Wisdom of the Fox

VI

A chariot came pounding up the road toward Fox Keep. The driver was whipping the horses on so hard that the car jounced into the air at every bump, threatening to throw out him and his companion. "Lord Gerin! Lord Gerin!" the archer cried.

The Fox happened to be on the palisade. He stared down in dismay at the rapidly approaching chariot. He was afraid he knew what news the onrushing warriors bore. But he had been back in Fox Keep only five days himself; he'd hoped he might have longer to prepare. Hopes and reality too often parted company, though. "What word?" he called to the charioteer and his passenger.

They didn't hear him over the rattling of the car and the pound of the horses' hooves, or spy him on the wall. The chariot roared into the courtyard of the keep. The driver pulled back on the reins so sharply that both horses screamed in protest. One tried to rear, which might have overturned the chariot. The lash persuaded the beast to keep all four feet on the ground.

At any other time, Gerin would have reproved the driver for using the horses so; he believed treating animals mildly got the best service from them. Now, as he hurried down from the walkway across the wall, such trivial worries were far from his mind. "What word?" he repeated. "Tomril, Digan, what word?"

Tomril Broken-Nose tossed the whip aside and jumped out of the chariot. "Lord Gerin, I'm here to tell you I beg your pardon," he said.

"You didn't come close to killing your team for that," the Fox answered.

"Oh, but we did, lord prince," Digan Sejan's son said. "Tomril and I, we both thought you were babbling like a night ghost when you came up the Elabon Way warning folk of those half-man, half-beast things that were supposed to have gotten loose from under some old temple or other-"

"But now we've seen 'em, lord Gerin," Tomril broke in, his eyes wide. "They're ugly, they're mean, they've got a taste for blood-"

Now Gerin interrupted: "And they must be up at the bottom of Bevon's barony by now, or you wouldn't have seen them. What news do you have from Ricolf's holding?"

"About what you'd expect," Tomril answered. "They're loose there, too, the cursed things, and ripping serf villages to bits."

"Oh, a pestilence," Gerin said wearily. "If they're in Ricolf's holding, and Bevon's, they'll be here, too. How are the peasants supposed to grow crops if they're liable to be killed in the fields or torn to pieces in their beds?"

"Curse me if I know the answer to that one," Tomril said. "Things I've seen, things I've heard, make me think these creatures are worse than the Trokmoi, and harder to get rid of, too."

"They don't care a fart about loot, neither," Digan chimed in. " They just kill and feed and go away-and in the woods, they're clever beasts, and not easy to hunt."

"I hadn't thought of that, but you're right," Gerin said. "How many Trokmoi have we disposed of because they stayed around to plunder or loaded themselves down with stolen gewgaws till they couldn't even flee?"

"A good many, lord." Tomril touched the hilt of his sword in fond reminiscence. Then he scuffed the ground with a hobnailed sandal. " Won't be so with these monsters, though. They've got teeth and claws and enough of a man's cleverness to be more dangerous'n wolves ever dreamt of, but they aren't clever enough-I don't think so, anyways-to steal the things we make."

"Maybe they're too clever for that," Gerin said. His warriors stared at him in incomprehension. He didn't try to explain; struggling against the black depression that threatened to leave him useless took all he had in him. After he'd ridden out the Trokme invasion, he'd begun, now and then, to have hope that he might keep something of Elabonian civilization alive north of the High Kirs. Now even a god seemed to have abandoned the land, leaving it open for these monsters from underground to course over it.

Rihwin came up in time to hear the last part of the exchange between Gerin and the two troopers. He said, "Lord Gerin, meseems these creatures, however horrific their semblance, should by virtue of their beastly nature be most vulnerable to magic: nor are they likely to have sorcerers of their own to help them withstand the cantrips we loose against them."

"The cantrips I loose against them, you mean," Gerin said, which made Rihwin bite his lip in embarrassment and nod. Gerin went on, "A really potent mage might be able to do what you say. Whether I can is another question altogether. I tell you frankly, I'm afraid of spells of bane, mostly because I know too well they can smite me instead of the ones at whom I aim them."

"A man who recognizes his limits is wise," Rihwin said, which made Gerin snort, for if he'd ever met a man who had no sense of limit whatever, that man was Rihwin.

Gerin paced up and down in the courtyard. At last he stopped and made a gesture of repugnance. "I won't try those spells," he said. " That's not just for fear of getting them wrong, either. Even if I work them properly, I'm liable to end up like Balamung, consumed by evil magic that's overmastered me."

Rihwin studied him judiciously. "If any man could work spells of bane without their corrupting him, I reckon you to be that man. But whether any man can do such is, I concede, an open question."

"Sometimes open questions are best left unopened," Gerin said. What he would do if faced by disaster complete and unalloyed he did not know; he muttered a silent prayer to Dyaus that he would not have to find out. Aloud, he went on, "What we need to do first, I think, is summon the vassals, fare south, and see if we can't teach those creatures fear enough to make them learn to stay away from lands I hold."

"As you say, lord prince," Rihwin agreed cheerfully. "I look forward to sallying forth against them." He mimed shooting a bow from the pitching platform of a chariot.

The Fox did not look forward to sallying forth. He felt harassed. He'd never wanted to be baron of Fox Keep, and once he became baron willy-nilly he'd never delighted in war for its own sake, as so many men of the northlands did. After the Empire of Elabon abandoned the northlands, his main aim had been to maintain its legacy in the lands he ruled. Fighting all the time did nothing to further that aim, but failing to fight meant dying, so what was he to do?

Rihwin said, "Of course, you also must needs take into account the possibility that the Trokme clans north of the Niffet will seize the chance to strike south on learning of your deployment toward the opposite side of your holding."

"Thank you so much, bright ray of sunshine," Gerin said. "And I have to worry about Schild Stoutstaff, and Adiatunnus, and where in the five hells my son has disappeared to, and more other things than I have fingers and toes to keep track of."

"Lord Gerin, that's why the Sithonians devised counting boards," Rihwin said with a sly smile. Gerin stooped, picked up a clod of dirt, and flung it at him. Rihwin ducked. His smile got wider and even more impudent. "Ah, my fellow Fox, I see you've been taking lessons in deportment from your lady."

"Grinning and ducking won't save you now," Gerin exclaimed. "You'd better run, too." He chased Rihwin halfway round the keep, both men laughing like boys. Gerin finally stopped. "You're made of foolishness, do you know that?"

"Maybe I am," Rihwin said. "But ifsobe that's true, what does it make you?"

"Daft," Gerin answered at once. "Anyone who'd want to run a holding, let along the beginnings of a realm, has to be daft." He sobered quickly. "I'll have to send out word to my vassal barons to gather here with as many armed men as they can bring. That can't wait. If it does, we'll have other visitors than our warriors."

Fand stood in the doorway to her chamber and shook her head. "No, Fox, I don't care to have you in here this evening, so back to your own bed you can go."

Gerin scowled at her. "Why not? This is three times running you've told me no, and I know you've said aye to Van at least twice." One reason the two friends had stayed friends and not quarreled over Fand was that she'd always treated them pretty evenhandedly-till now.

"Because I don't care to, is why," she said, now tossing her head so her hair flew about in coppery ringlets. "And if that's not enough of an answer to suit you, why, to the corbies with you."

"I ought to-" he began.

"Ought to what?" she broke in. "Have me by force? Och, you can do it the once, belike; you're bigger nor I am, and stronger, too. But your back'd never be safe after that, nor had you better sleep but behind barred door. For that I'd take vengeance if it cost the life of me."

"Will you shut up, you idiot woman, and let me get a word in edgewise?" he roared in a startlingly loud voice-loud and startling enough to make Fand give back a pace. "I was trying to say, before you started screeching at me, that I ought to know what you think I've done wrong so I can figure out whether I really meant it or if I should try to make amends."

"Oh." Fand came as close to seeming subdued as she ever did. After a moment, she sighed. "It's not that you don't mean well, indeed and it isn't. But haven't you had enough to do with women to know that if you need to ask a question like that, the answer'll do you no good?"

Elise had said things like that, not long before she left him. He hadn't understood then, and didn't altogether understand now. "I don't fancy guessing games," he said slowly. "Usually you tell me whatever's in your mind-more than I want to hear, sometimes. Why not now?"

"Och, it's late at night, and I'd sooner sleep than have a row with you the now," Fand said. "Go on to your own bed, Fox. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel kinder toward you-who knows?" Then, because she was honest in her own fashion, she added, "Or maybe I won't."

Evasion made Gerin angry; when he wanted to know something, he kept digging till he found out. "Tell me what you're thinking," he growled. "If I've done something wrong, I'll find a way to make it right."

"You do try that, I'll own; you're just enough and to spare, for a fact," Fand said. "This time, though, 'twill not be so easy for you, I'm thinking." She shut her mouth tight then, and gave him a stubborn look that warned she'd say no more.

More than her words, the set of her face finally told Gerin what she meant. He clapped a hand to his forehead. "You're still sizzling because I brought Selatre to the keep," he exclaimed.

"And wouldn't you be, now, if I was after coming back here with a big-thewed, big-balled Trokme man with a fine yellow mustache on him?" she said. "Och, puir fellow, by the side o' the road I found him, starving and all. Sure and I didn't fetch him back to sleep with him, even if he will be living in the castle from here on out." She did a wicked parody of his explanation of how he'd come to bring Selatre to Castle Fox, and topped it off by assuming an expression innocent and wanton at the same time.

Gerin hoped he managed to disguise his startled laugh as a cough, but wouldn't have bet money on it. "You have the tongue of a viper, do you know that?" he said. It pleased her, which wasn't what he'd had in mind. He went on, "By the gods, I haven't set a hand on her since she got here. I don't mean I haven't tried to take her to bed, I mean I literally have not touched her. So I don't know why you keep wanting to have kittens about it."

"Foosh, I know you've not touched her." Fand tossed her head in fine contempt. "But can you tell me so easy you've not wanted to?"

"I-" Gerin lied with few qualms when he dealt with his neighbors; only a fool, he reckoned, told the bald truth on all occasions. But lying to his leman was a different business. He ended up not answering Fand at all.

When she saw he wasn't going to, she nodded and quietly shut the door between them. The bar on her side did not come down; he could have gone in.

He stood in the hallway for a minute or so, then muttered, "What's the bloody use?" He went back to his own chamber and lay down. He was still awake when pale Nothos rose in the east, which meant midnight had come and gone. Eventually he slept.

Van sang in the stables as Raffo readied the chariot to go out on campaign. Gerin had always looked on war as an unpleasant part of the business of running a barony, but now the idea of escaping from Castle Fox for a while suited him fine.

When he said as much, Van stopped singing and started to laugh. " What's so stinking funny?" the Fox asked irritably.

"You're that glad to get away from sweet Fand, are you?" Van said, laughing still. "This I tell you: she's as happy to have you gone as you are to be going. Not just her eyes are green; she's jealous enough to spit poison like some of the snakes they have in the jungles of the east."

"I already saw that for myself, thank you very much," Gerin said. He wished Van hadn't brought it up where Raffo and a good many other men as well could listen, but after a moment he realized that didn't matter: the only people in his holding who hadn't heard about how well Fand liked his coming back with Selatre were deaf, and their friends had probably drawn pictures in the dirt for them. Fixing the outlander with a baleful stare, he ground out, "And how is it she hasn't stayed angry with you? You had as much to do with getting Selatre here as I did."

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt," Van admitted. Just then Raffo climbed into the chariot. Van followed him, setting his shield in the bracket on his side of the car.

Gerin did the same on his side. "You were saying?" he prompted when Van showed no sign of going on.

"I was, wasn't I? Well, how do I put it?" Van fiddled with his weapons to give him time to gather his thoughts. Raffo flicked the reins and got the horses going. As they passed from the stable out into the courtyard, the outlander said, "I guess the nub of it is, she believes me when I tell her I'm not out to bed Selatre. You she's not so sure about."

"I don't know what I have to do," Gerin said wearily. "I've told Fand and I've told her-"

"Not that simple, Captain, and you likely know it as well as I do," Van said. "Me, I'm a wencher and not a lot more, and Fand, she suits me well enough, though the gods know I'd sooner she didn't have that redheaded temper of hers. You and Fand, though… but for bed, damn me to the hottest one of your five hells if I can see where the two of you fit together."

"She came to Fox Keep at the right time," Gerin answered.

"Oh, I know that," Van said. "After Elise up and left, any woman would have done you for a while, just to let you remember you're a man. But I'd not expected this to last so long." He laughed again. "I figured you'd sicken of quarreling with her and leave her all to me, not that I know whether I could stand that myself."

"You have all of her now, seems like, without my having any say at all," the Fox answered, less than delighted his friend had seen into him so clearly.

"So I do, and I still don't know whether I can stand it." The outlander sighed. "What made it work so well, the three of us I mean, is that Fand has more than enough venom for any one man, but she's bearable when she has two to spread it on. Of course, it helps that neither of us is the jealous sort."

"No." Gerin let it go at that. Had he cared more for Fand, he thought, he would have been more likely to be jealous, too, but he didn't care to say as much straight out. He did add, "Another thing that helps is that she's lickerish enough for the two of us together. I think she'd wear me out if I had to try to keep her happy by my lonesome."

"You're getting old," Van said, to which the Fox mimed throwing a punch, for his friend was no younger. Then Van sighed again, and went on, "One more thing to worry about." He stopped, seemed to listen to himself, and guffawed. "By the gods, I've been with you too long, Captain. I'm even starting to sound like you."

"Believe me, I like the idea even less than you do," Gerin answered, and Van pretended to wallop him. Up ahead at the reins, Raffo snickered.

The chariots rolled south down the Elabon Way in no particular order, now bunched together, now strung out in a long line. Sometimes the Fox's warriors sang or swapped jokes, sometimes they kept them to themselves. Gerin knew the Empire of Elabon had imposed stricter discipline on its soldiers when it was strong, but he didn't know how the trick was done. By all the evidence, Elabon didn't know anymore, either.

Even though he was still in his own holding, he kept a wary eye on the woods and brush to either side of the Elabon Way. If the monsters from Ikos had been seen in Bevon's holding (not that Bevon held much of it), they might be loose in Palin's lands, too-and they might have come farther north than that.

Serfs in the fields stared as the chariots bounced past them. A few took no chances, but dropped their hoes and stone-headed mattocks and ran for the safety of the trees. After the chaos the northlands had endured the past five years, that did not surprise the Fox, but it left him sad. Here he and his comrades fared forth to protect the peasants, and they seemed to feel they needed protecting from their overlords.

Thanks to Gerin's forethoughtfulness, the little army had several hens among the baggage. They also had enough axes to cut plenty of firewood for a good-sized blaze. Between the offering and the fire, the evening ghosts were hardly more than a distraction.

"We'll set pairs of sentries out all night long in a triangle," Gerin said. "I won't have us assailed without warning."

Van took charge of roasting the two chickens they'd sacrificed. He was the logical man for the job: not only was he as good a roadside cook as anyone else, he was also no one to argue with when he passed out pieces of meat, for there weren't enough to go around. Those who went without chicken made do with hard-baked biscuits and smoked meat, cheese, and onions. Everyone drank ale.

Gerin tossed a gnawed thighbone into the fire. He chewed at a biscuit about as tough as his own teeth. "I wonder if this came from Ros the Fierce's reign, or just Oren's," he said after he managed to get a mouthful down.

"You have no cause to make complaint against Oren the Builder," Rihwin said, "for the image of him you fetched back from the fane at Ikos leaves you perhaps the richest man in the northlands."

"Aye, gold is good to have, I'll not deny," Gerin said. "That's not the way I expected to come by it, but you hear no complaints from me."

Some of the warriors rolled themselves in their blankets as soon as they'd finished eating. Others stayed up a while to talk or roll knucklebones by the light of the fire. Van snarled in angry dismay when he lost three throws in a row; his luck usually ran better than that. Then he lost again, and stood up from the game. "Enough is enough," he declared.

"Well, if you won't gamble with us, what about a tale?" Widin Simrin's son said. He had his own reasons for being willing to call off the game: a nice little pile of silver gleamed in front of him.

Everyone who heard the suggestion spoke up for it all the same, especially the men from outlying keeps who seldom got the chance to hear Van yarn. The outlander coughed and plucked at his beard. "Which tale shall I give you?" he asked. "You pick one for me."

"How about the one about how they teach the monkeys to pick pepper?" Gerin said. "You were going to start it a few days ago, but we got interrupted. And if I've not heard it, my guess is that few others here have."

From the way the warriors exclaimed, none of them knew the story. "So I've not told it in all the time I've been at your keep, eh, Captain?" Van said. "Nice to know I've not yarned myself dry, and that's a fact. All right, here goes: the tale of the way they teach monkeys to pick pepper."

Before he started the story, he paused to swig ale and lubricate his throat. That accomplished, he said, "This is what I saw in Mabalal, which is a hot, damp country a good ways east and south from Kizzuwatna. Take the muggiest summer day you've ever known here, imagine it ten times worse, and you'll start to know what the weather there is like.

"Now maybe it's on account of the weather, but a lot of the folk of Mabalal are what you'd have to call lazy. Some of 'em, I swear, would just as soon lie with their mouths open in the rain as get up and find themselves a cup to drink from-but that's no part of the tale.

"If you want to know what pepper trees are like, think of willowsthey look much like 'em, right down to the clusters of fruit. The trouble with 'em is, they grow on the steepest hillsides and cliffs, so people have a beastly time getting to 'em to take away the pepper."

"Probably why it costs so much by the time it gets here," Gerin said.

"Likely so, Captain. Now the folk of Mabalal are lazy, like I said. If we had to hope for them to climb hillsides and cliffs to gather the pepper fruits, it'd cost more than it does, I tell you true. What they do instead is get the monkeys to work for 'em, or maybe trick 'em into it would be a better way to put it."

"What's a monkey?" asked a warrior from an isolated keep, a man who never went more than a couple of hours' walk from his holding unless on campaign.

"A monkey is a beast about the size of a half-year babe that looks like a furry, ugly little man with a tail," Van answered patiently. " They live in trees, and have thumbs on their feet as well as their hands. They're clever and mischievous, almost like children, and they cause a lot of trouble stealing things and ruining them.

"The other thing about monkeys is, they like to do what people doand the folk of Mabalal, who live with 'em the same way we do with dogs and cats, know it. There are whole bands of these monkeys, mind you, that live in the rough country where the pepper trees grow. So when the Mabalali want to get themselves some pepper, what they do is this: they go down to the foothills below the rough country and pick all the fruit off some of the trees there. Then they dump piles of the fruit in little clearings they've made close by, and they pretend to up and leave.

"Now, all the while the monkeys have been watching them from the high ground. The monkeys go and they pick the fruits from the pepper trees, and then they come down and they drop them in the clearings just the same way they'd seen the men do it. Sometimes they'll steal the fruit the Mabalali have left, sometimes they won't. Either way, the Mabalali get the pepper, and they get it without having to do the hard work themselves. So you see, sometimes being lazy isn't such a bad thing after all."

The warriors buzzed appreciatively, as they would have at any tale well told. For them it was a pleasant way to pass the time and a story to remember so they could tell it in turn. Gerin also liked it on those terms, but it set him thinking in a different way, too. "I wonder how many useful things have come from men's being too lazy to keep on doing things the same old hard way," he mused.

"Give me a for-instance, Captain," Van said.

That made the Fox scratch his head. At last he said, "Take the fellow who thought of the wagon. Wouldn't you bet he was sick of hauling things on his back?"

"Ah, I see what you're saying," Van said. "Likely so."

"And the fellow who first brewed ale, what was he sick of?" Rihwin asked. With a grin, he answered his own question: "Seeing straight, I suppose."

Gerin and Van both laughed at that, but Drago the Bear drew in a sharp, disapproving breath. "No man first brewed ale," he said flatly. " 'Twas the gift of the god Baivers, and any who don't want his anger had best remember it."

Rihwin opened his mouth for what Gerin was sure would be a reply taken straight from the philosophers of the City of Elabon. Before that reply could emerge, Gerin forestalled it: "Rihwin, my fellow Fox, I trust you do recall the difficulties you had with Mavrix god of wine not so long ago?"

"Well, yes, I do," Rihwin said reluctantly. "I did not believe, however, that you of all people in the northlands would stifle the full and open discussion of ideas of all sorts. I-"

Gerin took him by the arm. "Here, walk with me," he said in a tone that brooked no argument. When the two men were as far from the fire and the blood offering as the wailing of the ghosts would let them go, Gerin continued in a low voice, "For all your study, one thing you never learned: there's a time and a place for everything. If you want to start arguments about the nature and powers of the gods, don't do it when you're heading out on campaign. I want my men's thoughts focused on two things: working with one another and slaughtering any monsters they happen across. Does that make sense to you?"

"I suppose so," Rihwin said, though he sounded sulky. "Yet you would be hard-pressed to deny that in theory-"

Gerin cut him off again, this time with a sharp chopping gesture of his left hand. "Theory is wonderful," he said. "What we have here is fact-if the men quarrel among themselves, they won't fight well. You do anything more to make them fight worse than they would otherwise and I'll leave you behind at the first keep we come to, or at a peasant village failing that. Do you understand me?"

"Oh, indeed." Rihwin angrily tossed his head; firelight glinted from the gold hoop in his left ear. "You're a hard man when you take the field, lord prince Gerin the Fox." He loaded Gerin's title with scorn.

"War is too important a business to be slack with it," Gerin answered, shrugging. "Will you do as I say and not stir up disputes among the gods, or shall I leave you? Those are your choices, sirrah."

Rihwin sighed. "Let it be as you say. You'd do better, though, if you learned to ease men into doing your will rather than hammering them into it."

"No doubt." Gerin sighed, too. Rihwin had nothing wrong with his wits, only a dearth of common sense. "And you'd do better if you thought more before you started talking or doing things. We all try to be the best men we can, and we all fail in different ways. Which watch do you have tonight?"

"The middle one." Rihwin's mobile features assumed an expression of distaste.

"There, you see?" Gerin said. "If your head held as much sense as a cabbage, you'd be asleep already instead of standing here arguing with me. Go curl up in your blanket."

"The power of your reasoning ravishes me yet again," Rihwin cried. Gerin snorted and made as if to kick him in the backside. The transplanted southerner lay down and soon fell asleep. Gerin had the midwatch, too, but stayed awake a good deal longer.

When the Fox's chariots rolled down into Bevon's holding, all the local barons shut themselves up right in their keeps and prepared to stand siege. "You just want to bite out another piece of our land," one of them called from his palisade when Gerin came up to the wall.

"That's not so," Gerin answered, wondering if the white rag he bore would protect him from the lordlet's archers. As he had so many times before, he spoke of the monsters that had erupted from the caves beneath Biton's temple.

And, as had happened too many times before, he met only disbelief. The petty baron laughed scornfully. "You're supposed to be clever, Fox. I'd have thought you could come up with a better excuse than that to come down on your neighbors."

"Have it as you will." The Fox knew he sounded weary, but couldn't help it. "You'll find out soon enough whether I'm telling the truth. When you learn I am, maybe you'll remember some of what I've said." He turned and walked back to the chariot where Van and Raffo waited. No one shot at him, so he just rode on.

Down at the southern border of Bevon's holding, Ricolf's men were no longer wary of the force Gerin used to hold the Elabon Way open. They'd seen the monsters for themselves-seen more of them than the Fox had, as a matter of fact. He spent the first couple of hours after he arrived asking questions.

"Some of the creatures are smarter than others, lord prince, seems like," one of Ricolf's troopers said. "I've seen a couple carrying sword or axe, and one even with a helm on its ugly head. But others'll either charge or run off, just like wild beasts."

"Interesting." Gerin plucked at his beard. "How many of them are there, would you say, and how much damage have they done?"

"How many? Too many, that's sure," the trooper said. "As for damage, think how much fun wolves would be if they had more in the way of wits, and hands to let them get into things doors and gates keep them out of."

Gerin thought about it. He didn't like the pictures that painted themselves in his mind. Elabonians were in the habit of calling Trokmoi wolves because of their fierce raids, but they had humanly understandable motives: they were out for loot and captives as well as slaughter for its own sake. Beasts that hunted and killed without grasping, let alone using, the concepts of mercy and restraint were daunting in an altogether different way.

The Fox thanked Ricolf's man and went back to pass the word to his own warriors. "One thing's certain," he said when he'd given them the grim news: "These creatures won't act like a regular army of men. They aren't an army at all, not really. Instead of trying to storm up the Elabon Way in a mass, I look for them to spread through the woods by ones and twos and maybe packs-no larger groups or bands or whatever you want to call them."

"If that's so, lord Gerin, we might as well not have brung these here chariots," Widin Simrin's son said.

"For fighting, you're right," the Fox answered, letting his young vassal down easy. "But we'd have been another two or three days on the road if we'd footed it down here."

Widin nodded, abashed. Drago the Bear said, "What'll you have us do with the cars, then? We can't go into the woods with 'em, that's certain, and you say the woods is where we'll find these things." He shook his head in somber anticipation. "You're going to make foot soldiers out of us, I know you are."

"Do you see that I have any choice?" Gerin asked. "Here's what I'm thinking: we'll split up by chariot crews, with teams of three crews sticking together in teams. That'll give each team nine men, which should be enough to hold off even a pack of the creatures. At the same time, we'll have eight or ten teams spreading out along the border between Bevon's and Ricolf's holdings, and that ought to give us a chance to keep a lot of the beasts from slipping farther north."

"What about the ones that are already over the border?" Van asked. "How are you going to deal with them?"

"Bevon's vassals, or rather Bevon's sons' vassals, will slay some of them," Gerin said. "That should convince them the things are real and dangerous. As for the others, we'll just have to hope there aren't too many."

"Fair enough," Van said, to Gerin's relief. The Fox's great fearone he didn't want to speak aloud to his followers-was that, like the Trokmoi, the monsters would permanently establish themselves in the northlands. If men couldn't rid the woods of wolves, how were they to be free of creatures cleverer and more vicious than wolves?

He divided his men into teams of nine, and appointed a leader for each band. He had contrary misgivings about naming Drago and Rihwin: the one might miss things he ought to find, while the other got in trouble by being too inventive. But they were both better than anyone else in their bands, so he spoke their names firmly and hoped for the best.

He ordered half the teams to head east from the Elabon Way, the other half west. "We'll go out for three days, hunt for a day, and then come back," he said. "Anybody who's not back to the road in seven days' time and hasn't been eaten to give him an excuse will answer to me."

Eastbound and westbound forces headed out from the highway; the Fox and his chariot crew were in the latter. At first each half of the little army tramped along as a single body, the better to overawe any of the local nobles who might be tempted to fare forth against them. Men chattered and sang and, after a while, began to grumble about sore feet.

When morning had turned to afternoon and the sun sank toward the horizon, Gerin turned to the team headed by Widin Simrin's son. "You men go back and forth through the woods hereabouts," he said. "The rest of us will push on, then leave another team behind, then another, and another, so when we're through we'll have men all along the border. Do you see?"

"Aye, lord," Widin answered. "That means at the end of our reach, though, so to speak, we won't be able to search for as long as we will here closer to the Elabon Way."

"True enough," the Fox said, "but I don't know what we can do about it. Travel takes time, and there's no help for it." He nodded approvingly to Widin; that was a much better point than the one he'd raised before. Gerin hadn't worked the implications of his strategy through so logically himself. "When we get back to Fox Keep, would you be interested in learning to read and write?"

"No, lord prince," Widin replied at once. "Got better things to do with my time, I do-hunting and wenching and keeping my vassals and serfs in line." He sounded so sure of himself that Gerin subsided with a sigh and did not push the question.

With Widin's team left behind, the rest tramped on. They took a game track through a stand of oaks and emerged on the far side at the edge of cleared fields in which peasants labored. The peasants stared at them in horror, as if they were so many monsters themselves, then fled.

Their cries of terror made Gerin melancholy. "This holding has seen too much war," he said. "Let's push ahead without harming anything here: let them know not every warrior is out to steal what little they have."

"A wasted lesson if ever I heard one," Van said. "The next band through here, so long as it isn't one of ours, will treat them the way they expect us to." Gerin glared at him so fiercely that he hastened to add, "But we'll do it your way, Captain-why not?"

Evening came before the Fox reckoned the time ripe to detach another piece of his force. Along with the men he had with him, he tossed knucklebones to see who would stand watch through the night. He felt like cheering when he won the right to uninterrupted sleep. No sooner had he cocooned himself in his blanket and wriggled around a little to make sure no pebbles poked his ribs than he knew nothing of the world around him.

A hideous cry recalled him to himself: a wailing shriek part wolf, part longtooth, part madman. He sat up and looked around wildly, wondering for a moment where he was and what he was doing here. His gaze went to the heavens. Tiwaz, nearly full, stood high in the south; ruddy Elleb, a couple of days past fullness, was in the southeast. Crescent Math had set and Nothos not yet risen. That put the hour a little before midnight.

Then all such mundane, practical thoughts vanished from his head, for the dreadful call again rang through the woods and across the fields. Some men started up from their bedrolls, grabbing for bow or sword. Others shrank down, as if to smother the cry with the thick wool of their blankets. Gerin could not find it in himself to blame them; the scream made him want to hide, too.

In a very small voice, someone said, "Is that the cry these monsters make?"

"Don't know what else it could be." Van sounded amazingly cheerful. "Noisy buggers, aren't they? 'Course, frogs are noisy, too, and a frog isn't hardly anything but air and legs."

Gerin admired his friend's sangfroid. He also admired the way the outlander had done his best to make the creatures from the caves seem less dangerous; he knew they were a great deal more than air and legs.

The frightful cry rang out yet again. "How are we to sleep with that racket?" Widin Simrin's son said.

"You roll up in your blanket and you close your eyes," Gerin said, not about to let Van outdo him in coolness. "We have sentries aplenty; you won't be eaten while you snore."

"And if you are, you can blame the Fox," Van put in, adding, "Not that it'll do you much good then."

Off in the distance, almost on the edge of hearing, another monster shrieked to answer the first. That sent ice walking up Gerin's back, not from terror at the faraway cry but because it said the creatures that made those dreadful sounds were spreading over the northlands. Gerin wondered how many more were calling back and forth farther away than he could hear.

The one nearby kept quiet after that. Exhaustion and edgy nerves fought a battle over the Fox; exhaustion eventually won. The next thing he knew, the sun was prying his eyelids open. He got up and stretched, feeling elderly. His mouth tasted like something scraped off the bottom of a chamber pot. He walked over to a tree, plucked off a twig, frayed one end of it with the edge of his dagger, and used it to scrub some of the vileness from his teeth. Some of his men did the same, others didn't bother.

Rihwin, who'd grown up south of the High Kirs, was so fastidious that even frayed twigs didn't completely satisfy him. As he tossed one aside, he said, "In the City of Elabon they make bristle brushes for your mouth. Those are better by far than these clumsy makeshifts."

"If you like, you can teach the art to one of the peasants who makes big brushes for rubbing down horses," Gerin said. "We might be able to sell them through the northlands-not many southern amenities to be had here these days."

"My fellow Fox, I admire the wholeheartedness of your mercenary spirit," Rihwin said.

"Anyone who sneers at silver has never tried to live without it." Gerin looked around. "Where'd Van go?"

"He walked into the woods a while ago," Widin said. "He's probably off behind a tree, taking care of his morning business."

The outlander returned a few minutes later. He said. "When you're done breaking your fast, friends, I want you to come with me. I went looking for the spot where that thing made a racket last night, and I think I found it."

Several of the men were still gnawing on hard bread and sausage as they followed Van. He led them down a tiny track to a clearing perhaps a furlong from the camp. The carcass of a doe lay there. Much of the hindquarters portion had been devoured.

A scavenging fox fled from the carcass when the men came out of the woods. Van said to Gerin, "I hope your name animal hasn't ruined the tracks I saw. I'd be liable to think ill of it if it has, and I know you wouldn't like that." He walked over to the doe, grunted. "No, looks like we're all right. Come up a few at a time, all of you, and have a look at what the ground shows."

Gerin was part of the first small group forward. When he got close to the dead doe, Van pointed to a patch of bare, soft dirt by the animal. The footprints there were like none the Fox had ever seen. At first he thought they might be a man's, then a bear's-they had claw marks in front of the ends of their toes. But they didn't really resemble either. They were-something new.

"So this is the spoor we have to look for, is it?" he said grimly.

"Either that or someone's magicking our eyes," Van answered. "And I don't think anybody is."

The Fox didn't think so, either. He waited till all his men had seen the new footprints, then said, "They have claws on their hands, too. Now that we know what their tracks look like, let's get moving and see if we can't hunt down a few."

The warriors were quiet as they trooped back to the campsite. Now they had real evidence that Gerin and Van hadn't made up the tale about the monsters. They'd believed them already, likely enough, in an abstract way, but hearing about something new and terrible wasn't the same as seeing proof it was really there.

A couple of hours after they started tramping west, Gerin detached another band of men from his force to scour the area where they were. The rest slogged on; grumbles about aching feet got louder.

Around noon, Rihwin said, "Lord Gerin, something which may be of import occurs to me."

"And what is that?" Gerin asked warily. You never could tell with Rihwin. Some of his notions were brilliant, others crackbrained, and knowing the one bunch from the other wasn't always easy.

Now he said, "My thought, lord prince, is that these may in sooth be creatures of the night, wherein we heard the two of them giving cry. For does it not stand to reason that, having lived an existence troglodytic lo these many years, perhaps even ages, their eyes, accustomed as they must be to darkness perpetual, will necessarily fail when facing the bright and beaming rays of the sun?"

"Troglo-what?" Van said incredulously, no doubt speaking for a good many of the Fox's warriors.

Gerin was well-read and used to Rihwin's elaborate southern speech patterns, so he at least understood what his fellow Fox was talking about. "Means 'living in caves,'" he explained for those who hadn't followed. To Rihwin, he said, "It's a pretty piece of logic; the only flaw is that it's not so. Van and I saw the things fighting the temple guards in broad daylight the morning of the earthquake, and heard one behind us coming out of Ikos later that same day. Their eyes work perfectly well in sunlight."

"Oh, a pox!" Rihwin cried. "How dreadful to see such a lovely edifice of thought torn down by hard, brute fact." He sulked for the next couple of hours.

The Fox detached another team late that afternoon, and camped with his remaining two teams not long afterwards. The night passed quietly, much to his relief. Standing first watch was not so onerous-better that than being torn from sleep by a horrible screech, at any rate.

Early the next morning, he gave Rihwin's team their area to patrol. "Good hunting," he said, clapping his ekenamesake on the shoulder.

"I thank you, lord Gerin," Rihwin answered, and then, "Do you know, there are times when I wonder how wise I was to cast aside my life of wealth and indolence in the southlands for an adventurous career with you."

"There are times when I wonder about that, too," Gerin said. "A lot of them, as a matter of fact. What you're saying now is that your heart wouldn't break if you didn't happen to run across any monsters?"

"Something like that, yes."

"I feel the same way, believe me," Gerin said, "but if we don't go after them, they'll end up coming after us. I'd sooner make the fight on my terms, and as far from my keep as I can."

"I understand the logic, I assure you," Rihwin said. "The argument takes on a different color, however, when it moves from the realm of ideas to the point of affecting one personally. Logicians who cling to abstract concepts seldom run the risk of being devoured."

"No matter how much they may deserve it," Gerin added, which won him a glare. He gave Rihwin another encouraging swat. For all the southerner's talk, Gerin didn't worry about his courage. His common sense was another matter, or would have been if he'd had any to speak of.

The Fox led his own team westward. Alarmed at their advance, a young stag bounded out of a thicket. Van pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked, and let fly, all in close to the same instant. "That's a hit!" he shouted, and hurried forward to where the stag had been. Sure enough, blood splashed the grass. "Come on, you lugs," the outlander said to his companions. "With a trail like this to follow, a blind man'd be eating venison steaks tonight."

They ran the deer down about a quarter of an hour later. It lay panting on the ground, too weak to run any further; Van's arrow stood in its side, just back of the heart. It tried to struggle to its feet, but could not. Its large brown eyes stared reproachfully at the warriors. Van stooped beside it. With one swift motion, he jerked up its head and cut its throat.

Together, Van and Gerin tackled the gory job of butchering the stag. "Next stream we come to, I wash," Gerin declared.

"You may not need to wait for a stream, Captain," the outlander answered, pointing west. The weather had been fine, but clouds were beginning to roll in off the distant Orynian Ocean. "That could be rain."

"So it could." The Fox glowered at the clouds, as if he could hold them back by sheer force of will. "If it starts raining, how are we supposed to track anything? By the gods, how are we even going to keep fires going to help hold the ghosts at arm's length?" His rising bad temper even extended to Van. "And why couldn't you have killed this deer closer to sunset, so we could use its blood as an offering to the spirits?"

Van stood tall and glared down at him. "Are you going to complain that the grass is green instead of blue, too, or will you help me get the meat off this beast?" As usual, his comrade's bluntness showed Gerin where he'd stepped over the line from gloomy to carping. He nodded shamefacedly and fell to work.

Raffo said, "I have a thought, lord Gerin." He waited for the Fox to grunt before he went on, "What say we post ourselves in hiding around the offal there and see if it doesn't lure one of the creatures we're seeking? The stink of blood might draw 'em."

"We're already farther west than any of the other teams," Gerin said musingly. "It would mean pushing on a ways further tomorrow, but why not? As you say, the lure is good: might as well be a grub on a fish hook. Aye, we'll try it-but I still want to go and find water."

"And I," Van agreed. His arms were bloody to the elbows.

"We'll be back as soon as we may," Gerin said. "Set your ambush, but remember to know what you're shooting at before you let fly."

He and Van found a creek a couple of furlongs west of where the stag had fallen. Just as they came up to the bank, a kingfisher dove into the water, to emerge a moment later with a minnow in its bill. Something else-a frog or a turtle, Gerin didn't notice which-splashed into the creek from a mossy rock and didn't come out again.

The stag's blood had already started to dry; scrubbing it off wasn't easy. "We need some of the soap they make from fat and ashes south of the High Kirs," Gerin said, scraping one arm more or less clean with the nails of his other hand. "Maybe I'll try cooking a batch myself when we get home to Fox Keep."

"The stuff's too harsh for my liking," Van answered. "It takes off the top layer of your hide along with the dirt." He looked at Gerin. " You have a splash of blood by your nose, Fox… No, on the other side. There, you got it."

"Good." Gerin gave a theatrical shiver. "That water's cold." He glanced westward again. The dirty gray clouds were piled higher there. "And before too long, more than my arms'll get wet. That does look like rain coming. The serfs will be glad of it, but I wish it would have held off till we were under a roof again."

"Weather won't listen, any more'n a woman will," Van said. "Let's head back and see if Raffo's brainstorm came to anything."

"We'd have heard if it did," Gerin answered. But he followed Van back toward the rest of their team. They could hold their ambush till it was time to set up camp for the night, he decided. Turning to his friend, he added, "It occurs to me now-too late, of course-that pile of guts might draw something besides monsters. If a longtooth decides it wants a meal, I hope they have sense enough to let it eat its fill."

"You're right," Van said. "I'm just glad Rihwin's not with us. He' s a fine chap, mind you, but he hasn't the sense you need to cart guts to a bear, so why should a longtooth be any different? If you ask me-"

Gerin didn't have the chance to ask Van anything. A racket broke out ahead, the shouts of men and the hideous shriek they'd heard in the night. He jerked his sword out of its sheath, Van pulled the mace from the loop at his belt on which it hung, and the two of them pounded toward the tumult as fast as their legs would carry them.

"It's us!" Gerin yelled as he ran. "Don't shoot-we're not monsters." Whether any of the men was cool-headed enough to note and heed his cry was an open question.

Because he thought that way, the arrow that hissed between him and Van neither surprised nor infuriated him. He had a moment to be glad it had missed them both, then burst through the bushes into the little open space where the stag had died and been butchered.

Several of his men had already emerged from cover, too. "The thing went that way," Raffo exclaimed, pointing south. "We all shot at it, and hit it at least twice, maybe three times." What he'd seen suddenly seemed to sink in. His eyes went wide and staring. "Lord Gerin, forgive me that I ever doubted your words, I pray you. The creature is all you said it was, and more and worse besides."

"Yes, yes," Gerin said impatiently. "Enough jabbering-let's catch it and kill it. Lead on, Raffo, since you know the way."

Looking imperfectly delighted with the privilege he'd been granted, Raffo plunged into the woods. The trail was easy to follow, blood and tracks both. Before long, Gerin could hear the monster crashing through the undergrowth ahead. "The things have weaknesses after all," Van panted. "They aren't woodswise like proper beasts, and they aren't what you'd call fast, either."

"You don't know about that," Gerin answered. "How fast and careful would you be with two or three arrows in you?" Van didn't answer, from which Gerin concluded he'd made his point.

With a roar, the monster sprang out from behind an elm tree. Four men shot arrows at it. Two of those missed; excitement could ruin anybody's aim. The creature screamed when the other two struck. But despite them, and despite the other shafts that pierced it, it rushed at its pursuers.

Its claws scraped against the bronze scales of Gerin's corselet. He could feel the force behind them, even if they did not wound; as he'd guessed, the monster was stronger than a man. He slashed with his sword. The thing screamed again.

Van clouted it with his mace. The blow would have crushed the skull of any man. It knocked the monster to the ground, but it got up again, blood streaming from the dreadful wound to the side of its head. Cursing in half a dozen languages, Van smote it again, even harder than before. This time it fell and did not rise again.

"Father Dyaus above," said a warrior named Parol and called Chickpea after a wart by his nose. Gerin's heart pounded in his chest. He felt as if he'd fought against a Trokme rather than hunted a beast. The monster's strength, even badly wounded, accounted for some of that. More, though, came from how much the thing resembled a man.

"Will you look at it?" Raffo said in wondering tones. "Take the ugliest scoundrel you've ever seen-old Wolfar, for instance-and make him five times as ugly as he really was, every which way, I mean, and you've just about got this thing here."

"Oh, not quite everything," Parol said. "I wouldn't mind being hung so good, and that's no lie."

That comment aside, Raffo's remark was to the point. Gerin had noted how manlike the monsters were from the moment he set eyes on them. Then, though, he hadn't had the leisure to examine one closely; he'd been more concerned about getting away from Ikos with his life and Van's and the Sibyl's.

Squat, muscular, hairy-the thing did resemble Wolfar, he thought, unkind to his old enemy though he'd killed him five years earlier. But Wolfar, except when he turned werebeast, had not been armed with claws on hands and feet both, and even as a werebeast his teeth had hardly matched the ones filling the monster's long, formidable jaws.

Above those jaws, its features were also a vicious parody of mankind's: a low nose with slit nostrils; large eyes set deep under heavy ridges of bone; thick hair, almost fur, rising to a crest on top of its head and nearly disguising how little forehead it had.

"There it is," Gerin said. "Dyaus above only knows how many of these things are spreading over the northlands."

"Are they all of the same sort as this one?" Raffo asked.

"Some of 'em are likely to be females or bitches or woman monsters or whatever the right name is," Parol put in.

"They're ugly enough so it'd only matter to another monster." Raffo made a gesture of distaste. "What I meant was, is this one pretty much like the others? You'd get a different notion of what people were like from Van's corpse and the one I'd like to make out of that weedy little jeweler who may have run off with Duren."

"Otes." Gerin heard the growl in his own voice as he supplied the name. How could he properly search for his son when catastrophe was overtaking all the northlands? More and more, he feared he'd never again see Duren alive. But Raffo's question raised a serious point. "I haven't had enough experience with them to answer that, though Ricolf' s man said some seemed smarter than others," he said. "One way or another, we'll all find out before long."

The warriors trooped back to where they had slain the deer, leaving the monster's body where it lay. "We may as well camp, as Raffo said," Van remarked. "No point in pushing further in the little daylight left."

When evening fell, the ghosts were very quiet. "Likely gorging on the creature's blood," Gerin said. He looked up to the sky. Math should have been at first quarter, with Tiwaz and Elleb rising in the early hours after sunset, but he saw only clouds. The wind was picking up. "We'll have trouble gauging watches tonight, and it feels like rain, to boot."

"I'm not looking forward to tramping along through the mud," Van said. "We won't be able to do much in the way of looking for monsters, either, not with rain making it hard for us to see our hands when we stretch our arms out at full length."

"Aye, you're right," Gerin said morosely. "I hadn't thought so far ahead yet." The gobbet of venison on which he was gnawing suddenly lost a good deal of its flavor. How was he supposed to set a perimeter to keep the monsters out of his holding if they could shamble past fifty paces away without getting noticed?

For that matter, if other nobles in the northlands didn't fight them as hard as he would himself, how was he supposed to keep the monsters out of his holding at all? The most obvious answer to that was depressing: maybe he couldn't. He hadn't had much hope of besting Balamung, either, but he'd persisted and come through. He had to believe he could do the same again.

He stood an early watch, then rolled himself in his blanket and fell asleep at once in spite of his worries. When he woke, he looked around in confusion-why was everything still dark? Then a raindrop landed on the end of his nose, and another in his hair.

The rain started pattering down in earnest a few minutes later. Men swore sleepily and rigged makeshift tents from their blankets and saplings pressed into service as tent poles. In spite of those, the rest of the night was chilly, wet, and miserable.

Day came with rain falling steadily from a leaden sky. The fire had gone out. Some of the venison from the night before had been cooked; along with hard bread, it made a decent enough breakfast, but not as good as it would have been, hot and juicy from the flames.

The warriors donned their armor and squelched off westward. Gerin felt as if he were moving inside a circle perhaps a bowshot across; the rain curtained away everything beyond that distance. Every so often, he or one of his comrades would slip in the mud and get up covered with it. Little by little, the rain would wash him clean once more-until he slipped again.

Echoing what Van had said the night before, Raffo grumbled, "How are we supposed to search in this? We'll be lucky if we can keep track of ourselves, let alone the cursed monsters."

Gerin did not answer, for he feared his driver was right. With rain and clouds concealing sun and landmarks, he wasn't even altogether sure he was still heading west. "Have to wait to see which half of the sky gets dark first," Van said. "Then we'll have a notion of how to head back toward the Elabon Way, anyhow, if not just where we'll strike it."

Raffo said, "Poor old Rihwin. He could be sitting under one of those red tile roofs south of the High Kirs that he never gets tired of talking about, with wenches to fetch him meat and grapes and wine. And he was silly enough to trade all that for this life of luxury." He shook himself like a wet dog to show what he meant.

Just thinking of being dry made Gerin wish he were somewhere other than tramping through the mud. He said, "May the next puddle you step in be over your head." As if to turn his words into a magic-powered curse, he waggled his hands in mock passes.

He'd almost stopped paying attention to the circle of relatively clear vision in which he moved: one piece of damp, dreary ground seemed much like the next. Looking where he put his feet so he wouldn' t go into a puddle over his head himself struck him as more important than anything else.

Then Raffo gasped, half in horror and half in amazement. The sound was plenty to jerk Gerin's head up. Splashing through the wet grass and mud came a band of eight or ten monsters.

They spied Gerin's men at about the same moment as Raffo saw them. A bulky male, evidently the leader of the band, swept out his arm to point at the warriors. He shouted something; through the rain, Gerin could not tell whether it was real words or just an animal cry. Whatever it was, the rest of the creatures got the idea. With hoarse roars, they charged the Fox's men.

In such dreadful weather, bows were useless. Gerin stooped to pick up a stone the size of a goose egg. He flung it at the oncoming monsters, then yelled, "Out sword and at them!" A moment later, his own blade slid from its scabbard.

A stone flew past his head. One of the creatures, at any rate, had wit enough to think of it as a weapon. Then the fight was at close quarters, the savagery and strength of the monsters well matched against the armor and bronze weapons Gerin's warriors carried.

With his long, heavy spear, better made for use afoot than from a chariot, Van had an advantage over his monstrous foes: he could thrust at them long before they closed with him. But when he sank the leafshaped point deep into the belly of one screaming creature, another seized the spearshaft and wrenched it out of his hands. He shouted in shock and dismay; long used to being stronger than any man he faced, having an opponent who could match him in might came as a jolt.

The monster dropped the spear; it preferred its natural weapons to those made by art. But when it sprang at Van, he stove in its head with an overhand blow from his mace. He needed no second stroke; the fight with the creature the day before had warned him to put all his power into the first one.

Gerin got only tiny glimpses of his friend's fight-he had troubles of his own. The monster that faced him was female, but no less unlovely and fierce on account of that. He felt as if he were fighting a wolf bitch or female longtooth, and knew none of the hesitation he might have felt against a woman warrior.

He slashed at the monster. It skipped back. It knew the sword was dangerous to it, then. The Fox went after it, slashed once more. This time the monster ducked under the blade and rushed him. He got his shield up just in time to keep it from tearing out his throat. It was very strong; when it tried to pull the shield off his arm, he wondered if his right shoulder would come out of its socket. The shield strap held, but barely.

Even in the pouring rain, the monster stank with a reek halfway between the musky smell of a wild beast and a human body that had never been bathed. Something else was there, too, a musty smell, perhaps the residue of long years-of countless generations-of life underground.

The Fox slashed again, and scored a bleeding line across the creature's rib cage. It squalled in fury and stopped trying to tear away his shield. But it did not turn and flee, as a wounded animal likely would have done. Instead, it went back to the attack, this time rushing at Gerin and knocking him off his feet, then springing on him as he lay in the mud.

Again his shield saved him, fending the monster away from his face and neck. He hissed in pain as its claws raked down his arm. But, though he was untaloned himself, his sandals had bronze hobnails to help him grip the ground. He kicked at the monster, and hurt it again.

He dropped his sword; it was too unwieldy for this work. Had he not been able to get at his dagger, or had he dropped it while yanking it from its sheath on his belt, he would have died. As it was, he stabbed the monster again and again.

It shrieked, first shrilly, then with a bubbling undertone as bloody froth burst from its mouth and nose. For once, Gerin wished he were not lefthanded; his blows to the right side of the creature's body had pierced a lung, but not its heart. Now, though, it wanted escape. He stuck out a leg in a wrestler's trick and tripped it when it tried to flee. It went down with a splash.

He half leaped, half rolled onto its back, stabbing again and again in an ecstasy of loathing, fury, and fear. The monster was as tenacious of life as any wild beast, that was certain. He'd put enough holes in it to make a sieve before it finally stopped trying to break free.

He didn't know whether it was dead. He didn't care-it was out of the fight for a good long while. He snatched up his sword again, scrambled to his feet, and hurried to give aid to his comrades.

Several of them were down, as were most of the monsters. Raffo and Parol Chickpea together battled the big male that had led the pack. It sprang on Parol. He screamed hoarsely. Gerin used the sword like a spear, stabbing the monster from behind. It wailed and tried to turn on him. Raffo's blade met its thick neck with a meaty chunnk. Blood spurted. Head half severed, the monster pitched forward onto its face and lay still.

When their leader fell, the couple of creatures still on their feet gave up the fight and fled. Gerin's warriors did not pursue them; they had enough to do finishing the monsters on the ground and seeing to their own wounded. One man was dead, Parol's driver, a likable young fellow called Delamp Narrag's son. Several others had bites and slashes of greater or less severity. Binding them up in the rain wasn' t easy.

"You're bleeding, Fox," Van remarked.

Gerin looked down at his clawed arm. "So I am. I hope we come to a village before long, so I can pour beer into those cuts and cover them over with lard. If they're anything like cat scratches, they're liable to fester."

"You're right about that." Van looked over the little battlefield. "Well, we beat 'em back. They're not as tough as armored warriors. That's something, anyhow."

"Something, aye." Now that he wasn't fighting for his life, the Fox noticed how much that arm hurt. "But I'd not want to be a peasant, even one with a mattock or scythe, and have one of those things spring at me from out of the woods. If I were lucky and hit it a good lick, it might run off. But if I missed that first stroke, I'd never get a chance to make a second one."

"You're right about that, too," Van said. After a moment's reflective pause, he added, "One of the ones that got away fled north."

"I saw it go. I was trying not to think about it," Gerin said wearily. "That's one past us, certain sure. I wonder how many more there are that we've never seen. Even the one is too many."

"And you're right about that," Van said. "If you're so bloody right all the time, why are we in this mess?" Gerin had no good answer for him.