The Scepter's Return (39 page)

Anser put an arrow into it, then another and another. Lanius nocked a shaft and let fly, too. This time, he wasn't trying to miss. Anything to make that bellowing, sharp-toothed horror lie down and never move again!

Blood ran from the boar's mouth. The flow choked its bellows. Slowly, struggling to the end, it yielded to death.

“Olor's beard!” Anser exclaimed. “That was more exciting than I really wanted.”

“I should say so,” Lanius agreed shakily. “Why would anyone want to hunt a monster like that?” He turned to the guardsman the boar had savaged. He wasn't sure he wanted to look at what the animal had done to the man, but the guard was sitting up and getting to his feet. “Are you all right?” Lanius asked in amazement.

“A little trampled, Your Majesty, but not too bad,” the guardsman answered. “The mailshirt kept him from opening me up.”

“Let's see your beaters say that about the leather they wear,” Lanius told Anser.

“They can't,” the arch-hallow admitted. “I'm glad the guardsmen managed to slow that beast down. The miserable thing was coming right at you.”

Lanius had noticed that, too. “Yes, it was, wasn't it?” he said, as calmly as he could. Was the Banished One able to take over a boar's mind the way he could take over a thrall's mind? Had he used this boar as a weapon against someone who was giving him trouble?
Or is my imagination running away with me?
Lanius wondered. He doubted he would ever know.

I hope I'm giving the Banished One trouble, anyhow,
he thought, and wondered if he would ever know the answer to that.

“Another river to cross,” Grus said, staring across a stream shrunken in the summer drought. A few Menteshe rode back and forth on the other side, not far from the southern bank. Right now, the river wasn't anywhere close to a bowshot wide. The nomads stayed out of range of Avornan archers.

Hirundo looked across the river, too. “Now the question is, how many of those bastards
aren't
we seeing? How many of them are waiting somewhere not too far away to hit us when we cross?”

Grus shaded his eyes with the palm of his hand. “Doesn't look like country where you could hide anything much bigger than a dragonfly.” Several of them danced in the air above the river. They had blue bodies so bright they almost glowed and wings of a dusky brown. Grus didn't remember seeing any like them farther north.

The general nodded. “No, it doesn't,” he agreed. “But how much aren't we seeing? Do they have wizards hiding a forest—and a swarm of Menteshe inside it?”

“Good question,” Grus said, and shouted for Pterocles.

“You need something, Your Majesty?” the wizard asked.

“Who, me?” The king shook his head. “No, I was just yelling because I like to hear myself make noise.” Pterocles blinked, not sure what to make of such royal irony. Grus went on, “Are the Menteshe on the far side of the river using magic to hide an ambush?”

“Ah. Now that's an intriguing question, isn't it?” Pterocles said. “I'll see if I can find out.” Before, he hadn't seemed to care one way or the other what lay on the far side of the river. Now he looked over there with fresh interest. “Where would be the best place for them to hide their men, if they're doing that?”

“Hirundo?” Grus said. He had his own ideas, but the general knew—or was supposed to know—more about such things than he did.

Hirundo stroked his neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. “Well, I can't say for certain, mind,” he warned, and Grus and Pterocles both nodded. Hirundo pointed east. “If I were in charge of the Menteshe, that's where I'd put them. They can strike at our flank from a position like that, do us a lot of harm.”

“Why not the other flank?” Pterocles pointed west.

“Well, they could,” Hirundo said, “but that's not how I'd do it. The ground is better the other way. They'd be coming downhill at us—do you see?—not trying to climb. It makes a difference.”

“I suppose it would.” Pterocles plainly didn't see how.

Patient as a father teaching his son to swim, Hirundo said, “You want to have the ground with you if you can. Either mounted or on foot, a charge uphill is harder than the other kind. Arrows don't go as far when you're shooting them up a slope, either.”

“Oh.” Pterocles nodded, perhaps in wisdom. “All right.”

Grus, who agreed with his general, set a hand on the wizard's shoulder. “Every trade has its tricks and its secrets. Hirundo and I wouldn't have any idea what to do if we needed to cast a spell, but we've tried to learn a thing or two about soldiering.”

“All right,” Pterocles said again. “I'll take your word for it, then, and I'll stick to things I know a little something about myself.” He took from his belt pouch an amulet made from a brown, shiny stone pierced and penetrated by a duller, darker one. “Chalcedony and emery,” the wizard explained. “Together, they are proof against all manner of fantastical illusions.”

“Good,” Grus said. “But don't use them yet.” Pterocles, who had clutched the amulet and was about to start a spell, stopped in surprise. The king went on, “If you find there are trees there and the Menteshe are lurking in among them, or something like that, you ought to be able to make them sorry they ever decided to try to attack us.”

“I can try,” Pterocles said doubtfully.

Hirundo snapped his fingers. “What about that spell you used against the Chernagor ships that were trying to bring grain into Nishevatz? You know—the one where you set them on fire when they were still out on the ocean. If they're hiding in a forest or an olive grove, say, you could roast 'em easy as you please.”

“If roasting them were as easy as you make it sound, I wouldn't have any trouble—that's true enough.” Now Pterocles' voice was tart. He rummaged some more in his belt pouch, and finally pulled out a clear disk of rock crystal thicker at the center than the edges. “I can try that spell, anyhow,” he said. “One thing's sure—the sun is stronger here than it was up in the Chernagor country. I'll need some greenery—with luck, some twigs torn from trees—to work the spell if I turn out to need it.”

Grus sent some of his guardsmen off. They came back with olive branches, twigs from almond trees, and fragrant orange and lemon boughs. No doubt the thralls who watched them would be puzzled—if puzzlement could soak into the sorry wits of thralls. When Pterocles had the greenery piled in front of his feet, Grus said, “Now, if you please.”

“Certainly, Your Majesty.” The wizard had a knack for being most exasperating when he was most polite. He gave a bow that struck Grus as more sardonic than sincere, then clutched the amulet in his left hand and looked east and south. He pointed in that direction with his right forefinger. Grus wished he hadn't; any watching Menteshe would get a good idea of what he was doing. But maybe there was no help for it. The king kept quiet.

Pterocles began a chant that started softly but grew louder and more insistent as it went on. Grus peered in the direction of the wizard's outthrust forefinger. He waited to see if the landscape would change. If it did, he would deal with whatever the nomads were hiding. If it didn't … well, better safe than sorry.

He and Hirundo and Pterocles all exclaimed at the same time. The sere, dun, dry landscape on the far side of the river wavered and rippled, as though it were being seen through running water. And then, quite suddenly, an almond grove that hadn't been there—or hadn't seemed to be there—appeared out of nowhere. Menteshe horsemen—Grus couldn't see how many—waited in the shade of the trees. There were plenty to cause his army trouble; he was sure of that.

He got only a brief glimpse of the grove before it vanished again. A woman whose skirt was flipped up by the wind might have yanked it down again that fast, leaving him with only a memory of her legs. Sometimes a memory would do, though. “Use your spell now,” the king told Pterocles. “They know you've gotten through theirs.”

“I'm already doing it,” the wizard said. And, sure enough, he was separating almond twigs out of the greenery the guardsmen had set at his feet. “I hope the Menteshe don't have a counterspell handy. The Chernagors never did figure out what to do about this one, but the nomads have more worry about fire than the northerners did, because they live in a hot, dry country. Well, we'll see before long.”

He held the crystal disk perhaps a palm's breadth above the bits from the almond branches. A bright spot of sunlight—it almost seemed a miniature sun—sprang into being on a twig. Grus wondered what magic lay in the crystal to make it do such a thing. Whatever the cause, that bright spot of sunlight seemed hot as a miniature sun, too. Smoke rose from the twig. A moment later, it burst into flame.

Pterocles chanted and pointed, sending his fire where he wanted it to go. For some little while, nothing—or nothing visible—happened. Then the illusion on the far side of the river wavered again, wavered and winked out. Pterocles wasn't attacking it now, not directly. But the Menteshe sorcerers abandoned it because they had other things that needed their power more.

Smoke streamed up into the sky. The leafy tops of the almond trees were on fire. Even from that distance, Grus could hear the nomads' horses screaming in terror and panic. The Menteshe had no chance to keep their mounts under control, not with flames above their heads and burning leaves and branches falling down on them. The horses galloped off in all directions, carrying their riders with them.

Grus nudged Hirundo. “Get our men across the river now, before the nomads can pull themselves together.”

“Right.” The general started shouting orders.

Pterocles looked as happy as a six-year-old with a brand-new wooden sword. “They haven't got a counterspell for that one, either,” he said, grinning widely. “I always did think it was a pretty piece of magic, and it's done some good things for us.”

“I should say so.” Grus remembered tall-masted Chernagor ships catching fire out in the Northern Sea, where he could have reached them in no other way than through magic. He looked at the burning trees. Now he had another memory to go with that one. He slapped Pterocles on the back. “Nicely done.”

“I'll have to thank Hirundo when he's done yelling his head off,” Pterocles said. “That might not have occurred to me if he hadn't suggested it.”

“It seems to be working pretty well,” Grus said. “Hard on the almonds, but nothing we can do about that.”

Avornan soldiers formed a perimeter on the far bank of the river. A few Menteshe rode toward them, but only a few—not nearly enough to keep them from making the crossing. And, at Hirundo's orders, the Avornans had brought some stone- and dart-throwers over the river with them. The missiles they flung discouraged the nomads from getting too close. Before long, even the handful of Menteshe who'd tried to oppose Grus' army wheeled their horses and trotted away.

“We took care of that,” Pterocles said.

“They aren't gone for good,” Grus said. “They'll try to give us trouble somewhere else. But they won't give us trouble here, and that's what I was worried about.” He grinned at the wizard. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Your Majesty, and I mean every word of that,” Pterocles answered. “Every time we set another thrall village free, I'm getting some of my own back against …” He did not say the name, but looked south. Grus nodded, understanding whom he meant. Pterocles went on, “Every time I do something like this, I'm getting some back, too.”

“All of Avornis owes … him a lot,” Grus said. “If this campaign goes the way we hope, we'll get to pay a lot of it back. We'll have … something he's kept for a long time.”

If they got to Yozgat, if they got the Scepter of Mercy—what then? Grus didn't know, but oh, how he wanted to find out!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Yes, I'm going out to the country again,” Lanius said. Sosia's expression was dubious, to say the least. “You can't tell me you enjoy it there,” she said. “You can't, I mean, unless you've got someone there waiting for you.”

“I do,” he said, and her eyes flashed furiously. He held up a hand to hold back the lightning. “It's not a woman. You saw that the last time you were there. You can come again, whenever you please. Don't tell me ahead of time. I'm not worried about that. But I've got Collurio and Crinitus out there, and Pouncer, too.”

“That miserable moncat,” his wife said. “The way you talk about it, it might as well be a person.”

“One of these days, maybe, all Avornis will be talking about it,” Lanius said.

“What makes you think all Avornis isn't talking about it already?” Sosia paused to spoon up some breakfast porridge and sip from her cup of wine. “I know what Avornis is saying, too. ‘Why is the king spending so much money and wasting so much time on a dumb beast?' People can understand mistresses. But the moncat?” She shook her head.

“Pouncer is a beast, but he's a long way from dumb. People will see that, too,” Lanius said. He started to say even more, but held his tongue at the last moment. The Banished One had never stalked Sosia's dreams. He wouldn't have talked about Pouncer with Anser or Hirundo, either. Grus and Pterocles … understood.

Sosia didn't. “Well, go on, then. I can't stop you, but I don't like it, either.”

“It has nothing to do with you,” Lanius said, and he wasn't lying. “It's business of state, that's what it is.”

His wife sniffed. “Tell me another one. I wonder what a bricklayer or a candlemaker says when he wants to get away from his wife for a while.”

Lanius exhaled in exasperation. “Do you want to come with me? You can, if you care to.”

“No.” Sosia made a face.
“I
don't care for the country at all. I like it right where I am. You always liked it here, too. Is it any surprise I wonder what you're up to when you start doing things you don't usually do?”