Prince of the North

by Turtledove, Harry

  Aragis the Archer raised his drinking jack in salute to Gerin, who sat across the table from him. “You’re a generous host, lord prince,” he said.

  “We do what we can, grand duke,” the Fox replied. “Once in a while, for celebration, is all well and good. If we ate like this every day, we’d all starve, serfs and nobles together, long before midwinter rolled around.”

  “I understand that full well,” Aragis said. “Between war and hunger and disease, we live on the edge of a cliff. But by the gods, it’s fine sometimes to step back from the edge and make life into what it was meant to be: plenty of food plenty of drink—you brew a fine ale—and no worries, not for today.” He raised his jack again, then drained it. A servant with a pitcher made haste to refill it.

  Selatre turned to Gerin. Under the noise of the crowd, she said, “Surely there’s more to life than a full belly.”

  “I think so, too,” he said, nodding. “So does Aragis, no doubt, or he’d be content to stay in his castle and stuff himself. If you ask me, he’d sooner drink power than ale.” But then, trying to be just, he added, “If you don’t have a full belly, not much else matters. Years the harvest fails, you find out about that.” He paused thoughtfully. “What civilization is, I suppose, is the things you find to worry about after your belly’s full.”

  “I like that,” Selatre said. Now she nodded. “Well said.”

  Van sat at Gerin’s right hand, with Duren between them. He’d been talking with Fand, and missed Gerin’s words. Selatre’s brisk statement of approval caught his notice. “What’s well said, Fox?” he asked.

  Gerin repeated himself. Van thought it over—perhaps a bit more intensely than he might have at other times, for he’d emptied his drinking jack again and again—and finally nodded. “Something to that.” He waved a big arm in a gesture that almost knocked a plate out of a servant’s hands. “You Elabonians, you’ve a great many things past farming. I give you so much, that I do.”

  Fand rounded on him. “And what o’ my own folk?” she demanded. “Sure and you’re not with the southrons who call us woodsrunners and barbarous savages and all, are you now?”

  “Now, now, lass, I said nothing of the sort. I didn’t speak of the Trokmoi at all, just of the folk of my friend here,” Van answered, mildly enough. Gerin breathed a silent sigh of relief; he’d seen trouble riding Fand’s question as sure as rain rode a squall line. Then, to his dismay, the outlander, instead of leaving well enough alone, went on, “Though now that you ask me, I will say that, since I traveled the forests of the Trokmoi from north to south, I’d far sooner live here than there. More good things to life here, taken all in all.”

  “Would you, now?” In the space of three words, Fand’s voice rose to a screech that made heads whip around. “Well, have some fine Elabonian ale, then!” She picked up her drinking jack and poured it over Van’s head, then got up from the bench and started to stalk off.

  Snorting and cursing and blinking because the stinging stuff ran down into his eyes, Van reached out a meaty hand and hauled her back. She squawked and swung at him. He blocked the blow with his other arm, slammed her down into her seat hard enough to make her teeth come together with a loud click. “Here, see how you like it,” he said, and drenched her with his jack of ale.

  She cursed him in Elabonian and the forest tongue, loudly and ingeniously. He just sat there grinning, which fanned the fires of her wrath.

  “Go on, both of you, and dry yourselves off,” Gerin said, uncomfortably aware a common role for a would be peacemaker was taking arrows from both sides. “Van may say what he thinks—”

  “I’d like to see anyone stop me,” the outlander put in.

  “Shut up, will you?” Gerin hissed at him before continuing, “—and you, lady, may agree or not, as you judge best. But if you drench someone, you shouldn’t be surprised or even angry to get drenched in return.”

  He waited for her to flare back at him, but every once in a while logic reached her. This proved one of those times. “Aye, summat to that,” she said, tossing her head so little drops of ale flew from her coppery hair. She looked warily at Van. “Quits for now?”

  “Aye, for now.” This time, the outlander got up first. Fand followed him. Gerin wondered if they’d look for a towel or the nearest bedchamber. He laughed a little. Even if Fand wasn’t his woman any more, he still got involved in her quarrels.

  After a while, Duren said, “Why aren’t Van and Fand coming back?”

  “I think they’re probably making up their quarrel,” Gerin answered, smiling.

  “Seldom dull around this place, is it?” Aragis said. He was smiling, too, more than half in bemusement. “My keep is more, mm, sedate.”

  By which you mean anyone who doesn’t think like you had best not let you know it, Gerin thought. But how the Archer ran his holding was his business. Duren curled up in the space Fand and Van had vacated and went to sleep. Gerin ruffled his hair and said, “Somebody finds it dull, anyhow.” He stared down at the little boy, still hardly daring to believe he had him back again, then raised his jack to Aragis in salute. Returning Duren made up for a multitude of the grand duke’s sins.

  Presently Van and Fand did return. Fand looked rumpled. The outlander looked smug. They both looked surprised when they found Duren stretched out where they’d been sitting.

  “Don’t worry,” Gerin said. “You can have your places back. I’ll take him up to bed.” He scooped up his son, who wiggled and muttered but did not wake.

  Selatre drained her drinking jack, set it down, and brought a hand up to her mouth to cover a yawn. “I’m for my own bed,” she announced. “I’ll walk up with you, if that’s all right.”

  “Your company is better than just all right, as you know very well,” Gerin said. He lifted Duren up as high as he could, to keep the boy’s dangling legs from catching any of the feasters in the head, and made his way toward the stairs. Selatre followed.

  Duren sighed again when Gerin put him down in the bed they both used. Duren muttered something, but Gerin couldn’t make out what it was. “He has the look of you,” Selatre said.

  The Fox nodded as he straightened up. “He has my coloring, certainly. I suppose his features are mostly mine, too.” Gently, he pulled off his sleeping son’s shoes and tossed them by the side of the bed. “After what happened, I hate to leave him alone, even for an instant.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Selatre said. “But if he’s not safe here in your bedchamber, where can he be safe?”

  “The way the world wags now? Maybe nowhere,” Gerin said bleakly. “None of us is really safe these days.” He took a couple of steps over to Selatre, put his arms around her, and kissed her. “We just have to do the best we can, that’s all.”

  She nodded. “Do you think you could leave him alone long enough to come with me to my little chamber?”

  He paused in some surprise before he answered: she hadn’t invited him to her chamber before. After he’d given it to her, he’d stayed out of it, not wanting to infringe on the privacy he knew she craved. On the other hand, the two of them would need privacy from Duren now. She’d grown up with everyone sleeping and doing everything else in one big bed, but he hadn’t. He slipped an arm around her waist. “I think I’ll take that chance.”

  Afterwards, though, he quickly dressed and returned to his own room. Wanting to make sure Duren was safe was only part of that. Selatre’s chamber lay on the south side of the hall, and its window faced south. Light from the moons streamed into the chamber and cast multiple shifting shadows. With what lay ahead, Gerin wanted to think about the moons as little as he could.

  Golden Math came full first. That night passed well enough: Tiwaz was two days before full, ruddy Elleb and Nothos both one day before. All three of them had risen earlier than Math, and so their rays did much to diminish the one full moon’s effect.

  From the werenight of five years before, Gerin knew which of his men were vulnerable to taking beast’s shape. The two he
worried most about were Widin Simrin’s son—who’d been just a boy at the time of the werenight—and Parol Chickpea. He wondered how Parol was, down in the serf village. Widin he locked away in the cellar with the ale; the youngster came through that first night unchanged.

  He fretted more over Aragis’ men than over his own, for they were an unknown quantity to him. He asked the Archer which of his men had the were taint, but Aragis was vague: “Lord prince, that’s hard for me to answer, for my vassals were most of ’em at their own keeps the night of the werenight. The Trokmoi hadn’t reached my lands yet, so we were still at ease. Afterwards, I had more urgent things to worry about than finding out which of my warriors had donned beast shape. I just didn’t see the need.”

  Gerin looked down his nose at the grand duke. “Which means we’re vulnerable now,” he said in reproof as mild as he could make it. No, Aragis wasn’t forethoughtful enough; when something had gone, he assumed its like would return no more.

  As the next evening approached, the one on which Elleb and pale Nothos would be full and swift-moving Tiwaz and Math but one day to either side of it, he sent all of Aragis’ men save the Archer himself, Marlanz Raw-Meat, and Fabors Fabur’s son out to the tented encampment they’d made. If trouble broke out, he wanted it well away from the keep. To his relief, the only comment Aragis made was, “A sensible precaution, lord prince.”

  The Fox sent Widin Simrin’s son to his shelter and mewed him up, saying, “If you don’t change tonight, you probably won’t tomorrow. But better safe—we’ll enclose you then, too.” Widin just nodded; he knew necessity when he saw it.

  Tiwaz came up over the eastern horizon first, a day before full and not far from round. Then, as the sun set, Elleb and Nothos rose side by side. Gerin watched them from the palisade. No cries of alarm rent the air the instant the two full moons appeared, for which he gave hearty thanks. Golden Math soon followed. Because she moved through her phases more slowly than Tiwaz, her bright disk was even closer to a perfect circle than his.

  When all four moons were in the sky and no screams of horror had come from within the keep or from the tents where Aragis’ men sheltered, the Fox decided he could safely descend and eat supper. He’d been sensible enough to have plenty of ale brought up before he closed Widin in the cellar, so washing down his meat would not be a problem.

  Aragis, who was already gnawing on beef ribs basted with a spicy sauce, greeted him with a wave and something not far from a sneer. “All quiet as the tomb here, lord prince. Seems to me you fretted over nothing.”

  Gerin shrugged. “Better to be ready for trouble and not have it than to have it and not be ready, as happened at the werenight of the four full moons.”

  “Can’t quarrel hard with that, I suppose,” Aragis admitted. He took another big bite from the rib he was holding; grease ran down his chin. “Your cooks do a fine job indeed; I give you that without any argument.”

  “Glad something here makes you happy,” Gerin answered. He waved to one of the kitchen servants for some ribs of his own.

  “Only thing that bothers me about sitting here some days eating your good food is that we could have been out campaigning already, striking at the Trokmoi and the monsters,” Aragis said.

  “They’ll be there, grand duke, never fear,” Gerin said. The servant plopped a round of flatbread on the table in front of him, then set atop it several steaming ribs. He tried to pick one up, scorched his fingers, and stuck them in his mouth. Aragis hid a chuckle behind a swig of ale.

  “I thought you were the patient sort, lord prince,” Fabors Fabur’s son said slyly, a gibe enough to the point to make Gerin’s ears heat.

  “I don’t know why everyone is praising the food to the skies,” Marlanz Raw-Meat grumbled. “They’ve cooked it to death, and that after I told them and told them I like it with the juice still in it.”

  Gerin stared over toward the gobbet of meat Marlanz was attacking. It might have been lightly singed on the outside, but juice and blood from it soaked the flatbread on which it lay. If Marlanz wanted it cooked less, he should have torn it off a cow as the beast ran by.

  Before he could say as much, Gerin looked from the dripping chunk of meat to Marlanz himself. His beard seemed thicker and bushier than it had moments before, his teeth extraordinarily long and white and sharp. His eyes gave back the torchlight with red glints of their own.

  “Meat!” he snarled. “Rrraw meat!” The backs of his hands grew hairier by the heartbeat.

  “Your pardon,” Fabors Fabur’s son said, his voice rising to a frightened squeak as he slid down the bench away from his friend. Aragis’ eyes were wide and staring. Van started to draw his sword, then slammed it back into its sheath. Gerin understood that; he’d stopped his own hand halfway to the hilt of his blade. Unless struck with silver, werebeasts knit as fast as they were cut. He’d seen that, to his horror and dismay, during the werenight.

  “Rrrraw meat!” Marlanz said again, and growled deep in his throat. His voice was hardly a voice at all—more like an angry howl.

  “Give him what he wants,” Gerin called quickly to the frightened-looking cook. “Raw meat, and lots of it.”

  The men used that as an excuse to flee the great hall. Gerin hoped one of them, at least, would be brave enough to come back with meat. If not, Marlanz was going to try getting it from the warriors and women with whom he’d sat down to supper.

  A cook, staggering under the weight of the haunch he carried on a platter, came slowly out of the kitchens. He did not bring the meat out to Marlanz, but set it down between the hearth and Dyaus’ altar and then retreated much faster than he’d advanced. Gerin found himself unable to complain. That the fellow had come back at all was enough.

  The Fox rose and edged past Marlanz, whose tongue lolled from jaws that had stretched remarkably to accommodate the improved cutlery they now contained. “Good wolf,” Gerin said in a friendly way, as if he were talking to one of the keep’s dogs. He looked around for those dogs, and did not see them—they’d all run outside as Marlanz began to change. They wanted no part of him. Gerin didn’t, either, but he had less choice.

  Grunting, he picked up the platter and carried it over to Marlanz. He bowed over it as if he were an innkeeper serving up an elaborate repast at some splendid hostelry in the City of Elabon. Indeed, his concern for his client’s satisfaction was even more pressing than such an innkeeper’s: none of their guests was likely to devour them if displeased with his proffered supper.

  Marlanz looked from the dripping haunch to Gerin and back again. He bent low over the meat and sniffed it, as if to make certain no flame had ever touched it. Then, not bothering with the knife that lay on the table by the platter, he began to feed. That was the only word that seemed appropriate to Gerin—Marlanz tore off bite after bite with his teeth, worked his jaws briefly, and gulped down the barely chewed chunks. Meat vanished from the bone at an astonishing rate.

  Gerin hurried back to the kitchens. “That haunch may not be enough,” he warned. “What else have you?”

  A cook pointed. “There’s but half a pig’s carcass, lord prince, that we were going to—”

  “Never mind what you were going to do with it,” Gerin snapped. Some of the doctors down in the City of Elabon reckoned eating raw pork unhealthy. That, as far as the Fox was concerned, was Marlanz’s lookout. He grabbed the split carcass by the legs and lugged it out into the great hall.

  As he came up to Marlanz, he realized that the offal from the carcass would have served just as well in the noble’s present condition. He did not, however, have the temerity to haul the meat back from the kitchens. Instead, he set it on the table in front of Marlanz, who began destroying it with the same wolfish single-mindedness he’d shown on the chunk of beef.

  “He can’t eat all that,” Van said as Gerin cautiously sat back down.

  “You have my leave to tell him as much,” Gerin said. “Go right ahead.” Van sat where he was; he was as bold as any man ever born, but a long wa
y from a fool. Fand set a hand on his arm, as if to congratulate him for his good sense. That surprised Gerin, who would have expected her to urge the outlander into any fight that came along.

  “I’d have tried fighting him, lord prince,” Aragis said, his eyes shifting back and forth from Gerin to Marlanz. “Your way is better, though. You’re sorry to lose so much meat, no doubt, but you’d be sorrier losing men hurt or killed against a werebeast that can’t be slain—and one who’s a good vassal when in his proper shape.”

  “That last weighed heaviest on my mind,” Gerin said.

  “For which I am in your debt,” Aragis said, “and Marlanz will be when he comes back to himself.”

  Marlanz wasn’t quite in full beast shape, as he would have been during the werenight of five years before; he seemed rather a man heavily overlain with wolf. That made Gerin wonder if he possessed the full invulnerability werebeasts had enjoyed then. Some experiments, he’d found, were more interesting to think about than to try. And, as Aragis had said, Marlanz was a good fellow—and certainly looked to be a good warrior—when fully human.

  The Fox wondered if he was going to have to get more meat still to set before Marlanz. As a werebeast, he ate like a wolf. Little by little, though, Marlanz slowed. He glared around at the unchanged men and women watching him, then picked up what was left of the pig carcass with mouth and pawlike hands and carried it over to a dark corner of the great hall. There he set it down while he heaped up rushes beside it into a sort of nest. He lay down in that nest, turned himself around a couple of times to accommodate its shape to his, and fell asleep.

  “I hope he sleeps well,” Gerin said sincerely. “Come sunrise tomorrow, he’ll be a man again.”

  Selatre giggled. “And wondering mightily, too, how he happened to end up on the floor beside half—no, less than that now—a dead pig.”

  “Maybe we’ll call him Marlanz Pork-Ribs,” Rihwin said blithely.

  Fabors Fabur’s son sent him a serious look. “Van of the Strong Arm might possibly do that and have it taken in good part. For anyone less imposing, such chaffing is liable to be unwise.”