Gerin was glad to find that Rihwin's injury was not serious. "You're not hamstrung, and the arrow went clear through your leg. Otherwise we'd have to cut it out, which is nothing to be taken lightly," the baron told him. "As is, though, you should heal before long."
"If I put spikes on my wrists and ankles, do you think I'll be able to climb trees like a cat?" Rihwin asked, adjusting his bandage.
"I see no reason why not."
"Odd," Rihwin murmured. "I never could before."
"Go howl!" Gerin threw his hands in the air and went off to see to other injured men. If the southerner could joke at his wound, he would soon mend.
Had they taken place at any other time, Gerin would have reckoned the next days among the most hectic of his life. As if was, they scarcely stood comparison to what had gone before.
True, four days after Balamung's fall, the Trokmê chieftain who had turned longtooth in the werenight led an attack on Fox Keep. By then, though, the breach in the palisade was repaired, and the holding had fresh supplies drawn from the countryside. Nor did the woodsrunner have patience for a siege. He tried to storm the walls, and was bloodily repulsed. He himself jumped from a scaling ladder to the palisade walkway. Wolfar took his head with a single stroke of the heavy axe that gave him his sobriquet.
Then the ladder went crashing over. Half a dozen Trokmoi tried to leap clear as it fell. The ladders that stayed upright long enough for the barbarians to come to grips with the Elabonians were few. After their leader was slain inside the keep, they lost their eagerness for the fight.
In a way, that second attack by the Trokmoi was a gift from the gods. It further united Wolfar's men and Gerin's against a common foe, and again reminded them how petty their old disputes were now. A good lesson, Gerin thought. He regretted that the province north of the Kirs had not learned it sooner.
Wolfar, surprisingly, seemed to take the lesson to heart. He did not much try to hide his animosity toward Gerin, but he did not let it interfere with the running of the keep. He never mentioned Elise. He was as cordial as his nature allowed toward the baron's men, and insisted on praising Fox Keep's ale, though by now it was coming from the barrel-bottom and full of yeast.
Gerin would sooner have seen him surly. He did not know how to react to this new Wolfar.
For Schild, on the other hand, his admiration grew by leaps and bounds. When the Fox learned from a prisoner of a band of Trokmoi planning to raft over the Niffet, Wolfar's lieutenant led a joint raiding party to ambush the barbarians as they disembarked. The ambush was a great success. The Trokmoi paddled back across the river after leaving a double handful of men dead on the shore.
On the raiders' return, Wolfar was so lavish in their praise and so affable that Gerin's suspicion of him redoubled. But beyond this uncharacteristic warmth, the thick-shouldered baron as yet showed no hint of what was in his mind.
"He's given me every reason to trust him," Gerin told Van one night, "and I trust him less than ever."
"Probably just as well for you," Van said. Gerin was not sorry to find his worries shared.
Word of Balamung's death spread quickly. It raised the Elabonians' spirits but disheartened their foes, who had leaned on the wizard's supposed invincibility. Two days after the defeat Schild had engineered for the band of southbound barbarians, a large troop of Trokmoi came north past Castle Fox. Except for keeping out of bowshot, they ignored the keep, intent on returning with their booty to the cool green forests north of the Niffet.
Another large band came by a day later, and another two days after that. As if the appearance of the third group of retreating Trokmoi had been some sort of signal, Wolfar stumped up to the Fox in the great hall and said abruptly, "Time we talked."
Whatever Wolfar had been hiding, it was about to come into the open. Of that Gerin felt sure. Stifling his apprehension, he said, "As you wish. The library is quiet." He led his western neighbor up the stairs.
Wolfar seemed less disconcerted by his strange surroundings than Gerin had hoped. "What a bastardly lot of books you have, Fox!" he said. "Where did you pick them all up?"
"Here and there. Some I brought back from the southlands, some I've got since, a few came from my father, and a couple I just stole."
"Mmm," Wolfar said. Then he fell silent, leaning back in his chair.
At last Gerin said, "You said you wanted to talk, Wolfar. What's on your mind?"
"You don't know, Fox?" Wolfar sounded honestly surprised.
"If it's Elise, she won't marry you, you know. She'd sooner bed a real wolf."
"As if what she wanted had anything to do with it. Still, she's only a—what word do I need?—a detail, maybe."
"Go on." Now Gerin was genuinely alarmed. This cold-blooded calculator was not the Wolfar he had expected, save in his utter disregard for anyone else. The Fox wanted to keep him talking until he had some idea of what he was dealing with.
"I'd thought better of you, Gerin. We don't get along, but I know you're no fool. You have no excuse for being stone blind."
"Go on," Gerin said again, wishing Wolfar would come to a point.
"All right. On this stretch of the border, we have the only two major holdings that didn't fall. Now tell me, what aid did we get from the Marchwarden of the North or our lord Emperor Hildor?" Wolfar tried to put mockery in his voice, but managed only a growl.
"Less than nothing, as well I know."
"How right you are. Fox, you can see as well as I—better, I suppose, if you've really read all these books—the Empire hasn't done a damned thing for us the past hundred years. Enough, by all the gods! With the confusion on the border—and deep inside, too, from some of the things you've said—the two of us could be princes so well established that, by the time Elabon moved its fat arse against us, we'd be impossible to throw out, you and I!"
No wonder Wolfar had changed, Gerin thought, whistling softly. Anyone carrying that big an idea on his shoulders would change, and might buckle under the strain of it. Something else bothered the Fox too, but he could not place it. "What would you have us be princes of?" he asked. "Our side of the border is so weak the Trokmoi can come down as they wish, with or without their wizard. For now, we can't hope to hold them."
"Think, though. We can channel their force into whatever shape pleases us. Save for them, we're the only powers on the border now, and we can use them against whoever stands against us."
That idea Gerin liked not at all. He wanted to drive every woodsrunner back across the Niffet, not import more as mercenaries. He said, "After a while, they'd decided they'd sooner not be used, and act for their own benefit, not ours."
"With their sorcerer gone, they could never hurt us, so long as we kept up enough properly manned and alert keeps," Wolfar argued. His elaborate calm worried Gerin more than any bluster or nervousness.
But at last he had it, the thing Wolfar was trying to hide. The blank look Schild had given his overlord, a few odd remarks from Wolfar's men . . . everything fell together. "Wolfar," he asked, "what were you doing on my land, away from your properly manned and alert keep, when you ran into me just before the werenight?"
"What do you mean?" Wolfar's deep-set eyes were intent on Gerin.
"Just this: you've tried to bury me in a haystack without my noticing. It almost worked, I grant you—you're more subtle than I thought."
"You'll have to make yourself plainer, Fox. I can't follow your riddles."
"Very well, I'll be perfectly clear. You, sir, are a liar of the first water, and staking everything on your lie not being found out. Your keep must have been sacked, and almost at once, or you'd still be in it, not trotting over the landscape like a frog with itchy breeches. In fact, you're as homeless as a cur without a master."