King of the North Read online

  Gerin plucked at his beard. The holy foretellers had a point. In a way, the Elabonian gods were immigrants here, as were those of the Gradi pantheon. And, indeed, the northlands had been cut off from the Elabonian heartland for most of a generation now. But if Dyaus and Baivers and Astis the goddess of love and the rest of the deities who had made their way north with Ros the Fierce were not at home here by now, then they were nowhere at home. They’d had centuries to grow acclimated to the northlands and have the landscape accept them. The Fox was sure the Gradi foretellers had blundered there. How to make them pay for the error?

  Had he been one of the heroes of whom the minstrels sang, he would have come up with an answer on the instant and been able to use it within days, if not right away. As he was, however, an ordinary man in the real world, nothing occurred to him. He asked the Gradi, “What do you mean, you’ll make the northlands into another Gradihome? What does that entail?” He’d heard the phrase before; he wanted to be sure he understood its meaning.

  Kapich stared at him, plainly thinking the question either foolish or having an answer so obvious, it needed no explaining. But explain he did, in condescending tones: “We make this country over, to suit us better. It is too hot now, too sunny. Our gods do not like this; it makes them squint and sweat. When they are at home here, they will shield us from the nasty heat.”

  Were the Gradi gods strong enough to do that? Gerin didn’t know. He didn’t want to find out, either. Kapich thought they were. That probably meant they thought they were, too, which meant they’d try.

  What little he knew of the land from which the Gradi came derived from Van’s accounts of his travels through it. By the outlander’s tales, it was a country of snow and rock and stunted trees, where the farmers grew oats and rye because wheat and barley wouldn’t ripen in the short, cool summers, a place where berries took the place of tree fruit and wolves and great white bears prowled through the winters.

  “I thought you were coming here because you liked our land and our weather better than your own,” he said to Kapich. He had a hard time imagining anyone not wanting to escape from the grim conditions Van had described.

  But the Gradi shook his head. “No. Voldar hates this hot country. When it is ours, she will make it comfortable. Some of our rowers, in working the oars, fall into a faint from the heat. How do we do a man’s deeds while we bake in an oven?”

  “If you wanted a cold country, you should have stayed in the one you had.” That was not Gerin, or even Geroge: that was Tharma, who usually held her tongue.

  ‘If we are strong enough to take this one, our gods are strong enough to make it fit what we want—and what they want,” Kapich answered.

  “Do your gods ever want something different from what you want?” the Fox asked, probing for weaknesses.

  Kapich shook his head again. “How could that be? They are strong. We are weak. We are their thralls, to do as they will with us. Is it not the same among you here, you and the Trokmoi?”

  Gerin thought of his own efforts, some even successful, to trick the gods into doing what he wanted rather than the other way round. “You might say that,” he answered, “and then again you might not.” Kapich stared at him in incomprehension.

  He left the Gradi and went up to the great hall, Geroge and Tharma following. Geroge asked, “Can his gods really do that, what he said they could?” The monster sounded like a boy asking his father for reassurance the sky couldn’t really freeze and shatter and fall on his head during a cold Winter.

  Gerin was as close to a father as Geroge had among the world of men. As far as he was concerned, that meant he had a father’s obligation to be honest with the young monster. He said, “I don’t know. I’ve never had to deal with the gods the Gradi follow till now.”

  “You’ll find a way around them.” Tharma spoke confidently. As children are convinced their fathers can do anything, she was certain the Fox would be able to fend off Voldar and the rest of the dark deities from the dark, gloomy land the Gradi called their own.

  As Widin Simrin’s son had shown, most of Gerin’s subjects felt that same confidence in him. He wished he had more of it himself. As far as he could see, he’d been lucky in his dealings with gods up to now. When you were dealing with beings far more powerful than you were, how long could your luck last? Could you make it stretch for a whole lifetime? Of course you can, Gerin thought wryly. If you make a mistake while you’re treating with a god, you don’t have any more lifetime after that.

  Van got up from the table where he’d been sitting. “You look like a man who could use a jack of ale, or maybe three,” he said.

  “One, maybe,” Gerin said while the outlander plied the dipper. “If I drink three, I’ll drink myself gloomy.”

  “Honh!” Van said. “How would anyone else tell the difference?”

  “To the crows with you, too,” the Fox said, and poured down the ale Van had given him. “These Gradi, you know, they’re going to be nothing but trouble.”

  “No doubt,” Van said, but more as if relishing than abhorring the prospect. “You ask me, life gets dull without trouble.”

  “No one asked you,” Gerin said pointedly.

  His friend went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “Aye, betimes life gets dull. I’ve put down so many roots here at Fox Keep, oftentimes I think I’m all covered with moss and dust. Life here can be a bore, for true.”

  “If things get too boring, you can always fight with Fand,” the Fox said.

  Van tried to ignore that, too, but found he couldn’t. “So I do,” he said, shaking his head as if to shake off a wasp buzzing around it. “So I do. But she fights with me as much as I fight with her.”

  That, Gerin knew from experience, was also true. “Maybe it’s love,” he murmured, which drew an irate glare from Van. The outlander’s eyes didn’t quite focus and were tracked with red, which made Gerin wonder how many jacks of ale Van had had. His friend didn’t test his enormous capacity as often as he once had, but today looked to be an exception.

  “If it is love, why do we go on sticking knives into each other year after year?” Van demanded. Given Fand’s habits—she’d stabbed a Trokmê who’d mistreated her—Gerin wasn’t so sure his friend was using a metaphor till the outlander went on, “You and Selatre, a year’ll go by between harsh words. Me and Fand, every peaceful day is a battle won. And you call that love?”

  “If it weren’t, you’d leave it,” Gerin answered. “Every time you have left, though, you’ve come back.” He raised a sardonic eyebrow. “And wouldn’t you be bored if you didn’t quarrel? You just said you thought peace and staying in one place for years were boring.”

  “Ahh, Fox, you don’t fight fair, hitting a man on the head with his own words like that.” Van hiccuped. “Most people—Fand, f’r instance—you say something to ’em and they pay it no mind. But you, now, you listen and you save it and you give it back just so as it’ll hurt worst when you do.”

  “Thank you,” Gerin said.

  That got him another dirty look from the outlander. “I didn’t mean it for praise.”

  “I know,” the Fox answered, “but I’ll take it for such all the same. If you don’t listen and remember, you can’t do much.” He turned the subject: “Do you think the Gradi can do as they say they will—them and their gods, I mean?”

  “That’s the question, sure as sure,” Van said, “the one we’ve been scratching our heads about since they tried to tear the keep down around our ears.” He peered down into his jack of ale, as if trying to use it as a scrying tool. “If I had to guess, Captain, I’d say they likely can … unless somebody stops them, that is.”

  “Unless I stop them, you mean,” the Fox said, and Van nodded, his hard features unwontedly somber.

  Gerin muttered something coarse under his breath. Even Van of the Strong Arm, who’d traveled far more widely than he himself ever would, who’d done things and dared things that would have left him quivering in horror, looked to him for answers.
He was sick of having the weight of the whole world pressed down on his shoulder. Even a god would break under a burden like that, let alone a man likely more than half through his appointed skein of days. Whenever he wished he could rest, something new and dreadful came along to keep him hopping.

  “Lord prince?”

  He looked up. There stood Herris Bigfoot, his expression nervous. The new village headman often looked nervous. Gerin wondered whether that was because he worried about his small job as the Fox did about his larger one or because he had something going on the side. “Well?” he said, his voice neutral.

  “Lord prince, the village suffered when the Gradi came here,” Herris said. “We had men killed, as you know, and fields trampled, and animals run off or wantonly slain, and some of our houses burned down, too—lucky for us it wasn’t all of ’em.”

  “Not just luck, headman.” Gerin waved to the warriors sitting here and there in the great hall, some repairing the leather jerkins they covered with scales of bronze to make corselets of them, others fitting points to arrows, still others sharpening sword blades against whetstones. “Luck had a bit of help here. If we hadn’t driven the Gradi away, you’d have had a thin time of it.”

  “That’s so.” Herris bobbed his head in his eagerness to agree—or at least to be seen agreeing. “Dyaus praise all your brave vassals who kept those robbers from hauling everything back to their big boats. Still and all, though, some bad things happened to us in spite of how brave they fought.”

  “Ah, now I see which way the wind blows,” Gerin said. “You’ll want me to take that into account come fall, when I’m reckoning up your dues. You’ll be missing people and animals, you’ll have spent time you could have been weeding on making repairs, and so forth.”

  “That’s it. That’s right,” Herris exclaimed. Then he noticed Gerin hadn’t promised anything. “Uh, lord prince—will you?”

  “How in the five hells do I know?” the Fox shouted. Herris sprang back a couple of paces in alarm. Several of the warriors looked up to see why Gerin was yelling. A little more quietly, he went on, “Have you noticed, sirrah, I have rather more to worry about than you or your village? I was going to fight a war against the Trokmoi. Now I’ll have to fight the Gradi first, and maybe Aragis the Archer off to the side. If anything is left of this principality come fall, I’ll worry over what to do about your dues. Ask me then, if we’re both alive. Till then, don’t joggle my elbow over such things, not when I’m trying to figure out how to fight gods. Do you understand?”

  Herris gulped and nodded and fled. His sandals thumped on the drawbridge as he hurried back to the village. No doubt he was disappointed; no doubt the rest of the serfs would be. Gerin resolved to bear up under that. As he’d told the headman, he had more important things to worry about.

  To his own surprise, he burst out laughing. “What’s funny, Fox?” Van demanded.

  “Now I understand what the gods must feel like when I ask them for something,” Gerin said “They’re really doing things that matter more to them, and they don’t like being nagged by some piddling little mortal who’s going to up and disappear in a few years no matter what they do or don’t do for him. As far as they’re concerned, I’m an annoyance, nothing more.”

  “Ah, well, you’re good at the job,” Van said. Gerin wondered whether his friend intended that as a compliment or a sly dig. After a moment, he shrugged. However Van intended it, it was true.

  Gerin drew his bow back to his ear and let fly. The sinew bowstring lashed his wrist. The arrow flew straight and true, into the flank of a young deer that had wandered too close to the bushes behind which he sheltered. The deer bounded away through the underbrush.

  “After him!” Gerin shouted, bursting from concealment. He and Van and Geroge and Tharma pounded down the trail of blood the deer left.

  “You got him good, Fox,” Van panted. “He won’t run far, and we’ll feast tonight. Venison and onions, and ale to wash ’em down.” He smacked his lips.

  “There!” Gerin pointed. The deer had hardly been able to run even a bowshot. It lay on the ground, looking reproachfully back at the men who had brought it down. As always when he saw a deer’s liquid black eyes fixed on his, the Fox knew a moment’s guilt.

  Not so Geroge. With a hoarse cry, the monster threw himself on the fallen deer and tore out its throat with his fangs. The deer’s hooves thrashed briefly. Then it lay still.

  Geroge got to his feet His mouth was bloody; he ran his tongue around his lips to clean them. More blood dripped from his massive jaws down onto the brownish hair that grew thick on his chest.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” Gerin said, working hard to keep his voice mild. “It would have been dead soon anyhow.”

  “But I liked killing it,” Geroge answered. By the way his deep-set eyes glittered, by the way the breath whistled in and out of his lungs, he’d more than liked it. It had excited him. The suddenly rampant and quite formidable bulge in his trousers suggested the same thing. He didn’t yet realize the excitement of the hunt could be transmuted to other excitements, but he would soon.

  And what then? Gerin asked himself. It was another question that refused to wait for an answer, especially when he saw how Tharma looked at Geroge. Everything seemed to be descending on his head at the same time: the Trokmoi, the Gradi, the gods, and now the awakening of the monsters. It wasn’t fair. You could deal with troubles when they came singly. But how were you supposed to deal with them when you couldn’t handle one before the next upped and bit you?

  Maybe you couldn’t. He’d learned a long time before that life wasn’t fair. You had to go on any way you could. But having all his problems so compressed seemed … inartistic, somehow. Whatever gods were responsible for his fate should have had more consideration.

  Van drew his bronze dagger. “After I gut the beast, what say we make a fire and roast the liver and kidneys right here? Meat doesn’t get any fresher than that.”

  Geroge and Tharma agreed so readily and so enthusiastically that, even had Gerin been inclined to argue, he would have thought twice. But he wasn’t inclined to argue. Turning to the monsters, he said, “Gather me some tinder, would you?”

  While they scooped up dry leaves and tiny twigs, Gerin found a stout branch on the ground and a good, straight stick. He used the point of his own dagger to bore a hole in the branch, then wound a spare bowstring around the stick and twirled it rapidly with the string. Van was even better with a fire bow than he was, but the outlander was also busy butchering the deer, and Gerin had made plenty of fires on his own. If you were patient …

  He worked the string back and forth, back and forth. The stick went round and round, round and round in the hole. After a while, smoke began to rise from it. “Tinder,” he said softly, not breaking his rhythm.

  “Here.” Geroge fed some crumpled leaves into the hole—not too many, or he would have snuffed out the sparks Gerin had brought to life. He’d done that before, and Gerin had shouted at him for it just as if he weren’t physically far more formidable than the Fox. Gerin breathed gently on the sparks: blowing them out was another risk you took. Presently, they grew to flames.

  “There ought to be a way to do that by magic,” Van said, impaling a chunk of liver on a stick and handing it to Geroge.

  “I know several, as a matter of fact,” Gerin answered. “The easiest will leave you exhausted for half a day. … No, that’s not so; the one for the flaming sword won’t, but that one takes ingredients that aren’t always easy to come by and, if you do it wrong, you’re liable to burn yourself up. Sometimes the simplest way is the best one.”

  “Aye, well, summat to that, I suppose,” the outlander admitted. “But still, a clever fellow like you ought to be able to figure out an easy way to make the kind of magic you need.”

  “I have trouble enough working magic,” Gerin exclaimed. “Expecting me to come up with new kinds is asking too much.” Wizards who could do things like that wrote grimoires; they didn
’t go from one book of spells to another picking out the simplest things to try and hoping they worked.

  Geroge toasted his chunk of liver over the fire. After a moment, Tharma joined him. The savory smell of roast meat drove the thought of magic from the Fox’s mind. The meat wasn’t well roasted; both foundling monsters had accepted the notion that meat needed cooking before being eaten, but they’d accepted it reluctantly, and ate even roast meat bloodier than was to Gerin’s taste.

  They were also halfhearted about any notions of manners. With their teeth, they hardly needed to cut bites from a slab of meat so they could chew them. They just bit down, and a juicy gobbet disappeared forever every time they did.

  Van handed Gerin a kidney on a stick. He cooked it a good deal longer than the monsters had their pieces of liver. “I wish we had some herbs, or even a bit of salt,” he said, but that was almost ritualistic complaint. The strong, fresh flavor of the kidneys—which went stale so quickly after you killed an animal—didn’t need enhancement.

  Van roasted the deer’s other kidney for himself. When he lifted it away from the flames, he took a bite and then swore: “Might as well be right out of your five hells, Fox: I just burned my mouth.”

  “I’ve done that,” Gerin said. “We’ve all done that. We ought to bring the rest of the carcass back to the keep.”

  The outlander checked the sun through the forest’s leafy canopy. “We still have some daylight left. I don’t feel like going back yet. Suppose I do the heart in four parts and we cook that, too?”

  “Do that!” Geroge said, and Tharma nodded. Any excuse to eat more meat was a good one for them.

  “Go ahead,” Gerin said after he too gauged the sun. “The cooks will jeer at us for stealing the best bits ourselves, but that’s all right. They didn’t catch the beast, and we did.”