The Bastard King Read online

  Bucco read the parchment, then crumpled it and threw it down. “This is outrageous! This is illegal!”

  “After the fiasco you’ve caused, you’d better be grateful you’re getting off with a whole skin,” Lepturus said. “If you let your jaw flap, maybe you won’t.” Bucco gave him a terrible look, but found it better to say nothing. His stiff back radiating fury, he stalked away.

  “Does this mean I won’t have to marry King Dagipert’s daughter?” Lanius asked.

  “Let’s see him try to marry her to you,” his mother answered. Lanius clapped his hands.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Otter glided along the Tuola River, on patrol against the Thervings. Now that Arch-Hallow Bucco no longer headed the regency, now that Queen Certhia had taken his place, King Lanius would not be betrothed to Princess Romilda of Thervingia. Grus approved of that. He didn’t expect King Dagipert would, though. No one in Avornis expected Dagipert would. War was coming now. The only question was when.

  “We never should have landed in this mess in the first place,” Nicator grumbled. “Bucco never should have made that bargain.”

  “Of course he shouldn’t,” Grus said. “I just think it’s a gods-cursed shame he’s still in the cathedral. They should have thrown him out of there when they flung him out of the palace.”

  “I hear old Megadyptes didn’t want the arch-hallow’s job back,” Nicator answered. “He’s too holy for his own good, you ask me.”

  “Me, I’d sooner have an arch-hallow who spends his time praying than one who tries to run the kingdom.”

  Nicator grunted. “I don’t mind Bucco trying so much as I mind him botching the job. And he cursed well did. And we’ll have to pay for it.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Grus said. The Otter and the rest of his flotilla could give the Thervings a hard time if they tried to cross the Tuola. But the river galleys could go only so far up the stream. Past that, Avornis’ horsemen and foot soldiers and wizards had to hold back Dagipert’s army. Could they? We’ll find out, Grus told himself, trying to smother his own doubts. Wistfully, he added, “It would be nice if somebody could run the kingdom, wouldn’t it?”

  “Well, you just might say so, yes,” Nicator answered. He looked northwest, toward the rapids that kept the river galleys from moving any farther up the Tuola. Water boomed and thundered over black jagged rocks. Rainbows came and went in the flying spray. “What do we do when the Thervings try to go around us? They will, you know.”

  “Of course they will,” Grus said. “We’ll just have to work with the soldiers as best we can, that’s all.”

  “Happy day.” Nicator sounded unimpressed—but then, Nicator made a habit of sounding unimpressed. “If those bastards had any brains, they wouldn’t have been soldiers in the first place.”

  Plump and fussy, Turnix bustled up to Grus and waited to be noticed. The commodore nodded to him now. “What’s up?”

  “Something’s stirring, sir,” Turnix answered.

  “What do you mean, stirring?” Grus demanded. “And where?”

  Turnix pointed toward Thervingia. “Something there. Something magical. Something big, or I wouldn’t know anything about it. I do believe they’re trying to mask it, but it’s too big for that. I know it’s there even through their spells.”

  “Ax is going to fall,” Nicator said grimly.

  “I think you’re right,” Grus said. “Turnix, can you tell exactly where this spell’s coming from?”

  “I haven’t tried, not up till now,” the wizard said. “I will if you like. The Thervings’ masking makes it harder.”

  “Do your best,” Grus said. “It’s important.”

  “Well, it may be important,” Nicator said. “Their wizards may be trying to bluff us about whatever they’re keeping under wraps.”

  Grus didn’t want to think about that. By Turnix’s pained expression, the wizard didn’t, either. It wasn’t that Nicator was wrong. It was only that knowing he was right made everyone’s life more complicated. Grus spoke to Turnix. “See if you can find it. Maybe that will tell you whether it’s real or not.”

  “Good enough.” Turnix turned toward Thervingia. He took an amulet set with a translucent green stone out from under his shirt and held it up so that the sun sparkled off it. Then he began to chant. He made one pass after another with his left hand. A couple of minutes into the spell, he staggered and muttered to himself.

  “Are you all right?” Grus asked.

  “I think so,” Turnix said. “They’ve got wizards looking for people who try to sneak through their masking spells, too. Whatever they’re doing, they don’t want anybody knowing about it.”

  “All the more reason for us to find out,” Grus said.

  Turnix nodded. He started chanting again, and swung the amulet back and forth, back and forth. Suddenly, he let out a sharp exclamation of triumph. The stone in the amulet turned clear as glass on part of the arc. Turnix pointed. “There!”

  “Toward the northwest, where we’d expect to have trouble,” Grus noted.

  “But do the Thervings mean it, Skipper, or are they trying to trick us?” Nicator persisted.

  “I don’t know.” Grus turned to Turnix. “You’re the wizard. What do you think?”

  Turnix looked troubled. “I still can’t be certain.”

  “I won’t let anyone beat you if you’re wrong,” Grus said. “I want your best guess.”

  The wizard nervously plucked at his beard. “I don’t think the Thervings know I got through their sorcerous screen. I do think they’re hiding something real, not running a bluff. You asked … sir.”

  “You gave me what I asked for.” Now—what to do with it? Grus went into the tiny cabin at the stern that let him and Nicator and Turnix sleep out of the rain. He found a scrap of parchment, a quill pen, and a bottle of ink. He wrote rapidly, then brought the note to Turnix. “Here. Send this to one of the wizards with the cavalry and foot soldiers and back to the city of Avornis.”

  Turnix read the note, then nodded. “You’ve summed things up here very well.”

  Grus shrugged. “Never mind that. As long as they know.”

  By the nervous way people went through the halls of the royal palace in the city of Avornis, one might think that one of the gods had stirred the place with a stick for sport. King Lanius felt the trouble without knowing what had caused it. When he asked his mother, Queen Certhia patted him on the head and told him, “It’s nothing for you to worry about, sweetheart.”

  She could have done no better job of making him angry if she’d tried for a month. Glaring at her, he said, “Arch-Hallow Bucco would have told me just the same thing, Mother.”

  Certhia mouthed something silent about Bucco. Then she said, “It’s nothing you can do anything about, and that’s the truth.”

  “I don’t care whether I can do anything about it or not,” Lanius said. Like any child, he’d had to get used to the idea that things happened regardless of his opinion about them. “But I do want to know. I’m only a few years from coming of age. Then I’ll be King of Avornis in my own right. I should know as much as I can before then, don’t you think?”

  His mother sighed and ruffled his hair. “I remember when I could hold you in the crook of my elbow. You were such a tiny thing then.”

  Lanius hated when his mother told him things like that. “I’m not a tiny thing anymore.”

  She had to nod. “No, that’s true. You’re not.”

  “Tell me, then,” he said.

  “All right. Let’s see what you make of it,” his mother said. “We have word from Commodore Grus and his wizard on the Tuola that the Thervings are planning something sorcerous farther up the river than his galleys can go.” She waited to hear what he would say next.

  He frowned in thought. “Is this Grus a good officer?”

  “Lepturus keeps track of such people. He says Grus is very clever,” Queen Certhia answered. “Lepturus says he may be too clever for his own good, but no doubt he�
��s able.”

  “Would you have known that if Lepturus hadn’t told you?” Lanius asked.

  His mother looked impatient. “Really, Lanius, you can’t expect me to keep track of all the officers who serve you.”

  “Why not?” Lanius asked in genuine surprise. “You’re the head of the Council of Regents now. That means you might as well be King of Avornis. You should know these men.”

  “Never mind that,” Certhia said. “I do know Grus now, thanks to Lepturus. What do you think we ought to do, supposing this report is true?”

  “That’s the place everyone expects Dagipert to attack anyhow, just because our ships can’t help stop the Thervings there,” Lanius replied. “We ought to do everything we can to hold him back.”

  Certhia gave him an odd look. “Did someone tell you to say that? One of your bodyguards, maybe? Or your tutor?”

  “No, Mother,” Lanius replied. “I figured it out for myself. It looks pretty obvious, doesn’t it?”

  For some reason he couldn’t fathom, that only made his mother’s expression odder. “How old are you?” she asked, and held up her hand before he could answer. “No, never mind—I know you’re eleven. But you don’t talk like you’re eleven. You talk like a man who’s my age, or maybe twice my age.”

  “I just talk the way I talk,” Lanius said.

  “I know,” Queen Certhia said. It didn’t sound like praise, or not altogether like praise. After a moment, she went on, “Lepturus gave me the same advice you did—that we go out and face the Thervings there in the foothills with everything we have.”

  “Will you take it?” Lanius asked.

  She nodded. “Yes. Lepturus will lead the army out of the city of Avornis. As head of the regency, I’m going with them.”

  “I should come, too,” Lanius exclaimed. “I’m the king, after all.” Even if I can’t do anything much, he added to himself.

  “Your coming along is fine if we win,” his mother said. “But what if we lose? What if King Dagipert gets his hands on you?”

  “I suppose I’d have to marry his silly daughter,” Lanius said, which struck him as all too close to a fate worse than death. Other than that, though, falling into Dagipert’s hands didn’t worry him all that much. He’d been in someone else’s hands—one someone’s or another’s—ever since his father died. He didn’t like it, but he was used to it. And besides … “With me there, the soldiers will know they’d better not lose.”

  “I want you to stay here safe in the city of Avornis,” Queen Certhia answered, and nothing Lanius could say to her would make her change her mind.

  Nothing Lanius could say to her … After his mother left—stalked out of his bedchamber, really—the King of Avornis sent a servant to Lepturus, asking if the commander of the royal bodyguard would come and see him. Lepturus came at once. “You don’t ask me to come see you, Your Majesty,” he said after making his bows. “You tell me to come see you. That’s what being king is all about, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know anything of the sort,” Lanius answered. “How should I?”

  Lepturus grunted laughter. “Well, you’ll find out, Your Majesty. By the gods, you will. When you say ‘Hop,’ you’ll never see so many hop toads as go up in the air for you. Won’t be so very long, either.”

  Lanius remembered that for the rest of his days, even though his coming of age seemed much further away to him than it did to Lepturus.

  The guards commander asked, “What can I do for you, Your Majesty? You just name it. If it’s in my power, it’s yours.”

  That was what Lanius wanted to hear. He said, “When you march against King Dagipert and the Thervings, take me along with you.”

  “What?” Lepturus rumbled, his eyes widening. Lanius repeated himself. Grown-ups, he’d noticed, had trouble hearing, or at least trouble listening. Lepturus heard him out for the second time, and then asked, “Why do you want to do a thing like that?”

  “Because I’m the King of Avornis, and that’s what the King of Avornis is supposed to do.” Lanius sounded very sure. He explained why. “I’ve read it in books, you see.”

  “But the books don’t say anything about what happens when the King of Avornis is only eleven years old,” Lepturus said.

  “Well, if I were bigger, I could fight better, but I don’t think one soldier more or less would make a lot of difference about whether we win or lose,” Lanius said. “Do you, Lepturus?”

  With a chuckle, Lepturus shook his head. “No, I don’t suppose so. Tell me, though, Your Majesty, what’s your mother got to say about all this?”

  “She says, ‘No!’ She says, ‘Heavens, no!’” King Lanius answered. “That’s why I called you—to see if I could get you to change her mind.”

  “She heads the regency council now. She doesn’t have to change her mind for anybody,” Lepturus said, and Lanius nodded unhappily. Lepturus went on, “I don’t know that she ought to change her mind here, either, meaning no disrespect to you.”

  “Wouldn’t the soldiers fight better if they knew the king shared danger with them?” Lanius asked. The books said things worked that way.

  And Lepturus didn’t laugh, or chuckle, or even smile. He just rubbed his bearded chin and looked thoughtful. “They might,” he admitted. “They just might.”

  Lanius leaned forward. “Will you talk to my mother, then?” His heart thudded in excitement.

  Lepturus rubbed his chin some more. At last, slowly, he nodded. “I might,” he said. “I just might.”

  Aboard the Otter, Grus waited for trouble. It hadn’t come yet. What had come was a message from the city of Avornis that astounded everyone aboard, from him down to the juniormost sailor.

  “King Lanius is leading the army against the Thervings.” Nicator still sounded disbelieving.

  “Maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye,” Grus said.

  “He’s a boy. There could hardly be less to him than meets the eye, now could there?” Nicator answered.

  “He’s a boy, but he’s the King of Avornis,” Grus said.

  “He’s the King of Avornis, but he’s a boy,” Nicator retorted.

  “If he carried the Scepter of Mercy, how old he is wouldn’t matter,” Grus said.

  Nicator scowled. “There weren’t any Thervings in the mountains the last time a King of Avornis wielded the Scepter of Mercy. The Banished One stole it before they filtered off the plains to the east.”

  “I know that. Everybody knows that, the same way everybody knows the Banished One can’t use the Scepter of Mercy.”

  “Sending a little boy into the field isn’t the way to make up for not having it,” Nicator said.

  “How do you know he was sent?” Grus said. “Maybe he wanted to go.”

  “Not likely,” Nicator disagreed. “I wouldn’t want to go face the Thervings when King Dagipert’s feeling testy. Neither would anybody else in his right mind—and if Lanius does, he likely isn’t in his right mind.”

  “Well, if you put what you’re trying to show into what you claim, that does make arguing easier,” Grus said, more annoyed at Nicator than he usually let himself get.

  Before the veteran could answer back, a watchman called out and pointed to the bank of the Tuola, where a ragged-looking fellow who might have been either an Avornan or a Therving stood waving by a horse on its last legs. At least he’s not a soul-dead thrall, Grus thought, and ordered the Otter to a halt. He hailed the stranger. “Who are you, and what do you want with us?”

  “I’m Count Corax, by the gods,” the ragged man replied, as though Grus were supposed to know who he was. And, in case Grus didn’t, he went on, “I’m just back from a mission to the Heruls, on the far side of the Bantian Mountains.”

  “Ah,” Grus said, and called an urgent order to his sailors. “Man the boat and bring him aboard.”

  As they hurried to obey, one of them asked, “What about the horse, Skipper?”

  “If you can get it onto the boat without any trouble, fine,”
Grus answered. “If you can’t, too bad. I don’t think Corax there will miss it.”

  Sure enough, the horse stayed behind. Corax scrambled up from the boat onto the river galley. No matter how ragged he looked, he carried himself like an Avornan noble, sure enough—one of the arrogant type. He looked at the Otter as though it were as much his to command as the horse had been. “Take me to the city of Avornis, so I may speak to the regents at once,” he said.

  Grus shook his head. “Sorry, Your Excellency, but I can’t do it.”

  Count Corax turned red. Grus got the idea he wasn’t used to hearing people say no. “Why not?” he demanded.

  “For one thing, I’m on war patrol,” Grus answered. “I can take you to the nearest town and put you on a better horse than the one you had, but that’s it. And, for another, the regents aren’t—or at least Queen Certhia isn’t—at the city of Avornis.”

  “Well, where are they?” Corax asked. “Wherever it is, you have to take me there right away.” He looked set to add, Now hop to it, gods curse you, but somehow held back.

  “I can’t do that, either,” Grus said.

  “Well, what in creation can you do?” Count Corax barked.

  “I can tell you that Queen Certhia has taken the field against the Thervings,” Grus replied. “I can tell you that King Lanius is in the field, too. And I can do what I said I’d do before that—I can take you to the next town and put you on a horse. The army is covering territory river galleys can’t reach.”

  Corax swore. He kept on swearing for the next several minutes, hardly seeming to draw breath and not repeating himself once. At last, he calmed down enough for a coherent sentence. “I need to see the queen this instant.”

  “I do understand that it’s important, Your Excellency,” Grus said. “I’m doing the best I can for you.”

  “It isn’t good enough,” Corax snarled.

  “Tell me, Your Excellency, are you by any chance related to Count Corvus?” Grus asked.

  Corax blinked. “He’s my brother. Why do you ask? Do you know him? I don’t recall hearing that he knows you.” Suspicion filled his voice.