Fox and Empire

by Harry Turtledove

  North of the town, he had two choices left: he could fall back to the top of the valley and try to break out through the rugged hills to either side, or he could swing to the west and take the one narrow, winding road through the ancient wood that lay between the valley and the Elabon Way. Without hesitation, he swung his men to the west.

  "Stay on this path!" he shouted to the warriors. "By all the gods, and by farseeing Biton most especially, stay on this path!"

  "What other path could they go on, Fox?" Van said. "There's only the one, after all. We've been along it, going east and west, often enough to know."

  "Take another look," Gerin suggested.

  Van did, and his eyes widened. As soon as he'd finished staring to either side, he stared at Gerin. "I'm not daft," the outlander said. " I know I'm not daft that particular way, anyhow. If you tell me there used to be half a dozen roads climbing up toward the forest, I'll call you a liar to your face. I know better. They didn't used to be here."

  "Unless I'm the one who's gone mad, they weren't here yesterday," Gerin answered. "That doesn't mean they're not here now, though." He raised his voice to shout again: "Stay on this road, men! No matter what happens, stay on this road!"

  "How do you know this is the right one, Father?" Dagref asked.

  Gerin gave him a harried look. "I don't," he answered in a low voice. "But I think it is, and that will have to do." He let out another yell "Stay on this road, by the gods!"

  "But, lord king, they're outflanking us!" one of his men cried in a frightened voice. The trooper pointed to either side. Sure enough, Swerilas the Slippery, with the luxury of numbers, was dividing his force, sending parts of it along the new paths that had appeared to either side of the one on which Gerin and his men traveled. Never having been in the valley of Ikos before, Swerilas did not, could not, know they were new.

  "Stay on the path!" Gerin shouted again. He looked ahead. The wood was getting closer and closer. A few imperials-enough to plug the gap should his army try to reverse its course-followed the men of the northlands along the road they were using. Most, though, hurried along the other paths that led into the wood.

  Van chuckled, but even the bluff outlander sounded a little nervous now. "I know what Swerilas is thinking," he said. "I know just what he's thinking, the son of a pimp."

  "So do I," Gerin said. "He's thinking these roads will all come together inside the forest. He's thinking he'll rush men along some of them, get ahead of us, cut us off, and wreck us once and for all. If you look at things from his point of view, it's a good plan. It's better than a good plan, in fact. Or it would be."

  "Aye," Van said in a hollow voice. "It would be."

  As he spoke, Dagref drove the chariot in under the trees. It was one of the last cars that belonged to the men of the northlands to enter the wood west of the valley of Ikos. "Stay on the path," Gerin called to the riders and chariot crews ahead. "For your lives, stay on the path! Ride through to the end of the wood, and we'll see what happens then."

  He hoped they heard him. He hoped they could hear him. He didn't know, not for certain. Sound had a different quality here under these great, immeasurably ancient trees. The rattle and squeak of the chariot axle, the clop of the horses' hooves, seemed distant, attenuated, as if not quite of this world. He could hardly hear the noise from other cars at all.

  Light changed, too. As it filtered down through the branches interlaced overhead, it became green and shifting, making distances deceptive and hard to gauge. Gerin imagined seeing underwater would be something like this. The green was not the usual shade it would have been in a forest, either. The Fox could not have said how it was different, but it was. He noticed that whenever he entered this strange place. Maybe it was because so many of the trees and bushes in this place grew nowhere else in the world. But maybe, too, it was because the rest of the world did not fully impinge on this place.

  Gerin tapped Dagref on the shoulder. "Stop the car," he said.

  His son obeyed. The last few chariot crews who had been behind them went past. The men in those cars gave Gerin curious and alarmed looks. Dagref looked curious, too, and perhaps a little alarmed. "If we wait here very long, Father, the imperial vanguard will be be upon us," he said.

  "Will they?" Gerin shook his head. "You may be right, but I don't think so. Listen."

  Obediently, Dagref cocked his head to one side. So did Van. So did the Fox. He could hear, ever more faintly, his own men hurrying west through the old and haunted wood. That was all he could hear, but for a few soft padding noises from beasts he had heard before but of which he had never seen anything save, once or twice, green eyes.

  "Where are the imperial whoresons?" Van sounded indignant. "They should be rattling along close behind us. Dagref is right; they ought to be coming upon us any time now. And they're racing along those other paths, too, the funny ones to either side of us. We should hear them there, too. By the gods, how could we miss 'em? But I don't hear a bloody thing." He dug a finger in his ear, as if that might help. " Where are they?"

  "I don't know." Gerin didn't hear the imperials, either. As Van said, he should have. Nor could he hear his own men, not any more. All he heard now was his own breathing, that of Dagref and Van, and the horses' panting and the jingle of their harness. "Turn back," he told his son. "Swing the chariot around and go back toward Ikos."

  "I will, Father," Dagref said, "but only if you're sure you want me to."

  "Go on," Gerin said. Shaking his head a little, Dagref flicked the reins and clucked to the horses. He was obviously reluctant. So were the animals. They rolled their eyes and snorted and flicked their ears. But they obeyed Dagref, and he obeyed Gerin. The chariot turned on the path, which was barely wide enough to let it do so, and rolled back toward the east.

  It did not roll far. No sooner had it rounded the first turn in the road than there was no more road. Trees and bushed blocked the way, looking as if they'd been growing there for the past hundred years. Dagref stared. "How could we have come up this path if there's no path to come up?"

  Before Gerin could answer, Van said, "The trees in this wood aren' t to be trusted, and that's a fact. They move around some kind of wayI've seen it before. Never like this, though. Never like this."

  "He's right," the Fox said. "I've never seen it like this, either, though, because…" His voice trailed off. Something was watching him from the cover of the bushes. He couldn't tell what-or who-it was. He couldn't even make out its eyes, as he could sometimes spot those of the strange creatures that dwelt inside this haunted wood. But he knew it was there.

  Something passed from it to him-and to Dagref and Van. It wasn't a message in words. Had it been, though, it would have required only two: go away. Dagref swung the chariot back toward the west. Now the horses seemed glad to run. They scurried away from that new-risen barrier. Gerin blamed them not in the least.

  Softly, Van said, "I wonder what's going on behind those trees. I wonder what's going on other places in the forest. Something quiet, but not something, I'd guess, that's making the imperials very happy."

  "I'd say you're likely right," Gerin agreed. "No matter how slippery Swerilas the Slippery is, I think he's just run into something he's not going to be able to slip out of again."

  "I wish I knew what was happening to the imperials," Dagref said.

  He had every bit of Gerin's relentless itch to know. He had only a small part of his father's years to temper that itch. Still, Gerin found the right question to ask: "Do you want to know badly enough to step off the road?"

  Dagref thought that over, then shook his head. He didn't spend much time thinking, either.

  Gerin wondered what would happen if, quite suddenly, the road ahead closed off as the road behind had done. Whatever it was, he didn't think he would be able to do much about it. He hoped it would be quick.

  But then he heard the rattle and squeak of chariots in front of him. Without his saying a word, Dagref urged the horses up to a quicker trot. They soon
caught up with the cars at the rear of his force. The men in those chariots exclaimed to Gerin and his companions. "Lord king!" one of them said. "We didn't think you'd be coming this way again when you stopped there."

  "Well, here I am," the Fox answered, determinedly making his voice sound as normal as he could. "Now, are you glad or sorry?"

  "Oh, glad, lord king!" the trooper said, and others echoed him. " How far behind are the imperials, would you say?"

  Dagref and Van both looked at Gerin. He, in turn, looked for the best reply he could give. "Farther than you'd think," he said at last, and then, liking the sound of the words, repeated them: "Aye, farther than you'd ever think."

  The warriors took the literal meaning and missed his tone. "That's good," one of them said. "Maybe the bastards'll take a wrong turning and get lost in these stinking woods."

  "Maybe they will," Gerin said, again with irony his men did not catch. When he spoke again, though, he was not being ironic at all: "I only hope we don't get lost in them ourselves."

  "Don't see how we could," a trooper said. "It's just the one road, and it looks like it runs straight on through. Doesn't get much simpler than that." Gerin didn't say anything. He and Van and Dagref looked at one another again. Then that trooper spoke once more, in puzzled tones: "I wonder what happened to the rest of the imperials, the ones who went down those other paths."

  "So do I," Gerin said solemnly. "So do I."

  He was relieved when the trooper turned out to be right: the road stayed straight, and the men of the northlands emerged from the wood into bright afternoon sunshine. Rihwin, who had been one of the first men out, was forming them into a line of battle to resist the imperials. "If we hit them hard," he was shouting when Gerin came out of the wood, "we'll have the effective advantage of numbers, for most of them will still be back under the trees."

  "Are you going to tell him, Father?" Dagref asked softly.

  Gerin shook his head. "I don't know for a fact, not yet," he said. "The event will tell better than I could, anyhow."

  Ferdulf came flitting over. "Do you know that I had to ride in a chariot like an ordinary mortal all the way through those ugly woods?" he demanded. "Well? Do you?"

  "You seem to have survived," Gerin answered dryly. Ferdulf glared, then floated off in a snit.

  The army waited, and waited, and waited. At last, as the sun began to set, the troopers made camp. No imperials came out of the wood, then or ever.

  **

  When morning came, the Fox rode into the forest again. He had no trouble traversing it. It seemed as normal as it ever did, perhaps even a little closer to normal than he'd ever known it before. Or perhaps the strangeness that dwelt within was sated for a time.

  Presently, Van said, "We're farther in now than we were yesterday when we turned around and the track was gone, aren't we?"

  "Aye, I think so," Gerin answered, and Dagref nodded. After a moment, the Fox added, "It's still here now. Or rather, it's here again now. Anyhow, it's as if the thing never went away, isn't it?"

  "Isn't it, though?" Van fixed Gerin with an accusing stare. "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"

  "This?" Gerin shook his head. "I had no idea this would happen. I did hope something would happen if the imperials came into this forest, and I was lucky enough to be right."

  "Not, if the imperials came into this forest," Dagref said. "The proper phrase is, if the imperials came into this wood."

  "What in the five hells difference does it make?" Van said. "The forest-the wood. So what? You're not a bard, to complain the one doesn't scan and the other does." He paused. Dagref looked very smug but didn't say anything, rare restraint for a lad his age. Gerin didn' t say anything, either. That extended silence warned Van he was missing something. Though not quite so quick as either Gerin or Dagref, he was nobody's fool. After a moment, he snapped his fingers. "The oracle!"

  Dagref grinned. Gerin just nodded. "Aye, the oracle," he said.

  Van slapped him on the back, almost hard enough to pitch him out of the chariot. "You sneaky son of a whore," he said in admiring tones. "You sneaky son of a whore. When the Sibyl talked about `bronze and wood,' I thought sure she meant swords and spears and arrowheads on the one hand and chariots on the other. Who wouldn't have thought that?"

  "It's what I thought first, too, and I'm not ashamed to admit as much," Gerin said. "And we kept fighting the imperials, and they kept kicking us in the teeth. It's not surprising, when you get down to itthey had twice as many men as we did, near enough."

  "Nothing like being proved wrong over and over again to make you think you might have misinterpreted an oracle," Dagref observed, sounding appallingly like his father. "You had already fulfilled one condition of the verse, when Rihwin summoned Mavrix but the god refused to aid us."

  "Even so," Gerin said, nodding.

  "One piece of the verse still puzzles me, though," Dagref said. " `They snap and float and always trouble'? What on earth was the farseeing god talking about there?"

  Gerin looked at Van. The outlander was looking back at him. He couldn't have said which of them started laughing first. Dagref let out an indignant snort. Laughing still, Gerin said, "That part of the oracular response seemed pretty plain to me, even at the time."

  "To me, too," Van added.

  "Well, I don't follow it," Dagref said, getting angrier by the moment. "And furthermore, let me tell you-"

  "No, let me tell you," the Fox broke in. "You're doing the snapping now. You don't float, but someone you know does."

  Dagref stopped and stared. "Ferdulf and me?" he said in a voice much smaller than the one he usually used. Gerin nodded. Dagref's eyes got even wider. "How did the god find a place for Ferdulf and me in his prophecy?"

  Van laughed. "You're not the most promising material, lad, but there's no accounting for what a god's liable to do."

  Dagref turned his head to give the outlander a dirty look over his shoulder. He opened his mouth. By the expression on his face, Gerin knew what he was going to say: something along the lines of, You may not think I'm so much, but your daughter has different ideas.

  Without the least hesitation, Gerin kicked Dagref in the ankle. Instead of saying what he'd been about to say, Dagref let out a startled yip. "On this road of all roads," Gerin said, "you'd better keep your eyes ahead of you and your mind on what you're doing-and nowhere else."

  He couldn't have been much less subtle if he'd walloped Dagref over the head with a branch. For a wonder, Van didn't notice that he was giving a ponderous hint. For an even bigger wonder, Dagref did.

  Then, a moment later, the Fox forgot all about the indiscretion from which he'd saved Dagref. Through the clop of the horses' hooves, though the squeak of the axle and the rattle of the wheels of the car, he caught the noise of another chariot-a chariot headed west, straight toward him.

  "Stop the chariot," he told Dagref, and reached over his shoulder for an arrow. His hand shook as he set the shaft on his bowstring. His heart pounded. Cold sweat burst out on his forehead. After the disaster that had befallen the army of the Elabonian Empire in this haunted wood, who was-who could be-riding through it now? Or was the right question, what could be riding through the haunted wood now?

  On came the other chariot, steady and confident as if it owned not just the road but the rest of the wood, too. Van muttered something under his breath. It wasn't in Elabonian. It wasn't in any language Gerin understood. Beneath his sun-bronzed skin, the outlander was pale. He didn't know who or what was liable to be in that other car, either, and he didn't seem to like any of the possibilities that occurred to him.

  Dagref clutched the whip till his knuckles whitened. "Is it-the master of this place, Father?" he whispered.

  "I don't know," Gerin whispered back. "I don't know if this place has any one master. If it does, I don't know if he's the sort of master who rides in a chariot. But I think we're about to find out."

  Around a slight twist in the path came the other car. Gerin
, Dagref, and Van all shouted the instant they spotted it. The driver of the other team shouted, too, in horrified surprise. So did his passenger, who threw his hands in the air, bleating, "I yield! Spare me, by the gods!"

  "Why, it's only a couple of imperials," Gerin said in slow wonder. "Did you lugs come into this wood yesterday?" Could they have survived when all their comrades… disappeared?

  But both imperials shook their heads. "By the gods, no!" the passenger said. "We are not fighting men; we are but harmless couriers."

  Gerin stared. The imperial couriers he'd known had been ready-foraughts who delivered their messages come what might. These fellows were a disgrace to the breed-either that, or it had gone badly downhill over the generation during which it hadn't operated north of the High Kirs.

  "And what message were you delivering to Swerilas the Slippery?" he asked. When the couriers hesitated before speaking, he went on, " You can tell me now, or we can take the message pouch off your body and read what's inside it." He aimed his bow at the driver's face. " Which will it be? You haven't got much time to make up your minds."

  Neither courier was armed with anything more than a knife at his belt. They must have thought they were traveling through safe country, and that Swerilas had crushed Gerin by now. The Fox grinned. They hadn't known everything there was to know.

  "We'll talk," the passenger said at once. The driver might have said something different if he hadn't been looking at an arrow from a range almost short enough to make his eyes cross. As things were, he nodded glumly. The passenger went on, "You'll probably like the news anyhow."

  "How do we know till we hear?" Gerin didn't lower the bow. "Speak up."

  And the courier did: "We were sent here to recall both lord Swerilas and lord Arpulo to duties more urgent than suppressing these semibarbarous northlands. All the empire's forces are needed in more vital provinces, for the Sithonians are risen in furious revolt."

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