The Fox

by Sherwood Smith

  But someone knew enough to ring the alarm bells.

  And so the guards responded by converging—some of them squishing miserably—on the main court behind the gate, whose massive bar would take ten men to lift.

  Inda and Fox hooked fingers and toes into the crosspieces holding together the tall, rough wooden spars that made up the gate, not stopping until they hoisted themselves to the top of the wall. Inda still fizzed with wheezy laughter.

  Arrows thunked close by. One hissed a finger’s-breadth from Inda’s ear, as whoever had rung the bell shouted orders in an attempt to marshal the swarming, yelling guards into a defensive line.

  Fox glanced outside the wall. The road leading up to the palace was empty, dark, silent.

  They unslung their bows, shook out their arrows onto the granite wall top, and began target practice on the half-dressed men down below, neither shooting to kill. Half were mere civs, and as for the guards, it was far more insulting just to drop them with an arrow in shoulder, knee, butt.

  “Eggs?” Fox asked as a squad of men lumbered with a peculiar gait into position behind a wagon, driven by a screaming officer. The peculiar gait of men with egg sliming the insides of their boots.

  Inda’s wheezing ceased. His grin widened, and then with shocking suddenness his chest heaved on a gulping sob. Once, twice: crashing, lung-deep sobs. Inda whooped his breath in and held it, teeth gritted, as he fought for control.

  Fox stared, helpless and appalled. Then swung around and glared down at the empty road as though he could will the last part of his plan into materialization.

  “They’re readying for a run,” Inda mumbled, snuffling.

  Fox whipped his bow up, smacked an arrow into place.

  They loosed arrows in drilled succession, each shooting as the other drew, and each finding his mark.

  The advance line staggered, straggled, and as the last arrow whacked into the commander’s left shoulder a palm’s-breadth from his heart, they broke and ran back for cover, despite the cursing and shouting of the staggering officer.

  For a moment the court was empty.

  “Not my idea, eggs,” Inda said, his words quick, his voice husky. “But I think Dogpiss’d like it. D’you think he’s a ghost? I hope he’s not a ghost. I don’t want him alone, bound to an island where no one goes, I want to think of his spirit in the sun, or beyond the sun, where spirits go out of the world, or the world that holds worlds, but then I wonder if he sees me. N-not—uh.” Inda stuttered to a halt.

  Dogpiss? Academy nickname. Has to be. Related to his exile?

  Below in the courtyard the officer ventured out, one hand gripping the arrow in his shoulder, and with the other he violently motioned forward a new squad.

  Inda shot. Fox shot.

  Inda blinked rapidly as Fox cast a despairing glance back at the empty road.

  “You know what the worst of it all was?” Inda began again in a running stream of words. “Wafri got tight against the seam when watching ’em scrag me. I could see it, what kind of madness is that, but Tau once said sex is like a persimmon pie, and I’ve always wondered what a per-per- persimmon was.” Stop. Blink-blink.

  Fox thought, I uncorked this bottle, better let it pour. “Persimmon pie being great if you like it—”

  “—but poison if you don’t. That’s what Tau said.”

  And I thought it a family saying—no. “Carry on.”

  But Inda had control again, mouth a rictus, teeth shut. As if his break hadn’t happened, though tears glistened on his cheeks, he kept shooting until the guards retreated behind cover, occasionally popping out for return shots. They were down to a last handful of arrows.

  Inda frowned down at one, and was off again. “What is the tie between sex and scragging—even Kepa wasn’t that bad—though we were only boys—no sex—anyway Kepa never petted anyone—that shit asked what my favorite color was! And I had to eat from his hand—which is why I got so scrawny.” He clapped his elbow briefly against his ribs. “Brought all this fancy food, but I gagged on it. He hated that! He wanted me to beg for it. Tonight I was supposed to drink kinthus again and talk about when I was a boy. Why?”

  Fox checked the road. Empty. “You say it—hear it said— but what do you think a soul-eater is?”

  Inda’s body jerked as if he’d been struck.

  You also hear “My blood turned cold” said and think it a failure of imagination until it happens. Fox took aim with care. Shot the hat off a steward who had been sidling around a heap of hay. Then glanced back at the blue-shadowed road. Empty. “I hope no one thinks to waken the mage,” he said when he knew his voice would remain steady. “I don’t know what they’re capable of.” Twang! “Possessing someone’s body is simple, relatively brief, and requires at least minimal cooperation; the desire to possess someone’s mind and spirit—to take and use it, especially against someone’s will—is what Norsunder is about. Ho! Another charge.”

  “I hope they take him,” Inda said, and shot a big, burly guard in the chest. It was the first deliberate kill he made.

  I’ll wager my life that was one of Wafri’s torturers. He glanced back again, and this time breathed easy. “Ah! Not too early.”

  Up the road behind them trotted two horses—evidence that there were indeed honest Ymarans in the world. Though the cost had been two rubies from Fox’s seriously diminished pocketful of gemstones, the boy Fox had bribed had indeed sent the saddled and loaded mounts, and then vanished as agreed.

  While Inda loosed the remainder of his arrows—two of them deliberate kills, as a pair of the torturers charged the gate—Fox unwound his cord from his waist and then swiftly secured it. On his word Inda let fly his last arrow, and then the two of them rapidly descended the rope, Inda wincing and grunting all the way down.

  When they reached the ground, Fox regretfully left the cord dangling—sailors’ habit, spare your cord. You always need it. But there was no retrieving it now.

  They mounted up, both feeling the pull of muscles they had not used for riding since childhood.

  Inda slewed around, eyes wide and manic. “I won’t ask how you managed that. But they have horses in there too, even if they have to run to the other end to get ’em.”

  “Where they will find every one of them hobbled by chain.”

  Finishing touches.

  Inda snickered. They rode away, Fox reflecting with satisfaction that the fire ought to light their way for a considerable distance, and Inda wheezing as his head drooped lower and lower over the horse’s neck.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  AS usual, directly before dawn Jeje and Tau met on the roof above her room and they worked their way through their drills.

  By now they were so used to one another as practice partners they thought nothing of the faint blue glitter of honed steel flashing a hair’s-breadth from neck or heart. They threw one another and exchanged reports; they dropped, kicked, spun, rolled, and discussed the day’s plans.

  There had been one very bad near breach when Tau told her about Vedrid, the Iascan spy. He’d expected to be congratulated on his effective handling of the situation.

  Jeje was furious. I can understand the sailors not telling me, she’d said. Though all their reasoning was wrong. But you? And the worst of it is, I probably could have found out more from this Vedrid than you did.

  Tau reacted with surprise, disbelief, then embarrassment. Only the last one lingered—the rest vanished in his habitual readiness to laugh at himself. But I’m the best there is at getting information, he’d tried to explain.

  Yes, from someone sitting across from you at a table, or in bed, or anywhere but lying there half dead. You probably scared him witless.

  Inarguable. Probably true. Jeje was indeed hearing things in the ordinary way of conversation among ordinary people, who chanced to be somewhere in the vicinity of surprising things. Seafarers spoke freely in front of Jeje without her having to employ subtle arts of coaxing.

  So he told her everything
about the Comet, including what he’d surmised about her background. And as the sun touched the tumbled line of clouds in the east, revealing a murky, pink-streaked sky, she gave her brief nod of approval.

  “We’ve got people, we’ve got information,” she said. “Now what we need to work on is getting ships.”

  When the full light of morning revealed how bad Inda looked, Fox urged his horse out of the stream they’d been riding in to obliterate their trail, and led it up onto a grassy bank under a sheltering oak. “I think we’ll halt here.”

  Inda did not speak. He slid off his horse, stumbled a few steps, and then dropped down onto the grass under the rusty-leafed oak. Fox unloaded the saddle packs of supplies, freed the horses of their tack and, regretfully, let them go. He stashed the horse gear deep into a thick, thorny shrub.

  “Can still see the smoke,” he said, pointing eastward. “I’m going to investigate. You stay here. Sleep. Eat. Plenty of stores in the bags. We’ll talk about our next step when I return.” He cast a cloak over Inda, looked down at those swollen knuckles, and added, “Don’t lose this.”

  On a flattish rock he carefully set a plain gold band.

  Inda was beyond speech. He flicked his fingers interrogatively, and Fox said, “It’s one of a pair of summons rings. Amazing, the things we do not have in Iasca Leror. Not that we’d ever need magic rings for a couple of armies to find one another. I can find you again by that ring, so if for some reason you must move, take it with you.”

  He slid the other ring onto his finger and then faded into the forest shadows, leaving Inda to lie back, staring up at the blue sky through the autumn-bronzed leaves. Presently the tears came again, burning from his eyes and running into his ears, until he drifted into sleep.

  Commander Durasnir walked around the smoking ruin of Limros Palace as Rajnir’s own Erama Krona efficiently directed the regular marine guards in sorting people, animals, and in fire dousing.

  The palace had been built at levels cut into a hill. Durasnir mounted to the highest wall to survey the countryside through his spyglass. He saw no sign of the mysterious hordes of attackers, who—after exhaustive questions—apparently numbered exactly two. At least only two were seen.

  One by one the task captains reported to him: Ymaran guards secured and questioned; the wounded in the process of being treated. Fires mostly out. Horses safely picketed alongside the river on the other side of the palace. Servants gathered in a court well away from the burning central residence. Everyone awaiting his orders.

  Ulaffa, as senior Yaga Krona, made his way through the laboring crews below, peering around. Durasnir climbed back down and met him in the central court.

  “Penros has confessed,” Ulaffa said, his grizzled white hair lifting in the wind. “He’s under the influence of the kinthus if you wish to talk to him.”

  “What’s the gist?”

  “They did indeed have Elgar—Indevan of Iasca Leror— as a prisoner here. Wafri was personally conducting torture in order to force him to raise and lead Ymar against us.”

  “Penros was a part of this plot?” Durasnir asked.

  “He was to be given Dag Erkric’s chambers and books.”

  Erkric, whose whereabouts were unknown.

  Durasnir would consider that later. Right now Rajnir was busy with Wafri, who had apparently crept away from one of their orgies at dawn in order to transfer home. Too late.

  Durasnir and Rajnir had transferred in not long after to discover Wafri standing in the main court of his burning palace, the majority of his guards lying wounded around him, his people in a panic, everyone screaming of Elgar the Fox.

  Durasnir remembered that stricken face, the naked terror as Wafri gibbered about a surprise attack. I’ll wager you were surprised.

  “Did Penros lie about the recorded interview as he did about the wounded warrior?” Durasnir asked.

  “Yes,” Ulaffa said. “He had the last page changed. There was no assassination plot. Elgar said he was here to gather information on us preparatory to a fleet attack to take back the strait. The substituted page of false information, Armor Chief Skir murdered—all were on the count’s specific orders.” Ulaffa paused, then added in a low voice, “The guard they claimed killed Elgar in Skir’s defense was the murderer, which explains the terror that Dag Signi saw in him.”

  Durasnir grunted. “He has to know what we do to anyone who kills one of us.” Plots—torture—the prospect of a grim execution of a man following orders—the orders and plots from a young, smiling liar pretending friendship. It all made him feel unclean.

  He turned his gaze back to the gate.

  Two. With a hundred of those distinctive spiral-fletched arrows: fifty each. The Ymarans—sixty injured in all, three dead—did not seem to appreciate the exquisite humiliation of those deliberately aimed arrows. Judging from the terrible aim evidenced by the bristling of spent arrows on the gate below where the two had sat, they probably thought those wounds accidental.

  Durasnir was willing to wager his rank the three who’d been shot dead were Wafri’s torturers.

  He gazed up along the length of the palace, now mostly blackened ruins. Two men—and one of them in bad condition after how many days of Wafri’s perverse attentions?

  A sea battle against such an adversary! A truly worthy opponent.

  He mentally reviewed the landscape as seen from the wall—no sign of retreat, the sea in proximity. Whoever had rescued Elgar would have a ship lying in one of the hundreds of inlets along the coast. A single spasm of regret tightened his heart, that he would not speak to Elgar. Torture! Disgusting. Reprehensible. Had Elgar been his own prisoner, he would have been given due honor. Durasnir indulged himself with brief, fanciful images: sharing the predawn meditation watch together, discussing strategy and tactics in theory then comparing battles they had seen, and battles they had studied; and when the king gave the inevitable command, Elgar would have gotten a clean death with all Venn lined up in formal battle dress, weapons polished, in respect to a worthy enemy.

  Instead we will meet in battle. A clear and worthy goal.

  So. He turned his attention back to the waiting mage. “We will not waste time and effort in a search—a second search, which would not do us credit.”

  Ulaffa pressed his palms together in silent but heartfelt agreement.

  “I shall inform the prince that we’re too close to the coast, and therefore too late. Elgar is surely out on the sea by now, in one of the hundreds of fishing craft still lurking about after the last search. I expect we shall see him leading a fleet before long.” Durasnir waved a hand. “Get all the information you can from Penros, write up a report for Dag Erkric as well as the prince. I leave Penros to you dags to deal with as you will. Rajnir will deal with Wafri. I am returning to Jaro to order the fleet to readiness.”

  “There’s no search,” Fox said.

  Inda had woken this latest time to low clouds, the cool, moist air that presaged rain.

  Fox had been gone two nights and a day; Inda could count that far back, though he did not remember the ride to this quiet little grove of autumnal-colored oaks.

  “No search?” Inda repeated. “Why not?”

  Fox flicked out his hand. “No idea. The palace is empty, a ruin. The Venn appear to have marched everyone away. So they have no use for the Fire Sticks or some of the other things I scavenged. Like Wafri’s jewelry box.” He hefted his bag. “I’ll strip the gemstones off, and bury the gold— the pieces might be well known. Gems are just gems.”

  A brief, vivid image of those rings on Wafri’s hands made Inda flinch. “As long as I don’t have to touch any of it.”

  Fox eyed him for a moment, then said, “But first I will boil water and steep you some listerblossoms and willow bark.”

  Inda sat up cautiously. Though his joints still ached, a day and a half of sleep had helped. He was even hungry.

  “I take it you told him about the treasure, then?” Fox asked. “If you want to wash off your pris
on stink in the stream, I found you some local duds.” He held up a laborer’s smock and some bag-kneed, patched trousers. He himself wore a similar outfit. “No one will look twice at us.”

  “Wafri never asked about treasure. Nor did the mage,” he added, “when I drank the kinthus and blabbed everything else.”

  Fox snorted. “What rotten interrogators! And how much kinthus did they give you?”

  “I don’t know. That first day. He was going to do it again, right before you came.”

  Fox shook his head. “Too much at the amounts they use for interrogation used too often and your mind never comes back.”

  “I didn’t know it could kill you.”

  Fox lifted a shoulder. “You probably haven’t read any of the records of Norsunder’s attack on the morvende, several centuries ago. My mother only has one antique record on brown, crackling paper, come down through my family’s marriage with the Deis. They used to use kinthus in some kind of magic ritual. Supposedly could hear one another mind to mind.” He tapped his forehead. “The way the Old Sartorans did. Again supposedly. I think that was the hyperbole of history—like they were all bigger and smarter and handsomer and more powerful than we are now . . . yet they lost Old Sartor.” He snorted. “Anyway apparently using kinthus and magic killed more mages than it helped with the hypothetical mental powers. What else did you keep from your interrogators?”

  “Didn’t keep anything.” Inda looked away. “But they didn’t ask about the treasure—or about you, if you’re coming around to that.”

  Fox laughed silently again, and then produced a small flat pan. “Look what I found! Along with some of the spices in the abandoned kitchen. And some of our chickens who flew away flew back to their coop and were sitting in there as if nothing had happened, busy laying eggs. A few of the outlying buildings were only scorched. So we’ve got enough supplies here to rest for as long as you like before we need to scavenge again.”

  Inda had already decided what he wanted to do, but he wasn’t going to talk about that yet.