Gerin said, 'My guess is still that you stuck a knife into the fellow who brought you south over the Niffet.'
'I've told you before, Gerin dear: I brought my own self over, thinking life might be more lively here. Och, and so it has been, not that I reckoned on yoking myself to a southron-' she paused to half turn and make eyes at Van '-let alone two.'
'I'm no Elabonian,' Van boomed indignantly, 'and I'll thank you not to call me one. One fine day I hitch a team to a chariot or just go off afoot-'
'How many years have you been saying that?' Gerin asked.
'As many as I've been here, no doubt, less maybe one turn of the fastest moon.' Van shook his head, forever bemused he could stay in one place so long. 'A tree, now, has need of growing roots, but a man-?'
'A man?' Fand said, still trying to stir up trouble. 'You'll quarrel over whether you're a southron or no, but not over me? What sort of man is that after making you?'
'You should remember well enough from last night what sort of man I am.' Van looked like a cat that had fallen into the cream pitcher.
Fand squeaked indignantly and turned back to Gerin. 'Will you be letting him speak to me so?'
'Aye, most likely I will,' he said. If she got fed up and left them both, he'd be sorry for a while, but he knew he'd also be relieved. He didn't feel like a screaming fight now, though, so he said, 'Here comes the meat.'
That distracted her. It distracted him, too. He drew his dagger from his belt and started carving strips off the bone in front of him and popping them into his mouth.
The dagger, like the rest of his personal gear, was severely plain, with a hilt of nothing more splendid than leather-wrapped bone. But it had good balance, and he kept the edge sharp; sometimes he used plainness to conceal effectiveness.
Van, by contrast, had the hilt to his knife wrapped in gold wire, with a big topaz set into the pommel. For him, flamboyance served the same purpose self-effacement did for Gerin: it disguised the true warrior beneath. Being dangerous without seeming so, Gerin had found, made the danger double.
Thinking thus, he glanced over at Fand, who was slicing with her own slim bronze blade. Was she disguising something? He snorted and took a long pull at his ale. No, concealment wasn't in her nature. But he'd thought as much about Elise, and where had that got him?
Duren said, 'Papa, will you help me cut more meat?' He had a knife, too, but a small one, and not very sharp. That helped keep him from getting cut, but it also kept him from eating very fast.
Gerin leaned over and sliced off several strips for him. 'Splash water on your face when you're done,' he said. He remembered how surprised and delighted he'd been to discover the elaborate hot and cold baths the City of Elabon boasted. North of the High Kirs, as best he knew, there was only one tub, and it wasn't at his holding. Not without a pang, he'd gone back to being mostly dirty most of the time.
Fand made eyes first at Van, then at him. 'Och, a woman gets lonely, that she does.'
'If you're lonely with the two of us to keep you warm at night, would you try a bandit troop next?' Van said.
She cursed him in the Trokme language, Elabonian not being satisfying enough for her. Van swore back in the same tongue; he'd traversed the gloomy forests of the Trokmoi before he swam the Niffet (towing his precious armor behind him on a makeshift raft) and splashed up inside Gerin's holding.
'Will you be letting him speak to me so?' Fand demanded of the Fox once more.
'Probably,' he answered. She picked up her drinking jack and threw it at him. She had more fury than finesse. It splashed down behind him and sprayed ale onto a couple of the hounds quarreling over bones. They separated with a yelp. Fand sprang to her feet and stomped upstairs.
'Not often dull around here,' Van observed to no one in particular.
'It's not, is it?' Gerin said. 'Sometimes I think I'd find a bit of dullness restful.' He hadn't known much, not since he came back over the Kirs to take over his father's holdings and especially not since the Trokmoi and their wizard Balamung invaded the northlands. Balamung was dead now, without even a grave to hold him, but too many Trokmoi still raided and settled on this side of the Niffet, adding one more volatile element to already touchy politics.
Gerin emptied his own jack in a fashion more conventional than Fand's, went over to the amphora, and poured it full again. Some of his vassals were already swilling themselves into insensibility. If I want dull, he thought, all I need do is listen to the talk around this table. Dice, horses and chariots, crops, women… no new ideas anywhere, just old saws trotted out as if they were fresh-minted from pure gold. He longed for the days when he'd sat in students' taverns, arguing sorcerous techniques and the shape of the historical process.
Rihwin the Fox knew the pleasures of intellectual conversation, but Rihwin also knew the pleasures of the wine jar or, that failing, the ale pot. He might complain about having to pour down ale, but that didn't stop him from doing quite a lot of it. And, at the moment, he had a serving girl on his lap. He would have done a better job of fumbling at her clothes had his hands been steadier.
Van knew his letters; he'd made a point of learning them when he discovered Elabonian could be written. He even spoke well of its alphabet; Gerin gathered he'd run across other, more cumbersome ways of noting down thoughts in his travels. But learning his letters did not make him interested in quoting poetry, except for informational content, let alone analyzing it.
As for Gerin's own vassal barons, most of them thought reading a vaguely effeminate accomplishment (he wondered why; even fewer women than men were literate). They'd learned better than to say so to him, and had learned he was a good fighting man in spite of having a room that stored several dozen scrolls and codices. But that didn't mean they grew interested in thinking, too.
Gerin sighed and drank more ale himself. Sometimes he thought slipping back into near barbarism easier than trying to maintain the standards of civilization he'd learned south of the High Kirs. Which is the way civilization falls apart, said the part of him that had studied history.
After one more jack of ale, he didn't feel like arguing with that part any more. Rihwin and the girl had wandered off. Drago the Bear snored thunderously on the floor, and took no notice when one of the dogs walked over him. Duren was asleep, too; the little boy had curled up, catlike, on his bench.
Van, on the other hand, was wide awake and looked more sober than Gerin felt. The Fox raised an eyebrow at him. 'What would you?' he asked. 'Shall we roll the dice after all?'
'For the lass, you mean?' Van shook his massive head. 'You go to her tonight, if you've a mind to. She'd sweeten up for me in a bit, I expect, but I haven't the patience to get through the shouting that'd come first. I'll drink a bit more and then maybe sleep myself.'
'All right.' Gerin lifted Duren off the bench. His son wriggled a little, but did not wake. As he carried Duren upstairs, the Fox was grateful for the banister he'd added to the stairway when he came back from the south. With it, he was much less likely to trip and break not only his neck but the boy's.
He set Duren on the bed in his own chamber, hoping his son would wake up if he had to piddle in the night. Otherwise, the mattress would need some fresh straw.
With Duren in his arms, the Fox hadn't been able to carry a lamp or a taper up to the bedchamber with him. That left it black as a bandit's heart inside. He stumbled over some wood toy or other that he'd carved for Duren and almost fell on his face. Flailing his arms, he managed to keep himself upright and, with a muttered curse, went out into the hallway.
A couple of failing torches cast a dim red light there, enough, at least, to let him see where he put his feet. The walk to the next chamber was a matter of just a few steps. He rapped on the door, wondering if Fand had fallen asleep. If she didn't answer, he'd go back to his own bed.
But she did: 'Which of you is it, now?'
Maybe it was the ale, but Gerin felt mischievous. He deliberately deepened his voice and put on a slight guttural accent: 'Which d'you think?'
He heard her take three rapid strides toward the door. She threw it open and blazed, 'Van of the Strong Arm, if you're after thinking y'can-' Then, by the torchlight and the brighter flame of the candle beside her bed, she realized it wasn't Van standing there. She scowled at Gerin. 'You're a right devil to befool me so, and I ought to be slamming the door on the beaky nose of you.'
He looked down that member at her. 'Well?' he said when she didn't do as she'd threatened.
'Well, indeed,' she said, and sighed. 'Must be I'm the fool, for taking up with a southron man-worse, for taking up with a southron man and his great galoon of a friend, the both of them at once. Often enough I've said it,
