"You have all of her now, seems like, without my having any say at all," the Fox answered, less than delighted his friend had seen into him so clearly.
"So I do, and I still don't know whether I can stand it." The outlander sighed. "What made it work so well, the three of us I mean, is that Fand has more than enough venom for any one man, but she's bearable when she has two to spread it on. Of course, it helps that neither of us is the jealous sort."
"No." Gerin let it go at that. Had he cared more for Fand, he thought, he would have been more likely to be jealous, too, but he didn't care to say as much straight out. He did add, "Another thing that helps is that she's lickerish enough for the two of us together. I think she'd wear me out if I had to try to keep her happy by my lonesome."
"You're getting old," Van said, to which the Fox mimed throwing a punch, for his friend was no younger. Then Van sighed again, and went on, "One more thing to worry about." He stopped, seemed to listen to himself, and guffawed. "By the gods, I've been with you too long, Captain. I'm even starting to sound like you."
"Believe me, I like the idea even less than you do," Gerin answered, and Van pretended to wallop him. Up ahead at the reins, Raffo snickered.
The chariots rolled south down the Elabon Way in no particular order, now bunched together, now strung out in a long line. Sometimes the Fox's warriors sang or swapped jokes, sometimes they kept them to themselves. Gerin knew the Empire of Elabon had imposed stricter discipline on its soldiers when it was strong, but he didn't know how the trick was done. By all the evidence, Elabon didn't know anymore, either.
Even though he was still in his own holding, he kept a wary eye on the woods and brush to either side of the Elabon Way. If the monsters from Ikos had been seen in Bevon's holding (not that Bevon held much of it), they might be loose in Palin's lands, too—and they might have come farther north than that.
Serfs in the fields stared as the chariots bounced past them. A few took no chances, but dropped their hoes and stone-headed mattocks and ran for the safety of the trees. After the chaos the northlands had endured the past five years, that did not surprise the Fox, but it left him sad. Here he and his comrades fared forth to protect the peasants, and they seemed to feel they needed protecting from their overlords.
Thanks to Gerin's forethoughtfulness, the little army had several hens among the baggage. They also had enough axes to cut plenty of firewood for a good-sized blaze. Between the offering and the fire, the evening ghosts were hardly more than a distraction.
"We'll set pairs of sentries out all night long in a triangle," Gerin said. "I won't have us assailed without warning."
Van took charge of roasting the two chickens they'd sacrificed. He was the logical man for the job: not only was he as good a roadside cook as anyone else, he was also no one to argue with when he passed out pieces of meat, for there weren't enough to go around. Those who went without chicken made do with hard-baked biscuits and smoked meat, cheese, and onions. Everyone drank ale.
Gerin tossed a gnawed thighbone into the fire. He chewed at a biscuit about as tough as his own teeth. "I wonder if this came from Ros the Fierce's reign, or just Oren's," he said after he managed to get a mouthful down.
"You have no cause to make complaint against Oren the Builder," Rihwin said, "for the image of him you fetched back from the fane at Ikos leaves you perhaps the richest man in the northlands."
"Aye, gold is good to have, I'll not deny," Gerin said. "That's not the way I expected to come by it, but you hear no complaints from me."
Some of the warriors rolled themselves in their blankets as soon as they'd finished eating. Others stayed up a while to talk or roll knucklebones by the light of the fire. Van snarled in angry dismay when he lost three throws in a row; his luck usually ran better than that. Then he lost again, and stood up from the game. "Enough is enough," he declared.
"Well, if you won't gamble with us, what about a tale?" Widin Simrin's son said. He had his own reasons for being willing to call off the game: a nice little pile of silver gleamed in front of him.
Everyone who heard the suggestion spoke up for it all the same, especially the men from outlying keeps who seldom got the chance to hear Van yarn. The outlander coughed and plucked at his beard. "Which tale shall I give you?" he asked. "You pick one for me."
"How about the one about how they teach the monkeys to pick pepper?" Gerin said. "You were going to start it a few days ago, but we got interrupted. And if I've not heard it, my guess is that few others here have."
From the way the warriors exclaimed, none of them knew the story. "So I've not told it in all the time I've been at your keep, eh, Captain?" Van said. "Nice to know I've not yarned myself dry, and that's a fact. All right, here goes: the tale of the way they teach monkeys to pick pepper."
Before he started the story, he paused to swig ale and lubricate his throat. That accomplished, he said, "This is what I saw in Mabalal, which is a hot, damp country a good ways east and south from Kizzuwatna. Take the muggiest summer day you've ever known here, imagine it ten times worse, and you'll start to know what the weather there is like.
"Now maybe it's on account of the weather, but a lot of the folk of Mabalal are what you'd have to call lazy. Some of 'em, I swear, would just as soon lie with their mouths open in the rain as get up and find themselves a cup to drink from—but that's no part of the tale.
"If you want to know what pepper trees are like, think of willows—they look much like 'em, right down to the clusters of fruit. The trouble with 'em is, they grow on the steepest hillsides and cliffs, so people have a beastly time getting to 'em to take away the pepper."
"Probably why it costs so much by the time it gets here," Gerin said.
"Likely so, Captain. Now the folk of Mabalal are lazy, like I said. If we had to hope for them to climb hillsides and cliffs to gather the pepper fruits, it'd cost more than it does, I tell you true. What they do instead is get the monkeys to work for 'em, or maybe trick 'em into it would be a better way to put it."
"What's a monkey?" asked a warrior from an isolated keep, a man who never went more than a couple of hours' walk from his holding unless on campaign.
"A monkey is a beast about the size of a half-year babe that looks like a furry, ugly little man with a tail," Van answered patiently. "They live in trees, and have thumbs on their feet as well as their hands. They're clever and mischievous, almost like children, and they cause a lot of trouble stealing things and ruining them.
"The other thing about monkeys is, they like to do what people do—and the folk of Mabalal, who live with 'em the same way we do with dogs and cats, know it. There are whole bands of these monkeys, mind you, that live in the rough country where the pepper trees grow. So when the Mabalali want to get themselves some pepper, what they do is this: they go down to the foothills below the rough country and pick all the fruit off some of the trees there. Then they dump piles of the fruit in little clearings they've made close by, and they pretend to up and leave.
"Now, all the while the monkeys have been watching them from the high ground. The monkeys go and they pick the fruits from the pepper trees, and then they come down and they drop them in the clearings just the same way they'd seen the men do it. Sometimes they'll steal the fruit the Mabalali have left, sometimes they won't. Either way, the Mabalali get the pepper, and they get it without having to do the hard work themselves. So you see, sometimes being lazy isn't such a bad thing after all."
The warriors buzzed appreciatively, as they would have at any tale well told. For them it was a pleasant way to pass the time and a story to remember so they could tell it in turn. Gerin also liked it on those terms, but it set him thinking in a different way, too. "I wonder how many useful things have come from men's being too lazy to keep on doing things the same old hard way," he mused.
"Give me a for-instance, Captain," Van said.
That made the Fox scratch his head. At last he said, "Take the fellow who thought of the wagon. Wouldn't you bet
he was sick of hauling things on his back?"
"Ah, I see what you're saying," Van said. "Likely so."
"And the fellow who first brewed ale, what was he sick of?" Rihwin asked. With a grin, he answered his own question: "Seeing straight, I suppose."
Gerin and Van both laughed at that, but Drago the Bear drew in a sharp, disapproving breath. "No man first brewed ale," he said flatly. " 'Twas the gift of the god Baivers, and any who don't want his anger had best remember it."
Rihwin opened his mouth for what Gerin was sure would be a reply taken straight from the philosophers of the City of Elabon. Before that reply could emerge, Gerin forestalled it: "Rihwin, my fellow Fox, I trust you do recall the difficulties you had with Mavrix god of wine not so long ago?"
"Well, yes, I do," Rihwin said reluctantly. "I did not believe, however, that you of all people in the northlands would stifle the full and open discussion of ideas of all sorts. I—"
Gerin took him by the arm. "Here, walk with me," he said in a tone that brooked no argument. When the two men were as far from the fire and the blood offering as the wailing of the ghosts would let them go, Gerin continued in a low voice, "For all your study, one thing you never learned: there's a time and a place for everything. If you want to start arguments about the nature and powers of the gods, don't do it when you're heading out on campaign. I want my men's thoughts focused on two things: working with one another and slaughtering any monsters they happen across. Does that make sense to you?"
"I suppose so," Rihwin said, though he sounded sulky. "Yet you would be hard-pressed to deny that in theory—"
Gerin cut him off again, this time with a sharp chopping gesture of his left hand. "Theory is wonderful," he said. "What we have here is fact—if the men quarrel among themselves, they won't fight well. You do anything more to make them fight worse than they would otherwise and I'll leave you behind at the first keep we come to, or at a peasant village failing that. Do you understand me?"
"Oh, indeed." Rihwin angrily tossed his head; firelight glinted from the gold hoop in his left ear. "You're a hard man when you take the field, lord prince Gerin the Fox." He loaded Gerin's title with scorn.
"War is too important a business to be slack with it," Gerin answered, shrugging. "Will you do as I say and not stir up disputes among the gods, or shall I leave you? Those are your choices, sirrah."
Rihwin sighed. "Let it be as you say. You'd do better, though, if you learned to ease men into doing your will rather than hammering them into it."
"No doubt." Gerin sighed, too. Rihwin had nothing wrong with his wits, only a dearth of common sense. "And you'd do better if you thought more before you started talking or doing things. We all try to be the best men we can, and we all fail in different ways. Which watch do you have tonight?"
"The middle one." Rihwin's mobile features assumed an expression of distaste.
"There, you see?" Gerin said. "If your head held as much sense as a cabbage, you'd be asleep already instead of standing here arguing with me. Go curl up in your blanket."
"The power of your reasoning ravishes me yet again," Rihwin cried. Gerin snorted and made as if to kick him in the backside. The transplanted southerner lay down and soon fell asleep. Gerin had the midwatch, too, but stayed awake a good deal longer.
* * *
When the Fox's chariots rolled down into Bevon's holding, all the local barons shut themselves up right in their keeps and prepared to stand siege. "You just want to bite out another piece of our land," one of them called from his palisade when Gerin came up to the wall.
"That's not so," Gerin answered, wondering if the white rag he bore would protect him from the lordlet's archers. As he had so many times before, he spoke of the monsters that had erupted from the caves beneath Biton's temple.
And, as had happened too many times before, he met only disbelief. The petty baron laughed scornfully. "You're supposed to be clever, Fox. I'd have thought you could come up with a better excuse than that to come down on your neighbors."
"Have it as you will." The Fox knew he sounded weary, but couldn't help it. "You'll find out soon enough whether I'm telling the truth. When you learn I am, maybe you'll remember some of what I've said." He turned and walked back to the chariot where Van and Raffo waited. No one shot at him, so he just rode on.
Down at the southern border of Bevon's holding, Ricolf's men were no longer wary of the force Gerin used to hold the Elabon Way open. They'd seen the monsters for themselves—seen more of them than the Fox had, as a matter of fact. He spent the first couple of hours after he arrived asking questions.
"Some of the creatures are smarter than others, lord prince, seems like," one of Ricolf's troopers said. "I've seen a couple carrying sword or axe, and one even with a helm on its ugly head. But others'll either charge or run off, just like wild beasts."
"Interesting." Gerin plucked at his beard. "How many of them are there, would you say, and how much damage have they done?"
"How many? Too many, that's sure," the trooper said. "As for damage, think how much fun wolves would be if they had more in the way of wits, and hands to let them get into things doors and gates keep them out of."
Gerin thought about it. He didn't like the pictures that painted themselves in his mind. Elabonians were in the habit of calling Trokmoi wolves because of their fierce raids, but they had humanly understandable motives: they were out for loot and captives as well as slaughter for its own sake. Beasts that hunted and killed without grasping, let alone using, the concepts of mercy and restraint were daunting in an altogether different way.
The Fox thanked Ricolf's man and went back to pass the word to his own warriors. "One thing's certain," he said when he'd given them the grim news: "These creatures won't act like a regular army of men. They aren't an army at all, not really. Instead of trying to storm up the Elabon Way in a mass, I look for them to spread through the woods by ones and twos and maybe packs—no larger groups or bands or whatever you want to call them."
"If that's so, lord Gerin, we might as well not have brung these here chariots," Widin Simrin's son said.
"For fighting, you're right," the Fox answered, letting his young vassal down easy. "But we'd have been another two or three days on the road if we'd footed it down here."
Widin nodded, abashed. Drago the Bear said, "What'll you have us do with the cars, then? We can't go into the woods with 'em, that's certain, and you say the woods is where we'll find these things." He shook his head in somber anticipation. "You're going to make foot soldiers out of us, I know you are."
"Do you see that I have any choice?" Gerin asked. "Here's what I'm thinking: we'll split up by chariot crews, with teams of three crews sticking together in teams. That'll give each team nine men, which should be enough to hold off even a pack of the creatures. At the same time, we'll have eight or ten teams spreading out along the border between Bevon's and Ricolf's holdings, and that ought to give us a chance to keep a lot of the beasts from slipping farther north."
"What about the ones that are already over the border?" Van asked. "How are you going to deal with them?"
"Bevon's vassals, or rather Bevon's sons' vassals, will slay some of them," Gerin said. "That should convince them the things are real and dangerous. As for the others, we'll just have to hope there aren't too many."
"Fair enough," Van said, to Gerin's relief. The Fox's great fear—one he didn't want to speak aloud to his followers—was that, like the Trokmoi, the monsters would permanently establish themselves in the northlands. If men couldn't rid the woods of wolves, how were they to be free of creatures cleverer and more vicious than wolves?
He divided his men into teams of nine, and appointed a leader for each band. He had contrary misgivings about naming Drago and Rihwin: the one might miss things he ought to find, while the other got in trouble by being too inventive. But they were both better than anyone else in their bands, so he spoke their names firmly and hoped for the best.
He ordered half the team
s to head east from the Elabon Way, the other half west. "We'll go out for three days, hunt for a day, and then come back," he said. "Anybody who's not back to the road in seven days' time and hasn't been eaten to give him an excuse will answer to me."
Eastbound and westbound forces headed out from the highway; the Fox and his chariot crew were in the latter. At first each half of the little army tramped along as a single body, the better to overawe any of the local nobles who might be tempted to fare forth against them. Men chattered and sang and, after a while, began to grumble about sore feet.
When morning had turned to afternoon and the sun sank toward the horizon, Gerin turned to the team headed by Widin Simrin's son. "You men go back and forth through the woods hereabouts," he said. "The rest of us will push on, then leave another team behind, then another, and another, so when we're through we'll have men all along the border. Do you see?"
"Aye, lord," Widin answered. "That means at the end of our reach, though, so to speak, we won't be able to search for as long as we will here closer to the Elabon Way."
"True enough," the Fox said, "but I don't know what we can do about it. Travel takes time, and there's no help for it." He nodded approvingly to Widin; that was a much better point than the one he'd raised before. Gerin hadn't worked the implications of his strategy through so logically himself. "When we get back to Fox Keep, would you be interested in learning to read and write?"
"No, lord prince," Widin replied at once. "Got better things to do with my time, I do—hunting and wenching and keeping my vassals and serfs in line." He sounded so sure of himself that Gerin subsided with a sigh and did not push the question.
With Widin's team left behind, the rest tramped on. They took a game track through a stand of oaks and emerged on the far side at the edge of cleared fields in which peasants labored. The peasants stared at them in horror, as if they were so many monsters themselves, then fled.
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