Harry Turtledove - Wisdom of the Fox

"I think they're probably making up their quarrel," Gerin answered, smiling.

"Seldom dull around this place, is it?" Aragis said. He was smiling, too, more than half in bemusement. "My keep is more, mm, sedate."

By which you mean anyone who doesn't think like you had best not let you know it , Gerin thought. But how the Archer ran his holding was his business. Duren curled up in the space Fand and Van had vacated and went to sleep. Gerin ruffled his hair and said, "Somebody finds it dull, anyhow." He stared down at the little boy, still hardly daring to believe he had him back again, then raised his jack to Aragis in salute. Returning Duren made up for a multitude of the grand duke's sins.

Presently Van and Fand did return. Fand looked rumpled. The outlander looked smug. They both looked surprised when they found Duren stretched out where they'd been sitting.

"Don't worry," Gerin said. "You can have your places back. I'll take him up to bed." He scooped up his son, who wiggled and muttered but did not wake.

Selatre drained her drinking jack, set it down, and brought a hand up to her mouth to cover a yawn. "I'm for my own bed," she announced. "I'll walk up with you, if that's all right."

"Your company is better than just all right, as you know very well," Gerin said. He lifted Duren up as high as he could, to keep the boy's dangling legs from catching any of the feasters in the head, and made his way toward the stairs. Selatre followed.

Duren sighed again when Gerin put him down in the bed they both used. Duren muttered something, but Gerin couldn't make out what it was. "He has the look of you," Selatre said.

The Fox nodded as he straightened up. "He has my coloring, certainly. I suppose his features are mostly mine, too." Gently, he pulled off his sleeping son's shoes and tossed them by the side of the bed. "After what happened, I hate to leave him alone, even for an instant."

"I don't blame you," Selatre said. "But if he's not safe here in your bedchamber, where can he be safe?"

"The way the world wags now? Maybe nowhere," Gerin said bleakly. "None of us is really safe these days." He took a couple of steps over to Selatre, put his arms around her, and kissed her. "We just have to do the best we can, that's all."

She nodded. "Do you think you could leave him alone long enough to come with me to my little chamber?"

He paused in some surprise before he answered: she hadn't invited him to her chamber before. After he'd given it to her, he'd stayed out of it, not wanting to infringe on the privacy he knew she craved. On the other hand, the two of them would need privacy from Duren now. She'd grown up with everyone sleeping and doing everything else in one big bed, but he hadn't. He slipped an arm around her waist. "I think I'll take that chance."

Afterwards, though, he quickly dressed and returned to his own room. Wanting to make sure Duren was safe was only part of that. Selatre's chamber lay on the south side of the hall, and its window faced south. Light from the moons streamed into the chamber and cast multiple shifting shadows. With what lay ahead, Gerin wanted to think about the moons as little as he could.

* * *

Golden Math came full first. That night passed well enough: Tiwaz was two days before full, ruddy Elleb and Nothos both one day before. All three of them had risen earlier than Math, and so their rays did much to diminish the one full moon's effect.

From the werenight of five years before, Gerin knew which of his men were vulnerable to taking beast's shape. The two he worried most about were Widin Simrin's son—who'd been just a boy at the time of the werenight—and Parol Chickpea. He wondered how Parol was, down in the serf village. Widin he locked away in the cellar with the ale; the youngster came through that first night unchanged.

He fretted more over Aragis' men than over his own, for they were an unknown quantity to him. He asked the Archer which of his men had the were taint, but Aragis was vague: "Lord prince, that's hard for me to answer, for my vassals were most of 'em at their own keeps the night of the werenight. The Trokmoi hadn't reached my lands yet, so we were still at ease. Afterwards, I had more urgent things to worry about than finding out which of my warriors had donned beast shape. I just didn't see the need."

Gerin looked down his nose at the grand duke. "Which means we're vulnerable now," he said in reproof as mild as he could make it. No, Aragis wasn't forethoughtful enough; when something had gone, he assumed its like would return no more.

As the next evening approached, the one on which Elleb and pale Nothos would be full and swift-moving Tiwaz and Math but one day to either side of it, he sent all of Aragis' men save the Archer himself, Marlanz Raw-Meat, and Fabors Fabur's son out to the tented encampment they'd made. If trouble broke out, he wanted it well away from the keep. To his relief, the only comment Aragis made was, "A sensible precaution, lord prince."

The Fox sent Widin Simrin's son to his shelter and mewed him up, saying, "If you don't change tonight, you probably won't tomorrow. But better safe—we'll enclose you then, too." Widin just nodded; he knew necessity when he saw it.

Tiwaz came up over the eastern horizon first, a day before full and not far from round. Then, as the sun set, Elleb and Nothos rose side by side. Gerin watched them from the palisade. No cries of alarm rent the air the instant the two full moons appeared, for which he gave hearty thanks. Golden Math soon followed. Because she moved through her phases more slowly than Tiwaz, her bright disk was even closer to a perfect circle than his.

When all four moons were in the sky and no screams of horror had come from within the keep or from the tents where Aragis' men sheltered, the Fox decided he could safely descend and eat supper. He'd been sensible enough to have plenty of ale brought up before he closed Widin in the cellar, so washing down his meat would not be a problem.

Aragis, who was already gnawing on beef ribs basted with a spicy sauce, greeted him with a wave and something not far from a sneer. "All quiet as the tomb here, lord prince. Seems to me you fretted over nothing."

Gerin shrugged. "Better to be ready for trouble and not have it than to have it and not be ready, as happened at the werenight of the four full moons."

"Can't quarrel hard with that, I suppose," Aragis admitted. He took another big bite from the rib he was holding; grease ran down his chin. "Your cooks do a fine job indeed; I give you that without any argument."

"Glad something here makes you happy," Gerin answered. He waved to one of the kitchen servants for some ribs of his own.

"Only thing that bothers me about sitting here some days eating your good food is that we could have been out campaigning already, striking at the Trokmoi and the monsters," Aragis said.

"They'll be there, grand duke, never fear," Gerin said. The servant plopped a round of flatbread on the table in front of him, then set atop it several steaming ribs. He tried to pick one up, scorched his fingers, and stuck them in his mouth. Aragis hid a chuckle behind a swig of ale.

"I thought you were the patient sort, lord prince," Fabors Fabur's son said slyly, a gibe enough to the point to make Gerin's ears heat.

"I don't know why everyone is praising the food to the skies," Marlanz Raw-Meat grumbled. "They've cooked it to death, and that after I told them and told them I like it with the juice still in it."

Gerin stared over toward the gobbet of meat Marlanz was attacking. It might have been lightly singed on the outside, but juice and blood from it soaked the flatbread on which it lay. If Marlanz wanted it cooked less, he should have torn it off a cow as the beast ran by.

Before he could say as much, Gerin looked from the dripping chunk of meat to Marlanz himself. His beard seemed thicker and bushier than it had moments before, his teeth extraordinarily long and white and sharp. His eyes gave back the torchlight with red glints of their own.