won't they?'
'If they don't, they'll be looking for a new master by this time tomorrow,' Gerin answered. Van clapped his big hands together and hurried back inside.
The morning proved busy. Gerin always kept someone in the watchtower. Life had been dangerous enough before the Trokmoi swarmed south over the Niffet. Now danger could come from any direction at any time. When the lookout's horn blew, men up on the palisade reached for their weapons; the gate crew got ready to pull up the drawbridge and defend Castle Fox against barbarians or men of Elabon.
But after he winded the horn, the watchman cried, ' Tis but a single man approaching-a trader, by the look of him.'
Sure enough, the fellow was no harbinger of a ravening horde: he drove a two-horse team from a small, neat wagon. 'Dyaus give you a good day, sir,' Gerin greeted him when he rolled into the courtyard. The Fox glanced at the sun. 'To get here so early in the day, you must have spent last night in the open.'
'That I did, lord prince,' the man answered. He was small and neat himself, with a shortsighted gaze and hands with long, slim fingers. ' I bought a couple of chickens from a peasant-likely a serf of yoursand their blood in a trench warded me against the ghosts. Otes son of Engelers I am, maker and purveyor of jewelry of all descriptions, and also ready to do tinker's work if you have pots and such that need patching.'
'Aye, we have a few of those,' Gerin said. 'If you know the secret of proper soldering, you'll make a bit of silver before you leave here. I've tried, but without much in the way of luck. But jewelry, now-hmm.' He wondered if he could find a piece Fand would like at a price that didn't make his own thrifty soul quail.
Van came up to the wagon and, from the thoughtful look on his face, might have had the same idea. But what he said was, 'You're not the least brave man I ever met, Master Jeweler, if you take your wares through this bandit-raddled countryside alone.'
Otes Engelers' son dipped his head to the outlander. 'You are gracious, sir. I traveled up into the Fox's lands from those of Aragis the Archer. Few bandits try to make a living in your holding, lord Gerin, or in his-few who aren't vassals styling themselves barons, at any rate.' He smiled to show that was meant as a joke.
'Aye, Aragis is a strong man.' Gerin let it go at that. One of these days, he and Aragis were liable to fight a war. The prospect would have bothered him less had he been less afraid he might lose.
'Show us these jewels of yours,' Van boomed.
Otes, as he'd said, had adornments of all descriptions, from polished copper with 'gems' of glass paste to gold and emeralds. Before he'd opened all his little cedar chests to display the baubles inside, Fand came out of the castle to admire them with her two men. Suddenly she pointed to a brooch. 'Isn't that pretty, now?' she breathed. 'Sure and it must be Trokme work. It fair puts me in mind of my auld village on the far side of the Niffet, that it does.'
Smiling, the jeweler picked it up and held it in the palm of his hand. It was a circular piece, about three fingers broad, decorated with spirals half silver and half inlaid, polished jet. 'As a matter of fact, my lady, I made this one myself, and I'm as Elabonian as they come,' Otes said. 'That it is from a northern pattern, though, I'll not deny.'
' 'Twould suit the very tunic I have on me,' Fand said, running a hand across the dark blue woad-dyed linen. She looked from one of her paramours to the other.
Van, who'd quarreled with her the night before, weakened first. With a cough, he said, 'Master Otes, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me what outrageous price you're asking for this chunk of tin and dirt.'
'Tin?' Otes screeched. 'Dirt? Are you blind, man? Are you mad? Feel the weight of that metal. And look at the care and the workmanship I put into the piece, shaping the tiny slivers of jet one by one and slipping each into its place-'
'Aye, tell me more lies,' Van said.
Sensing that the dicker would go on for some time, Gerin took his leave. He figured he had time to walk out to the village by Fox Keep, talk with Besant Big-Belly about knocking off too early, and be back before Van and Otes had settled on a price. He knew how stubborn Van could be, and the jeweler looked to have mule's blood in him, too.
But before the Fox could walk out over the drawbridge, the lookout in the watchtower winded his horn again. He called down, 'A chariot approaches, lord Gerin, with what looks to be a Trokme chieftain and two of his men.'
'Just a chariot?' Gerin shouted up. 'No army attached?'
'I see only the one, lord,' the lookout answered. A moment later, he added, 'The chieftain is holding up a green-and-white striped shield: he comes under sign of truce.'
Gerin called to the gate crew, 'When you spy him, give him sign of truce in return. We'll see what he wants.' Before the invasions, he'd have attacked any northerners he caught on his holding. Now the Trokmoi were powers south of the Niffet. However much it galled him, he had to treat with them.
'Who comes?' one of the men at the gate called to the approaching chariot.
'It's Diviciacus son of Dumnorix I am, liegeman to himself himself, the great chief Adiatunnus son of Commus, who's fain to have me bring his words to Gerin the Fox,' the chieftain answered in Elabonian that lilted like Fand's. 'No quarrel, no feud, stands between us the now.'
The Trokmoi had slain Gerin's father and brother. As far as he was concerned, that put him eternally at feud with them. Moreover, he reckoned them deadly dangerous to the remnants of civilization that survived in the northlands after Elabon had cut the province loose. But in a narrow sense, Diviciacus was right: no active fighting went on between Adiatunnus' men and those of the Fox.
Dropping into the Trokme tongue, Gerin said, 'If it's the Fox you' re seeking, I am he. Aye, I grant the truce between your chief and my own self. Come sit yourself by my hearth, drink a stoup of ale, and tell me Adiatunnus' words at your comfort and leisure.'
Diviciacus beamed. He was a tall, thin, pale man with a lean, wolfish face, clean-shaven but for a straggling mustache of bright red. He wore a checked tunic and baggy wool trousers tucked into boots; a long, straight bronze sword hung from his belt. The other warrior in the chariot and its driver might have been poured into the same mold as he, save that one of them had sandy hair and mustache, the other blond.
Inside the smoky great hall, Diviciacus gulped down his first jack of ale, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, belched loudly, and said, 'Sure and you're after living up to the name you have for hospitality, lord Gerin, that y'are.'
Gerin could take a hint. He filled the Trokme's drinking jack again, then said, 'And what would Adiatunnus wish with me, pray?' The northern chieftain controlled several holdings a fair distance south and west of Fox Keep. Of all the Trokmoi who'd settled south of the Niffet, he was probably the most powerful, and the most adept at riding-and twisting-the swirling political currents of the northlands.
Diviciacus came to the point with barbarous directness: 'Himself wants to know if you're of a mind to join forces with him and squeeze the pimple called Aragis off the arse of mankind.'
'Does he?' Gerin said. In a way, that was logical: Aragis blocked Gerin's ambitions no less than Adiatunnus'. In another way… 'Why wouldn't I be more likely to combine with a man of my own blood against an invader?'
'Adiatunnus says he reckons you reckon Aragis more a thorn in your side than his own self.' Diviciacus smiled at the subtlety of his chief's reasoning, and indeed it was more subtle than most northerners could have produced. The envoy went on, 'Forbye, he says that once the Archer is after being cut into catmeat, you can go your way and he his, with no need at all for the twain of ye to clomp heads like bull aurochs in rutting season.'
'He says that?' Gerin didn't believe it would work so; he didn't think Adiatunnus believed it, either. Which meant He was distracted from what it meant when Duren came in and said, 'I'm bored, Papa. Play ball with me or something.'
'A fine bairn,' Diviciacus said. 'He'd have, what-four summers on him?' At Gerin's nod, the Trokme also nodded, and went on, 'Aye, he's much of a size with my youngest but one, who has the same age.'
Gerin was so used to thinking of Trokmoi as warriors, as enemies, that he needed a moment to adjust to the notion of Diviciacus as a fond father. He supposed he shouldn't have been taken aback; without fathers, the Trokmoi would have disappeared in a generation (and the lives of all the Elabonians north of the High Kirs would have become much easier). But it caught him by surprise all the same.
To Duren, he said, 'I can't play now. I'm talking with this man.' Duren stamped his foot and filled himself full of air, preparatory to letting out an angry screech. Gerin said, 'Do you want my hand on your backside?' Duren
