The Scepter's Return by Harry Turtledove

rags they wore.
    â€œSo many of them have lived this way for so long,” he told Grus one evening. “So many of them lived out their whole lives without ever knowing there could be anything better. That’s wrong, Your Majesty!” He wasn’t a very big man or a very tough-looking one, but fury blazed from his eyes—eyes that had been as dull as a cow’s till Pterocles lifted the spell of thralldom from them.
    â€œWe’re doing what we can,” Grus answered, munching on flatbread, hard cheese, and onions—campaign food. “Till we had this magic, there wasn’t much we could do. If we came south of the Stura without it, we would have ended up as thralls ourselves. More than one Avornan army did. That’s why we stopped trying to fight the Menteshe down here.”
    â€œI understand your reasons,” Otus said. “I can’t tell you I like them.”
    Not many of Grus’ subjects would have spoken so freely. Maybe Otus didn’t realize how much deference he owed a king. Or maybe he would have behaved this way even if he’d grown up in Avornis and never had his spirit darkened.
    He paused to gnaw off a bite of chewy flatbread. “Even the food tastes better now!” he exclaimed. “Being a thrall stood between me and all my senses.”
    â€œMaybe this is just better than what you ate while you were a thrall,” Grus suggested.
    â€œOh, that, too,” Otus said. “But the days seem brighter. Birdcalls have music in them—they’re not just noise. I used to ignore stinks. Now I can’t. And when I’m with a woman … That’s better, too.” He sighed. “If we find my woman down here …”
    He had a lady friend back in the palace. The freedom to be a man and not a thrall could make life more complicated, too. Grus didn’t tell him so. He’d have to find that out for himself. The king did ask, “Where is the village you came from? If we can, we’ll free it.”
    Otus jumped to his feet so he could bow very low. “You are kinder to me than I deserve, Your Majesty! My village is west of here. I know now that it lies toward the sea. When I was the way I was before, I did not even know there was such a thing as the sea.”
    â€œI said we’d free it if we could, remember,” Grus warned. “I don’t know that we’ll have soldiers going over there any time real soon.” He doubted the Avornans would—not unless the Menteshe attacked from that direction and made him respond. But he didn’t have the heart to crush Otus’ hopes.
    The ex-thrall nodded. “I understand that, too, Your Majesty. You will do what you need to do before you do what you want to do, yes?”
    â€œYes,” Grus said, glad Otus had taken it so well.
    When they set out again the next morning, Grus noticed that the Argolid Mountains to the south reared higher in the sky than they had when he’d first crossed the Stura. The jagged peaks showed more brown and green and less purple haze of distance than they had, too. Long ago, Avornan rule had run almost to their foothills. That was before the Menteshe spilled through the passes and swallowed a third of the kingdom.
    Somewhere in those mountains, the Banished One was supposed to have his abode. Did he dwell in the mountains because they were closer to the heavens? Or was that where he’d fallen to earth, somehow leaving him unable to go anywhere else? Maybe the Menteshe knew. No Avornan did.
    Before Grus’ army had gone very far, it came upon a battlefield where the nomads had fought one another a year or two before. The bones of men and horses lay bleaching in the sun. Not much more than bones remained. As always happened, the winners—whichever side had won—had plundered the bodies of the fallen. Grus spied one skull with an arrow still sticking up from it. No need to wonder how that man had died.
    Hirundo