"Which, no doubt, is the reason we fail to find blazing blades closely clenched in the fierce fist of every peerless paladin," Rihwin answered. "Many a spell that seems superb on the leaves of a codex develops disqualifying drawbacks when actually essayed."
"You're right about that," Gerin answered, drying his hand on the thigh of his baggy wool breeches. Everyone in the northlands wore trousers; the Trokme style had conquered completely. Even Rihwin, who had favored southern robes, was in breeches these days. Gerin inspected his left palm. "I don't think that's going to blister."
"Smear butter or tallow on it if it does," Rihwin said, "but not the, ah, heated mixture you prepared there."
"With the poison oak leaves and all? No, I'll get rid of that." Gerin poured it out of its clay pot onto the ground. After a bit of thought, he scooped dirt onto the greasy puddle. If the sole of his boot happened to have a hole, he didn't want the stuff getting onto his skin.
He and Rihwin left the shack. Shadows were lengthening; before long, no one would want to stay outdoors. Ghosts filled the night with terror. A man caught alone in the darkness without sacrificial blood to propitiate them or fire to hold them at bay was likely to be mad come morning.
Gerin glanced to the sky, gauging the hour by the moons. Nothos' pale crescent hung a little west of south; golden Math, at first quarter looking like half a coin, was about as far to the east. And ruddy Elleb (pinkish white now, washed out by the late afternoon sun), halfway between quarter and full, stood well clear of the eastern horizon. The fourth moon, quick-moving Tiwaz, would be a waning crescent when the serfs went out to work just after sunrise tomorrow.
As if Gerin's thinking of the serfs he ruled had brought them to new life, a mournful horn blew in the village close by Fox Keep, calling men and women in from the fields.
Gerin looked at the moons again, raised one eyebrow in a characteristic gesture. "They're knocking off early today," he remarked. "I think I may have to speak to the headman tomorrow."
"He'll not love you for making him push the other peasants harder," Rihwin said.
Who does love me, for any reason? Gerin wondered. His mother had died giving birth to him; maybe because of that, his father had always been distant. Or maybe his father simply hadn't known what to do when he got himself a thinker instead of a brawler.
His son Duren loved him, aye, but now it was his turn to have trouble returning that love, because whenever he saw Duren, he thought of Elise. She'd loved him for a while, until passion cooled… and then just disappeared, with only a note left behind begging him not to go after her. It was, in fact, very much the way she'd fled with him from her father's keep.
He didn't feel like going into any of that with Rihwin. Instead, he answered, "I don't care whether Besant Big-Belly loves me or not." That, at least, was true. "I do care that we grow enough to get through the winter, for if we don't, Besant will be big-bellied no more."
"He would say, did he dare, that all the peasants would be biggerbellied did they not have to pay you a fourth of what they raised," Rihwin observed.
"He could say it to my face, and well he knows it," Gerin returned. "I'm not a lord who makes serfs into draft animals that happen to walk on two legs, nor do I take the half some barons squeeze from them. But if I took nothing, who would ward them from the chariot-riding wolves who'd swoop down on them?"
He waited for Rihwin to say something like, "They could do it for themselves." He was ready to pour scorn on that idea like boiling water splashing down from the top of a palisade onto the heads of attackers. Farmers didn't have the tools they needed to be fighters: the horses, the chariots, the swords, the armor. Nor did they have the time they needed to learn to use those tools; the endless rhythms of fields and livestock devoured their days.
But Rihwin said, "My fellow Fox, sometimes you don't know when you're being twitted."
Denied his chance to rend Rihwin with rhetoric, Gerin glared. He walked around to the front of the castle. Rihwin tagged along, chuckling. As they went inside, another horn sounded from a more distant village, and then another almost at the edge of hearing. Gerin said, "You see? If one village knocks off early, they all do it, for they hear the first horn and blow their own, figuring they don't want to work any harder than the fellows down the trail."
"Who does like to work?" Rihwin said.
"No one with sense," Gerin admitted, "but no one with sense will avoid doing what he must to stay alive. The trouble is, not all men are sensible, even by that standard."
"If you think I'll argue with that, you're the one who's not sensible," Rihwin said.
The great hall of the castle occupied most of the ground floor. A fire roared in the stone hearth at the far end, and another, smaller, one in front of the altar to Dyaus close by. Above the hearth, cooks basted chunks of beef as they turned them on spits. Fat-wrapped thighbones, the god's portion, smoked on the altar. Gerin believed in feeding the god well; moreover, after his brush with Mavrix, he figured he could use all the divine protection he could get.
Two rows of benches ran from the doorway to the hearth. In winter, seats closest to the fire were the choice ones. Now, with the weather mild, Gerin sat about halfway down one row. A couple of dogs came trotting through the rushes on the rammed-earth floor and lay at his feet, looking up expectantly.
"Miserable beggars," he said, and scratched their ears. "I don't have any food myself yet, so how can I throw you bones and scraps?" The dogs thumped their tails on the ground. They knew they got fed sooner or later when people sat at those benches. If it had to be later, they would wait.
Van and Drago the Bear and the other gamblers came in, chattering about the game. Duren frisked among them. When he saw Gerin, he ran over to him, exclaiming, "I rolled the dice a lot, Papa! I rolled double six twice, and five-and-six three times, and-"
He would have gone down the whole list, but Van broke in, "Aye, and the little rascal rolled one-and-two for me, and sent me out of that round without a tunic to call my own." He shook a heavy fist at Duren in mock anger. Duren, safe beside his father, stuck out his tongue.
"The dice go up, the dice go down," Drago said, shrugging shoulders almost as wide as Van's. From him, that passed for philosophy. He was a long way from the brightest of Gerin's vassals, but a good many more clever men managed their estates worse. Since Drago never tried anything new, he discovered no newfangled ways to go wrong.
Gerin called to one of the cooks, "We have enough here to begin. Fetch ale for us, why don't you?"
"Aye, lord prince," the man answered, and hurried down into the cellar. He returned a moment later, staggering a little under the weight of a heavy jar of ale. The jar had a pointed bottom. The cook stabbed it into the dirt floor so the jar stood upright. He hurried off again, coming back with a pitcher and a double handful of tarred leather drinking jacks. He set one in front of everybody at the table (Duren got a small one), then dipped the pitcher into the amphora, pouring and refilling until every jack was full.
"Take some for yourself, too," Gerin said; he was not a lord who stinted his servants. Grinning, the cook poured what looked like half a pitcher down his throat. Gerin slopped a little ale out of his mug onto the floor. "This for Baivers, god of barley," he intoned as he drank.
"This for Baivers," the others echoed as they poured their libations. Even Van imitated him: though Baivers was no god of the outlander's, the deity, whose scalp sprouted ears of barley instead of hair, held sway in this land.
Rihwin made a sour face as he set down the mug. "I miss the sweet blood of the grape," he said.
"Point the first: the grape doesn't grow in the northlands and we' ve lost our trade south of the High Kirs," Gerin said. "Point the second: when you drink too much wine, dreadful things happen. We've seen that again and again. Point the third: wine lies in Mavrix's province, and have you not had your share and more of commerce with Mavrix?"