For all Gerin knew, the Trokme guards at the border to Adiatunnus' holding might have been the same crew with whom he'd spoken when he came seeking Duren. This time, he didn't get a close look at them. As soon as they saw his force of chariotry approaching, they cried 'The southrons!' in their own language and fled. They got in among the trees before any of his men could shoot them like the pheasant.
'Shall we stop and go after them, lord prince?' Raffo asked.
'No,' the Fox answered. 'We storm ahead instead. That way we get in amongst the woodsrunners faster than they have word we're coming.'
The first village his men reached was inhabited by Elabonian serfs who had acquired new masters in the five years since the Trokmoi swarmed south over the Niffet. When they realized the men in the chariots were of their own kind, they came swarming out of their huts with cries of exultation.
'The gods be praised!' they shouted. 'You've come to deliver us from the Trokmoi and from the-things.' With that seemingly innocuous word, half their joy at seeing Gerin and his followers seemed to evaporate, boiled away in the memory of overpowering fear. One of them said, 'The Trokmoi are bad enough, stealing and raping and all. But those things…' His voice guttered out like a candle.
'If you want to go, just pack whatever you can carry on your backs and run for my holding,' Gerin said. 'The peasants there will take you in. The ground is thin of men these days, with so much war and plunder. They'll be glad to have you, to help bring in a bigger crop.'
'Dyaus bless you, lord,' the serf said fervently. Then he hesitated. 'But lord, how shall we travel with these things loose in the woods and ready to swoop down on us?'
'Take weapons, fool,' Van said. 'Anything you have is better than nothing. Would you rather be eaten trying to get away or stay here till the monsters come into your house and eat you in your own bed?'
'Truth to tell, lord,' the serf said, taking no chances on the outlander's rank, 'I'd sooner not be et at all.'
'Then get out,' Gerin said. 'Now we've no more time to waste gabbing with you. The Trokmoi and the monsters destroyed a peasant village in my land, just over the border from what used to be Capuel's holding. Now they're going to find out they can't do that without paying the price for it.' He slapped Raffo on the shoulder. The driver flicked the reins of the chariot. The horses started forward.
The Fox put himself in the lead now, with Drago's chariot right behind. The Bear would reliably follow him, and wouldn't do anything foolish. That counted for more than whatever brilliant stratagems Rihwin might come up with, for Rihwin might just as easily do something to endanger the whole force.
The road opened onto another clearing, this one recently hacked out of the woods. In it stood three or four stout wooden houses, bigger and sturdier than the round cottages in which most serfs dwelt. 'Those are Trokme homes,' Gerin said. 'I've seen enough of them north of the Niffet.'
'Let's get rid of the Trokmoi in 'em, then,' Van said. One of those Trokmoi came out from behind a house. He stared in amazement that might have been comical under other circumstances at the Elabonians encroaching on what he'd come to think of as his land. That lasted only a couple of heartbeats. Then he let out a shout of alarm and dashed for shelter inside.
Gerin already had an arrow in the air. It caught the woodsrunner in the small of the back. He went down with a wail. Gerin caught Van's eye. 'Try doing that with your precious spear,' he said.
Another Trokme came outside to see what the shouting was about. Gerin and Drago both shot at him-and both missed. He ducked back into the house in a hurry, slammed the door, and dropped the bar with a thump Gerin could hear across half a furlong.
'Fire arrows!' Gerin yelled.
A couple of chariots had firepots in them, half full of embers ready to be fanned to life. Others carried little bundles of straw soaked in pitch. While some of his men got real fires going, others tied the bundles to arrows, just back of the heads. Still others used shields to protect them from the Trokmoi, who started shooting at them from the windows of the houses.
Trailing smoke, the fire arrows flew toward the woodsrunners' shelters. Some fell short; some went wide- their balance was all wrong. But others stuck in wall timbers or the thatch of the roofs. Before long, smoke rose up from a dozen different places. The Trokmoi inside yelled at one another. Some of the voices belonged to women. One corner of Gerin's mouth twisted down, but only for a moment. The Trokmoi hadn't cared about women or children when they struck his holding. What did he owe them?
The fires on the roofs grew and spread. The women's cries rose to shrill shrieks, then suddenly stopped. Doors came open. Red- and yellow-mustached men charged out, half a dozen in all. Some had helms on their heads; two or three carried shields. They threw themselves at Gerin's troopers with no thought for their own survival, only the hope of taking some Elabonians with them before they fell.
'You'll not have our wives and daughters for your sport,' one of them panted as he slashed at the Fox. 'We're after slaying the lot of them.'
Van's spear caught the woodsrunner in the side. The fellow wore no armor; it bit deep. Van twisted the shaft as he yanked it out. The Trokme coughed bright blood and crumpled.
Gerin looked around. None of the other woodsrunners was still on his feet. One of his own men swore as he bound up a slashed arm. That seemed to be the only wound his warriors had taken-they'd so outnumbered their foes that they'd dealt with them three and four and five to one, and not all of them had been engaged by a long shot.
The houses kept on burning. Drago the Bear said, 'That smoke's going to give us away.'
'It's liable to,' Gerin agreed, 'though fire gets loose easily enough, and it's bloody hard to douse once it does. Adiatunnus and his lads will know something has gone wrong, but not just what-until we show up and teach 'em. Let's get moving again.'
Before long, they came to another peasant village-or rather, what had been one. Now several monsters from under the temple at Ikos stalked among the houses. More of them tore at the carcasses of a couple of oxen in the middle of the village square. They looked up, muzzles and hands red with blood, as Gerin's chariot came into sight.
Two or three monsters ran straight for the chariot, as any fierce beasts might have. Gerin shot one of them: a lucky arrow, right through the throat. That made the others hesitate, more thoughtful than any beasts would have been.
But it also gave the rest of the monsters the chance to snatch up weapons: clubs, spears, and a couple of swords. Then they too rushed toward the Fox, their cries more like words than any he had heard from the creatures before.
He had a bad moment or two there. There were a lot more monsters than he had men in the two lead chariots. He was about to order Raffo to wheel the horses around and retreat when reinforcements came rattling up.
Some of the monsters kept on with the attack, again as beasts might have done. But others must have made the calculation he'd been on the brink of a short time before: they headed off into the woods, to fight another day.
When the skirmish was done, Gerin pointed to the deserted huts in the village and said, 'Torch the place. If those things were denning here, we don't want to give them anyplace they can return to once we' ve gone.'
More smoke rose into the sky. The Fox knew that whoever saw it would figure out something unusual was going on in the northeastern part of the land Adiatunnus had overrun. His lips skinned back from his teeth. He had reached the point where he was resigned to having a woodsrunner for a neighbor; Adiatunnus hadn't acted much differently from Capuel the Flying Frog and the other Elabonian barons he'd displaced. But if Adiatunnus consorted with monsters That led Gerin to another thought. As Raffo drove the chariot deeper into the Trokme's territory, the Fox said to Van, 'I wonder how the monsters came to align themselves with Adiatunnus. Most of the ones we saw in Bevon's holding wouldn't have had the wit to do such a thing.'
'If I had to guess, Captain, I'd say there's smart ones and dumb ones, same as with people,' the outlander answered. 'Say the smart ones are as smart as dumb people: that'd make the dumb ones like wolves or longtooths or any other hunting beasts. The smart ones'd have the wit for something like banding together with the Trokmoi, and maybe even for bringing along some of their stupid friends.' He laughed. 'Makes 'em sound like half the folk we know, doesn't it?'
'More than half,' Gerin said. Van laughed again. The Fox went on, 'I wish we didn't have to waste time with
