He stuck out his hand. Gerin clasped it. 'Whatever comes, I hope we get through it without trying to carve each other's livers,' he said. 'The only one who'd gain from that is Adiatunnus.'
Aragis' eyes grew hawk-watchful again. 'I hear he sent to you. You were worried whether his men stole your boy. You're telling me you didn't join forces with him.'
'That's just what I'm telling you,' Gerin answered. 'The five hells will vomit forth the damned before I join hands with a Trokme.'
He waited for Aragis to say something like that. Aragis didn't. He only nodded to show he'd heard, then walked off to reclaim the chariot or wagon in which he'd come to Ikos.
'Cold fish,' Van said judiciously. 'Not a man who makes an easy enemy, though, or I miss my guess.'
'You don't,' the Fox answered. 'We've met only a couple of times before, so I don't have his full measure as a man, but what he's done in building up his holding speaks for itself. And you heard what he had done after his men hunted down a longtooth that had been taking cattle from one of his villages?'
'No, somehow I missed that one,' Van said. 'Tell me.'
'He had an extra strong cross raised, and nailed and lashed the beast's carcass to it as a warning to others of its kind-and, more to the point, as a warning to any men who might have thought about trifling with him.'
'Mm. It'd make me think twice, I expect,' Van said. 'Well, let's amble after him and get back our animals.'
The beasts and the vehicles they drew waited outside the walled courtyard around the temple. By luck, the low-ranking priest who'd taken the wagon by the gate stood close to it now; that meant Gerin didn't have to convince someone else he wasn't absconding with the property of another. As he climbed in, he pointed to a thatch-roofed wooden cottage not far away. 'Is that where the Sibyl lives when she's not prophesying?' he asked.
'So it is, good my sir,' the priest answered. His smooth face held worry. 'I saw her carried there not long since, and heard rumors and tales so strange I know not what to believe: even those who brought her seemed confused. Did the mantic trance take her for you?'
'It did. In fact, she lost her senses just afterwards, and did not get them back again as she usually does.' Without repeating the oracular verse, Gerin told the priest what had happened in the underground chamber.
The corners of the eunuch's mouth drew down even further. 'Biton grant she recover soon,' he exclaimed. 'Never has the good god seen fit to call two Sibyls to himself so quickly. The temple suffers great disruption while the search for a new maid to speak his words goes on.'
'To say nothing of the fees you lose when the oracle is quiet,' Gerin said, remembering sacks of silver he'd pressed into priests' pudgy palms.
But, in injured tones, the eunuch replied, 'I did say nothing of those fees.' Perhaps he was genuinely pious. Stranger things had happened, Gerin supposed. He twitched the reins, urging the horses back toward the inn.
The innkeeper and the head groom met him in front of it. 'You'll honor my establishment with another night's custom?' the innkeeper asked eagerly, adding, 'I trust all went well for you with the Sibyl? I gather there was some sort of commotion in the temple?' Like anyone else, he delighted in gossip.
'Not in the temple-under it,' Van said. Gerin let him tell the tale this time. The outlander was a better storyteller than he, anyhow. When Gerin told what he knew, he did it baldly, laying out facts to speak for themselves. Van embellished and embroidered them, almost as if he were a minstrel.
When he was through, the innkeeper clapped his hands. Bowing, he said, 'Good my sir, if ever you tire of the life you lead, which I take to be one of arms, you would be welcome to earn your bread and meat here at my inn, for surely the stories you spin would bring in enough new custom to make having you about a paying proposition.'
'Thank you, sir, but I'm not quite ready yet to sit by the fire and tell yarns for my supper,' Van said. 'If you'll fetch Gerin and me a big jar of ale, though, that'd be a kindness worth remembering.'
Seeking to be even more persuasive, Gerin let silver softly jingle. The innkeeper responded with alacrity. He shouted to his servants as Gerin and Van went inside and sat in the taproom. Grunting with effort, two men hauled a huge amphora up from the cellar. Right behind them came another fellow with a flat-bottomed pot full of earth. The Fox wondered at that until the two men stabbed the pointed base of the amphora down into the pot.
'It won't stand by itself on a wooden floor, don't you see?' the innkeeper said. 'And if the two of you somehow empty it, you won't be able to stand by yourselves, either.'
'Good. That's the idea,' Van boomed. 'You have a dipper there, my friend, so we can fill our jacks as we need to? Ah, yes, I see it. Splendid. If we do come to the point where we can't walk, you'll be kind enough to have your men carry us up to our beds?'
'We've done it a few times, or more than a few,' said one of the men who'd lugged in the amphora. 'For you, though, we ought to charge extra, seeing as you're heavy freight.' He looked ready to bolt if Van took that the wrong way, but the outlander threw back his head and laughed till the taproom rang.
The innkeeper hovered round Gerin like a bee waiting for a flower to open. The Fox didn't take long to figure out why. He'd jingled silver, but he hadn't shown any. Now he did. The innkeeper bowed himself almost double as he made the coins vanish-no easy feat, for he was almost as round as some of the temple eunuchs.
Once paid, he had the sense to leave his guests to themselves. Van filled two jacks, passed one to Gerin. He raised on high the one he kept. 'Confusion to oracles!' he cried, and poured the red-brown ale down his throat. He let out a long sigh of contentment: 'Ahhhh!'
Gerin also drank, but more slowly. Halfway through, he set down his jack and said, 'The poor Sibyl seemed confused enough already. I hope she's come back to herself.'
'Well, so do I,' Van admitted. He clucked impatiently. 'Come on, Captain, finish up there so I can pour you full again. Ah, that's better.' He plied the dipper. Before upending his own refilled jack, he went on, 'I wonder if, for a woman with juice in her like the new Sibyl looks to have, letting the god fill you makes up for long years without a man to fill you. Not a swap I'd care to make, anyhow.'
'I had the same thought myself, when I saw her in the chamber in place of the crone who'd been there time out of mind,' Gerin answered. 'I don't suppose Biton would speak to anyone who wasn't willing to listen, though.'
'Mm, maybe not.' Van kicked him under the table. 'What shall we drink to this round?'
Without hesitation, Gerin raised his jack and said, 'Dyaus' curse, and Biton's, too, on whoever kidnapped Duren.' He emptied the jack in one long pull, his throat working hard. Van shouted approval and drank with him.
After a while, they stopped toasting with each round and settled in for steady drinking. Gerin felt at the tip of his nose with thumb and forefinger. It was numb, a sure sign the ale was beginning to have its way with him. Suddenly, half drunk, he decided he didn't feel like sliding sottishly under the table.
Van filled his own jack, lowered the dipper into the amphora, and brought it, dripping, toward Gerin's. When he turned it so the dark amber stream poured into the jack, it quickly overflowed. He scowled at the Fox. 'You're behindhand there.' Only the care with which he pronounced 'behindhand' gave any clue to how much he'd poured down himself.
'I know. Go on without me, if you've a mind to. If I drink myself stupid today, I'll drink myself sad. I can feel it coming on already, and I have plenty to be sad about even with my wits about me.'
The outlander looked at him with an odd expression. Gerin needed a moment to recognize it; he hadn't often seen pity on his friend's blunt, hard-featured face. Van said, 'The real trouble with you, Captain, is that you don't let go of your wits no matter how drunk you get. Me, I'm like most folk. After a while, I just stop thinking. Nice to be able to do that now and again.'
'If you say so,' Gerin answered. 'I've lived by and for my wits so long now, I suppose, that I'd sooner keep 'em about me all the time. I'd feel naked-worse than naked-without 'em.'
'Poor bastard.' Van had drunk enough to make his tongue even freer than it usually was. 'I tell you this, though: a long time ago I learned it was cursed foolishness to try and make a man go in a direction he doesn't fancy. So you do what you feel like doing. Me, I intend to get pie-eyed. Tomorrow morning I'll have a head like the inside of a drum with two Trokmoi pounding on it, but I'll worry about that then.'
'All right,' Gerin said. 'You've touched wisdom there, you know.'
'Me? Honh!' Van said with deep scorn. 'I don't know from wisdom. All I know is ale feels good when it's inside me, and I feel good when I'm inside a wench, and a nice, friendly fight is the best sport in the world. Who needs
