The Bastard King Read online

  One of the nomads chose Grus; the other, Nicator. How do I keep from getting killed in short order? he wondered. He wasn’t so bad on horseback as Nicator had said, but he wasn’t good, either. This wasn’t his chosen way to fight. By the way his foe rode, the nomad might have been born in the saddle. Up came his saber.

  Iron belled on iron as Grus parried the Menteshe’s cut. Sparks flew. The nomad cut again, backhand this time. Again, Grus parried. He tried a cut of his own. The Menteshe beat it aside and slashed at his horse. Grus kept the foeman’s blade away from the beast. He couldn’t stop the next cut, not altogether, but he deflected it enough to make it slide off his helmet instead of laying his face open.

  The longer he fought, the more the lessons his father and a couple of implacable swordmasters had given him came back. The Menteshe howled a curse at him. The nomad must have expected sport, not work.

  A moment later, the Menteshe howled again, in pain. Blood ran down his leather sleeve—a cut of Grus’ had gotten home. The nomad wheeled his pony and booted the animal up into a gallop toward the south.

  Instead of going after him, Grus turned to see how Nicator was doing. The other river-galley captain traded sword strokes with his enemy. Neither seemed to have much of an edge. Nicator bled from a cut on his cheek. The very tip of the Menteshe’s left little finger also poured blood. That had to hurt, but it would do the nomad no great harm.

  Grus rode up to the fight. The nomad was so hotly engaged with Nicator, he didn’t realize he had a new foe till too late. Grus’ sword slammed into the side of his neck. Blood sprayed, then rivered out of him. He gave a gurgling cry of pain. His sword flew from his hand. He tried to ride south, as his comrade had. But he stayed in the saddle only a furlong or so. After he slid to the ground, his horse slowed to a walk.

  “Thank you kindly, Skipper,” Nicator said, dabbing at his cut with a scrap of rag. “That was a pretty bit of work.”

  “Only goes to show I’m good for something on land,” Grus answered. “I wouldn’t have bet on it, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Let’s round up that pony. We can sell it,” Nicator said. “And who knows what that Menteshe bastard’s got on him?”

  “All right,” Grus said. “We’re just lucky we didn’t run into archers. They would have filled us full of holes, and we couldn’t have done much about it.”

  “That’s what the nomads say when we catch their rafts on the water in our galleys.” Nicator grinned fiercely. “Here’s hoping they say it plenty.”

  The Menteshe’s sword would bring something, too. Grus got off his horse to pick it up and stow it in a saddlebag. Then he mounted once more and went after his friend. When Nicator dismounted, he squatted beside the dead Menteshe. He cut the nomad’s pouch from his belt. Hefting it, he whistled. “Nice and heavy.” He opened it and looked inside. “Silver, with a little gold.”

  “Make two piles,” Grus told him. “If there’s an odd coin, you take it. I’ve got his saber.”

  “Sounds fair,” Nicator agreed, and did it. “Only thing I feel bad about is knowing he probably stole it from Avornans.”

  “He paid a bigger price than money,” Grus answered. “What’s that he’s got around his neck?”

  “One of their amulets, I expect, on a cord.” Nicator drew it out and scowled. “A nasty one.”

  Grus nodded. “I’ll say it is.” The main ingredient of the amulet was the skull of some small animal with sharp teeth—a weasel, perhaps. What bothered him most was that the eye sockets, though empty, kept giving him the feeling they were looking at him. “Take it off the bastard. Let’s get rid of it.”

  “Right.” Nicator cut the rawhide loop that held the amulet in place. When he reached for the skull, he jerked back his hand with a startled curse. “Shit! It bit me!” Sure enough, blood dripped from his thumb.

  “I’ll take care of it.” Grus used his sword to flick the amulet away from the dead Menteshe. Its teeth clicked on the blade, too, but uselessly. He stomped on it, hard. It shattered under his boot heel. Even then, he felt a tingling jolt of power. The hair on his legs and arms and at the back of his neck stood up for a moment. Then the sensation ebbed. “There. That’s done it.”

  Nicator bandaged his thumb. “Hurrah,” he said sourly.

  “Come on. Let’s get down to the river,” Grus said. “As long as we meet them on land, we’re playing their game. But once their miserable little boats start trying to sneak back over the Stura, they’re playing ours.” His smile showed teeth almost as sharp as the amulet’s as he went on, “And their river galleys aren’t worth much. They can make thralls row, but they’re even worse on the water than people like us are on land.”

  “Right,” Nicator said again. He held up his hand. The bandage was turning red. “I want to have a wizard look at this anyway. It’s liable to fester.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Your Majesty,” Arch-Hallow Bucco said, reaching out to pat Lanius on the head. “The other regents and I have everything well in hand.”

  The King of Avornis was only nine, but Bucco couldn’t have taken a worse tack with him if he’d tried for a year. “Really?” Lanius said. “Then why are the Menteshe tormenting the south while the Thervings arm for war? Do you not think you made some bad choices there?”

  Bucco stared at him. Lanius had said such things before, but they never failed to surprise the grown-up on the receiving end. “Your Majesty, you are, ah, misinformed,” the arch-hallow said slowly.

  That was also a mistake. Lanius knew what he knew. And, as he had since he was a baby, he cherished facts. He could rely on them, unlike people, not to desert him. “Oh? How?” he said now. “Do you mean the Menteshe didn’t raid us? Or do you mean the Thervings aren’t arming for war? What exactly do you mean?”

  “Isn’t it … time for your lessons?” Bucco asked. He ran a finger around the neck opening of the silk shirt he wore under his red robe. It hadn’t grown too tight, but it felt as though it had.

  “Yes. I will go to them,” Lanius answered. “Don’t you have some lessons you could go to, so you could do a better job of running this kingdom?”

  Arch-Hallow Bucco muttered to himself as he went away. Lanius didn’t understand why. He’d told the man the truth. He had no trouble seeing it. Why was it so hard for the arch-hallow?

  His lessons should have been boring. Grammar and arithmetic and history horrified students in Avornis no less than anywhere else. Like any other tutor, Lanius’ carried a switch to make sure the lessons took hold. But he hadn’t had to use it for a long time. Lanius loved lessons—loved them enough to alarm the man who taught him, though the tutor never let on.

  Some time later, Lanius looked up from his exercises to find his mother standing there in place of the tutor. Queen Certhia smiled at him. “You’ve been working hard, sweetheart,” she said.

  “I hope so,” Lanius answered seriously. “I need to work hard. Someone has to be able to rule Avornis the way it should be ruled, and Arch-Hallow Bucco doesn’t seem to be the man.”

  Certhia’s mouth tightened. “No, he doesn’t,” she agreed. “I could do it better than he can.”

  “Why, so you could, Mama!” Lanius exclaimed. “I was reading about Queen Astrild just the other day. She ruled Avornis all by herself for a while. I’m sure you could do the same thing. You ought to.”

  “It’s not quite so simple, I’m afraid,” his mother said.

  “Why not? You’re the queen, and Bucco’s only the arch-hallow.” Lanius was a learned child, a precociously learned child, but he was only a child. What lay under his words was, You’re my mother. You can do anything.

  “But he’s the head of the Council of Regents, and I’m not,” Certhia said. “And the soldiers will follow him, and they won’t follow me. I’m only a woman, after all.” She didn’t try to hide her bitterness.

  “You could make them follow you. Queen Astrild did,” Lanius said.

  “I wish they were here to listen to you,” his mother
told him. She sounded amused and proud at the same time.

  “Here are some soldiers.” Lanius pointed to the doorway. Sure enough, in tramped four grim-faced troopers. Lanius raised his voice. “You men! Since the arch-hallow plainly has no idea what he’s doing, your duty to Avornis is to obey someone else. Here is the queen, who—”

  “That will be quite enough of that.” Arch-Hallow Bucco followed the armed men into the room. He went on, “You see how Certhia seeks to corrupt the child. She can no longer be trusted around him. Seize her.”

  “Yes, sir,” the soldiers chorused. They advanced on Queen Certhia.

  “You stop that! You leave her alone!” Lanius cried, and sprang at them. It did him no good. One of them caught him and held him in spite of all his thrashing.

  His mother kicked and cursed the soldiers. That did her no good. She cursed Arch-Hallow Bucco, too, at the top of her lungs. That did her no good, either. “Take her away,” Bucco told them.

  “Don’t you do that! She’s my mother!” Lanius shouted.

  “She is leading you in the ways of the Banished One,” Bucco said.

  “She’s not doing any such thing,” Lanius said indignantly.

  “She certainly is,” the arch-hallow replied. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be so disrespectful to your elders.”

  “You’re making a mess of the kingdom,” Lanius said. “Is it disrespectful to tell you the truth?”

  “I don’t need to argue with you. You’re only a little boy,” Bucco said. He nodded to the soldiers. “Away with the slut. I wish we could be rid of her bastard as easily.”

  “I’m no bastard!” Lanius’ voice went high and shrill. “Don’t you call me one, either, or you’ll be sorry.”

  “The whole kingdom is sorry because you’re the king,” Arch-Hallow Bucco said. “And your mother was a seventh wife. What else would you call yourself, Your Majesty?” He turned the royal title into one of scorn.

  Yes, Lanius knew what being the son of a seventh wife meant, or what it ordinarily would have meant. But he said, “A priest married my mother and father, so that was all right. And Arch-Hallow Megadyptes said the priest didn’t do anything wrong when he made the marriage, so that was all right, too. So there.” He stuck out his tongue. He might have been educated beyond his years, but he had only nine of them, and sometimes it showed.

  Bucco gave him a look full of loathing. “I don’t care what Megadyptes said. He shouldn’t have been arch-hallow then, and he isn’t arch-hallow anymore.” He didn’t say, So there, and stick out his tongue—he was, after all, a grown-up—but he looked as though he wanted to.

  “He isn’t arch-hallow now,” Lanius said, “but he could be again, when I come of age.”

  The look Bucco gave him this time didn’t hold just loathing. It held fear, too. “If you weren’t the last of your dynasty—” he began, but then broke off, shaking his head. He gave Lanius a bow much sharper and shorter than the King of Avornis deserved, and went off, shaking his head.

  Not long after that, the meadows around the walls of the city of Avornis began filling up with soldiers. When Lanius went up to one of the taller towers in the royal palace, he could see tents stretching out across the grasslands. Tiny as ants in the distance, men marched and countermarched in lines and squares. “Now we’ll beat the Thervings,” he told his tutor. He’d read of the Avornan army suffering defeats, but that didn’t seem real to him.

  His tutor, though, looked worried. “May you prove right, Your Majesty,” the man said, “but I’m not sure that army is even there to fight King Dagipert and his savages.”

  “What do you mean?” Lanius asked.

  “Well …” The tutor didn’t want to go on but finally did. “Duke Regulus is a very bold man; a very brave man. He’s also a man of very high blood, and a man who’s good friends with Arch-Hallow Bucco.”

  Lanius hadn’t read lots of chronicles for nothing. “You think he means to steal the throne from me!”

  “I don’t know whether he means to do it, or whether Bucco means for him to do it,” the tutor answered. “Regulus is very bold and very brave, but no one ever said he was very bright. Bucco could lead him the way you would lead an ox.”

  Fear filled Lanius. “What do I do?” he whispered. He wasn’t asking his tutor. He might have been asking himself, or he might have been asking the world. Whatever he asked, he got an answer. He snapped his fingers. He’d just learned how to do that, and liked the noise it made. “I know!” he said.

  “What?” his tutor asked.

  “I won’t tell you,” Lanius said. “I won’t tell anybody.”

  Grus was a mightily puzzled man. Any man who loves a woman—and, especially, any man who has children—will find himself puzzled now and again. But this was a different sort of puzzlement. The Osprey, flagship of his present flotilla, made her way upstream along the Stura. The rowers had to work hard; both current and wind were against them.

  He stared south, into the lands the Menteshe held. All seemed quiet there. Avornis had handled the latest raid from Prince Ulash roughly enough to make Ulash—and, Grus supposed, the Banished One, too—thoughtful. That left the commodore only more puzzled than ever at being ordered to stay on the Stura.

  “Do you think the Menteshe are likely to try anything any time soon?” he asked Captain Nicator.

  “Never can tell what those gods-cursed bastards are up to, not for sure,” Nicator answered. “Anytime you think you know, that’s when they’ll up and kick you in the balls.”

  “Well, yes,” Grus agreed. “But what are the odds?”

  “Slim,” Nicator said. “That I grant you. They are slim. We put the fear of Olor into the nomads.”

  Now if only we could put it into the Banished One. Grus shook his head. That was neither here nor there. He made himself stick to what had been uppermost in his mind: “Arch-Hallow Bucco is arming for war against the Thervings, isn’t he?”

  “He says he is,” Nicator allowed. “Duke Regulus thinks he is. An awful lot of soldiers think he is.”

  “Just so.” Grus nodded. “Duke Regulus. An awful lot of soldiers. Has he done anything about getting river galleys or sailors ready for the fight?”

  “He hasn’t called us. That’s all I know for sure. We wouldn’t be down here on the Stura if he had, now would we?” Nicator chuckled, then spat into the river.

  “He hasn’t called anybody. We’d know if he had,” Grus said. Nicator nodded. Sailors knew what other sailors were up to. Grus went on, “So how does Bucco aim to fight the Thervings without river galleys? He won’t be able to attack, and he won’t be able to defend, either.”

  “Looks that way to me, too,” Nicator said. “But Bucco, he’s not a general, you know. He’s a holy man.”

  “Then why is he trying to fight?” Grus burst out. “I’m not a holy man. If you gave me a red robe and put me in the cathedral, I’d make an ass of myself. Doesn’t he see it works the other way round, too? Aren’t there arty generals trying to talk sense into him? If I had to pretend I was an arch-hallow, I’d listen to the priests who knew what they were doing.”

  “Ah, but you’ve already got your head on straight, Skipper.”

  “Thanks.” Grus tugged at his beard, as though making sure his head wasn’t at some strange angle. “By the gods, though, Bucco’s no fool.”

  “Then why is he acting like one?”

  “That’s the question, all right,” Grus said. “Why?”

  “Maybe he’s not aiming at fighting the Thervings,” Nicator said. “Maybe he’s got something else in mind.”

  “Like what?” Grus asked.

  Nicator looked this way and that. Nobody stood particularly close to Grus and him. The sailors aboard the Osprey had learned Grus and his longtime comrade liked to have room to talk. Even so, Nicator didn’t answer, not in words. He just looked up at the sky and whistled a tune peasants sang when they trampled grapes in the fall.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Grus asked irritab
ly. Nicator went on whistling. Grus felt like hitting him. “Are you playing the fool or making me out to be one?”

  Nicator still didn’t answer. Grus started to get really angry. Then he stopped and stared. “You don’t suppose—?”

  “Me, Skipper?” Nicator was the very picture of innocence. “I’m just a dumb old sailorman. I don’t suppose anything.”

  Grus ignored that. “D’you think Bucco can get away with it?”

  “Who’s going to stop him?”

  A dour soldier named Lepturus commanded the royal bodyguard. King Lanius, by the nature of things, saw him every day. That made Lepturus one of the most important men in the kingdom. Lanius didn’t usually pay much attention to him, maybe because he saw him so often. He might have been part of the furniture. You didn’t pay attention to a chair—till you needed to stand on it to climb out a window in a fire.

  “I know my father always thought you were a wonderful officer,” Lanius said.

  In a way, that was a lie. So far as Lanius could remember (which, since he was only nine, wasn’t very far), King Mergus had never said a word about Lepturus. But it also held a truth. Mergus wouldn’t have put Lepturus in such an important post if he hadn’t thought the man could handle the job.

  It worked. Lepturus’ face softened more than Lanius would have guessed it could. The soldier said, “Your old man—uh, His Majesty—was one of a kind. Too bad he’s not here now. We could use him.”

  “Yes.” Lanius nodded. “We could. But he wasn’t one of a kind. He was part of the dynasty. I’m part of the dynasty, too.”

  “That’s true.” Somber once more, Lepturus nodded. “King Mergus, he went to a lot of trouble to make sure you’d be part of it, too. Seven wives!” He rolled his eyes. “If that’s not trouble, curse me if I know what is.”

  “Er—yes.” Lanius wasn’t sure what that meant. But, since he had no other good hopes, no other choice, he plunged ahead. “I don’t want to be the last part of the dynasty.”