The Chernagor Pirates

and far-seeing enough to sacrifice a pair of thralls to leave his opponents thinking they’d gained an advantage they didn’t really have? Again, probably. And so… bodyguards.

Lanius asked, “Do you really think we could free a lot of thralls using the spells that freed you?” Otus was the only one here who knew from the inside out what being a thrall was like. If his answer couldn’t be fully trusted, it had to be considered.

“I sure hope so, Your Majesty,” Otus answered. Then he grinned sheepishly. “But that wasn’t what you asked, was it?”

“Well, no,” Lanius admitted.

Otus screwed up his face into a parody of deep thought. He finally shrugged and said, “I do think so. If it freed me, I expect it could free anybody. I’m nothing special.”

“You are now,” Lanius told him. Otus laughed. The king was right. But the former thrall also had a point. The longer he was free, the more ordinary he seemed. These days, he sounded like anyone else—anyone from the south, for he did keep his accent. When first coming out of the shadows, he’d had only a thrall’s handful of words, and wouldn’t have known what to do with more if he had owned them. He truly must be cured, Lanius thought, but then, doubtfully, mustn’t he?

Beloyuz came up to King Grus. He pointed toward the walls of Nishevatz. Bowing, the Chernagor nobleman —the Chernagor whom Grus now styled Prince of Nishevatz—asked, “Your Majesty, how long is this army going to do nothing but sit in front of my city-state?”

Grus almost laughed in his face. He had to gnaw on the inside of his lower lip to keep from doing just that. Call Beloyuz the Prince of Nishevatz, and what did he do? Why, he started sounding just like Prince Vsevolod. After a few heartbeats, when Grus was sure he wouldn’t say anything outrageous or scandalous, he answered, “Well, Your Highness, we are working on that. We’re not ready to move yet, but we are working on it.”

He waited to see if that would satisfy Beloyuz. The Chernagor frowned. He didn’t look as glum or disgusted as Vsevolod would have, but he didn’t miss by much, either. Suspicion clogging his voice, he said, “You are not just telling me this to make me go away and leave you alone?”

“By King Olor’s beard, Your Highness, I am not,” Grus said.

Now Beloyuz didn’t answer for a little while. “All right,” he said when he did speak. “I believe you. For now, I believe you.” He bowed to Grus once more and strode away.

With a sigh, Grus walked down to the seashore. Guards flanked him. His shadow stretched out before him. It was longer than it would have been at high summer, and got longer still every day. He understood Beloyuzs worries, for the campaigning season was slipping away like grains of sand through an hourglass. If Nishevatz didn’t fall on its own soon, he would have to move against it—either move, or try to press on with the siege through the winter, or give up and go back to Avornis. They were all unappetizing choices.

The weather was as fine as he’d ever seen it up here in the north. He muttered a curse at that, tasting the irony of it. He hadn’t been lying to Beloyuz. He and Hirundo kept waiting for one of the famous fogs of the land of the Chernagors to come rolling in to conceal an attack on the walls. They waited and waited, while bright, clear day followed bright, clear day. The Chernagor country would have been a much more pleasant place if its summer days were like this all the time. Even so, Grus would gladly have traded this weather for the more usual murk.

Shorebirds skittered along the beach. Some of them, little balls of gray and white fluff, scooted on short legs right at the edge of the lapping sea. They would poke their beaks down into the sandy mud, every now and then coming away with a prize. Others, larger, waded on legs that made them look as though they were on stilts. Those had longer bills, too, some straight, some drooping down, and some, curiously, curving up.

Grus eyed those last birds and scratched his head, wondering what a bill like that could be good for. He saw no use for it, but supposed it had to have some, or the wading birds would have looked different.

Thanks to the clear weather, he could see a long way when he looked out to the Northern Sea. He spied none of the great ships the other Chernagor city-states had sent during the last siege of Nishevatz. They still feared Pterocles’ sorcery.

That left Nishevatz to its own devices. Grus turned toward the gray stone walls that had defied his army for so long. They remained as sturdy as ever. Small in the distance, men moved along them. The Chernagors’ armor glinted in the unusually bright sunshine. How hard would Vasilko’s soldiers fight if he assailed those walls? He scowled. No sure way to know ahead of time. He would have to find out by experiment.

Not today, Grus thought. Today the Chernagors could see whatever he did, just as he could watch them. If one of the swaddling fogs this coast could breed ever came… then, maybe. But no, not today.

He and his guards weren’t the only men walking up the beach. That lean, angular shape could only belong to Pterocles. The wizard waved as he approached. “Good day, Your Majesty,” he called.

“Too good a day, maybe,” Grus answered. “We could do with a spell of worse weather, if you want to know the truth.”

Pterocles only shrugged. “Beware of any man who calls himself a weatherworker. He’s lying. No man can do much with the weather. It’s too big for a mere man to change. The Banished One… the Banished One is another story.”

Grus suddenly saw the cloudless sky in a whole new light. “Are you saying the Banished One is to blame for this weather?” That gave him a different and more urgent reason for wanting fog.

And his question worried Pterocles. “No, I don’t think so,” the wizard answered after a long pause. “I believe I would feel it if he were meddling with the weather, and I don’t. But he could, if he chose to. An ordinary sorcerer? No.”

“All right. That eases my mind a bit.” Grus turned and looked toward the south. His mind’s eye leaped across the land of the Chernagors and across all of Avornis to the Menteshe country south of the Stura River. By all the dispatches that came up from Avornis, Sanjar and Korkut were still clawing away at each other. The princes to either side of what had been Ulash’s realm were still tearing meat off its bones, too. By all the signs, the Banished One’s attention remained focused on the strife among the people who had chosen him for their overlord.

They aren’t thralls, though. They’re men, Grus thought. They might be the Banished One’s servants, but they weren’t his mindless puppets, weren’t his slaves. They worshiped him, but they had their own concerns, their own interests, as well. And, for the moment, those counted for more among them.

That had to infuriate the exiled god. So far, though, the Menteshe seemed to be doing as they pleased in their wars, not as the Banished One would have commanded. His eyes on them, he forgot about Nishevatz, about Vasilko.

“If the Menteshe make peace, or if one of them wins outright…” Grus began.

Pterocles nodded, following his thought perfectly. “If that happens, the Banished One could well look this way again.”

“Frightening to think we depend on strife among our foes,” Grus said.

“At least we have it,” Pterocles replied. “And since we have it, we’d better make the most of it.”

“We will,” Grus said. “I don’t think we’re going to starve them out before we start running low on food ourselves. I hoped we would, but it doesn’t look that way. If we want Nishevatz, we’ll have to take it. I intend to try to take it. But I need fog, to let me move men forward without being seen.”

“If I could give it to you, I would,” Pterocles said. “Since I can’t, I’ll hope with you that it comes soon.”

“When I didn’t want them, we had plenty of fogs,” Grus said. “Now that I do, what do we get? Weather the city of Avornis wouldn’t be ashamed of. The best weather I’ve ever seen in the Chernagor country, by the gods— the best, and the worst.”

“The gods can give you fog, if they will,” Pterocles said.

“Yes. If they will.” Grus said no more than that. If the Banished One had power over wind and weather, surely the gods in the heavens did, too. Come on, Grus thought in their direction. It wasn’t a prayer—more like an annoyed nudge. You can make things harder for the Banished One.

Were they listening? Grus laughed at himself. How could he tell? If they didn’t pay some attention to it,