"Just pass on," the guard said.
Gerin flicked the reins so violently, the horses sprang forward with startled snorts. Van said, "A good thing we're away. I thought you were going to jump down and murder that fellow."
"For a counterfeit copper, I would have." Gerin rubbed at the scar over his eye. He was sure it was white now; it always went dead pale when he got furious. "Worst of it is, the fool's only echoing what Ricolf says."
"Would you sooner we didn't stop of Ricolf's holding, then?" Van asked.
"Now that you mention it, yes." But the Fox sighed. "Has to be done, though-as you say, Duren's his grandson, after all. I expect I' ll get through it. I wouldn't show my face in his holding if I thought he seriously meant me harm-not without that host in arms behind me, anyhow."
"The gods grant it doesn't come to that."
"Yes." Gerin wasn't thinking of the gods alone. If he ever did have to take on Ricolf, his former father-in-law was only too likely to call on Aragis the Archer for aid. Having Aragis extend his power northward was the last thing Gerin wanted. For that reason as well as for Duren's sake, he'd speak softly to the older baron. So he told himself, anyhow.
The sun tinged the western sky with colors like the belly of a salmon. Gerin imagined he felt the ghosts stir, though they would not truly emerge until after sunset. And from the castle ahead came a boy' s cry from the watchtower: "Who comes to the holding of Ricolf the Red?"
All was so much as it had been five years before that the hair on Gerin's arms tried to prickle up. He felt himself caught in time, like an insect in the sticky sap of a pine tree. Insects so stuck rarely got loose. The Fox knew the trouble here lay in his own mind, but knowing did little to help him get free, either.
He shouted back toward the keep, giving his own name and Van'sjust as he had then. But then Ricolf had been eager to let him in; they'd become friends on Gerin's earlier journeys south. Now? Who could say what Ricolf thought now?
Whatever it was, the drawbridge lowered, thick bronze chains rattling and squealing over the spokes of the winch as the gate crew turned it. The horses' hooves drummed like thunder when they walked across the timbers over the moat. Water plants added touches of green there, but the smell said that Ricolf's men used the barrier to empty their slop jars.
Ricolf the Red stood in the bailey near the gate, waiting to greet Gerin. He was a broad-shouldered, thick-bellied man heading toward sixty, his manner still vigorous and his hair still thick, though now mostly white rather than the Trokme-like shade that had given him his sobriquet. When he opened his mouth to speak, Gerin saw he'd lost a front tooth since the last time they'd met.
"Guest-friendship is a sacred trust," Ricolf said, his deep voice younger than his years. "With that trust in mind, I greet you, Fox, and you also, Van of the Strong Arm. Use my keep as your own while you stay here."
"You are gracious as always," Gerin said. Ricolf hadn't sounded particularly gracious; he sounded more like a man doing a duty he didn't much care for. Gerin thought more of him for that, not less. Sometimes his own sense of duty was all that kept him going.
"Pah! This for graciousness." Ricolf kicked at the dirt. "I hear something's amiss with my grandson, and I want to know everything there is to know about it. First Elise, now Duren-" He shook his big, hard-featured head. "I wasn't the luckiest man born, to link my family to you."
"That's not what you thought when you gave me your daughter," Gerin answered as steadily as he could; as always, anger and longing surged in him when Elise came to the front of his mind. He went on, " The gods know I am not a perfect man. Will you entertain the notion that Elise may not have been a perfect woman?"
"The notion does not entertain me." Ricolf kicked at the dirt again. "Well, we'll speak of that later. What's your pleasure for supper? We killed a sheep this afternoon, so there's mutton, or we can chop a couple of hens down to size if the two of you would rather."
"Mutton," Gerin and Van said in the same breath. The Fox added, " We've been traveling a good deal these past few days, and mostly supping on the fowls we've killed as blood-offerings for the ghosts."
"Thought as much," Ricolf answered, "but I figured I owed you the choice." He was indeed meticulous in observing the rituals of guestfriendship.
Inside Ricolf's great hall, fat-wrapped bones smoked on Dyaus' altar. At the cookfire, servants roasted ribs and chops. A big bronze pot boiled busily above it. Van stabbed a finger toward it. "That'll be the tongue and tripe, the lungs and lights?" he asked.
"Aye," Ricolf said. "Which of the dainties do you care for most?"
"The tongue," the outlander answered at once. "Have you got any rock salt to scatter on it?"
"I do that," Ricolf answered, a Trokme turn of phrase he probably would not have used before he got woodsrunners for neighbors. "The holding has several good licks, one of them near big enough to mine salt from."
Had Ricolf's holding been Gerin's, he suspected he would have mined salt and sold it to his neighbors. The only concern Ricolf had beyond his own borders was foes who might come at him. Past that, he was content with his land as he found it. Gerin wondered if he himself would ever be content with anything.
Bread and ale and meat distracted him from such worries. He gnawed roasted mutton from ribs, then tossed them to the dogs. Tripe was slippery and gluey under his knife, chewy in his mouth. The kidneys' strong smell cut through the smoke that filled the hall and foretold their flavor.
He stuffed himself full, but Van outdid him. Ricolf watched the outlander with awe tinged by alarm. He said, "Dyaus, I'd forgotten how you put it away. You could eat a man out of his barony."
"There's a deal of me to keep fed," Van replied with dignity. " Would you pass me the pitcher of ale? Ah, thank you, you're very kind." He poured from the pitcher into a delicately carved rhyton, part of the great stock of southron goods Ricolf had laid on to impress the band of suitors for Elise's hand. Elise was gone. The drinking horns, the even more elaborately carved bathtub, and other such things remained, and probably lacerated Ricolf's spirit whenever he saw or used them.
Van poured the horn of ale down his throat, hardly seeming to swallow. He filled it again, drained it with the same ease. By the look Ricolf gave him, the older man expected him to slide under the table at any moment. Instead, he got up and spoke softly to one of the young women who'd fetched food. Gerin listened to her giggle and was not surprised when, a little later, she and the outlander went upstairs together.
The Fox wished he could have gone upstairs, too, even alone, but Ricolf's eyes held him. The white-haired baron said, "Your harvests must have been good in spite of everything, or you'd not be able to afford to keep him around."
"I don't begrudge him his appetites," Gerin answered. "Not any of them. The rest of his spirit is in proportion."
"As may be, as may be." But Van was not what Ricolf wanted to talk about, and Gerin knew it. Ricolf stared down at his own drinking horn for a while before he went on, "Well, Fox, what in the five hells happened?"
"With Duren, you mean? You've heard everything I know about that," Gerin answered. "Someone snatched the boy, and when I find out who he was, he'll be sorry for the day his father woke up with a stiff one in his breeches."
"Oh, no doubt." Ricolf drank, smacked his lips, brought his fist down onto the table. "You'll track the whoreson down and make him pay. You're bloody good at all that sort of thing. Prince of the North these days, are you? I'll not deny you've earned the title. You hold more land-or control it, which amounts to the same think-than anyone else in the northlands save maybe Aragis and one or two of the cursed Trokmoi, and you run it better, too."
"You're generous." The Fox also took a pull at his ale. He could feel it buzzing inside his head. Maybe that was what made him burst out, "I wish I were shut of the whole business, and just left to be what I'd like."