Gerin considered. "Mm, I don't know whether I could have or not. I tell you this, though: I would have tried."

He doubted he could have done much to Adiatunnus, not if he was embroiled against a foe as formidable as Aragis at the same time. Again, he did not mention his doubts to the Trokm-. Ideas about how dangerous he was were ones he wanted Adiatunnus to have.

"When do we move against Aragis?" Adiatunnus asked. "Whenever it is, my warriors will be ready."

"Likely tell!" Gerin gave him a saucy grin. "I'll set the day for you two days before the one I tell my Elabonians, so we can all set out at the same time."

Adiatunnus glared. "Is that a tongue you carry in your mouth, or a woodworker's rasp? We're not so slow as all that, indeed and we're not, for you'd fret over less an we were."

"Fair enough," Gerin said. "Come drink some ale with me now, and your warriors and mine can get drunk together and tell lies about all the different times they tried to kill each other."

"And some of the tales they tell won't be lies at all, Fox darling," Adiatunnus said. "Widin Simrin's son would be here, for instance, I'm thinking? He wasna in his own keep when I passed it by on the way hither."

"Yes, he's here," Gerin answered. "Remember, he and you are both my vassals now. You can't go having your own little wars for the fun of it."

"Indeed and I'd never think such a thing!" The sparkle in Adiatunnus' eyes said he didn't expect Gerin to believe a word of it. "But I do recall the days when we went after each other, and not a doubt have I got that they're in his memory as well. Hashing them out over some ale will be safer nor going through them ever was."

"Truth that," Gerin agreed, falling into the Trokm- tongue for a couple of words. Like a lot of Elabonians who'd grown up on the border, he used it almost as readily as his own language.

Adiatunnus held up a forefinger. "One more question, before I drink deep and forget I meant to ask it: have you had more of your books copied out, that I might buy them of you?"

"Yes," Gerin answered: "a chronicle and a poem."

"Ah, that's fine, that's fine indeed," the Trokm- chieftain said. "When you told me you'd teach me the art of reading, I bethought myself I'd learn it as I learned to use a tool or a weapon. The more such things you know, the better, after all. But, you omadhaun, you, why did you not tell me beforehand it'd be near as much fun as futtering?"

"Why?" Gerin's eyes were wide and innocent. "If I had told you that-beforehand, mind you-would you have believed me?"

"Nay, I wouldna," Adiatunnus admitted. He gave the Fox a sudden, suspicious stare. "Don't go thinking you're civilizing me the now, or whatever you're after calling it. A Trokm- I am and I remain, and proud of it."

"Of course," Gerin said, more innocently still.

"Lord king, I beg you, put the army in motion soon," Carlun Vepin's son said. "You have no idea how fast they're going through the stores you've built up over the years."

"I have a very good idea how fast they're doing it," Gerin returned. "I ought to. And the reason you build up stores in the first place, Carlun, is to be able to use them at times like these."

Normally, that sort of answer would have silenced the steward. Now, though, he shook his head and said, "Truly, lord king, you must see this for yourself. Come down into the storerooms under the castle. Look at the empty shelves. Look at the empty chambers, by the gods! See what this campaign is doing to Fox Keep."

The Fox sighed. The trouble with Carlun, as with any good steward, he supposed, was that accumulating got to be an end in itself for him, not a means to an end. Shouting at the former serf had produced no lasting relief. Humoring him might buy Gerin a longer quiet stretch. "All right, let's go have a look," he said, and rose from the bench in the great hall he and Carlun had been sharing.

After exclaiming in glad surprise, Carlun rose, too. Pausing in the kitchen only to light two clay lamps at a cookfire, the steward handed Gerin one of them and then led him down into the cellars below Castle Fox. The air was cool and damp down there, full of the yeasty smell of ale and a greener odor suggesting that, somewhere back among those corridors, a crock of gherkins had gone over.

Carlun pointed to a bare wall. "Look, lord king! We had jars of ale set there not so long ago."

"I know that," Gerin said patiently. "If we all started drinking river water, the first thing it would do is make all my vassals and all their vassals and all their retainers hopping mad at me. The second thing it would do is give about half of them a flux of the bowels. That's not really what you want if you expect to fight a war sometime soon."

"And here," Carlun said dramatically, paying no attention whatsoever to him. He held the lamp close to another row of jars, so the Fox could see they had the lids off and were empty. "These were full of wheat, and these over here were full of barley, and these-"

"And you, Carlun, you're full of beans." Gerin's patience was breaking now; when it broke, it left sharp edges. "If I don't feed my soldiers, that will get me talked about worse than not giving them ale."

The steward still was not listening. The steward was determined not to listen. In the darkness all around, the flickering lamplight gleamed off his pale, set face. Gerin had seen less battle-ready faces coming at him over shields. Carlun pointed toward a corridor down which they'd not yet gone. "And the peas, lord king! When you think what's happening to our peas…"

What Gerin was thinking was that this wasn't working as he'd hoped. No matter what he did, Carlun wasn't going to stop nagging him about how much the warriors were eating. Wearily, he said, "All right, show me the peas, Carlun, and then we'll go back upstairs. The men aren't eating any more than I thought they would, and the stores don't look to be in any worse shape than I thought they were."

Carlun rounded the corner. Gerin followed close behind him. With a gasp, the steward stopped in his tracks. Gerin had to stop in a hurry, too, lest he walk up Carlun's back and perhaps set the steward's tunic on fire. Then the Fox's hand flew to the hilt of his sword, for he heard two other gasps from farther up the corridor.

He took his hand away from his sword as fast as it had gone there. He started to laugh. Down here, two gasps didn't mean thieves. They meant two people surprised when they wanted privacy. He had fond memories of some of the corridors in the cellar, not this one in particular but some nearby. He knew his son Duren had amused himself down here, too.

"Sorry to disturb you," he called into the gloom at the end of the passage, wondering if he'd interrupted Dagref at a moment in his education he couldn't possibly have acquired from a book.

From out of that gloom came a deep voice: "You startled us, lord king. We didn't think anyone would be down here."

Gerin clapped a hand to his forehead. He knew that voice. It wasn't Dagref's. "Carlun and I will go up to the great hall now," he said. "When the two of you have put yourselves back together, I want you to come up there, too. We have some talking to do, I'm afraid."

"Aye, lord king," came the answer from the darkness.

"Come on," Gerin said to Carlun, who was still staring down the passageway. "Let's go."

The steward looked back toward him as if he'd gone mad. "But, lord king, we're not nearly through the vegetables, and we haven't even begun on the smoked meats and, er, sausages."

"To the five hells with the vegetables and the smoked meats." Gerin didn't mention the sausages. If he didn't think about them, maybe he wouldn't think about… On the other hand, maybe he would. He grabbed Carlun by the arm. "Come on, curse you. Do you want to annoy them, hanging about down here?"