IX

Aragis' envoys rode out at dawn two days later. Gerin cordially loathed getting up with the sun, but made a point of seeing them off. He glanced up into the sky and pointed to golden Math, which, three days past full, was sliding toward the western horizon. "Lords, she makes her turn in nine-and-twenty days," he said to Marlanz and Fabors. "By the next time she reaches that phase, I hope to have the Grand Duke's chariots fighting alongside mine."

"We shall do everything in our power to make it so," Fabors Fabur' s son said.

"Aye, that should give us time for travel and for gathering the men and cars," Marlanz Raw-Meat added. "I hope the Archer orders me north again. Fighting the monsters and the Trokmoi at the same time would be worth the candle, I think."

Gerin had seen a good many men, Trokmoi and Elabonians both (to say nothing of Van), who loved war for its own sake. He recognized that, but it baffled him every time he ran into it. He said, "I'd sooner not be fighting at all, but sometimes you have no choice."

Marlanz sent him a curious look. "Your hand's not cold in war, lord prince. You may not care for it, but you do it well."

He probably had as much trouble understanding the Fox as Gerin did with him-maybe more, if he didn't make a practice of trying to see into the minds of people different from him. Explaining seemed an unprofitable use of time to Gerin, who contented himself with answering, "If you don't do what needs doing, before long you won't have the chance to do anything at all." Marlanz weighed that-as Gerin had guessed on first meeting him, he was smarter than he looked-and finally nodded.

The drawbridge thumped down. Aragis' ambassadors and the warriors who had come north to protect them rolled across it and off toward the Elabon Way. The gate crew hauled the bridge back up. Visitors to Fox Keep were few in these days of disordered commerce, and who could say what lurked in the not too distant woods? For legitimate travelers, the bridge would come down again. Meanwhile, Castle Fox was fortress first.

Van came out of the keep, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "So they're on their way south, are they?" he said through a yawn. "We can use all the help we can find, and that's a fact."

"I know," Gerin answered. "I didn't like the way Adiatunnus mocked me at the fight in that clearing. We'll see how he laughs when he finds Aragis' chariots ranged beside mine."

"Aye, that'll be a good thing, no doubt about it." Van yawned again. "I want some bread and ale. Maybe they'll make my wits start working."

"The Urfa nomads in the deserts south of Elabon brew some sort of bitter drink that's supposed to keep a man awake if he's tired and wake him up if he's all fuzzy the way you are," Gerin said. He sighed. "Time was when Urfa came up to Ikos to talk with the Sibyl. We might have bought some of the berries from them. Now the oracle at Ikos is no more, and even if it were still there, the Urfa couldn't come up through Elabon to get to it."

" 'The oracle at Ikos is no more,' " Van repeated as he and the Fox walked back toward the great hall. He glanced over to Gerin. "The lady Selatre's still very much here, though."

"So she is," Gerin said. He and Selatre hadn't tried to keep their becoming lovers a secret-not that they could have even if they did try. Castle Fox had too many pairs of eyes, too many wagging tongues, for that. If he could, Gerin would have looked down his nose at Van. The outlander being considerably taller, he looked up it instead. "So what?"

"So nothing, Captain," Van said hastily. "May you and she have joy of it." He paused, then went on in a low-voiced mumble, "And may the gods grant that I keep up with Fand and don't decide to throttle her."

"There is that," Gerin observed. Fand hadn't said anything to him; one thing that had been plain to both of them was that whatever they'd had was dead. But when she looked from him to Selatre, I told you so gleamed in her green eyes. She had told him so, too, which only made the look on her face more irksome. On the other hand, Fand enjoyed getting people angry at her, so he refused to give her the satisfaction of showing his annoyance.

Van cut a chunk from the loaf of bread on one of the tables. The morning was cool; Gerin decided he'd rather dip up a bowl of barley porridge from the pot that sat above the fire on the hearth at the far end of the hall. He took a horn spoon, then set that and the bowl on the table while he got himself a jack of ale.

He'd just poured a little libation to Baivers when Selatre came downstairs. "Here, join us," he said. "Marlanz and Fabors have headed south to take Aragis word of the agreement."

"I thought it must be so when you made yourself wake so early," she answered, cutting herself a piece of bread as Van had done.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to wake you." He felt guilty; he hadn't slept the night through with a woman in his own bed for a long time, and probably hadn't been as quiet as he might have been. For that matter, he hadn't slept with anyone in his own bed since Duren disappeared, and that was… more than sixty days ago now, he realized with a small shock, reckoning up everything that had happened since.

"It's all right," she said. "The sun was up, so I would have been awake soon anyhow. That's how it always was in my village, and that's how it was at Ikos, too." She somehow managed not to make Gerin feel bad for preferring to sleep later when he could. After she'd poured ale for herself, she sat down right beside him.

Fand came into the great hall a little later. When she saw Gerin and Selatre together, she didn't bother with breakfast. She just walked over to Van and plopped herself down in his lap.

He'd been reaching for his ale. Instead, his arms went around her. "What do you think you're doing?" he spluttered.

Her arms went around his neck. "What do you think I'm doing, now?" she purred into his ear.

Van could resist anything except temptation. He did try: "So early in the morning?" he said incredulously. Fand leaned closer still, whispered something Gerin couldn't quite catch into the outlander's ear. Whatever it was, it seemed to have the desired effect. Van snorted like a stallion and then, still holding Fand, stood up and carried her upstairs.

Gerin and Selatre stared after them. A moment later, a doorpresumably the one to Fand's chamber-slammed shut. When Gerin and Selatre looked from the stairway to each other, they both started to laugh. "Oh, my," Gerin said. "She has a hook in him like a man fishing for salmon."

"Did she always act like that?" Selatre asked in a small voice. She sounded half bemused, half awed.

The Fox shook his head. "When she was with us both, she didn'tusually-try to use one of us to make the other jealous." He chuckled. "Drop me into one of the hells if she's not trying to make me jealous now that we're apart." He took Selatre's hand. "She'll have no luck there."

"I'm glad." Selatre squeezed him. Not long ago, he thought, she'd have been mortally offended if I touched her at all. Then he realized with the front of his mind that that change had of course started some days after Duren disappeared. Somehow he felt he'd known Selatre longer.

Rihwin the Fox came into the great hall for breakfast. He nodded to Gerin and Selatre as he ambled over to the pot of porridge. Though he'd formally courted Elise, he'd never made any permanent attachments since returning to the northlands with Gerin and Van, contenting himself with tumbling the occasional servant woman or peasant girl.

Catching Gerin's eye, Rihwin tugged at his left ear and brayed like a donkey. He'd done that a couple of times before, and succeeded in embarrassing Gerin. This time Gerin was ready for him. He said, " You do that very well. You must have had a good deal of ass in you even before I worked that magic to restore your ear."

Rihwin staggered, as if pierced by an arrow. That made some of the hot porridge slop out of his bowl and onto the hand that was holding it. Now wounded literally as well as metaphorically, he sprang into the air with a yelp. "See what you made me do?" he shouted at Gerin.

"I'm sorry, but I can't take the blame for that one," Gerin said. "You were a showoff long before you met me, and you've got yourself in trouble for it a good many times before, too."

As was his way, Rihwin calmed as quickly as he'd heated. "I'd be more inclined to resent that if it weren't true." He got himself a jack of ale, then bowed to Gerin and said, "May I sit by you and your lady, your supreme awesomeness?"

"Sit, sit," Gerin said, valiantly resisting the urge to throw something at him. In a way, Rihwin was like Fand: he could be infuriating, but he was never dull. Fortunately, though, he lacked Fand's flammable temper.

He threw himself bonelessly down onto the bench next to Gerin. For all his seeming insouciance, he had a keen sense of what made others comfortable; Selatre still didn't care to be touched, even by accident, by anyone save Gerin.

He took a swig from his jack of ale, then leaned forward so he could look past Gerin to Selatre. "As you are Sibyl no more, lady, let me prophesy for you now: many years of happiness. I suppose that also means happiness for this lout here"-he nodded at Gerin-"but we'll just have to put up with what we can't help."

"One fine day, I will throttle you," Gerin muttered. Rihwin dipped his head, as at some extravagant compliment. Gerin threw his hands in the air.

Selatre said, "I thank you for the wish, and may a god prove to have spoken through you."

"I don't think foolishness has a god, unless it be Mavrix in his aspect as king of the drunkards," Gerin said. He'd meant that for a joke, but it brought him up short once he'd said it. All he wanted was to ignore Mavrix and hope the god would do the same with him, but suddenly that didn't seem easy.

He got up and poured himself another jack of ale. He wasn't thirsty any more, nor did he want to get drunk to start the day. Maybe, though, by showing his loyalty to Baivers he could persuade Mavrix to leave him alone. But even as he quaffed the apotropaic ale, he had his doubts.


***

Neither the Trokmoi nor the monsters were so considerate as to wait for Aragis' men to arrive and help drive them away. Gerin's raid into Adiatunnus' holding did make the woodsrunner thoughtful, but didn't stop him. And as for the creatures, who could say whether the ones that attacked Gerin's villagers were aligned with Adiatunnus or not? Either way, the work they did was dreadful.

Herders began to disappear, along with their flocks. The monsters slew more livestock than they could eat. Wolves or longtooths seldom behaved so, but men often did. As the reports came in to Castle Fox, Gerin grew ever grimmer.

He did what he could to help his serfs cope with the new menace skulking through the woods. He ordered herdsmen to go forth in pairs, and always to be armed either with bows or with hunting spears. He gave permission for all his smiths to make spearheads and arrowheads in large numbers. With more and more serfs at least somewhat armed, they'd have a better chance of holding off the monsters when no chariot-riding nobles could come to their aid.

Some of his more conservative vassals grumbled at that. Drago the Bear said, "Who's going to take all those spears away when the monsters are gone, lord Gerin? They'll use 'em on each other, aye, and on us nobles, too, if we don't watch 'em careful-and we can't watch ' em careful all the time."

Having been through a similar argument not long before with Van, the Fox only nodded tiredly. "You're right," he said, which made Drago's eyes widen. Then he went on: "But if we go under because we didn't arm the serfs, we won't have to worry about what we do later, now will we?"

Drago chewed on that for a while-literally, for Gerin watched his jaws work beneath his unkempt mat of graying brown beard-then walked off without making any direct reply. Under his breath, though, he was muttering phrases like "newfangled foolishness" and "idiotic shenanigans." The Fox refused to let that worry him. Stones changed more readily than Drago, but the Bear did as he was ordered.

Getting spears and arrows into the hands of the serfs wasn't enough, and Gerin knew it. They might kill an occasional monster, and would be cheered no end by so doing, but they weren't fighting men. If Gerin wanted any crops brought in come fall, he and the rest of the nobles would have to ride forth and do what they could to hold the monsters away from the villages.

Leaving Selatre was a wrench. That in itself surprised him; getting away from Fand had often seemed a relief. He took his sorrow on departing as a good sign: with luck, it meant he and Selatre had more to join them together than the pleasures of the bedchamber. Fine as those were, in the end they weren't enough. You needed other bricks as well if you wanted to build something that would last.

When he'd brought Elise up to Fox Keep, he'd thought they'd made something that would last forever. One thing he hadn't yet known was that you needed to keep what you'd built in good repair. If you didn' t, it would fall down on your head. He'd have to bear that in mind this time.

Such thoughts vanished from his head as the road jogged and Castle Fox vanished behind a stand of trees. "The monsters have been especially bad in the southwest," he said, grabbing for the rail as the chariot hit a pothole.

"That's no surprise," Raffo said over his shoulder. "They swarm into Adiatunnus' lands and then out against us."

"No doubt you're right," the Fox answered. "Wherefores don't much matter, though. Whatever the whys of it, we have to hurt the creatures badly enough to be sure the serfs can bring in the harvest. Fall's not that far away." He waved to the fields past which they were riding. The grain there was starting to go from green to gold.

Van dug a finger in his ear. "Am I hearing you right, Fox? You of all people saying wherefores don't matter? Either you've come down with a fever or-Wait, I have it. It must be love."

Gerin set a hand on the shaft of the war axe on his side of the chariot car. "I'd brain you, did I think you had any brains in there to let out."

"Aye, well, to the crows with you, too," Van said. Both men laughed.

As the chariots clattered by, peasants in the villages and out in the fields waved and cheered. They'd never been especially hostile to the nobles who ruled them; Gerin was a mild and just overlord. But they'd rarely seemed so glad to see armored men in chariots, either. Worthwhile reminding them we do more than take their crops and futter their women, Gerin thought.

Toward afternoon, one of the serfs did more than wave and cheer. He ran up to Gerin's chariot, the lead in a six-car force, shouting, " Help us, lord! Three of the creatures slaughtered our sheep, then ran back into the woods." He pointed to show the direction they'd taken, adding, "Remon hit one with an arrow, I think, but it kept running."

"Maybe we'll have a blood trail to follow, Fox," Van said. "Give us a better chance to hunt down the cursed things."

The peasant's eyes went wide. "You're lord Gerin?" he said, and bowed when the Fox nodded. That sort of thing had happened to Gerin before. Not all serfs knew what he looked like, for years could pass between his visits to any one village.

"Aye, I'm Gerin," he answered, and alighted from the chariot. Van stepped down after him. They waved the rest of the cars to a stop. Gerin pointed in the same direction the peasant had. "Three monsters just went in there. The villagers managed to wound one, so we may have blood to follow."

"Fox, what do you say the drivers stay with the cars?" Van put in. "If there're three of the things around, there may be more, and that' ll let folk properly armed fight for the serfs if monsters pop out of the woods."

"Aye, let it be as you say," Gerin answered, which drew howls of anger from Raffo and the other drivers. He glared them into submission, wondering as he did so at the urge that made men eager to risk their lives fighting and irate when they lost that chance, even with an honorable excuse.

Van pulled his mace from his belt and trotted into the woods, saying, "Come on, you lugs. The more time we waste here, the farther the cursed creatures can run."

Along with the rest of the fighting crews, Gerin pounded after the outlander. Sweat quickly burst out on his forehead. Running in armor was hard work-doubly so for Van, whose fancy cuirass was a good deal heavier than the one the Fox wore. But the outlander moved as easily as if he'd been in a thin linen shirt.

"Here, hold up," Gerin called at the edge of the woods. He was panting a little, but hadn't ordered the halt on account of that. " Let's see if we can find spilled blood. That'll give us the way the monsters took."

Less than a minute later, Widin Simrin's son exclaimed, "Over here, lord Gerin!" The Fox and the rest of the warriors hurried to him. Sure enough, blood splashed the grass where he stood; more painted the dark green leaves of a holly bush.

Gerin and his men plunged into the woods. Along with the blood the monster was losing, they also had footprints in the soft earth to follow. They crashed through the brush shouting at the top of their lungs, hoping to frighten the monster and its fellows into breaking whatever cover they'd found.

"There!" Drago shouted. He used his sword to point. Gerin caught a glimpse of a hairy body between a couple of saplings. Parol Chickpea, fast with his bow, loosed an arrow at the monster. It bellowed, whether in pain or simply in rage the Fox could not tell. Along with his companions, he dashed toward the place where it had disappeared. The men spread out widely, not wanting to give it any chance to get away.

It sprang out from behind the pale trunk of a birch tree, almost in Van's face. The outlander shouted in surprise, but kept the presence of mind to get his shield up and protect his bare face and arms from the monster's claws and teeth. He smote the creature with his mace. Blood spurted as the viciously spiked head struck home. The monster snarled and wailed, but did not run. Gerin sprinted to come to the aid of his friend.

The monster wailed without snarling when his sword slash drew a red line across its rib cage. Half turning to meet him, it left itself open to Van, who hit it in the side of its head with all his massive strength. The creature crumpled.

"A stupid one," Van said, panting. "The ones with the wit to wield weapons are truly dangerous."

"Even the ones without are bad enough." Gerin looked down at the twitching corpse. "I don't see an arrow in this one, either, so the one the peasant hit must still be around here somewhere."

"I hadn't thought on that, but you're right," the outlander said. "Let's get on with the searching, then." He slammed the head of his mace into the ground a couple of times to clean the monster's blood from the bronze spikes, then pushed on through the woods.

Not far ahead, two cries rang out, one from the throat of a monster, the other a deeper coughing roar that froze the Fox in his tracks for a moment, as it was meant to do. "Longtooth." His lips shaped the word, but no sound passed them.

The monster's scream rose to a high-pitched squall, then died away. The longtooth roared again, this time in triumph. Gerin rounded up his companions by eye. Ever so cautiously, they approached the place from which the roars had sounded. Twelve men were enough to drive off a longtooth at need, though doing so was always a risky business.

Gerin pushed aside the small-leaved branch of a willow sapling to peer out into a small clearing. At the far edge of the open space, the longtooth crouched over the monster's body.

"That's the one the peasant shot," Van breathed into Gerin's ear. The Fox nodded; part of an arrow shaft still protruded from the creature's left buttock. He wondered whether it had deliberately broken off the rest or the shaft had snapped as it ran through the woods.

The question was irrelevant now; the longtooth had seen to that. The great twin fangs that gave it its name were red with the monster's blood; it had torn open the creature's throat. Longtooths, fortunately, were solitary hunters-had they traveled in packs, they would have been an even worse plague than the monsters. This one, a big male, was almost the size of a bear, with massive shoulders and great taloned forepaws almost as formidable as its fangs.

It growled warningly at Gerin and the other warriors. The long, orange-brown hair on its neck and shoulders-not quite a lion's mane, but close-bristled up to make it look even larger and more threatening. Its little stumpy tail, the only absurd part of a thoroughly formidable creature, twitched to show its anger at being interrupted over a meal.

"Let's kill it," Parol Chickpea whispered hoarsely.

Up till then, Gerin had thought Parol's sobriquet came from the large round wen by his nose. The comment, though, made him wonder if a chickpea was what Parol used to do his thinking. He said, "No, it's done us a favor. We'll just go on our way and see if we can find the last monster."

Parol grumbled at that, but went along when everyone else moved away from the clearing. Gerin was sure the longtooth would be contentedly feeding for some time. All the same, he didn't go very far from his followers, nor they from one another. The price of being wrong about what the great hunting cat was doing was too high to pay.

Perhaps because the warriors stayed tightly bunched together, they didn't flush out the last monster. After another hour's search, Gerin said, "I fear it's got away. The gods willing, though, it won't be back in these parts anytime soon-and if it is, it may run across that longtooth."

"That would be good," Drago rumbled.

"So it would," Gerin said. "A longtooth is more than a match for one of those things, or two, or even four. But if a pack of them set out to drive a longtooth from its prey, I think they could do it."

"Best thing to happen there is that they kill each other off," Drago said. Gerin nodded at that. Somehow, though, things seldom worked themselves out so conveniently, at least not where he was concerned.

The warriors made their way back toward the peasant village. When they came out of the woods, not only the serfs but also their drivers raised a cheer. The cheer got louder after Gerin yelled, "Two of the creatures dead," and did not subside when he admitted the third had escaped.

He gave Remon a silver buckle for wounding one of the monsters. The serf, a young, well-made man, puffed out his chest, stood very straight, and did his best to act like one of the warriors who'd accompanied the Fox. Gerin thought that at best unconvincing, but it seemed good enough to impress the young women of the village. To Remon, their opinion doubtless mattered more than his.

"Sun's going down," Van observed.

Gerin glanced westward. The outlander was right. Gerin suspected his friend had an ulterior motive for the remark-several of the young women had also noticed him-but decided not to make an issue of it. " All right, we'll pass the night here," he said.

The villagers brought out their best ale for the nobles in their midst, and roasted a couple of sheep the monsters had killed. The rest, Gerin was sure, would be smoked or sun-dried or made into sausages. Nothing went to waste. He'd seen oaks in the woods nearby. No doubt the hides, however torn, would be tanned and used for winter coats or capes.

Remon disappeared from the celebration with one of the pretty girls who'd exclaimed at his prowess with a bow. There was prowess and then there was prowess, Gerin thought.

Several of his comrades also found themselves companions for the evening. As Van headed off toward one of the huts with a young woman, he turned back to Gerin and said, "You sleeping alone tonight, Fox?"

"Yes, I think so," Gerin answered. "Another cup of ale and then I' ll roll up in my blanket."

"All very well to be a one-woman man around the keep, Captain," the outlander said, "but you're not around the keep now."

"I don't tell you how to live your life, and I'll thank you for granting me the same privilege," Gerin said pointedly.

"Oh, I do, Captain, I do, but if I think you're a silly loon, you may be sure I'll tell you so." Van turned back to the girl. "Come along, my sweet. I know what to do with my time, by the gods." She went, not only willingly but eagerly. The Fox shook his head. Van had a gift, that was certain.

Van also reveled in variety. Gerin snorted. "If I need a different woman so soon after I found one, then I didn't find the right one," he muttered to himself.

"What's that, lord Gerin?" Drago stared owlishly. He'd put his nose into the ale pot a great many times. He'd sleep like a log tonight, and likely bawl like a hurt ox tomorrow with a head pounding fit to burst.

Gerin was just as well pleased the Bear hadn't caught what he'd said. He did his best to keep his private life private. In the tight little world of Fox Keep, that best often wasn't good enough, but he kept making the effort. And Selatre, unlike Fand, did not strike him as one to relish trumpeting her affairs-in any sense of the word-to the world at large.

He glanced up into the sky. Only Elleb shone there, a day before full. Swift Tiwaz had just slipped past new, while Nothos was approaching it. And golden Math, almost at her third quarter, would rise a little before midnight.

Math was the moon that mattered now. If she returned to the waning gibbous shape she'd had when Fabors and Marlanz set out for Aragis' lands before the Archer's chariots came north-if she did that, then all of Gerin's carefully laid plans would go awry.

"In that case, I'll have to try something else," he said, again to Drago's puzzlement-and to his own, for he had no idea what that something might be.


***

The sweep through the southern part of his holding netted the Fox several slain monsters. More to the point, it showed the serfs-and the monsters, if they paid attention to such things-that he and his vassals would defend the villages in every way they could.

Parol Chickpea was the only real casualty of the sweep: one of the monsters bit a good-sized chunk out of his right buttock. Gerin heated a bronze hoe blade over a fire back at the peasant village from which they'd set out and used it to cauterize the wound. Parol bawled louder at that than he had when he was bitten, but the wound healed well. Then he had to endure being called Parol One-Cheek all the way back to Castle Fox.

Two days after he'd returned to the keep, Gerin was up on the palisade when a chariot came streaking up from the south. He started worrying the instant he spied it: no one bringing good news would be in such a hurry. In any case, it was too early to expect Aragis' men.

He hurried down from the palisade while the gate crew was letting down the drawbridge. "What's toward, Utreiz?" he asked when the chariot came into the courtyard.

Utreiz Embron's son was one of the leaders of the force holding the Elabon Way open through Bevon's holding: a slim, dark fellow, a better than decent swordsman, and a long way from foolish-a rather lesser version of Gerin, as a matter of fact. He scowled as he got down from the car, saying, "It's not good news, lord prince."

"I didn't think it would be," Gerin answered. "Tell it to me anyhow."

"Aye, lord." Utreiz spat in the dirt. "Bevon and two of his stinking sons-Bevonis and Bevion-came out in force against us, with monsters coursing alongside their chariots. For the time being, the road's cut."

"Oh, a plague!" Gerin cried. The outburst spent, his wits began to work. "Bevander's with us, though. That'll help. Have our men gone south to pull Ricolf the Red into the fight? Having the Elabon Way blocked hurts him no less than us."

"Lord, my guess is they have, but it would be only a guess," Utreiz answered. "I came north, thinking this something you had to know as soon as might be."

"You did right," Gerin said. "So Bevion and Bevonis are the two who went with Bevon to suck up to Adiatunnus and the monsters, eh? And Bevander is on our side, as I said. What about Bevon's fourth son?"

"You mean Phredd the Fat?" Utreiz spat again. "The gods only know what he's doing-he hasn't the slightest clue himself. He could be trying to train longtooths to draw chariots, for all I know. He's not in the fight, that much I can tell you."

"Too bad," Gerin said. "I was hoping he'd come in on Bevon's side. He'd hurt him worse by that than by joining us, believe me."

"The gods know you're right about that, lord, but so far he's sitting out," Utreiz said. "Can you send us men to help force the road open again?"

"A few, maybe," Gerin said unhappily. "I'm stretched too thin as it is. I wish some of the lordlets on the land that used to be Palin the Eagle's would do their share. No merchants will ever get to their keeps if the highway stays closed."

"I've sent men to several of them," Utreiz answered.

"Stout man!" Gerin thumped him on the back. "There aren't enough people who see what needs doing and then go ahead and do it without making a fuss and without asking anyone's leave."

Utreiz shuffled his feet like a schoolboy who'd forgotten his lessons and looked anywhere but at the Fox. Praise plainly made him uncomfortable-another way in which he resembled his overlord. "I'd best head back now," he said, and climbed into the chariot that had brought him north. "You send those men as soon as may be, lord. We could use 'em." He spoke to the driver, who got the horses going and rattled away. He hadn't even stopped for a jack of ale.

"Send those men as soon as may be," Gerin echoed, wondering where he was supposed to find men to send. If he could have conjured warriors out of the air, he would have used them against Adiatunnus. But he realized he would have to reduce the sweeps against the monsters for the time being, no matter how little he relished the prospect. He would lose a disastrous amount of prestige if Aragis had to force the road open.

Glumly, he tramped into the great hall. Selatre was in there, eating some sun-dried plums. She smiled a greeting and waved him over to her side. "Here, open," she said, and popped a prune into his mouth.

It was sweet, but not sweet enough by itself to sweeten his mood. He said "Thank you" even so; Selatre appreciated formal politeness. He studied her-she looked a trifle on the haggard side, but wryly amused at the same time. The combination tweaked his curiosity. "You've got something to tell me," he said. "I can see it in your eyes." He wondered if he was about to become a father again.

"Yes, I do," she said, and her tone made him all but sure of it. Then she went on, "Just another proof I'm Sibyl no more: my courses started this morning. I needed a moment, I confess, to figure out what was happening to me." Her mouth twisted. "One part of full womanhood I'd willingly have missed."

"Mm, yes, I can understand that," he said judiciously. He knew a certain measure of relief that he didn't have to worry about fatherhood at such an inconvenient time, and a different measure of relief that Selatre still seemed in a reasonably good humor. At such times, Fand could often make a longtooth flinch. But then, Fand's temper was certain to be uncertain.

"I didn't know this would happen when I came into your bed, but it makes sense that it has," Selatre said. "Biton's law was that no woman who had known man could be his Sibyl. Now that we're lovers"-he admired the matter-of-fact way she brought that out-"no wonder I've lost what marked me as a possible Sibyl in the first place."

Gerin nodded. "That does make sense. And it's reasoned as nicely as any schoolmaster down in the City of Elabon might have done-not that they're in the habit of reasoning about such things."

Selatre stuck out her tongue at him. "What about the fellow who had that endlessly entertaining book?"

"He wasn't a schoolmaster," Gerin said with a snort. "Just an endlessly lecherous student. Now that I think back on it, a lot of us were like that." He waited for Selatre to make some sort of sharp reply to that, but she didn't. For once, her ignorance of men in general worked to his advantage.

The lookout in the watchtower let go with a long, discordant blast from his horn. "Chariots approaching out of the west, a pair of 'em," he bawled.

"Out of the west?" Gerin said. "I wonder who that is." He got to his feet. "Better go find out." He headed out toward the courtyard. Selatre followed.

"It's Schild Stoutstaff, lord," Parol Chickpea called from atop the palisade. "Shall we let him in?"

"Schild, is it?" the Fox said. Had he had ears like a real fox's, they would have pricked forward with interest. "Aye, by all means let him come in. I'll be fascinated to see what he wants of me."

"Why's that, lord prince?" Parol asked with a hoarse guffaw. "On account of he only remembers he's your vassal when he wants something off you?"

"That does have something to do with it, yes," Gerin answered dryly. The drawbridge lowered once more-a busy day, the Fox thought. A couple of minutes later, Schild and his companions rolled into the courtyard.

"Lord prince," Schild called, nodding to Gerin. He was a big, burly fellow, on the swarthy side, a few years older than the Fox, and had the air of one who trusted his own judgment and strength above any others. That alone made him less than the best of vassals, but Gerin understood it, for it was part of his own character as well.

"What brings you here?" he asked.

Schild jumped down from his chariot, surprisingly graceful for such a bulky man. He strode over to Gerin and fell to his knees in front of him, holding out his hands before him with their palms pressed together. "Your servant, lord prince!" he said, his eyes on the ground.

Gerin took Schild's hands in his, acknowledging the other man's vassalage and his own obligations as overlord. "Rise, lord Schild," he said formally. As soon as Schild was back on his feet, the Fox went on in more conversational tones: "You must need something from me, or you'd not choose to remember I'm your master."

"You're right, lord Gerin, I do." Schild didn't even bother correcting the Fox. "Those horrible things they say came up from under the ground are a hideous plague in my holding. My own vassals and I can't keep the serfs safe, try as we will. I have pride-you know that. I've buried it to beg aid of you."

"So now you'd be glad to see chariots cross from my holding to yours, eh?" Gerin waited for Schild to nod, then drove home the dart: "You wouldn't even let my men onto your land to seek my stolen son earlier this year-but you didn't need me then, of course."

"That's true. I made a mistake, and I may end up paying for it, too," Schild answered steadily. He won Gerin's reluctant admiration for that; whether you liked him or not, you had to admit he held very little nonsense. Now he let loose a rueful laugh. "I have more to tell you about that than I did then, too."

"Do you?" Gerin's voice went silky with danger. As if of itself, his hand slipped to the hilt of his sword. Schild was no mean fighting man, but he gave back a step from the expression on the Fox's face. " You had best tell it, and quickly."

"Aye, lord prince. You have to understand, I didn't know it at the time when your man came asking." Schild licked his lips. "That minstrel-Tassilo was his name, not so?-he came through my holding. You know that much already, I daresay. He didn't stop at my keep, though; he guested with a couple of my vassals before he passed out the other side of my lands. Lord Gerin, I learned not long ago he had a boy with him. If I'd known that then-"

"What would you have done, lord Schild?" Gerin asked, his quiet fiercer than a scream. "What would you have done? Sent Duren back to me? Or would you have kept him for a while, to see what advantage you might wring from him?"

"Damn me to the five hells if I know, Fox," Schild answered, formal politeness forgotten. "But I didn't have the chance to find out, which is likely just as well. Now I know, and now I'm here, and now I've told you."

"If I ever find out you lied to me about this-" Gerin let that drop. He had a score to settle with Schild even if Schild hadn't liedbut not now. Other things had to come first.

"Not here," Schild said. "I know what my life would be worth if I tried." He spoke with as much assurance as if he'd looked at rapidly approaching clouds and announced, "It looks like rain." Gerin had always done his best to give his neighbors the idea he'd be a dangerous man to cross. Seeing he'd succeeded should have been more gratifying than it was.

He said, "Duren came into your holding, then, and was alive and well when he went out again?"

"So far as I know, Fox, that's the way of it," Schild answered.

Selatre came up to Gerin, set a hand on his arm. "The prophecy Biton spoke through me said your son's fate would be mild. I'm glad we begin to see the truth of that now."

Schild's eyes widened when he realized who Selatre had to be, and then again when he realized what her touching Gerin was likely to mean. The Fox noted that without doing anything about it; his thought swooped down on Selatre's words like a stooping hawk. "Biton said Duren's fate might well be mild," he answered with a sort of pained precision he wished he could abandon, "not that it would be. We still have to see."

She looked at him. As if Schild-as if everyone but the two of them-had receded to some remote distance, she asked quietly, "You're afraid to hope sometimes, aren't you?"

"Yes," he answered, as if speaking to her ears alone. "Expect much and you're too often disappointed. Expect little and what you get often looks good."

Selatre made an exasperated noise. Before she could carry the argument further, though, Schild broke in: "Well, Fox, what can I expect from you?"

That hauled Gerin back to the world of chariots and monsters and red-mustached barbarians: not the world in which he would have chosen to spend his time, but the one in which the gods had seen fit to place him. He started calculating, and did not care for the answers he came up with. He'd been stretched too thin before he'd had to commit men to reopening the Elabon Way; he was thinner now. Fixing Schild with a glare, he growled, "Why couldn't you have forgotten you were my vassal a while longer?"

"Because I need your aid, lord prince," Schild answered, more humbly than the Fox had ever heard him speak.

He suspected a great deal of that humility was donned for the occasion, but that didn't mean he could ignore it. "Very well, lord Schild, I shall defend you with such forces as I can spare," he said. "I shall not do so, though, until you furnish me this year's feudal dues, in metal and grain and ale, for your holding. You haven't paid those dues lately; I hope you remember what they are."

By the sour look Schild gave him, he remembered only too well. "I knew you were a cheeseparer, Fox," he ground out, "so I started the wagons rolling as soon as I left my keep. They should be here in a day or two with the year's dues. To try to make up for its being my first tribute in a while, I even put in a couple of flagons of wine I found in my cellars."

"Don't tell Rihwin that," Gerin exclaimed.

"The way you're using me now, I hope they've gone to vinegar," Schild said, scowling still.

"If you want aid from your overlord, you'd best give him service with more than your lips," Gerin answered, unperturbed at Schild's anger. He went on, "Speaking of which, though you swore me fealty after I slew Wolfar of the Axe, you've given me precious little."

"I've demanded precious little till now, either," Schild retorted.

"That may be so, but the aid I send you is liable to cost me more than this year's dues alone," Gerin said. "My other vassals-my true vassals-pay what they owe whether they call on me for aid or not, for they don't know when they'll need me. Collecting all I'm due now would break you, so I shan't try, but what I take from you each year will go up hereafter-and if you don't render it, you'll see my chariots in ways you won't like so well as riding to your rescue."

Schild's expression was bright with hatred. "I wish Wolfar had wrung your neck instead of the other way round."

Gerin's blade hissed free. "You're welcome to try to amend the result, if you like."

For a moment, he thought Schild would draw, too. This once, the clean simplicity of combat looked good to him. If he slew Schild, the other's land would pass to him… and if he didn't, he wouldn't have to worry about alliances and feudal dues any more.

But Schild took a step back. Gerin did not think it was from fear. Few barons shrank from a fight on account of that-and the ones who did commonly had enough sense that they didn't go provoking their neighbors. The Fox's reluctant vassal said, "Even if I slay you and get out of this keep alive, I can't fill your shoes fighting the creatures, worse luck."

Gerin clapped a hand to his forehead in genuine amazement. He sheathed his sword. "An argument from policy, by the gods! For that I' ll gouge you less than I would have otherwise-having a neighbor who can think will pay off for itself, one way or another."

"I have to think you're right about that," Schild answered. "I've got one, and it's costing me plenty."

That crack was almost enough of itself to make Gerin like him. The Fox said, "Come into the great hall, drink some ale with me, and we'll try to figure out what we can do for you." He'd turned and taken a couple of steps before he remembered Schild had been less than forthcoming about his son. He kept walking, but resolved not to like or trust his neighbor no matter what sort of cracks Schild made.


***

Schild poured ale down his throat. He watched Gerin warily, too; coming to the Fox for aid could not have been easy for him. "How many cars will you send?" he demanded. "And how soon will you send them? We're hurting badly, and that's the truth. If I'd thought we'd have anything to eat this winter-" He let that hang. No, asking for help hadn't been easy.

Gerin didn't answer right away. He'd been weighing the question even before Schild asked it. "I want to say eight, but I suppose I can spare ten," he said at last.

"What, why you tightfisted-" Schild cursed with an inventiveness and a volume that had men running in from the courtyard and coming down from upstairs to see what on earth had gone wrong now.

Van said, "You don't have a moat, Captain, but shall I chuck him in the ditch for you?"

"No," Gerin answered. "He's pitching a fit because he doesn't know all the facts yet. For instance," he continued with a certain amount of spite, "I haven't told him the chariots and crew I do send will have to be back here in fifteen days' time. They can sweep his holding, but they can't stay there and fight all the way up till harvest time."

"That does it!" Schild sprang to his feet. "I'm for my own lands again, but the gods. And to the five hells with you, Fox, and a murrain on your ten stinking cars and your fifteen stinking days. We' ll manage somehow, and after we do-"

"Sit down and shut up." Every once in a while, Gerin could strike a tone that produced obedience without thought. He wished he could manage it at will-it was useful. This time it worked; Schild's knees folded and he sat back onto the bench. Gerin went on, "I can't send more than ten cars because I'm sending others south to open the Elabon Way: Bevon and two of his worthless sons have struck at it and driven my garrisons back. And I'll want the chariots home soon because Aragis the Archer and I have made alliance; he's bringing his forces north so we can strike at Adiatunnus and the monsters together. I want my force of chariotry at full strength for that. Now do you understand, lord Schild?"

"I understand you're the biggest bastard ever spawned in the northlands, lord Gerin," Schild answered, but the fire had gone out of his voice. He got up again, carried his jack to the pitcher of ale, poured it full, and drained it dry. Only after he'd wiped his mouth and mustache on the sleeve of his tunic did he give his attention back to the Fox. "You set me up for that tantrum, you son of a whore. You just wanted to see how loud you could make me yell."

"If it weren't so, I'd deny it," Gerin said. "In case you're interested, you yell louder than I thought you could."

"Truth that," Van put in. "I thought one of those monsters was loose in the keep when I heard you roar."

Schild looked from one of them to the other. "To the five hells with both of you. Now, when will you send out your chariotry?"

"As soon as I can," Gerin answered. "I'll send messengers today to my vassals who have keeps on the western side of my holding. As you'll have noticed, I haven't enough men here myself to make up ten cars, or anything close to that number. I would have, if I didn't need to order crews south against Bevon." He spread his hands. "I'm afraid that's what you get, lord Schild, for taking so long to make up your mind you're really in trouble. My men ought to be crossing your frontier about the time your tribute comes in to Fox Keep."

"Aye, I'd worked that out for myself, thanks," Schild said. "You' re not an easy overlord to serve under, lord prince. I console myself by thinking you're fair in what you do."

"I'll take that," Gerin said.


***

The Fox lay beside Selatre, watching the lamp gutter toward extinction. Its red, dying flame cast flickering shadows on the wall of the bedchamber. He let one hand run idly down the smooth length of her torso. He'd felt sated after he made love with Fand. He felt happy now. It had been so long since he'd felt really happy after he'd made love that the difference struck him like a blow.

He wondered how he'd failed to notice when that happy feeling started to slip away while Elise shared his bed. Partly, he suspected, his own stupidity was to blame. And partly, he'd supposed it was simply part of their growing used to each other. That was probably stupid too, now that he thought about it.

When she'd bedded the horseleech after she ran off, had she felt happy afterwards? Gerin rather hoped so.

Selatre snuggled against him, which drove thoughts of Elise, if not altogether out of his head, then at least back into the dark corners where they belonged these days. She laughed a little as she said, "The time when I thought no man could touch me seems faraway now. I was foolish."

"No, you weren't." Gerin shook his head. "You were doing what was right for you then. On the other hand, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't glad you'd changed your mind." He bent his head so he could kiss the sweet hollow place where her neck met her shoulder.

"Your beard tickles," she said, and then, as if she weren't changing the subject at all, "What I'm glad of is that my courses are finally spent. I could have done without that part of becoming a woman-I think I've said as much before."

"Eight or ten times," Gerin agreed.

She poked him in the ribs. He jerked. For someone who hadn't been allowed to touch a man for a long time, she learned fast. Maybe she'd grown up with little brothers back in her peasant village. Gerin had been a little brother. He knew what pests they could make of themselves.

Selatre said, "One of the reasons I didn't care for my courses is that they kept me from having you. I've grown greedy so fast, you see."

"They don't have to keep men and women apart," Gerin observed.

"No?" Selatre sounded surprised. Her mouth twisted. "It would be messy."

"It can be," Gerin agreed. "You're apt to be dry then, too. But"he smiled a lopsided smile-"there are compensations. I didn't want to seem as if I were forcing myself on you this first time. You're finding out about so many new things so fast, I thought I shouldn't burden you with one more. The gods willing, we have plenty of time."

"I think I am very lucky here." Selatre snuggled closer still. "I may have said that before, too-eight or ten times." She gave him a look that said, What are you going to make of that?

He knew what he wanted to make of it, and was hoping he could rise to the occasion once more, when someone came running up the hall toward the bedchamber. He scowled; it was too late at night for anyone to bother him without excellent reason. Then the fellow outside shouted, "Lord Gerin, there are monsters loose in Besant's village!"

"Oh, a pox!" Gerin cried, and sprang out of bed. "I'm coming!" He scrambled into tunic and trousers, buckled on his sandals and grabbed his sword belt, and unbarred the door. Selatre barely had time to throw a blanket over her nakedness.

Gerin hurried downstairs, where his armor, with that of his vassals, hung from pegs on the side walls of the great hall. He got into his corselet, jammed his bronze pot of a helm onto his head, and put his shield on his right arm. Tonight he'd make do without his greaves. He snatched up his bow and a full quiver of arrows.

Van had already armed himself. "Come on, Captain," he said impatiently. "I've missed good fighting to wait for you."

"You must have been down here, to have got into your gear so fast," Gerin said.

"Aye, so I was, drinking ale, rolling the dice with a few of the lads-you know how it goes. When the drawbridge thumped down, I figured somebody'd gone and pissed in the porridge pot, and sure enough, in came this screaming serf, babbling of monsters. I sent one of the cooks upstairs for you, while those of us who were down here got weapons and went out to fight." With that, he trotted for the door himself, the Fox at his heels.

At the gate, one of the men there handed Gerin a blazing torch. " Against the ghosts, lord prince," he bawled. Gerin was grateful for his quick thinking, but felt overburdened as he pounded toward Besant Big-Belly's village.

Even with the torch, the night spirits assailed him as soon as he got outside the keep. Dark of night was their time, their element; they sent a chilling blast of hate and resentment down on a mortal who presumed to enter it without better apotropaic than fire alone.

He set his teeth and ran on. Beside him, Van muttered oaths, or perhaps prayers, in a language he did not recognize. When those had no effect, the outlander shouted, "Be still, you cursed soulsuckers!" If any living man could awe the ghosts, Van would have been the one to do it. But no living man could.

Fortunately, Besant's village lay only a couple of furlongs from Fox Keep. Before the spirits could find all the chinks in the armor of Gerin's soul and slip cold mental fingers in to drive him mad, he was among the wattle-and-daub huts of the serfs. They'd given the ghosts the usual gift of sunset blood, and so were not haunted through the night. But things fiercer than phantoms assailed them now.

A man lay sprawled in the street. His blood darkened the dirt on which he'd fallen. His linen tunic was rucked up; monsters had been feeding on his legs and hindquarters before the warriors came to drive them off.

Gerin threw down his bow. In the dim light, shooting was useless. Math's crescent almost brushed the horizon, and even pale Nothos' fatter crescent, higher in the western sky, made distances seem to shift and waver, as if in a dream. His sword snaked free. This would have to be close-quarters work.

Screams from inside a hut with its door flung open told of a monster inside. Peering over the edge of his shield, Gerin ran in. The darkness was all but absolute, but his ears told him of the struggle there. Roaring, the monster turned from the serf it had been attacking to meet him.

He thrust at it with his sword. He couldn't have done more than pink it, for its cries redoubled. Crash! Something wet splashed in the Fox's face. The monster was staggering, though-the serf, with great presence of mind, had hit it over the head with a water jar. The Fox stepped close, stabbed again and again and again. The monster stumbled, recovered, fell.

"Dyaus bless you, lord prince," the serf and his wife cried in the same breath.

"And you, for the help you gave," he answered as he turned and rushed back out into the street. No time now for polite conversation.

Fighting the monsters was not like fighting human foes. That had both advantages and disadvantages. As Gerin had noted before, the creatures fought as individuals, not as part of a larger group. In the confused brawling in the darkness, though, his own men were hardly more organized. And the creatures neither cared anything for loot nor felt any shame at running away if they found themselves in danger they could escape by no other means. Full of notions about glory and honor and courage, Trokmoi would have held their ground and let themselves be killed where they stood.

Gerin caught the reek from a monster's body-a thicker, meatier smell than came from a man, no matter how long unwashed-and threw up his shield before the creature, just another shadow in the night, closed with him. He almost dropped the shield in surprise when a sword slammed against it.

The monster gave him the first unmistakable words he'd heard from one of their throats: "Die, man!" They were in the Trokme tongue, and snarled rather than spoken, but he had no trouble understanding them.

"Die yourself," he answered in the same language. The monster had no shield, no armor, and no skill at swordplay to speak of. But it was very quick and very strong. When it beat aside his thrust, the blow almost knocked the sword from his hand.

He wondered if it could see better in the night than he could. After it and its ancestors had spent so many generations in a troglodytic life, that seemed likely. And, though it was very awkward with its sword, something let it thwart his strokes again and again.

"Here, Captain, I'm coming!" Van shouted. His heavy footfalls got closer fast.

The monster, though, did not wait to be attacked by two at once. It turned and scampered away toward the woods, faster than an armored man could hope to follow. The fighting died away not long after that, with the rest of the creatures either down or fled. Some of Gerin's troopers had been clawed or bitten, but none of them was badly hurt.

Besant Big-Belly sought out the Fox. The serfs in his village hadn't been so lucky. As lamentations and moans of pain rose into the night, the headman said, "We've three dead, lord prince, and several more, men and women both, who won't be able to work for some while. Dyaus and the other gods only know how we're to bring in enough crops to meet your dues come fall." He wrung his hands in anxiety.

It was, Gerin thought with a flash of contempt, utterly characteristic of him to worry about the dues first and people only afterwards. "Don't worry about it," he said, "If I see the people here are making an honest effort, I won't hold them to blame for falling a bit short of what they might have done otherwise."

"You're kind, lord prince," Besant cried, seizing Gerin's hand and pressing it to his lips. The Fox snatched it back. He suspected the headman would use his generosity as an excuse to try to slack off before the harvest or cheat him afterwards, but he figured he had a decent chance of getting the better of Besant at that game.

"Lord prince?" A hesitant touch on his arm: it was the serf in whose house he'd fought. "I want to thank you, lord prince. Weren't for you, reckon that hideous thing would've et Arabel or me or maybe the both of us."

"Pruanz is right," the woman beside the peasant said. "Thank you."

"Can't have my villagers eaten," Gerin said gravely. "They never work as well afterwards."

Rihwin would have smiled at the joke, or at least recognized that it was one. It flew past Pruanz and Arabel, a clean miss. "Words, they're cheap," Pruanz said. "Want to give you something better, show we really mean what we say."

"Pruanz is right," Arabel said. "You come back with me to the house, I'll make you feel as good as I know how." Even in darkness, he saw her twitch her hips at him.

"Lord prince, she's lively," Pruanz said. "You'll like what she does."

Gerin looked from one of them to the other. They meant it. He sighed. He'd taken his pleasure with peasant women a good many times, but he didn't feel like it now, not with Selatre waiting for him back at the keep. As gently as he could, he said, "I don't want to take your wife from you, Pruanz. I was just doing as a liege lord should, and I have a lady of my own."

Pruanz didn't answer, but Arabel did, indignantly: "Well! I like that! What does she have that I don't?" She rubbed herself against the Fox. By the feel of her, she did indeed possess all female prerequisites.

He was embarrassed enough to wish he'd left her and her husband in the hut to be devoured. He managed to free his arm from Arabel and said to Pruanz, "The best way for the two of you to show you're glad you're alive is to bed each other."

Arabel let out a loud, scornful sniff. "Well! Maybe I should leave you to your fancy lady, lord prince, though I don't suppose she gets much use out of you, neither."

"Arabel!" Pruanz hissed. "That's no way to talk to him what saved us."

"And who saved him, smashing a jug over that horrible thing's head?" she retorted. "I expect that means you saved me, too." She all but dragged her husband back toward their hut. Gerin suspected his suggestion was about to be fulfilled, even if he'd given it to the wrong one of the pair.

He gathered up his troopers. They didn't have torches for the walk back to Fox Keep, but the ghosts were fairly quiet. Why not? he thought as he neared the drawbridge-the night spirits were no doubt battening on the new gift of blood they'd just received from the dead peasants and monsters.

Some of the warriors went off to bed right away. Others paused in the great hall for a jack of ale-or several jacks of ale-before they slept. After Gerin had put his armor and the bow he'd recovered back on their pegs, Van planted an elbow in his ribs, hard enough to make him stagger. "Fox, that's twice now lately you've turned it down when you had the chance to take some," he said. "You must be getting old."

"Oh, you heard that, did you?" Gerin looked up his nose at his taller friend, who stood there chuckling. "If you want to get much older, you'd be wise to tend to your own affairs and leave mine-or the lack of them-to me."

"Affairs, forsooth." Van drained his drinking jack, poured it full, drained it again. Then he headed for the stairs, a fixed expression on his face. For his sake, Gerin hoped Fand was in, or could be cajoled into, the mood. If she wasn't, or couldn't, she'd throw things.

"That's the closest they've come to here," Drago the Bear said, yawning. "I don't like it, not even a little bit." By his matter-offact tone, he might have been talking of a hot, sticky summer's day.

"I don't like it, either," Gerin answered. "I'm stretched far too wide-seems that's all I say lately. Men and cars off in Schild's holding, more of them down in the south fighting Bevon and his bastard boys-"

"They were born in wedlock, far as I know," said Drago, who could sometimes get the letter and miss the spirit.

"They're bastards all the same," Gerin said. "Lining up with the Trokmoi is bad enough, but anyone who lines up with the monsters deserves whatever happens to him. I intend to happen to Bevon and Bevonis and Bevion, but while I'm dealing with them, I can't be dealing with Adiatunnus and his monster friends. And if my men can't push Bevon off the Elabon Way, and if Aragis' troopers fail too, what then? I can't see anything-except us losing the war, I mean."

"Never happen," Drago said, and fell asleep at the table, his head in his hands.

Gerin wished he had his vassal's confidence-and naivete. He knew only too well how easy losing the war would be; his nimble imagination, usually an asset, betrayed him with images of blood and defeat and treachery. So many ways things could go wrong. What he had trouble coming up with was ways they could go right.

He emptied his own drinking jack and went upstairs himself. He opened the door to his bedchamber as quietly as he could, expecting Selatre to be asleep. But he found the lamp lit and her sitting up in bed waiting for him. She wasn't spending the time idly, either; she'd gone down the hall to the library and fetched back a codex to read until he returned. She put it down and said, "Biton and the other gods be praised that you're all right. Every time you go out to fight now-"

"Not a scratch," he said, turning to bar the door. "We hurt the monsters worse than they hurt the village, so that's-well, not all right, but better than it might have been." He didn't want to talk about the skirmish; all he wanted to do was forget it. "What do you have there?"

She flipped back to the first leaf of parchment. "On the Motions of the Moons, by one Volatin of Elabon. It was the first volume I saw in the library, the reason being that you left it out on the table there instead of returning it to its proper niche." She fixed him with the severe look of a librarian whose sense of order had been transgressed.

"I'm sorry," he said; rather to his surprise, he found himself meaning it. "So you're trying Volatin, are you? What do you make of him?"

"Not much, I'm afraid," she admitted. "Endless numbers and curious signs you didn't teach me and other obscurities and oddments. What do they all mean?"

"They mean that if I'd looked through his book five years ago I'd have known the werenight was coming, for he showed it beyond doubt in those columns of numbers. But I just thought of the book as a curiosity I'd brought back from the City of Elabon, and so it sat idle and useless on my shelf." He scowled in self-reproach.

"What could you have done about the werenight had you known of it?" Selatre asked.

"Given that I was traveling when it happened, probably nothing," he said. "But it's made me pay close attention to the phases of the moons ever since. Ten-no, eleven-days from now, Math will be full, the day after that Elleb and Nothos, and the day after that Tiwaz. It's not quite a dreadful werenight like the one we had before-from what Volatin says, those come less than once in a thousand years. But men with a were streak in them will come closer to changing then than on any other night for a long time to come. It's-"

"-One more thing to worry about," Selatre finished for him.

He stared at her in surprise and delight. "Well, well," he said. " I didn't know you spoke my language."

"I'm learning," she said.

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