Prince of the North

by Turtledove, Harry

  Gerin waved several chariots with him, trying to get between the Trokmoi and the haven they sought. Bad luck dogged the effort. An arrow made one of the Elabonian drivers drop the reins, and the horses, freed from control, chose to run in just the wrong direction. A pair of monsters sprang into another chariot; the mad fight that ensued there kept the car from going as he’d hoped it would. He never did find out why a third car failed to follow, but it did.

  That left him with … not enough. The Trokmoi did not have to slow down much to get around the handful of chariots with which he tried to block their path, and then he was the one in danger of being cut off and surrounded. Cursing, he shouted to Raffo, “We can’t go back, so we’d best go on. Forward!”

  Like an apple seed squeezed out from between thumb and forefinger, the Fox and his followers fought their way free from the far side of the fleeing Trokmê force. Now he was on the right wing of the attack, and most of his vassals on the left. He’d foretold that things would get mixed up in the fight: being of an uncommonly orderly turn of mind, though, he hadn’t expected the mixing to include himself.

  He still had arrows left, and shot them at the retreating Trokmoi. Some of the woodsrunners had their cars pounding down the narrow lanes between their homes. “Uh-oh,” Van said. “Are you sure we want to go after ’em in there, Fox?”

  Whenever Van urged caution, he had to be taken seriously. “Looks like a good way to get chewed to bits, doesn’t it?” Gerin said after he’d taken a long look at the situation.

  “Doesn’t it just?” Van agreed. “We’ll get a good many of ’em, and do the rest real harm, if we set the place afire. But going in there after the woodsrunners, you ask me, that’s putting your prong on the block for the chopper.”

  Had Gerin been undecided before, the wince from that figure of speech would have been plenty to make up his mind. He waved his arms and shouted for his men to hold up and ply the Trokmê village with fire arrows. A good many Trokmoi, though, were thundering into the village between him and his vassals, so only a few of those vassals heard. And, while he was supposed to be in command of Aragis’ men as well, they ignored him when he tried to keep them from pursuing the Trokmoi.

  “Now what, lord prince?” Raffo asked as the chariots streamed past.

  Gerin looked at Van. The outlander’s broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. The Fox scowled. The only thing he could do that would let him keep his prestige among the Elabonian warriors was also the thing he’d just dismissed as stupid. “Go on,” he shouted to Raffo. “If that’s where the fight is, that’s where we have to go.”

  “Aye, lord prince,” Raffo said, and cracked the whip over the horses’ backs.

  It was as bad as Van had predicted, as bad as Gerin had thought it would be. Foundered chariots blocked several of the village lanes, robbing the Fox’s force of mobility, the essence of chariotry. Some of the Trokmoi fought afoot, side by side with the monsters. Other men ran into the houses and shot arrows at the Elabonians from windows and doors, ducking back into cover after they’d shot.

  And quite as fierce as the men were the Trokmê women. It was like fighting dozens of berserk Fands. They screamed and shouted. Under their pale, freckled skins, their faces turned crimson with fury and the veins stood out like cords on their necks and foreheads. Some threw stones; others used bows and swords like their men. They weren’t merely unnerving; they were deadly dangerous.

  “Back, curse it! Back and out!” Gerin shouted, again and again. “We’ll throw everything away if we get stuck in this kind of fighting. Out and back!”

  Little by little, his men and Aragis’ began to heed him. But pulling out of the battle was harder than getting into it had been. Turning a chariot around in the crowded, bloody alleyways of the village was anything but easy; too often, it was next to impossible. Gerin wondered if going forward would have cost less than the withdrawal did.

  A lot of the chariots had lost the firepots with which they’d begun the day’s fighting. Still, before long, fire arrows sent trails of smoke through the air as they arced toward the thatched roofs of the Trokmê cottages. The weather had been dry. Before long, the straw on the roofs was blazing.

  More chariots rampaged through the fields outside the village, wrecking the crops that still stood after the battle had gone through them. Through thickening smoke, Gerin saw Trokmoi fleeing into Adiatunnus’ keep.

  “Do you aim to lay siege to ’em?” Aragis the Archer asked. The grand duke’s helmet was dented, maybe by a stone. The edge of the helm had cut him above one eye; when he healed, he’d have a scar like Gerin’s.

  “We can’t take the keep by storm, however much I wish we could,” Gerin answered. “We don’t have the numbers, we don’t have the ladders, and they’d be fighting for their lives. We can’t starve them out, either. Adiatunnus will have more in his storerooms and cellars than we can draw from the countryside. We can send in fire arrows and hope to start a big blaze, but that’s just a matter of luck.”

  “Aye, but we should try it,” Aragis said. Nonetheless, he showed relief that Gerin did not intend to linger in Adiatunnus’ country.

  The Fox understood that. “You’ll want to campaign against the monsters in your own lands as soon as may be, won’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact, that’s just what’s in my mind,” Aragis said. “Harvest won’t wait forever, and I’d like the woods cleared of those creatures before then … if that can be done. I’d not care to harm your campaign by pulling back from here too soon, but—”

  But I will, if you don’t pull back on your own hook soon enough to suit me. Aragis didn’t say it—Gerin gave him credit for being a good ally, a better one than the Fox had expected—but he thought it very loudly.

  “If it suite you, we’ll spend the rest of the afternoon lobbing fire arrows into the keep in the hope of sending it all up in smoke, and then—then we’ll withdraw,” Gerin said. “We’ll ravage more of Adiatunnus’ lands as we go. By your leave, we’ll stop at Fox Keep for a few days, to let me set up the defenses of my own holding while I’m in the south, and then I’ll meet my end of the bargain.”

  “Couldn’t ask for fairer than that,” Aragis said, though his eyes argued that any departure later than yesterday, or perhaps the day before, was too late. But again, he held his peace; he recognized necessity, and recognized that against it any man struggled in vain.

  The charioteers rode rings around Adiatunnus’ keep, howling and shouting louder than the Trokmoi on the walls as they sent more fire arrows smoking through the air. Up on the walls of the keep with the woodsrunners were several monsters. Gerin hoped they and the Trokmoi would quarrel in the tight quarters, but had no way to make that happen.

  Two or three times, thin columns of black smoke rose from within the keep. Whenever they did, Gerin’s men, and Aragis’ too, cheered themselves hoarse. But each time, the smoke thinned, paled, died. At last, as the sun sank ever lower in the west, the Fox called off the attack. He and his followers drew off toward the northeast, back in the direction from which they had come.

  Wounded horses and men and monsters still thrashed and groaned and screamed on the battlefield. Now and again, an Elabonian chariot would halt so its crew could cut the throat of a horse or a monster or a Trokmê, or so the troopers could haul an injured comrade into their car and do for him what they could once they stopped to camp. Some of the injured cried out louder in the jouncing chariots than they had lying on the ground. Their moans made Gerin grind his teeth, but all he could do was keep on.

  “One thing,” Van said as they entered the woods from which they’d emerged to fight: “we won’t have to offer much in the way of sacrifice to the ghosts tonight.”

  “That’s so,” Gerin agreed. “We gave them blood aplenty today. They’ll buzz round the bodies the whole night long, like so many great carrion flies round a carcass—gloating, I suppose, that all those brave men joined their cold and gloomy world.”

  The chariots came out of the w
oods bare minutes before sunset Gerin led them out into the middle of a broad meadow. “We stop here,” he declared. “Van, I leave it to you to get the first fire going.” He told off parties to go back to the forest and chop down enough wood to keep the fires blazing all through the night. Nothos would rise with a third of the night already passed, and the other three moons later still.

  That accomplished, the Fox turned his hand to giving the wounded what help he could. As always in the aftermath of battle, he was reminded how pitifully little that was. He splashed ale on cuts to help keep them from going bad, set and splinted broken bones, sewed up a few gaping gashes with thread of wool or sinew, bandaged men who had ignored their hurts in the heat of action. None of what he did brought much immediate relief from pain, although some of it, he made himself remember, would do good in the long run.

  More horses were hurt, too. He helped the drivers doctor them when he was done with the men. The men, at least, had some idea why they’d been hurt. The horses’ big brown eyes were full of uncomprehended suffering.

  He didn’t know who’d ordered it, but the men had made the same sort of circle of fires they’d built the night before. He chose warriors who’d slept through the previous night undisturbed for sentry duty, and made himself one of them. He was tired down to the marrow of his bones, but so was everyone else.

  “Did we win?” Van asked as he replaced the Fox for midwatch. “Did we do all you wanted done?”

  “Aye, we won,” Gerin said, yawning. “Did we do enough?” Yawning again, he shook his head and made for his bedroll.

  “Wait, Captain.” Van called him back. The outlander pointed to the woods, from which monsters were coming forth.

  Sentries’ shouts roused the camp. Swearing, men snatched at weapons and armor. Gerin found his sword in his hand. It wasn’t magic; he just didn’t remember drawing the weapon.

  The monsters approached to the edge of bowshot, but no closer. “There aren’t that many of them,” Gerin remarked as the creatures began a chorus of their dreadful shrieks. Shriek they did, but they made no move to attack. After a while, the Fox said, “I think they’re trying to put us in fear, nothing else but. A plague on ’em, says I. No matter how they scream, I’m going to get some sleep.” He raised his voice: “All save the sentries, rest while you can. We’ll have warning enough if they truly aim to come after us.”

  He rolled himself up in his blanket. The monsters’ hideous outcry kept him awake a little longer than he would have been otherwise, but not much. Not even Mavrix the god of wine appearing before him would have kept him awake for long, he thought as sleep swallowed him.

  He woke wondering why he’d worried about Mavrix, but shook his head at the pointlessness of that: sleepy minds did strange things, and there was no more to say about it. The monsters were gone. That didn’t surprise him; with sunrise, the Elabonians could have started shooting at them with good hopes of scoring hits.

  Not all the warriors had been able to sleep. Some of them shambled about as if barely alive. How they’d be after another day in the chariot was something about which the Fox tried not to think.

  No help for it. After breaking their fast on hard bread and sausage and ale, they rolled northeast, back toward the Fox’s holding. Knowing no large force lay directly ahead of them, they spread out widely over the countryside, doing as much damage to Adiatunnus’ lands and villages and crops as they could with fire and their horses’ hooves and the wheels of their chariots.

  A victory, but not a perfect one. Gerin had hoped to smash Adiatunnus utterly; he’d hurt the Trokmê chieftain, literally and metaphorically, but not enough to seize much of his territory with any assurance of keeping it. Maybe the monsters had learned not to attack large bands of armed and armored men, but they hadn’t been exterminated—and Adiatunnus’ lands still gave them haven.

  “Not enough,” Gerin said under his breath. Van glanced over to him, but did not venture to reply.

  Some of Gerin’s vassals peeled off from the main force as they reentered his territory, off to their own castles and to protect their own villages. Most, though, stayed on the road to Fox Keep. Before long, they’d be riding south to help Aragis and fulfill Gerin’s part of the bargain.

  He’d wondered if the serfs would ask him whether he’d rid their villages of the monsters for good, and dreaded having to tell them no. Then the army passed through a village the creatures had attacked while he was deep in Adiatunnus’ territory. That made him feel worse. He’d hurt the Trokmoi and the monsters, but he’d been mad to think he could root them out with a single victory.

  He also wondered how much he and his men would accomplish down in the holding of Aragis the Archer. He feared it would be less than Aragis hoped, but kept that fear to himself. Whatever the grand duke’s misgivings, he’d come north. The Fox saw no way to keep from reciprocating, not if he wanted to keep his good name.

  The return to Castle Fox was subdued. The victory the army had won did not outweigh the men who would not come back, the complete triumph that had eluded the Elabonians.

  Seeing Selatre again, squeezing her to him, was wonderful, but she quickly sensed that, past having come home alive and unhurt, Gerin had little to celebrate. That made her shrink back into herself, so that she seemed to stand aloof from the chaos in the stables although she was in the middle of it.

  Van and Fand got into a screaming fight over what business the outlander had had going off to fight the Trokmoi. He clapped a hand to his forehead and bellowed, “You tell me not to tangle with them when the only reason you’re here is that you stabbed the last woodsrunner daft enough to take you into his bed?”

  “Aye, I did that, and I had the right of it, too, for he was of my own folk, for all that he was an evil-natured spalpeen to boot,” she said. “But you, now, you’re the Fox’s friend, but you’re after being my lover. So you see!”

  Van shook his head—he didn’t see. Gerin didn’t see, either. If being Fand’s lover turned Van into some sort of honorary Trokmê, by her own argument that gave him a special right to go to war against the woodsrunners. Fand was seldom long on logic; the gods seemed to have given her extra helpings of all the passions instead.

  Duren hopped around, saying, “May I go fight too next time, Father? May I, please?”

  “You’re raising a warrior there,” Aragis said approvingly.

  “So I am,” Gerin answered. He wasn’t altogether pleased. Aye, any holding on the frontier—any holding in the northlands—needed a warrior at its head. But he hoped he would also be able to raise a civilized man, lest barbarism seize all the land between the Niffet and the Kirs and hold it for centuries to come.

  The castle cooks dished out mutton and pork and bread and ale. The warriors ate and sought their bedrolls. Gerin stayed down in the great hall, hashing over the fight, till Duren fell asleep beside him. Then, as he had a few nights before, he carried his son upstairs to his bedchamber.

  When he went back out into the hall, he found Selatre waiting there. She said, “If you were so worn you’d gone to bed with your son, I’d have walked back to my room, but since you’re not—”

  He caught her to him. “Thank you for being here when things don’t look as good as they might.” Even as he spoke the words, he realized he was doing his best to put a good face on the campaign from which he’d just returned. Things looked bloody awful.

  Selatre ignored all that. She said, “Don’t be foolish. If you hadn’t been there for me, I’d be dead. Come on.” She led him back to her chamber.

  He took her with something approaching desperation. He hoped she read it as passion, but she wasn’t one to be easily deceived. That she stayed by him when he needed her most was a greater gift than any other she could have given him.

  Afterwards, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. When he jerked awake, Nothos’ light streamed through the window, but not yet golden Math’s: past midnight, then, but not far past. Beside him, Selatre was also sitting bolt upright.
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br />   “Something is amiss,” she said. Her voice sent chills through him. For the first time in many days, she sounded like the Sibyl at Ikos, not the woman he’d come to love.

  But no matter how she sounded, she was right. “I heard it, too,” Gerin said. He stopped, confused. “Heard it? Felt it? All’s quiet now. But—” He got out of bed and started to dress.

  So did she. “I don’t know what it was. I thought for a moment Biton touched me.” She shook her head. “I was wrong, but it was more than a dream. I know that. And if it woke you, too …”

  “We’d better find out what it was.” Gerin held his sword in his left hand. How much good the blade would do against whatever had roused him and Selatre, he had no idea, but it couldn’t hurt.

  All seemed quiet in Fox Keep as he and Selatre tiptoed down the hall to the stairs. Van’s snores pierced the door to Fand’s chamber. Gerin smiled for a moment at that, but his lips could not hold their upward curve. A few warriors had fallen asleep in the great hall, maybe too drunk to seek their proper beds. Gerin and Selatre walked by. He looked this way and that, shook his head in the same confusion Selatre had shown. Whatever was wrong, it lay outside the castle proper. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.

  Outside, sentries paced their rounds up on the palisade. The courtyard seemed as still as the keep. Gerin began to wonder if worry and nerves hadn’t played tricks on Selatre and him at the same time. Then he heard footfalls—slow, erratic footfalls—coming up from the stables toward the entrance to the great hall.

  “Stay here,” he whispered to Selatre, but when he trotted round to the side of the keep to see who—or what—approached, she followed. She was not so close to him as to cramp him if he had to fight, so he bit down his annoyance and kept quiet.

  He rounded the corner and stopped dead with a strangled snort of laughter. No wonder the footfalls had been as they were: here came Rihwin, gloriously drunk. Gerin wondered how Rihwin managed to keep up his footfalls without falling himself. His face bore a look of intense concentration, as if putting one foot in front of the other took everything he had in him. It probably did.