Geroge and Tharma felt every bit as bad, if not worse, and had no idea what to do about it. Some forms of virginity were more enjoyable to lose than others. They moaned they were dying, and flinched from the harsh din of their own voices. Gerin did very little to make them more comfortable. The less they enjoyed the aftermath of their debauch, the less likely they were to repeat it.
Having been moderate the day before, he didn't flinch from leaving the shade of the great hall for the bright sunlight that streamed down into the courtyard. As soon as he went out there, he began to sweat; it was a fine, hot summer's day.
He wondered if that meant Stribog hadn't recovered from the drubbing Mavrix gave him. He also wondered what the weather was like west of the Venien, in lands where the Gradi held sway. If Stribog really was out of commission, the peasants might bring in some kind of crop even there. Have to try to find out, he thought. The more he learned about what the Gradi and their gods could do, the better his own chances of figuring out what to do about them.
He climbed up onto the palisade. Everything looked normal enough, as far as the eye could see: the trouble was, the eye couldn't see far enough. But here, peasants labored in the fields, cattle and sheep grazed on the meadows, pigs foraged for whatever they could find. In the peasant village near the keep, smoke came out the smoke holes in a couple of roofs as women simmered soup or stew for the evening meal.
What was Fulda doing there? Cooking? Weaving? Brewing? Weeding? Whatever she was doing, her courses hadn't come. She was pregnant, sure enough, and without a human partner. Why had Mavrix chosen to spawn a demigod in the northlands? What sort of demigod would the child be?
Time would answer those questions, provided Gerin remained alive to see the answers. Actually, time would answer those questions whether he remained alive or not, but he preferred not to dwell on that.
He didn't have to dwell on it for long. The lookout in the watchtower above the castle winded his horn and cried, "A chariot approaching, lord prince, out of the west!" Gerin peered southwest, in the direction of Adiatunnus' lands. For years, that was the direction from which trouble had come, out of the west. Then the lookout amplified his earlier words: "A chariot along the path by the Niffet."
Gerin whirled. When he thought about the Niffet these days, he thought of war galleys full of Gradi with axes, every one of the raiders bellowing Voldar's name. Much to his relief, he saw no galleys. For a little while, he saw no chariot, either. His watchtower was the tallest around, precisely to afford the sentries up there the widest possible view.
No, there it was, coming out from behind a grove of plum trees. The horsemen were trotting along at a pace that, while not the quickest, covered the most ground if you held it for a long time. Somebody up on the palisade next to Gerin said, "From out of Schild Stoutstaff's holding, maybe."
"That would be my guess," Gerin agreed. "Now we have to find out what sort of news he's bringing."
When the chariot came up to the keep, the fellow in the car named himself Aripert Aribert's son, one of Schild's vassal barons, though not a man the Fox knew well. Since there was only the one car, Gerin's warriors did not hesitate to lower the drawbridge and let him into the keep.
Once in the courtyard, he jumped down from the car and looked all around, calling, "The Fox! Where is the Fox?" He didn't know Gerin by sight, either. He was about thirty-five, stocky, with sharp features and a quick, jerky way of moving.
"I'm the Fox." Gerin had made his way down from the palisade. "What's gone so wrong in Schild's barony that you had to rush here and tell me about it?"
"You have the right of it, lord prince," Aripert said, pacing back and forth. He evidently couldn't stand to hold still more than a few breaths at a time. He cracked his knuckles, one after another, till they all popped, and hardly seemed aware he was doing it. "The wild men from out of the west, the Gradi, ships full of them landed in Schild's holding. His keep held against them, and those of his vassals, too, but they burned villages and killed serfs and trampled crops and stole livestock and we're all going to be hungry this winter on account of it." He stared at Gerin, as if convinced it was the Fox's fault.
"We haven't been sitting idle, Aripert," Gerin said. Aripert gnawed dead skin at the edge of his thumbnail. Gerin wondered if he had a wife. Living with such constant fidgeting would have driven him mad. But that was not what mattered at the moment. He went on, "Your own overlord has fought against the Gradi at my side."
"So what?" Aripert said, swatting at something that might have been a gnat and might have been a figment of his imagination. "It didn't do me any good. It didn't do Schild's holding any good."
"That's not so," Gerin said. "It might have been worse for you-it might have been much worse-if we hadn't. If you don't believe me, send a messenger down to Adiatunnus and ask him."
Aripert scratched his head, tugged at his ear, and plucked a hair out of his beard. Spinning it between thumb and forefinger, he answered, "All right, maybe it would have been worse. I don't know. It was cursed bad, I tell you." He started pacing again. "How are you going to keep those bastards off the Niffet? That's what I want to know." He yanked out his knife and cleaned his nails with it.
Just watching him made Gerin tired. "I don't know how we can keep the Gradi off the Niffet," he said. "They make better ships than we do. Best we can hope for is to beat them once they get off their ships to fight. But they can pick the spots where they do that."
"Not good enough." Aripert stuck one of his newly clean fingernails deep into his ear, stared with interest at what he dug out, and wiped his hand on his breeches. "Not good enough, not even close. We have to keep them from doing that."
"Fine," Gerin said, which surprised the newcomer into several heartbeats of immobility. The Fox fixed him with a sour stare. "How?"
Aripert opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lips, noisily sucked in air, licked his lips again, and finally said, "You're the prince of the north. I'm not. You're supposed to tell that to me."
Gerin laughed. Aripert glared. Gerin glared back, and kept on laughing. "If I had a cow for everyone who's said that to me since spring," he said, "I'd eat beef the rest of my life."
That left Aripert unimpressed. "If the prince of the north doesn't have the answers, who does?" he demanded.
"Maybe no one," Gerin said, which made the vassal baron's eyes open very wide. As Aripert was scuffing the ground with one foot, the Fox thought, Maybe Voldar. He wouldn't say that out loud, and wished it hadn't crossed his mind. What he did say was, "You'll have to put more watchers along the river, to keep an eye out for Gradi galleys and give the alarm when they spot them. Then you can decide whether you want to show yourself in force enough to keep them from wanting to land or hole up in your keep."
Aripert started pacing again, then hopped up in the air suddenly enough to startle the Fox. Even before his feet hit the ground again, he was talking: "Well, that's something, lord prince, so it is. If these cursed Gradi come and go on the Niffet as they please, the way you say, we will have to keep a tighter watch for 'em, do those kinds of things."
"If they land, try to burn their boats," Gerin said. "They guard them, but it would be worth doing if you could. If they're stranded in our country, we can hunt them down the way we would any dangerous wild beasts."
"Aye, lord prince-sense in your words." Aripert's jaws worked, as if literally chewing up and swallowing Gerin's advice.
"Had you done any of these things before the Gradi raided you?" Gerin asked. Aripert shook his head. He gnawed some more at the skin of his thumb, looking contrite. Now the Fox glared in good earnest. "Why not?" he shouted. "You know what the Gradi did to us here this spring. By the five hells, why did you think you were immune?"
"It wasn't that so much, lord prince," Aripert said, shifting from foot to foot and twisting his body back and forth as if he were dancing. "We didn't know what to do, so we didn't do anything much. If they come back, we'll give them a better fight for your wise words."
"How much wisdom does it take to see this?" Gerin held a hand out in front of his face. "How much wisdom does it take to feel this?" He wanted to hit Aripert over the head with a rock, with luck letting in some light and fresh air, but contented himself with squeezing the minor baron's arm. "You don't need to go to the Sibyl's shrine at Ikos for advice like what I've given you. You don't need to come to me, either. All you need to do is sit down on your fundament and ask yourself a few simple questions. Are the Gradi likely to come here? If they do, how will they come? If that's what they do, how can I best pour sand in their soup? How will they try to stop me? How can I keep them from doing that? It's not hard, Aripert. Any man can do it, if he will." He knew he sounded as if he were pleading. He couldn't help it. He was pleading.
Aripert Aribert's son scratched his head. He sighed, long and deep. "What am I supposed to say, lord prince?"
"You're not supposed to say any one thing," Gerin answered, quietly now. "You're not supposed to do any one thing. You're just supposed to think for yourself."
Aripert scratched his head again. He scratched his neck. He scratched his forearm, and the back of his hand. Watching him made Gerin itch. He started scratching his own head. Aripert said, "When a serf asks me something, I don't tell him to figure it out for himself. I give him an order, and I make certain sure he follows it."
"Sometimes that works fine." Gerin was always ready to talk about the art-or maybe magic was a better word-of ruling. "Sometimes it keeps him from getting a different idea, one as good as yours or maybe better. And sometimes, unless you're a god-maybe even if you're a god-you're going to be flat-out wrong. If the serf blindly goes ahead and does what you tell him, you've done him wrong. Of course, sometimes he'll know you're wrong and go ahead and do what you tell him anyhow, for spite or anger or to show you up for a fool. That's why I give fewer orders like that than I used to."
"By the way you talk, you want every man doing so much for himself, there'd be no need for barons-or for a prince," Aripert added pointedly.
"If every man were as smart as every other man and if everybody got along with everyone else, that would be fine," Gerin said. "But some men can't think, and, worse, some who can won't. And some people are quarrelsome and some want what their neighbors have but don't want to work the way the neighbors did. I don't think lords will disappear from the landscape tomorrow, nor even the day after."
"Heh," Aripert said. He sketched a salute. "All right, lord prince, I'll try not to be one of those people who can think but won't. Thinking about watchers along the river is a good place to start. Beacon fires, maybe." He plucked at his beard, then tugged at an earlobe.
"A string of beacon fires would be a good thing to have," the Fox agreed. "If you do set 'em up, I'll put a watcher next to Schild's land to relay news here to Fox Keep."
"Well, that's fine, lord prince. One thing I can't do for myself is make men out of thin air. Can you spare me some soldiers to come leap on the Gradi if they do land again?"
"Not a one," Gerin answered firmly. "But if you want to arm your serfs against them, I won't say a word. Peasants don't usually make the best soldiers-the gods know that's so-but if they have weapons, they'll do the Gradi some damage, anyhow."
"But if they learn to fight, they'll do us nobles damage down the road, too," Aripert protested.
"Which has the greater weight, what may happen down the road if you do arm them or what's almost sure to happen now if you don't?" Gerin asked. Aripert bit his lip, stamped his foot, and finally nodded. He was thinking, even if he didn't like the answers he was getting; Gerin gave him credit for it. The Fox said, "Here, spend the night with us. We'll feed you; you can drink some ale with us, if any turns out to be left in the cellar."
"Uh, thank you, lord prince." Aripert sounded a little unsure of himself, as if he couldn't decide whether Gerin was joking. Since Gerin couldn't decide, either, no reason for Aripert to be able to.
Geroge came out of the great hall, braving the vicious sunlight for a chance to breathe fresh air instead of the smoke inside the castle. The Fox's men, knowing the monster's delicate condition, prudently left him alone. He might have been good-natured most of the time, but anyone feeling the aftereffects from a day's binge was liable to be on the testy side. If you were huge, hairy, and armed with teeth like a wolf's, no one wanted to find out whether you were feeling testy or not.
"Father Dyaus!" Aripert yelled, grabbing for his sword. "It's one of those horrible things! I thought they were all gone."
Gerin seized Aripert's arm and kept him from getting the length of edged bronze out of the scabbard. Geroge swung his intimidating gaze toward Aripert. "Well!" he said, with almost as much condescension as Mavrix could have loaded into the word. "Some people don't insult strangers just for the fun of it, or so the Fox tells me, anyhow." His long, narrow nostrils were ideally suited to sniffing.
For once, Aripert stood completely motionless. He stared at the monster. By the look on his face, he would have sooner expected one of the logs on the palisade to say something to him than Geroge. "If you'll look closely, you'll notice he is wearing breeches," Gerin said. "We're friends."
"Friends," Aripert repeated through frozen lips. "You have some… unusual friends, lord prince."
Gerin set a hand on his shoulder. "Oh, I don't know. You're not so unusual as all that, are you?"
Geroge got the point of the gibe before Aripert did. The monster started to throw back his head and roar laughter. One or the other or both of those must have hurt, for he stopped with a grimace that showed off his formidable dental equipment. Aripert started to draw his sword again, but checked himself before Gerin had to stop him.
The Fox introduced the monster to the vassal baron, then explained for Aripert's benefit: "He was deep in the ale pot yesterday, the very first time, and he's feeling it now."
"Oh." Aripert stuck out a finger at Gerin. "Now I understand why you were wondering if you had any ale left. Must take up a bit to fill up one his size."
"Not one," Geroge said. "Three: me, Tharma, and Van of the Strong Arm."
Aripert didn't know who Tharma was, but he knew about Van. He let out an awed whistle. Gerin said, "There, you see? You can think, after all."
"What I think is, I'd like to have seen that," Aripert said. "From a safe distance, I mean. When you see a Gradi galley out on the Niffet, it's pretty, too, but you don't want it getting any closer."
"A good deal of truth there," Gerin said. "If we weather the storm, we'll have to see about making galleys of our own. But that's for later, in the great by-and-by. For now, come into the hall and we'll start feeding you. And you can watch Geroge and Tharma be very moderate tonight, unless I miss my guess." He turned to the monster. "How about it, Geroge? Feel like having your head pound like a drum again tomorrow morning?"
Geroge held up both hands in a gesture of genuine horror. "Oh, no, lord prince! Doing that once was plenty for me."
"He's not stupid," Aripert said, hopping into the air in surprise. He belied his own words, speaking as if Geroge wasn't there or couldn't understand even when giving a compliment. But then he went on, "Plenty of ordinary men who don't think getting drunk once is enough. Plenty of ordinary men who don't think getting drunk once in a day is enough, come to that."
"Aye," the Fox agreed mournfully. "We both know too many like that. Everyone knows too many like that. Well, come on. We'll see if we can make you happy without having you sleep in the rushes under the table when you're done."
* * *
Aripert Aribert's son rode out of Fox Keep the next morning, every bit as fidgety as he had been when he rode in. Gerin dared hope he would put some of that restless energy to work watching for the Gradi and resisting them if they struck Schild's holding again.
A few days later, he got word from a trader who had come out of the forests north of the Niffet with a load of fine beeswax and amber that the Gradi had also raided that side of the river. The trader, a lean, weathered, balding man n
amed Cedoal the Honest (a sobriquet the Fox would have bet he'd invented himself), said, "I didn't see the bastards my own self, lord prince; you got to understand that. But I did see the woodsrunners who were running from 'em. They like to swamp the village where I was at, and every one of 'em had worse tales to tell than the next."
That was logically impossible, but Gerin didn't press the merchant about it. Instead, he tried to figure out exactly when the raid had taken place. He wished he had Aripert back, to nail down the exact day. As best he could tell, though, both raids had probably been by the same band. Figuring out where Cedoal had been in relation to Schild's holding wasn't easy, either. The Fox thought the Gradi had hit Schild first and then raided the Trokmoi on the way west, but knew he couldn't be sure.
And then, a few days after that, Gradi galleys came rowing up the Niffet toward Fox Keep. Fires from Schild's holding warned of them, so Aripert had not only thought but also acted. "We'll smash them, Father!" Duren cried as he drove the chariot with Gerin and Van out toward the river. The Fox had decided to meet the raiders on the bank, not wanting them to ravage fields and assail the peasant village again.
But the Gradi did not land. Instead, sails taking advantage of the wind from the west and oars working with drilled precision, they propelled their galleys past Fox Keep and on up the Niffet. Gerin and a good many Elabonians shot arrows at them, but most of the shafts fell short: the Niffet was a broad stream, and a ship closer to the northern bank than the southern all but immune to archery.
Van normally disdained the bow in war. Seeing that the Gradi were not going to stop and fight, though, he grabbed the strongest bow any of Gerin's comrades carried: it belonged to Drungo Drago's son. Drungo had put a couple of arrows close to the galley. He growled when Van took the bow from him, but stared, slack-jawed, as the outlander bent it till the wood creaked and threatened to snap, then let fly.
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