Wisdom of the Fox gtf-1

by Harry Turtledove

  "—if Ricolf weren't Elise's father. If Elise hadn't up and left you," Van finished for him. "Aye, that does complicate your life, doesn't it?"

  "You might say so," Gerin agreed dryly. "Ricolf's not my vassal. When Elise was with me, there seemed no need, and afterwards I hadn't the crust to ask it of him. Nor has he ever sought my protection; he's done well enough on his own. When Elise was with me, I had a claim on his keep once he died. Now that she's gone, I suppose Duren is the rightful heir: she's Ricolf's only legitimate child, and none of his bastard sons lived."

  "Which means Duren is Ricolf's only grandson, too," Van said. "He'll need to know about the boy disappearing. Or let me put it another way—he'd have cause to quarrel with you if you rode by without saying so much as a word."

  Gerin sighed. "I hadn't thought about it quite like that, but I fear you're right. I'm his guest-friend from years gone by, but it'll be bloody awkward just the same. He thinks Elise never would have run off if I'd done . . . Dyaus, if I'd known what I should have done, I'd have done it. He won't think better of me for letting Duren be kidnapped, either."

  "Captain, you feel bad enough about that all by yourself—you won't hardly notice anyone else piling on a little more."

  "Only you would think of making me feel better by reminding me how bad I feel now." The method was, Gerin admitted to himself, nicely calculated to suit his own gloomy nature.

  Sitting beside him on the wagon's bench, Van stretched and looked about with an almost childlike delight. "Good to be out on the road again," he said. "Fox Keep's all very well, but I like having new things to see every minute or every bend in the road—not that the Elabon Way had many bends in it, but you take my meaning."

  "So I do." The Fox looked eastward. Quick-moving Tiwaz, now a day past first quarter, had raced close to Nothos, whose pale gibbous disk was just rising over the tree-covered hills. He shook his head. Just as Tiwaz gained on Nothos, so troubles seemed to gain on him with every day that passed, and his own pace was too slow to escape them.

  "There's a pleasant thought," Van said when he spoke his conceit aloud. "Tell you what, Fox: instead of sleeping in the open tonight, what say we rest at the next serf village we come upon? They'll have ale there, and you'll be better for drinking yourself drunk and starting off tomorrow with a head that thumps like a drum. Then at least you'll know what ails you."

  "I know what ails me now," Gerin said: "Duren's missing. What I don't know is what to do about it, and that eats at me as much as his being gone." Nevertheless, he went on reflectively, "Headman at the next village south is Tervagant Beekeeper. His ale doesn't have the worst name in the lands I hold."

  Van slapped him on the back, nearly hard enough to tumble him out of the wagon. "The very thing. Trust me, Captain, you'll be better for a good carouse."

  "That's what Rihwin thought, and he ended up with his robe round his ears and his pecker flapping in the breeze."

  Even so, the Fox reined in when they rolled up to Tervagant's village. The headman, a nervous little fellow who kept kneading the front of his tunic with both hands as if it were bread dough, greeted the arrival of his overlord with ill-concealed alarm. "W-what brings you so far south, l-lord prince?" he asked.

  "My son's been stolen," Gerin answered flatly. Tervagant's eyes widened. The news, the Fox saw, had not reached the village till this moment. He set it forth for the headman and the crowd of listeners—mostly women and children, for the men still labored in the fields—who gathered round the wagon.

  "Lord prince, I pray the gods give you back your boy," Tervagant said. Everyone else echoed his words; noble and peasant shared the anguish a missing child brought. The headman's hands fell away from his tunic. His face, which had been pasty, gained color. Another one who's glad I'm not looking into his affairs, Gerin thought. He wondered just how many village headmen had little schemes of their own in play. One of these days, he'd have to try to find out.

  Not today, though. Tervagant ducked into his hut, came out with a ram's-horn trumpet. He glanced at Gerin for permission before he raised it to his lips. The Fox nodded. Tervagant blew a long, unmusical blast. Some of the peasants looked up from their work in surprise: the sun was low in the west, but not yet brushing the horizon. The men came in happily enough, though.

  "Shall we kill a pig, lord prince?" the headman asked.

  "Aye, if you can without hurting yourselves," Gerin answered. The thought of fat-rich pork made spit rush into his mouth. He added, "The blood from the beast will give the ghosts what they want, too."

  "Some of the blood," Tervagant corrected thriftily. "The rest we'll make into blood pudding." In good times, serfs lived close to the edge. In bad times, they—and the nobles they supported—fell over it. They could afford to waste nothing.

  The pig, like any other, was half wild, with a ridge of hair down its back. Tervagant lured it to him with a turnip, then cut its throat. He had to spring back to keep it from tearing him with its tushes. Blood sprayed every which way as the beast ran through the village until it fell over and lay kicking.

  "That'll keep the ghosts happier than if the blood went into a nice, neat trench," Van said.

  The fire the villagers made was big enough to hold a fair number of ghosts away by itself. They butchered the pig, baked some of it in clay, and roasted the rest. Living up to his ekename, Tervagant went into his hut, came out with a pot full of honey, and glazed some of the cooking meat with it. The delicious aroma made Gerin hungrier than he had been before.

  Along with bread, ale, and berries preserved in more of Tervagant's honey, the pork proved as good as it smelled. A sizable pile of rib bones lay in front of Gerin when he thumped his belly and pronounced himself full. Van had found a pointed rock and was cracking a leg bone to get at the marrow.

  "More ale, lord prince?" one of the peasant women asked.

  "Thank you." He held out the cup they'd given him. She smiled as she filled it for him. She was, he noticed, not bad-looking, with light eyes that told of a Trokmê or two in the woodpile. She wore her hair long and unbraided, which meant she was unmarried, yet she was no giggling maid.

  When he asked her about that, her face clouded. "I had a husband, lord prince, you're right, I did, but he died of lockjaw year before last."

  "I'm sorry," Gerin said, and meant it—he'd seen lockjaw. "That's a hard way to go."

  "Aye, lord prince, it is, but you have to go on," she said.

  He nodded solemnly; he'd had quite a bit of ale by then. "What's your name?" he asked her.

  "Ethelinda, lord prince."

  "Well, Ethelinda," he said, and let it hang there. Now she nodded, as if he'd spoken a complete sentence.

  After supper, Tervagant waved Gerin and Van into a couple of huts whose inhabitants had hastily vacated them. "The gods grant you good night, lord prince, master Van," he said.

  "Me, I intend to give the gods some help," Van said. While he'd been sitting by the fire and eating, a couple of young women had almost come to blows over him. Now he led both of them into the hut Tervagant had given him. Watching that, Gerin shook his head. Too bad no one could find a way to put into a jar whatever the outlander had.

  And yet the Fox was not altogether surprised to find Ethelinda at his elbow when he went into the hut the headman had set aside for him. "You've no new sweetheart?" he asked her. Some lords took peasant women without thinking past their own pleasure. Along with hunger, though, that was the sort of thing liable to touch off an uprising. As usual, Gerin was careful.

  But Ethelinda shook her head. "No, lord prince."

  "Good." Gerin had to duck his head to get into the hut. It was dark inside, and smelled strongly of smoke. He shuffled in, found a straw-filled pallet with his foot. "Here we are."

  The straw rustled as he sank down onto it, then again when Ethelinda joined him there. She pulled her long tunic off over her head; that was all she wore. Gerin took a little longer getting out of his clothes, but not much. By the way she clung to him,
he guessed she'd been telling the truth about having no sweetheart; he didn't think anyone had touched her so for a long time.

  That made him take care to give her as much pleasure as he could. And, at the last moment, he pulled out and spurted his seed onto her belly rather than deep inside her. He thought he would make her grateful, but she said, "What did you go and do that for?" in anything but a happy voice.

  "To keep you from making a baby," he answered, wondering if she'd made the connection between what they'd just done and what might happen most of a year later. Every time he thought he had the measure of serfs' ignorance, he ended up being startled anew.

  Ethelinda knew that connection, though. "I wanted to start a baby," she said. "I hoped I would."

  "You did?" Gerin rolled off her and almost fell off the narrow pallet. "Why?"

  "If I was carrying your baby, I could go up to Fox Keep and you'd take care of me," she answered. "I wouldn't have to work hard, at least for a while."

  "Oh." Gerin stared through the darkness at her. She was honest, anyhow. And, he admitted to himself, she was probably right. No woman had ever claimed he'd put a bastard in her; he was moderate in his venery and, to keep such things from happening, often withdrew at the instant he spent. But he would not have turned away anyone with whom he'd slept.

  Maybe you shouldn't have pulled out, the darker side of him murmured. With Duren gone, you're liable to need an heir, even if he is a bastard.

  He shook his head. Sometimes he got trapped in his own gloom and lost track of what needed doing. He couldn't let that happen, not now. His son depended on him.

  Ethelinda sat up and reached for her tunic. "Do you want me to go away, lord prince?" she asked.

  "We'll be crowded on this bed, but stay if you care to," Gerin answered. "The night's not so warm that we'd be sticking to each other wherever we touched."

  "That's so," she agreed. "I always did like having somebody in a bed with me. That's how I grew up, with all my brothers and sisters and my father and my mother while she was alive, all packed tight together. Sleeping just by yourself is lonely." She tossed the tunic to the dirt floor. "And besides, who knows what might happen later on?"

  What happened was that Gerin slept the night through and didn't wake up till after sunrise, when Ethelinda rose from the pallet and finally did put her tunic back on. When she saw his eyes open, she gave him a scornful glance, as if to say, Some stallion you turned out to be.

  He bore up under that without getting upset; unlike Van, he didn't wear some of his vanity in his trousers. He looked around the peasant hut for a chamber pot. When he didn't see one, he got up, dressed quickly, and went off into the bushes by the village to relieve himself. The reek that rose from those bushes said he was but following the peasants' practice.

  When he came back, Van was standing outside the hut he'd been given, tweedling away on his flute. The two women who'd gone in there with him both clung to him adoringly. His grin was smug. The Fox felt like throwing something at him, but contented himself with saying, "Time we got moving. We can eat as we travel."

  "As you will." Van walked over to the horses, which were tethered to the low branches of a maple. "You harness the leader, then, and I'll see to the off beast. You're so hot to be on the road, the two of us together'll get us on our way in a hurry."

  * * *

  That afternoon, the wagon rolled into the holding of Palin the Eagle. Palin, who had Trokmoi on his western flank, acknowledged Gerin as his suzerain and, because he'd needed the Fox's help more than once against the woodsrunners, was more sincere about his submission than Schild Stoutstaff.

  Not far into Palin's land, Gerin and Van came upon a belt of devastation: for several miles, the Elabon Way and the land to either side of it had been cratered by Balamung's destructive sorcery. Now that weeds and shrubs had had five years to spread over the craters, they looked less raw and hideous than they had when they were new, but the ground remained too broken for farmers to work.

  The Elabon Way itself was in fair repair. That was at Gerin's order; he did not want the main road south from Fox Keep to remain a ruin. The repairs, he knew, did not come up to the standard the Elabonian Empire had set when it pushed the highway north to the Niffet. With the resources of a realm behind them, the imperial artisans had built to last, with a deep bed of gravel and stone, stone flags cemented together, and good drainage to either side of the roadway.

  With peasant levies working in time snatched from their fields, the Fox hadn't had a prayer of matching such construction. Cobblestones and gravel did give the rebuilt stretch of the Elabon Way a surface that, while it was hard on hooves, did not turn into gluey mud whenever rain fell.

  "Strange," Gerin said as the wagon jounced along over the uneven surface: "Whenever I travel this stretch of road, I remember trying to fight my way north over it just before the werenight."

  "You're not likely to forget that," Van agreed. "Me, I find it strange to travel the same stretch of road more than once. I'm too used to seeing something new every day to be easy with the idea of going back and forth, back and forth. Boring to see the same hills on the skyline every day. I want to find out what's on the other side of them."

  "Those hills?" Gerin pointed west. "They shelter Trokmoi and bandits."

  "Not what I meant," Van said. "Captain, you've no poetry in you, and that's a fact."

  "I suppose not. I do the best I can without it, that's all."

  Toward evening, they passed the keep of Raff the Ready, where they'd guested on their last trip south to Ikos. No guesting at Raff's tonight; the keep had fallen to the Trokmoi, and nothing but tumbled ruins remained. Gerin shook his head, remembering the fine meal Raff had fed him. Tonight it would be hard bread and sausage and sour beer and whatever they managed to hunt up to keep the ghosts happy.

  A red fox scurried across the road in front of the wagon. It paused by a clump of hound's-tongue, sitting up on its haunches with its own tongue lolling out as it watched the horses and men. Van tapped Gerin on the shoulder. "Rein in. Let me grab the bow and we'll have our evening's offering."

  "What? Where?" Gerin said.

  Van pointed to the fox. "Right there. Are you blind, not to see it?"

  Gerin stared, first at the fox, then at his friend. "You're enough like a brother to me that I often forget you're not Elabonian born. It's not our custom to kill the animals that give us our ekenames. All my luck, such as it is, would run away if I tried to slay a fox."

  "You wouldn't," Van said. "I would."

  "I'd be abetting you." Gerin shook his head. "In the spirit world, it would count for the other."

  "The spirit world will do more than count if we don't find something with blood in it pretty soon," Van grumbled. "Looks like all the peasants hereabout have fled, and a night in the open with only a fire to hold the ghosts at bay is nothing to look forward to."

  "Something will turn up." Gerin sounded more confident than he felt. But hardly more than a minute after he'd spoken, he spotted a big, fat gray squirrel sitting on the topmost branch of an oak sapling that really should have been cleared away from the side of the road. Now he did rein in. Van had seen the squirrel, too; he was already reaching into the back of the wagon for the bow.

  The bowstring thrummed as he let fly. The squirrel toppled out of the little tree and lay feebly kicking on the mossy ground below. It had stopped moving by the time Van walked over and picked it up. He hefted it in his hand. "It should serve," he said.

  "Not a whole lot of meat, but what there is will be tasty baked in clay," Gerin said. "If you'd shot at the fox, the gods might not have put the squirrel in our path."

  "If they're so grateful for me being good, why didn't they put a nice fat buck in that tree instead of a rat with a fuzzy tail that won't give us two good bites apiece?"

  "Abandoned scoffer," Gerin said, though he had to fight to get words past the laughter that welled up when he pictured an antlered stag perched atop a sapling. "Show some respect for
the gods of Elabon."

  "I give them as much as they deserve and not a bit more," Van said. "I've done enough traveling, seen enough gods to know they're stronger than I am, but I'll be switched if I can see that some of 'em are a whole lot smarter than I am."

  Gerin grunted, remembering Mavrix's long, pink tongue flicking out like a frog as the deity had mocked him and taken away Rihwin's sorcerous ability. "You may have something there, though you'll not be happier for it if some god hears what you've said."

  "Ifsobe that happens, I'll just go on to someplace else where the writ of Elabonian gods doesn't run," Van said. "The thing about gods is, they're tied to the lands of those that worship them, and me"—he thumped his chest—"I'm not."

  "Just like you to be so sure you'd get away," Gerin said, but then something else occurred to him. "Gods can travel, though, as their worshipers do—look at the way the Sithonian deities have taken hold in Elabon. And, I fear, we'll have Trokmê gods rooting themselves here in the northlands now that the woodsrunners have made homes south of the Niffet."

  "You're likely right; I hadn't thought of that," Van said. "Not a crew I'd be happy with as neighbors: their yen for blood is as bad as the one the Trokmoi have themselves. I should know; the woodsrunners were all set to offer me up till I got free of them."

  "Yes, you've told that tale," Gerin said. He shook his head. "One more thing to worry about." Trouble was, he seemed to add to that list almost every day. He halted the wagon. As long as he and Van had an offering for the ghosts for tonight, he wouldn't worry about any of the things on that list till tomorrow.

  * * *

  Splitting the night into two watches rather than three left the Fox and Van yawning as they started traveling a little past sunrise. "I'm slower than I should be, and that's not good," Gerin said. "When we cross Bevon Broken-Nose's holding, we'll need all our wits about us."

  "Bevon Broken-Land would be a better name for him, that's certain," Van said.