The Scepter's Return (15 page)

“Mrowr,” Pouncer said again. The moncat's yawn displayed a mouthful of needle teeth. It also declared that the idea of being a person struck Pouncer as imperfectly delightful.

Laughing, Lanius said, “He's got us to wait on him hand and foot. That must be how he sees it, anyway. And why wouldn't he? What do we do except give him things he likes to eat?”

“He has to perform for them,” Collurio said.

“He probably thinks he has us trained, not the other way around. And who's to say he's wrong?” Lanius scratched Pouncer by the side of the jaw. The moncat rewarded him with a scratchy purr.

Collurio gave him a curious look. “Trainers say things like that all the time, Your Majesty. ‘Oh, yes, that dog's taught me what I need to know,' they'll say, and then they'll laugh to show they don't really mean it—even when they do. But I've never heard anyone outside the trade talk that way before.”

Astonishment spread over his face when Lanius bowed to him. “I thank you. I thank you very much, in fact,” the king said. “You just paid me a great compliment.”

“Your Majesty?” Now Collurio was frankly floundering.

“I'm nothing but an amateur, a hobbyist, at training animals, but you told me I talk like someone who makes a living at it,” Lanius explained. “If that's not a compliment, what is?”

“Oh.” Collurio's chuckle had a sharp edge to it. “I see what you're saying. Meaning no offense, but you wouldn't seem so proud of sounding like an animal trainer if you really were one.”

“Maybe not, but you never know,” Lanius said. “It's honest work. It has to be. The animals are out there on display. Either they'll do what you taught them or they cursed well won't.”

“There are always times when they cursed well won't,” Collurio said. “Nobody likes times like that, but everybody has 'em. Anybody who tries telling you anything different is a liar. Those are the days when you go home telling your dogs that they don't know a sheep from a wolf and your cats that they belong in rabbit stew.”

That puzzled Lanius. “Why would a cat go in rabbit stew?”

This time, Cullurio bowed low to him. “There is a question a king would ask. When you tell your cooks you feel like rabbit stew, you're sure you'll get real rabbit. Anyone else, unless he's caught his bunnies himself—and cooked them himself, too—is liable to wonder whether he's eating roof rabbit instead.”

“Roof rab—? Oh!” Lanius had always been fond of a good, spicy rabbit stew. Now he wondered how many times his rabbit would have meowed. Collurio had exaggerated notions about how much a king could influence his cooks. The crew in the kitchens might well laugh behind their hands at the notion of fooling their sovereign. “I don't know that I'm ever going to think about eating rabbit the same way again.”

“I'm sorry, Your Majesty,” Collurio said.

“Don't be. Having something new to think about is always interesting.” Lanius scratched Pouncer again. “You wouldn't care one way or the other, would you? It's all meat, as far as you're concerned.”

“Mrowr.” To Pouncer, that was the only possible answer.

“Do you think he can learn … what I want him to learn?” Lanius asked Collurio. He didn't care to speak too directly. No telling who might be listening, even if no ordinary mortal was in earshot.

The trainer said, “He's clever enough, no doubt of that.” Pouncer chose that moment to yawn, which made both men laugh. “Yes, he's clever enough, but he's a cat, all right,” Collurio went on. “Whether he cares enough—ah, that's another question.” Lanius eyed Pouncer. Could the fate of a kingdom rest on whether a moncat cared enough? He feared it could.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Another river to cross. Grus looked over to the southern bank, which stood higher than the one he was on. Menteshe horsemen in some numbers trotted back and forth not far from the water. Every now and then, one of them would draw his bow and shoot an arrow at the Avornan army. Grus' archers shot back, but most of their arrows fell in the river. The nomads' bows outranged theirs.

How many Menteshe am I
not
seeing?
Grus wondered. He asked Hirundo, “What do you think about making a crossing here?”

The general looked south, too. “If there are a whole lot more Menteshe than the ones we can see, I think I'd rather not.”

That came unpleasantly close to echoing Grus' thoughts. Even so, he said, “We can't very well stop where we are.”

“I know,” Hirundo said unhappily. “If we can keep them busy in front of us and sneak a detachment over the river either upstream or down-, that might do the trick. We try swarming straight across, they'll bloody us.”

He wasn't wrong. Grus wished he were. The king said, “If that's nothing but a cavalry screen, the Menteshe will laugh at us for wasting time and effort.”

“No doubt,” Hirundo agreed. “But if it's not and we crash into their main force headlong, they'll laugh at that, too. They'll spend years laughing at it, as a matter of fact.”

“Maybe Pterocles can tell us how many of them there are,” Grus said.

“Maybe.” Hirundo didn't sound completely convinced.

Since Grus wasn't completely convinced, either, he couldn't blame his general for seeming dubious. He summoned the wizard anyway, and told him what he wanted. Pterocles peered across the river. “I can try, Your Majesty,” he said at last. “Numbers are fairly easy to hide sorcerously, though. Have you thought of sneaking a few freed thralls across the river to look around? The nomads aren't likely to pay much attention to them, and they can see how things are and come back.”

Grus hadn't thought of any such thing. By the flabbergasted look on Hirundo's face, neither had he. He said, “Maybe you ought to promote him to general, Your Majesty. You can put me out to pasture, and I'll just stand around chewing my cud.” He worked his jaw from side to side in uncanny imitation of a cow.

“I don't want to be a general! I'd have to tell other people what to do.” Pterocles spoke in obvious and obviously genuine horror.

“Some people would say that's one of the attractions of the job,” Grus remarked. By the way the wizard shook his head, he was not one of those people. Grus said, “Well, we will try that.”

“Don't waste time before you do,” Hirundo said. “Even if there aren't a lot of Menteshe over there now, more and more of them will come up the longer we wait.” That also struck Grus as sage advice.

Avornan wizards had lifted the dark sorcery from the men and woman of a village not far from the river. The thralls there were so newly free, they still remained filthy and shaggy. They weren't the same as they had been, though; they were recognizably people, which they hadn't been before. Their eyes had light in them, not the usual bovine dullness.

That worried Grus. Would the Menteshe notice the difference? Thralls clamored to volunteer. Picking and choosing among them was the biggest problem. Not all of them had words enough to do a good job of reporting what they saw. They would soon; as Grus had seen with Otus, they soaked them up even faster than children did. But many of them hadn't yet.

Women were as eager as men to spy on the nomads. Grus hesitated before sending any of them over the river. The Menteshe were in the habit of doing whatever they pleased with women from among the thralls. Male thralls were too sunk in darkness and too terrorized to fight them, and female thralls, ensorceled as they were, hardly seemed to care. But it would be different for someone who was fully awake, fully alive.

“One more time? So what?” one of the women said. “They do us, now we do them, too.” She gestured to show what she meant, in case the king hadn't understood her. But he had. And he did send her over the river.

She came back, too. So did both the men Grus sent with her. One of them said, “Not many Menteshe. Like this.” He opened and closed his hands a few times. “Not like this.” Now he opened and closed them many times. The other man and the woman both nodded.

Grus still had to decide whether he believed them. If the Banished One held some control over them even now, this would be a good time for him to use it. He could badly hurt the Avornans if they ran into more nomads than they expected while crossing the river. He could … if he held some control over them even now.

But if he did, then everything the Avornans tried south of the Stura was bound to fail anyhow. Grus refused to believe it. His refusal, of course, might prove one of the last thoughts he ever had while still in possession of his mind and will. He knew as much. He gave the orders anyway.

The Avornans demonstrated downstream from where they'd encamped. A few riders crossed the river. Many soldiers looked as though they were getting ready to cross. The Menteshe galloped west to try to head them off—and most of the Avornans went over the river upstream from their camp. They rolled down on the nomads, scattered them, and drove them off in flight.

Grus gave a golden ring to each of the thralls who'd gone across to spy on the Menteshe. The two men had learned enough by then to bow low in thanks. That woman sent him a smoldering smile. She was awake and fully herself, but she hadn't yet figured out how to hide for politeness' sake what she had in mind.

She was pretty, and shapely, too. Once she was cleaned up, she would turn heads anywhere. All the same, Grus pretended not to notice the way she looked at him. Taking her to bed would be almost as bad, almost as unfair, as bedding a woman who remained a thrall. She needed time to figure out who and what she was. Once she'd done that …
Once she's done that, I'll be far away,
Grus thought.
Probably just as well, too, for both of us.

She didn't try to hide her disappointment, either, or her annoyance. Grus also pretended not to notice those. He had other things on his mind. Maybe the Banished One was biding his time with the thralls. It was either that or the Avornan sorcerers really were taking them out of the exiled god's control. Little by little, Grus began to believe it.

Ortalis came up to Lanius in a palace corridor with an odd expression on his face. Grus' legitimate son seemed to be trying to look friendly, but he wasn't having a whole lot of luck. At least he didn't look as though he wanted to pummel Lanius, the way he had ever since they quarreled.

“Good morning,” Lanius said. He'd never given up being polite to Ortalis. As far as he was concerned, the quarrel was all inside his brother-in-law's mind, such as that was.

“Good morning.” Ortalis sounded as grudging as he looked. But he went on making an effort, saying, “How are you today?”

“Pretty well, thanks.” Lanius pointed out the window. The view showed flowers in the palace garden, bright blue sky, and puffy white clouds drifting along on a lazy breeze. “Nice weather we're having, isn't it?”

“I suppose so.” By the way Ortalis said it, he hadn't even thought about the weather until Lanius brought it up. Again, though, he tried to hold up his end of things. “Not too hot. Not too cold. Just right.”

It wasn't scintillating conversation, but it was conversation—more than Lanius had had from Ortalis for quite a while. Out in the garden, a sparrow chirped. A jay let out a couple of raucous screeches from a tree not far away. Lanius said, “Good to have all the birds back from the south.”

“That's true.” Now Ortalis showed some enthusiasm, even if it wasn't of the sort Lanius might have chosen; he said, “Songbirds done up in a stew or baked in a pie with carrots and onions and peas are mighty tasty.”

“Well, so they are.” Lanius like songbirds in a pie, too. Even if he didn't, he wouldn't have contradicted his brother-in-law just then. He did say, “I like to hear them singing. It's one of the things that tell me spring is here, along with the sweet smells from the flowers.”

“Limosa likes flowers, too.” Ortalis might have announced that his wife liked Thervingian poetry—to him, it was obviously her eccentricity. “Some of them do have nice colors,” he allowed, as though he'd learned a few words of Thervingian himself to humor her.

“Yes, they do.” Lanius enjoyed the poppies and roses and bluebells. He eyed Ortalis, wondering as he often did what went on in his brother-in-law's head. He sometimes thought he was better off not knowing. But, if Ortalis was working hard to act civilized, the least he could do himself was keep matching Grus' son. And so he asked once more, “How
are
you today?”

“I'm … not too bad.” Ortalis hesitated, then went on, “Anser had a few things to say to me.”

“Did he?” Lanius worked hard to keep his tone neutral. He didn't want Ortalis to know that had been his idea.

His brother-in-law nodded. “He did. He said he knew why the two of us squabbled. He said the whole palace knew about it. I don't much fancy that.”

“Not a whole lot we can do about it now,” Lanius said. There would have been a lot less palace gossip if Ortalis' tastes hadn't run to the whip. Telling him so was unlikely to change those tastes, worse luck.

“I suppose not.” Ortalis didn't seem convinced. He never believed anything could be his fault, even in a small way. The only exception to that rule that Lanius had ever seen came when his brother-in-law went hunting. If Ortalis missed a shot, he laughed and joked about it the way a miller or a leather worker would have. But he was different in many regards when he went hunting.

“Well … any which way, I'm glad you're not angry anymore,” Lanius said.

The corners of Ortalis' mouth turned down. Pretty plainly, he
was
still angry. Lanius hadn't really thought he wasn't. But Grus' legitimate son nodded a moment later. “Not worth making a big fuss about,” he said. Coming from him, that was the height of graciousness.

Lanius nodded, acknowledging as much. “I don't think it is, either,” he said, and held out his hand.