Before slicing up the heart, Van kicked the pile of guts away from the fire. He frowned a little. “Not so many flies on ’em as I’d’ve thought.”
“It’s been a cool spring. That has something to do with it,” Gerin said. Then he too frowned. Sometimes the most innocent remark, when you took it the wrong way—or maybe the right one—led to fresh ideas … and fresh worries. “Is it a cool spring because that’s how it happens to be, or is it a cool spring because the gods of the Gradi are getting a toehold here and want it to be cool?”
“You have a cheerful way of looking at things, don’t you, Fox?” Van handed him a piece of the meat he’d just cut. “Here, get some fresh heart in you.”
Gerin snorted. “You have been at Fox Keep a goodish while, haven’t you? When you first got here, you never would have made a joke like that.”
“See how you’ve corrupted me?” the outlander said. “Bad jokes, staying in one place for years at a time, having brats and knowing it—I probably sired some out on the road, but I never stayed in one place long enough to find out. It’s a strange life settled folk live.”
“All what you’re used to,” Gerin said, “and by now you’ve been here long enough to be used to this.”
He glanced over to Geroge and Tharma. Sometimes the two of them—especially Geroge—would closely follow human conversation. Humans were all they knew, and they wanted to fit in as best they could. Today, though, both of them seemed more intent on the roasting quarters of heart than on what Gerin was saying. He didn’t let that bother him as much as he would have a few years before. He’d done a better job of making them into more or less human beings than he’d ever expected.
No. He’d made them into more or less human children. He still had no proof their true essence would stay hidden as they matured. He still had no idea what to do with them as they did mature, either. The just thing would be to let them grow up as if they were people, and to treat them as such unless and until they gave him some reason to do otherwise. The safe thing would be to put them out of the way before he had to do it.
He took his piece of roasted heart off the fire, blew on it, and took a bite. The meat was tough and chewy, and he lacked the teeth to slice effortlessly through it as Geroge and Tharma had. He sighed. The safest thing would have been to put them out of the way as soon as they came into his hands. He hadn’t done that then, fearing the hands of the gods, not his own, had true control over their fate. He still feared that now. He’d do nothing—except worry.
Van’s teeth were merely human, but he made short work of his chunk of deer heart. He licked his fingers and wiped them clean on the grass, then dug around with a fingernail to rout out a piece of meat stuck somewhere in the back of his mouth. “That hit the spot,” he said. “Enough to make my belly happy, not so much that I won’t be able to enjoy myself come supper.”
“The way you eat, the only thing that amazes me is that you’re not as wide as you are tall,” Gerin said.
Van looked down at himself. “I am thicker through the middle than I used to be, I think. If I get too much thicker, I won’t be able to fit into my corselet, and then what will I do?”
“Save it for Kor,” Gerin answered, “unless Maeva takes it before he has the chance.”
“You had that thought run through your head too, eh?” Van started to laugh, but quickly swallowed his mirth. “It could happen, I suppose. There’s not a boy her age can match her, and she’s wild for weapons, too. Whether that’ll still be so once she sprouts breasts and hips—the gods may know, but I don’t. She’ll not be one of the common herd of women any which way; so much I’ll say already.”
“No,” the Fox agreed. In musing tones, he went on, “I wonder, now: is there any such thing as ‘the common herd of women,’ once you come to know ’em? Selatre wouldn’t fit there, nor Fand, the gods know”—he and Van both chuckled, each a little nervously—“nor Elise, either, thinking back.”
“You seldom speak of her,” Van said. He scratched at his beard. “To a shepherd, I suppose, each of his sheep is special, even if they’re nothing but bleating balls of wool to the likes of you or me.”
“I know that’s so,” Gerin said, warming to the discussion. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? The better you know the members of a class, the less typical of the class they seem. Does that mean there really isn’t any such thing as ‘the common herd of women’?”
“Don’t know if I’d go so far,” Van answered. “Next thing, you’ll be saying there’s no such thing as a common grain of sand or a common stalk of wheat, when any fool can see there is.”
“A lot of times, the things any fool can see are the things only a fool would believe,” Gerin said. “If you looked hard enough, I daresay you could find differences between grains of sand or stalks of wheat.”
“Oh, you could, maybe,” Van allowed, “but why would you bother?”
A question like that, intended to dismiss a subject, often started Gerin thinking harder. So here; he said, “I can’t tell you why you might want to know one grain of sand from another, but if you could tell which stalk of wheat would yield twice as much as the others, wouldn’t you want to do that?”
“You have me, Fox,” his friend said. “If I could do that, I would. I can’t, not by looking. Can you?”
“No, though I wish I could.” Gerin paused. “I wonder if I could make a magic to see that. Maybe with barley, not wheat: Baivers god of barley knows I’ve never scanted him, and he might lend me aid. That would be a sorcery worth taking risks for, if I could bring it off.”
He wondered if he knew enough, or could learn enough here in the northlands, even to plan such a spell. Or rather, he started to wonder; Geroge’s formidable yawn distracted him. The monster said, “I’m bored, sitting around here. Can we go back to the keep now?”
“Aye, we can.” Gerin climbed to his feet. “In fact, we’d better, so we’re there before sunset. With the deer, we have enough for a decent offering for the ghosts, but you don’t want to use such things if you don’t have to.”
They tied the carcass to a sapling, which they took turns shouldering by pairs as they carried it to the chariot waiting at the edge of the woods. The car had been crowded for four, and was all the more crowded for four plus a gutted deer, but Fox Keep wasn’t far.
When they got back, a stranger waited in the courtyard. No, not quite a stranger; after a moment, Gerin identified him: “You’re Authari Broken-Tooth, aren’t you? One of Ricolf the Red’s vassals?”
“Your memory is good, lord prince,” the newcomer said, bowing. “I am Authari.” When he opened his mouth to speak, you could see the front tooth that gave him his sobriquet. “But I am not Ricolf the Red’s vassal. I came here to tell you, Ricolf has died.”
IV
“But he can’t have done that,” Gerin exclaimed: looking back on it, surely one of the more foolish things he’d ever said. Authari was polite enough not to point that out; Authari, whatever else he was, was usually polite. Gerin recovered his wits and went on, “I am in your debt for bringing me the news. You will, of course, stay the night and sup with me.”
“I will, lord prince, and thank you,” Authari said, bowing again. “It happened four days ago now. He was drinking a cup of ale when he said he had a headache. The cup fell out of his hand and he slid off the bench. He never woke up again, and half a day later he was dead.”
“Worse ways to go,” the Fox remarked, and Authari nodded. Like most men, both of them had seen a great many worse ways. But that was not the point of this visit, and Gerin knew it. “The succession to his barony—”
Authari coughed. “Just so, lord prince: the succession to his barony. Several of Ricolf’s vassals banded together and bade me tell you—”
“Tell me what?” Gerin said, his voice deceptively mild. “What have you and your fellow vassals of Ricolf’s to tell me? In law, his heir is surely my son Duren, as he has no sons of his own living.”
“Of course you would,” Gerin said, mildly still. “That way, when, a year and a half down the line, the rest of you decide you don’t care for whichever of your number you’ve chosen, you can go to war against him with a clear conscience and make his holding as much a mess as Bevon’s ever was.”
“You misunderstand,” Authari said in hurt tones. “That is not our concern at all. Our fear is having foisted upon us a youth who does not know the holding.”
Gerin felt his patience leaking away like grains of sand—whether individually identifiable or not—between his fingers. “Your concern is, if Duren takes over Ricolf’s holding, you’ll all have to become my vassals as well as his. There—now it’s out in the open.”
“So it is.” Authari sounded relieved—he hadn’t had to come right out and say it himself. “No one denies you’re a good man, lord prince, but we who served Ricolf value our freedom, as true men must.”
“You value freedom even more than law, seems to me,” Gerin replied, “and when you use the one to flout the other, soon you have neither.”
“As may be.” Authari drew himself up to his full height “If you seek to install Duren by force of arms, I must tell you we shall fight.”
At most times, that threat, if it could be so dignified, would have made Gerin laugh. Lands where the barons did acknowledge his suzerainty surrounded the holding of Ricolf the Red. The main reason Ricolf had never sworn fealty to him was that he’d been too embarrassed to ask it of the older man after Elise ran away with the horseleech. He could easily have summoned up the force to quash Ricolf’s restive vassals … were he not facing war with Adiatunnus and a bigger war against the Gradi. He did not need distractions, not now.
And then Authari said, “If you seek to interfere with our freedom, I must tell you we have friends to the south.”
“You’d call on Aragis the Archer, would you?” Gerin said. Authari nodded defiantly. “I ought to let you do it,” the Fox told him. “It would serve you right. If you think you wouldn’t fancy being my vassals, you deserve to be his. First time anyone stepped out of line, he’d crucify the fool. That would make the rest of you think—if anything could, which I doubt.”
Authari’s angry scowl showed the stump of his front tooth. He shook a finger in Gerin’s face. “Now that’s just the kind of thing we don’t want in an overlord—showing off how much better than us he thinks he is. Aragis would respect us and respect our rights.”
“Only goes to show how much you don’t know about Aragis,” Gerin answered with a derisive snort. But then he checked himself. The more he antagonized Authari, the more the loon and his fellow fools were liable to summon Aragis to their aid. Since the Archer’s forces would have to pass through areas under Gerin’s control, that would touch off the long-threatened war between them … at the worst possible time for the northlands as a whole.
“We may not know about Aragis, by Dyaus, but we know about you,” Authari said. “And what we know, we don’t trust.”
“If you know me, you know my word is good,” the Fox said. “Has anyone ever denied that, Authari? Answer yes or no.” Reluctantly, Authari shook his head. When he did, Gerin went on, “Then maybe you’ll hear out the proposal I put to you.”
“I’ll hear it,” Authari said, “but I fear it may be another of your tricksy schemes.”
Gerin thought seriously about taking Authari up onto the palisade and dropping him headfirst into the ditch around Fox Keep. But his head was so hard, the treatment probably would neither harm him nor knock in any sense. And so the Fox said, “Suppose we ask the Sibyl at Ikos who the rightful heir to Ricolf the Red is? If the oracle says it should be one of you people, I won’t fight that. But if Duren should succeed his grandfather, you accept him without any quarrels. Is that just?”
“Maybe it is and maybe it’s not,” Authari answered. “The god speaks in mysterious ways. We’re liable to get an answer that will just keep us squabbling.”
“Some truth to that,” Gerin said, not wanting to yield any points to Ricolf’s vassal but unable to avoid it. “And, of course, people of bad will can deny the meaning of even the plainest verses. Will you and your fellows swear a binding oath by the gods that you’ll do no such thing? I will—and I trust Biton’s judgment, however he sees the future.”
Authari gnawed at his underlip. “You’re so cursed glib, lord prince. You always have a plan ready, and you don’t give a man time to think about it.”
As far as the Fox was concerned, planning came as naturally as breathing. If Authari hadn’t thought he might suggest the Sibyl as a means of resolving their dispute, Authari hadn’t looked very far ahead. Silently, Gerin sighed. People seldom did.
At last, much more slowly than he should have, Authari said, “I’ll take that back to my fellows. It’s worth thinking on, if nothing else.”
“Don’t spend too much time thinking about it,” Gerin said in peremptory tones. “If I have to, I can ravage your countryside and maybe take several of your keeps before Aragis could hope to get far enough north to do you any good.” With luck, Authari had no idea how reluctant he was to launch such a campaign. Still sharply, he went on, “You’ll ride out tomorrow. Ten days after that, I’ll follow, and meet you at Ricolf’s keep to hear your answer. Don’t think to waylay me, for I’ll have plenty of men along to start the war on the spot if that’s what you people decide you want.”
He waited. Authari had the look of a man who’d just discovered his lady friend not only had a husband but that the fellow was twice his size and bad tempered to boot. He licked his lips, then said, “I’ll take your word back with me, lord prince. Since you put it so, I expect we’ll let the Sibyl and the god decide it, if that’s their will.”
“I hoped you’d see it that way,” Gerin said, with irony that sailed past Authari. He sighed again. “Sup, drink, stay the night. I have to find my son and let him know what’s happened.”
“Grandfather dead?” Duren’s face twisted in surprise. That startlement was all the more complete because, when Gerin tracked him down in a corridor back of the kitchen, death had been the last thing on his mind; exactly what he’d been about to do with a serving girl wasn’t obvious, but that he’d been about to do something was.
“That’s what I said,” Gerin answered, and summarized what Authari had told him, finishing, “He lived a long life, and a pretty good one, taken all in all, and he died easy, as those things go. A man could do worse.”
Duren nodded. Once over his initial surprise, he starting thinking soon enough to please his father. “I wish I’d known him better,” he said.
“I always thought the same,” Gerin said, “but he was never one to travel much, and I—I’ve had an active time, most of these years. And—” He hesitated, then brought it out: “And the matter of your mother clouded things between us.”
He watched Duren’s face fall into a set, still mask. That happened whenever the youth had to think of Elise, who’d given him birth and then abandoned him along with Gerin. He didn’t remember her at all—for as long as his memory reached, Selatre had been his mother—but he knew of his past, and it pained him.
Then he made the mental connection he had to make: “With Grandfather dead, with my mother—gone—that leaves me heir to the holding.”
“So it does,” Gerin said. “What do you think about that?”
“I don’t know what to think yet,” Duren answered. “I hadn’t thought to leave Fox Kee
p so soon.” After a moment, he added, “I hadn’t thought to leave Fox Keep at all.”
“I always knew this was one of the things that might happen,” his father said. “That it chose now to happen—complicates my life.”
“It complicates my life, too,” Duren exclaimed with justifiable indignation. “If I go down there—do you really think I can give orders to men so much older and stronger than I am?”
“You won’t be a youth forever. You won’t even be a youth for long, though I know it doesn’t seem that way to you,” the Fox said. “By the time you’re eighteen at latest, you’ll have a man’s full strength. And take a look at Widin Simrin’s son. He wasn’t any older than you when he took over his vassal barony, and he’s done a fine job of running it ever since.”
“But he’s your vassal,” Duren said. “I wouldn’t be. I’d be on my own.” His eyes widened as he thought that through. “I’d have as much rank as you, Father, near enough. I wouldn’t call myself prince or anything like that, but—”
Gerin nodded. “I understand what you’re saying. You’d owe no one allegiance, not unless you wanted to. That’s right. You could go to war with me if you chose to, and you’d break no oaths doing it.”
“I wouldn’t, Father!” Duren said. Then, proving he was indeed the Fox’s son, he added, “Or rather, I don’t see any reason to now.”
“I didn’t expect you to call out the chariots the moment you become a baron,” Gerin said, chuckling. “I’d hope you wouldn’t. And, even though you wouldn’t be my vassal as Ricolf’s heir, you’re still my son, and Ricolf’s chief vassals know that. It’s one of the things that bother them: if they don’t answer to you, they’ll have to answer to me, and not in ways they fancy. That will help you for a while, and by then, Dyaus willing, they’ll have the habit of obeying you.”
“I can’t lean on you forever,” Duren said. “Sooner or later, likely sooner, I’ll have to lead on my own.”
“That’s true.” Duren’s being able to see it made Gerin want to burst with pride. “When the time comes—and it’ll come sooner than you think; it always does—I expect you’ll be able to do it.”
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