"What are you talking about?" Geroge demanded. "I don't understand what you're saying."

Gerin had often heard that complaint from Dagref. When he and Selatre would talk about adult matters, the oldest child they'd had together would listen, following as far as his own experience let him, and would keep on trying to follow past that point, trying to make his parents slow down and let him know what they meant.

Baivers' murmurs perplexed the Fox, too, but he thought he had some notion of what was in the god's mind. Groping for words, he asked, "Lord Baivers, are the powers below the roots connected to those who make a habit of living down there?" To show what he meant, he pointed to Geroge and Tharma.

"Of course," Baivers answered, once more sounding surprised. "Where there are no folk there are no powers."

"Ah," Gerin said. That answered one question he'd long had: at least in the eyes of the god, the monsters were people. From the day they'd emerged from the caverns below Biton's shrine, Gerin had wondered. He'd phrased his question carefully, to avoid both saying they were and saying they weren't. He found another question: "Will that power-?"

"Those powers," Baivers corrected, sounding finicky and precise.

"Those powers, then. Will they fight for us against the Gradi?"

Still finicky, the god replied, "They will fight. It is why they exist: to fight. Against the Gradi? Who can say for certain. For us?" Those sprout-green eyes swung to Gerin. "Why do you think you and I are `we'?"

"Why?" Gerin said in some alarm. "You just said you didn't like the Gradi or their gods. If they take the northlands, you get no more libations here, no more worship. I'm only a mortal, lord Baivers, I know that, but as mortals go, I'm strong. If you can help me fend off the Gradi gods, I think I can beat the Gradi themselves."

"Could be so," Baivers said. "Could be nonsense, too. But what I think and what I do, they're not the same. My power is over growing and brewing-you know that. I'm not a god of blood, a god of war."

"But you can fight-I know you can." Gerin came up with one of the bits of lore he'd culled from the scrolls up in his library: "When that demon sent the barley blight, you didn't just fight him and beat him, you made him swallow his own tail and eat himself up."

Selatre silently clapped her hands.

"Well, of course I did," Baivers said. "He was causing my crop all kinds of trouble. He had it coming, he did, and I gave it to him." For a moment, he seemed a formidable deity indeed.

"The Gradi are the same," Gerin insisted. "If they win here, there won't be any barley, because they'll make the northlands too cold for it to grow. Do you want that to happen?"

"Do I want it to happen? Of course I don't want it to happen. It would sadden me," Baivers answered. "But if the grain won't grow, then it won't and that's all there is to it. It's not the same, it's not close to the same, as murdering it in the shoot, the way that demon did. He'll never find his way back to this world, never once."

The distinction Baivers drew was so fine it meant nothing to the Fox, but it plainly did to the god. Gerin kicked at the dirt floor of the shack. He'd feared that, even if Baivers did appear for him, the god would keep on doing what the gods of the Elabonian pantheon did most of the time: nothing. He'd needed an angry Baivers, a furious Baivers, and what he found was a regretful but resigned Baivers, which did him no good.

How to find a furious Baivers? Even as the question formed in his mind, so did an answer. He tried to find another, because he didn't like that one. But nothing else occurred to him. And, when he was about to enrage a god, he didn't think prayer would do him any good.

His laugh was loud and scornful. George and Tharma stared at him. So did Selatre, in dismay: she knew more about gods, or about gods more directly, than Gerin. And so did Baivers. "Don't like your tone, young fellow," he said sharply.

"Why should I care?" Gerin retorted. "I've spilled a lot of ale to you over the years, and what has it got me? Not bloody much, that's plain. I should have paid more heed to Mavrix. He has a long memory for foes, but he has a long memory for friends, too, and that's more than I can say about you. He was right about what he told me-he certainly was."

"The Sithonian?" Baivers snorted. "The next time he's right'll be the first."

"Oh, no!" Jeering at a god was something of which Gerin would never have dreamt were his need less great. If he overdid it, he was liable to be destroyed by a deity he might have brought to his side. But if he didn't do it, he was all too sure he would be destroyed by the Gradi and their gods. And so jeer he did: "Mavrix said you were useless, said you'd always been useless, said you'd always be useless, too. And he's right, looks as if to me."

"Useless? Mavrix talks about useless?" Baivers threw back his head and laughed; his barley hair rustled. "The Sithonian, who can't play the pipes, who manures himself whenever he's in trouble" — that wasn't fair or true, but Gerin had long since noted gods were no more fair and probably less truthful than human beings- "who buggers pretty boys and calls himself a fertility god? He thinks I'm useless? I'll show him!"

As the Fox knew, buggering pretty boys was not all Mavrix did to amuse himself. He feared Baivers' tirade would draw the notice of the Sithonian god. He'd wanted Biton and Mavrix together; they'd spurred each other on against the monsters. He didn't want Baivers and Mavrix together, lest they go after each other instead of the Gradi.

But he had to keep Baivers roused. And so he kept on jeering: "You might as well be from the law courts of the City of Elabon, not the fields where the barley grows. All you care about is the detail of the law" — he was being unfair himself; that charge applied more justly to his son Dagref than to Baivers- "if you'd fight that demon but not the Gradi gods. The barley is gone, whether killed in the shoot or never planted. Yes, Mavrix was right-useless is the word."

For a moment, he glanced over to Selatre. Her face was white as milk; she knew, probably better than he, all the different risks he was running. If I get through this, I'll never traffic with gods again, he told himself, though he knew that was a lie. If he got through this, he'd have to try to find some way to enlist whatever gods the monsters had against the Gradi. That was likely to make dealing with Baivers seem a stroll on the meadow by comparison.

Then Tharma spoke to the god of barley and brewing: "Please don't let the barley go away from here. We like your ale."

"Call me useless?" Baivers said to Gerin. "Mavrix said it and so you believe it? I'll show you useless, I will. Powers of the earth, powers under the earth, we're stronger than you think, little man. Loose us against the invaders and-" The Fox had hoped he'd prophesy victory. He didn't, instead finishing, "-and we'll give 'em all the fight in us."

Gerin wished he knew how much that was. Relieved he hadn't been turned into an insect pest or something else small and obnoxious, he dared one more question, no longer mocking: "Lord Baivers, can you bring Father Dyaus into the fight, too?"

Baivers looked astonished, then sad. "I wish I could," he said. "We'd win certain sure then. But Dyaus, he's-gone round to the far side of the hill, you might say, and I don't know what it'd take to call him back."

"You know, lord Baivers-or maybe you don't know, if I don't say it-we Elabonians have the feeling sometimes that all our gods have gone round to the far side of the hill," Gerin said.

"We're pleased enough with the way things are here, or we have been, anyhow," Baivers answered. "When a thing is to your liking, you don't need to meddle with it, and you don't want to, either, for fear you'll make it worse." Gerin nodded at that, for he thought the same way himself. Baivers suddenly grunted, a most ungodlike sound. "Could be that's why Elabonians latch onto Sithonian gods sometimes, I suppose. They're born meddlers, every one of them. And Mavrix worse than the others," he added with a growl.