Both monsters gave the question serious consideration. Gerin admired them for that, the more so considering how much ale they’d already drunk. A lot of ordinary people he knew wouldn’t have looked so hard for an answer. At last, Tharma said, “I think it’s made us feel better than we did since the time we drank and drank with Van.”
“Didn’t feel so good afterwards, though,” Geroge said, making a horrible face at the memory. As if to help himself forget, he drank deep.
Gerin, meanwhile, called down curses on his friend’s head. But that wasn’t fair, either; a god might have been nudging Van into getting the monsters drunk that day. For that matter, Gerin thought he was acting as a free agent now, but he was honest enough to admit he didn’t know for certain whether he really was one. How much did being prince of fleas mean when a dog started scratching?
That thought led nowhere, though. Whether he was truly his own man or nothing more than a tool of the gods, he had to act as if he were free and independent. Not even a god could restore to you an opportunity you’d missed yesterday.
He studied Geroge and Tharma. They weren’t paying much attention to him, or to anything but their ale. When he was down below Biton’s shrine at Ikos, he’d wondered whether the monsters had gods of their own. Now that thought came back to him. If they had gods, what did those gods think of two of their number’s being left aboveground when Biton and Mavrix had returned all the others to their gloomy haunts? Even more to the point, what did they think about the Gradi?
He shook his head. Here he was, building castles in the air—or rather, castles under the ground. He didn’t know for a fact that the monsters had any gods at all. Geroge and Tharma gave the Elabonian deities the same absentminded reverence he did himself. Why not? That was what they’d learned from him.
How was he supposed to find out if they had gods of their own? Asking them didn’t seem likely to give him his answer. Whom to ask, then? Biton would probably know, but, even if he did, he’d cloak whatever reply he gave to the Fox in such ambiguity, it wouldn’t come clear till it was too late to do him any good.
Who else might know? He thought of Mavrix, and wished he hadn’t. Disaster felt very close whenever he dealt with the Sithonian fertility god—and Mavrix had already shown he despised the monsters, which meant he was certain to despise their gods, too.
Then he realized Baivers might know. The god of barley and brewing was intimately connected to the earth, and so were the monsters. If Gerin invoked him, Baivers would be a logical deity to ask. If Gerin invoked him—if he could invoke him—the Elabonian gods seemed so uninterested in the world, though, that it might not be possible.
The Fox had resolved to try when the lookout in the watchtower winded his horn and cried, “The Gradi! The Gradi are coming down the river!”
Baivers forgotten, Gerin rushed out of the great hall. Men on the palisade were pointing east. The sentry had got it right, then: these were the Gradi who had gone up the Niffet to see what damage they could do beyond Gerin’s holding, not a new band coming to join them. That was something, if not much.
“We’ll greet them as we did before: on the riverbank,” the Fox ordered. “If they want to try to land here in the face of that, let them, and may they have joy of it.”
Ahead of the rest, he sent out Rihwin the Fox and the other adventurous sorts who rode horses. They had their animals ready for action faster than teams could be hitched to chariots. He also sent out a fair number of men on foot: the more resistance the Gradi faced at the water’s edge, the less likely they were to try to land.
By the time Van, Duren, and he were rattling across the meadow toward the Niffet, the raiders’ war galleys were already passing Fox Keep. The Gradi shouted unintelligible insults across the water, but stayed near the Trokmê bank of the river and showed no desire to clash with foes so obviously ready to receive them.
“Cowards!” Gerin’s men yelled. “Spineless dogs! Eunuchs! White-livered wretches!” The Gradi probably could make no more sense of their pleasantries than they could of those coming from the raiders.
Duren said, “The gods be praised, we frightened them away.”
“Here, for now, yes,” Gerin said. “But what did they do, farther upstream? Whatever it is, they’ve come faster than the news of it.” When he was younger, fits of gloom had threatened to overwhelm him. They came on him less often these days, but he felt the edge of one now. “They can do as they like, and we have to respond to it. With them controlling the river, they can pick and choose where to make their fights. Where we seem strong, they leave us alone. Where we’re weak, they strike. And when we try to hit back over land, their gods make even moving against them the next thing to impossible.”
“Have to light our beacons, to warn Aripert and the rest of Schild’s vassals still in his holding,” Van said.
“Right,” Gerin answered, with a grateful glance at his friend. The outlander had shown him something simple and practical he could do that would help his cause. He shouted orders. A couple of Rihwin’s riders went galloping back to the keep for torches with which to light the watchfires.
Before long, the first fire was blazing, glowing red and sending a great pillar of smoke into the sky. Gerin peered west. His own watchers quickly spotted the warning fire and started another to pass the word into Schild’s holding. And, soon enough, another column of smoke rose, this one small and thin in the distance. The Fox nodded somber approval. Either Aripert Aribert’s son or another of Schild’s vassals—but someone, at any rate—was alert. The Gradi might land again in Schild’s holding, but he did not think they would be delighted with their reception.
“We’ve done something worthwhile there,” he said, and both Van and Duren nodded.
Hagop son of Hovan was a man who put Gerin in mind of Widin Simrin’s son: a baron who’d taken over his holding as a youngster but who had matured into a good enough overlord for it. He acknowledged the Fox his suzerain, paid him his feudal dues, and sent men to fight on his behalf. Had all Gerin’s vassals been so tractable, he would have had an easier time of it by far.
Now, though, he was a man in despair. “Lord prince,” he cried as he got down from his chariot, “the Gradi dealt me a heavy blow, and it fell on me all the harder because so many came here to fight the raiders along with you. I never dreamed they could sail up the Niffet and strike my holding.” His swarthy, big-nosed face was still haggard with shock.
“I didn’t dream of it, either,” Gerin answered. “That’s the only excuse I can make for not setting up watchfires running east from here. Using oars and sails both, the Gradi outran the news of their coming. I did send out riders to try to warn you and the others upstream. I’m sorry they didn’t get there in time.”
“So am I,” Hagop said bitterly. “They got there half a day after the Gradi did. I give them credit; they fought at my side, and a couple of them were wounded. They’re still back at my keep. But the damage is done, lord prince, and we’ll be a long time getting over it.”
What he meant was, You are my lord, and your duty is to keep such things from happening to me. You failed me. That he was too polite to come out and scream what he meant, as so many of Gerin’s vassals would have done, made the Fox feel worse, not better.
Gerin said, “They’re bad enemies, worse than the Trokmoi and”—he looked around to make sure Geroge and Tharma were out of earshot—“worse than the monsters, too. I have a couple of things I intend to try to see if I can’t get the upper hand on them, but it hasn’t happened yet. I’m sorry.”
Hagop’s dour countenance immediately became more confident. “If you think you can overcome them, lord prince, I am sure it will be so in the end.”
I wish I were, Gerin thought. Explaining exactly how worried he was, though, struck him as less than wise. The more you seemed to believe in yourself, the more your vassals would believe in you … till you let them down. Hagop, luckily, didn’t seem to think he’d been let down for good—not yet, anyhow.
“I aim to hold them here through the summer, while we can move against the Gradi,” Gerin answered. To his great relief, Hagop accepted that with no more than another frown. If Gerin’s leading vassals started pulling their vassals out from under him, he wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything against the invaders.
In short order, he realized, he wouldn’t be prince of the north any more, either. He’d be one petty baron among many, with no more power and no more reach than any of the rest. And the Gradi would eat up the northlands a barony or two at a time, and after a while a new, cold, dismal Gradihome would arise here. Voldar would be very happy, no doubt. So would the Gradi. The Elabonians, even the Trokmoi, would have less reason to rejoice.
“Not that I want to jog your elbow—” Hagop began, an opening almost invariably a lie. So it proved here, for he continued, “—but whatever you’re going to set in motion against the Gradi, the gods grant you start it soon. The busier they are answering us, the less chance they’ll have to make us answer them.”
That was inarguably true. It also marched with Gerin’s own thoughts. He said, “I intend to start as soon as I can. I still have some more sorcerous research to undertake before I can begin, though.”
As he’d hoped, mentioning magic impressed Hagop. His vassal said, “Lord prince, if you know a spell for turning the lot of those buggers into toads, that would be a great thing.”
“So it would,” Gerin agreed. He didn’t say anything past that. If Hagop wanted to conclude he did have such a spell, that was Hagop’s concern. By the awestruck look on Hagop’s face, he wanted to conclude just that.
“I hope your spell succeeds,” he breathed.
“So do I,” the Fox replied. He still hadn’t said that the spell was one for the batrachifaction of the Gradi. He always hoped his spells succeeded, and knew such hope was always urgently necessary. Repeatedly finding himself in deep trouble had made him try spells a half-trained, lightly talented wizard had no business undertaking. Here he was in deep trouble again, and about to go into sorcery over his head once more, too.
“How soon can you do the—what did you call it?—the research, that was the word you used?” Hagop asked.
“I have to go through the volumes in my library. It will be a couple of days,” Gerin told him. “I don’t care for much companionship when I incant, but if you’d like to stay and see the results of the magic, you’re more than welcome.”
Most of his vassals would have accepted at once. Hagop shook his head. “I thank you, lord prince, but no. I shall go back to my holding after tonight. My people need me there. They need more than me, but I am willing to believe—for now—you need my vassals more. I trust you will use them wisely.”
“I hope so.” Gerin bowed to Hagop. “I’m lucky to have you for a vassal; your serfs are lucky to have you for a lord.”
“They do not think so right now,” Hagop answered. “If your research and your spell go as you would have them go, that may yet prove so, though. The gods grant you do it well, and that you do it soon.” He plainly meant, What are you waiting for?
Gerin went up to the library. He had the feeling Hagop was right—every moment he delayed invited disaster. But if he was going to summon Baivers, to dicker with the god to aid him against the Gradi and Voldar, he wanted to learn everything he could about him before he started.
When you’d worshiped a god all your life, you took him for granted. Gerin poured Baivers a libation whenever he drank ale, as did every other Elabonian in the northlands and down in whatever was left of the Empire of Elabon south of the High Kirs. In return, Baivers made the barley flourish and made it ferment into ale. He was very reliable about that. Beyond it, he wasn’t often a pushy god, of the sort who frequently stuck his nose into human affairs.
What the Fox wanted to find out from his scrolls and codices was how to make Baivers pushy, how to make him want to intervene in the northlands. As he began working the handles of a scroll, he shook his head. What he really wanted to find was whether there was any way to make Baivers pushy. If Baivers was resolutely confined to his one power, what point in summoning him?
Baivers was the son of Father Dyaus and a daughter of the earth goddess. Gerin knew that, of course, as he knew most of the other bits and pieces of lore he dug out about the god of barley. But they weren’t things he commonly thought about; reading of them was a quicker way to call them to mind than rummaging through his memory, good though that was.
Selatre came in, saw what he was doing, and pulled out another two scrolls and a codex for him. “These talk about the god, too,” she said, and then, cautiously, “Have you found anything that will help you?”
“Not as much as I’d like,” he said, his voice edgy with discontent. “By most of this, and by most of everything I’ve seen, once barley turns to ale, Baivers is content.” He paced back and forth. “I don’t want him content. I want him angry. I want him furious. He’s a power of the earth, and Mavrix half told me a power of the earth was my best hope against Voldar and the Gradi gods.”
“Is he the right one?” Selatre asked. “Many powers rest in the earth.”
“I know. But Mavrix wouldn’t have been shy about naming most of them. He despises Baivers. He wouldn’t come out and say, ‘I failed, but this god I detest might succeed.’ He wouldn’t say it, but I think it’s what he meant.”
After considering that, Selatre gravely nodded. “Yes, that rings true. Mavrix reminds me of a child who can’t admit he isn’t always the best at something and, even when it’s plain he isn’t, won’t give the one who really is his due.”
“The trouble is, you can’t take a god, turn him over your knee, and spank that kind of foolishness out of him.” Germ let out a long, weary sigh. “But oh, Father Dyaus, how I wish you could.”
IX
Geroge and Tharma stared fearfully at the interior of the shack where Gerin worked—or tried to work—magic. As he had with his own children and Van’s, the Fox had warned them of the dire consequences they would suffer if they ever so much as set a toe inside. The monsters had taken him more seriously than the children had; he’d never had to punish either of them.
“It’s all right,” he said now, for about the fourth time. “You’re here with me, so that’s different.” Constant repetition eventually eased the monsters’ worries. Gerin wondered if it should have. The mischief they might have raised coming in by themselves was as nothing next to the disaster of a spell gone awry.
“What do we need to do?” Geroge asked.
“Well, for starters, you get to drink some ale,” Gerin answered. That made both monsters visibly cheerier. Gerin used a knife to cut the pitch sealing the stopper of a fresh jar. He dipped out large jacks for Geroge and Tharma, and half a jack’s worth for himself. Normally, he would no sooner have tried magic after drinking ale than he would have tried leaping off the palisade headfirst, but when the god whose aid he sought was also the deity who turned malted barley to ale, what he would normally do took second place to that special concern.
He filled the monsters’ jacks after they emptied them, thanking all the gods—Baivers in particular—they didn’t grow rowdy or fierce as they took on ale. He sipped at his own jack, too. He wanted to feel the ale ever so slightly, but not so much that it interfered with the passes and chants he would have to make.
Selatre spread seed barley and unthreshed ears of the grain on the worktable in the shack. She stayed sober. If the conjuration went very wrong, she would try to set it right. Gerin did not think that would be the problem. Getting Baivers to respond at all would be the hard part.
“We begin,” the Fox said. Selatre stood quiet, watchfully waiting. Geroge and Tharma watched, too, their deep-set eyes wide with wonder as Gerin began to chant, begging the bo
on of Baivers’ presence. He praised the god for barley, not just transformed as ale, but also as porridge and even as bread, though barley flour refused to rise as high as that ground from wheat: a little hypocrisy in a good cause never hurt anyone, he thought.
When he began his song in praise of ale, he made sure he set it to the tune of a drinking song he knew Van had taught to Geroge and Tharma. He gestured, and the monsters, quick on the uptake for their kind, began to sing. Their voices were unlovely, but he hoped that would not matter: unlike Mavrix, Baivers was not a snob in such matters.
Once started, the monsters didn’t stop singing. That suited Gerin fine. If they didn’t attract the god’s attention, nothing would. That nothing would, however, remained dismayingly possible. As he generally did when dismayed, the Fox carried on as if success were assured.
He discovered that changing from the chant in the tune of the drinking song to a new one was harder than he’d expected, because having Geroge and Tharma braying out the one tune made him struggle to keep the other. Some of the ancillary spells he was using required quick and difficult passes from the right hand, too. For most wizards, that would have made matters simpler. The left-handed Fox found it a nuisance.
“Come forth!” he cried at last. “Come forth, great Baivers, lord of barley, lord of ale! Come forth, come forth, come forth!”
Nothing happened. He turned away from the barley on the worktable, convinced he had failed. What was the point to trying to summon the Elabonian gods? They might have all gone off on holiday, leaving their portion of the world to look after itself. But now other gods were looking—hungrily—at that portion of the world. Did they know? Did they care? Evidently not.
And then, as he was about to tell—to shout at—Geroge and Tharma to cease their wretched din, the inside of the shack seemed to … enlarge. The monsters fell silent, quite of their own accord. “It is the god,” Selatre said quietly: she, of all people, recognized the presence of the divine when she felt it.
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