It didn’t work. Even Fandor and Simrin, both of whom had kept those noses buried in their drinking jacks till now, jerked up their heads. Diffidently, Rollan began, “Begging your pardon, my lord—” and Gerin braced for insubordination. It came fast enough: “The gods know Van of the Strong Arm has proven himself a man, time and again, and a loyal and true vassal as well. But for all that, he is an out-lander and owns no land hereabouts, guesting with you as he does. It’d be downright unseemly for us, whose families have held our fiefs for generations, to take orders from him.”
Gerin gathered himself for an explosion. Before he loosed it, he saw all the barons nodding their agreement. He caught Van’s eyes; the outlander shrugged. Tasting gall, the Fox yielded with as much grace as he could. “If that’s how you would have it, so be it. Van, would it please you to ride with me, then?”
“It would that, captain,” Van said, coming as close as he ever did to Gerin’s proper feudal title. “I’ve never been south of the Kirs, and I’ve heard enough about Elabon’s capital to make me want to see it.”
“Fine,” Gerin said. “Duin, you have the highest standing of any here. Do you think you can keep things afloat while I’m away?”
“Aye, or die trying.”
Gerin feared the latter, but merely said, “Good!” and whispered a prayer under his breath. Duin was more than doughty enough and not stupid, but he lacked common sense.
Drago and Rollan decided to stay at Fox Keep themselves and leave the defense of their own castles to the vassal contingents they would send home; Gerin dared hope they might restrain Duin. After his other liegemen had gone, he spent a couple of hours giving Duin instructions on matters probable, matters possible, and as many matters impossible as his fertile mind could envision. He finished, “For Dyaus’ sake, send word along the West March Road and the Emperor’s Highway. The border barons must know of this, so they can ready themselves for the storm.”
“Even Wolfar?”
“As his holding borders mine, news has to go through him anyway. But the slug happens to be out a-courting, and his man Schild, though he has no love for me, won’t kill a messenger for the sport of it. Also, you could do worse than to get Siglorel here; he has the most power of any Elabonian wizard north of the Kirs, even if he is overfond of ale. Last I heard, he was in the keep of Hovan son of Hagop east of here, trying to cure Hovan’s piles.”
Duin nodded, hopefully in wisdom. He surprised Gerin by offering a suggestion of his own: “If you’re bound to go through with this wizard scheme, lord, why not go to Ikos and ask the Sibyl for her advice?”
“You know, that’s not a bad thought,” Gerin mused. “I’ve been that way once before, and it will only cost me an extra day or so.”
Next day he decided—not for the first time—that mixing ale and mead was a poor idea. The cool, crisp early morning air settled in his lungs like sludge. His side was stiff and sore. His head eached. The creaks and groans of the light wagon and steady pound of hooves on stone roadbed, sounds he usually failed to notice, rang loud in his ears. The sun seemed to have singled him out for all its rays.
Worst of all, Van was awake and in full song. Holding his throbbing head, Gerin asked, “Don’t you know any quiet tunes?”
“Aye, several of ’em,” Van answered, and returned to his interrupted ditty.
Gerin contemplated death and other delights. At last the song came to an end. “I thank you,” he said.
“Nothing at all, captain.” Van frowned, then went on, “I think yesterday I was too hellishly worn out to pay as much attention to what you were saying as I should. Why is it such a fell thing for Balamung to have got his claws on Shabeth-Shiri’s book?”
The Fox was glad to talk, if only to dull the edge of his own worry. “Shabeth-Shiri was the greatest sorcerer of Kizzuwatna long ago: the land where all wizardry began, and where it flourishes to this day. They say he was the first to uncover the laws behind their magic, and set them down in writing to teach his pupils.”
“Now, that can’t be the book Balamung was boasting of, can it?”
“No. I have a copy of that one myself, as a matter of fact. So does everyone who’s ever dabbled in magic. It’s not a book of spells, but of the principles by which they’re cast. But, using those principles, Shabeth-Shiri worked more powerful warlockery than any this poor shuddering world has seen since. He made himself king as well as mage, and he fought so many wars he ran short of men, or so the story goes. So he kept his rule alive by raising demons to fight for him, and by many other such cantrips. Think how embarrassed an army that thought itself safe behind a stream would be to have it flood and drown their camp, or turn to blood—or to see Shabeth-Shiri’s men charging over a bridge like the one Balamung used against us.”
“Embarrassed is scarcely the word, captain.”
“I suppose not. Shabeth-Shiri wrote down all his most frightful spells, too, but in a book he showed to no one. He meant it for his son, they say, but for all his wizardry he was beaten at last: all the other mages and marshals of Kizzuwatna combined against him, lest he rule the whole world. His son was killed in the sack of his last citadel, Shaushka—”
“Shaushka the Damned? That was his? I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It lies in the far north of Kizzuwatna, at the edge of the plains of Shanda, and the plainsmen showed it to me from far away: stark, dark, and dead. Nothing grows there to this day, even after—how many years?”
Gerin shuddered. “Two thousand, if a day. But the winners never found Shabeth-Shiri’s body, or his book either, and sorcerers have searched for it from that day to this. The legends say some of its pages are of human skin. It glows with a light of its own when its master uses it.” The baron shook his head. “Cliath saw it, sure as sure.”
“A nice fellow, this Shabeth-Shiri, and I think he’d be proud of the one who has his Book now. It seems all Kizzuwatnans have a taste for blood, though,” Van said. “Once when I was traveling with the nomads—” Gerin never found out about the Kizzuwatnan Van had fallen foul of, for at that moment two hurtling bodies burst from the oaks that grew almost to within bowshot of the road.
One was a stag, proud head now low as it fled. But it had not taken more than three bounds when a tawny avalanche struck it from behind and smashed it to the grass. Great stabbing fangs tore into its throat, once, twice. Blood spurted and slowed; the stag’s hooves drummed and were still.
Crouched over its kill, the longtooth snarled a warning at the travelers. It settled its short hind legs under its belly and began to feed. Its stumpy tail quivered in absurd delight as it tore hunks of flesh from the stag’s carcass. When the men stopped to watch, it growled deep in its throat and dragged its prey into the cover of the woods.
Van was all for flushing it out again, but Gerin demurred; like rogue aurochs, longtooths were best hunted by parties larger than two. Rather grumpily, Van put away his spear. “Sometimes, Gerin,” he said, “you take all the fun out of life.”
The Fox did not answer. His gloomy mood slowly cleared as the sun rose higher in the sky. He looked about with more than a little pride, for the lands he ruled were rich ones. And, he thought, the wealth they made stayed on them.
The lands between the Kirs and the Niffet had drawn the Empire of Elabon for their copper and tin and as a buffer between its heartland and the northern savages. Once seized, though, they were left largely to their own devices.
Not a measure of grain nor a pound of tin did Elabon take from Gerin’s land, or from any other borderer lord’s. The Marchwarden of the North, Carus Beo’s son, kept his toy garrison in Cassat under the shadow of the Kirs. So long as the borderers held the Trokmoi at bay, the Empire let them have their freedom.
Traffic on the great road was light so near the Niffet. The only traveler Gerin and Van met the first day was a wandering merchant. A thin, doleful man, he nodded gravely as he headed north. A calico cat with mismatched eyes and only one ear sat on his shoulder. It glared at Gerin as they passed.
When night began to near, the baron brought a brace of fowls from a farmer who dwelt by the road. Van shook his head as he watched his friend haggle with the peasant. “Why not just take what you need, like any lord?” he asked. “The kern is your subject, after all.”
“True, but he’s not my slave. A baron who treats his serfs like beasts of burden will see his castle come down round his ears the first time his crops fail. Serve him right, too, the fool.”
After they stopped for the evening, Gerin wrung a hen’s neck and drained its blood into a trough he dug in the rich black soil. “That should satisfy any roving spirits,” he said, plucking and gutting the bird and skewering it to roast over the campfire.
“Any that wouldn’t sooner drink our blood instead,” Van said. “Captain, out on the plains of Shanda the ghosts have real fangs, and they aren’t shy of watchfires. Only the charms the nomads’ shamans magic up can keep them at bay—and sometimes not those, either, if most of the moons are dark. A bad place.”
Gerin believed him. Any land that made his hardbitten comrade leery sounded like a good place to avoid.
They drew straws for the first watch. Within seconds, Van was curled in his bedroll and snoring like a thunderstorm. Gerin watched Tiwaz and Math, both thin crescents almost lost in the skirts of twilight, follow the sun down to the horizon. As they sank, full Nothos rose. Under his weak grayish light, field and forest alike were half-seen mysteries. Small night-creatures chirped and hummed. Gerin let the fire die into embers, and the ghosts came.
As always, the eye refused to grasp their shapes, sliding away before they could be recognized. They swarmed round the pool of blood like great carrion flies. Their buzzing filled Gerin’s mind. Some shouted in tongues so ancient their very names were lost. Others he almost understood, but no true words could be heard, only clamor and loss and wailing.
The Fox knew that if he tried to grasp one of the flittering shapes it would slip through his fingers like so much mist, for the dead kept but a pallid semblance of life. Grateful for the boon of blood, they tried to give him such redes as they thought good, but only a noise like the rushing wind filled his head. Had he not granted them that gift, or had the fire not been there, they likely would have driven him mad.
He kept watch until midnight, staring at stars and full Nothos and the half-seen shapes of spirits until Elleb, a copper disc almost half chewed away, was well clear of the dark woods on the horizon. No man disturbed him: few travelers were so bold as to risk moving in the dark of the sun.
When Gerin roused Van, he woke with the instant awareness of a seasoned warrior. “The ghosts are bad tonight,” the baron mumbled, and then he was asleep.
Van announced the dawn with a whoop that jerked the Fox awake. Trying to pry his eyes open, he said, “I feel as if my head were filled with sand. ‘Early in the morning’ says the same thing twice.”
“An hour this side of midday is counted as morning, is it not?”
“Aye, it is, and too bloody early in the bargain. Oh for the days when I was in the capital and not one of the wise men I listened to thought of opening his mouth before noon.”
Gerin gnawed leathery journeybread, dried fruit, and smoked sausage, washing them down with bitter beer. He had to choke the bread down. The stuff had the virtue of keeping nearly forever, and he understood why: the bugs liked it no better than he.
He sighed, stretched, and climbed into his armor, wincing as his helm slipped down over one ear bent permanently outward by a northerner’s club in a long-ago skirmish. “The birds are shining, the sun is chirping, and who am I to complain?” he said.
Van gave him a curious glance. “You feeling all right, captain?” he asked, a note of real concern in his voice.
“Yes and no,” Gerin said thoughtfully. “But for the first time since I came back from the southlands, it doesn’t matter at all. Things are out of my hands, and they will be for a while now. If someone pisses in the soup-pot, why, Duin will just have to try and take care of it without me. It’s a funny feeling, you know. I’m half glad to be free and half afraid things will fall apart without me. It’s like running a long way and then stopping short: I’ve got used to the strain, and feel wrong without it.”
They moved south steadily, but not in silence. Van extracted a clay flute from his kit and made the morning hideous with it. Gerin politely asked if he’d been taking music lessons from the ghosts, but he shrugged a massive shrug and kept on tweedling.
A pair of guardhouses flanked the road where it crossed from Gerin’s lands to those of Palin the Eagle. Two sets of troopers sprawled in the roadway, dicing the day away. At the creak of the wagon, they abandoned the game and reached for their weapons.
Gerin looked down his long nose at the wary archers. “Hail!” he said. “Would that you’d been so watchful last summer, when you let Wacho and his brigands sneak south without so much as a challenge.”
The guard captain shuffled his feet. “Lord, how was I to know he’d forged his safe-conduct?”
“By the hand of it, and the spelling. The lout could barely write. Too late now, but if it happens again you’ll find a new lord, probably in the underworld. Do we pass your inspection?”
“You do that, lord.” The guard waved the wagon on. Gerin drew sword as he passed the ancient boundary stone separating his holding from Palin’s. Palin’s guardsmen returned his salute. For long generations the two houses had been at peace. The stone, its time-worn runes covered by gray-green moss, had sunk almost half its height into the soft earth.
Once past the guards, Van turned and said to Gerin, “You know, Fox, when I first came to your land I thought Palin the Eagle had to be some fine warrior, to judge by what his folk called him. How was I to know they were talking of his nose?”
“He’s no Carlun come again, I will say.” Gerin chuckled. “But he and his vassals keep order well enough that I don’t fear a night or so in the open in his lands, or perhaps with one of his lordlets.”
“You don’t want himself to guest you?”
“No indeed. He has an unmarried sister who must be rising forty by now and desperate, poor lass. Worse, she cooks for him too, and badly. The last time I ate with Palin, I thought the belly-sickness had me, not just a sour stomach.”
When the travelers did stop for the night, it was at the ramshackle keep of one of Palin’s vassals, Raff the Ready. A blocky boulder of a man, he was very much of the old school, wearing a forked beard that almost reached his waist. His unflappable solidity reminded the Fox of Drago; so, less hearteningly, did his disdain for cleanliness.
Withal, he set a good table. He had killed a cow that day, and along with the beef there was a stew of frogs and mussels from a nearby pond, fresh-baked bread, blueberries and blueberry tarts, and a fine, nutlike ale with which to wash them down.
Gerin sighed in contentment, loosened his belt, belched, and then, reluctantly, gave Raff his news. His host looked uneasy. He promised to spread the word. “You think your men won’t be able to hold them at the Niffet, then?” he asked.
“I’m very much afraid they won’t.”
“Well, I’ll tell my neighbors, not that it’ll do much good. All of us are looking south, not north, waiting for the trouble in Bevon’s barony to spill over into ours.”
“There’s fighting there?” Van asked hopefully.
“Aye, there is that. All four of Bevon’s sons are brawling over the succession, and him not even dead yet. One of them ran twenty sheep off Palin’s land, too, the son of a whore.”
With that warning, they left early, almost before dawn. They carried a torch to keep the ghosts at bay. Even so, Gerin’s skin crawled with dread until the spirits fled the rays of the sun.
He spent a nervous morning hurrying south through Bevon’s strife-torn barony. Every one of Bevon’s vassals kept his castle shut tight. The men on the walls gave Gerin and Van hard stares, but no one tried to stop them.
Around noon, they heard fighting down an approaching
side road. Van looked interested, but Gerin cared far more about reaching the capital than getting drawn into an imbroglio not his own.
The choice did not stay in his hands. Two spearmen and an archer, plainly fleeing, burst onto the highway. The archer took one quck glance at Gerin and Van, shouted “More traitors!” and let fly. His shaft sailed between them, perhaps because he could not pick either one as target.
He got no second shot. Gerin had been sitting with bow ready to hand, and no confusion spoiled his aim. But even as the archer fell, his comrades charged the wagon. Gerin and Van sprang down to meet them.
The fight was short but savage. The footsoldiers seemed to have already despaired of their lives, and thought only of killing before they fell. Cool as usual in a fight, the Fox ducked under his foe’s guard and slid the point of his blade between the luckless fellow’s ribs. The man coughed blood and died.
The baron wheeled to help Van, but his friend needed no aid. A stroke of his axe had shattered his man’s spearshaft, another clove through helm and skull alike. Only a tiny cut above his knee showed he had fought at all. He rubbed at it, grumbling, “Bastard pinked me. I must be getting old.”
The triumph left the taste of ashes in Gerin’s mouth. What fools the men of Elabon were, to be fighting among themselves while a storm to sweep them all away was rising in the northern forests! And now he was as guilty as any. Warriors who might have been bold against the Trokmoi were stiffening corpses in the roadway—because of him.
“Where you’re going makes you more important than them,” Van said when he voiced that worry aloud.
“I hope so.” But in his heart, Gerin wondered if the southern wizards could withstand Balamung and the Book of Shabeth-Shiri.
He sighed with relief when at last he spied the guardhouse of Bevon’s southern neighbor, Ricolf the Red. He was not surprised to see it had a double complement of men.
The baron returned the greetings Ricolf’s guardsmen gave him. He knew a few of them, for he had spent several pleasant weeks at Ricolf’s keep on his last journey to the southlands. “It’s been too long, lord Gerin,” one of the guards said. “Ricolf will be glad to see you.”
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