Wisdom of the Fox

VII

Rihwin walked mournfully through the courtyard, a bandage plastered over his left ear and tied round his head to hold it in place. "Can't you take that off yet?" Gerin asked him. "We've been back here ten days now, so you can't still be bleeding, and the wound didn't fester, or you'd have taken sick long since."

"Oh, I could, if that were all there was to it," Rihwin answered. "The sad truth is, though, that I'm uglier without the bandage than with it."

Gerin clapped a hand to his forehead. "You're vainer than a peacock, is what you are. If you hadn't worn that gold hoop in your ear, the monster down in Bevon's holding never would have had the chance to hook a claw on it and tear it out. And a torn ear's not the worst thing in the world, anyhow. I've seen plenty of men with worse, and that's a fact."

Rihwin's mobile features twisted into a dolorous frown. "But my earlobe has shriveled up and withered. In the southlands, surgeons had ways of repairing such wounds, for those who could bear the pain. Many did, as a ruined ear does one's appearance no good. Henceforward, I'm liable to be styled Rihwin One-Ear, not Rihwin the Fox. But who in this benighted country is familiar with such techniques? Not a soul, unless I'm much mistaken."

"I fear you're right," Gerin said. "Your southern surgeons may have had practice at such work, but we don't wear earrings here." He paused a moment, his curiosity awakening. "How do the southern surgeons go about their work with ears, anyhow?"

"First they ply the patient well with wine and poppy juice, to dull his senses as much as they can," Rihwin answered. "They also have his friends hold him, mind you-I've done that duty a time or two. Then they cut loose a flap of flesh from behind the ruined ear, open up what remains of the earlobe so it's raw and bloody, and sew the two together. After they grow into one-for they will, once they exchange blood-the surgeon cuts off the base of the flap and behold! One has a new ear, perhaps not so fine as the original article but far better than the miserable nub I have left."

Gerin eyed him speculatively. "Do you know, my fellow Fox, in my years up here on the frontier, I've done my share of rough healer's work: drawing arrows, stitching wounds, setting bones, what have you. The men I've treated haven't done any worse than anyone else's patients. If you like, I might try to rebuild your ear for you."

Rihwin went into a sudden and hasty retreat, holding his hands out before him as if to fend off Gerin. "I thank you, but no. Not only do you lack some of the essentials (for where will you find wine and poppy juice here in the northlands?), but, meaning no disrespect, you have neither witnessed nor essayed the procedure in question."

"But you described the procedure so clearly," Gerin said, half to alarm Rihwin, half in real disappointment. "I feel as if I could give you something better than the stub you have now. If I were to sketch in ink the shape of a proper earlobe here on the side of your neck-"

Rihwin retreated further. "No thank you," he repeated. "Now, I grant that I cannot wear a bandage forever, but if I were to let my hair grow long, in half a year it would conceal the mutilation, thus obviating the need for surgery."

"I suppose you could do that," Gerin admitted. "Why didn't you think of it a while ago, instead of whining about how your looks were ruined forever?"

"I didn't have such incentive to devise an alternative until this moment," Rihwin answered with a sheepish grin. "Compared to the prospect of being carved upon by an inept and inexperienced butcheragain, meaning no disrespect-going through life with but one earlobe suddenly seems much less unattractive." Rihwin was self-absorbed, but not stupid. He fixed Gerin with a suspicious stare. "And you, sirrah, manipulated me into coming up with that alternative."

"I did?" Gerin was the picture of innocence. "All I wanted was to try my hand at surgery."

"I know," Rihwin said darkly. "I am certain the procedure would have been quite interesting-for you. And for me-how much I should have enjoyed it-is another matter altogether."

"If you hadn't wanted something done about it, you shouldn't have described how to do something about it in such loving detail," Gerin said.

"Believe me, my fellow Fox, I shall not be guilty of repeating the error," Rihwin said. "I suppose you should have been as eager to follow through had I suggested you repair the ear by thaumaturgic means."

"Now, there's an idea!" Gerin exclaimed. "You know, that really ought to be within my power, such as it is. It wouldn't involve much, just a straightforward application of the law of similarity. And you still have your right ear intact to serve as an exemplar. What could be more similar to a man's left ear than his own right? Let's go over to that little shack of mine and-"

Rihwin fled.

Selatre read, "In this year, the fifth of his reign, the Emperor Forenz, the second of that name"-she paused to sound out a word she didn't run across as often as the usual opening formula of a chronicle's annual entry; she read that with confidence-"increased the tribute on the Sithonian cities. And the men of Kortys gathered together and thought how best they might revel-"

Gerin blinked and leaned over to check the scroll in front of her. "That's 'rebel,' " he murmured.

She looked at the passage again. "Oh. So it is." She let out a small, embarrassed laugh. "It does change the meaning, doesn't it?"

"Just a bit." Gerin started to reach and to touch her hand in added praise, but thought better of it. Selatre made little fuss over accidental contact these days, but she remained unhappy about anything that wasn't an accident. He went on, "Even with the slip, you're doing marvelously well. You've picked up your letters as fast as anyone I've ever taught."

"Letters are simple," she said. "Seeing how they fit together and make words is harder." She looked around the room that served Castle Fox as a library. "And so many words there are to read! I'd never imagined."

Now Gerin laughed, bitterly. "When I look at them, I see how few there are. It's a good collection for the northlands-for all I know, it may be the only collection in the northlands-but it's a chip of wood drifting on the sea of ignorance. I studied down at the City of Elabon; I know whereof I speak."

"As may be," Selatre said. "When Biton abandoned me, I thought I would be empty of knowledge, of the feeling of knowledge passing through me, forevermore. This is a different sort from what the god gave directly, but it's worthy in its own way. For that I thank you."

She hesitated for a moment, then set her hand on top of his, very lightly, before she jerked it back. Gerin stared at her. Then a snarl of rage, a noise like ripping canvas, jerked his gaze to the doorway. Fand had chosen that moment to walk by. The fury on her face was frightening. Gerin waited for her to scream at him, but she stalked away instead. That worried him more than her usual firestorm would have.

"I'm sorry," Selatre said. "Your leman does not favor me, and I've gone and made matters worse."

"Not that much worse," he answered. "Things have been going, mm, imperfectly well for a while already."

She sighed and said, "I must confess, I don't altogether understand. If things between you and her have not gone well, as you tell me, why do you still seek her bedchamber?"

He felt his face heat. From anyone else, that question would have got nothing more than a sharp, None of your affair. With Selatre, though, he tried to be as honest as he could. Maybe that sprang from lingering awe and respect for the oracular role she'd once had, maybe just because, by her nature and not Biton's, she called forth such honesty. After a little thought, he said, "Because what goes on in the bedchamber, as you say, is one of the few good things we have left between us. Has been one of the good things, I should say."

Selatre caught the distinction. "Has been but is no more, do you mean?"

"I suppose I do." The Fox gnawed on the inside of his lower lip. " You've seen children balance a board or a branch on a rock and make a game out of going up and down, up and down?"

"Of course," she answered. "I've played that game myself. Haven't you?"

He nodded, then went on, "Van and I have played it with Fand, these past couple of years. But staying in balance, the two of us with one woman, isn't easy, any more than keeping the board in balance on a stone is. And I seem to be the one who's falling off." He laughed, ruefully but without much anger. "I shouldn't be surprised that's happening, not when Fand has a temper like boiling oil. I ought to be surprised we've kept the balance as long as this."

"You would have kept it longer, if not for me," Selatre said. "She thinks you're out to have me take her place."

"I know she does," Gerin said. "That isn't what I intended when I brought you here to Castle Fox."

She studied him. For a moment, he thought the fathomless wisdom of Biton still looked out through her eyes. Then he realized the wisdom he saw was her own, which made it no less intimidating. "Do you intend that now?" she asked. Even if he'd intended to evade, she didn't make it easy; though she hardly had her letters, she used words with a precision the rhetoricians down in the City of Elabon might have envied.

"By Biton or Dyaus-whichever you'd rather, Selatre-I swear I do not want you to take Fand's place in my life," he answered steadily. " If you think I am in the habit of swearing false oaths, you can best judge my likely fate in the world to come."

"Only a fool mocks the gods, and whatever else you may be, lord Gerin, you are no fool," Selatre said. "For that, and for the truth you've shown me thus far, I will believe you."

"And for that I thank you," the Fox said.

"Shall we return to the chronicle?" Selatre asked. "There, with the words before us on the parchment, we have less room for misunderstanding."

"That is probably a good idea." Gerin listened to her read. Every sentence seemed to come with more confidence than the one before it. Now that she'd grasped the principle, she was showing she could apply it. Some men took years to reach the place where she'd come in moonturns. Some men gave up in dismay and never got there at all.

He was proud of her, and pleased with himself for having guessed so well where she would fit into the life of Fox Keep and the human fabric of the holding as a whole. She and Fand didn't fit; Van had foreseen that more clearly than he had himself. And Van and Fand still seemed to be getting along as well as Fand ever got on with anyone.

Under the usual busy stir of his thoughts, Gerin remembered something else as well-Selatre had reached out and taken his hand. He didn't know how much that meant; he didn't know if it meant anything. Of one thing he was sure: he wanted to find out.

Rain plashed down on Castle Fox, filling puddles in the courtyard and turning the ditch around the palisade to the muddy beginning of a moat. Harvest lay far enough ahead for the peasants to look on the storm with relief rather than alarm.

In any other year, that would have made Gerin do the same. Now a cloud-filled sky and curtains of water kicking up myriad splashes everywhere only raised his hackles; the wet weather reminded him too vividly of the storm that had rolled through the day his band of warriors fought the pack of monsters.

Planting his feet with care on the slippery steps, he mounted to the palisade and peered south. He could see the peasant village near the castle. The broad thatched roofs of the huts there would keep most of the rain away from the walls of wattle and daub, but he knew serfs would be patching them with fresh mud after the downpour rolled away eastward.

Beyond the village, at the edge of visibility through the rain, lay the woods. Gerin wished he could peer inside them, see into each windfall and cave, under each fallen tree. He feared monsters sheltered in some of them. He did not have the men he would have needed to form a cordon around his entire border, but without such a cordon, how was he supposed to hold off the creatures?

He was thinking so hard, he did not notice anyone coming up to join him until footfalls jarred the timbers beside him. Van wore a conical hat of woven straw that kept the rain off his face. "Wondering what's out there, Captain?" the outlander asked.

"I know what's out there," Gerin answered glumly. "I'm wondering how close it is and how soon we'll have to worry about it right here. But as a matter of fact, when you asked I was wishing bronze were cheaper."

"Begging your pardon, Fox, but I have to tell you I don't follow that one," Van said.

"If bronze were cheaper-if we had more copper and especially more tin-we could afford to make more weapons. Then the peasants could have 'em, and that would give them a better chance of killing the monsters instead of getting eaten."

"Mm, likely you're right." Van's features turned blunter and harder as he frowned in thought. "But even if you are, I'd lay you five to one that a lot of your vassal barons wouldn't fall in love with the idea of giving their serfs swords and spears and helms and cuirasses."

"For fear the arms would get turned on them instead of the monsters, you mean?" Gerin asked. Van nodded. So did the Fox. "Not many of my vassals need to worry overmuch, I think; they know I don't put up with some of the things that go on in other holdings. But if the idea ever spread through the northlands, I'll not deny a good many barons would have cause to fear their peasants would revolt. I can think of half a dozen I'd rise against in an instant if someone put a sword in my hand."

"Oh, aye, more than that." Van's big head bobbed up and down again. "But here's a question for you, Fox: suppose you put swords and spears in the hands of a lot of your serfs. When the time comes to pay the dues they owe you, aren't they going to go after your collectors instead of handing over the grain and ale and such? They'll be protecting themselves, so why should they go on paying you to do it for them?"

"That's-a good question," Gerin said slowly. "They all turn into villagers like the ones who tried to waylay us, is that what you're saying?"

"That's just what I'm saying," Van agreed.

Gerin thought for a while. "Do you know, it's very likely they would," he said at last. "The way of life we have here looks as it does because bronze is so scarce and costly. Peasants can't afford to get their hands on arms and armor: not enough bronze to go around. Things would be different if there were."

"Better? Worse?"

"Damn me to the five hells if I know," Gerin answered. "But different they'd surely be. Like those footholders Duin the Bold came up with a few years ago, before he died in the fight against Balamung: what with everything else that's gone on since, I haven't had the chance to explore what all they're good for, but it's plain they make riding a horse and staying on its back a lot easier than that ever was before. If you can really fight from horseback, what point to chariots?"

"Maybe you can fight from horseback," Van said. "You're a goodsized man, aye, but alongside me you're a stripling. The horse that could bear my weight, especially in armor" -he slapped his broad, bronze-covered chest-"hasn't been foaled yet. If it's not the chariot, I'm a foot soldier."

"That's not the point," Gerin said. "Chariots are like any of the rest of our weapons; they're scarce and hard to come by. More men could be warriors if they just had to lay hold of a horse and some arms rather than a team and a car to go with it."

"Then you'd best start showing them those footholders and what to do with 'em," the outlander answered. "We're going to need as many warriors as we can muster, and that soon, too."

"I know-sooner than I can train them into being proper horsemen, the more so as I'm nowhere near a proper horseman myself." Gerin sighed. "If only that monster of Balamung's hadn't killed Duin when he kicked out. Our little pepperpot would have had all of us riding whether we wanted to or not."

"He rode ideas even harder than you do, and that's a fact," Van said. "You're better at picking the ones to ride, though; I give you so much."

"Such generosity," Gerin said in tones far drier than the weather. "Suppose I did teach a good many men, barons and peasants both, to ride and fight from horseback…" His voice trailed away. Actions had inevitable consequences; on that philosophers and historians agreed. The trick was to reason out what they might be before you acted, instead of getting caught by surprise later.

His best guess was that large numbers of warriors on horseback would prove as revolutionary as large numbers of bronze weapons in the hands of the serfs. If one lord in the northlands succeeded in forming a good-sized force of cavalry as opposed to chariotry, the rest would have to imitate him or go under. Since a man wouldn't need as many resources to maintain a horse as he would for a team and chariot, vassal barons' holdings could shrink until, after a couple of generations, it might be hard to tell a poor baron from a prosperous peasant.

Gerin had been teaching bright serfs their letters. Did he really want to arm them, too? Was he ready to unleash more great change on a land that had seen too much too fast of late?

For the moment, the decision was out of his hands. The monsters were forcing the pace of change, not he. But if they were put down at last Van cleared his throat, bringing the Fox's thoughts back to the here and now. The outlander said, "Captain, what is it you've done to put Fand in such a swivet? Last night she was going on about the sheep's eyes you were casting at Selatre till I all but had to hit her over the head with an ale jar to make her leave off."

"I've done nothing of the sort," Gerin said indignantly. "I've spent time with her, aye, but I have to if she's to learn her letters and be able to go through the books in the library and find out what's in them. You hit the mark there at the start-having Selatre here hasn' t set right with Fand, and she blames me, not you, that Selatre's here."

"She said you were pawing Selatre when she walked by the library the other day," Van said, doubt in his voice. "Not that I'd care to believe Fand over you, mind, but she says she saw it with her own eyes."

"She didn't," Gerin insisted. "You think Selatre would stay here for a moment if I tried pawing her? As a matter of fact, she put her hand on mine, not the other way round."

"Selatre touched you?" Van said, giving the Fox a sharp stare. " Honh!" The noise was not a word, but carried a world of meaning nonetheless.

Gerin wished his friend were not so tall; it made trying to look down his nose at Van likelier to give him a crick in the neck than to overawe the outlander. He said, "Fand's hardly speaking to me anymore. Are you going to start in and speak for her?"

"Not a chance," Van said. "Ever since I got too big for my mother to tell me what to do, I've lived just as I pleased, and I'm a great believer in letting everyone else do the same thing. But if you think I'll pretend to be blind to what goes on around me, you can think again on that, too."

The Fox rolled his eyes. "Do you know why she touched me? She was glad I'd taught her her letters; they fill up some of the emptiness she feels now that Biton speaks to her no more. That's all."

"That may be why she says she did it, but the fact remains-she did it, she didn't have to do it, and she hasn't done it with anybody else," Van says. "Me, I'd say that means it's not all, not even close to all."

"That's-" Gerin felt fury rising in him. He seldom lost his temper, but results were memorable when he did. But before he exploded like a tightly stoppered pot left too long in the fire, he paused to wonder why he was getting so angry so fast. When he did, the anger evaporated. "That's-possible," he said in a small voice.

Van studied him with approval. "You're honest with yourself, that I will say for you. And suppose it's not just possible but so? What will you do then?"

"You ask good questions. That's a better question than I have an answer for right now." One corner of Gerin's mouth quirked up in a wry smile. Suppose Selatre was coming to care for him? Could he come to care for her in return? After falling in love with Elise and then watching that love crumble to ashes, he wondered if he dared let himself become vulnerable to a woman again. In some ways, going into battle against the monsters was easier. There, at least, he knew what he had to do to come through unhurt.

Van said, "Mind you, Fox, I have nothing against the lass. Too quiet for my taste, but I'm a roisterer born and you're not. But I do want to know you're doing what you're doing with your eyes open."

"I don't even know," Gerin said heavily. "I tell you this much, though: just as you find Selatre too quiet, a couple of years of life with Fand have left my ears ringing, and that's the truth."

"Ah, it's not so bad," Van said. "She shouts, you shout back. After the yelling's done, you futter a couple of times and all's right till the next go-round."

"We've done that more than once, she and I," Gerin said. "Too many times more than once, as a matter of fact. That sort of thing gets wearing in a hurry, at least for me."

"Ah, Fox, you pay fancy prices for pepper and cloves and the gods only know what all else to make your food taste interesting, and you want the rest of your life dull as oatmeal porridge without even salt."

"My food won't stick a knife in me if it doesn't like the way I've cooked it," Gerin retorted. "And I wouldn't mind the rest of my life turning dull for a while. These past few years, what with one thing and another, it's been too bloody lively to suit me."

Van yawned an enormous, sarcastic yawn.

Nettled, Gerin said, "For that matter, you great barrel-brained oaf, I've never heard you speak Fand so fair. Here's a warning: if she throws me over, she'll aim her whole self straight at you. Are you ready for that?"

"I can handle her," Van said, confidence throbbing in his voice. Gerin wondered if he was as smart as he thought he was.

A peasant brought the Fox the news he'd been dreading. The fellow arrived in the back of a chariot along with Notker the Bald and his driver. He looked stunned, not only at traveling that way and faring so far from his home but also, Gerin thought, for deeper reasons: his own face might have borne that expression of disbelieving amazement just after the ground at Ikos stopped shaking.

"It's happened?" the Fox asked Notker.

"Aye, lord Gerin," his vassal returned. "This fellow here made it to my keep day before yesterday from his village next to the lands of Capuel the Flying Frog. I thought you'd best listen to his story, so I fetched him hither." His lined face made him look even more worried than he sounded.

"Monsters?" Gerin asked.

"Monsters, aye, and worse," Notker said. Gerin had not imagined there could be worse. Notker pointed to the serf he'd brought to Fox Keep. "This here is Mannor Trout, lord-he's the best fisherman in his village, which is how he got his ekename and likely why he's alive today." He nudged Mannor. "Tell the lord prince the tale you told me."

The peasant brushed a lock of dark hair back from where it had flopped down onto his forehead. "Aye, lord Notker," he said in rustic accents. His voice rang oddly flat, as if he held all emotion back from it to keep from having to remember the terror he'd known. "My village is southwest of here, you know, close to the border of your holding, and-"

"I know," Gerin said impatiently. "I rode that way not long ago, in search of my son Duren. I don't recall seeing you, though."

"You didn't, nor I you, though the talk of you going through lasted for days," Mannor said. "I was off fishing then, too." He drew himself up with pride, or at least its memory. "I bring in enough from the streams that they don't begrudge me staying out of the fields. They didn't, I mean." He shivered; that passionless tone he'd been using threatened to flee, leaving him naked against whatever it shielded him from.

"So you were at the stream the day I passed through your village, and you were at the stream this other day, the one you're going to tell me about," Gerin said, wanting to move the tale along without making Mannor face more than he could stand.

The serf nodded. That lock of hair fell onto his forehead again. This time he let it stay. He said, "I was having a day to beat all days, if you know what I mean, lord prince. Every time I stuck a new worm or a grub on my hook, I'd catch me a big tasty one, I would. Weren't much past noon when I had me 'bout as much as I felt like hauling back. Reckoned I'd eat some, trade me some to other folk, smoke me some for winter, and salt down the rest: we've a good lick close by, we do."

"All well and good," Gerin said. "So you were carrying your fish back to the village-through the woods, is that right?"

"Just like you say," Mannor agreed. "I get myself inside maybe two furlongs of the fields and hear the most horrible racket you ever put ear on in all your born days. Wolves howling, longtooths caterwaulingput 'em all together and they ain't a patch on this. I drop my fish and run up to see what I can see."

"Monsters in the village." Gerin's voice was as flat as the peasant's.

"Monsters, aye, but that's not all," Mannor said. "There was monsters, but there was Trokmoi, too, and they was workin' together to wreck and kill, Dyaus drop me into the hottest hell if I lie."

Notker nodded, his face now even grimmer: he'd already heard the tale. Gerin stared in horrified dismay. He'd imagined a great many catastrophes; he was good at it. But never in his blackest nightmares had he dreamt the creatures from the caves under Biton's temple wouldor could-make common cause with his human foes.

"How do you mean, working together?" he demanded of Mannor. "Were the Trokmoi using the monsters for hunting dogs, to drive people out for destruction?" Adiatunnus was clever, no way around that. Perhaps he or one of his men had figured out a way to tame the monsters.

But the serf shook his head. "Some of the things, they was just goin' around bitin' whatever they could get their teeth into, like they was wolves or summat like that. But some, they was carryin' swords and spears and even talkin' some kind of growly talk with the red mustaches. They were uglier than the woodsrunners, but otherwise I didn't see much to choose between 'em."

"Can you confirm this?" Gerin asked Notker. It wasn't so much that he disbelieved Mannor as that he so much wanted to disbelieve him.

His vassal said, "No, lord prince. As soon as I heard the story, I figured you had to give ear, too. But do you think it's one he'd make up?" The Fox didn't, but he wished Notker hadn't made him realize he didn't.

Almost unnoticed by both of them, Mannor went on, "Two o' the things, they caught my little boy. They was squabbling over him like dogs over a bone till a Trokme, he seen what was happening and he takes his axe and chops the body in half." Quietly, hopelessly, he began to weep.

"Here," Gerin said, tasting the uselessness of words. "Here." He put an arm around the serf's shoulder. Mannor's tears soaked hot through his tunic. He held the man, and held his own face even harder, to keep from breaking down and blubbering along with him. Hearing what had happened to the serf's son reminded him all too vividly of all the things that might have happened to Duren. That he did not know whichif any-had befallen the boy only let him exercise his ability to envision disasters.

"What do we do with him, lord Gerin?" Notker asked.

The Fox waited until Mannor had cried himself out, then said, " First thing to do is get him good and drunk." He pointed the serf toward the entrance to the long hall of the keep. "Go on in there, Mannor; tell them I said to give you all the ale you can drink." He shoved Mannor in the direction of the doorway; the man went as if he had no will of his own left. Gerin turned back to Notker. "We have to see if he can live with this now. He has to see for himself, too. It won't be easy; he'll carry scars no less than if he'd been wounded in war, poor fellow."

"You know about that, lord prince," Notker said. The Fox nodded. These days, he had no family left: his father and brother slain, his wife run off, and his son stolen.

As he'd grown used to doing, he resolutely shoved that grief and worry to the back of his mind. More immediately urgent worries took precedence. He said to Notker, "The Trokmoi and monsters didn't assail your keep?"

"No, lord," Notker answered. "First I heard of them coming over the border from Capuel's-Dyaus knows why we still call it that, with nobody in charge there these past years-was when Mannor brought word. The gods only know what's happened since, mind you, but you'd reckon raiders and yon creatures could move faster than a grief-crazy serf if they had a mind to."

"That you would." Gerin rubbed his chin in perplexity.

Notker shared that perplexity. "Not like what you'd look for from the woodsrunners, neither. The Trokmoi, when they hit you, they mostly hit you like a man going into a woman: they want to get in as deep as they can as fast as they can."

"True enough." Gerin made an abstracted clucking noise, then suddenly held up one finger. "I have it, I think. Adiatunnus is a sneaky beggar, and smart, too-though not half so smart as he thinks he is. He's cobbled up some kind of deal with these creatures, but he doesn't know how well it's going to work. So he thinks he'll try it out small at first, and if it does what he hopes, why then he'll strike harder the next time. How does that sound to you?"

"Don't know if it's true," Notker said after some thought of his own. "Makes decent sense, though."

"In a way, it does," the Fox said. "But only in a way-that's why I called Adiatunnus half-smart. Now I'm warned. He'll be gathering his forces, collecting more monsters, doing whatever he thinks he needs to do. And do you know what I aim to do in the meanwhile?"

"What's that, lord?" Notker asked.

"I aim to hit him first."

The chariot hit a bump. Gerin's legs kept him smoothly upright without conscious thought on his part. "How am I supposed to administer my holding if I'm too busy fighting to pay heed to anything else?" he asked.

Van had adjusted as automatically as the Fox. He glanced over and answered, "I don't know the answer to that one, but let me give you one in return: how are you supposed to administer your holding if the Trokmoi and the monsters swarm out and take it away from you?"

"There you have me," Gerin said. "If I can't keep it, it isn't truly mine. But if I can't run it, it's hardly worth keeping." Schooling south of the High Kirs had left him fond of forming such paradoxes.

Van cut through this one with the ruthless economy he usually displayed: "If you still hold on to it, you can always fix it later. If it's lost, it's gone for good."

"You're right, of course," Gerin said, but the admission left him dissatisfied. Endless warfare would hurl his holding back into barbarism faster than anything else he could think of. But, as Van had said, everything else turned irrelevant if he didn't win each war.

Along with his regathered host of vassals, he rolled southwest down the same road he'd taken to Adiatunnus' border after Duren disappeared. This time, he wouldn't stop and exchange polite chitchat with the Trokme chieftain's border guards. He'd go after Adiatunnusand his monstrous allies-with all the might he had.

Notker the Bald brought his chariot up alongside Gerin's. He pointed ahead. "There's my keep, off to one side. At our pace, we'll make the village before sunset."

"So we will, and then roll through it," Gerin said. As soon as the sun had started to swing down toward the horizon from its high point in the sky, he'd ordered a couple of chariots out two furlongs ahead of the rest. The Trokmoi were often too impatient to set proper ambushes, and he suspected the monsters Adiatunnus had taken as allies would be even less skilled in the stratagems of war.

A puff of breeze from the west brought a whiff of something sickly sweet. Raffo turned and wrinkled his nose. "Phew! What's that stink?"

"Dead meat," Van answered.

The Fox nodded. "We're coming up on the village Mannor Trout got out of, or what's left of it. Mannor didn't lie, that's certain."

The closer they got, the worse the smell grew. Gerin coughed. The stink of carrion always made fear and rage bubble up in him: it called to mind the aftermath of too many fights, too many horrors.

The serf village, though, was worse than he'd expected. He'd been braced for sprawled, bloated corpses and charred ruins, and they were there. He'd looked for the livestock to be run off or slain, and it was. He'd known the crows would rise in a black cloud and the foxes slink off into the woods when he disturbed them, and they did.

But he hadn't reckoned on so many of the pathetic corpses looking as they'd been mostly devoured before the scavengers started on them. His stomach did a slow flip-flop. He should have realized the monsters wouldn't be fussy about where they got their meat. Intellectually, he had realized it. The implications, though, had escaped him.

Van said, "I had thought to round up a hen or two here, to give to the ghosts come sundown and to cook up for us, too. But now I'm going to let that go. The gods alone know what these hens have been pecking at since the Trokmoi and their little friends went home."

Gerin's stomach lurched again. "Reasoned like a philosopher," he said. Anthropophagy, even at one remove, was worth fighting shy of. A few minutes later, a pig stuck its head out of the bushes. No one shot at it. It was even likelier than any surviving village chickens to have fed on the bodies of those who had raised it.

After making sure no life remained in the village, Gerin waved his arm. The chariots rattled on toward the border with the holding of Capuel the Flying Frog. How much of that now lay in the hands of the Trokmoi and the monsters was anyone's guess. Few men said much about what they'd seen in the clearing, but a new, grim sense of purpose informed the force. They'd collect the payment due, and more.

Just before sunset, a cock pheasant made the mistake of coming out from the woods onto a meadow to feed. Its ring-necked head came up in alarm when it saw, or perhaps heard, the chariots on the road. It began to run rapidly, then leaped into the air, its wings thuttering.

Arrows hissed toward it. One of them, either cleverly aimed or luckier than the rest, brought the bird tumbling back to earth. "Well shot!" Gerin called. "Not only will it feed the ghosts, it'll feed some of us, too."

"Aye, a pheasant's tasty, no doubt of that," Van said. "Me, though, I'd sooner hang it a while to let it get properly ripe before I cook it."

"Yes, I've seen you do that at Fox Keep once or twice," Gerin said. "I don't care for my meat flyblown, thank you very kindly. Besides, we've no time for such fripperies tonight. Bringing it down at all strikes me as a good enough omen."

"Flyblown's not the point," Van replied. "Bringing out the full flavor is. But you're right about today: we just pluck it and gut it and put it over the flames or bake it in clay."

"Fuel for the fire," the Fox agreed. "It'll help us keep going. And then we'll get into Adiatunnus' lands and set some fires of our own."

For all Gerin knew, the Trokme guards at the border to Adiatunnus' holding might have been the same crew with whom he'd spoken when he came seeking Duren. This time, he didn't get a close look at them. As soon as they saw his force of chariotry approaching, they cried "The southrons!" in their own language and fled. They got in among the trees before any of his men could shoot them like the pheasant.

"Shall we stop and go after them, lord prince?" Raffo asked.

"No," the Fox answered. "We storm ahead instead. That way we get in amongst the woodsrunners faster than they have word we're coming."

The first village his men reached was inhabited by Elabonian serfs who had acquired new masters in the five years since the Trokmoi swarmed south over the Niffet. When they realized the men in the chariots were of their own kind, they came swarming out of their huts with cries of exultation.

"The gods be praised!" they shouted. "You've come to deliver us from the Trokmoi and from the-things." With that seemingly innocuous word, half their joy at seeing Gerin and his followers seemed to evaporate, boiled away in the memory of overpowering fear. One of them said, "The Trokmoi are bad enough, stealing and raping and all. But those things…" His voice guttered out like a candle.

"If you want to go, just pack whatever you can carry on your backs and run for my holding," Gerin said. "The peasants there will take you in. The ground is thin of men these days, with so much war and plunder. They'll be glad to have you, to help bring in a bigger crop."

"Dyaus bless you, lord," the serf said fervently. Then he hesitated. "But lord, how shall we travel with these things loose in the woods and ready to swoop down on us?"

"Take weapons, fool," Van said. "Anything you have is better than nothing. Would you rather be eaten trying to get away or stay here till the monsters come into your house and eat you in your own bed?"

"Truth to tell, lord," the serf said, taking no chances on the outlander's rank, "I'd sooner not be et at all."

"Then get out," Gerin said. "Now we've no more time to waste gabbing with you. The Trokmoi and the monsters destroyed a peasant village in my land, just over the border from what used to be Capuel's holding. Now they're going to find out they can't do that without paying the price for it." He slapped Raffo on the shoulder. The driver flicked the reins of the chariot. The horses started forward.

The Fox put himself in the lead now, with Drago's chariot right behind. The Bear would reliably follow him, and wouldn't do anything foolish. That counted for more than whatever brilliant stratagems Rihwin might come up with, for Rihwin might just as easily do something to endanger the whole force.

The road opened onto another clearing, this one recently hacked out of the woods. In it stood three or four stout wooden houses, bigger and sturdier than the round cottages in which most serfs dwelt. "Those are Trokme homes," Gerin said. "I've seen enough of them north of the Niffet."

"Let's get rid of the Trokmoi in 'em, then," Van said. One of those Trokmoi came out from behind a house. He stared in amazement that might have been comical under other circumstances at the Elabonians encroaching on what he'd come to think of as his land. That lasted only a couple of heartbeats. Then he let out a shout of alarm and dashed for shelter inside.

Gerin already had an arrow in the air. It caught the woodsrunner in the small of the back. He went down with a wail. Gerin caught Van's eye. "Try doing that with your precious spear," he said.

Another Trokme came outside to see what the shouting was about. Gerin and Drago both shot at him-and both missed. He ducked back into the house in a hurry, slammed the door, and dropped the bar with a thump Gerin could hear across half a furlong.

"Fire arrows!" Gerin yelled.

A couple of chariots had firepots in them, half full of embers ready to be fanned to life. Others carried little bundles of straw soaked in pitch. While some of his men got real fires going, others tied the bundles to arrows, just back of the heads. Still others used shields to protect them from the Trokmoi, who started shooting at them from the windows of the houses.

Trailing smoke, the fire arrows flew toward the woodsrunners' shelters. Some fell short; some went wide-their balance was all wrong. But others stuck in wall timbers or the thatch of the roofs. Before long, smoke rose up from a dozen different places. The Trokmoi inside yelled at one another. Some of the voices belonged to women. One corner of Gerin's mouth twisted down, but only for a moment. The Trokmoi hadn't cared about women or children when they struck his holding. What did he owe them?

The fires on the roofs grew and spread. The women's cries rose to shrill shrieks, then suddenly stopped. Doors came open. Red- and yellow-mustached men charged out, half a dozen in all. Some had helms on their heads; two or three carried shields. They threw themselves at Gerin's troopers with no thought for their own survival, only the hope of taking some Elabonians with them before they fell.

"You'll not have our wives and daughters for your sport," one of them panted as he slashed at the Fox. "We're after slaying the lot of them."

Van's spear caught the woodsrunner in the side. The fellow wore no armor; it bit deep. Van twisted the shaft as he yanked it out. The Trokme coughed bright blood and crumpled.

Gerin looked around. None of the other woodsrunners was still on his feet. One of his own men swore as he bound up a slashed arm. That seemed to be the only wound his warriors had taken-they'd so outnumbered their foes that they'd dealt with them three and four and five to one, and not all of them had been engaged by a long shot.

The houses kept on burning. Drago the Bear said, "That smoke's going to give us away."

"It's liable to," Gerin agreed, "though fire gets loose easily enough, and it's bloody hard to douse once it does. Adiatunnus and his lads will know something has gone wrong, but not just what-until we show up and teach 'em. Let's get moving again."

Before long, they came to another peasant village-or rather, what had been one. Now several monsters from under the temple at Ikos stalked among the houses. More of them tore at the carcasses of a couple of oxen in the middle of the village square. They looked up, muzzles and hands red with blood, as Gerin's chariot came into sight.

Two or three monsters ran straight for the chariot, as any fierce beasts might have. Gerin shot one of them: a lucky arrow, right through the throat. That made the others hesitate, more thoughtful than any beasts would have been.

But it also gave the rest of the monsters the chance to snatch up weapons: clubs, spears, and a couple of swords. Then they too rushed toward the Fox, their cries more like words than any he had heard from the creatures before.

He had a bad moment or two there. There were a lot more monsters than he had men in the two lead chariots. He was about to order Raffo to wheel the horses around and retreat when reinforcements came rattling up.

Some of the monsters kept on with the attack, again as beasts might have done. But others must have made the calculation he'd been on the brink of a short time before: they headed off into the woods, to fight another day.

When the skirmish was done, Gerin pointed to the deserted huts in the village and said, "Torch the place. If those things were denning here, we don't want to give them anyplace they can return to once we' ve gone."

More smoke rose into the sky. The Fox knew that whoever saw it would figure out something unusual was going on in the northeastern part of the land Adiatunnus had overrun. His lips skinned back from his teeth. He had reached the point where he was resigned to having a woodsrunner for a neighbor; Adiatunnus hadn't acted much differently from Capuel the Flying Frog and the other Elabonian barons he'd displaced. But if Adiatunnus consorted with monsters That led Gerin to another thought. As Raffo drove the chariot deeper into the Trokme's territory, the Fox said to Van, "I wonder how the monsters came to align themselves with Adiatunnus. Most of the ones we saw in Bevon's holding wouldn't have had the wit to do such a thing."

"If I had to guess, Captain, I'd say there's smart ones and dumb ones, same as with people," the outlander answered. "Say the smart ones are as smart as dumb people: that'd make the dumb ones like wolves or longtooths or any other hunting beasts. The smart ones'd have the wit for something like banding together with the Trokmoi, and maybe even for bringing along some of their stupid friends." He laughed. "Makes 'em sound like half the folk we know, doesn't it?"

"More than half," Gerin said. Van laughed again. The Fox went on, "I wish we didn't have to waste time with all these little fights. I want to hit Adiatunnus as hard and sudden a blow as I can, but every skirmish we fight makes me slower to get to him and gives him more time to ready himself."

"Well, we can't very well say to the woodsrunners we run into-or still less to these monsters-'Sorry there, friend, we have more important things to do than slaughtering you right now. Can you hang about till we're on our way back?' "

Gerin snorted; when you put it that way, it was absurd. All the same, unease gnawed at him. Before he'd set out on this punitive raid, he'd seen it clearly in his mind: go into Adiatunnus' territory, strike the Trokmoi-and with luck kill their chieftain-and then fare home again. Reality was less clear-cut, as reality has a way of being.

Before long, his army rolled past the ruins of what had been a palisaded keep before the Trokmoi came south over the Niffet. The woodsrunners hadn't bothered repairing the timbers of the outwall; instead, they'd built a dwelling of their own in the courtyard between the wall and the stone keep, turning the place into a sort of fortified village.

A couple of Trokmoi were up on what was left of the wall, but they raised no alarm when Gerin's chariot came into sight. "Are they all asleep?" he demanded indignantly. He didn't like his enemies to act stupidly; it made him wonder what sort of ruse they were plotting.

But Van smacked one fist into the palm of his other hand. "Me, I know what it is, Captain: they think we're woodsrunners, too."

"By the gods, you're right." Gerin waved toward the distant stronghold. One of the Trokmoi waved back. The Fox frowned. "I don't fancy going in after them. They could have enough men to make that expensive-and it would cost us the speed and free movement the chariots give."

"More fire arrows?" Raffo said over his shoulder.

"Aye, and maybe a muzzle for a mouthy driver, too," Gerin answered, but he swatted the young man on the back to leave no doubt that was a joke. "We want to make sure none of them gets away, too, so what we'll do is-"

His chariot, and Drago's with it, pulled off the road a little past the keep the Trokmoi had altered. That might have perplexed the men on the battered wall, but not enough to make them cry out. Even when the first chariots of the Fox's main force came into view, they kept silent long enough to let the cars get well begun on forming a ring around the holding.

"Southrons!" The cry in the Trokme language floated across weedy fields to Gerin's ears. "We've been cozened by southrons!"

So they had, and by the time they realized it, they were too late to do anything about it. The Elabonian warriors shot arrows at any woodsrunner who appeared on the palisade. Some of them also shot fire arrows at the wooden palisade itself and over it at the roofs of the houses it sheltered. The timbers of the palisade caught only slowly; the same was not true for the dry straw thatching of those roofs.

"Well, what'll they do now?" Van said as several thick plumes of gray-white smoke rose from the courtyard.

"Curse me if I know," Gerin answered. "I don't know what I'd do in that spot-try not to get into it in the first place, I suppose. But they don't have that choice, not anymore."

Some of the Trokmoi took refuge in the stone keep in the center of the courtyard-Gerin saw bits of motion through its slit windows. He wondered if that would save them; the door and all the furnishings within were wood, and liable to catch fire… and even if they didn't, so much smoke filled the air that anyone inside was liable to feel like a slab of bacon being cured.

The Trokmoi had let the ditch around the palisade alone; shrubs and bushes grew in great profusion in it. That would have made matters easier for anyone who tried to lay siege to the castle, but it helped those inside now. Some leaped off the wall-not just men but also women with their skirts flying up around them as they jumped-to land in those bushes and shelter there from fire and foe alike.

And the drawbridge thumped down. A double handful of woodsrunners in bronze armor stormed forth to put up the best fight they could. Gerin admired their gallantry even as his men thundered toward them. Fighting afoot against chariotry was like trying to spoon up sand with a sieve. The Elabonians rattled by, pouring arrows into their foes, and the woodsrunners could do little but stand and suffer.

They had one moment of triumph: an archer of theirs hit an oncoming horse in the neck. The beast crashed to the ground, dragging down its harnessmate and overturning the car the two horses pulled. Men tumbled over the ground like broken dolls. The three or four Trokmoi still standing raised a defiant cheer. Soon they were dead.

Of the Elabonians in the wrecked chariot, one also lay dead, his head twisted at an unnatural angle. Another writhed and groaned with a broken leg and other injuries besides. The third, Parol Chickpea, was on his feet and hardly limping. "By all the gods, I'm the luckiest man alive!" he cried.

Gerin was not inclined to argue with him, but said, "Whether it's so or not, don't boast of it. If you tempt the divine powers to take away what they've given, they're too apt to yield to that temptation."

He did what he could for the warrior with the broken leg, splinting it between two trimmed saplings. The fellow had to be tied aboard a chariot after that, though, which ruined the car's efficiency and made him cry out at every bump and pothole in the road-and the road seemed nothing but bumps and potholes.

"I should have brought a wagon to carry the wounded," the Fox said as they made camp that evening in the heart of the land Adiatunnus had seized. "I didn't want anything to slow us down, but here we are slowed down anyhow by all the fighting we've done-and we haven't really come to grips with Adiatunnus yet."

"Expecting a plan to run just as you make it asks a lot of the gods," Van said.

"That's so." Gerin fretted despite the admission. He always expected his plans to work perfectly; if they failed, that reflected unfavorably on him, since he had formed them. Life being as it was, few of them came to pass exactly as designed, which left him plenty for which to reproach himself.

Pale Nothos, nearly full, was the only moon in the sky: Math was just past new, and too close to the sun to be seen, while Tiwaz was a waning crescent and ruddy Elleb halfway between full and third quarter. It had been about there in its wanderings through the heavens when the Fox and his men slew the first monster down in Bevon's holdings, though rain clouds kept him from seeing it then.

Thinking of that monster made him think of the monsters that had joined Adiatunnus. He did not expect the Trokmoi themselves to sally forth against his men at night. He still hoped, though he didn't really believe, Adiatunnus hadn't yet learned of his attack. Even if the woodsrunners did know of it, sending men out by night was not something to be undertaken lightly.

But the monsters were something else again. He'd already seen that the night ghosts held no terror for them. They might well try to fall on his warriors when they had them at a disadvantage.

That made him double the watchstanders he'd placed out away from the main campfires. The men he'd hauled from their blankets grumbled. "Go back to sleep, then," he snapped. "If you'd rather be well rested and dead than sleepy and alive, how could I possibly presume to argue with you?" Stung by sarcasm, the newly drafted sentries went out to take their places.

Sure enough, monsters did prowl the woods and fields; their yowls and screams woke the Fox several times before midnight came. He'd grab for sword, shield, and helmet, realize the creatures were not close by, wriggle around till he was comfortable once more, and go back to sleep.

Then he heard screams that came not only from the monsters' throats but also from those of his own men. He snatched up his weapons and sprang to his feet. The night was well along; Elleb had climbed halfway from the eastern horizon to the meridian. But Gerin's eyes were not on the reddish moon.

Its light, that of Nothos, and the crimson glow of the embers showed two of his sentry parties locked in battle with the monsters, and more of the creatures running toward the warriors slowly rousing themselves round the fire.

Gerin shouted to distract a monster from an Elabonian who still lay on the ground snoring. The Fox envied the man's ability to sleep through anything, but wished he hadn't put it on display at that exact moment.

The monster swerved from the sleeping warrior and rushed at Gerin. Moonlight glinted from its teeth. Its clawed hands were outstretched to rend and tear. He was acutely aware of having only helm and shield; cool night air blew through his linen shirt and wool trousers, reminding him of what the monster's teeth and claws would do to flesh so nearly naked.

Instead of slashing, he thrust at the creature, to keep the full length of arm and sword between it and him. It spitted itself on the point of the bronze blade. He twisted the sword in the wound, then yanked it free. The monster screamed again, this time with the note of shocked surprise he'd heard so often from wounded men.

As it staggered, he thrust again, this time taking it right in the throat. Blood fountained, black in the light of the moons. The monster stumbled, fell, and did not rise again.

The Fox ran to the next closest fight he could find. He stabbed a monster in the back. It shrieked and whirled to face him, whereupon the trooper it had been fighting gave it a sword stroke almost identical to the one Gerin had used.

Though the monsters were individually more than a match for unarmored men, they had little notion of fighting save by and for themselves. That let the Elabonians slowly gain the upper hand on their attackers. And, like any beasts of prey, the monsters were not enthusiastic about taking on foes who fought back hard. They finally fled into the forest, still screaming in fury and hate.

"Throw some wood on the fire," Gerin said. "Let's see what needs doing here and do it."

As the flames leaped higher, the warriors went around finishing off monsters too badly hurt to run or even crawl away. Several men were also down for good. Gerin, Rihwin, and a couple of others who knew something of leechcraft did what they could for men who had been bitten or clawed.

"Lucky they didn't go for the horses," Van said, holding out a gashed arm to be bound up. "That would have spilled the perfume into the soup."

"Wouldn't it?" Gerin said. "As is, we'll have some cars with two men in them rather than three. But you're right; it could have been worse."

"It could that," the outlander said; every once in a while, a Trokme turn of phrase cropped up in his speech. "Me, I'm just as glad I won't be clumping along on foot when Adiatunnus and his jolly lads come after us in their chariots. That'll be tomorrow, unless Adiatunnus is blinder than I think."

"You're right there, too," the Fox said. "We could have run into them yesterday, easy as not. I'd hoped we would, as a matter of fact. All these little fights leave us weaker for the big one ahead."

Van nodded, but said, "We've hurt them worse'n they've done to us, though."

"I console myself with that thought," Gerin answered, "but drop me into the hottest hell if I know who can better afford the hurt, Adiatunnus or me. He brought a lot of Trokmoi south over the Niffet with him, the whoreson, and these monsters only add to his strength."

"We'll find out come the day," Van said, more cheerfully than Gerin could have managed. "For me, though, the only I thing I want to manage is some more sleep." He set down spear and shield, doffed his helm, wrapped himself in his blanket, and was snoring again while the Fox still stared indignantly.

Gerin could not put the desperate fight out of his mind so easily, nor could most of his men. Some still groaned from their wounds, while others sat around the fire and chatted in low voices about what they'd just been through.

The eastern sky turned gray, then pink, then gold. Tiwaz's thin crescent almost vanished against the growing light of the background against which it shone. The sun spilled its bright rays over the land. The Fox's men scratched shallow graves for their comrades the monsters had slain, then covered them over with stones to try to keep the creatures or other scavengers from molesting their remains. The corpses of the monsters, now stiff in death, they let lie where they had fallen.

Drivers harnessed chariots. "Let's get going," Gerin said. "What we do today tells how much this strike is worth."

The first peasant village through which they rolled was empty and deserted. Gerin thought nothing of that till his warriors had already passed the hamlet. Then he realized word of their coming had got ahead of them. If the peasants knew invaders were loose in Adiatunnus' lands, the Trokmoi would know, too.

"Well, we didn't really think we could keep it a secret this long," Van answered when Gerin said that aloud. The outlander checked his shield and weapons to make sure he could get at them in an instant. Gerin told Raffo to slow the pace. When the driver obeyed and the chariots behind came up close enough, he shouted the warning back to them. Then he thumped Raffo on the shoulder. His chariot rejoined Drago's in the lead.

Cattle, sheep, and a couple of horses grazed on a broad stretch of meadow. They looked up in mild surprise-and the herders with them in dismay-when Elabonian chariots began rolling out. The herdsmen fled for the woods, but they were a long way away.

"Shall we go after 'em?" Raffo asked. "By their red locks, they're woodsrunners."

"No, let 'em run," Gerin said. "They look like men who hardly have their breeches to call their own; they're no danger to us."

Van pointed across the meadow. More chariots, these drawn by shaggy ponies and painted with bright spirals and jagged fylfots, came rattling out of the woods there. The men in them were pale-skinned and light-haired, like the herders. Bronze shone ruddy in the morning sun. "You want folk dangerous to us, Fox, I think you've found them," Van said.

Before Gerin could so much as nod, Drago the Bear called from the other chariot: "What do we do now, lord?"

"Pull over to one side, begin to form line of battle, and clear the roadway so the cars behind us can deploy," Gerin answered. Raffo, who knew his mind well, already had the chariot in motion. Drago's driver conformed to his movements.

To Van, Gerin murmured, "Now we see how much Adiatunnus has learned from a few years of fighting against Elabonians."

"Aye, if he's brought his own army in a great roaring mass, Trokme style, he'll swarm down on us before our friends get here," the outlander said. "Let's hope he's set out scouts the way we have, and that they're waiting for their main body, too." He chuckled. "The fighting trick'll work against him this time, not for."

Much to Gerin's relief, the Trokmoi across the meadow didn't whip their horses into a wild charge. Instead, they too sidled out onto the grass almost crab fashion, as if wondering how many cars the Fox had with him and how soon those cars would arrive.

Gerin was wondering the same thing about the woodsrunners. Adiatunnus must have done a fine job of absorbing Elabonian military doctrine, for his supporters began coming out of the woods at about the same time as those of the Fox. The two lines of chariots stretched about to equal length on the meadow. Monsters stood between the cars of Adiatunnus' battle line. Gerin wondered whether that would do the Trokme more good than harm; the ponies that pulled the chariots seemed nervous of these fierce new allies.

Adiatunnus cupped his hands and bellowed like a bull. Gerin knew that voice. At the same moment, Gerin raised his arm and then brought it down to point toward the Trokme line. Drivers on both sides whipped their teams forward.

Chariot battles were generally fluid as quicksilver, and this one proved no exception. The herds in the broad field made teams swing wide to avoid them. The pounding of the horses' hooves, the rattle and thump of the cars, and warriors' hoarse, excited shouts panicked the sheep and cattle and made them run wild, spreading more confusion still.

Gerin plucked an arrow from his quiver, nocked, and let fly at Adiatunnus: if the chieftain fell, that would make his followers easier meat. Shooting from the jouncing platform of a chariot carindeed, standing in the car without hanging on to the rail to keep from being pitched out on your head-was anything but easy, though endless practice let him do it without wondering how he managed. He cursed when the Trokme did not fall.

An arrow hissed by his own ear; the woodsrunners were aiming at him, too. Here and there, men on both sides pitched out of chariots to sprawl in the thick green grass. Horses went down, too, and often made the cars they drew founder with them. Sometimes warriors would come up from those mishaps unhurt, and go on to fight as foot soldiers.

A monster loped toward Gerin's chariot. The creature was almost as fast as the horses, and much more agile. Unlike some the Fox had seen, it carried no weapons. Even so, it was clever enough to attack the beasts of burden rather than the men they hauled: the horses could not fight back, and if one of them went down, the chariot was apt to overturn, too.

The Fox shot at the monster from only a few yards' distance, and turned the air sulfurous when his arrow went wide. Van was on the wrong side of the chariot to attack the creature, and in any case could not reach it with his thrusting spear. The horses squealed and shied away from the monster as it came up on them.

Before Gerin could draw another arrow, Raffo lashed the monster across its outstretched arms with his whip. The thing screeched. The driver hit it again, craack!, this time across its muzzle, just missing one eye. The monster clapped a hand to the wound and fled.

Along with three or four other chariots, Gerin's overlapped the end of the Trokme line. "Come on! We'll roll 'em up!" he shouted with fierce joy, and led his men around the enemy's flank. The chaos they created was marvelous to behold-and would have been more marvelous still had the woodsrunners' line not overlapped his on the other wing. But it did, and the whole battle spun round, a mad wheel of destruction.

The Fox found himself face-to-face with Adiatunnus. The Trokme had lost his helm somewhere in the fighting; his bald pate glowed red from exertion and sun. His eyes, though, were cold and shrewd, "Well, lord Gerin," he said with a mocking salute, "we lie athwart your way home now, don't we?"

"You do that," Gerin answered in the Trokme tongue, "but no more than we lie athwart yours."

Fighting ebbed as the leaders parleyed. Adiatunnus scowled; perhaps he'd hoped to panic Gerin, but he'd failed. He looked over the field. "You've hurt us about as bad as the other way round," he said. "Are you fain to go on, now, or shall we say enough and have done?"

Gerin gauged the field, too. The Trokme chief had the right of it; the battle was drawn. The woodsrunners had wrecked Mannor Trout's village, but he'd had his revenge there: he'd hurt Adiatunnus' lands worse. Fighting till only a handful of men still stood had scant appeal to him, especially with the monsters on the loose.

"Enough-for now," he said reluctantly, "if you can hold thosethings-to a truce to let us separate."

"That I can, though I'll thank you for not speaking ill of my friends and allies here," Adiatunnus said. "And 'for now' indeed-we'll have at each other again, I have no doubt. Och, and when we do, I'll be after having more in the way of friends and allies, but you, Foxwhat will you do?"

Gerin pondered that question as the rival forces warily passed through each other. He was still pondering it when he crossed back over the border into his own holding, and when he came home to Fox Keep. Ponder as he would, though, he found no answer that satisfied him.