They wound their way down from the pass, hoping to reach a town before the sun disappeared. Gerin was less worried about the ghosts than he would have been on the other side of the mountains; peace had reigned here for many years, and the spirits were relatively mild. For his part, Van grew eloquent about the advantages of fresh food, a mug of ale (or even wine!), a comfortable bed, and perhaps (though he did not say so) a wench to warm it.
The road was flanked by a grove of fruit trees of a kind unknown north of the Kirs. Not very tall, they had gray-brown bark, shiny light-green leaves, and egg-shaped yellow fruit. Both leaves and fruit were fragrant, but Gerin remembered how astonishingly sour the fruit was to the tongue. It was called … he snapped his fingers in annoyance. He had forgotten the very name.
As the trees began to thin, another smell made its presence known through their perfume: a faint carrion reek. The baron’s lips drew back in a mirthless grimace. “I think we’ve found our town,” he said.
The road turned, the screen of trees disappeared, and sure enough the town was there. It was not big enough to have a wall. The Fox was sure folk living ten miles from it had never heard its name. Nonetheless, it aspired to cityhood in a way open to the meanest of hamlets: by the road stood a row of crucifixes, each with its slow-rotting burden. Under them children played, now and then shying a stone upward. Dogs slunk there too, dogs with poor masters or none, waiting for easy meals.
Some of the spiked and roped criminals were not yet dead. Through sun-baked and blistered lips they begged for water or death, each according to the strength left in him. One, newly elevated or unnaturally strong, still howled defiance at gods and men.
His roars annoyed the carrion birds nearby. Strong black bills filled with noisome food, they flapped lazily into the sky, staring down with fine impartiality on town, travelers, and field. They knew all would come to them in good time.
Van’s face might have been carved from stone as he surveyed the wretches. Elise was pale. Her eyes went wide with horror. Her lips shaped the word “Why?” but no sound emerged. Gerin tried not to remember his own thoughts when he’d first encountered the malignant notions of justice the southerners had borrowed from Sithonia.
“Maybe,” he said grimly, “I had my reasons for going home, after all.”
VI
The town (Gerin learned its name was Fibis) did little to restore the luster of the southlands in the baron’s eyes. The houses lining the north-south road were little finer than the huts of his peasants. Only muddy alleys ankle-deep in slops led away from that road.
The sole hostel Fibis boasted was of a piece with the rest. It was low-roofed, dingy, and small. The sign outside had faded past legibility. Within, the smell of old grease fought with but could not overcome the odor of stale urine from the dyeworks next door and the never-absent stench of the crosses.
And the townsfolk! City ways that had been sophisticated to the youth who traveled this road ten years before now seemed either foppish or surly. Gerin tried to strike up a conversation with the innkeeper, a dour, weathered old codger named Grizzard, but got only grunts in return. He gave up and went back to the rickety table where his friends awaited supper. “If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I’d take oath the fellow was afraid of me.”
“Then he thinks you’ve already tasted his wine,” said Van, who was on his third mug. “What swill!” He swigged, pursed his lips to spit, but swallowed instead.
The rest of the meal was not much better than the wine. Plainly, lack of competition was all that kept Grizzard in business. Disgusted with the long, fruitless day he had put in, Gerin was about to head for bed when a cheery voice said, “Hello, you’re new here! What’s old Grizzard given you to drink?”
Without so much as a by-your-leave, the fellow pulled up a chair and joined them. He sniffed the wine, grimaced, and flipped a spinning silver disk to the innkeeper, who made it disappear. “You can do better than this, you thief,” he said. To the Fox’s surprise, Grizzard could.
The baron studied his new acquaintance curiously, for the man seemed made of pieces which did not belong together. Despite his heartiness, his voice soon dropped so low Grizzard could not hear what he said. While his mouth was full of slang from the capital, his homespun tunic and trousers were both rustic. Yet his chin sported a gray imperial and his shoes turned up at the toes: both Sithonian styles. The name he gave—just Tevis, without patronymic or sobriquet—was one of the three or four commonest south of the mountains.
Whoever he was, he had a rare skill with words. Softly, easily, he enticed from Gerin (usually as close-mouthed as any man alive) the story of his travels, and all without revealing a bit of his own purpose. It was almost as if he cast a spell. He paused a while in silent consideration, his clear dark eyes studying the Fox. “You have not been well-used by the Empire,” he said at last.
Gerin only shrugged. His caution had returned. He was wary of this smooth-talking man of mystery. Tevis nodded, as if he had expected nothing more. “Tell me,” he said, “do you know of Moribar the Magnificent, his imperial majesty’s governor at Kortys?”
Van, who had drunk deep, stared at Tevis in owlish incomprehension. Elise was nearly asleep, her head warm on Gerin’s shoulder. Her hair tickled his cheek. The scent of it filled his nose. But in his mind the stench of the rood was stronger still. Here was the very thing Carus Beo’s son had feared most: a potential rebel in the capital of Sithonia, seeking northern help.
At any other time, the baron would have shed no tears to see the Empire go up in civil war, but now he needed whatever strength he could find at his back. He chose his words with care: “Tevis, I don’t know you and I didn’t ask to know you. If you say one word more to me, you will have spoken treason, and I will not hear it. True, I’ve had my quarrels with some of his majesty’s servants, but if he does not plot against me in my land, I have no right to plot against him in his. I would not have drunk with you had I known what was in your mind. Here, take this and go.” He set a coin on the table to pay for the jug of wine.
Tevis smiled faintly. “Keep it,” he said, “and this as well.” He took something from the pouch on his belt, tossed it next to the coin, and was gone into the night while Gerin still gaped at what he had thrown: a tiny bronze hand, fingers beginning to curl into a fist.
“Oh, great Dyaus above!” he said. “An Imperial Hand!” He propped his chin on his palm and stared at the little token before him. He could have been no more startled had it sprung up and slapped him in the face.
Bristles rasped under Van’s fingers as he scratched his jaw. “And what in the five hells is that?” he asked with ponderous patience.
“A secret agent, spy, informer … call him what you will. That doesn’t matter. But if I’d shown any interest in setting Moribar on the throne, by this time tomorrow we’d be on crosses side by side, waiting for the vultures to pick out our eyes.”
“Ha! I’d bite off their heads!” Van seemed more concerned with the vultures than the crucifixion that would invite them.
“That’s one way of dealing with them, I suppose,” Gerin agreed mildly. He woke Elise. She yawned and walked sleepily to the one room Grizzard grudged female travelers. Van and Gerin headed for their own pallets, hoping they would not be bug-ridden. Almost as an afterthought, the Fox scooped up the diminutive but deadly emblem Tevis had left behind.
Though weary, he slept poorly. The quarrel with Carus, his jarring reintroduction to the dark side of the southlands, and above all the brush with doom in the form of Tevis kept him tossing all night. The bed was hard and lumpy, too. When he awoke, half a dozen red, itchy spots on his arms and chest proved he had not slept alone.
Van was unusually quiet at breakfast. “Head hurt?” Gerin asked as they walked to the stables.
“What. Oh. No, it’s not that, captain.” Van hesitated. Finally he said, “I’ll tell you right out, Gerin, last night I almost decided to buy myself a gig and get the blazes out of this crazy country.”<
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Gerin had imagined disaster piled on disaster, but never in his worst nightmares had he imagined his friend leaving. Ever since Van came to Fox Keep the two of the had been inseparable, fighting back to back and then carousing and yarning far into the night. Each owed the other his life several times. With a shock, the baron realized Van was a larger, gustier version of his dead brother Dagref. Losing him would be more than parting with a comrade; part of the baron’s soul would go with him.
Before he could put what he felt into words, Elise spoke first: “Why would you want to leave now? Are you afraid? The danger is in the north, not here.” She seemed unwilling to believe her ears.”
At any other time, the outlander’s wrath would have kindled if his courage was questioned. Now he only sighed and kicked at a pebble. Genuine distress was in his voice as he answered, “My lady, look about you.” His wave encompassed not just the grubby little hamlet of Fibis and the crosses outside it, but all the land where the writ of the Empire was law. “You’ve seen enough of me to know what I am and what my pleasures are: fighting, talking, drinking, aye, and wenching too, I’ll not deny. But here, what good am I? If I break wind in the backhouse, I have to look over my shoulder lest some listening spy call it treason. It’s not the kind of life I care to lead: worrying before I move, not daring even to think.”
Gerin understood that well enough, for much the same sense of oppression weighed on him. But Van was still talking: “I was all set to take my leave of you this morning—head north again, I suppose. But then I got to thinking”—he suddenly grinned—“and I decided that if any boy-loving Imperial Hand doesn’t like the way I speak, why, I’ll carve the son of a pimp into steaks and leave him by the side of the road to warn his scurvy cousins!”
Elise laughed in delight and kissed him on the cheek.
“I think you planned this whole thing just to get that kiss,” Gerin said. “Come on, you hulk, quit holding up the works.”
“Bastard.” Still grinning, Van pitched his gear into the wagon.
The morning was still young when they splashed through the chilly Langros river. Though not as great as the Niffet or the mighty Carastos which watered much of the plain of Elabon, its cold current ran swift as it leaped down from the Kirs toward the Greater Inner Sea.
The water at the ford swirled icily around Gerin’s toes and welled up between the wagon’s floorboards. Most of the travelers’ belongings were safe in oiled leather sacks, but half the journeybread turned to slimy brown paste. Gerin swore in disgust. Van said, “Cheer up, captain, the stuff wasn’t worth eating anyhow.”
When they stopped to rest and eat, Van turned to Gerin and said quietly, “Thanks for not pushing me this morning. You might have made it hard for me to stay.”
“I know,” Gerin said. Neither of them mentioned the matter again.
They made good progress that day, passing small farms in the foothills and then, as the land began to level out, going by great estates with splendid manor-houses set well back from the raod. When shadows lengthened and cool evening breezes began to blow, they camped by the roadside instead of seeking an inn. Gerin fed and watered the horses as the sun set. In the growing darkness the ghosts appeared, but their wails were somehow muted, their cries almost croons.
Elleb’s thin crescent soon followed the sun, like a small boy staying close to his father. That left the sky to the stars and Math, whose gibbous disk bathed the land beyond reach of the campfire in pale golden light. As the night went on, she was joined by Tiwaz, whose speedy flight through the heavens had taken him well past full. And, when Gerin’s watch was nearly done, Nothos poked his slow-moving head over the horizon. The baron watched him climb for most of an hour, then gave the night to Van.
The next day gave every promise of rolling along as smoothly as had its predecessor. The promise was abruptly broken a bit before noon. A manor-holder had decided to send his geese to market. The road was jammed by an endless array of tall white birds herded along by a dozen or so men with sticks. The geese honked, cackled, squabbled, and tried to sneak off the road for a mouthful of grain. They did everything, in fact, but hurry. When Gerin asked their warders to clear a way so he could pass, they refused. “If these blame birds get into the fields,” one said, “we’ll be three days getting them all out again, and our lord’ll have our heads.”
“Let’s charge right through,” Van suggested. “Can’t you see the feathers fly?”
The thought of a goose stampede brought a smile to Gerin’s lips, but he said, “No, these poor fellows have their job to do too, I suppose.” And so they fretted and fumed while the birds dawdled along in front of them. More traffic piled up behind.
As time dragged on, Van’s direct approach looked better and better. The whip twitched in Gerin’s hand. But before he used it, he noticed the road was coming to a fork. The geese streamed down the eastern path. “Can we use the western branch to get to the capital?” he called.
“You can that,” one of the flock-tenders answered, so the Fox swung the wagon down the new way.
New? Hardly. Gerin noticed that none of the others stalled behind the geese used the clear road. Soon enough, he found out why. The eastern branch of the highway was far newer. After it was complete, evidently nobody had bothered with the other one again. The wagon jounced and rattled as it banged over gaping holes in the roadbed. On one stretch, the paved surface vanished altogether. There the blocks had been set, not in concrete, but in molten lead. Locals had carried away blocks and valuable mortar alike as soon as imperial inspectors no longer bothered to protect them. The baron cursed the lout who had sent him down this road. He hoped he could make it without breaking a wheel.
The district had perhaps once been prosperous, but had decayed when its road was superseded. The farther they went, the thicker the forest grew, until at last its arms clasped above the roadway and squirrels flirted their bushy gray tails directly overhead. Soon the very memory of the road would be gone.
Finding a village in the midst of such decline seemed divine intervention. The villagers fell on Gerin and his friends like long-lost relatives, plying them with food and a rough, heady country wine and listening eagerly to every word they brought of the world outside. Not a copper would they take in payment. The baron blessed such kindly folk, and blessed them doubly when they confirmed that the road did in fact eventually lead to the capital instead of sinking into a bog.
“You see, captain? You worry too much,” Van said. “Everything will work out all right.”
Gerin did not answer. He could not let things work out all right; he had to make them do so. Backtracking would have cost him a day he could not afford to spend.
The villagers insisted on putting up their guests for the night. Gerin’s host was a lean farmer named Badoc son of Tevis (the baron hid a shiver). Other villagers, just as anxious for news, claimed Elise and Van.
The benches round Badoc’s table were filled to overflowing by the farmer, his plump, friendly wife Leunadra, the Fox, and a swarm of children. These ranged in age from a boy barely able to toddle to Badoc’s twin daughters Callis and Elminda, who were about seventeen. Gerin eyed the striking girls appreciatively. They had curly hair, sparkling brown eyes, and cheeks rosy under sun-bestowed bronze; their thin linen tunics clung to young breasts. As subtly as he could, the baron turned the conversation in their direction. They hung on his every word … so long as he was talking about Van. To his own charms they remained sublimely indifferent.
“I wish your friend could stay here,” one of the twins mourned; Gerin had forgotten which was which. They both babbled on about Van’s thews, his armor, his rugged features, his smile … and on and on, until Gerin began to hate the sound of his comrade’s name. Badoc’s craggy face almost smiled as he watched his guest’s discomfiture.
At last the ordeal was over. The baron, quite alone and by then glad of it, went to his bed. His feet hung over the end, for Badoc had ousted one of his younger sons to accommodate the Fox.
Gerin was tired enough that it fazed him not a bit.
A woman’s cry woke him around midnight. Another followed, then another, long and drawn out: “Evoi! Evoiii!” The baron relaxed; it was only the followers of Mavrix, the Sithonian god of wine, out on one of their moonlight revels. Gerin was a bit surprised Mavrix’s cult had spread to this out-of-the-way place, but what of it? He went back to sleep.
The next morning he discovered the considerate villagers had not only curried his horses till their coats gleamed, but also left gifts of fresh bread, wine, cheese, onions, and bars of dried fruit and meat in the back of the wagon. A troop of small boys followed him south until their parents finally called them home.
“I almost hate to leave,” Van said. Gerin studied him: was he still wearing the traces of a satisfied grin? What if he is, witling? the baron asked himself. Do you begrudge him his good fortune? Well, yes, a little, his inner voice answered.
The road was a bit better south of the village; at least it never disappeared. Under the trees the air was cool and moist, the sunlight subdued. Gerin felt more at home than he had since leaving Ricolf’s keep. He was not alone. He heard Elise softly humming a song of the north country. She smiled when she saw him watching her.
They came to a clearing almost wide enough to be called a meadow, hidden away deep in the forest. The Fox squinted at the sudden brightness. A doe which had been nibbling at the soft grass by the forest’s edge lifted its head at the wagon’s noisy arrival and sprang into the woods.
“Pull over, will you?” Van said. The outlander reached for Gerin’s bow and quiver. Though he disdained archery in battle, he loved to hunt and was a fine shot. He trotted across the clearing and vanished among the trees with grace and silence a hunting cat might have envied.
Sighing, Gerin threw down the reins and stretched out full-length on the sweet-smelling grass. Sore muscles began to unkink. Elise stepped down and joined him. The horses were as glad at the break as the people; they cropped the grass with as much alacrity as the deer had shown.
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