Gerin had thought himself the most sarcastic soul in the northlands; saying one thing and meaning another was a subtle art more often practiced south of the High Kirs. But wherever Fand had picked it up, she was dangerously good at it. And her furious question made the Fox ask himself if he would have headed back toward the fane to rescue Selatre's crone of a predecessor. He had to admit he didn't know, and that troubled him.
'Is this your wife, lord Gerin, thinking I'm some sort of menace to her?' Selatre asked. 'I hope that is not so.' Now she looked as if she doubted anew all the assurances she'd come to trust on the road north from Ikos.
'My leman, rather, and Van's,' the Fox answered. Selatre raised an eyebrow at his domestic arrangements, but he ignored that; he'd worry about it later. Fand, as usual, was immediate trouble. To her, he said, 'I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. By the gods, I did what I did for the reasons I said I did it, and if you don't fancy that, you can pack up and leave.'
'Och, you'd like that, now wouldn't you?' Fand was low-voiced no more; her screech drove Drago from the seat close by her. 'Well, lord Gerin the Fox-and you too, you overthewed oaf'-this to Van-'you'll not be rid of me so easy as that, indeed and you won't. Use me and cast me forth, will you?'
She picked up her drinking jack and threw it at Gerin. It was half full; a trail of ale, like a comet's tail, followed it as it flew. The Fox had been expecting it, so he ducked in good time-you needed battle-honed reflexes to live with Fand.
Van tried again. 'Now, lass-'
She snatched the dipper out of the jar of ale and flung it at him. It clanged off the bronze of his cuirass. He was vain about his gear; he looked down in regret and anger at the ale that dripped to the floor.
'I ought to heat your backside for that,' he said, and took a step forward, as if to do it on the spot.
'Aye, come ahead, thrash me,' Fand fleered, and stuck out the portion of her anatomy he had threatened. 'Then tomorrow or the day after or the day after that you'll be all sweet and poke that cursed one-eyed snake o' yours in my face-and I'll bite down hard enough to leave you no more'n a newborn wean has. D'you think I wouldn't?'
By the appalled look he wore, Van thought she would. He turned to Gerin for help in quelling this mutiny. The Fox didn't know what to say, either. He wondered if Fand would storm out of the castle, or if he'd have to throw her out. He didn't really want to do that; for all her hellish temper, he liked having her around, and not just because he slept with her. Till Duren was kidnapped, she'd watched over him as tenderly as if she'd given birth to him. Her wits were sharp, too, as he sometimes found to his discomfort.
Right now, though, he wouldn't have minded putting a hard hand to her behind, if only he'd thought that would make matters better. Unfortunately, he thought it would make them worse. If force wouldn't help and she wouldn't listen to reason, what did that leave? He wished he could come up with something.
Then Selatre got to her feet. She dropped a curtsy to Fand as if the Trokme woman had been Empress of Elabon and said, 'Lady, I did not come here intending to disrupt your household in any way: on that I will take oath by any gods you choose. I am virgin in respect of men, and have no interest in changing my estate there; as lord Gerin and Van of the Strong Arm both know, any touch from an entire man would have left me religiously defiled before-before Biton abandoned me.' Her brief hesitation showed the pain she still felt at that. 'I tell you once more, I am not one like to steal either of your men from you.'
Where Gerin and Van had fanned Fand's fury, Selatre seemed to calm her. 'Och, lass, I'm not after blaming you,' she said. 'By all 'twas said, you had not even your wits about you when these two great loons snatched you away. But what you intend and what will be, oftentimes they're not the same at all, at all. Think you I intended to cast my lot with southron spalpeens?'
'I'm no southron,' Van said with some dignity.
'You're no Trokme, either,' Fand said, to which the outlander could only nod. But Fand wasn't screaming any more; she just sounded sad, maybe over the way her life had turned out, maybe-unlikely though that seemed to Gerin-regretting her show of temper.
'And what am I?' Selatre said. She answered her own question: 'I was the god's servant, and proud and honored he had chosen me through whom to speak. But now he has left me, and so I must be nothing.' She hid her face in her hands and wept.
Gerin was helpless with weeping women. Maybe that explained why he got on with Fand as well as he did- instead of weeping, she threw things. He knew how to respond to that. He hadn't known what to do when Elise cried, either, and suddenly wondered if that had been one of the things that made her leave.
He looked to Van, who made an art of jollying women into good spirits. But Van looked baffled, too. He jollied women along mostly to get them into bed with him; when faced with a virgin who wanted to stay such, he was at a loss.
Finally the Fox went into the kitchens and came back with a bowl of water and a scrap of cloth. He set them in front of Selatre. 'Here, wash your face,' he said. She gulped and nodded. Van beamed, which made Gerin feel good; he might not have done much, but he'd done something. It was a start.
VI
A chariot came pounding up the road toward Fox Keep. The driver was whipping the horses on so hard that the car jounced into the air at every bump, threatening to throw out him and his companion. 'Lord Gerin! Lord Gerin!' the archer cried.
The Fox happened to be on the palisade. He stared down in dismay at the rapidly approaching chariot. He was afraid he knew what news the onrushing warriors bore. But he had been back in Fox Keep only five days himself; he'd hoped he might have longer to prepare. Hopes and reality too often parted company, though. 'What word?' he called to the charioteer and his passenger.
They didn't hear him over the rattling of the car and the pound of the horses' hooves, or spy him on the wall. The chariot roared into the courtyard of the keep. The driver pulled back on the reins so sharply that both horses screamed in protest. One tried to rear, which might have overturned the chariot. The lash persuaded the beast to keep all four feet on the ground.
At any other time, Gerin would have reproved the driver for using the horses so; he believed treating animals mildly got the best service from them. Now, as he hurried down from the walkway across the wall, such trivial worries were far from his mind. 'What word?' he repeated. 'Tomril, Digan, what word?'
Tomril Broken-Nose tossed the whip aside and jumped out of the chariot. 'Lord Gerin, I'm here to tell you I beg your pardon,' he said.
'You didn't come close to killing your team for that,' the Fox answered.
'Oh, but we did, lord prince,' Digan Sejan's son said. 'Tomril and I, we both thought you were babbling like a night ghost when you came up the Elabon Way warning folk of those half-man, half-beast things that were supposed to have gotten loose from under some old temple or other-'
'But now we've seen 'em, lord Gerin,' Tomril broke in, his eyes wide. 'They're ugly, they're mean, they've got a taste for blood-'
Now Gerin interrupted: 'And they must be up at the bottom of Bevon's barony by now, or you wouldn't have seen them. What news do you have from Ricolf's holding?'
'About what you'd expect,' Tomril answered. 'They're loose there, too, the cursed things, and ripping serf villages to bits.'
'Oh, a pestilence,' Gerin said wearily. 'If they're in Ricolf's holding, and Bevon's, they'll be here, too. How are the peasants supposed to grow crops if they're liable to be killed in the fields or torn to pieces in their beds?'
'Curse me if I know the answer to that one,' Tomril said. 'Things I've seen, things I've heard, make me think these creatures are worse than the Trokmoi, and harder to get rid of, too.'
'They don't care a fart about loot, neither,' Digan chimed in. ' They just kill and feed and go away-and in the woods, they're clever beasts, and not easy to hunt.'
'I hadn't thought of that, but you're right,' Gerin said. 'How many Trokmoi have we disposed of because they stayed around to plunder or loaded themselves down with stolen gewgaws till they couldn't even flee?'
'A good many, lord.' Tomril touched the hilt of his sword in fond reminiscence. Then he scuffed the ground with a hobnailed sandal. ' Won't be so with these monsters, though. They've got teeth and claws and enough of a
