that I've always looked too big to knock down. Maybe I don't, not any more. I don't think Marlanz is bluffing.'
'No. Aragis doesn't want you becoming Balser's overlord,' Selatre agreed. She cocked her head to one side and studied him. 'Wouldn't you say that means he's afraid of you?'
Gerin started to say something, then stopped. What he did say, in tones of appreciation, was, 'I think I've just been outargued.'
Selatre was still studying him, but now in rather a different manner. 'And what do you propose to do about that?' she inquired.
He got up, walked over to the door, and barred it. He'd had a serf skilled in carpentry install the bar and the brackets that held it a couple of years before. At about the same time, he'd taken to storing a bolt of thick woolen cloth in one corner of the library. That had perplexed Dagref, who'd noted, pointedly and accurately, that nothing else but books ever got stored in that room. 'It's not doing any particular harm there, so let it alone,' Gerin had told him. That was also true. Dagref had grumbled about it for a while, but then, as is the way of such things, he'd got used to it. He probably didn't even notice it was there any more.
The other thing he didn't notice, however alert he was to connections between events around him, was that that bar and the roll of cloth had appeared in the library at about the same time he and Clotild grew to the point where they didn't sleep much more than Gerin and Selatre did. The Fox's bedchamber had only one large bed in it. Private moments there got harder and harder to find.
'What are you doing?' Selatre asked now, though her tone of voice suggested she knew perfectly well what he was doing-and that she might have done it herself if he hadn't.
'Who, me?' Gerin unrolled the cloth on the floor. When he'd doubled it over onto itself, it was a little longer than a woman, or even a man, might be, lying at full length.
Selatre came over and stood beside him. As if altogether of its own accord, his arm slid around her waist. She moved closer. Her voice, though, was thoughtful as she said, 'It's really not quite so soft as the bed, is it? And you don't always remember to keep your weight on your elbows instead of on me.' She let out a small sigh that might have proclaimed she was resigned to his iniquities.
Some pleasant little while later, Gerin murmured, 'There. You can' t say I'm squashing you now.' Selatre, astride him, nodded agreement altogether too solemn for the moment. Both of them started to laughquietly. Gerin slid his hands along her smooth, warm length. 'Is this better, then?'
'Better?' Her shrug was delightful. Even then, though, the answer she gave was carefully considered: 'I don't know. It's not the same, and you're not squashing me. That's enough.' She began to move, and the answers she and Gerin found were not expressed in words.
Once he'd put on his linen tunic and wool trousers, Gerin rolled up the bolt of cloth and slung it back in its corner. In the light of the single lamp still burning in the library, it looked altogether mundane: just one more thing for which there hadn't been room anywhere else in the crowded castle.
Suddenly, Selatre started to giggle. The Fox raised an interrogative eyebrow. She said, 'I wonder what Ferdulf would have thought if he'd been walking in the air outside the window just then.'
There was an aspect of Ferdulf's unusual abilities Gerin hadn't contemplated till then. 'Maybe he would have learned something,' he said, which made Selatre laugh again. He went on, 'Considering which god he's the son of, maybe he wouldn't have, too.' He and Selatre both laughed at that. Were they a little nervous? If they were, they both kept quiet about it. He unbarred the door. Selatre blew out the lamp. They went off to bed.
**
Marlanz Raw-Meat looked as if he'd bitten into something sour. ' It's still no, is it?' he said, and swigged at the ale which, with bread and honey, made up his breakfast.
'It's still no,' Gerin said firmly. 'If Balser Debo's son acknowledges that he is my vassal-and I expect he will-I'll protect him from all his neighbors, including Aragis the Archer.'
'I'm sorry to hear that, lord king,' Marlanz said. 'I'll take your words down to King Aragis. After that, I expect I'll see you in the field.' He put down the loaf on which he'd been gnawing and made cutand-thrust motions. 'Guest-friends don't slay each other, of course, but that doesn't hold for your men.'
'I know,' Gerin said. 'Tell Aragis also that I have no quarrel with him if he has no quarrel with me. Tell him I don't aim to use Balser's land against him. Tell him he and I have managed to keep from going to war with each other up till now even though we've been the two strongest men in the northlands for most of the past twenty years. I'm in no great hurry to change that.'
'I'll tell him everything you say, lord king.' Marlanz upended his jack, then looked into it as if amazed it held no more ale. 'I'll tell him, but his mind's made up. If Balser claims you for his overlord, Aragis will go to war. When he says something like that, it's as sure as the sun coming up tomorrow.'
From everything Gerin had gleaned by intently watching his rival over the years, Marlanz was telling the truth. When Aragis said he would do something, he would do it, no matter how appalling it might be. He was not a man who deviated from his declared purposes. That made him more dangerous than someone who might be intimidated, but also made him more vulnerable because he was more predictable.
But the lands he controlled and those acknowledging the Fox's overlordship already marched over a long stretch of the northlands. If he went to war with Gerin, he could pick the spot for the first assault. 'Tell Aragis one thing more from me,' the Fox said, and Marlanz Raw-Meat nodded attentively. 'Tell him that if he starts this war, I will finish it, and he won't care for that.'
By Marlanz's expression, he didn't care for it, either. 'I will take your words to him just as you say them, lord king,' he promised. His face got longer yet. 'I don't think it will help, but I'll do it.'
'All right. I'll tell you one thing, too, Marlanz,' Gerin said: 'I don't hold this against you personally. You're doing as a good vassal should, following the orders of your suzerain. I think you'll be sorry for doing it even so.'
'That's in the hands of the gods,' Marlanz said, and then looked as if he wished he could have the words back. They must have made him think of Ferdulf, and from Ferdulf go on to Mavrix. He wouldn't know Mavrix was none too well disposed toward Gerin. Aragis did know thator had known it some years before. But Aragis had also seen Gerin cozen Mavrix into doing what the Fox wanted him to do. He might well reckon that meant man and god had patched things up. With luck, the prospect-even if it wasn't a true prospect-of facing an irate god would give even the Archer pause.
The prospect of facing an irate god had given Gerin pause several times. That didn't mean he hadn't done it. It didn't mean he hadn't got away with it, either. He had no reason to assume Aragis couldn't get away with it, too. He wished he did have such a reason.
'Try to make Aragis see that I don't want this war, will you?' the Fox persisted. 'If I did want it, I'd hold you here, and the first thing Aragis would know was that my men were coming over the border at him.'
'As I say, lord king, I'll pass on everything you say to me,' Marlanz replied. 'I don't think it will do much good, as I told you before. King Aragis will answer that it only means you don't want war now, right this minute, not that you don't want war at all.' He sat a little straighter, a little more defiantly. 'Can you tell me my king would be wrong?'
'Yes,' Gerin said. 'If I'd wanted war, I could have had it whenever I chose, and I've never chosen war with Aragis, not down through these past twenty years.' He sighed; he was blessed-or perhaps cursed-with the ability to see the other fellow's point of view. 'And he'll say the only reason I didn't do it was because I wasn't ready all this time, and now I finally am.' He felt tired. 'Go on home, Marlanz. Pretty soon Aragis and I can try killing each other, and then we'll find out who's better at that.'
The warriors who had accompanied Aragis' envoy up to Fox Keep had their chariots ready for the return journey. Gerin's resignation to the prospect of war ahead seemed to reach Marlanz where his earlier denials had been brushed aside. As Marlanz stepped up into his car, he spoke urgently: 'I'll urge him to hold the peace-by Father Dyaus, I swear it. Whether he listens to me…'
'If he doesn't listen to you, maybe he'll listen to edged bronze.' Gerin waved to the gate crew. 'Let down the drawbridge.' The men in the gatehouse turned the capstan. Bronze chain rattled out, a link at a time. Down went the bridge. The Fox waved again, this time to Marlanz Raw-Meat.
Marlanz looked to be on the point of saying something more. Instead, he bowed stiffly and tapped his driver
