"What's this, lord?" Utreiz asked, and Gerin realized he hadn't heard about Schild's cry for help.
He explained quickly, finishing, "You'd have been just as glad if the men I'd sent to Schild had stayed out a few days more, seeing as Rihwin was one of them. But all we have to do now is await Aragis' troopers." And hope they come, he added to himself.
"This splendid news calls for an equally splendid celebration!" Rihwin shouted, which raised more cheers from the warriors gathered in the courtyard around Utreiz. Even Gerin clapped his hands, not wanting to be thought a wet blanket. If his men felt like roistering where no fight impended, that was all right with him. But then Rihwin went on, "What say we break out the wine with which Schild was generous enough to buy our aid?"
Some of the troopers clapped again. Others—notably Van and Drago—looked to Gerin instead. "No," he said in a voice abrupt as an avalanche.
"But, my fellow Fox—" Rihwin protested.
Gerin cut him off with a sharp, chopping gesture. "No I said and no I meant. Haven't you had enough misfortunes with wine and with Mavrix, my fellow Fox?" He freighted Rihwin's ekename with enough irony to sink it.
Rihwin flushed, but persisted, "I hadn't intended to summon the lord of the sweet grape, lord prince, nor had I intended to do aught more with his vintage than sip it, and not to excess."
"No," Gerin said for the third time. "What you intend and what turns out have a way of being two different things. And I trust that gift of wine from Schild about as far as I'd trust so many jars full of vipers."
"What, you think the whoreson's out to poison us?" Van rumbled. "If that's so—" He didn't go on, not with words, but pulled his mace free and whacked the shaft against the palm of his left hand.
But Gerin shook his head and said, "No," yet again. Van looked puzzled. Rihwin looked as dubious as he had just before Gerin gave him an ass's ear in place of his own. Gerin went on, "What I mean is, I fear that Mavrix seeks a foothold in my lands." He explained how the Sithonian god of wine and fertility and creativity had repeatedly cropped up of late, finishing, "Given what's passed between the god and me—and between the god and Rihwin—these past few years, the less presence he has here, the happier and safer I'll feel. I didn't dare refuse the wine of Schild, for that would have offered Mavrix insult direct. But I shan't invite his presence by broaching those jars, either."
"I had not considered the matter in that light," Rihwin admitted after rather more thought than usual. "So far as men can, you may well have wisdom there, lord prince. But one thing you must always bear in mind: the lord of the sweet grape is stronger than you are. If it be his will that he establish himself in your holding, establish himself he shall, whether you will or not."
"I am painfully aware of that," Gerin said, sighing. "But what I can do to prevent it, I will. I'm on good terms with Baivers. Drink all the ale you please, Rihwin, and I'll say not a word. The wine jars stay closed."
"Sense, lord prince," Utreiz Embron's son said. Van nodded. After a moment, so did Drago. After a longer moment, so did Rihwin.
"Good," Gerin said. All the same, he quietly resolved to take the wine jars from the cellar—where they resided with the ale—and find a more secret place for them. Rihwin's intentions were surely good, but his actions lived up to them no more than anyone else's—less than those of a few people who crossed the Fox's mind.
The warriors trooped into the great hall, still loudly congratulating Utreiz. "It's not as if I won the fight all by my lonesome," he protested, much as Gerin might have in the same circumstances. Nobody paid any attention to him. He'd taken part in the victory and brought news of it, and that was plenty.
Seeing the invasion, servants hurried downstairs and into the kitchens. They quickly returned with ale (no wine; the Fox checked each amphora to be sure of what it held), meat from the night before, and bread to put it on. Some of the warriors called for bowls of the pease porridge that simmered in a big pot above the hearth.
The troopers made enough racket to bring people down from upstairs to see what was going on. Van caught Fand in his arms, planted a loud, smacking kiss on her mouth, and then sat down again, pulling her into his lap. He grabbed for his jack of ale. "Here, sweetling, drink!" he cried, almost spilling it down her chin. "We've beaten Bevon and his boys proper, that we have."
"Is it so?" she said. "Aye, I'll drink to that, and right gladly, too." She took the jack from his hand, drained it dry. Gerin wondered if she would have been so ready to toast a triumph over Adiatunnus—he, after all, was of her own folk, not just an Elabonian on the wrong side. The Fox shook his head. She'd never been disloyal to him that way. When Van kissed her again, she responded as if she meant to drag him upstairs in a moment—or possibly not bother with dragging him upstairs. But then she got off his lap to claim a drinking jack of her own and fill it full of ale.
Selatre came down into the great hall in the middle of that. She too got a jack of ale. Gerin stood to greet her, but hesitated to do so much as take her hand; she remained leery of publicly showing affection. Unlike many, she didn't assume her own standards applied to everyone: she watched Fand and Van with much more amusement than disapproval.
She sat down on the bench by the Fox. "I take it the news is good?" she said. Then she saw Utreiz. "Now I know the news is good, and what sort of news it is. We've beaten Bevon and his sons and taken back the full length of the Elabon Way, not so?"
Gerin nodded. "That's just what we've done." He gave her an admiring look. "You don't miss much, do you? Next time I have to ride out in a sweep against the monsters, I think I'll leave you in charge back here."
For the first time since they'd become lovers—maybe for the first time since she'd come to Fox Keep—Selatre got angry at him. "Don't mock me with things you know I can't have," she snapped. She waved to the crowd of noisy, drinking warriors. "The only use they have for women is to tumble them, or maybe to have them fetch up another jar of ale from the cellar. As if they'd pay heed to me!" She glared.
Taken aback at her vehemence, the Fox said slowly, "I'm sorry. I don't suppose I meant that altogether seriously, but I didn't mean to mock you with it, either." He plucked at his beard as he thought. "If you wanted to badly enough, you could probably bring it off. All you'd need to do is remind them that you'd once been Sibyl and give them the feeling your eye for what needed doing was better than theirs even now."
"But that would be a lie," Selatre said.
Gerin shook his head. "No, just a push in the right direction. There's a magic to getting people to do what you want that doesn't show up in any grimoire. It uses what a person has done and who he is to show that he—or she—is apt to do well, or to come up with the right answer, or whatever you like, the next time, too. That's what I was talking about here. You could do it. Whether you'd want to or not is another question."
"Some of me is tempted," she said in a small voice. "The rest, though, the bigger half, wants no part of it. I'm not fond of having people tell me what to do, so I don't think I have any business giving orders to anyone else, either."
"Good for you," Gerin said. "I never intended to be a baron, much less somebody who calls himself a prince. I just aimed at being a scholar, studying what I wanted when I wanted to do it." Self-mockery filled his laugh. "What you aim at in life and what you end up with are often two very different things."
That made him think of the jars of wine Schild had sent him. They still sat down in the cellar, sealed and innocuous, and he'd move them somewhere safer yet as soon as he got round to it. But with Mavrix immanent in that wine, who could say how much his own aims mattered?