He did say, "When you're done there, find someplace to be rid of the bodies so the Gradi never find them. For that matter, if you get word we've lost, you probably ought to think about running for your lives."

"You won't lose, lord prince," one of the serfs exclaimed. "You can't."

Gerin wished he shared the fellow's touching optimism.

The Fox pushed the pace as his force of chariotry approached the keep the Gradi were holding. He didn't want any of the men he'd released deciding to act heroic and getting there ahead of his warriors to warn the garrison. Taking a keep was hard enough without having the foe alerted in advance.

One thing: the Gradi seemed to have no idea he and his troopers were anywhere nearby. To make sure they didn't, on his approach he sent out dismounted scouts, who, if they were seen, were likely to be taken for either Gradi or for Elabonian peasants. The scouts came back with word that, sure enough, the Gradi did hold the keep, but that they had the drawbridge down and were keeping no watch worth mentioning.

"Why don't we just march up on foot and tramp right in, then?" the Fox said. "With luck, they won't notice we aren't who we're supposed to be till it's too late to raise the drawbridge against us."

"What, and leave the cars behind?" Adiatunnus demanded.

"We can't fight with them inside the keep anyhow, can we?" Gerin said. The Trokm- chieftain scratched his head, then shrugged, plainly not having looked at it that way. Gerin said, "They've got us here faster than we could have come on foot, and we're not worn out from walking, either. They've served their purpose, but you can't use the same tool for every job."

"Ah, well," Adiatunnus said. "I told you I'd follow against the Gradi where you led, and if you'll be after leading with the feet of you, I'll walk in your footsteps, that I will." His eyes, though, said something more like, And if this goes wrong, I'll blame you for it, that I will.

That was the chance you took in any battle, though: if you lost, you got the blame, assuming you lived. Actually, you could get the blame if you died, too, but then you had other things to worry about.

The Fox told off approximately equal numbers of Elabonians and Trokmoi to stay behind with the horses. As for the rest, he put those who in looks and equipment most closely resembled the Gradi at the head of the column, to confuse the warriors in the keep for as long as he could. Being dark haired himself, with gear of the plainest, he marched along at the fore.

Van, who with his blond hair and fancy cuirass resembled almost anything in the world more than a Gradi, was relegated to the rear, to his loud disgust. He complained so long and so bitterly, Gerin finally snapped, "I'm getting better obedience out of the Trokmoi than I am from you."

"Oh, I'll do it, Fox," the outlander said with a mournful sigh, "but you can drop me into the hottest of your five hells if you think you'll make me like it."

"So long as it gets done," Gerin said. He wished he'd been able to find an excuse to hold Duren back at the rear. If both of them fell, all his hopes would fall, too-not, again, that he'd be in a position to do anything about it.

He led the column of warriors on a looping track to bring them up to the keep from the south, figuring the Gradi were less likely to take alarm if he and his men didn't come into view from straight out of the east. "We'll get as close to the keep as we can," he said, "and then charge home. If enough of us can get inside, they'll be very unhappy."

"And if not enough can," somebody-he didn't see who-said, "we will." Since that was undoubtedly true, he wasted no time arguing about it.

His first view of the keep confirmed the scouts' reports and his own hopes. The Gradi had only a handful of men up on the walls. Several more were passing time outside, a couple going at each other with axe and shield, three or four more standing around watching.

When the Gradi caught sight of the oncoming column, the first thing they did was raise a loud, wordless cheer. "Yell back!" the Fox hissed to his own men, who did. A shout was a shout in any language.

One of the Gradi perfecting his axework was the first to notice that Gerin and his followers were not what they appeared to be. By then, though, they were less than a hundred yards from the drawbridge. The sharp-eyed Gradi let out a shout that, though still without words, was of altogether different tone from those his countrymen had been exchanging with Gerin's masquerading warriors. He rushed at the Elabonians and Trokmoi, the sun glinting off the bronze head of his axe.

Several archers shot him. He fell before he got close to the attackers. "Run!" Gerin shouted, giving up the pretense. "We seize the gateway, we get inside, and we clean them out."

Yelling for all they were worth, his men and Adiatunnus' dashed for the drawbridge. The Fox wasn't the first man onto it-some of the young bravos ran faster-but he wasn't far behind. He wondered if the Gradi were going to raise it with warriors on it and inside the keep.

They didn't, as they hadn't tried raising it before their enemies reached it. When he stormed into the keep, Gerin realized the raiders from the north hadn't kept any sort of gate crew on the winches that would have moved the bridge up or down. Maybe they hadn't seen the need. Maybe castles in their own cold homeland had gates that worked differently. Whatever the reason, they made his work easier for him.

As soon as he and his men got inside the keep's outer wall, the fight was as good as won. The Gradi would have done better to throw down their axes and beg for mercy. Not all of them even had axes, or helms, or leather jerkins. They'd been expecting no attack. Had they yielded, they would have lived.

With few exceptions, they would not yield. Instead, they hurled themselves at the Elabonians and Trokmoi with loud cries of "Voldar!" As had a couple of their warriors back at the peasant village, many of them, armed with nothing more than belt knives and stools and whatever they could snatch up, fought so fiercely, they made their foes slay them.

And they slew their foes, too. Outnumbered, outmatched, they still did a lot of damage. One of them, swinging a bench from the great hall, leveled a whole row of Elabonians, as if he were scything down wheat. A couple of the warriors who went down didn't get up again, either: he'd managed to split their skulls.

His next flailing swipe with the bench almost took Gerin out with it. The Fox had to skip back in a hurry to keep from getting his ribs stove in. But a bench was an unhandy thing with which to make a backhand stroke. Gerin stepped forward, thrust his sword into the Gradi's belly, twisted to make sure the stroke killed, and jerked the blade free. The Gradi toppled, clutching himself and howling.

Adiatunnus shouted in his own language: "Into the castle, now! We'll not be letting 'em use it for refuge against us!"

Had the Gradi thought to do that, they might have given Gerin's army a hard fight. Many of them tried to get into the great hall to lay hold of their weapons and then return to the fight out in the courtyard. When Elabonians and Trokmoi got in with them, the chance of using the castle as a citadel disappeared.

And when the fighting raged in the great hall as well as outside, the servants in the kitchen-Elabonians all-joined Gerin's warriors, throwing themselves at the Gradi with kitchen knives and cleavers and spits and two-tined serving forks. They had no armor, they had no skill at fighting, some of them were women, but they had hatred and to spare. In the tight quarters, in the chaos, that let them bring down more than one of the men who had oppressed them, though more of their number fell making the effort.