A guardsman strode out from the open gateway of the fort to ask his business. The fellow started slightly when he recognized Gerin and Van. Gerin started slightly, too; he had no idea what this warrior's name was, but he'd been at the border on that other journey, too. The Fox remembered those first days when he'd known Elise and snuck her out of her father's keep as vividly as if they were just past. Now that only ashes lay between him and her, he often wished he could forget. Somehow that only made him remember more intensely.
"Lord prince," Ricolf's man said, his voice polite but wary. "What brings you to the holding of Ricolf the Red? Is it the matter your vassal—what was his name?—spoke of some days past?"
"Widin Simrin's son," Gerin supplied. "Yes, it has to do with my son—Ricolf's grandson. We've had no luck finding him—I'm for the Sibyl at Ikos, to see if Biton will grant her sight of where the boy might be."
"May it prove so," the guard said. "Since it's but you and your comrade here, and no host in arms behind you, pass on, lord prince."
"No host in arms behind me?" Gerin said angrily. "Does Ricolf look for one? I've no quarrel with him, but I may, by Dyaus, if he keeps thinking that way."
"You had no quarrel with Bevon, either, yet your men stay on his land against his will. We don't want that happening here."
"Ricolf ought to get down on his knees and thank me for that," Gerin ground out. "If my men didn't keep order along the Elabon Way, you'd have more trouble spilling into this holding than you dream of. But Ricolf keeps his own house quiet, and needs no help from me."
"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's—just 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 Trokmê-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 guest-friendship.
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 Trokmê 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.