side of the roadway.
With peasant levies working in time snatched from their fields, the Fox hadn't had a prayer of matching such construction. Cobblestones and gravel did give the rebuilt stretch of the Elabon Way a surface that, while it was hard on hooves, did not turn into gluey mud whenever rain fell.
'Strange,' Gerin said as the wagon jounced along over the uneven surface: 'Whenever I travel this stretch of road, I remember trying to fight my way north over it just before the werenight.'
'You're not likely to forget that,' Van agreed. 'Me, I find it strange to travel the same stretch of road more than once. I'm too used to seeing something new every day to be easy with the idea of going back and forth, back and forth. Boring to see the same hills on the skyline every day. I want to find out what's on the other side of them.'
'Those hills?' Gerin pointed west. 'They shelter Trokmoi and bandits.'
'Not what I meant,' Van said. 'Captain, you've no poetry in you, and that's a fact.'
'I suppose not. I do the best I can without it, that's all.'
Toward evening, they passed the keep of Raff the Ready, where they'd guested on their last trip south to Ikos. No guesting at Raff's tonight; the keep had fallen to the Trokmoi, and nothing but tumbled ruins remained. Gerin shook his head, remembering the fine meal Raff had fed him. Tonight it would be hard bread and sausage and sour beer and whatever they managed to hunt up to keep the ghosts happy.
A red fox scurried across the road in front of the wagon. It paused by a clump of hound's-tongue, sitting up on its haunches with its own tongue lolling out as it watched the horses and men. Van tapped Gerin on the shoulder. 'Rein in. Let me grab the bow and we'll have our evening's offering.'
'What? Where?' Gerin said.
Van pointed to the fox. 'Right there. Are you blind, not to see it?'
Gerin stared, first at the fox, then at his friend. 'You're enough like a brother to me that I often forget you're not Elabonian born. It's not our custom to kill the animals that give us our ekenames. All my luck, such as it is, would run away if I tried to slay a fox.'
'You wouldn't,' Van said. 'I would.'
'I'd be abetting you.' Gerin shook his head. 'In the spirit world, it would count for the other.'
'The spirit world will do more than count if we don't find something with blood in it pretty soon,' Van grumbled. 'Looks like all the peasants hereabout have fled, and a night in the open with only a fire to hold the ghosts at bay is nothing to look forward to.'
'Something will turn up.' Gerin sounded more confident than he felt. But hardly more than a minute after he'd spoken, he spotted a big, fat gray squirrel sitting on the topmost branch of an oak sapling that really should have been cleared away from the side of the road. Now he did rein in. Van had seen the squirrel, too; he was already reaching into the back of the wagon for the bow.
The bowstring thrummed as he let fly. The squirrel toppled out of the little tree and lay feebly kicking on the mossy ground below. It had stopped moving by the time Van walked over and picked it up. He hefted it in his hand. 'It should serve,' he said.
'Not a whole lot of meat, but what there is will be tasty baked in clay,' Gerin said. 'If you'd shot at the fox, the gods might not have put the squirrel in our path.'
'If they're so grateful for me being good, why didn't they put a nice fat buck in that tree instead of a rat with a fuzzy tail that won't give us two good bites apiece?'
'Abandoned scoffer,' Gerin said, though he had to fight to get words past the laughter that welled up when he pictured an antlered stag perched atop a sapling. 'Show some respect for the gods of Elabon.'
'I give them as much as they deserve and not a bit more,' Van said. 'I've done enough traveling, seen enough gods to know they're stronger than I am, but I'll be switched if I can see that some of 'em are a whole lot smarter than I am.'
Gerin grunted, remembering Mavrix's long, pink tongue flicking out like a frog as the deity had mocked him and taken away Rihwin's sorcerous ability. 'You may have something there, though you'll not be happier for it if some god hears what you've said.'
'Ifsobe that happens, I'll just go on to someplace else where the writ of Elabonian gods doesn't run,' Van said. 'The thing about gods is, they're tied to the lands of those that worship them, and me'-he thumped his chest-'I'm not.'
'Just like you to be so sure you'd get away,' Gerin said, but then something else occurred to him. 'Gods can travel, though, as their worshipers do-look at the way the Sithonian deities have taken hold in Elabon. And, I fear, we'll have Trokme gods rooting themselves here in the northlands now that the woodsrunners have made homes south of the Niffet.'
'You're likely right; I hadn't thought of that,' Van said. 'Not a crew I'd be happy with as neighbors: their yen for blood is as bad as the one the Trokmoi have themselves. I should know; the woodsrunners were all set to offer me up till I got free of them.'
'Yes, you've told that tale,' Gerin said. He shook his head. 'One more thing to worry about.' Trouble was, he seemed to add to that list almost every day. He halted the wagon. As long as he and Van had an offering for the ghosts for tonight, he wouldn't worry about any of the things on that list till tomorrow.
Splitting the night into two watches rather than three left the Fox and Van yawning as they started traveling a little past sunrise. ' I'm slower than I should be, and that's not good,' Gerin said. 'When we cross Bevon Broken- Nose's holding, we'll need all our wits about us.'
'Bevon Broken-Land would be a better name for him, that's certain,' Van said.
'Can't argue with you there,' Gerin replied. Bevon's sons had been squabbling over their father's holding five years before. Bevon himself was still alive, but universally ignored beyond a bowshot from his keep.
Gerin pointed ahead. 'There we are. That's progress, if you like.'
'Your fort, you mean? Aye, I expect so. It's about the only thing that keeps the Elabon Way open through Bevon's lands, anyhow.'
Despite a wooden palisade, the building wasn't a keep in the proper sense of the word: no stone castle sat inside the wall, only a blockhouse also of wood. Gerin had run up the fort and put a garrison in it less than a year after the werenight, to make sure the road stayed clear. Bevon and all four of his sons had protested furiously, but couldn't unite even to get rid of the Fox's men.
'One day soon, Captain, you'll just quietly claim the land along the road as part of your own holding, won't you?' Van said. 'Without your patrols, it'd be the howling wilderness it was before you put your men here-and it's like you to let the facts talk before you open your mouth yourself.'
'That has been in my mind lately, as a matter of fact.' Gerin gave his friend a look half respectful, half annoyed. 'I like it better when no one else can pick out what's in my mind.'
'Live in a keep for a while with a man and he will rub off on you.' Van added, 'However much he doesn't care to,' in the hope-which was realized-of making Gerin scowl.
A three-chariot patrol team came north up the Elabon Way toward the fort. Seeing the wagon, they made for it instead, to see who was on the road. Gerin waved to one of the men in the lead car. 'Hail!' he called loudly. 'How fares the road, Onsumer?'
'Lord Gerin!' the bulky, black-bearded man called back. 'I thought that was your wagon, though I'm just now close enough to be sure. We had a quiet run down to Ricolf's border and back, so the road is well enough.' His face clouded. 'But what of you? Is this the business Widin Simrin's son spoke of?'
'My son being stolen, you mean? Yes,' Gerin said. 'All my searches went awry, those after the men who might have taken him and the one round Fox Keep as well. I'm off to Ikos, to learn if the Sibyl can see farther than I did.'
'Dyaus and Biton grant it be so,' Onsumer said. The driver and warrior who shared the car with him nodded vigorously.
'I can but hope,' Gerin said. 'Widin told me he learned nothing new on his run down here. Have you had word of anything unusual from Bevon's sons? One of them, I suppose, could have arranged to kidnap Duren, though I'd not have thought any of them had the wit to plan such a thing.'
