Sweat rivered down Grus' face. He felt as though he were being steamed inside his mailshirt. He swigged from a jar of water mixed with wine. Standing orders were for soldiers to drink as much as they could hold. Some of them ignored standing orders, as some soldiers ignored standing orders of any kind. Telling who ignored orders here was easy. The miscreants were the ones who toppled from the saddle with heatstroke. Several men had died. Grus would have thought that might give the others a hint. But men went right on not drinking enough and collapsing because they didn't.
Hirundo brought his horse up alongside Grus'. "How much farther do you plan on going this campaigning season, Your Majesty?" the general asked.
"I'd like to go to Yozgat," the king answered.
"I'd like a lot of things I'm not going to get. I'd like to lose twenty years, for instance," Hirundo said. "I didn't ask what you'd like. I asked what you planned. You're one of the people who know the difference – or I hope you are."
"I hope so, too," Grus said. "I really had hoped to get there before the season ended. But you're right – it won't happen. We ought to take what we can get and do our best to see that the Menteshe don't take it back."
"Sounds good to me." By the relief in Hirundo's voice, it sounded very good to him. "I did want to make sure you weren't getting carried away."
"Tempting, but no." Grus sounded dry enough to make Hirundo laugh. He went on, "I'm not falling in love for the first time, you know. I've gone along this kind of road before. I won't let a pretty face fool me."
That got another chuckle from the general. "Fine. In that case, how does stopping at the next river line sound?"
"Terrible," Grus answered, and Hirundo's face fell. The king continued, "But we'll do it anyhow. I know how thin we're stretched. I know how much work we still have to do behind the line, too. Gods only know how many thralls still need freeing. And we have more forts to set up – otherwise the Menteshe will start nipping in to chew up our supply wagons. We have a thousand other things to take care of besides those, I know, but they're the most important. Or am I missing something?"
"I don't think so, Your Majesty," Hirundo said. "You might ask Pterocles what he thinks, though." "I'll do that," Grus promised.
But I won't do it just yet, he thought. He had accomplished more south of the Stura than any Avornan king since the loss of the Scepter of Mercy. By that standard, the campaign was an outstanding success. He hadn't done as much as he'd hoped he would. Did that make it a failure?
With some hesitation, he shook his head. It just meant he would need longer to get what he wanted. So he told himself, anyhow.
Looking south, he swore softly. Prince Korkut would have the coming winter to try to figure out what to do when the war resumed come spring. So would Prince Sanjar. They would also have the winter to try to figure out what to do about each other.
And the Banished One would have the winter to work out his next moves against Avornis. Grus liked giving him a breathing space even less than he liked giving one to the Menteshe princes. But going too far too fast would be worse… he supposed.
CHAPTER TEN
King Lanius relished getting away from the city of Avornis. If he wasn't in the palace with Sosia, she couldn't quarrel with him. Things were going well in the countryside. Lanius still suspected that Tinamus thought he was crazy. That didn't matter. What did matter was whether the architect and the swarm of stonecutters and bricklayers and carpenters and other artisans at his command could create what Lanius wanted. By all appearances, they could.
Watching their work grow gave the king an unusual sense of accomplishment. Here was something real rising at his command. So many of a ruler's monuments were intangible – laws, decrees, orders. Not here. Not now. This he could reach out and touch. His son could come here and see for himself what Lanius had been up to.
And Crex, seeing for himself, would probably decide Lanius was crazy, too.
The air was full of the rich greenness of growing things. Had the breeze blown from the other direction, it would have carried the smoke and stinks of the artisans' encampment, an odor much more like those usual in the city of Avornis.
Some of the workmen washed in the stream that ran by the encampment. Some of them splashed one another to fight the late-summer heat or just to have a good time. They whooped and hollered as they played. Lanius sighed. The foolishness looked like fun, but it wasn't the sort of fun in which a king could indulge. All he could do was watch and be wistful.
"Here comes Tinamus, Your Majesty," the guard said.
"Well, good," Lanius said. "I was going to want to talk to him today."
Tinamus bowed to the king. "Good morning, Your Majesty," he said. "Everything here seems to be going very well. No builder could ask for a more generous client. The only thing I wish is…" His voice trailed away.
"Yes?" Lanius knew what Tinamus wanted. Grus would have been able to make that yes so intimidating, Tinamus never would have had the nerve to come out and say it. Grus was made of fabric coarser than Lanius, and really was as tough as he sounded. Lanius wasn't particularly tough, and couldn't sound as though he were.
Proof of that was his utter failure to intimidate Tinamus. The architect went right on with what he'd been at the point of saying. "What I wish, Your Majesty, is that I had some notion of what all this is for."
If Lanius couldn't sound severe, maybe he could look that way. His eyebrows came down. He pursed his lips and frowned. If his father had made a face like that, anyone who saw it would have quaked in his boots. By all accounts, King Mergus had been as tough as a boot. Lanius still didn't seem to impress Tinamus very much. He said, "We've been over this ground before. The less you know, the better off you are."
"So you've said." Tinamus looked as unhappy as he sounded. "You understand that drives me wild, I'm sure. If you tell a baker to make you one thin slice of cake, don't you think he'll wonder why?"
"If I paid a baker what I'm paying you, he wouldn't have any business asking questions," Lanius answered.
"Well, maybe not," the builder said. "But a baker's slice of cake would be gone in a hurry. What I'm doing here could last for the next five hundred years. People will look at it and say, 'This is how Tinamus wasted his time?' "
"You're not wasting your time. Whatever else you're doing, you're not doing that," Lanius assured him.
"What am I doing, then?"
"Do you really want to know?" Lanius asked. Tinamus nodded eagerly. The king smiled and said, "You're building a fancy run for one of my moncats."
Tinamus gave him a stiff bow. "If you'll excuse me, Your Majesty, I'll go away now. Perhaps one day you'll be serious, or you'll decide that I am." He bowed again and stalked off.
Lanius looked after him, then quietly started to laugh. Sometimes the worst thing you could do to someone was to tell him the exact and literal truth. Unless the King missed his guess, Tinamus wouldn't come troubling him with more questions for a long, long time – which was exactly what he'd had in mind.
Grus looked at the river with something less than delight. It was narrow and shallow, not really the sort of barrier between his men and the Menteshe that he'd had in mind. Mud by the riverside sent up a nasty smell as it dried in the sun. "I wonder how much farther we'll have to go to find a real stream."
Hirundo took a more optimistic view of things than he did. "Oh, it won't be so bad, Your Majesty."
"No? Why not? I could piss across this miserable thing." Grus exaggerated, but not to any enormous degree.
Hirundo didn't lose his smile. "Yes, you could – now. But the Menteshe aren't going to try to hit us now. We've rocked them back on their heels. They'll need some time to regroup. If Korkut and Sanjar do decide to join forces against us, they'll need to do some dickering so one of them doesn't murder the other one anyhow. And pretty soon the fall rains will start. This is an ugly little excuse for a river now, but I think it'll fill out nicely once the rains get going."