Tale of the Fox gtf-2

by Harry Turtledove

  "I am against the Elabonian Empire," Ferdulf said. "If you want to stand against it, too, you may join with me."

  Gerin remained of the opinion that one god's son, no matter how arrogant, was not going to prove a match for all the soldiers and, if what Aragis said was true, all the mages of the Empire of Elabon. But he did not feel like quibbling about definitions with Ferdulf. Instead, he held out his hand. Aragis clasped it. A moment later, the demigod set his warm little palm over both their hands. Gerin had made a good many unlikely alliances in his time. This one struck him as being as improbable as any.

  * * *

  Balser Debo's son looked mutinous. "By the gods, lord king, why should I furnish you with twenty chariot crews? All the fighting you aim to do will be off my land."

  "That's not the point." Gerin might have borrowed his hard, harrowing smile from Aragis the Archer. "The point is that you owned yourself my vassal. True, you did it because you wanted me to help protect you. But that doesn't mean your obligations go away when the danger to your holding disappears. I have the right to ask this of you, and ask it I do."

  "It's outrageous!" Balser exclaimed. "Why should I send my men off to fight farther south than they'd ever have any natural reason to go?"

  "Because if you don't, they're likelier to be fighting here sooner or later anyhow," Gerin answered. "The idea, if we can bring it off, is to beat the Empire as far south as we can. If we can do that, the imperials may never get up here at all."

  If all the fighting turned out to be in the south, Aragis' lands would suffer far more than his own. That might end up giving him a decisive edge on the Archer: so declared the calculating part of his mind that never slept.

  "I suppose my twenty men are going to make the difference between beating the imperials and losing to them," Balser said scornfully.

  "By themselves? I doubt it, or else we're in worse trouble than I think," Gerin said. "But if you leave yours home and Widin Simrin's son leaves his home and Adiatunnus leaves his home… You didn't much like the idea of Adiatunnus' leaving his men home when you thought Aragis was going to land on you like a load of rocks, did you?"

  Balser had the decency to turn red. "All right, I see what you're saying, lord king. Bah! To the five hells with me if I like it."

  "Oh, I'm just dancing with glee myself at the idea of taking on the Elabonian Empire. Dancing with bloody glee!" The Fox did a few rather awkward steps.

  Balser stared at him. Kings were supposed to be serious, even solemn, people. Gerin didn't fit the bill. He hadn't intended to be a king. He hadn't intended to be a prince, or a baron. If he wasn't always what the world thought he was supposed to be, that was the world's hard luck.

  But he wasn't always a funny man, either. "One more thing for you to think about," he told Balser: "How many men do I have on your lands right now?"

  That got through to his new and now reluctant vassal. Balser looked as if he'd bitten into a pear about three days after it should have been tossed into a swill bucket for the pigs. "Lord king, when I became your vassal, you promised you'd respect my rights," he said reproachfully.

  "So I did," Gerin agreed. "And, when you became my vassal, you promised you'd live up to your duties. This is one of them. I am within my rights to ask it of you. You are not within your rights to refuse it to me."

  Plainly, Balser Debo's son did not agree. As plainly, he couldn't do anything about it. "Very well." He spat out the words one by one. "Twenty chariots and their crews, to go with you when you leave my land."

  "I do thank you for them," the Fox said. "They will help. And there's one other thing you need to remember: the sooner you furnish them to me, the sooner we will be able to leave your land, and the sooner we stop eating your storerooms empty."

  "Ah," Balser said. "I was wondering if you'd be able to come up with a reason for me to give you the crews and cars in a hurry. You have, by the gods."

  "I thought that might be so," Gerin said.

  Balser sighed. "Get caught up in the quarrels of neighbors bigger than you are and you find they make you do things and then expect you to like it."

  "I don't expect you to like it," Gerin told him. "I do hope you'll see the need." He got a shrug from Balser, which was about as much as he'd thought the baron would give him. Then he shrugged, too: the Elabonian Empire was forcing him into a position not far from the one in which he'd put Balser. He hoped he'd have better luck than Balser getting out of it.

  * * *

  Aragis the Archer studied Gerin's assembled forces. "I'll tell you this much, Fox," he said: "I'm gladder to have you with me than I would have been fighting you. You've got more men here than I thought you could raise."

  "I've never picked a quarrel with you," Gerin answered. "I wasn't picking a quarrel with you over Balser's holding, either, however you chose to take it. But I wasn't going to back away, either."

  "Leave that aside, since I'm not such a fool as to call my ally a liar," Aragis said, which let him call the Fox a liar even as he said he was doing no such thing. "You've put a lot of men on horseback here, too. You always were one to try things no one would have looked for."

  "Maybe." Gerin raised an eyebrow. "You came here all by your lonesome, and you say I do things nobody would look for? What would have kept me from dropping you off Balser's wall on your head?"

  Aragis shrugged. "I counted on your good sense. Biggest worry I had was that some of your troopers would do me in before I got the chance to tell you what the Empire was up to. But your men are well disciplined, too-maybe not quite so tight as mine, but well enough."

  "Your idea of discipline is to make your men fear you worse than any foe," the Fox said.

  "Well, of course," Aragis said, as if surprised Gerin contemplated discipline of any other sort. "It's worked, too. Tell me it hasn't."

  Gerin couldn't tell him that. Whether it would work for Aragis' successor was a different question. Maybe Aragis didn't care. Maybe he thought one of his sons was as fierce as he-an alarming idea if ever there was one.

  "My way works, too," Gerin said, and Aragis could not deny that. The Fox went on, "We'll see-or our sons will see, or our grandsons-whose way ends up working better."

  By way of reply, Aragis only grunted. Gerin hadn't expected much more from him. Other times he'd talked with Aragis about anything further away than the immediate future, he'd got only incomprehension in return. Within Aragis' range of vision, he was most effective; beyond it, he didn't seem to see at all.

  "How determined did the imperials seem to be about taking back the northlands?" the Fox asked Aragis. "If we give them one set of lumps, or maybe two, will they go back over the High Kirs and leave us alone? Or do you think they'll keep coming after us no matter what we do?"

  "I don't know the answer to that," Aragis answered. "I do know one thing: if we don't give them a set of lumps, we've lost the cursed fight." He paused, as if waiting for Gerin to disagree with him. When Gerin didn't say anything, the Archer picked up again: "They're every bit as arrogant as I remember them being, and that's saying a lot."

  "So it is," Gerin agreed. "Down in the City of Elabon, they'd look down their noses at you for wearing trousers instead of robes, and for coming straight out and saying what you mean instead of talking all around it from four different directions at once." He looked up at the sound of hoofbeats. "And a good day to you, Rihwin. What can I do for you?"

  Atop his horse, the noble from the City of Elabon tossed his head in anger more assumed than real. "I heard that last remark of yours, lord king, and I desire you to know that it filled my heart with resentment, that I reject it as a slanderous and scurrilous assault on my former homeland, that it bears not even the slightest relation to truth of any sort, and that, furthermore, your syntax in framing the said remark, being both slipshod and leaden, causes me to-"

  "— Prove the point of everything I was saying?" Gerin suggested.

  "Oh, I am wounded. Wounded!" Rihwin cried, clapping a hand over his heart. Gerin
snorted. By the expression on Aragis' face, he wouldn't have put up with Rihwin's flamboyant nonsense for a moment. There were times when Gerin wondered why he put up with his fellow Fox's nonsense himself. But, over years, Rihwin had-narrowly-convinced him he was worth keeping around.

  And then his friend did his best to unconvince him. Rihwin's face took on a look almost of transfiguration. In soft, reverent tones, he said, "With the Empire returned to the northlands once more, surely commerce between us and the long-sundered south will soon revive."

  As soon as Rihwin spoke of commerce, Gerin knew what he had in mind. Gerin would have liked to see commerce revived, too, commerce in books and fine cloth and other such luxuries the northlands had trouble producing for itself. Rihwin, however, would be thinking of only one such luxury. "You don't mean commerce. What you mean is wine."

  "And wherefore, I pray you, should I not?" Rihwin demanded.

  "For one thing, you get into trouble when you drink wine," Gerin answered. "You get into trouble when you drink ale, too, but you get into worse trouble when you drink wine. For another, with wine comes Mavrix, lord of the sweet grape. Do you truly want more dealings with him?"

  That did give Rihwin pause. The first time he'd ever invoked Mavrix, just before the werenight, the Sithonian god had permanently taken away his ability to work magic. Their meetings since had not been marked with any great warmth, either; Mavrix disliked and distrusted not only Gerin but also anyone who had anything to do with him.

  But Rihwin was made of stern stuff-either that or he had a marvelously selective memory. He said, "It should be all right, lord king, and for the chance to taste wine once more, what risk could be too great?" He struck a melodramatic pose on horseback.

  "I like wine well enough," Aragis said, "but ale suits me." He stuck out his chin and folded his arms across his chest in a different sort of melodrama, the pantomime of demanding obedience.

  As Gerin could have told him, getting obedience out of Rihwin the Fox was an uphill fight. Loftily, Rihwin observed, "Some people are of the opinion that, for no better reason than something's suiting them, it should suit everyone, a proposition easily demonstrated to be fallacious."

  Aragis blinked. Gerin watched him sort through Rihwin's sentence a clause at a time. He watched him scowl when he got to the end of it. "Some people," Aragis rumbled, "are of the opinion that anyone else cares about their opinions to the extent of dumping a pisspot."

  "Yes, some people are," Rihwin agreed. He and Aragis glared at each other. Gerin would have bet the two of them were likely to rub each other the wrong way. When he made bets of that sort, he usually proved right. When he bet something would go well, on the other hand, he was wrong dishearteningly often.

  That afternoon, his army reached the border between Balser's holding and the lands Aragis the Archer ruled. The border guards cheered. "Kick Aragis the Arrogant's arse!" one of them shouted. The rest offered even more creative advice. They all cheered Gerin.

  Aragis tapped his driver on the shoulder. His chariot broke out of the swarm and rattled over to the border station. One of the guards recognized him, and went from jeering to white-faced and shaky in the space of a heartbeat. At his whispered comment, the other warriors shut up one by one.

  "I thought I would give you the chance to say to my face what you say to my back," Aragis told them. "I see you have not the belly for it. This surprises me not at all." At his order, his driver took him back up alongside Gerin.

  "That took nerve," the Fox said. In his own cold-blooded way, Aragis had style.

  The Archer shrugged. "Most men are dogs. They yap loud enough when nothing bigger and fiercer is around. When challenged, though, they sniff your backside and then roll over."

  "Use them as men and you'll find them likelier to behave as men," Gerin said. Aragis shook his head. They rode on in silence after that. Gerin would have been happier had he been more nearly certain he was right and his royal rival wrong.

  IV

  Gerin had not been down in the lands over which Aragis the Archer ruled for more than twenty years. For some time, he'd been busy far closer to Fox Keep. Then, after his attention reached so far south, the only way he could have come was at the head of an invading army. Here he was at the head of an army, but, to what would have been his astonishment up until a couple of days before, he wasn't invading.

  Before the Empire of Elabon withdrew beyond the High Kirs, the lands closer to the mountains had been more nearly a true part of the Empire than the raw frontier up by the River Niffet. Some of the villages hereabouts had almost deserved to be called towns. Close by the Elabon Way, especially, trade had flourished. It was, in fact, the condition to which the Fox aspired to lift his own holdings.

  And Aragis, who had such splendid underpinnings for his kingdom, was letting them slip. Maybe Gerin remembered these lands as having been more prosperous than they really were because he'd been so much younger the last time he'd been through them. But he didn't think so. He hadn't been so young as all that. He could see signs of change, too, and not for the better.

  Several villages had buildings standing empty-not just houses, but smithies and potters' works and taverns as well. Some had fallen down into rubble. Some were being torn down to patch other buildings still in use. And only weeds and bushes grew in the blank spaces between houses where others had presumably stood.

  Some fields weren't being cultivated, either. In them, scruffy wheat and barley fought what was going to be a losing fight against brambles and saplings and plain, ordinary grass. "You don't seem to have quite so many people as you did," Gerin remarked to Aragis, sounding as casual as he could.

  "Just have to make sure the ones who are left work harder to take up the slack." Past that, Aragis was indifferent. Gerin wanted to grab him by the front of the tunic, lift him into the air, and shake some sense into him. What are you doing, you fool? he wanted to shout. Don't you see that, if this goes on a while longer, the peasants you have left won't be able to feed all your warriors? Then it won't matter how strong your armies are, or would be, because you won't be able to keep them in the field.

  Aragis wouldn't listen. Aragis wouldn't have the vaguest idea what he was talking about. Aragis would get angry. Knowing all that, Gerin walked away instead of screaming at him.

  Van followed the Fox. "If you could have seen the look on your face there when the Archer said, `So what? — " the outlander began.

  "If he saw it, he didn't know what it meant." Gerin kicked at the dirt. "If he had known what it meant, he wouldn't have let this happen to his lands in the first place." Gerin kicked again. "I wouldn't have had to fight him. In another few years, all this would have fallen under its own weight."

  "Maybe," Van said. "Or maybe, if he heard the creaking, he would have fought you. If he won, he'd have your lands to ruin over the next twenty years. Even if he lost, he wouldn't have so many fighters to feed."

  Gerin studied him. "That's a cold-blooded way of looking at things. It's more the way I'd look at them than how I'd expect you to."

  "And who's been living beside you in Fox Keep these twenty years and more?" Van returned. He shook his head. "I wouldn't have thought that way when I first came there, not when I swam the Niffet with the Trokmoi shooting arrows at me till I got out of range. I'd spent so many years wandering, I didn't expect I'd ever put down roots." His head went back and forth again. "Never would have thought I'd stay attached to the same woman so long, either."

  "You don't let that worry you, not when you're off someplace where Fand can't see what you're up to."

  "And so what?" Van said. "If I get the itch, by the gods, I scratch it." His chuckle was mordant. "And if I didn't, I'd get no credit for holding back. One campaign we fought over in the southwest, years ago this was, I kept my prong in my breeches the whole time, and when I got back to Castle Fox I said as much to my lady love. What happened? Do you remember what happened, Fox?"

  "Sorry," Gerin answered. "You and Fand have had enough dus
tups that that one doesn't stick in my mind."

  "No, eh? Well, it does in mine. She thought I was lying, is what she thought. That put more fire under her cookpot than she gets when I tell her about all the pretty girls I rumple. So I ask you: what am I supposed to do?"

  "I don't know," the Fox said. As far as he could see, Van and Fand quarreled as much because they enjoyed quarreling as because they really had anything about which to quarrel. He'd suggested as much to the outlander once or twice. Van had agreed with him, which was alarming, and had done exactly nothing to change his ways, which Gerin found even more alarming.

  Dagref trotted by on horseback. He waved to the Fox and to Van. Loping along beside the horse, barely visible over the beast's back, was the fuzzy-bearded youngster Gerin had noticed once or twice before as the army moved south. He didn't wave. Has to be from some keep out in the middle of nowhere, Gerin thought. The king's son isn't far from his own age, so he can be easy with him, but with the king and his old friend-no.

  Van said, "One of these days before long, Kor will be coming with us when we go to war, too. Won't be long, not the way time goes by now."

  "You're right about that," Gerin said. "He'll be something to watch out for on the battlefield, too."

  "That he will," Van said proudly. "My size, or most of it, and Fand's temper, or worse. I tell you the truth, the gods had better help anybody fool enough to stand in his way by the time he's seventeen. And if Maeva were a lad, I'd have two grand warriors to leave behind me when I go." He scratched his chin. "I wonder how many brats I've got that I don't know the first thing about? A few, I shouldn't wonder, but I've never been like Rihwin, ready to keep track of 'em all."

  "Rihwin's almost as good at keeping track of his bastards as Carlun is at keeping track of beans," Gerin agreed. He spotted his fellow Fox not far away, and raised his voice a little: "The only thing Rihwin can't keep track of is Rihwin."

  "Are you speaking to me or of me or against me?" Rihwin asked. "In sooth, I was but enjoying a vision, a memory of days long past, and nights as well, nights spent in the pursuit of knowledge, nights spent comparing the color and bouquet of one glorious vintage against another, and-"