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"I wonder what the Gradi call the moons," Gerin said, staring up at Math from his seat close to a fire outside the village.
"That I can't tell you, Captain," Van answered. He paused to use a thumbnail to pry at a piece of mutton stuck between two back teeth, then resumed: "I'm amazed at how much of their speech has come back to me, now that I've had to try using it again, but I never was much interested in finding out about the moons. Maybe if some Gradi lass had looked up at 'em while I was on top of her-but she'd have been thinking about other things, or I hope she would."
"You are impossible," Gerin said, "or at least bloody improbable."
"Thank you, Fox," his friend answered. Gerin gave up and wrapped himself in his blanket. He had plenty of sentries out. Even in the worst of times, the Trokmoi weren't likely to brave the ghosts for a night attack, and his men and theirs were supposed to be allies. Nevertheless, he hadn't got as old as he had by taking needless chances. Knowing he'd taken none here, he slept sound.
Warriors Gerin led had-once-reached the village around the keep Adiatu
And now here they were, more than ten years later, coming up to Adiatu
"Rein in," Gerin told Duren. The Fox also held up a hand to halt the rest of his chariots. His son pulled back on the reins. The horses obediently came to a stop.
Adiatu
Gerin jumped down from his chariot and hurried over to Adiatu
Speaking the Trokm- tongue so his folk could follow, Adiatu
The Fox noted Adiatu
Also speaking the woodsru
The Trokmoi yelled and cheered; Gerin doubted they'd ever given any Elabonian a greeting like the one he was getting. Most of his own men understood the Trokm- speech well enough to have followed what he was saying. They cheered, too.
Some of them, he saw, had their eyes on Trokm- women, many of whom were strikingly pretty and who had a reputation among the Elabonians for easiness. Gerin knew that reputation was not altogether deserved; it was just that Trokm- women, like their menfolk, said and acted on what they thought more readily than most Elabonians. But, as Fand had taught him, you tried going too far with them at your peril. He hoped no trouble would spring from that.
Adiatu
"For my men, I thank you," Gerin said. Save for insults on the battlefield, this was the first time he'd exchanged words with Adiatu
He was studying the Fox with the same wary care Gerin gave him. Seeing Gerin's eye on him, he chuckled self-consciously and said, "I've always been after thinking you're so high" — he reached up as far as he could- "with fangs in your mouth and covered all over with fur or a viper's scales, I never could decide which. And here, to look at you, you're nobbut a man."
"And you likewise," Gerin answered. "You've given me enough trouble for any other ten I could name, though; I tell you that."
"For which I thank you," Adiatu
"Not altogether," the Fox admitted, and Adiatu
Adiatu
"For which I suppose I thank you," Gerin said, at which Adiatu
The game he was playing now was designed to make him seem a good fellow to the Fox and his warriors, and to make them forget they were more likely to be his foes than his friends. When he wanted to use it, he had a huge voice. He used it now, bellowing in Elabonian, "Into the keep, the lot of you. The meat and bread want eating, the beer wants drinking, aye, and maybe the lasses want pinching, though you'll have to find that out your own selves."
Gerin tried to shout just as loudly: "Any man of mine who drinks so much today that he's not fit to travel tomorrow will answer to me, and I'll make him sorrier than his hangover ever did." That might also keep his men from getting so drunk they started fights, and from being too drunk to defend themselves if the Trokmoi did.
"The same goes for my warriors," Adiatu
Roast meat was roast meat, though the Trokmoi cooked mutton with mint, not garlic. Some of the bread the serving women set before the warriors struck Gerin as odd: thick and chewy and studded with berries. It wasn't what he ate at home, but it was good. He wasn't so sure about the beer. It wasn't ale, nor anything like what he and other Elabonians brewed, coming almost black from the dipper and tasting thick and smoky in his mouth.