Tale of the Fox gtf-2

by Harry Turtledove

"For which I thank you," Adiatunnus said, preening a little. His eyes were an odd shade, halfway between gray and green, and quite sharp. Looking intently at Gerin, he went on, "Ah, but if one o' them ten you could name was Aragis the Archer, now, would you still be telling me the truth?"

  "Not altogether," the Fox admitted, and Adiatunnus preened again, this time admiring his own cleverness. Gerin said, "If you won't let me flatter you now, how am I supposed to fool you later?"

  Adiatunnus stared at him, then started to laugh. "Och, what a wonder y'are, Fox. I've been glad to have you for a neighbor betimes, that I have, for you've taught me more than a dozen duller men could have done."

  "For which I suppose I thank you," Gerin said, at which Adiatunnus laughed again. The Trokm- was telling the truth there. Over the years, Gerin had noted, Adiatunnus, more than any other Trokm- chieftain, had learned from the Elabonians among whom he'd settled. He played far more sophisticated-and far more dangerous-political games than his fellow woodsrunners, most of whom still seemed hardly better than bandits after all these years.

  The game he was playing now was designed to make him seem a good fellow to the Fox and his warriors, and to make them forget they were more likely to be his foes than his friends. When he wanted to use it, he had a huge voice. He used it now, bellowing in Elabonian, "Into the keep, the lot of you. The meat and bread want eating, the beer wants drinking, aye, and maybe the lasses want pinching, though you'll have to find that out your own selves."

  Gerin tried to shout just as loudly: "Any man of mine who drinks so much today that he's not fit to travel tomorrow will answer to me, and I'll make him sorrier than his hangover ever did." That might also keep his men from getting so drunk they started fights, and from being too drunk to defend themselves if the Trokmoi did.

  "The same goes for my warriors," Adiatunnus said in his speech and in Elabonian, "save only that they answer to me first and then the Fox, and they'll care for neither, indeed and they won't."

  Roast meat was roast meat, though the Trokmoi cooked mutton with mint, not garlic. Some of the bread the serving women set before the warriors struck Gerin as odd: thick and chewy and studded with berries. It wasn't what he ate at home, but it was good. He wasn't so sure about the beer. It wasn't ale, nor anything like what he and other Elabonians brewed, coming almost black from the dipper and tasting thick and smoky in his mouth.

  Adiatunnus drank it with every sign of enjoyment, so it evidently was as it was supposed to be. "Aye, we make the pale brew, too," the Trokm- chieftain said when Gerin asked him about it, "but I thought you might be interested in summat new, you having the name for that and all. You roast the malted barley a good deal longer here, you see, so it's nearly burnt, before you make it into the mash."

  "I'll bet the first fellow who brewed this did it by accident, or because he was careless with his roasting," Gerin said. He took another pull and smacked his lips thoughtfully. "After you get used to it, it's-interesting, isn't it? A new way of doing things, as you say."

  "When all this is done, I'll send a brewer to Fox Keep to show you the making of it," Adiatunnus promised.

  "When all this is done, if you're able to send him and I'm able to receive him, I'll be glad to do that." Gerin drained his mug of beer. Getting up to fill it with another dipper of that dark brew seemed the most natural thing in the world, so he did.

  Van had other ideas about what the most natural thing in the world might be. If he got any friendlier with that serving woman-a lively redhead who, Gerin thought, looked a lot like Fand-they'd be consummating their friendship on top of the table, or maybe down in the rushes on the floor.

  Gerin peered around for Duren but didn't see him. He wondered whether his son had found a girl for himself or was just off visiting the latrine. When Duren didn't come back right away, the first guess seemed more likely.

  "A fine-looking lad y'have there," Adiatunnus said, which made the Fox start a little; he wasn't used to anyone save Selatre or sometimes Van thinking along with him. Adiatunnus went on, "Am I after hearing the grandfather of him is a dead corp, the which puts him in line for that barony?"

  "That's so," Gerin agreed. He eyed the Trokm- with genuine respect. "You have your ear to the ground, to have got the news so soon."

  "The more you know, the more you can do summat about," Adiatunnus answered, a saying that might have come straight from the Fox's lips.

  Gerin peered down into the black and apparently bottomless mug of beer. When he looked up again, Duren was coming back into the great hall, a smug look on his face. That eased Gerin's mind; after the boy had been kidnapped when he was small, the Fox wasn't easy about letting him out of his sight.

  Turning to Adiatunnus, Gerin said, "It will be strange, riding alongside you instead of at you."

  "It will that." Adiatunnus knocked back the black beer in his mug at a single gulp, then sat there slowly shaking his head. "Strange, aye. But you southrons, now, you've no fear of the Gradi, have you?"

  "No more than I do of you," Gerin answered. "By the fight they made with us, they're brave and they're strong, but so are you Trokmoi-and so are we."

  "I canna tell you what it is, Fox," Adiatunnus said, his features sagging in dismay, "but when we face 'em, summat always goes wrong for us. And when you get to the point where you expect to have a thing happen, why, happen it will."

  "Yes, I've seen that," Gerin said. He remembered Kapich, his Gradi prisoner, sneering at the Trokm- gods. Whether that had anything to do with the woodsrunners' bad luck against the Gradi, he couldn't have said, but the notion wouldn't have surprised him.

  Adiatunnus said, "When we go against the Gradi, now, how will you work it? Will you mix our men together like peas and beans in the soup pot, or do you aim to keep 'em apart, one group from the other?"

  "I've been chewing on that very thing," Gerin said, noting with some relief that Adiatunnus really did seem to accept his command. "I'm leaning toward mixing: that way, it's less likely your warriors or mine will think the other bunch has run off and left 'em in the lurch. How do you feel about it?"

  He asked for more than politeness' sake; Adiatunnus had proved himself no fool. The Trokm- said, "Strikes me as the better notion, too. If we're to have an army, it should be an army now, if you ken what I'm saying."

  "I do." Gerin nodded. "My chief worry is that your men won't follow my commands as quickly as they might, either because they think I'm trying to put them in more danger or just out of Trokm- cussedness."

  "As for the first, I trust it won't be so, else I'd never have bent the knee to you," Adiatunnus said. "You fight hard, Fox, but you fight fair. As for t'other, well, there are times when I wonder you Elabonians don't bore yourselves to death, so dull you seem to us."

  "I've heard other Trokmoi say as much," Gerin admitted, "but, of course, they're wrong." He brought that out deadpan, to see what Adiatunnus would do with it.

  The chieftain frowned, but then started to laugh. "Try as you will, lord prince-I should be saying that now, eh? being your vassal and all, I mean-you'll not get my goat so easy."

  "Good," Gerin said. "So. You're flighty to us, and we're dull to you. What of the Gradi? You know them better than we do."

  "Belike, and how I'm wishing we didna." This time, Adiatunnus' frown stayed, making his whole face seem longer. "They're-how do I say it? — they're serious about what they do, that they are. It's not your fault you're in their way, mind you, but y'are, and so they'll rob you or kill you or whatever they like. And if you have the gall to be offended, mind, then they'll get angry at you for trying to keep what's always been yours."

  "Yes, that fits in with what I've seen," Gerin agreed. "They're very sure of themselves, too: they don't think we can stop them. That goddess of theirs, that Voldar-"

  Adiatunnus twisted both hands into an apotropaic sign. "Dinna be saying that name in this place. A wicked she-devil, no mistake." He shivered, though the inside of the great hall was smoky and hot. "Wicked, aye, but strong-strong.
And the others-" His fingers writhed again.

  You fear her, eh? Gerin started to ask that aloud, but held his tongue. Dabbling in magic had taught him how much power lay in words; saying something could make it real. Voldar undoubtedly knew-or could find out-Adiatunnus' feelings about her, but putting words in the air made it more likely the Trokm- chief would draw her notice.

  "Father Dyaus will prosper our enterprise," Gerin said, and hoped the chief Elabonian god was paying as much attention to him as Adiatunnus feared the chief Gradi goddess was paying to him. Dyaus usually seemed content to reign over those who worshiped him without doing much to rule them. Gerin had always taken that for granted. Only in facing the Gradi had he come to realize it had drawbacks as well as advantages.

  He was distracted from such musings when a very pretty Trokm- girl less than half Adiatunnus' age sat down on the chieftain's lap. Adiatunnus was holding a mug of black beer in one hand. The other closed over her breast through her tunic. The public display of what Gerin would have kept private didn't disturb her; indeed, she seemed proud Adiatunnus acknowledged she'd captured his affection, or at least his lust.

  "And can I be finding you summat lively in the line of women?" the Trokm- chieftain asked. His hand opened and squeezed, opened and squeezed. "I'd not want you to think me lacking in hospitality, now."

  "I don't," Gerin assured him. "Good food and good drink are plenty for me, and you've given me those. As for the other, I'm happy enough with my wife not to care to look anywhere else, though I thank you all the same."

  "And what a daft notion that is," Adiatunnus exclaimed. "Not that you're happy, the which is as may be, but that your being happy back there would keep you from poking a wench here. What has the one to do with t'other? A friendly futter is worth the having, eh, no matter where you find it."

  The Fox shrugged. "If that's how you want to live, I'm not going to say you shouldn't. It's your affair-and you can take that however you like. And since I'm happy enough to let other people do as they please, I'm even happier when they let me do the same."

  "You're happy to drive a lesson home like a man splitting logs with an axe, too," Adiatunnus retorted. "But all right, have it as you will, since you're bound to, anyhow. And if you're not fain to have yourself a good time, I'll not be after making you do it. So there."

  Gerin laughed out loud and raised his own mug in salute. Not many men could puncture him at arguments of that sort, but Adiatunnus had just done it. That said something about how sharp the Trokm-'s wits were, not that Gerin hadn't already had a good notion of that. It also said Adiatunnus would make a useful ally-provided Gerin kept an eye on him.

  The Trokm-'s leman found something interesting to do with her hand, too. Gerin wondered with abstract curiosity whether Adiatunnus would suddenly need to change his trousers. Before that happened, the woodsrunner got up and slung the girl over his shoulder-no small display of strength-and carried her upstairs while she laughed.

  Gerin turned to Duren and said, "I daresay you're learning some things here that you wouldn't see at Fox Keep."

  "Oh, I don't know," his son answered, sounding very much like him. "Van and Fand do things like that sometimes."

  "Mm, so they do," the Fox admitted. He thumped Duren on the shoulder and started to laugh, then got to his feet. "Well, now you're going to see something you have seen before: I'm going to bed." Also laughing, his son went up with him.

  * * *

  Van scratched his head, then, in fashion most ungentlemanly, reached inside his breeches and scratched there, too. He squashed something between his thumbnails, look at it, wiped it on his trouser leg, and let out a long sigh. "I'm going to have to go over myself for nits," he said, and dug in the pouch at his belt for a fine-toothed wooden comb. As he started raking it through his beard and hissing as the thick, curly hairs got stuck, he shook a thick forefinger at Gerin. "And don't you twit me about these cursed lice and where I got 'em. I know where I got 'em, and I had fun doing it, too."

  "Fine," Gerin said. "You can have fun explaining to Fand where you got 'em, too."

  But Van refused to let that sally faze him. "There's too many ways to-ouch! — pick up lice for anybody to be sure which one I found."

  That was true. Gerin, for his part, had fresh bedbug bites, courtesy of no one more intimate than whoever'd last slept in the bed Adiatunnus had given him and Duren. But he also knew that Fand, given a hundred possibilities, would always choose the one likely to lead to the wildest fight-and, this time, she'd be right.

  The Fox didn't waste a lot of time brooding over it, though he did spend a moment hoping he wouldn't come down with lice himself. As he got grayer, the vermin and their eggs got harder to spot in his hair.

  Getting the army ready to move soon made all such insectile worries seem of insectile size and importance. His own men were quickly ready to ride, whether on horseback or in their chariots. He'd never before watched the Trokmoi getting ready to move out on campaign-most of the campaigns on which they'd moved in these parts had been aimed at him. Now that he was watching them, he concluded they had to start days earlier than he would have to set out at the same time.

  They bickered. They bungled. They got drunk instead of eating breakfast. They went off for a fast poke with a serving girl instead of eating breakfast. An Elabonian captain would have killed a couple of his men on the spot before he put up with insubordination the Trokm- leaders ignored.

  When the woodsrunners had finally fought, they'd always done well against the Fox's troopers. He had to hope the same would hold now. The longer he watched them-and he had a good long while to watch them-the more forlorn that hope seemed.

  Adiatunnus was everywhere at once, shouting, blustering, cursing, cajoling. The chieftain did get his fair measure of respect, but, as far as Gerin could see, matters moved no faster because of the racket he made. Gerin had to hope Adiatunnus wasn't making things slower, another hope that faded as the morning wore on.

  Van muttered, "We'd have done better if the woodsrunners lined up with the Gradi, I'm thinking."

  "I wouldn't argue," Gerin said mournfully, watching two Trokmoi draw swords and scream at each other before their friends pulled them apart.

  The closest Adiatunnus came to acknowledging anything was wrong came when he said, "Och, you're ready a bit before us, looks like," and gave a breezy shrug to show how little that mattered to him. The Fox, ignoring the way his stomach churned, managed to nod.

  At last, with the sun a little to the west of south, not even the Trokmoi could delay any more. Their women calling last farewells, they rode west from Adiatunnus' keep along with Gerin's men. The Fox murmured a prayer to Dyaus that the campaign would end better than it had begun.

  VI

  Early omens were less than good. The army crossed the Venien River, which flowed into the Niffet, not far from where the Gradi had come down in their galleys and beaten the Trokmoi. Though the woodsrunners had burned the bodies of their comrades who had fallen, they still muttered among themselves as they passed the battlefield.

  On the west side of the river-land that had been still in Elabonian hands, not under Adiatunnus' control-the hair prickled up on Gerin's arms for no reason he could see or feel. He kept quiet about it, doubting his own judgment, but after a while Van said, "The air feels-uncanny."

  "That's it!" Gerin exclaimed, so vehemently that Duren started and the horses snorted indignantly. "Aye, that's it. Feels like the air in the old haunted woods around Ikos."

  "So it does." Van frowned. "We've been out this way a time or two, and it never did before. What's toward, Fox? Your usual Elabonian gods, they don't make a habit of letting folk know they're around like this."

  "You're right; they don't, and they certainly never have around here-you're right about that, too." Gerin scowled. What followed from his words did so as logically as the steps in a geometric proof from Sithonia. "I don't think we're feeling the power of Elabonian gods."

  "Whose, then?" Van glanced around
to make sure no Trokmoi could overhear him. "The woodsrunners' gods are too busy brawling amongst themselves to pay much heed to impressing people."

  "I know," Gerin said. "Folk get the gods they deserve, don't they? So who's left? Not us, not the Trokmoi, not…" He let that hang in the air.

  Van had been many places in his travels, but never to Sithonia. Yet he needed to be no logician to see what Gerin meant. "The Gradi," he said, his voice as sour as week-old milk.

  "Can't think of anyone else it could be," the Fox said unhappily. He waved, trying to put into words what he felt. "We're heading toward high summer now, but doesn't the air taste more the way it would at the start of spring, when winter's just loosed its grip? And the sun." He pointed up to it. "The light's… watery somehow. It shouldn't be, not at this season of the year."

  "That it shouldn't," Van said. "I've lived here long enough to know you're right as can be, Captain." He shook his fist toward the west, toward the Orynian Ocean. "Those cursed Gradi gods are settling in here, making themselves at home, growing like toadstools after a rain."

  "My thought exactly," Gerin said. "Voldar and the rest of them, they must be strong to do… whatever they're doing. Dyaus and the Elabonian pantheon, they wouldn't interfere with the sun." He didn't say, They couldn't interfere with the sun, though that was in his mind, too. He didn't know whether it was so or not. The Elabonian gods were so lax about manifesting themselves in the material world, he honestly didn't know the full range of their power.

  He didn't know the full range of Voldar's power, either, or the powers of the other Gradi gods and goddesses. He had the ominous feeling he was going to find out. This would have been a fine mild day, had it come a little before the vernal equinox. Drawing near the summer solstice, though…

  Over his shoulder, Duren said, "I wish we could find out what the weather's like back on the east side of the Venien. That would tell us more about whether what we're worrying about is real or we're shying at shadows."