Carlun shook his head “I don’t want that, lord prince. What I want is revenge, and I can’t take it. They’d kill me if I tried.” His eyes swung in the direction Rihwin had gone.
“If you tried sticking a knife into one of them, he would kill you,” the Fox agreed. “There are other ways, though, if you think for a bit. A man with armor can stand off several without. And a man who knows reading and numbers, if you put him in with folk who don’t—”
He watched Carlun’s eyes catch fire. That amused him; clever as the ex-headman was, he hadn’t yet learned to conceal his thoughts. And, a moment later, the fire faded. Carlun said, “You warned me, lord prince, what would happen if you caught me cheating. I don’t like the warriors’ mocking me, but you would do worse than mock.”
Though he did not smile, the Fox was pleased he’d put a healthy dose of fear in Carlun’s soul. He answered, “I didn’t say anything about cheating—certainly not about cheating me out of my due. But if a man insults you, he should hardly be surprised if you reckon up what he owes his overlord with very close attention to every detail. Do you understand what I’m saying?” He waited for Carlun to nod, then went on, “It’s not as satisfying as smashing a man in the face with an axe, maybe, but you’re not there so he can smash you in the face, either.”
Carlun went down on one knee and seized Gerin’s right hand in both of his. “Lord prince,” he said, “now I understand why you have gone from victory to victory. You see farther ahead than any man now living. Teach me!”
That evening, in some bemusement, Gerin said to Selatre, “There I was, explaining how to avenge yourself on someone who’d offended you without getting killed in the process, and he ate it up like a bear in a honey tree. Have I made him someone who will aid me better, or am I turning him into a monster more dangerous than any of Geroge and Tharma’s unlamented cousins?”
“You can’t be sure, one way or the other,” she answered, sensible as usual. “For all you know, you may be doing both at once. He may end up being a useful monster, if you know what I mean.”
“Which is fine for me, but not so good for him,” Gerin answered. “Maybe I should have just sent him off to another village and had done with it. That would have been simplest, and it wouldn’t have shown poor Carlun temptations the likes of which he’s never seen before.”
“Nonsense,” Selatre said crisply. “If he hadn’t known about temptations like that, he wouldn’t have tried cheating you in the first place. Now you have him working for you, not against you.”
“People like Carlun, the only ones they work for are themselves,” Gerin replied with a shake of the head. “The way you get them to do what you want is to make them see that going your way sends them along their own path better than anything else they could do.”
Selatre nodded. “Aye, I can see that. You’ve done it for Carlun, plain enough. By the time he’s through with your vassals, they’ll be lucky if they have a tunic and a pot of beans apiece to call their own.”
She laughed, but the Fox began to worry. “Can’t have that. If he squeezes them too hard, they’ll blame me. Just what I’d need—rebellions from men who’ve always been solid backers.”
“You’ll curb him before it comes to that,” Selatre said confidently. She had more confidence in Gerin, sometimes, than he had in himself.
“The gods grant you’re right,” he said.
From Fox Keep, the land sloped down to the Niffet a few furlongs away. Gerin drilled his vassals on the expanse of grass and bushes where sheep and cattle usually grazed. Some of the warriors grumbled at that. Drungo Drago’s son complained, “This practicing is a silly notion, lord prince. We go off, we find the cursed Trokmoi, and we smash ’em into the ground. Nothing to worry about in any of that.” He folded massive arms across a wide chest.
“You’re your father come again,” Gerin said. Drungo beamed, but Gerin had not meant it altogether as a compliment. Drago the Bear had been strong and brave, but up to the day he clutched his chest and keeled over dead he’d not been long on thought.
“Aye,” several men said together. Turn us loose on the Trokmoi. We’ll take care of what happens next”
“You practice with the bow, don’t you?” toe Fox asked them. They nodded. He tried again: “You practice with the spear and the sword, too?” More nods. He did his best to drive the lesson home: “You practice in your chariots, I expect, so you can do the best job of fighting from them?’ When he got still more nods, he bellowed, “Then why in the five hells don’t you want to practice with a whole swarm of chariots together?”
He should have known better than to expect logic to have anything to do with their answer. Drungo said, “On account of we already know how to do mat, on account of we’ve all been in a bunch of fights already.”
“Brawls,” Gerin said scornfully. “Every car for itself, every man for himself. The woodsrunners fight the same way. If we have an idea of what we’re going to do before we do it, we’ll have a better chance of winning than if we make it up as we go along. And besides”—he pointed off to the right wing—“we’ll be trying something new on this campaign.”
“Yes, and those fools on horses’ backs aren’t worth anything, either,” Drungo said, eloquently dubious, as his gaze followed the Fox’s finger.
“You are your father’s son,” Gerin told him, feeling old. Sixteen years ago now, back before the werenight, Drago had mocked Duin the Bold, claiming the art of equitation was more trouble than it would ever be worth. They’d almost brawled then. Now Gerin was going to find out whether Duin had known what he was talking about.
When his overlord pointed to him, Rihwin the Fox waved from the stallion on whose back he perched. He led a couple of dozen mounted men, most of them only half his age. His years were the main reason Gerin, halfway against his better judgment, had placed him in command of the riders. With luck, he would have more sense than the hotheads he led, but he was also living proof that experience did not necessarily bring maturity.
“Well try another practice charge,” Gerin said to Drungo. “Maybe you’ll see what I’m driving at.” He had thought about giving up the chariot himself and going over to riding a horse, but his long partnership with Van and their driver Raffo had kept him in the car.
He brought down his arm. The chariots jounced across the meadow in a line less ragged than it had been a few days before. And over on the right flank, the horses moved faster than any team hauling car and warriors both. They also made their way without effort over ground that would surely have made a chariot flip over. Rihwin even leaped his horse across a gully: you would have had to be mad to urge a team to try such a stunt (which might not have deterred Rihwin, but would have given anyone else pause).
“There,” Gerin said when the exercise was over. “Do the lot of you think this business of riding horses may have something to it after all?”
Again, Drungo spoke for the conservative majority, just as Drago had in his day: “Maybe a small something, lord prince, but no more than that. Horses for scouts and for flank attacks: aye, I’ll give you so much. But it’s the chariots that’ll finish the foe.”
As he was still fighting from a chariot himself, Gerin could not very well argue with that In fact, he more or less agreed. Having stood up against a chariot charge, he knew how it turned opponents’ blood to water and their bones to gelatin. The drum of the hooves, the rattle and bang of the cars as they thundered down on you, the fierce cries of the warriors standing upright in them, weapons ready to hand … If you could stand up against such without quailing, you were a man indeed. Cavalry alone would not be nearly so fearsome.
What he said, then, was, “We will be using the cavalry on the flanks, to disrupt the charge our foes try to make against us. We’ve not done that before, not in war. That’s why I’ve been bringing us out here the past few days: so we could see how it would go, see how the flank chariots need to stick close to the riders and how the riders can’t get too far out in front of the
chariotry—”
“Well, why didn’t you say so, lord prince?” Drungo demanded.
The Fox couldn’t decided whether to throttle his literal-minded vassal or merely to pound his own head against the side rail of his car. By Drungo’s self-righteous tones, the notion that they had been out there for any reason save Gerin’s perverse obstinacy had till that moment not penetrated his thick skull and actually reached his brain.
After a long sigh, the Fox said, “We’ll try it again, this time charging down toward the Niffet. If the woodsrunners on the north side are peering across, as they likely are, we’ll give them something new to think on, too.”
They pounded down toward the Niffet, as he’d ordered, and then, after a pause to let the horses rest, back up toward Fox Keep. The men on the palisade there gave them a cheer. Gerin took that as a good omen. Very often, looking bloodthirsty was a sign you would fight well.
“You know something, Fox?” Van said as Raffo drove the chariot at a slow walk toward the drawbridge. “By the time Duren’s son is the big man here, most of his warriors will be on horseback, and they’ll listen to the minstrels’ old songs about chariot battles and wonder why the singers couldn’t get it right.”
“D’you think so?” Gerin said. Van’s big head bobbed up and down. That surprised Gerin; in matters military, the outlander was for the most part as conservative as Drungo. “Well, you may be right, but I’d bet on the bards to change their tunes by then.”
He thought about what he’d just said, then shook his head. “No, I take that back. You’re likelier to be right than I am. The minstrels have a whole great store of stock phrases and lines about chariots, same as they do about keeps and love and everything else you can think of. If they have to start singing about horses instead of chariots, their verses won’t scan.”
“And most of ’em, being lazy as everybody else, won’t have the wit to come up with anything new on their own, so we’ll hear the same songs a bit longer yet, aye.” Van cocked his head to one side, studying the Fox. “Not everybody would up and own he was wrong like that.”
“What’s the point to defending a position you can’t hold?” Gerin asked. Put that way, it made sense to the outlander. He nodded again, jumped down from the chariot, and headed into Castle Fox afoot.
Gerin let Raffo drive him into the stables. There, his lungs full of the green, grassy smell of horse manure, he said to Rihwin, “You did well in the practice. I want to see how well your lads fare at charging home with the spear and at archery from horseback, too.”
“I’d not care to be a man afoot trying to stand against me when I have a leaf-pointed spear of shining bronze aimed at his belly,” Rihwin replied, sounding a bit like a bard himself. “Riding him down or putting the point through his vitals should be no harder man gigging trout from a stream.”
Gerin shook his head in bemusement; he’d been on the other end of this same conversation with Van a few days before. “Except the trout aren’t trying to gig you, too,” he pointed out, his voice dry. “And except that you mostly won’t be going up against men afoot. How will you do against chariotry”
“We’ll ride over them like—” Rihwin paused to catch an elusive simile and caught sight of Gerin drumming the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. His flight of fancy came back to earth with a thud. “When we fight the battle, we’ll know, lord prince. With luck, we’ll come at them from directions they’ll not expect.”
Gerin thumped him on the shoulder. “Good. That’s what I’m hoping you do. I don’t ask miracles, you know: just that you do what you can.”
“Ah, but, my fellow Fox, miracles are so much more dramatic—the stuff of which the minstrels sing for generations yet unborn.”
“Aye, with formulas that should have died of old age but haven’t,” Gerin said, now picking up the discussion he’d just been having with Van as if it hadn’t stopped. “Besides, the trouble with miracles is that, even if you do get ’em, you’d almost rather not: getting ’em is a sign of how bad you need ’em, as much as anything else.”
He did not mention the couple he’d pulled off, though they went a long way toward proving his point. By the gleam in Rihwin’s eye, he was about to bring them up, but he suddenly thought better of it; if it hadn’t been for him, at least one and maybe both of them would have been unnecessary.
What he did say, after a few heartbeats’ hesitation, was, “For a man who has accomplished as much as you have, lord prince, you’ve left the bards surprisingly little about which to sing.”
The converse of that was, For a man who’s accomplished as little as you, Rihwin, you’ve given the bards all too much fodder. Gerin did not say that. Rihwin was as he was, charm and flaws engagingly blended. You enjoyed him, admired his courage, and hoped he was seldom in a position to do you much harm. That hope, however, did not always work out.
“Let’s go into the great hall,” Gerin said, also a little more slowly than he should have. “We’ll drink some ale and hash over how best we can make horses and chariots work together.”
“I’m for that,” Rihwin said. “I have several ideas we’ve yet to try, which, if they work as I hope, bid fair to make that cooperation easier to effect.” Rihwin always had several ideas. Out of any given batch, some would work. The trouble was figuring out which ones before you tried them all, because those that failed had a way of failing spectacularly.
In the courtyard, Duren was patiently standing alongside Dagref, helping his half brother improve his form at archery. Under Duren’s tutelage, Dagref let fly. He whooped in delight when he hit the target.
Watching them, Rihwin sighed. “There are times, my fellow Fox, when I envy you—oh, not so much your children, but having them all here so you can see them every moment as they grow. It’s not like that with my brood of bastards.”
Gerin exhaled through his nose. “If you’d wanted a wife, plenty of barons had daughters or sisters they’d have pledged to you. We both know that’s so.” He didn’t come any closer to mentioning that Rihwin would have been betrothed to Elise, back before the werenight, if he hadn’t gone and disgraced himself as the betrothal was about to be announced. Instead, he went on, “Plenty of barons would pledge you a daughter or sister even now. You have but to seek a bit.”
Rihwin sighed again, on a different note. “You, my fellow Fox, are fortunate enough to enjoy waking in the same bed each morning, and to enjoy the company of the same lady—and an excellent lady she is; mistake me not—when not in that bed. In my opinion, the chances of finding a woman who both makes a pleasing bedmate and is interesting when vertical as well as horizontal are lamentably low. Were I wed I fear I should be bored.”
“You don’t know till you look,” Gerin said stubbornly. “If you’re unhappy with your life as it is, wringing your hands and moaning won’t make it better.”
“‘Unhappy’ perhaps takes the point too far,” Rihwin answered “Say rather I recognize its imperfections, but also realize it would have other imperfections, likely worse ones, did I change it.”
“And you the one who usually plunges ahead without the least thought of consequences,” Gerin exclaimed “You’d best have a care, or you’ll get a name for prudence.”
“Father Dyaus avert such a twisted fete!” Rihwin cried. Both men laughed.
In the great hall, the kitchen servants had set a big jar of ale in the middle of the floor, the pointed tip stabbed through the rushes strewn there and into the dirt below. Gerin and Rihwin got drinking jacks, filled them with the dipper, and joined a crowd of warriors at a table arguing over what they’d done and what still needed doing.
“A good strong spear thrust into a man from horseback, now—that’d do some damage,” Schild Stoutstaff declared He pointed to his own weapon hanging on the wall, which had given him his sobriquet. His thinking lived up to the ekename. He nodded to Gerin. “This time, lord prince, maybe we’ll be rid of that cursed Trokmê for good”
“Aye, maybe,” Gerin said
. He suspected that, if Adiatunnus was beaten, Schild would promptly forget as many of his own feudal obligations as he could. He’d done that before. The only time he remembered he owed service was when he needed protection.
Well, he was here now. That would do. Gerin poured out a small libation to Baivers, then stuck his forefinger into the drinking jack and used ale to draw cryptic lines on the tabletop in front of him. “Here—these are the chariots,” he told Rihwin, pointing. “And these are your horses. What you need to—”
He didn’t get to finish explaining what Rihwin needed to do. The lookout’s horn blew, a higher, clearer note than the one the village horn used to call the serfs back from the fields at close of day. Normally, the sentry up in the watch tower just called out when he spied someone. He saved the horn for times he really needed it.
After he sounded the warning note, he shouted something. Through the racket and chatter in the great hall, Gerin couldn’t hear what he said. He got to his feet and started for the doorway. He hadn’t gone more than a few steps when a man came running in, yelling, “Lord prince! Lord prince! There’s boats in the Niffet—big boats—and they’re heading this way!”
III
“Oh, a pestilence,” Gerin said as men exclaimed and cried out all around him. Unlike his vassals, he was angry at himself. After Rihwin had told him of the galley his leman had seen on the Niffet, he’d intended to station riders along the river to bring word if more such came up it. As sometimes happens, what he’d intended to do didn’t match what he’d actually done.
Too late for self-reproach now. He ran outside and hurried up onto the palisade. One of the warriors already up there pointed out to the Niffet. Gerin had to choke down sardonic thanks. The ships out there, all five of them, were quite easy enough to find without help.
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