"Go away, Ruffian!" Ricolf snapped. The dog ignored him. "Beast thinks the place belongs to him," Ricolf grumbled. He took Gerin's arm and pointed. "Right over there, and I'll see to it your horses are tended."

Ricolf s tubs were carved limestone; the delicate frieze of river G.o.dlets and nymphs carved round them told Gerin they'd been hauled up from the south, for local gravers were not so skilled. Soaking in his steaming tub, the Fox said, "Ricolf gives his suitors nothing but the finest. I never thought I'd feel clean again."

Van's bulk almost oozed out of his tub," but he grunted contented agreement. He asked, "What is this daughter of Ricolfs like?"

Gerin paused to rinse suds from his beard. "Your guess is as good as mine. As near as I can remember, ten years back she was small and skinny, and rather wished she were a boy."

They dried on furs. Van spent a few minutes polishing imaginary dull places on his cuira.s.s and combing the scarlet crest of his helm. Gerin did not re-don his own armor, choosing instead a sky-blue tunic and black breeches. "With your gear," the baron said, "you could go anywhere, but I'd look a mere private soldier in mine. Even this is none too good; the southerners will doubtless have their hair all curled and oiled and wear these toga things they affect." He waved a limp-wristed hand. "And they talk so pretty, too."

"Don't have much use for them, eh, Captain?"

Gerin smiled wryly. "That's the funniest part of it; I spent the happiest part of my life south of the Kirs. I'm a southerner at heart some ways, I suppose, but I can't let it show at Fox Keep."

Ricolf met them and led them into his long hall. At the west end a great pile of fat-wrapped bones smoked before Dyaus' altar. "You feed the G.o.d well," Gerin said.

"He has earned it." Ricolf turned to the men already at the tables. "May I present the baron Gerin, called the Fox, and his companion Van of the Strong Arm. Gentlemen, we have here Rihwin the Fox-"

Gerin stared at the man who shared his t.i.tle. Rihwin stared back, his clean-shaven face a mask. That alone would have said he was from the south, but he wore a flowing green toga and a golden hoop in his left ear. Gerin liked most southern ways, but he had always thought that a bit excessive.

Ricolf was still talking. "Also Rumold of the Long Bow, Laidrad the Besieger, Wolfar of the Axe-"

Gerin muttered a polite unpleasantry. Wolfar, a dark-skinned lump of a man with bushy eyebrows, coa.r.s.e black hair, and an unkempt thicket of beard that almost reached his swordbelt, was his western neighbor. They'd fought a b.l.o.o.d.y skirmish over nothing in particular two winters ago, before Wolfar went to seek Ricolf's daughter.

While Ricolf droned on, introducing more suitors and men of his household, Gerin grew hungrier and hungrier. Finally Ricolf said, "And last but surely not least, my daughter Elise."

The baron was dimly aware of Van sweeping off his helmet and somehow bowing from the waist in full armor. Elise's long golden gown acutely reminded him how much little girls could grow in ten years. He was vaguely regretful she did not follow the bare-bodiced southern style, but it was scarcely necessary. Long brown hair flowed over her creamy shoulders. Her laughing green eyes held him. "I remember you well, Lord Gerin," she said lightly. "When last you were here you bounced me on your knee. Times change, though."

"So they do, my lady," Gerin agreed mournfully.

He took his seat without much attention to his benchmates, and found himself between Rihwin and Wolfar. "Bounced her on your knee, forsooth?" Rihwin said, soft voice turning words in elaborate southern patterns. "I should be less than a truthteller were I to say some such idea had not crossed my mind at one time or another, and perhaps the minds of others here as well. And here we have a man who has accomplished the fondest dreams of a double hand of n.o.bles and more: in good sooth, a fellow manifestly to be watched with the greatest of care." He raised his mug in mocking salute, but Gerin thought the smile on his handsome face was real. The baron drained his own tankard in return. Rihwin seemed to wince as he downed his ale; no doubt he preferred wine.

Most southerners did, but north of the Kirs grapes did not grow well.

Gerin felt an elbow nudge his ribs. Wolfar grinned at him, displaying snaggled teeth. Gerin suspected he had were-blood in him; his hairiness varied marvelously as the moons whirled through the sky, and three years before, when Nothos and Math were full at the same time, there had been a tale that he had gone all alone into the forests of the Trokmoi and with his teeth ripped out the throat of any man he met. "How fare you, Fox?" he grunted.

"Well enough until now," Gerin answered smoothly. From the corner of his eye he saw Rihwin c.o.c.k an eyebrow in an expression he was more used to feeling on his own face than seeing on another. He felt he had pa.s.sed an obscure test.

His empty belly was growling audibly when the repast made its appearance. Ricolf's cooks did not have the spices and condiments the Fox had known south of the mountains, but the food was good and they did no violence to it. There was beef broth roasted and boiled, fowls fried crisp and brown, mutton, ribs of pork cooked in a tangy sauce, creamy cheese with a firm, tasty outer skin, thick soup from the stockpot, and mountains of fresh-baked bread. Ricolf's good beer was an added delight. Serving wenches ran here and there, food-laden bronze platters in their hands, trying to keep ahead of the gobbling suitors.

Rihwin and one or two others discreetly patted the girls as they went by. Gerin understood their caution; it would not have done for a n.o.ble intent on marrying Ricolf's daughter to get one of his wenches with child. Van had no such compunctions. When a well-made la.s.s came by, he kissed her loudly and squeezed her haunch. She squealed and almost dropped her tray. Her face was red as she pulled away, but she was smiling back at him.

The feasters tossed gnawed bones onto the hall's dirt floor, where Ricolf's dogs fought and snarled over them. Whenever the battles grew too noisy a couple of cleaned-up serfs in stout boots toed the hounds apart. Even so, the din was overpowering. So was the smell; the odors of dog and man vied with the smell of cooking meat, and the acrid smoke from the torches and the great hearth next to Dyaus' altar hung in a choking cloud, with only a little going up the flue.

Gerin ate until he could barely move, then settled back, replete and happy. Everyone rose as Elise made her exit, flanked by two maids. When she was gone the serious drinking and gambling began.

Wolfar, as Gerin knew well, was a fanatic for dicing, but tonight, for some reason, he declined to enter the game. "I never bet in my life," he declared loftily, pretending not to hear the Fox's snort.

"I wish I could say that," mourned a loser as his bet was scooped up.

"Why can't you? Wolfar just did," Rihwin said. Gerin grinned at him with genuine liking. In the southlands the smooth insult was a fine art, one the baron had enjoyed but one decidedly too subtle for Castle Fox. Rihwin nodded back; it seemed he had aimed the remark for Gerin's ears. It always warmed the Fox when a southerner born and bred took him for equal; they were a sn.o.bbish lot on the other side of the Kirs. That Wolfar was Rihwin's target made things only more delightful.

Rihwin had a capacity for ale that belied his soft looks. Gerin valiantly tried to keep up, emptying his mug again and again until the room spun as he rose. His last clear memory was of Van howling out a nomad battlesong and accompanying himself with the flat of his blade on the tabletop.

To his everlasting amazement, the baron woke up the next morning in a bed, though he had scant notion of how or when he'd reached it. Little wails of delight and Van's hoa.r.s.echuckle from the next room told him the outlander had not wasted his night sleeping.

The Fox found a bucket of cold water outside his door and poured it over his head. Spluttering, he wandered down the pa.s.sageway and into the yard. He found Ricolf halfheartedly practicing with the bow. Though the older man had not tried to pace his guests, he looked wan.

"Is this sort of thing a nightly happening?" Gerin asked.

"The G.o.ds forbid! Were it so, I'd have been long dead. No, I plan to announce my decision tonight, and it would be less than natural if the tension didn't build. For near a year I've seen these men-all but Sigiber the Strong, poor wight, who got a spear through his middle-in battle, heard them talk, watched them. Aye, my mind's made up at last." "Who?"

"Can you keep it quiet? No, that's a foolish question; you could before, pup though you were, and it's not the sort of thing to change in a man. For all his affected ways-I know there are some who call him 'Fop' and not 'Fox'-Rihwin is easily the best of them. After him, perhaps, would be Wolfar, but a long way back."

"Wolfar?" Gerin was amazed. "You can't mean it?"

"Aye, I do. I know of your trouble with him, but you can't deny he's a doughty warrior, and he's not as slow of wit as his looks would make you think."

"He's a mean one, though. Once in hand-to-hand he almost bit my ear off." Something else occurred to the Fox. "What of your daughter? If the choice were hers, whom would she pick?"

It was Ricolf's turn for surprise. "What does that matter? She'll do as I bid her." He turned back to his archery.

Gerin was tempted to leave but knew his old friend would think him rude to vanish on the eve of the betrothal. He spent the day relaxing, glancing through the few books Ricolf owned, making light talk with a few of the suitors. Van emerged in the early afternoon, a smile on his face. The outlander was rubbing a callus on his right forefinger when he found Gerin, and the baron remembered he was proud of the heavy silver ring he'd worn there. He explained, "It's only right to give the la.s.sie something to remember me by."

"You don't think she's likely to forget."

"I suppose not," Van agreed happily.

A bit before sunset a wandering minstrel appeared outside Ricolf's gate and prayed shelter for the night. The baron granted it on condition that he sing after Elise's betrothal was announced. The minstrel, whose name was Ta.s.silo, agreed at once. "How not?" he said. "After all, 'tis the purpose of a singer to sing."

The evening meal was much as it had been the night before. Tonight, though, Ricolf opened the jugs of wine brought up from the south along with griffin-headed ivory rhytons and eared cups of finest Sithonian ware, beautiful scenes of hunting, drinking, and the deeds of the G.o.ds painted under their flaze. Gerin's thrifty soul quailed when he thought of what Ricolf must have spent. Rihwin, who seemed to expect his coming triumph and hadn't tasted his beloved wine in a year, began pouring it down almost faster than he could be served. He held it well at first, regaling his comrades with bits of gossip from the Emperor's court. Though this was a year old, most of it was new to Gerin.

The feasters finished. An expectant hush fell on the hall.

Just as Ricolf began to rise, Rihwin suddenly clambered atop the table. The boards creaked. Voice wine-blurred, Rihwin called out, "Ha, bard! Play me a tune, and make it a lively one!" Ta.s.silo, who had looked at the bottom of his cup more than once himself, struck fiery music from his mandolin, and Rihwin went into a northern dance. Gerin stared at him; he was sure Ricolf would not like this. But Rihwin found his jig too sedate and shifted in midstep to a wild stamping nomad dance.

Ricolf, watching the unmanly performance, looked like a man bathing in h.e.l.lfire. He had all but beggared himself to provide the best for these men and make his holding as much like the elegant southland as he could. Was this to be his reward?

Then, with a howl, Rihwin stood on his hands and kicked his legs in the air in time to the music.

His toga fell limply about his ears, and he was wearing nothing at all beneath it.

At that spectacle the maids hustled Elise from the hall. Gerin did not quite catch her expression, but thought amus.e.m.e.nt a large part of it.

In agony, Ricolf cried, "Rihwin, you have danced your wife away!"

"I could hardly care less," Rihwin retorted cheerfully. "Play on, minstrel!"

chapter 3.

After that there was little enough Ricolf could do. He tried to make the best of the fias...o...b.. proclaiming to everyone that Wolfar of the Axe was his true choice as Elise's groom. Wolfar acknowledged his honor with a gracious growl, which only disconcerted Ricolf more. There were scattered cheers, including a sardonic one from the sodden Rihwin.

Gerin muttered insincere congratulations to Wolfar, then left the feast, claiming he wanted an early start in the morning. There was just enough truth in that to make mannerly his escape from his enemy's victory. Van had already disappeared with another wench and a jug of wine. Ignoring the raucous celebration in the great hall, Gerin blew out the little flame flickering from the middle fingertip of the hand-shaped clay lamp by his bed and was asleep at once.

He woke to the sound of someone fumbling at the barred door. Elleb's crescent, just now topping the walls of Ricolf's keep, peeped through the east-facing slit window and sent a pale pink stripe of light across the bed to the door; sunrise was still two or three hours away Head aching, Gerin groped for his clothes. He slid into his trousers, but wrapped his tunic round his right arm to serve as a shield. The fumbling went on. Knife in hand, he padded to the door and flung it open.

Whatever outcry he had intened clogged in his throat. "Great Dyaus, Elise, what are you dong here?" he gurgled. He almost had not known her. No longer was she gowned and bedecked; she wore stout boots, breeches, and a sheepskin jacket so baggy it all but hid her curves. A knife swung at her belt, and her long hair was tucked up under a shapeless leather traveler's hat.

For a long moment she stared at the blade in his left hand its nicked edge glittering in the fading light of the hallway torches. Then she brushed past the stunned Fox and shut the door behind them. Voice low and fast, she said, "I need help, and of all the men here I think I can only ask it of you, Lord Gerin. I was willing to try my father's idiot scheme as long as I thought I'd have some chance of getting a husband I could endure, but Wolfar of the Axe-"

Gerin wished he had not drunk so much; his head still buzzed and his wits were slow. "All the northland knows I have no love for Wolfar, but what do you want of me?" he asked, already afraid he knew the answer.

She looked up at him, eyes enormous in the gloom. "I know you are going to the City-take me with you! My mother was of a southern house, and I have kin there. I'd be no burden to you; I've been daughter and son both to my father, and I can live from the land like any warrior-"

"Don't you see it's something I can't do?"

Gerin broke in. "It's impossible. What would my life be worth if someone were to find you here even now?" Alarmed at that thought, he added, "By the G.o.ds, where are your maids?"

"As soon as I knew my father had chosen Wolfar, I put a sleeping powder in their cups. The ninnies were still clucking over poor besotted Rihwin. He wasn't a bad fellow, for all his silly ways."

The baron felt a touch of annoyance at her mentioning the drunken fool with kindness, but stifled it. He said, "There's one for you, then. But why would Ricolf not think I ran off with you against your will?"

"Nothing simpler: I left a note in my room saying just what I was doing, and why. There are things in it only he and I know; he'd not think it forced from me."

Gerin stared. Women who read and wrote were not of the ordinary sort. Well, he thought, I've already found that out. But he shook his head, saying, "You have all the answers, it seems. But answer me this: would you have me break the sacred oath of guest-friendship I hold with your father? No luck comes to the oathbreaker; G.o.ds and men alike turn from him."

She inspected him, and he felt himself flinch under her gaze. "You've forgotten the oath you gave me all those years ago, then?" she asked bitterly, and her eyes filled with unshed tears. "How old was I? Eight? Ten? I don't know, but I've remembered from then till now that you treated me as if I was a real person, not just a brat underfoot. You swore if ever I needed you, there would you be. Is an oath less an oath because given to a child? Am I less a person because I have no beard? You called on Dyaus; by Dyaus, Lord Gerin, could you see yourself wed to Wolfar, were you a woman?" The tears slid down her cheek.

"No," he sighed, understanding what the truth meant but unable to lie to her.

"No more could I.I would sooner die."

"There's no need of that," he said, awkwardly patting her shoulder. He tossed the rolled-up tunic aside and climbed into his cuira.s.s. "What sort of gear do you have?" he asked.

"No need to worry about that; I've already stowed it in your wagon."

He threw his hands in the air. "I might have known. You know, Van will call me nine different kinds of fool, and every one of them true, but you'll be useful to have around; you could talk a longtooth into eating parsnips. Wait here," he added, and stepped into the hall. He tried Van's door and found it barred; he swore under his breath. He was about to tap when the door flew open. Van loomed over him, naked as the day he was born; his mace checked its downward arc inches from Fox's head.

"Captain, what in the five h.e.l.ls are you up to?" he hissed. Behind him the voice of a woman made drowsy complaint; in the half-light the curve of her hip and thigh was an inviting shadow. "It's all right, love," the outlander rea.s.sured her. She sighed and went back to sleep. Van turned to Gerin: "Don't ever come scratching round my door. It isn't healthy."

"So I see. Now will you put that fornicating thing down and listen to me?"

When the baron's tale was done, there was nothing but astonishment on Van's face. He whistled softly. "I will be d.a.m.ned," he said. "Spend two years thinking a man stodgy and then he does this to you." His shoulders shook with suppressed mirth. "What are you standing here gawking for? Go on, get the horses. .h.i.tched up; I'll be with you in a few minutes." Softly but firmly, he shut the door in Gerin's face.

Blinking, the baron retreived Elise and hurried down the hallway. The only sounds were faint cracklings from the guttering torches and snores from behind almost every door. Gerin thanked the G.o.ds for the flooring of rammed earth; on planking the nails in his sandals would have clicked like the wooden snappers some Sithonian dancers wore on their fingers.

"How can I thank you?" Elise whispered. "I-" Gerin clamped a hand over her mouth: someone else was in the hall.

Wolfar, stumbling to his bed, had rarely felt better in his life. He had spent most of the night thinking of Gerin chopped into dogmeat after he took over Ricolf's lands as well as his own, and Elise was a tasty baggage, too. Every other feaster had long since either lurched off to bed or slid under the table, but Wolfar, buoyed by his visions of glory and mayhem, was still mostly himself after drinking them all down. He gaped when Gerin appeared before him.

"Ah, the Fox," he said jovially. "I was just thinking of you." His piggy eyes went wide when he saw the baron's companion.

Gerin saw him fill his lungs to shout. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a dead torch from its dragon-headed bronze sconce and broke it over Wolfar's bald spot. Wolfar sank to the ground without a sound, mouth still open. Gerin and Elise darted for the stables, not knowing how long he would be stunned.

Once outside the castle they slowed; to attract the attention of the gate crew was the last thing they wanted.

The horses looked resentful as Gerin harnessed them. His fingers flew over the leather straps, for at any moment he expected an alarm to sound. But the horses were hitched and Elise hidden under blankets in the back of the wagon, and still all was quiet. There was no sign of Van, either; Gerin waited and worried.

A footfall in the doorway made him whirl, hand leaping for his swordhilt, but that gigantic silhouette could only belong to one man. "What kept you?" the baron barked.

"Captain," Van said with dignity, "there are some things a gentleman never hurries. You laid out Wolfar cold as a cod; he'll have a headache for a week. Now let's be off, shall we? Ah, you've already got a torch lit. Good; here, start another. The light may keep the worst of the ghosts away. Or, of course," he added fatalistically, "it may not. I know few men who've gone night-faring, and fewer still who came back again, but now it's a needful thing."

He climbed aboard, took the reins, and clucked the horses into motion. Harness jingling, they rode up to the gate. A couple of Ricolf's hounds sniffed about the wagon's wheels, but Van flicked them away with his whip.

The gate-guards made no move to let down the drawbridge, but looked curiously at Van and Gerin. One asked, "Lords, why are you on your way so early?"

Van stopped breathing; it was a question for which he had no good answer. But Gerin only grinned a lopsided grin. He laughed at the guard and said, "I'm running away with Ricolf's daughter; she's much too good for anyone here."

The soldier shook his head. "Ask a question like that and you deserve whatever answer you get, I suppose. Come on, Vukov," he said to the other watchman, "let down the bridge. If they want to take their chances with the ghosts, it's their affair and none of mine." Smothering a yawn, Vukov helped his comrade with the winch. The bridge lowered slowly, then dropped the last few feet with a thump. To Gerin the clop of the horses' hooves on it seemed the loudest thing in the world.

Trying not to bellow laughter, Van wheezed and choked. Between splutters he managed to say, "Captain, that was the most outrageous thing I've ever seen in my life! You've got to promise me you'll never, ever let me gamble with you. I have better things to do than throw my money away."

"It's ill-done to lie in the house of a guest-friend. If his men choose not to believe, why, that's their affair and none of mine," Gerin shrugged, mimicking the guardsman.

As soon as they left the shelter of Ricolf's keep the ghosts were at them, keening their loss and shrieking cold resentment of any who still kept warm blood in their veins. Without the boon of blood to placate them, they sent an icy blast of terror down on the travelers. The horses rolled their eyes, shying at things only they saw. Gerin stopped his ears with his fingers in a vain effort to shut out the ghosts' wails. He saw Van work his ma.s.sive jaw, but no word of complaint pa.s.sed the out lander's lips. Elise, shivering, came up to sit with them under the scant protection the torches gave.

Ricolf's lands shot by in a gray blur, as if Van thought to outrun the ghosts by fleeing south. The horses did not falter, but seemed glad to run. False dawn was touching the east with yellow light when the wagon sped past the little guardpost Ricolf kept on his southern border. Gerin was not much surprised to see the guards curled up asleep inside; fire and blood warded them from the night spirits. They did not stir when the wagon went by.

Half expecting pursuit, the Fox had been looking back over his shoulder as long as he was in Ricolf's lands. When he saw how much Van slowed his pace once past the border he knew he had not been alone. He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at his friend. "For all his willingness to help carry off the lady," he said to no-one in particular, "I seem to notice a certain burly accomplice of mine lacking a perfect faith in the power of her notes to soothe ruffled tempers."

"If all that noise means me," Van rumbled, "then you've hit in the center of the target. It would have been downright awkward to have to explain to a horde of warriors just what I was doing with their lord's daughter."

Elise made a face at him. She, at least, seemed confident there would be no followers. Gerin wondered what it took to put trust in someone unknown for a double handful of years. His mind stalked round the idea like a cat with ruffled fur, and he was still astonished any pleading of Elise's could have convinced him to bring her along.

At last the sun touched the eastern horizon, spilling out ruddy light like a huge hand pouring wine from a jug. The ghosts gave a last frightened moan and returned to whatever gloomy haunts they inhabited during the day.

The morning wore on with no sign of anyone on their trail, but Gerin still felt uneasy for no reason he could name. It could not have been the land; save for the High Kirs, now a deep blue shadow on the southern skyline, there was nothing to be seen much different than he knew in his own barony. Meadow and forest alternated, and if there were a few more elms and oaks and a few less pines and maples, that mattered little. The woods did grow closer to the road than the Fox would have liked: south of Ricolf's holding the highway marked the boundaries of two barons said to be rivals, and to Gerin's way of thinking they should have kept the undergrowth well trimmed so it could not be used for cover.

Once a little stream wound close by the roadway. When Van pulled off to water the horses and let them rest for a few minutes, frogs and turtles leaped from mossy rocks and churned away in senseless terror, just as they would have done near Fox Keep. No, the Fox thought as he stared back at a suspicious turtle, the land was not what troubled him.

The peasants seemed much the same, too. The lived in little villages of wattle and daub, the community oxen housed about as well as the people. Scrawny chickens picked around their cottages and squawked warnings at their dogs, who snarled back. Little naked herdboys guided their flocks of sheep and cattle with sticks, helped by the short-legged brown and white dogs native to the north country. Men and women in colorless homespun worked in the fields, knowing no less toil than the draft animals laboring with them.