certain advantages to being the King of Avornis. A luckless homeowner would have had to wait for good weather. But Lanius couldn’t stand the notion of water dripping down onto the precious and irreplaceable parchments in the archives. Being who he was, he didn’t have to stand for it, either.
Grus looked down from the hills on a riverside town. Like a lot of riverside towns, it had had its croplands ravaged. He’d seen far worse devastation elsewhere, though. The landscape wasn’t what kept him staring and staring.
“Pelagonia,” he murmured.
Hirundo nodded. “That’s what it is, all right,” he said. “Looks like a provincial town to me.”
“And so it is,” Grus agreed. But that wasn’t all it was, not to him. Just seeing it made his heart beat faster.
Pterocles understood, but then Pterocles had a wizard’s memory for detail. “This is the place where you sent the witch,” he said. “Will you ship me back to the city of Avornis and turn her loose on the Menteshe?”
It had crossed Grus’ mind. Shipping Alauda back to her cousin’s tavern had also crossed his mind. He hadn’t seen Alca for three years, not since his wife made him send her away.
“Well, Your Majesty?” Pterocles spoke with unwonted sharpness.
He’d had trouble standing up against the Banished One. Of course, so had Alca. Any mortal wizard had trouble standing up against the Banished One. Grus found his answer. “No, I won’t,” he said. “We’re all on the same side in this fight, or we’d better be.”
He waited to see what Pterocles would say to that. To his relief, the wizard only nodded. “Can’t say you’re wrong. She acts like she’s pretty snooty, but her heart’s in the right place.”
Grus bristled at any criticism of his former lover. Fighting to hold on to his temper, he asked Hirundo, “Can we reach the town tonight?”
“I doubt it,” the general replied. “Tomorrow, yes. Tonight? We’re farther away than you think.”
Grus stared south. Only the keep and the spires of the cathedral showed above Pelagonia’s gray stone walls. In the nearer distance, a handful of Menteshe rode through the burnt fields in front of the town. They would flee when the Avornan army advanced. Grus knew a lot about fighting the nomads. Unless they had everything their own way, they didn’t care for stand-up fights. Why should they? Starvation and raids unceasing worked well for them.
“Tomorrow, then,” the King of Avornis said, reluctance and eagerness warring in his voice—reluctance at the delay, eagerness at what might come afterwards.
As he’d thought they would, Prince Ulash’s men withdrew at the Avornan host’s advance. He and Hirundo picked a good campground, one by a stream so the Menteshe couldn’t cut them off from water—a favorite trick of theirs. He also made certain he scattered sentries widely about the camp.
“Is something wrong?” Alauda asked in his tent that night.
“No,” Grus answered, quicker than he should have. Then, hearing that too-quick word, he had to try to explain himself. “I just want to make sure the town is safe.”
The explanation sounded false, too. Alauda didn’t challenge him about it. Who was she—a barmaid, a whim, a toy—to challenge a king? No one, and she had sense enough to know it. But she also had the sense to hear that Grus wasn’t telling her the truth, or all of the truth. No, she said not a thing, but her eyes showed her hurt.
When they made love that night, she rode Grus with a fierce desperation she’d never shown before. Maybe she sensed he worried more about someone inside Pelagonia than about the city itself. Was she trying to show him he needed to worry about her, too? After the day’s travel and after that ferocious coupling, Grus worried about nothing and nobody, but plunged headlong into sleep, one arm still around Alauda.
He almost died before dawn, with no chance to worry about Alauda or Alca or, for that matter, Estrilda. The Menteshe often shied away from stand-up fights, yes. But a night attack, an assault that caught their enemies by surprise, was a different story.
Their wizards must have found some way to fuddle the sentries, for the Avornans knew nothing of their onslaught until moments before it broke upon them. They would have been caught altogether unaware if Pterocles hadn’t started up from his pallet, shouting, “Danger! Danger!” By the confused shock in his voice, he didn’t even know what sort of danger it was, only that it was real and it was close.
His cry woke Grus. The king’s dreams had been of anything but danger. When he woke, one of Alauda’s breasts filled his hand. He’d known that even in his sleep, and it had colored and heated his imaginings.
Now… now, along with the wizard’s shouts of alarm, he heard the oncoming thunder of hoofbeats and harsh war cries in a language not Avornan. Cursing, he realized at least some of what must have happened. He threw on drawers, jammed a helmet down on his head, seized sword and shield, and ran, otherwise naked, from the tent.
“Out!” Grus shouted at the top of his lungs. “Out and fight! Quick, before they kill you all!”
Soldiers started spilling from their tents. In the crimson light of the dying campfires, they might have been dipped in blood. Many of them were as erratically armed and armored as the king himself—this one had a sword, that one a mailshirt, the other a shield, another a bow.
They were a poor lot to try to stop the rampaging Menteshe. And yet the nomads seemed to have looked for no opposition whatever. They cried out in surprise and alarm when Avornans rushed forward to slash at them, to pull them from their horses, and to shoot arrows at them. They’d been looking to murder Grus’ soldiers in their tents, to take them altogether unawares. Whatever happened, that wouldn’t. More and more Avornans streamed into the fight, these more fully armed than the first few.
One of Prince Ulash’s men reined in right in front of Grus. The nomad stared around, looking for foes on horseback. He found none—? and had no idea Grus was there until the king yanked him out of the saddle. He had time for one startled squawk before landing in a camp-fire. He didn’t squawk after that. He shrieked. The fire was dying, but not yet dead. And the coals flared to new life when he crashed down on them.
As for Grus, he sprang into the saddle without even thinking about how little he cared for horses and horsemanship. The pony under him bucked at the sudden change of riders. He cuffed it into submission, yelling, “Avornis! Avornis! To me, men! We can beat these cursed raiders!”
