"Got their line nibbled by a bigger fish than they expected," Van said gleefully. "Instead of pulling him up onto the bank, they find that they're going out into the creek."

"So they do," Gerin said. "And do you know what? I'm not the least bit sorry for them. Maybe now, seeing what I can do if I like, they'll realize they aren't big enough to quarrel with me, and they'll settle down and be good-or at least not impossible-vassals for my son."

If that was what the three vassal barons had in mind, they didn't show it right away. Authari stomped up to Ricrod and, all politesse forgotten, demanded, "Has your messenger gone daft? What's this nonsense about kings he was babbling?"

Glancing nervously toward Gerin, the steward cleared his throat and answered, "Ah, lord Authari, no nonsense to it. There stands the king of the north."

Authari clapped a hand to his forehead. "You haven't had enough of lording it over men who are by rights your peers?" he snapped at Gerin. "Who named you king, anyhow? Did you do it yourself?"

As the Fox had more than once already, he took considerable pleasure in answering, "No, the first man to use the title was my vassal, Adiatunnus the Trokm-."

Authari's jaw dropped. Hilmic and Wacho both gaped at Gerin. All three of them must have known how much trouble Adiatunnus had given him over the years, and had probably hoped to match his thorny independence. Authari found his voice first: "What did he go and do that for?" He sounded not just disbelieving but outraged.

"For driving the Gradi back to the edge of the ocean and for embroiling their gods with others so we could pin 'em back there," Gerin answered calmly.

"If you'll think back," Van added, "you'll recall the Fox here was the one who put paid to the monsters a few years back, and to the wizard Balamung a few years before that. So he's done a thing or three to deserve being called a king. What in the five hells have you done to deserve to say he doesn't?"

Several of Authari's men nodded when they heard that, which made Gerin work hard to keep a stiff face. He said, "What I've done doesn't matter, not here, not now. This trip isn't about me. It's about my son here, and about the oaths you swore after you heard what the Sibyl had to say about him."

"I said I had to serve my father before I came and ruled this barony on my own," Duren put in. "Now I've done that, and now I'm ready to take up my rule here. Does any man in this keep say I have not the right?"

There it was, a challenge set out with more blunt force, perhaps, than Gerin would have used, but with undeniable power. The crowded great hall in the castle that had been Ricolf's and was now passing to his grandson grew very still. Men leaned forward to hear if any of Ricolf's vassals would challenge that succession.

Always a temporizer, Authari asked, as Ricrod had before him, whether Duren intended to hold the barony as his father's vassal. As Duren had before, he denied it. "It doesn't matter," Authari said then, gloomily. "We're still going to be in the middle of this kingdom, whether we're a part of it in name or not. Bah!"

Gerin thought he was right about that. Everyone outside Duren's barony with whom he would deal would be one of the Fox's vassals… unless he tried dealing with Aragis the Archer, in which case Gerin would make him regret it faster than he'd ever imagined.

Authari, still looking for a way to play ends against middle, hadn't noticed all the implications of what he'd said. Wacho, for a wonder, did. "Give it up," he said. "We're fighting somebody too big for us now."

"You say that?" Authari demanded angrily, his suave manner eroding with his hopes.

But Wacho nodded, and so did Hilmic, who said, "Look around you. He's got too many men for us to fight, he's got Adiatunnus' Trokmoi backing him instead of making his life a misery-"

"And how did you manage that?" Authari snapped at Gerin. "Aren't you the one who was always prating about what a pack of savages the Trokmoi were and how we Elabonians shouldn't do anything with 'em except drive 'em back over the Niffet?"

Since Gerin had done a good deal of prating on exactly that theme, he answered carefully: "When you've seen the Gradi, it's amazing what a bunch of good fellows the Trokmoi seem alongside 'em." He looked down his nose at Authari. "Not that you've ever seen a Gradi, of course."

Authari's scowl was a joy to behold till the Fox remembered he was trying to get the petty baron to accept his son's overlordship, not to make an enemy for life of him. Scowling still, Authari said, "Had they come here, we'd have beaten them back."

"Maybe we would, Authari," Wacho said, "but the point is that they didn't come here, and the reason they didn't come here is that the lord prince-uh, the lord king-beat 'em back before they could."

Gerin studied Wacho in some bemusement; he was showing more in the way of common sense than he'd given any hint of having till now. Hit a man over the head with an idea often enough and he sometimes got it.

Authari Broken-Tooth was getting it, too, but not caring for it once he had it. He set a hand on the hilt of his sword as he glared at Ratkis Bronzecaster. "If you hadn't shown up at the wrong time, we'd all still be free," he snarled.

"What, there on the Elabon Way when the Fox here was coming back from Ikos the second time?" Ratkis asked. Authari nodded. Ratkis, by contrast, shook his head. "I heard about what happened there. You could have squashed him, but you funked the job. And you've got no one to blame for that but yourself." Under his breath, he added, "Not that you will."

And, sure enough, Authari snapped, "That's a lie." But it wasn't a lie. Gerin knew it, and Authari probably knew it, too, down in his heart of hearts: he lacked the gambler's nerve that would have spelled the difference between a petty baron and something more prominent. He looked around the great hall, out toward the courtyard, and out toward the encampment some of Gerin's men had made beyond it. The Fox could gauge the moment when he accepted that he could not change what he saw. "Bah!" Authari said. "We might as well get this over with." He looked around again, this time for Duren.

Ratkis Bronzecaster did more than look. He waved, and got Duren's attention. Gerin waved, too: if Authari was going to give homage and fealty, the opportunity had to be seized, not wasted.

Duren hurried over. Gerin used elbows to help clear a space in the crowd where Authari and his fellows could kneel. Ratkis Bronzecaster had already sworn loyalty to Duren, but had no objection to doing it again. On the contrary: when he gave his new overlord homage and fealty, he obviously meant what he said, which exerted extra pressure on the other three men who had formerly been Ricolf's vassals to mean what they said, too.

After they had given Duren homage and fealty, he said in a loud voice, "Now we see how the prophecy Biton delivered through his Sibyl at Ikos is fulfilled. May the omen prove good!"

Gerin's men cheered raucously. So did a good many of the ordinary troopers Hilmic, Wacho, and Authari had brought with them. That in turn cheered the Fox. If ordinary soldiers favored his son, their leaders would have a harder time making trouble for Duren. And reminding the folk here of the oracular response also struck Gerin as clever. Duren could claim-and claim truthfully-he took the barony with the support of the gods.

The Fox made his way over to his son. "It's yours now. Use it the best way you know how. If you have trouble, you know you can call on me."

"Yes, I know that." Duren nodded. "I shouldn't do it save in direst need, though, or people will think I can't handle my own troubles."

"That's the answer a man gives." Gerin thumped his son on the shoulder.

Duren might have sounded like a man, but he didn't look like one, not in that moment. He looked about the way Gerin would have expected a youth leaving the only home he'd ever known to look: worried and a little afraid. "I'll have to make my place here," he said. "I won't have it on account of who you are."