Wereblood Part 1

WEREBLOOD.

ERIK IVERSON.

chapter 1.

"Duin, you're a d.a.m.ned fool if you think you can fight from horseback," said Drago the Bear, tossing a gnawed bone to his trencher.

Duin the Bold slammed his tankard down on the long table; ale slopped over the rim. "Fool, is it?" he shouted, his fair face reddening. "You're the fool, you thickskulled muckbrain!"

Drago stormed up with an oath, murder in his eyes, thick arms groping toward Duin. The slimmer man skipped back; his hand flashed to his swordhilt. Cries of anger and alarm rang through Castle Fox's great hall. Gerin the Fox,.baron of Fox Keep, leaped to his feet. "Stop it!" he shouted, and the shout froze both angry men for a moment, giving their benchmates a chance to crowd between them. Drago sent one man flying with a shrug of his ma.s.sive shoulders, but was brought up short by a grip not even his ma.s.sive thews could break. The outlander Van of the Strong Arm grinned down at him. Almost a foot taller than the squat Bear, he was every bit as powerfully made, and no man in Castle Fox had yet seen his full strength exerted.

Gerin glowered at his fractious va.s.sals, absolute disgust plain in every line of his lean body. Both men grew shamefaced under his glare. Nothing would have pleased him more than breaking both their stupid heads; instead he lashed them with his voice, snapping, "I called you here to fight the Trokmoi, not each other. The woodsrunners will be a tough enough nut to crack without us squabbling among ourselves."

"Then let us fight them!" Duin exclaimed, but his blade was back in its scabbard. He went on, "This Dyaus-d.a.m.ned rain has cooped us up for ten days now. It's no wonder we're quarreling like so many snapping turtles in a pot. Turn us loose, lord Gerin!" To that even Drago rumbled agreement, and he was not alone.

The Fox shook his head. "If we try to cross the River Niffet in this weather, either current or storm will be sure to swamp us. When the sky clears, we move. Not before." Privately, Gerin was more worried than his liegemen, but he did not want them to see that. Since spring began he'd been sure the northern barbarians were planning to swarm south over the Niffet and ravage his holding, and had decided to strike first himself. But this downpour-worse than any he could recall in all his thirty years on the northern marches of the Empire of Elabon-had balked his plans. For ten days there had been no glimpse of sun, moons, or stars. Even the Niffet, a scant half mile away, was hard to spy. Too, rumor said the Trokmoi had a new wizard of great power. More than once the baron had seen fell lights dancing deep within the northern forests, and his ever-suspicious mind found it all too easy to blame the Trokme mage for the rude weather.

Duin started a further protest, but saw the scar over Gerin's right eye go pale: a sure danger signal. The words stayed bottled in his throat. He made sheepish apologies to Drago, who frowned but, under Gerin's implacable gaze, nodded and clasped his hand.

As calm descended, the baron took a long pull at his own ale. The hour was late and he was tired, but lie was not eager for bed; his chamber was on the second story, and the roof leaked. Siglorel Shelofas' son, when sober the best Elabonian wizard north of the High Kirs, had laid on a five-year calking spell only the summer before, but the old sot must have had a bad day, for water trickled through the roofing and collected in cold puddles on the upper story's floor. Spread rushes did all too little to soak it up.

Gerin plucked at his neat black beard and wished for carpets like those he had known in his younger days south of the mountains, when study was all he lived for and the barony the furthest thing from his mind. He remembered the fiasco that resulted when his exasperation drove him to try the book of spells he had brought north from the City of Elabon. History and natural lore had interested in him more than mage-craft; his studies at the Sorcerers' Collegium began late and, worse, were cut short after three months. An ambush laid by the Trokmoi had taken his father and elder brother, leaving him the unexpected master of Fox Keep. In the past eight years he had had little cause to try wizardry, and his skill was not large. Nor had age improved it: his incantation had raised nothing more than a cloud of stinking black smoke and the hackles of all his va.s.sals. He counted himself lucky; amateur wizards who played with forces stronger than they could control often met unpleasant ends.

A bit of drunken song made him look up. Duin and Drago were sitting with their arms round each other's shoulders, boasting of the havoc they would wreak among the Trokmoi when the cursed weather finally cleared. The baron was relieved; they were two of his stoutest fighting men. He drained his mug, rose to receive the salutes of his va.s.sals and, head buzzing slightly, climbed the soot-grimed oak stairway leading to his bedchamber. His last waking thought was a prayer to Dyaus for fair weather so he could add another chapter to the vengeance he was taking on the barbarians . . .

A horn cried danger from the watchtower, tumbling him from his bed with the least ceremony imaginable. He cursed the bronzen clangor as he stumbled to a window. "If that overeager lackwit up there is tootling for his amus.e.m.e.nt," he muttered to himself, "I'll have his ears." But the scar over his eye was throbbing and his fingers were nervous in his beard; if the Trokmoi had found some way to cross the Niffet in the rain, there was no telling how much damage they could do.

The window was only a north-facing slit, intended more for arrow fire than sight, but what it showed was enough. Jabbing forks of lightning revealed hand after hand of Trokmoi, all busily searching for something to carry off or, failing that, to burn. The wind blew s.n.a.t.c.hes of their lilting speech to his ears.

"May the G.o.ds fry you, Viredorix, you tricky b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and your pet wizard too," Gerin growled, wondering how the Trokme chieftain had managed to get so many men across the river so quickly. Then he raised his eyes further and saw the bridge bulking impossibly huge over the Niffet.

It was plainly sorcerous, a silvery band of light leading from the northern woods into Gerin's holding, and it had not been there when the baron went to his rest a few hours before. Even as he watched, Trokme n.o.bles poured over it in their chariots, their retainers loping beside them. Once long ago, it seemed, he had read something of such spans; he could not recall where or when, but the half-memory sent a pang of fear icing up his spine.

No time for thought now. He hurled himself into trousers and hobnailed sandals, buckled on his sword, and rushed down dim-lit pa.s.sageway and creaking stair to the great hall, where his lesser barons had hung their corselets when they arrived. The gleam of ruddy bronze in the torchlight was a delightsome thing to see, but now the hall was a swearing jumble of men donning metal-faced leather cuira.s.ses and kilts, strapping on greaves, jamming pot-shaped helms onto their heads, and fouling each other as they waved spears in the air. Like Gerin, most had dark hair and eyes and skin that took the sun well, but a few freckled faces and light beards told of northern blood-Duin, for one, was fair as any Trokme.

"Ho, Captain!" boomed Van of the Strong Arm. "Thought you'd never get here!"

Even in the rowdy crew Gerin led, Van stood out. Taller than the Fox's six feet by as many inches, he was broad enough not to look his height. A sword-cut creased his nose, wandered over his cheek, and disappeared into the sun-colored mat of beard covering most of his face. Little h.e.l.lish lights were flickering in his blue eyes.

His gear was as remarkable as his person, for his back-and-breast was cast of two solid pieces of bronze, and not even the Emperor had a finer one. Unlike the businesslike helmets his comrades wore, Van's was a fantastic affair with a scarlet horsehair plume nodding above his head and leather cheekpieces to protect his face. Looking more war-G.o.d than man, the outlander shook a spear like a young tree.

If his tale was true, he had been trying to cross the forests of the Trokmoi from north to south, end had all but done it until he fell foul of Viredorix's clan. But he had escaped them too, and had enough left in his giant frame to swim the Niffet, towing his precious armor behind him on a makeshift raft. His strength, bluff good humor, and wide-ranging fund of stories (told in the forest tongue until he learned Elabonian) won him a home at Fox Keep for as long as he wanted to stay. But when Gerin asked him his homeland he politely declined to answer. The Fox had not asked twice; if Van did not want to talk of that, it was his affair. That had been only two years ago, Gerin thought with a twinge of surprise; it was hard to recall what it had been like without his burly friend at his side.

The Fox's own armor was of the plainest, its leather much-patched, its plates battered and nicked. Patches and all, though, the leather was firm and supple, and every plate was sound. To Gerin's way of thinking, the figure he cut on the field was far less important than keeping himself alive and putting a quick end to his foes.

The warriors wallowed through thick mud to the stables. It squelched underfoot, trying to suck their sandals and boots into its cold slimy mouth. Inside the stables chaos was compounded, with boys trying to hitch unwilling horses to their masters' chariots. Gerin strung his bow and stowed it on the right side of his car next to his quiver; on the left went an axe. Like many of the Fox's va.s.sals, Van affected to despise the bow as an unmanly weapon. His seven-foot spear was his favorite arm, and he bore sword, dagger, and a wickedly spiked mace on his belt. Their shields, yard-wide discs of bronze-faced wood and leather, topped the car's low sidewalls when put in their brackets. Gerin's was deliberately dulled, Van's burnished bright. Despite their contrasting styles, the two formed one of the most feared teams on the border.

Gerin's driver, a gangling youth named Raffo, leaped into the chariot. A six-foot shield of heavy leather was slung on a baldric over his left shoulder; it gave Gerin cover from which to shoot. Taking up the reins, Raffo skillfully picked his way through the confusion.

After what seemed far too much time to the Fox, his men gathered in loose formation just behind the gatehouse. Shrieks from beyond the keep told plain as need be that the Trokmoi were plundering his serfs of what little they had. Archers on the palisade kept up a sputtering duel with the barbarians, their targets limited to those the lightning showed.

At Gerin's shouted command, the gatehouse crew flung wide the strong-hinged gates and let the drawbridge thump down. The chariots lumbered into action, trailing mucky wakes. Van's bellowed imprecations cut off in mid-oath when he saw the bridge. "By my beard," he grunted, his guttural accent harsh, "where did it come from?"

"Magicked up, without a doubt," Gerin said, and wished he were as calm as he sounded. No Trokme hedge-wizard could have called that span into being-nor could the elegant and talented mages of the Sorcerers' Guild in the City of Elabon.

An arrow whining past his ear shattered his brief reveries. Trokmoi swarmed out of the peasant village to meet his men; they had no mind to let their looting be stopped. "Viredorix!" they shouted, and "Balamung!"-a name the Fox did not know. The Elabonians roared back, "Gerin the Fox!" and the two bands met in b.l.o.o.d.y collision.

A northerner appeared at the left side of the Fox's chariot, sword in hand. The rain plastered his long red hair and flowing mustaches against his head; he wore no helm. The reek of ale was thick about him.

It was easy to read his mind. Van would have to twist his body to use his spear, Raffo had his hands full, and Gerin, who had just shot, could never get off another arrow before the Trokme's blade pierced him. Feeling like a gambler playing with loaded dice, the Fox s.n.a.t.c.hed up his axe with his left hand and drove it into the barbarian's skull. The Trokme toppled, a look of outraged surprise still on his face.

Van had caught the action from the corner of his eye. He exploded into laughter. "What a rare sneaky thing it must be to be left-handed," he chuckled.

More barbarians were hustling stolen cattle, pigs, sheep, and serfs across the gleaming bridge to their homeland. The villains had had no chance against the northern wolves; huddled in their huts against the storm and the wandering ghosts of the night, they were easy meat. A few had tried to fight, and their crumpled bodies lay beside their homes. Sickle, flail, and scythe were no match for the sword, spear, shield, helm, and bow of the Trokme" n.o.bles, though their retainers were often little better armed than the peasants. Gerin felt something almost akin to pity as he drove an arrow into one of these and watched him thrash his life away, but knew the northerner would have had no second thoughts about gutting him.

A few Trokmoi had managed to light torches despite the deluge; they smoked and sputtered in the woodsrunners' hands, but the rain made the thatched roofs and wattle walls of the cottages all but impossible to light.

With a wave and a shout Gerin sent half his chariots after the pillagers. His own car was in the middle of the village when he shouted, "Pull up!" Raffo obediently slowed; Gerin slung his quiver over his shoulder, then he and Van slid their shields onto their arms and leaped into the mire. Raffo wheeled the horses and made for the safety of Fox Keep's walls. The chariot-riders not chasing the looters followed the Fox to the ground; panting footmen rushed up to stiffen their line.

A Trokme sprang on the baron's back before he could find his footing in the slime. His bow flew from his hand. The two struggling men fell together, the barbarian's dagger seeking Gerin's heart but foiled by his cuira.s.s. He jabbed an elbow into the Trokme's unarmored middle; he grunted and loosened his grasp. Both scrambled for their feet, but Gerin was the quicker. His foot lashed out in a roundhouse kick, and the spiked sole of his sandal ripped away half the Trokme's face. With a dreadful shriek the marauder sprawled in the ooze, his features a gory mask.

Duin the Bold thundered by on a horse; though his legs were clenched round its barrel, he still wobbled on the beast's bare back. Since a rider did not have both hands free to use a bow and could not deliver any sort of spearthrust without going over his horse's tail, Gerin thought fighting from horseback a foolish notion, but his fierce little va.s.sal clung to the idea with the tenacity of a bear-baiting dog. Duin cut down one startled Trokme with his sword, but when he slashed at another the northerner ducked under his stroke and gave him a hefty push. He fell in the mud with a splash; the horse fled. The Trokme was bending over his prostrate victim when an Elabonian with a mace stove in his skull from behind.

Van was in his element. Never happier than when on the field, he was howling a battle song in a language Gerin did not know. His spear drank the blood of one mustachioed barbarian; panther-quick, he brought its bronze-shod b.u.t.t back to smash the teeth of another raider who had thought to take him from behind. A third Trokme rushed at him with an axe. The barbarian's wild swipe went wide, as did Van's answering thrust; the impulse of the blows left them breast to breast. Van dropped his spear and seized the barbarian's neck with his huge fist. He shook him once, as a dog does a rat, and the crack of parting vertebrae was a dire thing to hear.

The baron did not share his comrade's red joy in slaughter. The main satisfaction he took from killing was the knowledge that the shuddering corpse at his feet was one enemy who would never trouble him again. As far as he could, he stood aloof from the internecine quarrels of his fellow-barons, fighting only when provoked, and fell enough to be provoked but seldom.

Toward the Trokmoi, though, he bore a cold, bitter hatred. At first it had been fueled by the slaying of his father and brother, but now revenge was but a small part of it. The woodsrunners, it seemed, lived only to destroy, and all too often his border holding tasted of that destruction, shielding the softer, more civilized southlands from the sudden bite of arrows and the baying of barbarians in the night.

Almost without thinking, he ducked under, a flung stone. Another glanced from his helmet and filled his head with a brief shower of stars. A spear grazed his thigh; an arrow pierced his shield but was turned by his corselet. His archers shot back, filling the air with death. Men in moiling knots cursed, grunted, wrestled, and hewed at each other, and spouting bodies disappeared in the mud to be trampled by friend and foe alike. The Trokmoi swarmed round Gerin's armored troopers like snarling wolves round bears, but little by little they were driven back from the village toward their bridge. Their chieftains still made fierce charges across the Fox's fertile wheatfields, crushing his men beneath the flailing hooves of their woods-ponies, sending yard-long arrows through cuira.s.ses into soft flesh, and lopping off heads and arms with their great slashing swords.

At their fore was Viredorix. He had led his clan for nearly as long as Gerin had been alive, but his splendid red mustachios were unfrosted. Almost as tall as Van, if less wide in the shoulders, he was proud in gilded armor and wheel-crested bronze helm. His chariot was adorned with golden fylfots and the ears of men he had slain. His right hand held a dripping sword, his left the head of an Elabonian who had tried to stand against him.

His long, k.n.o.bby-cheekboned face split in a grin when he spied Gerin. "It's himself himself," he roared, "come to be corbies' meat like the father of him. Thinking to be a man before your ape of a friend, are you laddie?" His Elabonian was fluent enough, but flavored by his own tongue. Van roared back at him; Gerin, silent, set himself for the charge. Viredorix swung up his sword. His driver, a gaunt, black-robed man the Fox did not know, whipped his beasts forward.

On came the chariot, the hooves of its horses pounding like doom. Gerin was lifting his shield to beat back Viredorix' s first mighty stroke when Van's spear flashed over his shoulder and took one of the onrushing ponies full in the chest.

With the awful scream only wounded horses make, the s.h.a.ggy pony reared and then fell, dragging its harnessmate down with it. The chariot overturned and shattered, sending one wheel flying and spilling both riders into the muck. Gerin ran forward to finish Viredorix, but the Trokme lit rolling and rushed to meet him. "A fine thing will the skull of you be over my gate," he shouted, and then their blades joined with a clash of sparks and there was no more time for words.

Slashing and chopping, Viredorix surged forward, trying to overwhelm his smaller foe at the first onset. Gerin parried desperately; he would have been sliced in two had any of the Trokme's cuts landed. When Viredorix's blade bit so deep into the edge of his shield that it stuck for a moment, the Fox seized the chance for a thrust of his own, but Viredorix knocked his questing point aside with a dagger in his left hand; he had lost his b.l.o.o.d.y trophy when his chariot foundered.

The barbarian would not tire. Gerin's sword was heavy in his hand, his battered shield a lump of lead on his arm, but Viredorix only grew stronger. He was bleeding from a cut under his chin and another on his arm, but his attack never slowed. Crash! Crash! An overhand blow smashed the Fox's shield to kindling, the next ripped.through his armor and drew a track of fire down his ribs. With a groan, he went to one knee. Thinking him finished, the Trokme loomed over him, eager to take his head. But Gerin was not yet done. His sword shot up and out with all the force of his body behind it, and its point tore out Viredorix's throat. Dark in the gloom, his lifeblood foun-tained forth as he fell, both hands clutching futile-ly at his neck.

The baron dragged himself to his feet. Van came up beside him; there was a fresh cut on his brawny forearm, but his mace dripped blood and brains and his face was wreathed in smiles. He brandished the gory weapon and shouted, "Come on, Captain! We've broken them!"

"Is it to go through me you're thinking?"

Gerin's head jerked up. The Trokme's voice seemed to have come from beside him, but the only northerner within fifty yards was Viredorix's scrawny driver. He wore no armor under his sodden black robes and carried no weapon, but he was striding forward with the confidence of a demiG.o.d. "Stand aside, fool," Gerin said. "I have no stomach for killing an unarmed man."

"Then have not a care in the world, southron darling, for I'll be the death of you and not the other way round at all." Lightning cracked, giving Gerin a glimpse of pale skin stretched drumhead tight over skull and jaw. Like a cat's, the northerner's eyes gave back the light in a green flash. He raised his arms and began to chant. An invocation poured forth, sonorous and guttural, and Gerin's blood froze in his veins as he recognized the magic-steeped speech of the dreaming river valleys of ancient Kizzuwatna. He knew that tongue, and knew it did not belong in the mouth of a swaggering woodsrunner. The Trokme dropped his hands, screaming, "Ethrog, O Luhuzantiyas!" A horror from the h.e.l.ls of the haunted east appeared before him. Its legs, torso, and head were human, the face even grimly handsome: swarthy, hooknosed, and proud, beard falling in curling ringlets over broad chest. But its arms were the snapping chelae of a monster scorpion, and a scorpion's jointed tail grew from the base of its spine, sting gleaming at the tip. With a bellow that should have come from the throat of a bull, the demon Luhuzantiyas sprang at Gerin and Van.

It was a fight out of a nightmare. Quicker on its feet than any human, the demon used its tail like a living spear. The sting flashed by Gerin's face, so close that he caught the acrid reek of its poison. It scored a glittering line across Van's corselet. Those terrible claws chewed his shield to bits, and only a backward leap saved his arm. The warriors landed blow after blow, but the demon would not go down, though dark ichor pumped from a score of wounds and one claw was sheared away. Not until Van, with a strength born of loathing, smashed skull and face to b.l.o.o.d.y pulp with frenzied strokes of his mace did it fall. Even then it writhed and thrashed in the mire, still seeking its foes.

Gerin felt his blood trickle warm down his side. He drew in a long, shuddering breath. "Now, wizard," he grated, "join your devil in the fiery pit that sp.a.w.ned it."

The Trokme had put twenty or so paces between himself and the Fox, but his laugh-an unclean chuckle that sc.r.a.ped across Gerin's nerves-made plain his lack of fear. He bowed mockingly. "It's a strong man you are, lord Gerin the Fox"-the contempt he packed into that stung-"and this day is yours. But we'll meet again; aye, indeed we will. My name, lord Gerin, is Balamung. Mark it well, for you're after hearing it twice the now, and hearing it again you will be."

"Twice?" Gerin did not say it aloud, but Balamung heard.

"Not even remembering, are you? Well, 'twas three years agone I came south, having it in the mind of me to take up sorcery. You had me sleep in the stables, with the reeking horses and all, for some fatgut from the south and his party of pimps filled the keep all to busting, you said. When the next time comes for me to be sleeping at Fox Keep-and 'twill be soon-'twill no be in the stables.

"So south I went, stinking of horsedung, and in the City of Elabon only their hinder parts did the Sorcerers' Collegium show me. The gall of them to be calling me a savage, and that to my face, mind! After you, it's them to be paying their price.

"For, you see, quit I didna. I wandered through desert and mountain, and learned from warlocks and grizzled hermits and squinting scribes who cared not about a 'prentice's accent, if he'd do their bidding. And in a cave lost in the snows of the High Kirs, far above one of the pa.s.ses the Empire is after having blocked, I found what I had learned to seek, the which is none less than the very Book of Shabeth-Shiri the sorcerer-king of Kiz-zuwatna long ago. Himself had died there, and when I took the Book from the dead fingers of him it was a puff of smoke he turned to, and blew away. And today it's the Book that's mine, and tomorrow the northlands-and after that, the world is none too big!''

"You lie," Gerin said. "All you will own is a nameless grave, with no-one to comfort your shade."

Balamung laughed again, and now his eyes flamed red with a fire of their own. "Wrong you are, for 'tis the stars themselves tell me no grave will ever hold me. They tell me more, too, for it's the gates of your precious keep they show me all beat to flinders, and that inside two turns of the b.l.o.o.d.y second moon."

"You lie," Gerin growled again. He ran forward, ignoring the pain lancing up from his wound. Bony hands on hips, 'Balamung stood watching him. The Fox lifted his blade; Balamung was unmoving, even when it came hissing down to cleave him from crown to breastbone.

The stroke met only empty air; Gerin staggered and almost fell, for, like the light of a candle suddenly snuffed, the wizard was gone. His derisive laugh rang in Gerin's ears for a long moment, then it too faded. "Father Dyaus above!" the shaken Fox exclaimed Van muttered an oath in an unknown tongue. "Well, Captain," he said, "there's your warlock."

Gerin did not argue it.

The Trokmoi seemed to lose their nerve when the sorcerer disappeared. Faster and faster they streamed over Balamung's bridge, their feet silent on its misty surface. Only a snarling rearguard held Gerin's men at bay. They too slipped away to safety one by one, and with deep-throated roars of triumph the Elabonians swarmed after them.

Like a phantasm compounded of coils of smoke, the bridge vanished into the night as if it had never been. Warriors screamed with terror as they plunged into the foaming Niffet, the bronze weighing about their shoulders dragging them to a watery doom. On the sh.o.r.e men doffed armor with frantic haste and splashed into the water to try to save their comrades. Jeering Trokmoi on the northern bank shot at victims and rescuers alike.

It took two men to save Duin. Impetuous as always, he had been farthest along the bridge when it evaporated, and he could not swim. Somehow he managed to stay afloat until the first rescuer reached him, but so desperate was his grip that both would have drowned had not another swimmer been nearby. A few others were hauled out as well, but Balamung's trap took more than a dozen.

A plashing downstream made Gerin whirl. Matter-of-fact as any river G.o.dlet, Drago the Bear came out of the water, wringing his long beard like a peasant wench with her man's breeches. Incredibly, armor still gleamed on his breast.

If anyone could survive such a dip, thought Gerin, it would be Drago. He was strong as an ox and lacked the imagination to be frightened by anything. Still, his retainers were devoted to him and, if he was not brilliant, the Fox found it hard to imagine him disloyal.

"Nasty," he rumbled in a voice like falling trees. He might have been talking about the weather.

"Aye," muttered an abstracted Gerin. At the same moment the bridge melted away, the rain had stopped. Pale, dim Nothos, nearing full, gleamed in a suddenly star-flecked sky, while ruddy Elleb, now waning toward third quarter, was just beginning to wester. The other two moons, golden Math and quick-moving Tiwaz, were both near new and hence invisible.

Hustling along a double handful of disheveled prisoners, most of them wounded, the weary army made its way back to the keep. A large contingent of Gerin's serfs met them at the village. They capered about making fools of themselves, screaming their thanks for having their crops saved in a dialect so rustic that even Gerin, who had heard it from birth, found it hard to understand.

Gerin ordered ten oxen slaughtered, laying the fat-wrapped thigh-bones on the altars of Dyaus and the war-G.o.d Deinos, which stood in his great hall. The rest of the meat vanished into his men. To wash it down, barrel after barrel of smooth, foaming ale and sweet mead were broached and emptied. The makings of a full-scale celebration took shape. Men who found combat raising other urges pursued serving wenches and peasant girls, many of whom made only token efforts at evasion.

At first the baron did not join the merrymaking himself. He tended to his wound (luckily not deep), applying an ointment of honey, lard, and astringent herbs; he winced at their bite. Then he had the brightest-looking captive, a tall mournful blond barbarian who kept his left hand clutched to a torn right shoulder, bandaged and brought into a storeroom. While two troopers stood by with drawn swords, Gerin cleaned his nails with a dagger from his belt. He said nothing.

The silence bothered the Trokme, who fidgeted nervously. "What is it you'd want of me?" he burst out at last. "It's Cliath son of Ailech I am, of a house n.o.ble for more generations than I have toes and fingers, and no right at all do you have to treat me like some low footpad."

"What right have you," Gerin asked mildly, "to rob and burn my land and kill my men? I could flay the hide off your carca.s.s in inch-wide strips and give it to my dogs to eat while what was left of you watched, and there would be no-one to say I did not have the right. Thank your G.o.ds Wolfar did not catch you; he would do it. But tell me what I need to know, and I will set you free. Otherwise," his eyes flicked to the two hard men by him, "I'll walk out this door, and ask no questions after."

One of Cliath's eyes was swollen shut; the other glowed green in the dim lamplight. "What would be keeping you from doing that anyway, once I've talked?"

Gerin shrugged. "It's almost eight years I've held this keep. Men on both sides of the Niffet know what my word is worth. And on this you have that word: you'll have no second chance."

Cliath studied him. The'Trokme made a move as if to rub his chin, but grimaced and thought better of it. He sighed. "What would you know of me, then?"

"Tell me this: what do you know of the black-robed warlock who calls himself Balamung?"

"Och, that kern? Till this raid it's little I've had to do with him, and wanted less. It's bad cess to any honest man to have truck with a wizard, say I, for all he brings loot. No glory in beating en-sorcelled foes is there, no more than in cutting the throat of a pig, and him tied, too. But those who go with him grow fat, and the few as stand against him, and in ways so pretty as having the skins of them flayed off. I mind me of one fellow-poor wight!-who no slower than a sneeze was nought more than a pile of white twisty, slimy worms- and the stench of him! Nigh on a year and a half is it since the omadhaun came to us, and for all we're friends now with Bricriu's clan and thieving Meriasek's, still I long for the days when a man could take a head without asking the leave of a dried-up little t.u.r.d like Balamung. Him and his dog-futtering talisman!" the Trokme spat on the hard-packed dirt floor.

"Talisman?"

"Aye. With my own eyes I've seen it. 'Tis squarish, perhaps as long as my forearm, and so wide, but not near so thick, you understand, and opening out to double that. And when he'd fain bewitch someone or magic up something, why the talisman lights up almost like a torch. With my own eyes I've seen it," Claith repeated.

"Can you read?" Gerin asked.

"No, nor write, no more than I can fly. Why in the name of the G.o.ds would you care to know that?"

"Never mind," Gerin said. "I know enough now." More than I want, he added to himself; Bricriu's clan and Meriasek's had been at feud since the days of their grandfathers. He tossed the knife to the barbarian, who tucked it into the top of one of his high rawhide boots. The Fox led him through the main hall, ignoring the stares his va.s.sals gave him. He told his startled gatekeepers to let out Cliath, and said to him, "How you cross the river is your affair, but with that blade I hope you won't be waylaid by my serfs."

Good eye shining, Cliath held out his left hand. "A poor clasp, but I'm proud to make it. Och, what a clansmate you'd have been."

Gerin took the offered hand but shook his head. "No," he said, "I'd sooner live on my own land than take away my neighbor's. Now go, before I remember the trouble I'm giving myself by turning you loose." As the northerner trotted down the hill Gerin was already on his way back to the rollicking great hall, a frown on his face. Truly Deinos had loosed his terrible hounds in the northern forests, and the baron was the game they sought.

After he had downed five or six tankards, though, things looked rosier. He staggered up the stairs to his room, arm round the waist of one of his serving wenches. But even as he cupped her soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s later, part of his mind saw Castle Fox a smoking ruin, and fire and death all along the border.

chapter 2.

It was past noon when he awoke. From the noises coming from below, the roistering had never ceased. Probably no-one was on the walls, either, he thought disgustedly; could Balamung have roused his men to a second attack, he would have had Fox Keep in the palm of his fleshless hand.

The girl was already gone; he dressed and went down to the great hall, looking for half a dozen of his leading liegemen. There he found Van and Rollan the Aurochs-slayer still rehashing the battle, drawing lines on the table in sticky mead. Fan-dor the Fat had a beaker of mead, too, but he was drinking from it. That was his usual sport, and his red nose and awesome capacity testified to it. Drago was asleep on the floor, his body swathed in furs; beside him snored Simrin Widin's son. Duin was nowhere to be found.

The Fox woke Simrin and Drago and bullied his lieutenants up the stairs to his library. Grumbling, they found seats round the central table and stared suspiciously at the shelves full of neatly-pigeon-hold scrolls and codices bound in leather and gold leaf. Most of them were as illiterate as Cliath and held reading an affectation, but Gerin was a good enough man of his hands to let them overlook his eccentricity. Still, the books and the quiet overawed them a bit, and today he needed that.

He scratched his bearded chin and remembered how horrified they'd been when after his father had been killed, he'd come back from the southlands clean-shaven. Duin's father, dour old Borbeto the Grim, had been managing the barony until his return, and when he saw Gerin he had roared, "Is Duren's son a fancy-boy?" Gerin only grinned and answered, "Ask your daughter," and the shouts of laughter won the barons to him.

Duin wandered in, still fumbling at his breeches. Bawdy chuckles greeted him. Fandor called, "Easier to stay on a la.s.s than a horse, is it?"