The Scepter_s Return см-3 Read online

  But Strix shook his head. "No, or it doesn't seem that way, anyhow. We've followed their trails as best we could, and those trails just – stop. All three of 'em just – stop. No sign of the men. No sign of the horses, either."

  No wonder he looked worried. "Sounds like magic," Grus said, and heard the worry in his own voice, too.

  "That's what I thought. I sent for a wizard." A sour look on his face, Strix muttered something about a donkey-riding blunderer. Grus couldn't catch all of it, which was probably just as well. After a moment of fuming, the scout captain went on, "He couldn't tell that anything was wrong, not for sure." His expression got more sour still.

  "You don't believe that," Grus said.

  "Bet your balls I don't," Strix agreed. "People don't disappear for no reason at all. Horses especially don't disappear for no reason at all. Hard to take a horse and stuff it up your -" He broke off, not wanting to offend Grus' delicate ears.

  That he thought Grus' ears might be delicate only proved he'd never served on a war galley. "You're right," the king said. "Which wizard was this?"

  "A scrawny beggar named Anthreptes," Strix answered with a scornful wave of the hand.

  "Oh. Him." Grus said no more than that. He'd brought south the best sorcerers he could. He knew, though, that Anthreptes wasn't one of the best of the best. The man had been able to learn Pterocles' spell for taking the pall from thralls' minds. How much else he'd been able to learn in his career was much less obvious.

  "I thought about kicking some sense into his empty head. I thought about it, Your Majesty, but I didn't do it." Strix sounded mournfully proud of his own virtue. He did kick up a puff of dust; no rain had fallen here in the south for quite a while, and no more was likely to until autumn.

  "Would you like to find out what a real wizard thinks of this business?" Grus asked.

  "That might be nice," Strix said. "It's one of the reasons I came back here, as a matter of fact."

  "I'll see to it." Grus shouted for a runner. When one of the young men came up to him, he said, "Fetch Pterocles for me, if you please." The runner bowed and hurried off. He came back with the wizard a few minutes later. Pterocles gave Grus a curious look. The king told Strix, "Tell him what you just told me."

  Strix did, though he didn't name the sorcerer with whom he was dissatisfied. After hearing him out, Pterocles said, "I don't much like the sound of that."

  "Neither do I. Neither do my men," Strix said. "Don't much fancy the chance of vanishing off the face of the earth."

  "Can you work out what's really going on?" Grus asked.

  Pterocles shrugged. "I don't know. I can try." That only made Strix look unhappy again. Grus knew Pterocles better than the scout captain did. Unlike a lot of wizards, Pterocles didn't promise before he saw what he was promising. He had fewer broken promises to regret than a lot of wizards had.

  Night fell before Pterocles came back. Strix rode in with him. Challenges from sentries warned Grus they were approaching. The king got to his feet. Firelight didn't reach very far or tell very much. He saw the looming shapes of horse and mule, and of the men aboard them, but shadows swallowed their expressions.

  "What news?" Grus called.

  "Anthreptes is a gods-cursed imbecile. Maybe somebody ought to run the thrall-curing spell on him," Strix said. That wasn't exactly praise for Pterocles, but it came close enough.

  With a weary grunt, Pterocles slid down from his mule – it definitely came closer to that than to dismounting in the ordinary sense of the word. The wizard stretched, twisted, and rubbed his backside before saying, "That turned out to be more interesting than I wish it would have."

  "Did you figure it out?" Grus asked.

  "Finally, yes. Olor's beard, though, I could use something wet," Pterocles said. Grus waved to one of the servants who'd accompanied the royal pavilion south of the Stura. The man brought Pterocles a mug of wine. Pterocles bowed to him as deeply as though he were the king, exclaiming, "Oh, gods be praised!" He drained the mug at one long, blissful pull, then looked around expectantly.

  "I think our wizard could use another dose of the same medicine," Grus told the servant. Had Pterocles nodded any more eagerly, his head might have fallen off. Grus waited while he gulped the second mug of wine, then said, "All right – you figured it out. What was it?"

  "It was a cloaking spell masquerading as a transposition spell."

  "Was it?" Grus said. Pterocles nodded again, this time in solemn agreement. Grus went on, "Uh – what exactly does that mean?"

  "It means the Menteshe sorcerers wanted us to think they snatched the scouts off to gods know where. They didn't. They didn't." Pterocles blinked, realizing he'd repeated himself. "Oh, I said that already. Oh, I -" He broke off. "What they did do, or the nomads with them, was ambush our men and then hide their bodies – and the dead horses, too – with magic. They counted on that to make us worry."

  "They got what they wanted," Strix put in.

  "Didn't they?" Grus remembered his own alarm. "I was wondering whether the Menteshe or… someone else could snatch people out of our army whenever they wanted to. That wouldn't have been very good."

  "Not hardly," Strix agreed.

  "That musht – must – be what they wanted," Pterocles said. "If we were all running around trying to protect ourselves from an imaginary danger, we wouldn't have worried about the real dangers in this country. And there are, oh, just a few of those."

  "Are there? I hadn't noticed," Grus said. Strix laughed raucously. Pterocles giggled. The king eyed him. "I hadn't thought being drunk and disorderly was one of them."

  Pterocles bowed and almost fell over. Straightening, he said, "Your Majesty, I am not disorderly."

  Strix laughed again. So did Grus. He said, "Well, no more than usual, anyway. Why don't you go to bed? In the morning, you can be sober and disorderly." After another imperfectly graceful bow, the wizard lurched out of the firelight and off toward his tent. Grus turned to Strix. "Happier now?"

  "A bit." The guard captain followed Pterocles' irregular path with his eyes. "You were right, Your Majesty. He does know what he's doing. Makes that other fellow look even more like an idiot than he did already."

  Grus shrugged. "Some men are smarter than others. Some men are braver than others. Some men are better wizards than others. You can use men who aren't the smartest or the bravest. Wizards who aren't the very best have their uses, too."

  Strix chewed on that, then reluctantly nodded. "I suppose so," he said, and then, "I know what I'd use him for, by the gods."

  Grus had a pretty good idea of that himself. He said, "Well, but once you did, I wouldn't be able to use him for anything anymore." Strix chuckled. He hadn't been joking, though, and neither had the king.

  Ortalis seemed to imagine that Lanius had offended him. That offended Lanius. As far as he could see, he'd done nothing but tell his brother-in-law the truth. Whom could the truth offend? Only a fool. So it looked to the younger king, anyhow.

  It must have looked different to Ortalis. He stubbornly stayed away from meals with Lanius and Sosia. That meant Limosa stayed away, too. Lanius regretted her absence more than Ortalis', for she was usually better company. When Grus' legitimate son couldn't avoid Lanius – when they passed in a hallway, for instance – he would give as curt a nod as he could get away with and go on with a scowl darkening his face.

  Sosia only threw up her hands when Lanius complained. "He's been hard and harsh for as long as I can remember," she said. "You're not telling me anything I don't know. If you want to throw him in a dungeon for lese-majeste, go ahead. I won't say a word. It might even teach him something." By the way her mouth twisted, she didn't think it would.

  Lanius had just promised Tinamus he wouldn't be punished for lese-majeste no matter what he did. He didn't expect the architect to do anything that deserved punishment, where Ortalis' expression indicted him half a dozen times a day. All the same… "The only thing he'd learn in a dungeon was how to hate me forever. Sooner o
r later, he'll get over this. If nothing else works, Limosa will bring him around."

  "Maybe." Sosia's mouth twisted again, as though she'd tasted something sour. She liked Limosa less than Lanius did. To her, Ortalis' wife was more a threat than a person. If Limosa gave Ortalis a son, Ortalis would think the succession passed through him alone. Grus might even think the same thing. Ortalis' opinion didn't matter so much. Grus' mattered overwhelmingly. Sosia went on, "If you want to send Ortalis to the Maze, I won't say a word about that, either."

  "I can get away with more and more these days," Lanius said. "Your father's stopped thinking I'll try to overthrow him whenever he turns his back. But if I did that, there would never be peace between us again. No matter what I think, no matter what you think, Ortalis matters to him. And…" He didn't want to go on or to admit what came next even to himself. But he did. "And if we quarrel with each other, I'll lose, curse it. He's better at such things than I am."

  He paused again, hoping his wife would tell him he was wrong. But Sosia only sighed and said, "You're better than you used to be."

  He could have directly confronted Ortalis. That was not his way, though. It never had been. He wouldn't have said even as much as he had if he hadn't been worried for the child Limosa carried.

  Instead of bearding his brother-in-law, then, he called on Anser in his residence by the grand cathedral. Anser got along with everybody. Maybe he could find a way for Lanius and Ortalis to get along with each other.

  A forest of antlers decorated the walls of Anser's study – antlers from stags he'd slain himself. Lanius wondered what Anser's predecessors as arch-hallow would have thought of that. Some of them had been saints, some scholars, some statesmen, even a few scoundrels. The king didn't think any of them had taken his chief pride in his skill with the bow.

  Anser wore the arch-hallow's red robe as casually as though it were a greengrocer's tunic and breeches. He took his title more lightly than any of the men who'd gone before him, too. He neither was nor wanted to be a theologian. All he was doing as arch-hallow was making sure the priesthood caused King Grus no trouble. That, Lanius had to admit, he did pretty well.

  A smile of what looked like and surely was real pleasure spread over Anser's face when Lanius walked in. "Your Majesty!" he exclaimed. Laughing, he bowed himself almost double. He didn't need to do that; he came as close to being a genuine friend as a king could have. But he didn't do it because he had to. He did it because he felt like it, which made the gesture very different from what it would have been otherwise.

  He made Lanius laugh, too, which wasn't always easy. "Good to see you, by the gods," Lanius said.

  "Let me fetch you some wine. That'll make it better yet." Anser bustled off. He came back with a jug and two mismatched cups, for all the world like any bachelor who didn't ever bother pretending to be a fussy housekeeper.

  Lanius sipped appreciatively. "I tell you," he said, "I'm tempted to take that whole jug and pour it down my throat."

  "Go ahead, if you want to. Plenty more where it came from." Anser didn't have a whole lot of use for fighting temptation. He was more apt to yield to it. After a moment, though, he realized Lanius seldom talked that way. He pointed a finger at the king. "Something's on your mind, isn't it?" By the way he said it, he might have feared Lanius was suffering from a dangerous disease.

  "Afraid so," the king replied, and poured out the story of his trouble with Ortalis.

  "You really do need the rest of the jug, don't you?" Anser said when he was done.

  "I don't know that I need it. But I want it." Lanius wondered whether Anser recognized the difference. A glance at all those antlers made him doubt it. Sighing, he went on, "I didn't intend to quarrel with him, but then – "

  "It's easy enough to quarrel with Ortalis even when you don't intend to," the arch-hallow finished for him.

  That wasn't what Lanius had been about to say, which made it no less true. He said, "All I wanted to do was make sure nothing bad happened to Limosa."

  "No matter how much she might enjoy it," Anser murmured.

  Lanius had been finishing the cup of wine. He almost choked at that. Anser was in dangerous form this morning. "I was thinking of the baby," Lanius said carefully.

  "Well, of course you were," Anser said. That couldn't be anything but polite agreement… could it?

  Wondering too much would only make matters worse, Lanius decided. He said, "I was hoping you could help persuade Ortalis I didn't mean to offend him. I was only trying to do his whole family a good turn."

  "What's that saying about getting punished for your good deeds and not for your bad ones?" Anser clucked sympathetically. Then he did something more practical – he refilled Lanius' winecup. Lanius drank without hesitation; no, he wouldn't have minded getting drunk by then, not at all. The arch-hallow poured his own mug full again, too. After a sip, he went on, "I'll do what I can, Your Majesty, but I don't know how much that'll be."

  "I understand. Believe me, I understand," Lanius said. "When Ortalis gets an idea into his head, he – " He stopped so hard, he almost bit his tongue. What had almost come out of his mouth was he beats it to death. It wouldn't have been anything but a figure of speech, but it would have been a disastrous one here.

  "Yes, he does, doesn't he?" Anser said. Maybe he was just responding to the pause. Lanius dared hope. The other choice was that Anser knew exactly what he hadn't said, which would be almost as embarrassing as though he'd actually said it. He can't prove that was what I meant, Lanius thought. Anser, who didn't need to prove a thing, continued, "I'll try. I said I would, and I will. We don't need this kind of foolishness in the palace when we're fighting the Menteshe, too."

  "You've got good sense," Lanius said gratefully.

  "A whole fat lot of good it's liable to do me here, too," the arch-hallow replied with a wry grin. Knowing that also showed he had good sense. He added, "You do pretty well that way yourself, Your Majesty. Ortalis, though, once he gets angry, everything else flies out of his head."

  Again, he wasn't wrong. Lanius took a long pull at his wine. "I don't expect miracles," he said. "Miracles are for the gods, not for us. Do what you can, and I'll be glad of it no matter what it is."

  "Thanks. The family ought to stick together. And we – " Now Anser was the one who broke off in a hurry.

  Lanius wondered why. Then, all at once, he didn't. Had Anser swallowed something like, We bastards ought to stick together, too? Lanius didn't, wouldn't, think of himself as a bastard, but Anser really was one. Did he ever wonder if he might have been in line for the throne had his birth turned out different? He'd hardly be human if he didn't. But he wasn't – he never had been – a jealous man, which was probably all to the good. Lanius would have been furious at almost anyone who suggested he might not be legitimate. But how could he get angry at Anser, who really wasn't?

  "By Olor's prong, we should, shouldn't we?" Lanius said.

  If he'd talked about some other part of Olor's anatomy, Anser might not have been sure he'd filled in what the arch-hallow hadn't said. As things were, Anser turned red as a modest maiden hearing her beauty praised for the first time. "I meant no offense, Your Majesty," he mumbled.

  "I took none," Lanius said quickly. "And I thank you very much for trying to talk to Ortalis. If he'll listen to anybody, he'll listen to you."

  "Yes," Anser said with a nod. "If."

  When the Avornan army stopped for the evening south of the Stura, Hirundo always threw out sentries all around it. Whenever he found the chance, he had the men run up a rampart around the encampment, too, made up of whatever timber or stones and rubble they could get their hands on. They sometimes grumbled. Hirundo took no notice of that, not where they could hear.

  "I know it's not the strongest defense, and I know it's work nobody likes to do," he said to Grus on an evening when the complaints were louder than usual. "But it's better than nothing, and it'll slow the nomads down, maybe even throw 'em into confusion, if they try hitting us at nigh
t."

  "You're right. You couldn't be lighter," Grus said. "Do you want me to say a few words – or more than a few words – to the soldiers about that?"

  Hirundo shook his head. "I think that would make things worse, not better. They're following orders. They just don't like them very much. If you start fussing about it, they're liable to decide they have to have their own way no matter what. That's how mutinies start."

  "All right. You know best." Grus thought for a little while, then slowly nodded. "Yes, if I had grumbling sailors to deal with, I'd probably handle them the same way. As long as they don't think you think something's worth pitching a fit about, they won't get too excited themselves."

  "That's it exactly," Hirundo agreed. "They need to be worrying about the Menteshe, not about earthworks and such. This should just be part of routine. And it is, pretty much. It's a part they don't care for, that's all."

  "All sorts of things down here I don't care for." Grus looked back toward the north. "One of them is that we aren't getting as many wagonloads of supplies as I hoped we would."

  Hirundo looked unhappy. The lamplight inside Grus' pavilion deepened the shadows in his wrinkles and made him seem even less pleased than he would have in the daytime. "Miserable nomads have been raiding the wagon trains. They've decided they can make trouble for us that way without meeting our main force face-to-face, strength to strength."

  "And they're right, too, curse them," Grus said. Hirundo didn't deny it. Grus hadn't thought he would. The king asked, "What can we do about it?"

  "We're doing what we can," Hirundo answered. "We've got solid guard parties going with the wagons. If they were any stronger, we'd start weakening the army here. We've built a line of real strongpoints back to the Stura. All of that only helps so much. The Menteshe get to pick and choose where they'll hit us. That gives them the edge."