Prince of the North

by Turtledove, Harry

  “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 watch tower 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 l’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 lied—but 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. H
e 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.”