“What if—” Duren paused, then went on: “What if the Sibyl at Ikos says I’m not to rule Grandfather’s holding?”
“Then you’re not,” Gerin answered. “That’s all there is to it. You can try to twist a god’s will, you can try to trick a god, but if you try to go dead against what a god says, you’ll fail. If the Sibyl says Ricolf’s holding is not for you, you know you have a place here.”
“I don’t even know that I want to try to run that holding,” Duren muttered, perhaps more to himself than to his father.
“If you don’t think you want it, if you don’t think you’re ready, I won’t set on you a burden you can’t bear,” the Fox assured him. “That’s what we’ll tell Authari, and he’ll ride south and tell it to the rest of Ricolf’s vassals.”
“And the holding will be lost to us,” Duren said. It didn’t sound like a question, as it easily might have. It came out flat and harsh.
“Things aren’t always lost forever,” Gerin said. “My guess here is that once the vassals fought among themselves for a while, they’d welcome an overlord who wasn’t a jumped-up equal but someone they could all follow without any jealousy.”
Duren looked at him in blank incomprehension. Gerin smiled and put a hand on his son’s shoulder. For Duren, half a year felt like a long time, and waiting a few years to let things sort themselves out was beyond his mental reach. Gerin didn’t blame him. He’d been the same himself at the same age, as had everyone else who made it to and then past fourteen.
“I do want it,” Duren declared. “If Biton says I have the right to rule that holding, I’ll do the best I can there. One day, maybe—”
He didn’t go on. He set his jaw, as if to say Gerin could not make him go on. Gerin didn’t try. He could make a pretty good guess as to what was in his son’s mind: one day he would die, too, and then Duren would inherit his broad holdings as well as Ricolf’s single barony.
His son was right. That was what would happen. If the Gradi got their way, it was liable to happen before the year was out. Of course, if the Gradi got their way, Duren would be in no position to inherit anything but a grave.
Selatre said, “I wish I were coming with you.” That wasn’t serious complaint; if she’d made serious complaint about riding south with Gerin and Van and Duren, she would have gone. Wistfully, she went on, “I’d like to see how Biton restored his shrine after the earthquake laid it low.”
“From all we’ve heard, it’s just the same as it used to be,” Gerin said, which was both true and in large measure beside the point: when it took divine intervention to bring back what had been destroyed, the restoration was on the face of it worth seeing.
“And it would be so interesting to go into the underground chamber of prophecy just as a person, not as a Sibyl—to see the prophetic trance from the outside instead of being a part of it.”
“It’s because you were the Sibyl that I want you to stay here,” Gerin told her. “My vassals are more likely to listen to you because the god once spoke through you than they are to any of their own number. And a good thing, too, if you ask me, for you’re more clever than any of them.”
“More clever than Rihwin?” Selatre asked, mischief in her voice. Her gaze flicked out to the hallway beyond the library chamber where they sat quietly talking: there of all places in Fox Keep they were least likely to be disturbed. But Rihwin, formidably educated himself, was one who might come in to look at a scroll or codex.
Gerin glanced outside, too, before replying, “Much more clever than Rihwin, for you have the sense to know when cleverness for its own sake isn’t the answer, and he’s never yet figured that out.”
“For which I thank you,” his wife said. “I’d have been angry if you told me anything else, but I do thank you for what you did tell me.”
“Van would say something like ‘Honh!’ about now,” Gerin said.
“So he would,” Selatre agreed. “He’ll probably say it several times on the trip down to Ikos. He’ll probably do several other things on the way down to Ikos, too, things where he’d be better off if Fand never heard of them.”
“She won’t hear about them from me, or from Van, either, I hope,” Gerin said. “Only trouble is, that won’t matter. Whether he’ll tell her about them or not, she’ll know what he’s been doing, and they’ll have a row when we get home. Or maybe she’ll do something to keep herself amused—or to make him furious—while he’s gone. Do you suppose you could keep her from trying something like that?”
“Me?” Selatre stared at him in horrified disbelief, then clutched his hand as if she were drowning in the Niffet and he a floating log. “Take me with you to Ikos after all, oh, please! Anything but trying to keep Fand from what she sets her mind on doing!” She laughed, and so did Gerin, but he knew she wasn’t altogether joking. She went on, quite seriously, “If anyone can restrain Fand, it’s Van, and the other way around. But neither has much hope of that out of the other’s sight.”
“Too true,” Gerin said, and then again, “Too true. I’ve given up on it, for both of them.”
“And you expect me to manage with her?” Selatre said. “I like that!”
Dagref poked his head into the library. “Manage what, Mama? And with who?”
“What I need to manage, and with the person I was talking about,” she said.
“Why won’t you tell me?” Dagref demanded. Any child would have let out that eternal complaint, but he went on, “Why shouldn’t I know? Would I tell someone? Would it make that person angry?” He brightened. His string of questions had led him to an answer. “I’ll bet it has something to do with Aunt Fand! She gets angry faster than anyone else I know. Why didn’t you want to tell me that? I wouldn’t tell your secret, whatever it is. It must have something to do with Uncle Van going away. Is that right?”
Gerin and Selatre looked at each other. It wasn’t the first time Dagref had done that to them. His relentless pursuit of precision would take him a long way—unless he failed to notice it leading him into trouble. He’s nine now, Gerin thought uneasily. What will he be like as a man grown? Only one answer occurred to him: as he is now, only more so. It was a vaguely—or perhaps not so vaguely—alarming notion.
He said, “No, son, we were talking about one of the cows down in the village, and what your mother should do if it has chickens.”
“Cows don’t have chickens,” Dagref said indignantly. Then his face cleared. “Oh. “You’re making a joke.” He sounded like Gerin letting off some serf after a minor offense, and warning the wretch of how much trouble he’d be in if he ever did such a thing again.
“Yes, a joke,” the Fox agreed. “Now go on out of here and let us finish talking about whatever it was.” Knowing secrecy was a losing battle, he fought it anyhow.
Dagref left without any more disputation. That surprised Gerin for a moment. Then he realized his son, having won the argument, didn’t need to stay and fight it through a second time. He rolled his eyes. “What are we going to do with that one?”
“Hope experience lends him sense to go with his wits,” Selatre answered. “It often does, you know.”
“Yes, leaving Rihwin out of the bargain.” Gerin glanced warily toward the door, half expecting Dagref to reappear and ask, Out of what bargain?
Selatre’s gaze had gone in the same direction, and probably for the same reason. When her eyes met Gerin’s, they both started to laugh. But she sobered quickly. “If the Gradi or Adiatunnus attack us, I can’t lead the men into battle,” she said. “Who commands then?”
Gerin wished he hadn’t just made his joke, because that question had only one answer. “Can’t be anyone but Rihwin,” he said. “He’s the best of all of them here, especially if he has someone to check his enthusiasm. That’s what you’ll do, up till the fighting starts. Once it does … Well, when the fighting starts, everyone’s plans, good and foolish alike, have a way of breaking down.”
“I’ll miss you,” Selatre said. “I always worry when you’r
e away from Fox Keep.”
“Sometimes I have to go, that’s all,” Gerin said. “But I’ll tell you this: with you here, I have all the reason I need and then some to want to come back again.”
“Good,” Selatre said.
The Fox rode south with a force of twenty chariots at his back. That wouldn’t be as many as all of Ricolf’s vassals could gather, but it was plenty to make him dangerous in a fight. Besides, if Ricolf’s vassals didn’t have factional squabbles of their own, that would be a miracle about which the minstrels would sing for years to come.
Instead of Raffo, Duren was driving the chariot in which Gerin and Van rode. He handled the reins with confidence but without undue arrogance; unlike some a good deal older than himself, he’d come to understand the importance of convincing the horses to do what he wanted rather than treating them like rowboats or other brainless tools.
As Fox Keep disappeared behind trees when the road jogged, Van let out a long, happy sigh. “Does my nose good to get away from the castle stink!” he said. “Yours is cleaner than most, Fox, but that only goes so far, especially with all the extra warriors packed in.”
“I know,” Gerin answered. “My nose is happier away from the keep, too. But if we keep rattling along like this, my kidneys are liable to fall out.”
“Pity you can’t keep the Elabon Way repaired up to the way it used to be,” Van said, “but I suppose I should be grateful there’s any road at all.”
Gerin shrugged. “I haven’t the masons to keep it the way it was, or the artisans to build the deep strong bed that holds up to traffic and weather both. Cobbles and gravel keep it open in the rain and mud, even if they are hard on a man’s insides and a horse’s hooves.”
“To say nothing of the wheels,” Van added as they jounced over a couple of particularly large, particularly rough cobbles. “Good thing we have spare axle poles and some extra spokes in case we break ’em.”
“This isn’t even a particularly bad stretch,” Gerin said “Those places farther south where Balamung wrecked the roadway, those are the ones that haven’t been the same since in spite of all the effort I’ve had the peasants put into them.”
“You’d expect wizardry to smash a road worse—or faster, anyway—than ordinary wear and tear,” Van said. A glint came into his eyes as he went on, “I wonder if you could set it right by wizardry, too.”
“Maybe you could.” The Fox refused to rise to the bait. “The gods know I wouldn’t be madman enough to try.”
His little army halted by a peasant village to spend the night. As the sun set, the serfs sacrificed several chickens, letting their blood run down into a small trench they’d dug in the dirt. The offering of blood, the torches flickering outside their huts, and the great bonfire the warriors made were enough to keep the keening of the night ghosts down to a level a man could bear.
Up in the sky, pale Nothos was a fat waxing crescent; Gerin was surprised to realize it had almost completed one of its slow cycles since he’d made his ruling on the rightful ownership of Swifty the hound. A lot had been crowded into that time.
Quick-moving Tiwaz, also a waxing crescent, hung a little to the east of Nothos. Ruddy Elleb, a nail-paring of a moon, soon followed the sun into the west. Golden Math would not rise till after midnight.
Inside the borders of his own holding, he posted only a couple of sentries for the night. Not all his men went straight to sleep, anyhow. Some of them tried their luck with the women, unattached and otherwise, of the village. Some of that luck was good, and some of it was bad. One thing Gerin’s subjects had learned during the generation he ruled them: they did not have to give in for no better reason than that a warrior demanded it of them. He’d outlawed fighting men who forced women. His men knew what he expected of them, too, and by and large lived up to it.
When Duren made as if to go after a pretty girl who looked a couple of years older than he was, the Fox said, “Go ahead, but don’t tell her who your father is.”
“Why not?” Duren asked. “What quicker way to get her to say yes?”
“But will she have said it because you’re you or because you’re my son?” Gerin asked. He wondered if Duren cared, so long as the answer turned out to be the one he wanted. Probably not; he remembered how little he’d cared at the same age. “Try it,” he urged his son. “See what happens.”
“Maybe I will,” Duren said. And maybe he did, but the Fox didn’t find out one way or the other. Feeling no urge to chase after any of the peasant women, he lay down, wrapped himself in a blanket, and slept till the sun woke him the next morning.
The ride down to Ricolf’s keep was more peaceful than the journey had been when he’d made it in his younger days. Now all the barons between his own holding and Ricolf’s acknowledged him as their overlord, and had, for the most part, given up squabbling among themselves. Even what had been Bevon’s barony—now held by his son Bevander, since his other sons had backed Adiatunnus against Gerin in their last clash—seemed to be producing more crops than brigands. Progress, he thought.
Because Ricolf had always formally remained free of Gerin’s suzerainty, he had kept up the post between his land and Bevon’s. His border guards saluted when the Fox and his fighting tail drew near. “Pass through,” one of them said, standing aside with a spearshaft he had held across the road. “Authari said you would be coming after him.”
“And so we are.” Gerin set a hand on his son’s shoulder. “And here is Duren, Ricolf’s grandson, who, if Biton the farseeing agrees, will become your lord now that Ricolf—a brave man and a good one, if ever such there was—no longer lives in the world of men.”
The border guards looked curiously at Duren. Nodding to them, he said, “If I can rule this holding half so well as Ricolf did, I will be pleased. I hope you will be pleased with me, too, and teach me what I need to learn.”
Gerin hadn’t told him what to say on first meeting Ricolf’s men. He wanted to see how his son fared on his own. He would be on his own if he succeeded to the barony. The guardsmen seemed happy enough with what he’d said. One of them asked, “If you take the holding, will it be as vassal to the Fox here?” He pointed at Gerin.
Duren shook his head. “He hasn’t asked that of me. Why would he? I’m his son. What kind of oath could I give to bind me to him tighter than that?”
“Well said,” one of the border guards answered. He waved southward, deeper into the territory Ricolf had ruled. “Ride on, then, and may the gods make it all turn out for the best.”
Once they’d passed beyond the border station, Gerin said, “You did fine there. You can give Authari and the rest of the petty barons the same answer. I don’t see how they can fault you on it, either.”
“Good,” Duren answered over his shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about these things ever since Authari came to Fox Keep. I want to do them as best I can.”
“You will, with that way of looking at them,” Gerin told him. He studied his son’s back as the chariot rattled along. Duren was starting to do his own thinking, not coming to the Fox for every answer. He’s becoming a man, Gerin thought, bemused, but he took it for a good sign.
They came to the keep that had for so many years been Ricolf’s as the sun was sliding down the western sky. Elleb had grown to a plump waxing crescent, while Nothos, at first quarter, hung like half a coin a little east of south. Tiwaz had swelled in the past three days to halfway between quarter and full, and was climbing toward the southeastern part of the sky.
“Who comes to this castle?” the watchman called, and Gerin felt a jar inside him at hearing Ricolf’s name omitted from the challenge. Approaching Ricolf’s keep gave him an odd feeling these days anyhow: old memories twisted and stirred and muttered in his ear like the night spirits, fighting to be understood once more in the world of the living. Here he had met Elise, here he had spirited her away south of the High Kirs, here on returning he had bedded her, here after beating Balamung he had returned and claimed her for his wife.
But change came along with memory. He answered the watchman: “I am Gerin, called the Fox, come with my son Duren who is also the grandson of Ricolf the Red to discuss the succession to this holding with Authari Broken-Tooth and whichever of Ricolf’s vassal barons he may have summoned hither.”
“You are welcome here, lord Gerin,” the sentry said. He could hardly have failed to know who the Fox was, but the forms had to be observed. With a rattle of chains, the drawbridge lowered so Gerin and his companions could cross over the moat and enter the keep. Unlike Gerin’s, Ricolf’s ditch had water in it, making it a better ward for the castle.
Ricolf’s men stared down from the walls at Gerin and the small chariot army he’d brought with him. In the failing light, he had trouble reading their faces. Did they think him ally or usurper? Even if he could not tell now, he’d find out soon enough.
Authari came out of the great hall along with several other men who wore authority like a cloak. Authari bowed, well-mannered as usual. “I greet you, lord prince.” His eyes swung to Duren. “And you as well, grandson of the lord who held my homage and fealty.”
He conceded Duren nothing. Gerin had expected as much. Duren said, “Dyaus and the other gods grant you give me vassalage as good as my grandfather got from you.”
Gerin admired his son’s self-possession. It seemed to startle Authari, but he quickly rallied, saying, “That is what we have gathered here to decide.” He gave his attention back to Gerin. “Lord prince, I present to you Hilmic Barrelstaves, Wacho Fidus’ son, and Ratkis Bronzecaster, who with me are—were—Ricolf’s chiefest vassals.”
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