Whatever it was, it was dreadful going. Some small streams had climbed out of their banks, their water pouring in brown sheets across fields already sodden from the downpour. As had that first lot across which the army had come, serfs huddled in their villages, looking out with glum astonishment on the ruin of the year's crops. Gerin shuddered to think what winter would be like. The peasants were liable to end up eating grass and bark and one another. Uprisings started after years like this, among men who had nothing left to lose.
Toward evening (or so the Fox thought; by then, he seemed to have been traveling forever), the army did come across some Gradi: a double handful of the invaders were trudging, or rather squelching, across a field, oiled-leather rain capes over their heads. "There they are!" Gerin shouted. "The men whose gods are making this campaign so horrid. What do you say we pay those gods back for the grief they've given us?"
Afterwards, he didn't know whether to be glad or sorry he'd put it that way. The Gradi, spying his forces coming out of the rain at about the same time as he saw them, started running clumsily toward some trees bordering the edge of the field. The ground was mucky, but not quite so impossible as some he'd been through. That meant chariots could outdistance men afoot. His troopers cut the Gradi off from escape, then jumped down and slaughtered them, one after another. The water standing in the field was puddled here and there with red till the rain eventually diluted it and washed it away.
The fight itself wasn't what disturbed Gerin. But the savage glee both Elabonians and Trokmoi had taken in massacring the Gradi gave him pause, even though-and perhaps especially because-he'd encouraged them to do just that. Putting the best face he could on it, he told Adiatunnus, "There-you see? Every time we come on them, we beat them."
"Truth that," Adiatunnus said. "The warriors, we can beat them, sure and we can." He didn't sound happy about it, continuing, "And what good does that do us, I ask you? When the gods and goddesses are all after pissing out of the heavens down onto us, what good does killing men do?"
"If we hadn't shown we could do that, the Gradi gods and goddesses wouldn't have joined the fight against us," Gerin said.
"Are you saying that'd be better, now, or worse?" Adiatunnus asked, and splashed off before the Fox could reply.
The ghosts did not trouble the army that night, not with the fallen Gradi nearby to give them their boon of blood. But rain and sleet kept pelting down, which made the encampment as wretched as it had been the night before. Gerin wondered if Voldar would appear to him when he slept (if he slept, wet and cold as he was), but he remembered nothing after finally dropping off.
Dawn was the same misnomer it had been since the storm began. The Fox got the army moving more by refusing to believe it would not move than any other way. Exhausted, dripping men hitched exhausted, dripping horses to chariots and did their best to keep moving west against the Gradi.
Gerin would have relished a big fight that day. It would have been a focus for the anger that filled his men. But how could you fight back against a gray sky that kept pouring rain and ice on your head? You couldn't, which was precisely the problem.
"You won't make 'em go tomorrow," Van said as they slowly slogged on. "Damn me to the five hells if I know how you made 'em go today."
"They're more afraid of me than of the Gradi gods and goddesses right now," the Fox said. "They know what I can do, and they still aren't sure about them."
But by the next day it wasn't just streams out of their banks, it was rivers. And rain and sleet turned to hail and then to snow. Gerin shook a fist at the heavens, wishing he had a bow that could reach beyond them. Wishing was futile, as usual.
Shivering, teeth chattering, he gave in. "We go back," he said.
VII
Back on the eastern side of the Venien River, in territory Adiatunnus controlled, the weather was cool and rainy. No one there seemed willing to believe the tales the returning warriors told of what they had endured trying to penetrate to the heart of the Gradi power.
"Only thing I can think of," Gerin said, standing close to the fire roaring in the hearth at Adiatunnus' great hall, "is that Voldar and the rest don't hold full sway this far east. Not yet, anyhow."
Adiatunnus' long face grew even more dolorous than it had been of late when he heard the Fox name the Gradi goddess. Gerin didn't care. Defiance burned like fever in him. Maybe it was making him delirious, as fever sometimes did. He didn't care about that, either. He wanted to hit back at the Gradi any way he could, and at their deities, too.
"How will you keep 'em from stretching their sway, though?" Adiatunnus demanded. He too stood close by the fire, as if he couldn't get warm enough. The Fox understood that, for he felt the same way. "You're nobbut a man, lord prince, and a man who fights a god-or even a goddess-he loses afore he begins."
"Of course he does," Gerin answered, "if he's stupid enough to make the fight straight on. Gods are stronger than men, and they see farther than men, too. That doesn't mean they're smarter than men, though."
"And how smart d'you need to be to step on a cockroach, now?" Adiatunnus returned. "That's what you are to the gods, Fox: lord Gerin the Bug, prince of cockroaches."
"No doubt," Gerin said, annoying Adiatunnus by refusing to be annoyed himself. "But if I can get other gods angry at the ones the Gradi follow, and if I can steer them in the right direction-" Listening to himself, he could gauge how desperate he was. Playing with vipers-even the ones Van had described-was a safer business than getting involved with the gods. But if he didn't get divine aid of his own, the Gradi and their grim deities would swallow up the whole of the northlands. He felt it in his bones.
"And which gods will you summon, now?" Adiatunnus sounded both anxious and worried. "Our own, now, they willna face the ones the Gradi follow. So we've seen, to our sorrow. Is it any different with your Elabonian powers?"
"I don't know," Gerin said. That wasn't all he didn't know: he was wondering if he could make Father Dyaus pay any real attention to the affairs of the material world at all. The head of the Elabonian pantheon had swallowed up the savor of any number of fat-wrapped thighbones over the years; could he now give value for value? Gerin had taken his power for granted till he saw how Voldar supported the Gradi. Ever since, and especially since the storm, he'd wondered… and worried.
" `I don't know' isn't much to rest the hopes o' the land on," Adiatunnus said.
"If I thought you were wrong, I would say so," Gerin answered. "As a matter of fact, I don't intend to summon an Elabonian god to deal with the goddess and the gods the Gradi follow. There's a foreign god with whom I've dealt before…"
He stopped. Adiatunnus noticed him stopping. "Tell me more," the Trokm- urged. "What foreign spirit is it, now? What powers has he got?"
"Mavrix is the Sithonian god of wine and poetry and fertility and beauty," the Fox answered. "Along with Biton, he's also the god who drove the monsters back underground after the earthquake."
"A mighty god indeed," Adiatunnus said, looking impressed. "I was talking with one of those monsters, that I was, figuring ways to smash you to powder, Fox, when he softly and silently vanished away, leaving nobbut the rank smell of him behind to show he'd been no dream."
"So Diviciacus told me," Gerin said. "That was when you swore vassalage to me the first time." Adiatunnus nodded, not a bit abashed. He'd been frightened into swearing submission then, just as he had now because of the Gradi. If the danger went away, he was liable to try to reclaim his freedom of action once more, as he had a decade earlier.
What the Fox didn't tell him was that he faced the prospect of summoning Mavrix to his aid with the same enthusiasm he would have given the notion of having an arrowhead cut out of his shoulder: both were painful necessities, with the emphasis on painful. Mavrix and he had never got on well. He hadn't persuaded the Sithonian god to get rid of the monsters so much as he'd tricked him into doing it. Mavrix would just as soon have got rid of him instead-maybe sooner.
He'd survived Mavri
x once, he'd tricked him once. Could he do it again? He'd said a man could be more clever than a god. Now he was going to have his chance to prove it… if he could.
Adiatunnus found another interesting question to ask: "Is your Sithonian god truly strong enough to beat back… that goddess?" He wouldn't name Voldar. "She's no mere monster, monster though she seems."
"I don't know that, either," Gerin told him. "All I can do is try to find out." He held up a hand. "And I know what your next question is going to be: what will we do if Mavrix turns out not to be strong enough?"
He didn't answer the question. He made a production out of not answering it. Finally, Adiatunnus prodded him: "Well, what will we do then?"
"Jump off a cliff, I suppose," the Fox said. "I haven't got any better ideas right now. Have you?"
To his surprise, the Trokm- chieftain spoke up, asking, "Will you be taking all your southrons back to your own holding the now?"
"I hadn't thought about doing anything else with them," Gerin admitted. "I didn't think you'd want them on your land-they are Elabonians, after all-and I didn't think you'd want to keep feeding them any longer than you had to. Why? Am I wrong?"
Adiatunnus hesitated, but at last, looking shamefaced, said, "I wouldn't mind your leaving a couple of hundred behind for the sake of watching the line of the Venien and fighting alongside us should the Gradi be after trying to force it. Indeed, I ask that, Fox, as your vassal I do."
"You mean it," Gerin said in slow wonder. His expression unhappier than ever, Adiatunnus nodded. The Fox scratched his head. "Why, after spending so many years trying to kill every Elabonian you could find?"
"Because if it's us by our lonesome and the Gradi coming over the river and all, we'll lose," Adiatunnus answered bleakly. "Summat'll go wrong, same as it always does when the shindy's 'twixt us and the Gradi. You southrons, though, you can stand up to 'em. With my own eyes I saw it. And so-"
Gerin slapped him on the shoulder. "For that, I'll leave men behind. A lord protects his vassals, or else he doesn't stay their lord long-or deserve to. Would it suit you if I left Widin Simrin's son to command my men?"
"We're all your men now, Fox-however little we like it," Adiatunnus said with a wry grin. "Aye, Widin pleases to lead the Elabonians. I know his worth-I should, the trouble he's given me. But will he follow my lead when it's a matter of southrons and Trokmoi together?"
"Without me here?" Gerin rubbed his chin. "That seems fair. There'll be more of your men here than mine." He wondered if Adiatunnus really wanted him to leave a good chunk of his army behind so the woodsrunners could fall on it. He didn't believe that, though, not after their aborted campaign against the Gradi. Any man who feared him more than Voldar was a fool, and Adiatunnus didn't qualify there.
The Trokm- said, "I hope your foreign god knows too little of these Gradi to be in fear of 'em."
Mavrix was, or could be, a great coward. The Fox didn't tell that to Adiatunnus.
* * *
"There it is." Gerin breathed a great sigh of relief. Fox Keep still stood; the land around it hadn't been disturbed since the last Gradi raid. He thought he would have heard of any catastrophe as he traveled through his own holding, but you could never be sure. Sometimes the only way you found news was by stumbling over it.
The lookout in the watchtower was alert. Gerin heard, thin in the distance, the horn call he blew to alert the garrison to the approach of the army. Armed men popped up on the palisade with commendable speed.
"Ride out ahead," the Fox said, tapping Duren on the shoulder. "We'll let them know we came through in one piece." He'd hoped to be coming back in triumph. That hadn't happened. He'd feared coming back in defeat, perhaps with a force of fierce Gradi in pursuit. That hadn't happened, either. Had he won, then, or had he lost? If he didn't know himself, how was he supposed to tell anybody else?
Someone up on the wall shouted, "It's the Fox!" The warriors cheered. They didn't know what he'd done, any more than he knew what had gone on here. As he had been after the earthquake that toppled Biton's shrine, he was on the outermost ripple of spreading news.
"All well, lord prince?" Rihwin the Fox called down to him.
"All well-enough," Gerin answered. "And you? And the keep? And the holding? How has the weather been?"
"You go off to war and you ask about the weather?" Rihwin demanded. When Gerin only nodded, the southern noble who'd chosen to come to the northlands spread his hands in confusion. At last, pierced by his overlord's stare, he answered, "Weather's not been bad. On the cool side, and more rain than I remember most summers, but not bad. Why? How was the weather farther west?"
"Well, let's see-how do I put it?" Gerin mused. "If it weren't for the sleet's getting me prepared, I would have liked the hail even less than I did." That drew all the incredulous comments he'd thought it would. He waved impatiently. "Let down the drawbridge and we'll tell you what went on."
The drawbridge lowered. Duren drove the chariot into the keep. The rest of the force followed. Questions rained down on them: "Did we beat the Gradi?" "Did the Gradi beat us?" "Is Adiatunnus ally or traitor?" "Will we go back out on campaign again this season?"
Gerin answered abstractedly, for Selatre was waiting for him in the courtyard with their children. Seeing her and them reminded Gerin he had indeed come home. Seeing her also reminded him she'd been the intimate of a god, even if Biton was in many ways Mavrix's opposite. He wanted to talk with her before summoning-or trying to summon; you never could tell with gods-the Sithonian deity.
Before he could talk with his wife, though, he had to keep on answering questions and to deal with what seemed like everything that had happened at Fox Keep while he was away on campaign. Not for the first time, he wondered how anything important ever got done when people had to wade through so many trivia first.
At last, those who'd stayed behind stopped asking questions, at least of him. He'd settled arguments, handed down judgments, put off handing down others till he found out more, confirmed almost everything Rihwin and Selatre had done in his name while he was gone, and, somewhere along the way, acquired a couple of juicy beef ribs and a jack of ale. He ate gratefully: having your mouth full was a good excuse for not saying anything for a while.
When he finally did get the chance to speak of what he intended to do, Selatre nodded gravely. "A risky course, but one I think we have to take if the danger from the Gradi and their gods is as great as you say," was her verdict.
"Exactly what I thought," the Fox said, which was pleasing but not surprising; over the past eleven years, he'd come to see that his mind and Selatre's worked in ways very much alike-and ways that, as time went on, grew more alike as they went on living and planning together.
Rihwin the Fox was all excitement. "A chance to work with gods!" he burbled. "A chance to match wits with the immortals, to manipulate forces far stronger than we even dream of being, to-"
"— Get killed in nasty ways or have other unpleasant things happen to us," Gerin finished for him. "Or don't you remember why you can't work magic any more? You were trying to manipulate Mavrix then, too, as I recall."
Rihwin had the integrity to look embarrassed. All he'd done-a small thing, really-was ask Mavrix to turn some wine that had soured into vinegar back into something worth drinking once more. But the Sithonian god, already piqued at Gerin for reasons of his own, had not only not fixed the wine but had robbed Rihwin of his sorcerous talent to keep from being bothered by him any more in the future. If you went through rapids in a canoe and came out the other side alive and unhurt, you hadn't manipulated them, you'd just survived. You forgot the difference at your peril.
"Why should Mavrix concern himself with Voldar and the other Gradi gods?" Selatre asked. "What are they doing that he'll particularly loathe?"
"For one thing, they're making the part of the northlands the Gradi have seized as cold and bleak as the Gradi homeland," Gerin answered, glad to marshal arguments for his wife so he'd have them ready when he had to give
them to the god. "For another, they'll kill or torment those who don't bow down to them. Sithonians and their gods are fond of freedom; one of the things they don't like about us Elabonians is that we give our rulers too loose a rein."
"Voldar doesn't sound as if she likes the idea of wine," Rihwin remarked.
"Yes, I think you're right about that," Gerin said. "It would be more useful, though, if we could get wine in the northlands these days. The winters are too hard to let the vines live even now. If the Gradi and their gods settle down to stay, even the summers will be too cold." He shivered, remembering the unnatural freezing storm through which he'd tried to lead his army.
Rihwin's mobile features assumed a comically exaggerated expression of longing. "How I miss the sweet grape!" he cried, sighing long and deep like a minstrel with a song of unrequited love.
"You miss finding a great deal of trouble because you miss the sweet grape," Selatre pointed out.
Now Rihwin looked indignant, an expression perhaps not altogether assumed. "My lady," he said with a low bow, "I regret to have to offer the opinion that your judgments have been clouded by overlong association with that lout there." He pointed to his fellow Fox.
"Heh," Gerin said. "She's right, Rihwin, and you know it bloody well. Oh, you can drink yourself stupid with ale as easily as you can with wine, but you never got Baivers' dander up at you. Whenever you touch wine, you seem to bump up against Mavrix, and when you bump up against the lord of the sweet grape, horrible things happen."
"They aren't always horrible," Rihwin insisted. "Without Mavrix, we might never have been rid of the monsters."
"True," Gerin admitted, "but getting rid of them wasn't your doing, and the odds were all too good we'd end up getting rid of ourselves instead." He paused. "And speaking of monsters, how have Geroge and Tharma been?"
"Except for eating as much apiece as any three people I could name, they've been fine," Rihwin answered, and Selatre nodded agreement. "If your vassals and your serfs gave as little trouble, your holding would be easier to run."
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