more?'
'No, really.' The Fox had enough ale inside him to make him painfully earnest. 'So many folk aren't content to let their friends'he almost said the people they love, but knew with accurate instinct that that would have been more than Van could put up with-'be what they are. They keep trying to make them into what they think they're supposed to be.'
Van grunted. 'Foolishness,' was all he said. He plied the dipper yet again, then burst into raucous song in a language Gerin didn't know.
The outlander went to the jakes several times over the course of the afternoon as the ale extracted a measure of revenge. When he came back from the latest of those visits, he zigzagged to the table like a ship trying to tack into port against a strong wind. His chair groaned when he threw his bulk into it, but held.
Even after more drinking, he was able to paste an appreciative smile on his face when a servitor brought over flatbread and a juicy roast of beef. He used his eating knife to carve off a chunk that would have done a starving longtooth proud, and methodically proceeded to make it disappear, lubricating the passage with ale.
After so many years' comradeship, the outlander's capacity no longer amazed Gerin, even if it did still awe him. The innkeeper watched Van eat and drink with amazement, too: glum amazement that he hadn't charged more, if the Fox was any judge. Gerin did his best to damage the roast, too, but, beside Van's, his depredations went all but unnoticed.
Twilight faded into night. Torches, their heads dipped in fat for brighter flames, smoked and crackled in bronze sconces. Gerin drained his jack one last time, set it upside down on the table, and got to his feet. He moved slowly and carefully, that being the only sort of motion he had left to him. 'I'm for bed,' he announced.
'Too bad, too bad. There's still ale in the jar,' Van said. He got up himself, to peer down into it. 'Not a lot of ale, but some.'
'Don't make me think about it,' the Fox said. 'I'm going to have a headache in the morning as is; why bring it on early?'
'You!' Van said. 'What about me?' Pity showed on his face again, this time self-pity-he had indeed drunk titanically, if he'd managed to make himself maudlin.
Gerin climbed the stairs as if each were a separate mountain higher than the last. Triumph-and a bellyful of ale-surged in him when he got to the second story. The floor seemed to shift under his feet like the sea, but he reached the room he shared with Van without having to lean against the wall or grab at a door. That too was triumph of a sort.
He rinsed out his mouth with water from the pitcher there, though he knew it would be a cesspit come morning anyhow. Then he undressed and flopped limply onto one of the beds. He pulled off his sandals, hoping Van wouldn't choose the same bed and squash him when-if-the outlander made it upstairs.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the Fox sat bolt upright in bed, eyes staring, heart pounding. His head was pounding, too, but he ignored it. The horror of the dream that had slammed him out of sodden slumber made such merely fleshly concerns as hangovers meaningless by comparison.
Worst of all, he couldn't remember what he'd seen-or perhaps the darkness of the dream had been so absolute that even imaginary vision failed. Something dreadful was brewing somewhere in the dark.
The room in which he lay was dark, too, but not so dark that he could not see. Light from all the moons save Elleb streamed in through the window, painting crisscrossing shadows on the floor. In the other bed, Van snored like a bronze saw slowly cutting its way through limestone.
Just as Gerin tried to convince himself the dream, no matter how terrifying, had been only a dream and to go back to sleep, the outlander stirred and moaned. That he could move at all amazed the Fox; the room reeked of stale ale.
Van shouted-not in Elabonian, not in words at all, but like an animal bawling out a desperate alarm. One of his big hands groped for and found a knife. He sprang to his feet, naked and ferocious, his eyes utterly devoid of reason.
'It's all right,' Gerin said urgently, before that mad gaze could light on him and decide he was the cause of whatever night terror Van faced. 'It's only a dream. Lie down and sleep some more.'
'A dream?' Van said in a strange, uncertain voice. 'No, it couldn' t be.' He seemed to shrink a little as consciousness came back. 'By the gods, maybe it was at that. I can hardly believe it.'
He set the knife back on the floor, sat down at the edge of the bed with a massive forearm across his eyes. Gerin understood that; now he noticed his own throbbing head, and Van's had to be ten times worse. The outlander stood again, this time to use the chamber pot. Gerin also understood that. 'Pass it to me when you're done,' he said.
'I thought I was lost in a black pit,' Van said wonderingly. ' Things were looking at me, I know they were, but I couldn't see even the shine of their eyes-too dark. How could I fight them if I couldn't see them?' He shuddered, then groaned. 'I wish my head would fall off. Even the moonlight hurts my eyes.'
'I had a dark dream, too, though I don't remember as much of it as you do,' Gerin said. Analytical even hung over, he went on, 'Odd, that. You've drunk much more than I have, yet you recall more. I wonder why.'
'Captain, I don't give a-' Van's reply was punctuated by a frightened wail that came in through the window with the overbrilliant moonlight. The Fox recognized the innkeeper's voice, even distorted by fear.
More than his headache, more than his own bad dream, that fear kept him from falling back to sleep. Van said nothing but, by the way he tossed and fidgeted, he lay a long time wakeful, too.
Breakfast the next morning was not a happy time. Gerin spooned up barley porridge with his eyes screwed into slits against the daylight. Van drew up a bucket of water from the well outside the inn and poured it over his head. He came back in dripping and snorting, but turned aside with a shudder from the bowl of porridge the innkeeper offered him.
The innkeeper did his best to seem jolly, but his smiles, although they stretched his mouth wide, failed to reach his eyes. Little by little, he stopped pretending, and grew almost as somber as his suffering guests. 'I have some word of the Sibyl, good my sirs,' he said.
'Tell us,' Gerin urged. 'You'll give me something to think about besides my poor decrepit carcass.' Van did not seem capable of coherent speech, but nodded-cautiously, as if afraid the least motion might make his head fall off.
The innkeeper said, 'I hear she still lies asleep in the bed where the priests put her, now and again thrashing and crying out, as if she has evil dreams.'
'I wonder if hers are the same as mine and Van's,' Gerin said: ' darkness and unseen things moving through it.'
'I saw-or rather, did not see-the same last night.' The innkeeper gave a theatrical shiver. His eyes flicked over to Dyaus' altar by the fireplace. The king of the gods might hold the ghosts at bay, but seemed powerless against these more frightening seemings that came in the night.
Van made a hoarse croaking noise, then said, 'I wonder what Aragis dreamt last night.' He didn't quite whisper, but used only a small piece of his big voice: more would have hurt him.
'Are you sure you won't eat something?' Gerin asked him. 'We'll want to do a lot of traveling today, to get beyond the wood and also past that peasant village where they hunted us in the night.'
'I'm sure,' Van said, quietly still. 'You'd make a fine mother hen, Captain, but if I put aught in my belly now, we'd just lose time stopping the wagon so I could go off into the woods and unspit.'
'You know best,' the Fox said. The porridge was bland as could be, but still sat uncertainly in his own stomach, and lurched when he stood up. 'I do think we ought to go upstairs and don our armor, though. However much we hurt, we're liable to have some handwork ahead of us.'
'Aye, you're right,' Van answered. 'I'd be happier to sit here a while-say, a year or two-till I feel I might live, or even want to, but you're right.' With careful stride, he made his way to the stairs and up them. Gerin followed.
The rasps and clangs of metal touching metal made the Fox's head hurt and, by Van's mutters, did worse to him. 'Don't know how I'm supposed to fight, even if I have to,' Gerin said. 'If I could drive somebody away by
