'Send those men as soon as may be,' Gerin echoed, wondering where he was supposed to find men to send. If he could have conjured warriors out of the air, he would have used them against Adiatunnus. But he realized he would have to reduce the sweeps against the monsters for the time being, no matter how little he relished the prospect. He would lose a disastrous amount of prestige if Aragis had to force the road open.
Glumly, he tramped into the great hall. Selatre was in there, eating some sun-dried plums. She smiled a greeting and waved him over to her side. 'Here, open,' she said, and popped a prune into his mouth.
It was sweet, but not sweet enough by itself to sweeten his mood. He said 'Thank you' even so; Selatre appreciated formal politeness. He studied her-she looked a trifle on the haggard side, but wryly amused at the same time. The combination tweaked his curiosity. 'You've got something to tell me,' he said. 'I can see it in your eyes.' He wondered if he was about to become a father again.
'Yes, I do,' she said, and her tone made him all but sure of it. Then she went on, 'Just another proof I'm Sibyl no more: my courses started this morning. I needed a moment, I confess, to figure out what was happening to me.' Her mouth twisted. 'One part of full womanhood I'd willingly have missed.'
'Mm, yes, I can understand that,' he said judiciously. He knew a certain measure of relief that he didn't have to worry about fatherhood at such an inconvenient time, and a different measure of relief that Selatre still seemed in a reasonably good humor. At such times, Fand could often make a longtooth flinch. But then, Fand's temper was certain to be uncertain.
'I didn't know this would happen when I came into your bed, but it makes sense that it has,' Selatre said. 'Biton's law was that no woman who had known man could be his Sibyl. Now that we're lovers'-he admired the matter-of-fact way she brought that out-'no wonder I've lost what marked me as a possible Sibyl in the first place.'
Gerin nodded. 'That does make sense. And it's reasoned as nicely as any schoolmaster down in the City of Elabon might have done-not that they're in the habit of reasoning about such things.'
Selatre stuck out her tongue at him. 'What about the fellow who had that endlessly entertaining book?'
'He wasn't a schoolmaster,' Gerin said with a snort. 'Just an endlessly lecherous student. Now that I think back on it, a lot of us were like that.' He waited for Selatre to make some sort of sharp reply to that, but she didn't. For once, her ignorance of men in general worked to his advantage.
The lookout in the watchtower let go with a long, discordant blast from his horn. 'Chariots approaching out of the west, a pair of 'em,' he bawled.
'Out of the west?' Gerin said. 'I wonder who that is.' He got to his feet. 'Better go find out.' He headed out toward the courtyard. Selatre followed.
'It's Schild Stoutstaff, lord,' Parol Chickpea called from atop the palisade. 'Shall we let him in?'
'Schild, is it?' the Fox said. Had he had ears like a real fox's, they would have pricked forward with interest. 'Aye, by all means let him come in. I'll be fascinated to see what he wants of me.'
'Why's that, lord prince?' Parol asked with a hoarse guffaw. 'On account of he only remembers he's your vassal when he wants something off you?'
'That does have something to do with it, yes,' Gerin answered dryly. The drawbridge lowered once more-a busy day, the Fox thought. A couple of minutes later, Schild and his companions rolled into the courtyard.
'Lord prince,' Schild called, nodding to Gerin. He was a big, burly fellow, on the swarthy side, a few years older than the Fox, and had the air of one who trusted his own judgment and strength above any others. That alone made him less than the best of vassals, but Gerin understood it, for it was part of his own character as well.
'What brings you here?' he asked.
Schild jumped down from his chariot, surprisingly graceful for such a bulky man. He strode over to Gerin and fell to his knees in front of him, holding out his hands before him with their palms pressed together. 'Your servant, lord prince!' he said, his eyes on the ground.
Gerin took Schild's hands in his, acknowledging the other man's vassalage and his own obligations as overlord. 'Rise, lord Schild,' he said formally. As soon as Schild was back on his feet, the Fox went on in more conversational tones: 'You must need something from me, or you'd not choose to remember I'm your master.'
'You're right, lord Gerin, I do.' Schild didn't even bother correcting the Fox. 'Those horrible things they say came up from under the ground are a hideous plague in my holding. My own vassals and I can't keep the serfs safe, try as we will. I have pride-you know that. I've buried it to beg aid of you.'
'So now you'd be glad to see chariots cross from my holding to yours, eh?' Gerin waited for Schild to nod, then drove home the dart: 'You wouldn't even let my men onto your land to seek my stolen son earlier this year- but you didn't need me then, of course.'
'That's true. I made a mistake, and I may end up paying for it, too,' Schild answered steadily. He won Gerin's reluctant admiration for that; whether you liked him or not, you had to admit he held very little nonsense. Now he let loose a rueful laugh. 'I have more to tell you about that than I did then, too.'
'Do you?' Gerin's voice went silky with danger. As if of itself, his hand slipped to the hilt of his sword. Schild was no mean fighting man, but he gave back a step from the expression on the Fox's face. ' You had best tell it, and quickly.'
'Aye, lord prince. You have to understand, I didn't know it at the time when your man came asking.' Schild licked his lips. 'That minstrel-Tassilo was his name, not so?-he came through my holding. You know that much already, I daresay. He didn't stop at my keep, though; he guested with a couple of my vassals before he passed out the other side of my lands. Lord Gerin, I learned not long ago he had a boy with him. If I'd known that then-'
'What would you have done, lord Schild?' Gerin asked, his quiet fiercer than a scream. 'What would you have done? Sent Duren back to me? Or would you have kept him for a while, to see what advantage you might wring from him?'
'Damn me to the five hells if I know, Fox,' Schild answered, formal politeness forgotten. 'But I didn't have the chance to find out, which is likely just as well. Now I know, and now I'm here, and now I've told you.'
'If I ever find out you lied to me about this-' Gerin let that drop. He had a score to settle with Schild even if Schild hadn't liedbut not now. Other things had to come first.
'Not here,' Schild said. 'I know what my life would be worth if I tried.' He spoke with as much assurance as if he'd looked at rapidly approaching clouds and announced, 'It looks like rain.' Gerin had always done his best to give his neighbors the idea he'd be a dangerous man to cross. Seeing he'd succeeded should have been more gratifying than it was.
He said, 'Duren came into your holding, then, and was alive and well when he went out again?'
'So far as I know, Fox, that's the way of it,' Schild answered.
Selatre came up to Gerin, set a hand on his arm. 'The prophecy Biton spoke through me said your son's fate would be mild. I'm glad we begin to see the truth of that now.'
Schild's eyes widened when he realized who Selatre had to be, and then again when he realized what her touching Gerin was likely to mean. The Fox noted that without doing anything about it; his thought swooped down on Selatre's words like a stooping hawk. 'Biton said Duren's fate might well be mild,' he answered with a sort of pained precision he wished he could abandon, 'not that it would be. We still have to see.'
She looked at him. As if Schild-as if everyone but the two of them-had receded to some remote distance, she asked quietly, 'You're afraid to hope sometimes, aren't you?'
'Yes,' he answered, as if speaking to her ears alone. 'Expect much and you're too often disappointed. Expect little and what you get often looks good.'
Selatre made an exasperated noise. Before she could carry the argument further, though, Schild broke in: 'Well, Fox, what can I expect from you?'
That hauled Gerin back to the world of chariots and monsters and red-mustached barbarians: not the world in which he would have chosen to spend his time, but the one in which the gods had seen fit to place him. He started calculating, and did not care for the answers he came up with. He'd been stretched too thin before he'd had to commit men to reopening the Elabon Way; he was thinner now. Fixing Schild with a glare, he growled, 'Why couldn't you have forgotten you were my vassal a while longer?'
'Because I need your aid, lord prince,' Schild answered, more humbly than the Fox had ever heard him speak.
