A woodsrunner leaped at him when he dropped his sword and shield. Van stretched the man lifeless in the dirt. The outlander had no idea what his friend was doing, or indeed whether he still had all his wits, but would guard him as long as breath was in his body.
Chanting in the harsh Kizzuwatnan tongue, left hand moving through passes fast as he dared, the Fox went to his knees in the first of the three required genuflections. As he rose, he remembered the words of the Sibyl of Ikos, words he had thought filled only with doom. Confidence tingled along his veins, warm like wine. He grinned savagely. Aye, he was bowing to the mage of the north, but he did not think Balamung would appreciate the compliment.
That newfound confidence almost made him careless. His tongue stumbled in a particularly intricate passage of the spell. For a moment, his body filled with frightening heat. But he recovered and raced on, driving to be done before Balamung could finish his own magic and realize himself attacked. He bowed for the last time, shouted the last Kizzuwatnan curse, and stood. If he had blundered, he would soon be dead, either from the recoil of his spell or the overwhelming power of his foe.
He had won the race. Balamung was still incanting, his demon materializing before him. Half a minute passed in anticlimax. Gerin watched his enemy in baffled despair. Then the fire in the stables reached the two or three hairs still left from the wizard's visit long before.
Balamung paused for an instant, brushing a sleeve of his robe across his forehead as if to wipe away sweat. Then little yellow flames licked at the robe, and at his flesh as well. Smoke poured from his body.
The half-formed demon vanished.
Balamung screamed, a cry of utmost anguish that stirred horror though from the throat of a foe. The wizard beat at his flaming chest with arms no less afire. He knew the author of his destruction the instant his dreadful eyes seized the Fox's. A clawlike hand speared at Gerin for a final malediction. Flame dripped down the pointing index finger before the spell was cast.
The all-consuming fire left of Balamung only gray flakes of ash. The wind tossed them high in the air and blew them away. He had read his stars aright: no man would ever know his grave, for there was nothing of him to bury.
And with him burned the Book of Shabeth-Shiri. That evil tome, which had survived so long, seemed at the end more tenacious of life than the wizard who briefly owned it. Only slowly did the flames grip its pages. Gerin would have taken oath that he saw those pages flutter and rustle in an almost sentient effort to put out the fire and escape their fate. But the spells Shabeth-Shiri had amassed in ancient days now turned to smoke one by one, and as each was destroyed the power of the Book grew less. At last the fire engulfed it altogether, and it was gone.
A strange pause followed; neither side could quite believe Balamung had truly perished. Gerin's men in Fox Keep recovered first. Shouting, "The Fox! The Fox!" they battered their way through the dismayed Trokmoi at the breach and rushed toward the baron and his few remaining comrades. The woodsrunners scattered before them.
Drago the Bear took Gerin in an embrace that hurt even through armor. Right behind him were Rollan, Simrin Widin's son, and most of the borderer crew. They were thinner and dirtier than the Fox remembered, but still men to be reckoned with, and happier than he had ever seen them.
Gerin had hoped their onslaught, coupled with the death of the wizard at his moment of triumph, would send the Trokmoi fleeing for the Niffet. But a northern chieftain stopped the rout before it began. He cut down with his own hand a barbarian running past him. "Are we men or snot-nosed weans?" he roared. "It's but southrons we're fighting, not gods. They bleed and they die-and it's not many of 'em are left to be killed!"
The Trokmoi sensed the truth in his words. So, with sinking heart, did the Fox. Though magic had failed the barbarians, edged bronze might yet suffice. "We haven't enough men to fight in the open here. Back to the castle before they cut us off," he commanded. "Keep the best order you can."
Drago began to protest. He looked from the regrouping barbarians to the white scar over Gerin's eye and thought better of it. For the first hundred yards or so, the retreat went smoothly. Then the Trokmoi gave a hoarse cheer and charged.
Direct as always, Van went straight for the northern leader, reasoning that his death might kill the spirit he'd given his men. But not even the outlander's might let him bull his way through the Trokmoi. Their noble commander declined combat. Like few barbarians Gerin knew, he was aware he had more value for his band than his sword-arm alone.
The baron and his men were within the shadow of the palisade when Rihwin swore and fell, an arrow through his calf. An axe-wielding Trokme leaped in for the kill. Though prone, Rihwin turned the first stroke with his shield. Before the woodsrunner could make a second, Drago speared him in the side. Gerin's burly vassal slung Rihwin over his shoulder like a sack of turnips. He ran for the breach with the rest of the Elabonians.
Thus, through the gap torn in the palisade, Gerin re-entered Fox Keep, the outbuildings afire before him, the Trokmoi hard on his heels. Cursing the noble who had rallied the northerners, he shouted for pikemen to hold the gap.
The barbarians outside the keep listened to the passionate oratory of their self-appointed leader. With much argument and wasted motion, they formed a ragged line of battle. "At 'em!" the noble cried. Now he led the charge himself.
Arrows and javelins took their toll of the onrushing barbarians, but they did not waver. They slammed into the thin line the Fox had built against them.
Spear and shield, sword and corselet kept them out. Van was everywhere at once, smiting like a man possessed, bellowing out a battle-song in the twittering tongue of the plains. He hurled his spear at the leader of the woodsrunners and cursed foully when he missed.
He took out his rage on the Trokmoi nearest him. Blood dribbled down the leather-wound handle of his mace and glued it to his hand. As always, Gerin fought a more wily fight, but he was in the front line, his left-handed style giving more than one woodsrunner a fatal halfsecond of confusion.
When at last the Trokmoi sullenly pulled out of weapon-range, though, Gerin realized how heavy his losses had been. Simrin Widin's son was on his knees, clutching at an arrow driven through his cuirass into his belly. Fandor the Fat lay dead behind him, along with far too many others. Almost everyone who could still wield a weapon was at the breach, and almost everyone bore at least one wound.
Shouts of alarm came from the watchtower and two sides of the palisade. "Ladders! Ladders!" The few defenders still on the wall raced to the threatened spots. One ladder, another, went over with a crash, but already red-mustached barbarians were on the walkway. They fought to hold off the Elabonians until their comrades could scale the wall for the final, surely victorious assault on Fox Keep.
Gerin knew such weariness as he had never felt before. He had endured the terrors of the werenight, slain a wizard more deadly than the world had known for a score of centuries… for what? An extra hour of life. Merely for the lack of a few men, his holding would fall despite all he had done. A double-bladed throwing axe hurled from the walkway flashed past him. It buried itself in the blood-soaked ground.
But instead of pressing home their attack, the Trokmoi cried out in despair and fear. The Fox's troopers shouted in sudden desperate urgency. The barbarians on the wall fled back to their scaling-ladders and scrambled down them, trying to reach ground outside the keep before its defenders sent their escape routes toppling.
Bewildered, the baron looked south and saw the most unlikely rescue force conceivable thundering toward Fox Keep. Wolfar of the Axe, in man's shape once more, still had with him a good third of the two-hundred-man army he had led before the werenight. Gerin more than half expected Wolfar's men to ignore the Trokmoi and attack him, but they stormed down on the barbarians, the bloodthirsty baron at their head.