His heart jumped. There up ahead strode Duren, sword in one hand, shield on the other arm, prowling forward, his head going back and forth as he picked his way west through the woods. When the youth heard Gerin coming up behind him, he whirled around, ready to fight.

"I'm not the enemy," Gerin said, although, to a boy first sprouting his beard, any older relative, and especially his father, was liable to look like a foe a lot of the time.

Here, though, Duren understood him as he'd intended. He asked the same question as had been in Gerin's mind: "Are we winning?"

"Drop me into the hottest of the five hells if I know," the Fox answered: quietly, so as not to draw the attention of the Gradi. That might have been excess caution, for the woods rang with cries of every description. Still, caution did no harm if exercised when not needed, while needing it and not exercising it often led straight to disaster. "I don't know," he repeated. "But we're well into the woods, and they haven't thrown us back, so I'd say we're not losing."

When the words were spoken, he remembered Baivers' telling him much the same thing in the middle of the fight against Voldar and the Gradi gods. No, he though, it probably wasn't the middle of the fight, but only the beginning-by all the signs, that fight was still going on. It might go on for days more, or, for all Gerin knew, for years more. Gods didn't need to eat or sleep in any ordinary senses of the words, and they were a lot harder to kill than mere men.

He reached out and tapped Duren's shield with his sword. "Come on," he said. "Let's see what sort of lovely company we have waiting for us."

They hadn't gone far before they came to a screen of bushes around the edge of a small clearing. Again, the scene eerily reminded Gerin of the clearings in the divine Gradihome. The battle going on in the clearing was hardly less confused and no less savage than the one from which Voldar had expelled him.

"Baivers!" Duren shouted, and ran for the fighting. Gerin, had he had his way, would have gone into the fight without shouting first, and might have cut down a Gradi or two before the enemy knew he was there.

Well, no help for it now. "Baivers!" he cried, and sprinted after his son.

One Gradi who turned to meet Duren's onslaught died a moment later, the victim of the Trokm- from whom he'd been distracted. Maybe outrageous openness was as good at inducing surprise as stealth. Gerin reminded himself to think that one over if he ever found a moment when no one was trying to slaughter him.

If he did find such a moment, it wouldn't be any time soon. Here in the clearing, his men and the Gradi could find and fight one another. That was just what they were doing, with sword and spear and knife and axe, with stones grubbed from the ground with their hands, and with those broken-nailed hands themselves.

"Voldar!" the Gradi cried, over and over again. Gerin had heard that shout more often than he'd ever wanted, and had gauged the different ways the Gradi used it. What he heard now gave him hope: the Gradi sounded imploring, as if they hadn't heard from their goddess for a long time and desperately wished they would.

"Voldar is dead!" he yelled at the raiders. Some of them understood enough Elabonian to recoil in horror from that claim. The Fox knew perfectly well it was a lie. He didn't care. If the Gradi couldn't prove him wrong-and their reaction suggested they couldn't-he might as well have been right. Voldar too preoccupied with her battle on the gods' plane to come to the aid of the men she had intended to rule the northlands might as well have been Voldar dead.

But the Gradi remained fierce opponents even without Voldar tilting the natural order of things in their favor. One of them, shouting incomprehensible things that Gerin did not think were compliments, swung his axe at the Fox. His shield turned the stroke so that the flat of the axehead rather than the edge slammed against his helmet, but that was plenty to send him staggering. The Gradi rushed after him. He raised his sword to block the next vicious stroke, but it sent the blade flying from his hand.

Bellowing in triumph, the raider brought back the axe to finish him off. Gerin seized the fellow's wrist and twisted. The Gradi bellowed again, this time in pain and alarm. Gerin gave him another twist, spinning his foe over his hip and slamming him down to the ground. The Fox was still one of the best wrestlers in the northlands, and the Gradi, as far as he could tell, knew nothing whatever of the art.

The fall knocked the axe loose. The Gradi scrambled after it. Gerin kicked him in the ribs, then in the face. He grabbed the axe himself-it was closer than his sword. He swung it up, then down. Blood sprayed out from the wound it made. The Gradi's limbs convulsed. Gerin hit him again. He let out a snoring cough and died.

"Baivers!" shouted someone from behind the Fox. The shout was so fierce, he glanced back over his shoulder-and leaped aside just in time as Drungo Drago's son swung a sword at him.

"Drungo, you idiot, I'm your overlord!" Gerin screamed.

Drungo stared. "Oh, it is you, lord prince," he said in what sounded like sincere apology. "I saw the axe and I figured you were a Gradi. I didn't think one of us might have taken it off one of them."

Gerin sighed. Drungo wasn't much good at thinking. Drago the Bear, his father, hadn't been, either. Both of them, though, were handy men to have in a brawl.

More Elabonians and Trokmoi stormed into the clearing. More Gradi came in, too, but not so many more. After a while, no more Gradi were left on their feet in the open space. The ground was strewn with Gradi down and moaning, and with Gradi down and forever silent. A good many of their enemies lay there with them. Gerin's followers who were still upright stalked across the red-splashed grass, finishing off the wounded Gradi who still lived.

"Come on," Gerin said when that grim task was done. He pointed into the woods. "We've still got plenty of the whoresons to deal with in there."

Some of his men, even those who had fought bravely in the clearing, hesitated before leaving it for the forest. He couldn't blame them. Fighting in the open was what they knew. Sneaking among the trees was more like hunting, except that here the quarry was also hunting them.

Somewhere west in the woods, a Gradi was shouting to his comrades. Gerin couldn't understand a word he was saying, but he recognized the voice: that was the captain who'd spoken Elabonian, marshaling his troops. The Fox stopped and cocked his head and listened to the fighting. It got fiercer off to his left. He sent men of his own in that direction. Unlike the Gradi, he didn't roar and bellow while he was doing it.

Then he started moving toward that great voice. "Van was right all along," he remarked to Duren. "They've found themselves a leader who's trying to whip them into shape, Voldar or no Voldar. If we kill him, my bet is they start falling to pieces."

With their chieftain alive, the Gradi showed no signs of falling to pieces. Gerin had to fight several times as he approached the roaring Gradi leader. He was getting close when a big man emerged from behind a tree that didn't look to have been wide enough to conceal his bulk. As Drungo had, he started to attack the Fox; unlike Drungo, he checked himself without Gerin's having to scream at him.

Gerin halted what would have been his own attack. He nodded to Van, hardly more surprised than if he'd met him walking out of the great hall back at Fox Keep. "Good to see they haven't let the air out of you."

"And you," the outlander answered. "You heading over to put paid to that fellow giving orders at the top of his lungs?"

"Just what I'm doing," Gerin agreed. "Killing one man and breaking their backbone is a cheaper way of beating them than having to make the fight on his terms."