King of the North Read online

  “Don’t blow out the lamp,” Selatre said quietly. “I need the pot myself.”

  “So do I, as a matter of fact,” the Fox answered. “Ale.”

  He wondered if Duren would disturb them, coming back later in the night. He didn’t think so; he doubted his elder son would be sleeping in this bed tonight. Just in case, though, he shut the door without barring it. After he shoved the chamber pot against the wall so Duren wouldn’t knock it over if he did come in, he blew out the lamp. Darkness and the heavy smell of hot fat filed the bedchamber.

  The night was mild, not so much so that he felt like getting out of tunic and trousers and sleeping in his drawers, as he would when summer came, but enough that he didn’t drag a thick wool blanket up over his chin and put a hot stone wrapped in flannel by his feet. He sighed and wriggled and twisted away from a stem of straw that was poking him in the ribs. Beside him, Selatre was making the same small adjustments.

  Blestar snored on a surprisingly musical note. Dagref and Clotild wiggled around like their parents, also trying to get comfortable. “Stop poking me,” Clotild complained.

  “I wasn’t poking you, I was just stretching out,” Dagref answered, maddeningly precise as usual. “If I poke you, that’s something I do on purpose.” Usually, he would add, like this, and demonstrate. Tonight he didn’t. That proved he was tired. Clotild didn’t snap back at him, either.

  Before long, their breathing smoothed out. Gerin yawned and stretched himself—carefully, so as not to bother anyone else. He yawned again, trying to lure sleep by sympathetic magic. Sleep declined to be lured.

  Selatre was breathing very quietly, which meant she too was likely to be awake. When she slept, she sometimes snored. Gerin had never said anything about it. He wondered if he did the same. If he did, Selatre hadn’t mentioned it. Wonderful woman, he thought.

  Her voice reached him, a tiny thread of whisper: “Have you fallen asleep?”

  “Yes, quite a while ago,” he answered, just as softly. Dagref hadn’t poked Clotild. Selatre did poke him now, right in the ribs, and found a sensitive spot. He had all he could do not to writhe and kick one of his children.

  She started to poke him again. He grabbed her arm and pulled her close to him, that being the fastest way he could think of to keep her questing finger from making him jerk again. “You cheat,” she said. “That’s the only ticklish spot you have, and you won’t let me get to it.”

  “I cheat,” he agreed, and covered her right breast with his left hand. Through the thin linen of her long tunic, her nipple stiffened at his touch. The feel of her body pressed against his made him stiffen, too. He felt one eyebrow quirk upward into a question, but she couldn’t see that in the dark. He put it into words: “Do you think they’re sleeping soundly enough yet?”

  “All we can do is find out,” she answered. “If they do wake up, it would fluster you more than me. I grew up in a peasant’s hut, remember: the whole of it about the size of this room. I never imagined having so much space as I found first at Ikos and then here at Fox Keep.”

  Thinking of the raised eyebrow he’d wasted, he said, “Well, if my ears turn red, it’ll be too dark for the children to notice.” He kissed her then, which struck him as a better idea under the circumstances—and, indeed, generally—than talking about his ears. His hand slid down from her breast to tug up the hem of her tunic.

  They didn’t hurry, both because they didn’t want to wake the children and because, after a good many years together, friendly familiarity had taken the edge off passion. Presently, Selatre rolled over onto her side, facing away from Gerin. She lifted her top leg a little to let him slide in from behind, a quiet way of joining in more ways than one. Her breath sighed out as he entered her to the hilt. He reached over her to tease at her nipple again. The edge might have gone from their passion, but a solid core remained.

  After they’d finished, Selatre said, “Did you put the pot by the wall? I think I’d better use it again.” She slid out of bed and groped her way toward it. Gerin, meanwhile, separated his clothes from hers and got back into them. He suspected he had his drawers on backward, but resolved not to worry about it till morning.

  When Selatre came back to bed, she put her drawers and tunic back on, too, then leaned over and unerringly planted a kiss on the end of his nose. He squeezed her. “If I wasn’t sleepy before,” he said, “I am now—or pleasantly tired, anyhow.”

  Selatre laughed at him. “You saved yourself in the nick of time mere, didn’t you?”

  “Considering the history of this place since I took the rule after my father was killed, how could I do it any other way?” Gerin replied, and settled down to sleep. Laughing still, almost without voice, Selatre snuggled against him.

  His eyelids were growing heavy when the bed frame in the next chamber started to creak. Selatre giggled, a sound different from her earlier laughter. “Maeva must have stayed awake longer than our brood did.”

  “Or maybe Kor woke up, just to be difficult,” Gerin answered. “He has his mother’s temper, all the way through. He’d better be a good swordsman when he grows up, because I have the feeling he’ll need to be.”

  Selatre listened to the noises from the far side of the wall for a moment, then said, “His father’s quite the mighty swordsman, by all I’ve seen.”

  “That’s true any way you care to have it mean,” Gerin agreed. “It’s because of that, I suppose, that he and Fand are able to make up their quarrels. I almost wonder if they have them for the sake of making up.”

  “You’re joking,” Selatre said. After she’d thought it over, though, she shook her head against his chest “No, you’re not joking. But what an appalling notion. I couldn’t live like that”

  “Neither could I,” he said, remembering fights he’d had with Fand back in the days when she was his lover as well as Van’s. “My hair and beard would be white, not going gray, if I tried. But one of the things I’ve slowly come to figure out through the years is that not everybody works the same way I do.”

  “Some people never do figure that out.” Selatre yawned. “One of the things I’ve slowly come to figure out over the years is that I can’t do without sleep. Good night”

  “Good night,” Gerin said. He wasn’t sure his wife even heard him: now her breathing was as deep and regular and—he smiled a little—raspy as that of their children. Sleep swallowed him moments later.

  The peasants set out for their village early the next morning, Trasamir Longshanks leading Swifty the hound on a rope leash. Walamund’s relative, rather to the Fox’s disappointment, seemed not much worse for wear after his night in the courtyard. Uncharitably, Gerin wondered how often he’d passed out drunk between houses in his hamlet.

  Bread and ale and cheese and an apple did for Gerin’s breakfast. He was going down to see how the apples were holding out in the cellar when the lookout yelled, “A horseman approaching from out of the south, lord prince.”

  Gerin went out to the doorway of the great hall. “A horseman?” he called up. “Not a chariot?”

  “A horseman,” the sentry repeated. “One of our men, without a doubt.”

  He was right about that. The idea of getting up on a horse’s back rather than traveling in wagon or chariot or cart was new in the northlands. As far as Gerin could discover, as far as widely traveled Van could say, it was new in all the world. One of the Fox’s vassals, Duin the Bold, had come up with a trick that made staying mounted much easier: wooden rings that hung down from either side of a pad strapped around the horse’s girth, so a man could use his hands for bow or spear without the risk of going over the animal’s back.

  Duin, though, had died fighting the Trokmoi just after the werenight. Without his driving energy, the device he invented advanced more slowly than it would have otherwise. If your father had ridden to war in a chariot, and your grandfather, and his grandfather …

  “It’s Rihwin the Fox, lord prince,” the sentry reported when the rider came close enough to re
cognize him.

  “I might have known,” Gerin muttered. That was true for a couple of reasons. For one, Rihwin had been some time away from Fox Keep. A couple of times a year, he went out to see how his numerous bastards were doing, and, no doubt, to try to sire some more of them. He had a fair-sized troop of by-blows scattered widely over the lands where Gerin’s suzerainty ran, so his expeditions ate up a good deal of time.

  And, for another, his love for the new extended to more than women. He’d come north with Gerin from the civilized heart of the Empire of Elabon bare days before the werenight for no better reason than that he craved adventure. Had riding horses been old and chariotry new, he would no doubt have become an enthusiastic advocate for the chariot. As things were, he probably spent more time on horseback than any other man in the northlands.

  The gate crew let down the drawbridge. Rihwin rode into the courtyard of Fox Keep. He waved a salute to Gerin, saying, “I greet you, lord prince, my fellow Fox, valiant for your vassals, protector of your peasants, mild to merchants, and fierce against your foes.”

  “You’ve been in the northlands fifteen years and more now,” Gerin said as Rihwin dismounted, “and you still talk like a toff from the city.” Not only did Rihwin have a soft southern accent, he also remained fond of the elaborate phrasing and archaic vocabulary nobles from the City of Elabon used to show they had too much time on their hands.

  A stable boy came up to lead Rihwin’s horse to its stall. “Thank you, lad,” he murmured before turning back to Gerin. “And why should I not proclaim my essence to the world at large?” A hand went up to the large gold hoop he wore in his left ear. So far as Gerin knew—and he likely knew more of the northlands than anyone else alive—no other man north of the High Kirs followed that style.

  “Rihwin, save for keeping you out of the alepot as best I can, I’ve long since given up trying to make you over,” he said.

  Rihwin bowed, his handsome, mobile features twisting into a sly smile. “No small concession that, lord prince, and in good sooth I know it well, for where else has the victorious and puissant prince of the north retreated from any venture to which he set his hand?”

  “I hadn’t looked at it so,” Gerin said thoughtfully. “You tempt me to go back to trying to reform you.” Rihwin made a face at him. They both laughed. Gerin went on, “And how is your brood faring these days?”

  “I have a new daughter—the mother says she’s mine, anyhow, and since I lay with her at around the proper time, I’m willing to believe her—but I lost a son.” Rihwin’s face clouded. “Casscar had only three years: scarlet fever, his mother said. The gods be land to his ghost. His mother was crying still, though it happened not long after I saw her last.”

  “She’ll be grieving till they bury her,” Gerin said, remembering the loss he and Selatre had had. He shook his head. “You know you shouldn’t risk loving a child when it’s very small, for so many of them never do live to grow big. But you can’t help it: it’s how the gods made us, I suppose.”

  About half the time, maybe more, a remark like that would have led Rihwin to make a philosophical rejoinder, and he and Gerin could have killed a pleasant stretch of time arguing about the nature of the gods and the reasons they’d made men and women as they had. The two of them were the only men in the northlands of whom Gerin knew who’d had a proper education down in the City of Elabon. That perforce kept them friendly even when they wore on each other: in an important way, they spoke the same language.

  But now Rihwin said, “The other thing I wanted to tell you, lord prince, is something interesting I heard when I was out in the west, out well past Schild Stoutstaff’s holding. When I went that way a few years ago, I met this yellow-haired Trokmê wench named Grainne and, one thing leading to another, these days I have myself a daughter in that village. The gods grant she does live to grow up, for she’ll delight many a man’s eye. She—”

  Gerin stared down his nose at him. “Has this tale a point? Beyond the charm and grace of your daughter, I mean? If not, you’ll have to listen to me going on about my children in return.”

  “Oh, I do that all the time anyhow,” Rihwin said blithely, “whereas you need only put up with me a couple of times a year.” Gerin staggered back as if he’d taken a thrust mortal. Chuckling, Rihwin said, “As a matter of fact, though, lord prince, the tale indeed has a point, though I own to being unsure precisely what it is. This village, you see, lies hard by the Niffet, and—”

  “Did you get word of more Trokmoi planning to raid or, worse, settle?” Gerin demanded. “I’ll hit them if you did, and hit them hard. Too cursed many woodsrunners this side of the Niffet already.”

  “If you will let me finish the tale, lord prince, rather than consistently interrupting, some of these queries may perhaps be answered,” Rihwin replied. Gerin lacked at the grass, annoyed at himself. Rihwin had caught him out twice running now. The southerner went on, “Grainne told me that, not so long before I came to visit, she’d seen a new kind of boat on the river, like nothing on which she’d ever set eyes before.”

  “Well, what does she know of boats?” Gerin said. “She wouldn’t have been down to the City of Elabon, now would she, to watch galleys on the Greater Inner Sea? All she’ll have ever seen are little rowboats and rafts and those round little coracle things the Trokmoi make out of hides stretched over a wicker frame. You’d have to be a Trokmê to build a boat that doesn’t know its front from its backside.” He held up his hands. “No. Wait. I’m not interrupting. Tell me how this one was different”

  “The Niffet bends a trifle, a few furlongs west of Grainne’s village,” Rihwin said. “There’s a grove of beeches at the bend, with mushrooms growing under them. She was out gathering them with a wicker basket—which she showed me as corroborating evidence, for whatever it may be worth—when, through a screening of ferns, she spied this boat.”

  “Eventually, my fellow Fox, you’re going to tell me about it,” Gerin said. “Why not now?”

  Rihwin gave him a hurt look before going on, “As you say, lord prince. By her description, it was far larger than anything that moved on the water she’d ever seen before, with a mast and sail and with some large but, I fear, indeterminate number of rowers laboring to either side.”

  “A war galley of some sort,” Gerin said, and Rihwin nodded. Gerin continued, “You say she saw it through ferns? Lucky the rowers didn’t spot her, or they’d likely have grabbed her and held her down and had their fun before they cut her throat. That’d be so no matter who they were—and, so far as I know, nobody’s ever put a war galley on the Niffet. Do you suppose the Empire of Elabon has decided it wants the northlands back after all?”

  “Under His indolent Majesty Hildor III?” Rihwin’s mobile features assumed a dubious expression. “It is, lord prince, improbable.” But then he looked thoughtful. “On the other hand, we’ve had no word, or next to it, out of Elabon proper since the werenight, which is, by now, most of a generation past. Who can say with certainty whether the indolent posterior of Hildor III still warms the Elabonian throne?”

  “A distinct point,” Gerin said. “If it is the imperials—”

  Rihwin raised a forefinger. “As you have several times in the course of this conversation, lord prince, you break in before I was able to impart salient information. While the ship and men Grainne saw may have been Elabonians, two significant features make me doubt it. First, while her Elabonian is fluent—much on the order of Fand’s, including the spice thereof—she could not follow the sailors’ speech. Admittedly, the ship was out on the river, so this is not decisive. But have you ever heard of an Elabonian ship mounting the shields of oarsmen and warriors between rowing benches?”

  Gerin thought back to his days in the City of Elabon, and to the galleys he’d seen on the sea and tied up at the quays. He shook his head. “No. They always stow them down flat. Which leaves—”

  He and Rihwin spoke together: “The Gradi.”

  “That’s bad,” Gerin s
aid. He kicked again at the dirt and paced back and forth. “That’s very bad, as a matter of fact. Having them raid the seacoast is one thing. But if they start bringing ships up the Niffet … Father Dyaus, a flotilla of them could beach right there, a few furlongs from Fox Keep, and land more men than we could hope to hold away from the walls. And we’d have scant warning of it, too. I need to send out messengers right away, to start setting up a river watch.”

  “It will not happen tomorrow, lord prince,” Rihwin said soothingly. “Grainne watched this vessel turn around at the river bend and make its way back toward the west. The Gradi have not found Castle Fox.”

  “Not yet,” Gerin answered; he borrowed trouble as automatically as he breathed, having seen from long experience that it came to him whether he borrowed or not, and that it was better met ahead of time when that proved possible. The Gradi, however, were not the only trouble he had, nor the most urgent. He asked Rihwin, “When you rode out to visit all your lady loves, did you go through Adiatunnus’ holding?”

  “Lord prince, I had intended to,” Rihwin answered, “but when I came up to the margins of the lands he rules as your vassal, his guardsmen turned me away, calling me nothing but a stinking southron spy.”

  “He’s not yet paid his feudal dues this year, either.” Gerin’s dark eyebrows lowered like stormclouds. “My guess is, he doesn’t intend to pay them. He’s spent the last ten years being sorry he ever swore me fealty, and he’ll try breaking loose if he sees the chance.”

  “I would praise your wisdom more were what you foresee less obviously true,” Rihwin answered.

  “Oh, indeed,” Gerin said. “All I had to do to gain his allegiance last time was work a miracle.” Adiatunnus had made alliance with the monsters from under the temple at Ikos; when, at Gerin’s urging, Mavrix and Biton routed them from the northlands, the proud Trokmê chieftain was overawed into recognizing the Fox as his overlord. Now Gerin sighed. “And if I want to keep that allegiance, all I have to do is work another one.”