Tale of the Fox gtf-2

by Harry Turtledove

  If swearing by his three chief gods would not bind a Trokm- to the truth, nothing would. Gerin smiled a little when he heard Selatre had asked the same guarantee of Diviciacus: Biton didn't speak through her these days, but she saw plenty clear on her own. "Good enough," the Fox said.

  "I pray it is; I pray you're right," Diviciacus told him. "The priests, they've been edgy of late, indeed and they have. It's as if, with the gods o' the Gradi so near 'em and all, our own gods have taken fear, if you know what I'm saying."

  "I think perhaps I do," Gerin said after a moment's pause. The Gradi prisoners had also boasted of how much stronger their gods were than those of the woodsrunners, and again seemed to know whereof they spoke.

  Diviciacus sent Gerin a keen look. "You know more of this whole business than you let on, I'm thinking." When Gerin didn't answer, the Trokm- went on, "Well, that was ever the way of you. Adiatunnus, he swears you stand behind him and listen when he's haranguing his men."

  "With the way Adiatunnus bellows, I wouldn't need to be that close to overhear him," Gerin said. Diviciacus chuckled and nodded, acknowledging the hit. Gerin was careful not to deny possible occult means of knowledge. The more people thought he knew, the more cautious they'd be around him.

  The one thing he wished as the chariot clattered northward was that he really knew half as much as friends and foes credited him with knowing.

  * * *

  "Are we ready?" Gerin looked back at the throng of chariots drawn up behind him on the meadow by Fox Keep. The question was purely rhetorical; they were as ready as they'd ever be. He waved his arm forward, tapping Duren on the shoulder as he did so. "Let's go!"

  They hadn't gone far before Diviciacus' chariot came up beside Gerin's. "It's a fine thing you do here, Fox, indeed and it is," the Trokm- said. Then his face clouded. "Still and all, I'd be happier, that I would, were you bringing the whole of your host with you and not leaving a part of 'em behind at Castle Fox."

  "I'm not doing this to make you happy," Gerin answered. "I'm not doing it to make Adiatunnus happier, either. I'm doing it to protect myself. If I leave Fox Keep bare and the Gradi come up the Niffet again" — he waved back toward the river- "the keep falls. I don't really want that to happen."

  "And if your men and Adiatunnus' together aren't enough to be beating the Gradi, won't you feel the fool, now?" Diviciacus retorted.

  "Those are the risks I weigh, and that's the chance I take," Gerin said. "If I could bring my whole army, and Adiatunnus', too, down the Niffet against the Gradi, I'd do that. I can't, though. The Gradi control the river, because they have boats beside which ours might as well be toys. And as long as that's true, I have to guard against their taking advantage of what they have. If you don't care for that, too bad."

  "Och, I'd not like to live inside your head, indeed and I wouldn't," Diviciacus said. "You're after having eyes like a crayfish-on the end of stalks, peering every which way at once-and a mind like a balance scale, weighing this against that and that against this till you're after knowing everything or ever it has the chance to happen."

  Gerin shook his head. "Only farseeing Biton has that kind of power. I wish I did, but I know I don't. Seeing ahead's not easy, even for a god."

  "And how would you know that?" Diviciacus said.

  "Because I watched Biton trying to pick out the thread of the future from among a host of might-bes," Gerin answered, which made the Trokm- shut up with a snap. Diviciacus knew that Gerin had made the monsters vanish from the face of the earth, but not how he'd done it or what had happened in the aftermath of the miracle.

  They soon left the Elabon Way and rolled southwest down lesser roads. Serfs in the fields alongside the dirt tracks stood up from their endless labor to watch the army pass. One or two of them, every now and then, would wave. Whenever that happened, Gerin waved back.

  Diviciacus stared at the serfs. "Are they daft?" he burst out after a while. "Are they stupid? Why aren't they running for the woods, aye, and taking the livestock with 'em, too?"

  "Because they know my men won't plunder them," the Fox answered. "They know they can rely on that."

  "Daft," Diviciacus repeated. "I'll not tell Adiatunnus, for himself wouldna credit it. He'd call me drunk or ensorceled, so he would."

  "I had trouble making sense of it when I first came here, too," Van said sympathetically. "It still strikes me strange, but after a while you get used to it."

  "For which ringing endorsement of my ideas I thank you very much," Gerin said, his voice dry as the dust the horses' hooves and chariot wheels raised from the road.

  "Think nothing of it," Van said, dipping his head.

  "Just what I do think of it, and not a bit more," Gerin said.

  Both old friends laughed. Diviciacus listened and watched as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing and seeing. "If any of our Trokmoi, now, bespoke Adiatunnus so," he said, "the fool'd be eating from a new mouth slit in his throat, certain sure he would, soon as the words were out of his old one."

  "Killing people who tell you you're a fool isn't always the best idea in the world," Gerin observed. "Every so often, they turn out to be right." Diviciacus rolled his eyes. That wasn't the way his chieftain handled matters, so, as far as he was concerned, it had to be wrong.

  They came to the keep of Widin Simrin's son late the next day. Widin and Diviciacus greeted each other like old neighbors, which they were, and old friends, which they weren't. "Better you southrons for friends nor the Gradi," Diviciacus told him, and that seemed to suffice.

  Widin had a good-sized garrison quartered at his keep: had Adiatunnus begun the war against Gerin rather than the other way round, those troopers would have done their best to slow the Trokm- advance and buy the Fox time to move down and deal with the woodsrunners. "So we'll really be on the same side as the Trokmoi?" Widin said to Gerin. "Who would have believed that at the start of the year?"

  "Not I, I tell you for a fact, but yes, we will," Gerin replied. "The Trokmoi would rather work with us than with the Gradi, and from what I've seen of the Gradi, I'd rather work with the Trokmoi than with them, too."

  "I haven't seen anything of them, lord prince," Widin said, "but if they're rugged enough to make the Trokmoi cozy up to us like this, they must be pretty nasty customers." He grinned wryly. "I won't be sorry to move out against the Gradi myself, I tell you that much. You go feeding a good-sized crew of warriors for a while and you start wondering whether anything'll be left for you to eat come winter."

  "You don't sing me that song, Widin," Gerin told him. "I sing it to you." His vassal baron grinned and nodded, yielding the point. The Fox had been feeding a lot more warriors for a lot longer than Widin. The Fox had also made the most thoroughgoing preparations for feeding and housing a lot of warriors of any man in the northlands, save perhaps Aragis the Archer-and he would have bet against Aragis, too.

  Ruefully, Widin said, "And now, of course, the whole army guests off me, even if it is for only the one night."

  "I don't see you starving," Gerin observed, his voice mild.

  "Oh, not now," Widin answered. "The apples are harvested, and the pears, and the plums. The animals are getting fat on the good grass. But come the later part of next winter, we'll wish we had what your gluttons will gobble up tonight."

  "Well, I understand that," Gerin said. "The end of winter is a hard time of year for everyone. And Father Dyaus knows I'm happy to see you thinking ahead instead of just living in the now, the way so many do. But if we don't beat the Gradi, how much you have in your storerooms won't matter to anyone but them."

  "Oh, I understand all that, lord prince," Widin assured him. "But since you take so much enjoyment complaining about every little thing, I wouldn't think you'd begrudge me the chance to do the same."

  "Since I what?" The Fox glowered at his vassal, much as if he were serious. "I expect to hear that from Van or Rihwin, not from you."

  "Can't trust anyone these days, can you?" Widin said, now doing a wicked impres
sion of Gerin himself. The Fox threw his hands in the air and stalked off, conceding defeat.

  By the extravagant way Widin fed the army that had descended on his castle, his plea of hunger to come had been a case of averting an evil omen, nothing more. As if to extract some sort of revenge on the lesser baron, Gerin ate until he could hardly waddle off to his blanket. He committed gluttony again the next morning, this time because he knew what sort of country lay ahead.

  The land between Widin's holding and Adiatunnus' territory belonged to no one, even if it was formally under Gerin's suzerainty. The Fox and the Trokm- chieftain had been probing for advantage down there for years; even after giving Gerin homage and swearing fealty, Adiatunnus conducted himself like an independent lord.

  Caught between two strong rivals, most of the peasants who had farmed that land in the days before the werenight were dead or fled now. Fields were going back to meadows, meadows to brush, and brush to saplings. Looking at some pines as tall as he was, Gerin thought, This is how civilization dies. When his army-or Adiatunnus'-wasn't crossing this country (on dirt roads also vanishing from disuse), it belonged more to wild beasts than to men. And it bordered his own holding. That was a profoundly depressing thought.

  Adiatunnus had pushed his border station north and east, toward the edges of Gerin's land. More than once, Gerin had moved against the Trokmoi with an army, routing his enemy's guards and overturning the prevaricating boundary stones they would set up to support their claims. When he and his army came upon the Trokm- guards now, the red-mustachioed barbarians cheered and waved their long bronze swords in the air.

  Laughter rumbled from Van. Turning to Gerin, he said, "There's something you've never seen before, I'll wager."

  "Woodsrunners cheering me?" The Fox shook his head. "The only time I ever thought the Trokmoi would cheer me was after I died."

  Diviciacus rode near enough to hear that. "We tried to arrange it, Fox dear, time and again we did," he said, "and we'd have cheered like madmen if we'd done it. But things being as they are-"

  "Yes, things being as they are," Gerin agreed. Without the Trokmoi, he wouldn't have become baron of Fox Keep, wouldn't have set forth on the path that had made him prince of the north. The woodsrunners had ambushed his father and older brother, putting an end to his hopes of passing his days as student and scholar.

  And, on returning from the City of Elabon to take up the barony, he'd sworn never to stop taking revenge on the barbarians for what they'd done to him and his. Over the years, he'd taken that revenge many times and in many ways. And now he found himself allied to the Trokmoi against a danger he and they both recognized as worse than either was to the other. Did that leave him forsworn?

  He didn't think so. He hoped not. He hoped the spirits of his father and brother understood why he was doing what he was doing. He thought his brother would. Of his father, he was less certain. The Dagref after whom he'd named his first son by Selatre had not been the most flexible of men.

  The Fox shrugged. Regardless of what his father would have thought, he'd chosen this course and would have to see it through. What came afterwards, he'd sort out afterwards.

  He knew the way to the keep Adiatunnus had held as his own since the Trokm- invasion after the werenight. He'd been that way before, with soldiers at his back every time. He'd had to fight his way through Adiatunnus' holding then. The Trokmoi welcomed him and his men now.

  Trokmoi were not the only folk still living on the land, of course. A good many Elabonian peasants remained, serfs toiling for tall, fair overlords now, not for barons of their own race. Whenever he rode past one of their villages, Gerin wondered how much that bothered them. He suspected they cared only how much of their crops their overlords, whoever those overlords were, exacted from them and how much those overlords interfered in the day-to-day routine of their lives.

  He passed a couple of strongpoints he'd burned out in his last serious campaign against Adiatunnus, more than a decade before. One had been rebuilt, the other was still in ruins. Here and there in his holding, ruins remained from the werenight, well before that. The Trokmoi were moving at a pace not too far from his own.

  When night fell, the Elabonians stopped at a village dominated by a stockaded building too large and strong to be a house, too small to be a castle. Several Trokm- warriors dwelt there with their wives and children, plainly to lord it over the Elabonian serfs who lived in the usual huts of wattle and daub. Had Gerin extended his dominions to the forests of the Trokmoi north of the River Niffet, he might have used a similar system, save with Elabonians controlling woodsrunners.

  Golden Math, just past first quarter, floated high in the south when the sun set. Pale, slow-moving Nothos, full or a day past, rose in the east during evening twilight. Elleb, approaching third quarter, would not come up till nearly midnight, while Tiwaz was too close to the sun to be seen.

  "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 Adiatunnus had taken for his own. They'd fought their way in among the houses there, but never had managed to force their way into the keep. With both Trokmoi-men and women-and monsters opposing them, they'd lost men too fast to make the assault worthwhile even if it did succeed.

  And now here they were, more than ten years later, coming up to Adiatunnus' fastness once more. This time, no monsters fought them; the monsters, all save Geroge and Tharma, were back in the trackless caverns under Biton's temple at Ikos. The Trokmoi-men and women-stood in the narrow, rutted streets of the village, shouting for the Elabonians till their voices grew raw and hoarse. The drawbridge to the keep was down, and Adiatunnus rode out from it to greet the Fox. The last time Gerin had come this far, the two of them had done their best to kill each other, and they'd both nearly succeeded.

  "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.

  Adiatunnus halted his own car perhaps twenty feet from Gerin's. He got out of it and walked half the distance before going down on one knee in the roadway. The watching Trokmoi sighed.

  Gerin jumped down from his chariot and hurried over to Adiatunnus. The Trokm- chieftain clasped his hands together, Gerin covered them with his own, and they went through the same rituals of homage and fealty in person as they had by proxy through Diviciacus.

  Speaking the Trokm- tongue so his folk could follow, Adiatunnus said, "I want no misunderstanding, now. You are my lord, and I own it's so. What you're after ordering me and mine to do against the Gradi, that we'll do, and promptly, too. You'll find us no more trouble than any of your other vassals."

  The Fox noted Adiatunnus' reservation-he would take orders against the Gradi, but hadn't said anything about other orders. Gerin decided not to make an issue of it. Maybe the alliance against the new invaders would lead to better things later, maybe it wouldn't. For now, he wouldn't argue that it was necessary.

  Also speaking the woodsrunners' language, he said, "Gla
d we are to have your valiant warriors with us in the fight. We'll teach the Gradi they chose the wrong foes when they decided to trifle with us."

  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.

  Adiatunnus waved back toward his keep, whose drawbridge remained down. "Come in, Fox, come in, and the men of you, too. I'll feast the lot of you till you're too full to futter, that I will." Maybe he'd been watching Gerin's troopers eyeing the Trokm- women, too.

  "For my men, I thank you," Gerin said. Save for insults on the battlefield, this was the first time he'd exchanged words with Adiatunnus. The Trokm- chief was close to his own age, a couple of digits taller and a good deal thicker through the shoulders and through the belly, with a balding crown and long, drooping fair mustaches now going gray. He wore a linen tunic and baggy woolen trousers, both dyed in checks of bright and, to Gerin's eye, clashing colors.

  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."