Neither was likely.
Despite the gift of fowls' blood, the ghosts were a torrent of half-seen motion, a clamorous murmur of incomprehensible voices. The spirit which had visited Gerin on the two previous nights returned once more. He could see its ill-defined features writhing in frustration as it failed again to impart its tidings.
'You know, captain,' Van said, 'I may be daft, but I think the poor wraith even looks a bit like you.' Gerin shrugged. For one thing, though the ghosts were extraordinarily immanent of late, they remained cloudy and indistinct. For another, the Fox, like most folk in the Empire and the lands it knew, had only a vague idea of his features. Mirrors of polished bronze or silver were uncommon and expensive; even the best gave images of poor quality. He probably had not seen his own reflection more than a dozen times since taking over his father's barony.
The holding of Raff the Ready, Palin's vassal who had guested Gerin and Van on their way south, was only a burnt-out shell. The little pond beside it was rubble-choked and fouled with the bodies of men and beasts. Gerin viewed the ruins with sadness, but little surprise. Too many years of peace had led Raff to neglect his walls. He could not have put up much of a fight, not in his dilapidated keep.
Late that afternoon, the Fox passed from Palin's land and entered his own once more. The roadside guardhouses on either side of the border were deserted, but had not been burnt. The borderstone itself had been uprooted by the Trokmoi. Gerin cursed when he saw its mosscovered runes effaced by fylfots chipped into the rock, as if Balamung was claiming the land for his own.
So, perhaps, he was. Gerin and his band had not gone far before they tripped some sorcerous alarm the wizard had planted. A misty image of the black-robed sorcerer appeared in the road before them. ' Back, are you, Fox, in spite of it all? Well, you'll have no joy of it. My lads will see to that, and soon.' With a scornful laugh, the projection vanished.
'The spell your enemy placed here was plainly set to react to you and no one else,' Rihwin said. 'In which case-'
Gerin finished for him: '-there's sure to be another charm in action now not far away, telling a few hundred woodsrunners to come down and make an end of me. Well, what can I do but go on? Balamung has thrown away the advantage of surprise in his vainglory, for whatever that's worth.'
Arms at the ready, they moved ahead as the sun sank low in the west. As they passed a tiny crossroads, a whoop from behind some brush told them they had been seen. Archers nocked arrows; spearmen tightened grips on their weapons.
They did not have long to wait. Chariots and infantry together, a veritable army thundered down the cross road toward them. At its head was Wolfar of the Axe. His hairy features split in a bloodthirsty grin when he recognized the Fox. 'What luck! It's the wench-stealing sodomite himself!' he roared to his men. Then, to Gerin: 'I'll make a capon of you, to keep you from having such thoughts again!'
Had Wolfar's rancor against the Fox driven him into the arms of the Trokmoi? Gerin would not have thought that even of his western neighbor, yet here he was.
There was scant time for such thought. Gerin shot at Wolfar but missed. His arrow tumbled one of the men behind Wolfar out of his chariot. Rihwin and the other bowmen let fly too, dropping a couple of other men and sending a chariot down in crashing ruin as one of its horses was hit. But to stand and fight was madness, for Wolfar had easily ten times Gerin's force.
'North!' the Fox shouted to his followers. 'We'll outrun the footsoldiers, at least, and meet him on more even terms.'
North they fled in the gathering dusk. Wolfar howled hatred close behind. Arrows flew up. Almost all went wide-the jouncing chariots made poor shooting platforms.
'Captain,' Van shouted in Gerin's ear, 'what in the five hells is that up ahead?'
Only his will kept the baron from hysterical laughter. Whatever else Wolfar was, he was shown to be no traitor. 'What does it look like? It's the wizard's bully-boys, come to finish us off. We're on the horns of a dilemma, sure enough, but maybe, just maybe, they'll gore each other instead of us.'
The leader of the Trokmoi was an immensely tall, immensely fat blond barbarian who filled most of a three- man chariot by himself. He stared in dismayed amazement at the force of chariotry bearing down on him. Instead of the small band he'd expected, this looked like the leading detachment of an army as large as his own.
He frantically reined in, shouting, 'Deploy, you spalpeens! Don't be letting 'em get by you, now!' The Trokmoi shook themselves out into a wide line of battle, some afoot, others still in their cars.
But Gerin did not intend to take evasive action. He and his men stormed toward the center of the Trokme line, hoping to slash through and then let the northerners and Wolfar's men slaughter each other to their hearts' content. But the Trokmoi were too many and too quick to be broken through so easily. They swarmed round the Fox's chariots, slowing the momentum of his charge and stalling him in their midst.
Their huge leader left his car to swing a great bludgeon with deadly effect. He crushed the skull of Rihwin's chariot-mate, then lashed out at Priscos. Gerin's driver took the blow on his shield. It all but knocked him from the chariot. The baron chopped at the Trokme with an axe. The barbarian, quicker than his girth would have suggested, ducked the stroke.
A horse shrieked as a woodsrunner drove a dagger into its belly.
For a moment, Rihwin was close by Gerin. 'We've got to get out of here!' he cried.
'If you have any notion how, I'd love to hear it,' Gerin said.
A barbarian tried to climb into his chariot. Van hit the man in the face with a chakram-braceleted forearm. He screamed through a torn, blood-filled mouth and fell away.
Then, suddenly, the pressure of the woodsrunners on Gerin's beleaguered band slackened as Wolfar hurled himself into the sea of Trokmoi after the man he hated. 'He's mine, you arse-lickers! He's mine!' he roared.
The barbarians turned to meet this new and much more dangerous threat. Gerin tried to extricate his men from the now three-cornered battle. It was not easy. The Trokmoi had not forgotten them, and to Wolfar's men the woodsrunners were only obstacles blocking the way to their real target.
Unnoticed by anyone in the melee, the sun sank below the horizon. As it set, the four moons rose within seconds of one another, all of them full. The last time that had happened had been close to three centuries before Elabon's capital was founded.
Huge tides swamped low-lying coastal areas, drowning small towns and wrecking great ports. Prophets the world around cried doom.
And in those lands where the taint of wereblood ran through a folk, no moons at quarter or crescent counteracted the pressure to change shape exerted by the light of a full moon's disk. Those with only the thinnest, most forgotten trace of wereness were now liable, indeed compelled, to take beast form.
Hills off to the east briefly shielded the battlefield from the rays of the rising moons. Then they topped the low obstacle and washed the fighters in their clear, pale light. Gerin was trading axe-cuts with a scrawny, green-eyed Trokme who fought without armor when his foe dropped his weapon, bewilderment and alarm on his face.
The Fox had no idea what was happening to him, but was not one to let any advantage slip. His stroke was true, but the northerner ducked under it with sudden sinuous ease. The Trokme's body writhed, twisted
… and then the baron was facing no Trokme, but rather a great wildcat. It spat fury and leaped at him.
He had no time to wonder if he had lost his mind. Razor-sharp claws tore at the bronze facing of his shield, snarling jaws full of jagged teeth snapped at his arm. He brought his axe crashing down between the mad eyes of the cat, felt its skull splinter under his blow. Hot blood spattered his arm. The carcass lay still a moment, twitching.
Gerin stared in disbelief. The awful wound he had inflicted healed before his eyes. Bones knit, skin and fur grew together as he gaped. The wildcat's eyes opened and caught sight of him. It yowled, gathered itself for a second spring-and was bowled over and spun to the ground by an outsized wolf. They rolled away, locked in a snarling, clawing embrace.
The battlefield was a world gone mad. At first the Fox thought some spell of Balamung's, intended for his destruction, had gone awry. He soon realized the chaos was far too general for anything of that sort.
Then, quite by accident, he saw the four full moons. Understanding came, but brought no relief, only terror. Nearly half the fighting men had gone were, in one beast-shape or another. The field was littered with corselets, greaves, and helms they escaped when the change came over them. The were-creatures fought former friends, foes, and fellow beasts with an appalling lack of discrimination.
