Torches smoked along the palisade. Even so, Duren, who had followed his father into the yard, whimpered and said, "I don't like the ghosts yelling in my ears, Papa."
To Gerin, the cries of the night spirits were not yells but whimpers and faint wails, none of them understandable. As he had fires lit and had given the ghosts blood in the great hall, they were not likely to do him or Duren harm. He set his jaw and endured the cries he heard only with his mind's ear. Children, though, were supposed to be more sensitive to the spirits than adults.
A couple of minutes later, the first rays of the rising sun touched the top of the tall watchtower that stood above the keep. The ghosts sounded frightened for an instant, then vanished back into whatever gloomy haunt was theirs while the sun ruled the sky.
"A new day," Gerin said to Duren. "This is the time for living men to go abroad in the world." He patted the boy's back, heartening him against the terror that fluttered with the ghosts.
Van of the Strong Arm came out a few minutes later, whistling loudly but off-key. Smoke poured from windows and doorways as the cooks built up the fire to heat the morning porridge. Van squinted as a strand of smoke stung his eyes. "There ought to be a way to cook your food without smoking everyone who eats it as if he were a sausage," the burly outlander complained.
Gerin narrowed his eyes, too, but not at the smoke. There ought to be a way was a phrase that always set him thinking. Sometimes nothing came of it, but sometimes things did. He said, "Remember the newfangled footholders Duin the Bold came up with so he wouldn't go over his horse's tail if he tried to ride? Maybe we could find a new way to get rid of smoke, too."
"Remember what happened to Duin? He got himself killed with his newfangled scheme, that's what. Me, I'd sooner fight from a chariot any day." For all his wandering, for all the strange things he'd seen and done, Van remained at heart a profoundly conservative man.
Gerin had more stretch to him. "I think this business of riding to war will end up coming to something: a horse alone can cross terrain where a chariot can't go. But you have a special trouble there—where will you find a beast to bear your bulk?"
"I've never been small; that's a fact," Van said complacently. "From the rumbles in my belly, though, I'll be thin if I don't put something in there soon. They'll have bread and meat from last night to go with the porridge, won't they?"
"If they don't, they'll be looking for a new master by this time tomorrow," Gerin answered. Van clapped his big hands together and hurried back inside.
The morning proved busy. Gerin always kept someone in the watchtower. Life had been dangerous enough before the Trokmoi swarmed south over the Niffet. Now danger could come from any direction at any time. When the lookout's horn blew, men up on the palisade reached for their weapons; the gate crew got ready to pull up the drawbridge and defend Castle Fox against barbarians or men of Elabon.
But after he winded the horn, the watchman cried, " Tis but a single man approaching—a trader, by the look of him."
Sure enough, the fellow was no harbinger of a ravening horde: he drove a two-horse team from a small, neat wagon. "Dyaus give you a good day, sir," Gerin greeted him when he rolled into the courtyard. The Fox glanced at the sun. "To get here so early in the day, you must have spent last night in the open."
"That I did, lord prince," the man answered. He was small and neat himself, with a shortsighted gaze and hands with long, slim fingers. "I bought a couple of chickens from a peasant—likely a serf of yours—and their blood in a trench warded me against the ghosts. Otes son of Engelers I am, maker and purveyor of jewelry of all descriptions, and also ready to do tinker's work if you have pots and such that need patching."
"Aye, we have a few of those," Gerin said. "If you know the secret of proper soldering, you'll make a bit of silver before you leave here. I've tried, but without much in the way of luck. But jewelry, now—hmm." He wondered if he could find a piece Fand would like at a price that didn't make his own thrifty soul quail.
Van came up to the wagon and, from the thoughtful look on his face, might have had the same idea. But what he said was, "You're not the least brave man I ever met, Master Jeweler, if you take your wares through this bandit-raddled countryside alone."
Otes Engelers' son dipped his head to the outlander. "You are gracious, sir. I traveled up into the Fox's lands from those of Aragis the Archer. Few bandits try to make a living in your holding, lord Gerin, or in his—few who aren't vassals styling themselves barons, at any rate." He smiled to show that was meant as a joke.
"Aye, Aragis is a strong man." Gerin let it go at that. One of these days, he and Aragis were liable to fight a war. The prospect would have bothered him less had he been less afraid he might lose.
"Show us these jewels of yours," Van boomed.
Otes, as he'd said, had adornments of all descriptions, from polished copper with "gems" of glass paste to gold and emeralds. Before he'd opened all his little cedar chests to display the baubles inside, Fand came out of the castle to admire them with her two men. Suddenly she pointed to a brooch. "Isn't that pretty, now?" she breathed. "Sure and it must be Trokmê work. It fair puts me in mind of my auld village on the far side of the Niffet, that it does."
Smiling, the jeweler picked it up and held it in the palm of his hand. It was a circular piece, about three fingers broad, decorated with spirals half silver and half inlaid, polished jet. "As a matter of fact, my lady, I made this one myself, and I'm as Elabonian as they come," Otes said. "That it is from a northern pattern, though, I'll not deny."
" 'Twould suit the very tunic I have on me," Fand said, running a hand across the dark blue woad-dyed linen. She looked from one of her paramours to the other.
Van, who'd quarreled with her the night before, weakened first. With a cough, he said, "Master Otes, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me what outrageous price you're asking for this chunk of tin and dirt."
"Tin?" Otes screeched. "Dirt? Are you blind, man? Are you mad? Feel the weight of that metal. And look at the care and the workmanship I put into the piece, shaping the tiny slivers of jet one by one and slipping each into its place—"
"Aye, tell me more lies," Van said.
Sensing that the dicker would go on for some time, Gerin took his leave. He figured he had time to walk out to the village by Fox Keep, talk with Besant Big-Belly about knocking off too early, and be back before Van and Otes had settled on a price. He knew how stubborn Van could be, and the jeweler looked to have mule's blood in him, too.
But before the Fox could walk out over the drawbridge, the lookout in the watchtower winded his horn again. He called down, "A chariot approaches, lord Gerin, with what looks to be a Trokmê chieftain and two of his men."
"Just a chariot?" Gerin shouted up. "No army attached?"
"I see only the one, lord," the lookout answered. A moment later, he added, "The chieftain is holding up a green-and-white striped shield: he comes under sign of truce."
Gerin called to the gate crew, "When you spy him, give him sign of truce in return. We'll see what he wants." Before the invasions, he'd have attacked any northerners he caught on his holding. Now the Trokmoi were powers south of the Niffet. However much it galled him, he had to treat with them.
"Who comes?" one of the men at the gate called to the approaching chariot.
"It's Diviciacus son of Dumnorix I am, liegeman to himself himself, the great chief Adiatunnus son of Commus, who's fain to have me bring his words to Gerin the Fox," the chieftain answered in Elabonian that lilted like Fand's. "No quarrel, no feud, stands between us the now."