**
Down went the drawbridge. As soon as it had thumped onto dry land on the other side of the moat, Aragis' driver crossed over it and into Balser's keep. No hesitation, Gerin thought, standing there in the courtyard with Balser and Dagref and Van and some of his leading vassals. But then, Aragis the Archer seldom showed hesitation about anything, which was one reason the Fox wondered why they weren't already at war.
Without waiting for the chariot to stop, Aragis hopped out of it and strode briskly over to Gerin. He was a slim, hawk-faced man of about the Fox's age who leaned slightly forward as he walked, as if he were a hunting dog following an exciting scent.
Abruptly, he stuck out a hand. 'I greet you, lord king,' he said. As an obvious afterthought, he nodded to Balser. 'Baron.'
'I greet you, lord king,' Gerin said, accepting the clasp. Aragis' grip was firm and hard, as it had been for as long as the Fox had known him. 'You don't mind my asking, why aren't we trying to kill each other right now?'
'Don't worry, I thought we'd be doing just that by this time, too.' Aragis bared his teeth in what was as much snarl as smile. 'I think I'd have won, too. But something more important's come up.'
'More important than which of us ends up ruling the northlands?' Gerin said incredulously. Aragis' head jerked up and down in a sharp, emphatic nod. Gerin whistled softly under his breath. A few times in his life, he'd been at the very edge of spreading news, the outermost boundary between those who knew and those who didn't. Aragis, plainly, was such an outer ripple now. The Fox said, 'You'd better tell me, then, hadn't you?'
Aragis nodded again. 'It's not a question of which of us ends up ruling the northlands any more,' he said. 'It's a question of whether we can keep our heads on our shoulders.'
'By your five Elabonian hells, what are you talking about?' Van boomed.
'The Empire's come back to the northlands,' Aragis answered.
For a few heartbeats, that didn't mean anything to the Fox. Save for memories of his student days down in the capital, he hadn't thought much about the Elabonian Empire in the more than twenty years since it had closed itself off from its former northern province. He'd thought about it as little as he could get away with in the days before it had done so, too; he hadn't paid the tribute required of him because he hadn't got the protection the tribute was supposed to earn.
But if the Empire had returned… 'Father Dyaus,' he whispered.
'That's the way of it, all right,' Aragis the Archer agreed. ' They've cleared two of the passes through the High Kirs, and they're sending soldiers through 'em. I don't know what all's been happening down there these past years, but it surely looks as though they've got a lot of soldiers to send.'
'Father Dyaus,' Gerin said again. He'd worried about Aragis. He'd worried about Adiatunnus and the Trokmoi. He'd worried about the monsters from the caverns under Biton's shrine at Ikos. He'd worried about the Gradi. He'd worried about Ferdulf. Worrying about the Empire of Elabon, long vanished from the northlands, had never crossed his mind.
Dagref spoke with his usual precision and accuracy: 'Something might perhaps be done against the Empire if you two kings joined forces.'
Aragis turned his clear, cold-eyed gaze on Dagref, but spoke to his father, saying, 'No fools in your family, are there, Fox? This wouldn't be the lad who was kidnapped, would it, the one I got back for you from that cursed minstrel?'
'No, that's Duren, his older half brother,' Gerin answered. 'This is Dagref, whom I present to you with the warning that you'd better not ever be wrong in his presence, or you will hear about it.'
'Ah, one of those,' Aragis said, and then paused, the small grin he'd put on slowly fading. He gave Dagref another long look. 'Mm, no, maybe not. Most of that kind think they know it all and turn out not to know a thing. If this one says something, he'll have a good notion of what he's talking about. You'd have been the same way before your beard sprouted, eh?'
'Oh, yes,' Gerin answered, putting an arm around his son, who looked as if he could have done without the attention. 'I was always sure in those days. I wasn't always right, mind you, but I always thought I was.'
Dagref squirmed under the Fox's arm. 'Let me be,' he said indignantly. 'The only other way either one of you could come through this mess would be to ally with the Empire against the other, and how far do you suppose you could trust the imperials? They'd use you and then sweep you aside.'
Both Gerin and Aragis stared at him then. Gerin was pretty sure he eventually would have reached that same conclusion himself, but not with his son's effortless ease and ruthless clarity. Aragis made a sharp, short bow to Dagref. He said, 'I came here to propose alliance to your father. You help me see I chose right. I am in your debt.'
'Don't let it worry you,' Dagref said tranquilly. 'My father's in my debt, too. You didn't lose a bet to get there.'
Aragis turned a speculative eye on Gerin. 'Don't ask me about that now,' the Fox said. 'More important things to think about.'
'As you say.' Aragis the Archer managed a thin smile. 'Still, anyone who gets the better of you at anything needs careful watching. Shall we speak, then, of what needs doing against the Empire?'
Balser Debo's son said, 'Use my great hall as your own, lord kings.' Of all the people in the courtyard, he was the only one who sounded delighted at the news Aragis had brought. Gerin had no trouble figuring out why: it meant Aragis and he wouldn't be fighting their war through Balser's holding. The noble might not even have to feed his new overlord's large, expensive army very long. If the warriors headed south to fight against the Elabonian Empire, they'd end up on Aragis' lands.
'They want the land back,' Aragis said after he'd sat down and had a jack of ale pressed into his hand. 'As far as they're concerned, it' s as if they've never been away. The one who came to my keep said I could stay on-as baron, mind you, not as king-if I paid twenty-one years' worth of back tribute.'
'Dyaus Allfather!' Gerin exclaimed. 'Did you let him live?'
'I'm afraid I did.' The Archer sounded faintly embarrassed at the admission. 'I wasn't ready to fight in the south then-I had all my strength shifted north to go to war with you.' He spoke as if Gerin should have expected nothing else. Since the Fox had expected nothing else, he only nodded. Aragis went on, 'I just sent him out of my lands naked, to let the Empire have a clue as to how much it could ever expect to take away from me.'
'Well done!' Van boomed. Adiatunnus clapped his hands. Gerin admired Aragis' gesture, too, but probably would have handled the imperial envoy rather differently himself.
Before he could decide whether to say as much, Dagref did it for him: 'Being less abrupt with the fellow might have proved more prudent.' Dagref was still at the age where, if something seemed obviously true to him, he let the world know about it without troubling his head about things like tact.
'I thought about that later,' Aragis said. After pausing to down his ale and hold out the jack for a refill, he went on, 'At the time, all I thought about was that the arrogant bastard had angered me, and so I was going to anger him right back, by the gods.'
'Are you fighting with the imperials down on the southern border of your kingdom, then?' Gerin asked.
Aragis shook his head. 'They're holding some of the territory that's rightfully mine, the whoresons. I don't know whether you know it or not, but these days I rule almost down to the foothills of the High Kirs.' Again, his smile was one that a wolf might have offered. ' Easier pushing south against the odds and sods there than coming north against you, Fox.'
'Good.' Gerin gave back that same display of teeth. Aragis' concern about him was the only thing that had kept them from clashing years before. 'So you want my help against the Empire, do you?'
'It's your neck, too,' Aragis answered steadily. 'If they beat me by myself, do you think they'll stop at the northern border to my realm? And if they look like beating me, do you think I wouldn't go over to them, as your boy says, and save what I can by helping them smash you flat?'
'No and no, respectively,' the Fox admitted. Aragis gave him that fierce smile again. He sighed. 'Equal allies, as we were against the monsters fifteen years ago?' Aragis nodded, as if that went without saying. From his perspective, no doubt it did. Gerin might have tried extorting more from him, since he was the one more threatened, but didn't bother. Aragis had a notoriously long memory for slights. Thinking as much, Gerin realized
