“I hope not,” Gerin said. Aragis chewed on that, then slowly nodded. He looked sincere, but his face, as Gerin had already seen, showed what he willed it to, not necessarily what he felt. That was useful for a ruler, as Gerin knew—his own features were similarly schooled.
Van said, “All right, Archer, if you don’t care to circle and watch and not trust, suppose you do tell us why you came up to Ikos, so long as it’s not life or death for your holding that we know.”
For a moment, Aragis was nonplussed. Gerin hadn’t been sure he could be. Then his usual watchful expression returned as he considered the outlander’s words. At last he said, “Fair enough, I suppose. I rode here because I’ve had bad dreams; I hoped—I hope still—the Sibyl could put meaning to them.”
“What sort of dreams?” Gerin’s curiosity was as dependable as the changing phases of the moons.
Aragis hesitated again, perhaps not caring to show a rival any weakness. But after another pause for thought, he murmured, “If I can’t understand them, you bloody well won’t, either.” He raised his voice to answer the Fox: “They’ve been filled with horrid things, monsters, call them what you will, overrunning my lands—overrunning the rest of the northlands, too, for all I could tell.” He grimaced and shook his head, as if talking about the visions made him see them again.
“I too have had this dream,” Gerin said slowly.
“And I,” Van agreed.
“And the innkeeper from whom we’ve taken rooms,” Gerin said. “I did not like the omen when it was Van and I alone. Now with four—” He checked himself. “Four I know of, I should say—I like it even less.”
“Wherever else we rub, Fox, I’ll not argue with you there.” Aragis ran a hand down to the point of his graying beard. “Did the Sibyl say anything to you of this before she had her fit? What verse did she speak?”
“Why don’t you ask him how big his is, as long as you’re snooping?” Van said.
Like most men, Aragis seemed a stripling when set against the burly outlander. But he had no retreat in him. He reached for the sword that hung on his belt. Before Van could grab any of the lethal hardware he carried, Gerin held up a hand. “Hold, both of you,” he said. “Aragis, you know what the question was. The answer has nothing to do with you, so I can give it without fear you’ll gain from it.” He repeated the oracular response.
Aragis listened intently, still rubbing his chin and now and then plucking at his beard. When Gerin was done, the other noble gave a grudging nod. “Aye, that’s nought to do with me, and might even hold good news about Duren mixed in there. But what of the rest? I’ve never heard—or heard of—a reply so filled with doom. No wonder the Sibyl wouldn’t wake up after she delivered it.”
“I wonder if it’s got summat to do with the dreams we’ve had,” Van said.
Aragis and Gerin both looked at him. As if animated by a single will, their hands formed the same sign to turn away evil. “Off with you, omen,” Aragis exclaimed. The Fox nodded vehemently.
Van said, “It’s not much of an omen talk and finger-twitching’ll turn aside.”
“The little vole will turn and bite in the eagle’s claws,” Gerin answered. “One time in a thousand, or a thousand thousand, he’ll draw blood and make the bird drop him. With omens, you never know which ones you can shift, so you try to shift them all.”
Now it was Van’s turn to look thoughtful. “Might be something to that, I suppose. I know what I’d sooner do, though, now that the Sibyl’s not going to give you what you’re after.”
“And what’s that?” Gerin asked, though he thought he knew the answer.
Sure enough, Van said, “Go back to the inn and hoist enough beakers of ale that we don’t care about omens or Sibyls or anything else.”
“If there’s nothing for us here, we should head straight off to Fox Keep,” Gerin said, but he sounded doubtful even to himself.
Van looked at the sun. “You want to start up the road just a bit before noon, so we can camp for the night in the middle of the haunted wood? Begging your pardon, Captain, that’s the daftest thought you’ve had in a goodish while.”
Gerin prided himself on his ability to admit mistakes. “You’re right, it is. And if we’re stuck with spending another day at the inn, how better to pass it than with a carouse?”
He looked doubtfully at Aragis. Polite talk with his main rival in the northlands was one thing, a day of drinking with him something else again. Aragis studied him with the same question on his face. The Fox realized that, while he and the self-styled grand duke were very different men, their station gave them common concerns. That was disconcerting; he hadn’t tried mentally putting himself in Aragis’ shoes before.
After a moment of awkward silence, the Archer resolved the problem, saying, “The way back to my holding is straight enough, and I’ll be free of the woods well before sunset if I start now, so I think I’ll head south.”
He stuck out his hand. Gerin clasped it. “Whatever comes, I hope we get through it without trying to carve each other’s livers,” he said. “The only one who’d gain from that is Adiatunnus.”
Aragis’ eyes grew hawk-watchful again. “I hear he sent to you. You were worried whether his men stole your boy. You’re telling me you didn’t join forces with him.”
“That’s just what I’m telling you,” Gerin answered. “The five hells will vomit forth the damned before I join hands with a Trokmê.”
He waited for Aragis to say something like that. Aragis didn’t. He only nodded to show he’d heard, then walked off to reclaim the chariot or wagon in which he’d come to Ikos.
“Cold fish,” Van said judiciously. “Not a man who makes an easy enemy, though, or I miss my guess.”
“You don’t,” the Fox answered. “We’ve met only a couple of times before, so I don’t have his full measure as a man, but what he’s done in building up his holding speaks for itself. And you heard what he had done after his men hunted down a longtooth that had been taking cattle from one of his villages?”
“No, somehow I missed that one,” Van said. “Tell me.”
“He had an extra strong cross raised, and nailed and lashed the beast’s carcass to it as a warning to others of its kind—and, more to the point, as a warning to any men who might have thought about trifling with him.”
“Mm. It’d make me think twice, I expect,” Van said. “Well, let’s amble after him and get back our animals.”
The beasts and the vehicles they drew waited outside the walled courtyard around the temple. By luck, the low-ranking priest who’d taken the wagon by the gate stood close to it now; that meant Gerin didn’t have to convince someone else he wasn’t absconding with the property of another. As he climbed in, he pointed to a thatch-roofed wooden cottage not far away. “Is that where the Sibyl lives when she’s not prophesying?” he asked.
“So it is, good my sir,” the priest answered. His smooth face held worry. “I saw her carried there not long since, and heard rumors and tales so strange I know not what to believe: even those who brought her seemed confused. Did the mantic trance take her for you?”
“It did. In fact, she lost her senses just afterwards, and did not get them back again as she usually does.” Without repeating the oracular verse, Gerin told the priest what had happened in the underground chamber.
The corners of the eunuch’s mouth drew down even further. “Biton grant she recover soon,” he exclaimed. “Never has the good god seen fit to call two Sibyls to himself so quickly. The temple suffers great disruption while the search for a new maid to speak his words goes on.”
“To say nothing of the fees you lose when the oracle is quiet,” Gerin said, remembering sacks of silver he’d pressed into priests’ pudgy palms.
But, in injured tones, the eunuch replied, “I did say nothing of those fees.” Perhaps he was genuinely pious. Stranger things had happened, Gerin supposed. He twitched the reins, urging the horses back toward the inn.
The innkeeper and
the head groom met him in front of it. “You’ll honor my establishment with another night’s custom?” the innkeeper asked eagerly, adding, “I trust all went well for you with the Sibyl? I gather there was some sort of commotion in the temple?” Like anyone else, he delighted in gossip.
“Not in the temple—under it,” Van said. Gerin let him tell the tale this time. The outlander was a better storyteller than he, anyhow. When Gerin told what he knew, he did it baldly, laying out facts to speak for themselves. Van embellished and embroidered them, almost as if he were a minstrel.
When he was through, the innkeeper clapped his hands. Bowing, he said, “Good my sir, if ever you tire of the life you lead, which I take to be one of arms, you would be welcome to earn your bread and meat here at my inn, for surely the stories you spin would bring in enough new custom to make having you about a paying proposition.”
“Thank you, sir, but I’m not quite ready yet to sit by the fire and tell yarns for my supper,” Van said. “If you’ll fetch Gerin and me a big jar of ale, though, that’d be a kindness worth remembering.”
Seeking to be even more persuasive, Gerin let silver softly jingle. The innkeeper responded with alacrity. He shouted to his servants as Gerin and Van went inside and sat in the taproom. Grunting with effort, two men hauled a huge amphora up from the cellar. Right behind them came another fellow with a flat-bottomed pot full of earth. The Fox wondered at that until the two men stabbed the pointed base of the amphora down into the pot.
“It won’t stand by itself on a wooden floor, don’t you see?” the innkeeper said. “And if the two of you somehow empty it, you won’t be able to stand by yourselves, either.”
“Good. That’s the idea,” Van boomed. “You have a dipper there, my friend, so we can fill our jacks as we need to? Ah, yes, I see it. Splendid. If we do come to the point where we can’t walk, you’ll be kind enough to have your men carry us up to our beds?”
“We’ve done it a few times, or more than a few,” said one of the men who’d lugged in the amphora. “For you, though, we ought to charge extra, seeing as you’re heavy freight.” He looked ready to bolt if Van took that the wrong way, but the outlander threw back his head and laughed till the taproom rang.
The innkeeper hovered round Gerin like a bee waiting for a flower to open. The Fox didn’t take long to figure out why. He’d jingled silver, but he hadn’t shown any. Now he did. The innkeeper bowed himself almost double as he made the coins vanish—no easy feat, for he was almost as round as some of the temple eunuchs.
Once paid, he had the sense to leave his guests to themselves. Van filled two jacks, passed one to Gerin. He raised on high the one he kept. “Confusion to oracles!” he cried, and poured the red-brown ale down his throat. He let out a long sigh of contentment: “Ahhhh!”
Gerin also drank, but more slowly. Halfway through, he set down his jack and said, “The poor Sibyl seemed confused enough already. I hope she’s come back to herself.”
“Well, so do I,” Van admitted. He clucked impatiently. “Come on, Captain, finish up there so I can pour you full again. Ah, that’s better.” He plied the dipper. Before upending his own refilled jack, he went on, “I wonder if, for a woman with juice in her like the new Sibyl looks to have, letting the god fill you makes up for long years without a man to fill you. Not a swap I’d care to make, anyhow.”
“I had the same thought myself, when I saw her in the chamber in place of the crone who’d been there time out of mind,” Gerin answered. “I don’t suppose Biton would speak to anyone who wasn’t willing to listen, though.”
“Mm, maybe not.” Van kicked him under the table. “What shall we drink to this round?”
Without hesitation, Gerin raised his jack and said, “Dyaus’ curse, and Biton’s, too, on whoever kidnapped Duren.” He emptied the jack in one long pull, his throat working hard. Van shouted approval and drank with him.
After a while, they stopped toasting with each round and settled in for steady drinking. Gerin felt at the tip of his nose with thumb and forefinger. It was numb, a sure sign the ale was beginning to have its way with him. Suddenly, half drunk, he decided he didn’t feel like sliding sottishly under the table.
Van filled his own jack, lowered the dipper into the amphora, and brought it, dripping, toward Gerin’s. When he turned it so the dark amber stream poured into the jack, it quickly overflowed. He scowled at the Fox. “You’re behindhand there.” Only the care with which he pronounced “behindhand” gave any clue to how much he’d poured down himself.
“I know. Go on without me, if you’ve a mind to. If I drink myself stupid today, I’ll drink myself sad. I can feel it coming on already, and I have plenty to be sad about even with my wits about me.”
The outlander looked at him with an odd expression. Gerin needed a moment to recognize it; he hadn’t often seen pity on his friend’s blunt, hard-featured face. Van said, “The real trouble with you, Captain, is that you don’t let go of your wits no matter how drunk you get. Me, I’m like most folk. After a while, I just stop thinking. Nice to be able to do that now and again.”
“If you say so,” Gerin answered. “I’ve lived by and for my wits so long now, I suppose, that I’d sooner keep ’em about me all the time. I’d feel naked—worse than naked—without ’em.”
“Poor bastard.” Van had drunk enough to make his tongue even freer than it usually was. “I tell you this, though: a long time ago I learned it was cursed foolishness to try and make a man go in a direction he doesn’t fancy. So you do what you feel like doing. Me, I intend to get pie-eyed. Tomorrow morning I’ll have a head like the inside of a drum with two Trokmoi pounding on it, but I’ll worry about that then.”
“All right,” Gerin said. “You’ve touched wisdom there, you know.”
“Me? Honh!” Van said with deep scorn. “I don’t know from wisdom. All I know is ale feels good when it’s inside me, and I feel good when I’m inside a wench, and a nice, friendly fight is the best sport in the world. Who needs more?”
“No, really.” The Fox had enough ale inside him to make him painfully earnest. “So many folk aren’t content to let their friends” —he almost said the people they love, but knew with accurate instinct that that would have been more than Van could put up with— “be what they are. They keep trying to make them into what they think they’re supposed to be.”
Van grunted. “Foolishness,” was all he said. He plied the dipper yet again, then burst into raucous song in a language Gerin didn’t know.
The outlander went to the jakes several times over the course of the afternoon as the ale extracted a measure of revenge. When he came back from the latest of those visits, he zigzagged to the table like a ship trying to tack into port against a strong wind. His chair groaned when he threw his bulk into it, but held.
Even after more drinking, he was able to paste an appreciative smile on his face when a servitor brought over flatbread and a juicy roast of beef. He used his eating knife to carve off a chunk that would have done a starving longtooth proud, and methodically proceeded to make it disappear, lubricating the passage with ale.
After so many years’ comradeship, the outlander’s capacity no longer amazed Gerin, even if it did still awe him. The innkeeper watched Van eat and drink with amazement, too: glum amazement that he hadn’t charged more, if the Fox was any judge. Gerin did his best to damage the roast, too, but, beside Van’s, his depredations went all but unnoticed.
Twilight faded into night. Torches, their heads dipped in fat for brighter flames, smoked and crackled in bronze sconces. Gerin drained his jack one last time, set it upside down on the table, and got to his feet. He moved slowly and carefully, that being the only sort of motion he had left to him. “I’m for bed,” he announced.
“Too bad, too bad. There’s still ale in the jar,” Van said. He got up himself, to peer down into it. “Not a lot of ale, but some.”
“Don’t make me think about it,” the Fox said. “I’m going to have a headache in the
morning as is; why bring it on early?”
“You!” Van said. “What about me?” Pity showed on his face again, this time self-pity—he had indeed drunk titanically, if he’d managed to make himself maudlin.
Gerin climbed the stairs as if each were a separate mountain higher than the last. Triumph—and a bellyful of ale—surged in him when he got to the second story. The floor seemed to shift under his feet like the sea, but he reached the room he shared with Van without having to lean against the wall or grab at a door. That too was triumph of a sort.
He rinsed out his mouth with water from the pitcher there, though he knew it would be a cesspit come morning anyhow. Then he undressed and flopped limply onto one of the beds. He pulled off his sandals, hoping Van wouldn’t choose the same bed and squash him when—if—the outlander made it upstairs.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the Fox sat bolt upright in bed, eyes staring, heart pounding. His head was pounding, too, but he ignored it. The horror of the dream that had slammed him out of sodden slumber made such merely fleshly concerns as hangovers meaningless by comparison.
Worst of all, he couldn’t remember what he’d seen—or perhaps the darkness of the dream had been so absolute that even imaginary vision failed. Something dreadful was brewing somewhere in the dark.
The room in which he lay was dark, too, but not so dark that he could not see. Light from all the moons save Elleb streamed in through the window, painting crisscrossing shadows on the floor. In the other bed, Van snored like a bronze saw slowly cutting its way through limestone.
Just as Gerin tried to convince himself the dream, no matter how terrifying, had been only a dream and to go back to sleep, the outlander stirred and moaned. That he could move at all amazed the Fox; the room reeked of stale ale.
Van shouted—not in Elabonian, not in words at all, but like an animal bawling out a desperate alarm. One of his big hands groped for and found a knife. He sprang to his feet, naked and ferocious, his eyes utterly devoid of reason.
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