“Oh, by the gods!” he said in a low voice. Things down in the south had been a lot more chaotic in the old days than they were now. When Avornis and the Menteshe weren’t fighting these days, they traded across the border. The Menteshe princes, though, made sure Avornans didn’t go too far south of the frontier, while Avornans, fearing each nomad as the Banished One’s eyes and ears, refused to let any Menteshe come very far north.
Once upon a time, it hadn’t been like that. The fellow whose report Lanius was reading had gotten all the way down to Yozgat, where the Menteshe stowed away the Scepter of Mercy after capturing it from Avornis. That truly amazed Lanius. He hadn’t had the faintest idea any Avornan had set eyes on it from the day the Menteshe took it till now. Yet here was a detailed description of the building where the nomads kept the Scepter. The explorer wrote:
Were it within the bounds of our own realm, I should without hesitation style it a cathedral. Yet that were false and misleading, the Menteshe now hallowing no other gods save only the false, vile, and wicked spirit cast from the heavens for that he was a sinner, the spirit known as the Banished One. Him do they worship. Him do they reverence, and give no tiniest portion of respect unto King Olor and Queen Quelea, the which thereof are truly deserving.
He went on for some little while, spewing forth one platitude after another. That tempted Lanius to put aside the old parchment after all. He didn’t, though, and ended up glad he didn’t, for the explorer went on.
At length, they suffered me to gaze upon this grand and holy relic, now no more than a spoil of war. Yet, like a slave woman once the beautiful and famous wife of some grand noble, it doth retain even in its lowly state a certain haggard loveliness. Indeed, I believe the building wherein it is enshrined was peradventure once a house for the proper gods, though now sadly changed into a hall in which the Banished One receives his undeserved praises of those he hath seduced away from truth and piety.
That was interesting. Lanius hadn’t believed any shrine to Olor and Quelea had existed so far south. He read on, doing his best to ignore the old-fashioned language. The merchant had been lucky to get out of Yozgat in one piece, for he’d left just before the Banished One himself came to view the Scepter.
Had I been there then, the Menteshe do assure me, nothing less than death or thralldom had been my portion. The Menteshe have no love for us Avornans, but the Banished One, being filled with a cold and bitter hate against us, is here even harsher than these his people. In his jealousy, he minds him that we were privileged to wield the Scepter of Mercy, whose touch he to this day may not abide. Thus he stole it, for to keep it from being turned against him.
Lanius slowly nodded. That all fit in with what other sources told him, but was more definite and emphatic than anything else he’d seen. He wished the merchant had gotten a glimpse of the Banished One. That might have told him things worth knowing. Or, on the other hand, more likely it wouldn’t have. Had the Banished One sensed an Avornan close by, the intrepid explorer would have paid the price for his zeal.
Carefully, Lanius returned the ancient parchment to its pigeonhole. If ever an Avornan army went down to Yozgat, it might prove useful to the commander. Lanius had never seen a better description of the city’s walls and defenses. On the other hand, it was also more than three hundred years old. No telling what the Menteshe had done since to make sure the Scepter of Mercy stayed exactly where it was.
He laughed a little, sadly, as he left the archives. No telling, either, when an Avornan army might push south past the Stura River, let alone all the way down to Yozgat. These days, the fight was to keep the Menteshe on their side of the river, and to keep the Banished One from making yet more Avornan farmers into soul-dead thralls.
The tide may turn again, Lanius thought, and tried very hard to believe it.
Colonel Hirundo beamed at King Grus. “The tide has turned, Your Majesty!” he exclaimed. “We drive the barbarians.”
“Yes.” Grus sounded less delighted than his officer. “We’ve given Dagipert something to think about, anyhow.”
“Something to think about? I should say so,” Hirundo answered. “Three weeks, and we’ve driven his army all the way out of Avornis. There ahead, across that stream, that’s Thervingia. We’re heading into Thervingia.” By the way he said it, he might have been talking about exploring the dark side of the moon. Up till now, the Thervings had had all the better of the fighting between the two kingdoms during Dagipert’s long reign.
“Send your cavalry across,” Grus told him. “Find a good farm, a prosperous farm, close by the border. Burn it. Run off the livestock. If the farmer puts up a fight, deal with him or capture him and bring him back for the mines. If he flees, let him go. Once you’ve done that, bring your horsemen back.”
“Bring them back?” Hirundo gaped. “Olor’s beard, why? Uh, Your Majesty?”
“Because we’ve still got to worry about Corvus and Corax, that’s why,” Grus answered. “Dagipert’s never going to take the city of Avornis, not if he sits outside it for a thousand years.” He’d been more worried than that when Dagipert besieged the royal capital not so very long before, but he wasn’t about to admit it now, not even to himself. He went on, “The rebels just might, though, if we stay away from home too long. Bound to be traitors in the city that Alca’s witchery didn’t find, and who knows how much trouble they can cause if we give ’em the chance?”
Would Lanius sooner have Corvus for a protector than me? Grus wondered. He’d done everything he could to make his usurpation as painless as possible. He couldn’t very well have gone further than marrying his own daughter to the young king. From all the signs Grus could read, Sosia and Lanius were getting on as well as a couple of newly weds could. But would Lanius think he could be king in his own right if Corvus overthrew Grus? Grus was convinced he’d be wrong, but that might not have anything to do with what Lanius believed.
With a sigh, Grus waved Hirundo on. “Go do as I tell you. We’ll let Dagipert know what we might have done. Next time, if we have to, we will do it. This time, he gets off easy, and let him thank the gods for it.”
Grus hoped Dagipert would take his moderation as a warning and not as a confession of weakness. He knew that was only a hope, though, not a guarantee. Dagipert might think the Avornan civil war was a pot he could stir to his own advantage. He might think that—and he might be right.
Hirundo saluted. “One burnt-out farmhouse coming up, Your Majesty.”
He called orders to his horsemen. They rode along the stream, looking for a ford. Before long, the whole band splashed across, then raced on into Thervingia. Grus waited on the Avornan side of the border, worrying. If the Thervings had an army waiting in ambush among those trees over there, as they were fond of doing…
But no roaring horde of Thervings burst from the woods. No more than a quarter of an hour after Hirundo’s men crossed the border, a column of smoke rose into the air. The soldiers who remained in Avornis with King Grus pointed to it and nudged one another. The vengeance the horsemen were taking might be small and symbolic, but vengeance it was.
Then Hirundo led his column back from the west. This time, they made for the ford without hesitation. Water dripping from his mount’s belly and from his own boots, Hirundo rode up to Grus. “It’s taken care of, Your Majesty,” he said. “The farmer and his kin tried putting up a fight from inside the house. Brave—but stupid. One of their arrows hurt a horse. I hope it makes ’em feel better in the next world, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”