convinced the Fox that Turgis' cook was a genius as well as a showman: simmered and sauteed pieces of lamb and veal in a spicy sauce which also featured pounded lobster tail and nutmeats. Whole lobster tails garnished the incredible creation; Gerin had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. He could hardly look at the fruits and spunsugar confections that came after. All the while, Turgis made sure no glass stayed empty long.
The baron's head was beginning to spin when Turgis announced, 'Now I will have the tale of your coming here.'
All three travelers told it, each amplifying the others' accounts. Gerin tried to slide through the tale of his fight with the aurochs, but to his annoyance Elise made him backtrack and tell it in full.
Turgis looked at him shrewdly. 'Still carrying your lantern with a hood on it, are you?' He turned to Elise: 'My lady, here we have the most talented of men, the only one who does not know it being himself. He can sing a song, cut a purse (even mine, the unprincipled highwayman!), tell you what that finger-long bug is on friend Van's cuirass-and the cure for its bite as well-'
Snarling an oath, Van crushed the luckless insect. 'No need for that,' the Fox said. 'It was only a walkingstick, and it doesn't bite at all; its sole food is tree sap.'
'You see?' Turgis said triumphantly. The wine had flushed his face and loosened his tongue. 'He can conjure you up an ever-filled purse-'
'Of mud, perhaps,' Gerin said, wishing Turgis would shut up. The innkeeper's paean of praise made him nervous. Most plaudits did; as a second son, he'd seldom got them and never quite worked out how to deal with them. He knew his virtues well enough, and knew one of the greatest was his ability to keep his mouth shut about them. They were often of most use when employed unexpectedly.
Turgis was not about to be quiet. 'Besides all that,' he said, ' this northern ruffian is as kind and loyal a friend as one could ever hope for'-Elise and Van nodded solemnly-'and worth any three men you could name in a brawl. I well recall the day he flattened three rascals who thought to rob me, though he wasn't much more than a stripling himself.'
'You never told me that one,' Van said.
'They were just tavern toughs,' Gerin said, 'and this fellow here did a lot of the work. He's pretty handy with a broken bottle.'
'Me?' Turgis said. 'No one wants to hear about me, fat old slug that I am. What happened after the aurochs was slain?' The hosteler howled laughter to hear how Mavrix had been thwarted. 'Truly, I love the god for his gift of the grape, but much of his cult gives me chills.'
The baron quickly brought the journey down to the capital: too quickly, again, for Elise. She said, 'Once more he leaves out a vital bit of the story. You see, as we traveled we came to care for each other more and more, try though he would to hide himself behind modesty and gloom.' She gave him a challenging stare. He would not meet her eye, riveting his attention on his glass. She went on, 'And so it's scarcely surprising that when he asked if he might come south to court me when the trouble is done, I was proud to say yes.'
'Lord Gerin, my heartiest congratulations,' Turgis said, pumping his hand. 'My lady, I would offer you the same, but I grieve to think of your beauty passed on to your children diluted by the blood of this ape.'
Gerin jerked his hand free of the innkeeper's grip. 'A fine excuse for a host you are, to insult your guests.'
'Insult? I thought I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.' Turgis poured wine all around. A sudden commotion drowned out his toast. Two men who had been arguing over the company of a coldly beautiful Sithonian courtesan rose from their seats and began pummeling each other. Three husky waiters seized them and wrestled them out to the street.
Turgis mopped his brow. 'A good thing they chose to quarrel now. The could have broken Osnabroc's concentration-see, here he comes!'
A rising hum of excitement and a few spatters of applause greeted Osnabroc, a short, stocky man whose every muscle was so perfectly defined that it might have been sculpted from stone. He wore only a black loincloth. In his hand he carried a pole about twenty feet long; a crosspiece had been nailed a yard or so from one end.
A pair of young women followed him. They, too, wore only loincloths, one of red silk, the other of green. Both had the smallbreasted, taut-bellied look of dancers or acrobats; Gerin doubted if either was five feet tall.
The musicians vacated the stage and Osnabroc ascended. More torches were brought. Each girl took one and set the rest in brackets. After a sharp, short bow to his audience, Osnabroc arched his back and bent his head backwards, setting the pole on his forehead. He balanced it with effortless ease. At his command, both girls shinnied up the pole, torches in their teeth. Once at the crosspiece, they turned somersaults, flips, and other evolutions so astounding Gerin felt his heart rise into his throat. All the while, the pole stayed steady as a rock.
One girl slid down headfirst, leaving the other hanging by her knees twenty feet above the floor. But not for long-she flailed her arms once, twice, and then she was upright again, going through a series of yet more spectacular capers. Despite her gyrations, the supporting pole never budged. A grimace of concentration distorted Osnabroc's face; sweat ran streakily down his magnificent body.
'Who do you think has the harder job?' Turgis whispered to Gerin: 'Osnabroc or his girls?'
'I couldn't begin to tell you,' the baron answered.
Turgis laughed and nodded. 'It's the same with me. I couldn't begin to tell you, either.'
Van, though, had no doubts: his eyes were only on the whirling girl. 'Just think,' he said, half to himself, 'of all the ways you could do it with a lass so limber! She all but flies.'
'Speak to me not of people flying!' Turgis said as the second girl slid down the pole to a thunderous ovation. She skipped off the stage, followed by her fellow acrobat and Osnabroc. He sagged now as he walked, and his forehead looked puffy.
Van tried to catch the eye of one of the girls, but with no apparent luck. Disappointed, he turned his attention back to Turgis. ' What do you have against people flying?' he asked.
'Nothing against it, precisely. It does remind me of a strange story, though.' He waited to be urged to go on. His companions quickly obliged him. He began, 'You've told me much of the Trokmoi tonight; this story has a Trokme in it too. He was drunk, as they often are, and since the place was crowded that night, he was sharing a table with a wizard. You know how some folk, when they go too deep into a bottle, like to sing or whatever. Well, this lad flapped his arms like he was trying to take off and fly. Finally he knocked a drink from the wizard's hand, which was the wrong thing to do.
'The wizard paid his scot and walked out, and I thought I'd been lucky enough to escape trouble. But next thing I knew, the northerner started flapping again, and-may my private parts shrivel if I lie-sure enough he took off and flew around the room like a drunken buzzard.'
'A boozard, maybe,' Gerin suggested.
'I hope not,' Turgis said.
'What befell?' Elise asked.
'He did, lass, on his head. He was doing a fine job of flying, just like a bird, but the poor sot smashed against that candelabra you see up there and fell right into someone's soup. He earned himself a knot on the head as big as an egg and, I hope, enough sense not to make another wizard annoyed at him.
'This tale-telling gets to be thirsty work,' Turgis added, calling for another bottle of wine. But when he opened it and began to pour, Elise put a hand over her glass. A few minutes later she rose. Pausing only to bestow a hurried but warm kiss on Gerin, she made her way to her room.
The three men sat, drank, and talked a bit longer. Turgis said, ' Gerin, you're no fool like that Trokme was. You're the last man I ever would have picked to make a sorcerer your mortal foe.'
'It was his choosing, not mine!' The wine had risen to Gerin's head, adding vehemence to his words. 'The gods decreed I am not to be a scholar, as I had dreamed. So be it. Most of my bitterness is gone. There's satisfaction in holding the border against the barbarians, and more in making my holding a better place for all to live, vassals and serfs alike. Much of what I learned here has uses in the north: we no longer have wells near the cesspits, for instance, and we grow beans to refresh the soil. And, though my vassals know it not, I've taught a few of the brighter peasants to read.'
'What? You have?' Van stared at the Fox as if he'd never seen him before.
'Aye, and I'm not sorry, either.' Gerin turned back to Turgis. ' We've had no famines round Fox Keep, despite
