Some of Gerin's vassals peeled off from the main force as they reentered his territory, off to their own castles and to protect their own villages. Most, though, stayed on the road to Fox Keep. Before long, they'd be riding south to help Aragis and fulfill Gerin's part of the bargain.
He'd wondered if the serfs would ask him whether he'd rid their villages of the monsters for good, and dreaded having to tell them no. Then the army passed through a village the creatures had attacked while he was deep in Adiatunnus' territory. That made him feel worse. He'd hurt the Trokmoi and the monsters, but he'd been mad to think he could root them out with a single victory.
He also wondered how much he and his men would accomplish down in the holding of Aragis the Archer. He feared it would be less than Aragis hoped, but kept that fear to himself. Whatever the grand duke's misgivings, he'd come north. The Fox saw no way to keep from reciprocating, not if he wanted to keep his good name.
The return to Castle Fox was subdued. The victory the army had won did not outweigh the men who would not come back, the complete triumph that had eluded the Elabonians.
Seeing Selatre again, squeezing her to him, was wonderful, but she quickly sensed that, past having come home alive and unhurt, Gerin had little to celebrate. That made her shrink back into herself, so that she seemed to stand aloof from the chaos in the stables although she was in the middle of it.
Van and Fand got into a screaming fight over what business the outlander had had going off to fight the Trokmoi. He clapped a hand to his forehead and bellowed, 'You tell me not to tangle with them when the only reason you're here is that you stabbed the last woodsrunner daft enough to take you into his bed?'
'Aye, I did that, and I had the right of it, too, for he was of my own folk, for all that he was an evil-natured spalpeen to boot,' she said. 'But you, now, you're the Fox's friend, but you're after being my lover. So you see!'
Van shook his head-he didn't see. Gerin didn't see, either. If being Fand's lover turned Van into some sort of honorary Trokme, by her own argument that gave him a special right to go to war against the woodsrunners. Fand was seldom long on logic; the gods seemed to have given her extra helpings of all the passions instead.
Duren hopped around, saying, 'May I go fight too next time, Father? May I, please?'
'You're raising a warrior there,' Aragis said approvingly.
'So I am,' Gerin answered. He wasn't altogether pleased. Aye, any holding on the frontier-any holding in the northlands-needed a warrior at its head. But he hoped he would also be able to raise a civilized man, lest barbarism seize all the land between the Niffet and the Kirs and hold it for centuries to come.
The castle cooks dished out mutton and pork and bread and ale. The warriors ate and sought their bedrolls. Gerin stayed down in the great hall, hashing over the fight, till Duren fell asleep beside him. Then, as he had a few nights before, he carried his son upstairs to his bedchamber.
When he went back out into the hall, he found Selatre waiting there. She said, 'If you were so worn you'd gone to bed with your son, I'd have walked back to my room, but since you're not-'
He caught her to him. 'Thank you for being here when things don't look as good as they might.' Even as he spoke the words, he realized he was doing his best to put a good face on the campaign from which he'd just returned. Things looked bloody awful.
Selatre ignored all that. She said, 'Don't be foolish. If you hadn't been there for me, I'd be dead. Come on.' She led him back to her chamber.
He took her with something approaching desperation. He hoped she read it as passion, but she wasn't one to be easily deceived. That she stayed by him when he needed her most was a greater gift than any other she could have given him.
Afterwards, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. When he jerked awake, Nothos' light streamed through the window, but not yet golden Math's: past midnight, then, but not far past. Beside him, Selatre was also sitting bolt upright.
'Something is amiss,' she said. Her voice sent chills through him. For the first time in many days, she sounded like the Sibyl at Ikos, not the woman he'd come to love.
But no matter how she sounded, she was right. 'I heard it, too,' Gerin said. He stopped, confused. 'Heard it? Felt it? All's quiet now. But-' He got out of bed and started to dress.
So did she. 'I don't know what it was. I thought for a moment Biton touched me.' She shook her head. 'I was wrong, but it was more than a dream. I know that. And if it woke you, too…'
'We'd better find out what it was.' Gerin held his sword in his left hand. How much good the blade would do against whatever had roused him and Selatre, he had no idea, but it couldn't hurt.
All seemed quiet in Fox Keep as he and Selatre tiptoed down the hall to the stairs. Van's snores pierced the door to Fand's chamber. Gerin smiled for a moment at that, but his lips could not hold their upward curve. A few warriors had fallen asleep in the great hall, maybe too drunk to seek their proper beds. Gerin and Selatre walked by. He looked this way and that, shook his head in the same confusion Selatre had shown. Whatever was wrong, it lay outside the castle proper. He didn't know how he knew, but he did.
Outside, sentries paced their rounds up on the palisade. The courtyard seemed as still as the keep. Gerin began to wonder if worry and nerves hadn't played tricks on Selatre and him at the same time. Then he heard footfalls-slow, erratic footfalls-coming up from the stables toward the entrance to the great hall.
'Stay here,' he whispered to Selatre, but when he trotted round to the side of the keep to see who-or what- approached, she followed. She was not so close to him as to cramp him if he had to fight, so he bit down his annoyance and kept quiet.
He rounded the corner and stopped dead with a strangled snort of laughter. No wonder the footfalls had been as they were: here came Rihwin, gloriously drunk. Gerin wondered how Rihwin managed to keep up his footfalls without falling himself. His face bore a look of intense concentration, as if putting one foot in front of the other took everything he had in him. It probably did.
Gerin turned to Selatre in mingled amusement and disgust. 'We might as well go back to bed, if this poor sot's the worst menace we can find.'
'No. We stay,' she said, again sounding like the Sibyl she had been. 'More is here than we yet know. Can you not feel it?'
And Gerin could: a prickling of the hairs at the nape of his neck, a tightening of his belly, his mouth suddenly dry as dust. He'd felt like this in the instant when the ground began to shake at Ikos, when his body gave alarm but his mind hadn't yet realized why.
The ground wasn't shaking now, though he wouldn't have bet Rihwin could have told whether that was so. Nevertheless, the feeling of awe and dread built inside Gerin till he wanted to run or scream or smash something just to get relief. He did none of those things. Forcing himself to stillness, he waited for Rihwin's staggering progress to bring his fellow Fox to him.
Rihwin was so intent on walking, he didn't notice Gerin till he almost ran into him. 'Lord pr-prince!' he said thickly, and gave such a melodramatic start that he nearly tumbled over backwards. 'Mercy, lord prince!' he gasped, and then hiccuped.
Now Gerin drew back a pace, his nose wrinkling. 'Feh!' he said. ' Your breath stinks like a vineyard in pressing season.'
'Mercy!' Rihwin repeated. He swayed as he stared owlishly at his overlord; standing in one place seemed about as hard for him as walking. His face was slack with drink, but alarm glittered in his eyes.
Then Gerin looked through him instead of at him, really hearing for the first time what he himself had said. 'You've been at the wine Schild brought us, haven't you, my fellow Fox?' he asked softly. He'd let his sword trail to the ground. Now it came up again, as if to let the wine out of Rihwin.
'Mercy!' Rihwin squeaked for the third time. 'I found it buried in the hay when we brought our-hic!-horses to the stables. I broached but two jars. Mer-hic!-cy!'
'That is it.' Selatre's voice was firm and certain. 'That is what we felt: the power of Mavrix loosed in this holding.'
Gerin wanted to scream at Rihwin. Even in his fury, though, he remembered the hour, remembered the warriors and women and cooks and servants asleep inside Castle Fox. But although he hissed instead of shrieking, his fury came through unabated: 'You stupid, piggish dolt. Thanks to your greed, thanks to the wine you're going to piss away over the course of the next day, you've made Mavrix notice us and given him a channel through which
