He threw the door wide. But the load he’d planned to dump on Fabors’ head turned into a coughing fit, for Fabors wasn’t standing out there. Selatre was.
Listening to him splutter, she asked, “Are you all right?” in tones of real concern. When he managed a nod, she said, “Well then, shall we go on from where we were, uh, interrupted this afternoon?”
“Are you sure?” he asked; she nodded in turn. He went on, “I didn’t come to your chamber tonight because—” He came to a ragged stop, not sure how to go on.
“For fear I’d lost my nerve, you mean?” Selatre said.
“That’s just it,” Gerin said gratefully.
“I wondered why you stayed away,” Selatre said. “The only two things I could think of were that on the one hand and that you didn’t really want me on the other. I thought I’d better find out which it was.”
“If you don’t know the answer to that—” Gerin ran dry again. After a moment, he resumed: “If you don’t know the answer to that, I’ll just have to show you.” He took a step to one side to let Selatre come into the bedchamber. He shut the door behind her, barred it, then glanced over to the flickering lamp on the chest of drawers. “Shall I blow that out?”
“However you’d rather,” she answered after her usual grave consideration. “It certainly would have been light had we come here earlier in the day, though.”
“So it would,” he agreed. “Well, then—” Feeling foolish at echoing what she’d said a few moments before, he stepped forward, took her in his arms, and kissed her. As he’d discovered in the library, her knowledge of that portion of the game was enjoyably more than theoretical.
When their lips parted at last, she murmured, “Did you learn that in the book you were telling me of? If you did, I’d like to read it.”
“Er—no,” he answered. “And, as I said, I don’t have a copy here in Fox Keep.”
“That’s too bad,” Selatre said, quite seriously. “You really should write down what you remember of it—and what you’ve learned other places as well.” She brought her mouth toward his again.
After some long, pleasurable time, he led her over to the bed. He was sure she couldn’t be altogether ignorant of what went on between men and women—after all, she’d grown up in a peasant hut which, if it was like all the other peasant huts he’d known, would have boasted one room and in that room one bed for the whole family. But knowing how things happened and having them happen to her might be two different matters, especially when, not long before, she hadn’t been able to stand a man touching her at all, let alone in her most secret places.
She hesitated with her hands at the neck of her tunic. “Do you want me to blow out the lamp after all?” he asked.
Selatre shook her head, perhaps as much at herself as toward Gerin. Almost defiantly, she pulled the tunic up over her head, then kicked off her sandals and got out of her long wool skirt and the linen drawers she wore beneath it. Gerin had known she was well made, but hadn’t realized how well. If he stared too much, he might fluster her. The only way to keep from staring was to undress himself. He did that, quickly, and lay down on the bed.
Selatre hesitated again before joining him there. The soft straw of the mattress rustled as her weight came down on it. “Forgive me,” she said. “I am—nervous.”
“No reason you shouldn’t be, and every reason you should,” he said. “First times come only once.”
She nodded. “What did your book say we’re supposed to do next?”
“Not any one thing in particular,” he answered. “If I remember aright, it says I’m supposed to kiss you and caress you for a long time to make you easy in your mind and to help make your body ready for what we’ll do after that.” He smiled at her. “I’d want to do that anyhow.”
He embraced her, drew her to him. She started to pull back when their bare bodies met—that was touching of a different sort from what she’d known before. But she checked herself, managed a smile in return. When he kissed her, she kissed him back.
“That tickles,” she said as his tongue slid down the smooth, soft skin of her neck. Then it found the tip of her right breast. “Ah,” she murmured, a syllable all breath and no voice.
After some time, he let his mouth stray lower. The sound she made was half surprise, half pleasure. He’d forgotten about the book; he enjoyed what he was doing for its own sake.
“Oh, my,” she said a little while later. “I’d expected one surprise, but two? Is that something you brought back with you from south of the High Kirs?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” he answered. But then, who could guess what would be done in a peasant village outside of Ikos?
“Well, wherever you learned it, it’s—” She didn’t go on in words, but the pause and the delighted expression on her face said enough. After a moment, she added, “Could I do the same for you?”
“You could, but probably not for very long right now,” Gerin said. “Let’s try something else instead.” He sat up on the bed. “Here, why don’t you get onto my lap?”
She straddled him, which he hadn’t expected quite yet; she did know the theory of what they were going to do. He took himself in hand. She lowered herself onto him, slowly and cautiously. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said, and then, a heartbeat later, “Wait. There.”
“Yes,” Gerin said. “Do you want to stop? No rush here.” She shook her head. “All right, then,” he said, and took hold of her buttocks, easing her down until he was fleshed to the root—that was what the racily illustrated scroll in the City of Elabon had recommended, and it seemed to work well. “Is it all right?” he asked.
“It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would,” she said, nodding. “You were gentle. Thank you.”
He kissed her and ran his hands over her body. When he was sure she’d meant what she said, he began to move inside her, slowly, a little at a time, not hurrying at all. His left hand slid down between her legs to add to her pleasure—or perhaps to create it, as few women were likely to find full joy from coupling itself their first time.
His own pleasure built slowly. He let that happen, rather than straining to quicken it. When at last it reached its peak, it was all the more intense because of the long, unhurried climb to get there. He closed his eyes and squeezed Selatre hard against him.
There was a little blood when she slid off him, but not much. He wondered what she’d thought. Not looking at him, she said, more than half to herself, “I’m so sorry for all the Sibyls who died without ever knowing this.”
He set a hand on her bare shoulder. Instead of pulling away, she snuggled against him. He said, “I made two alliances today. This is the better one.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Oh yes.”
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 door—presumably 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’t—usually—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.
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