Fox and Empire

by Harry Turtledove

  "Thank you so much," Rihwin snarled. "And you went ahead and let me drink it."

  "No," Gerin said. "I did not let you drink it. You insisted on doing it. `I deserve it,' you said. In my opinion, you were correct. You did deserve it. If you hadn't been so greedy, you would have let me taste, or you would have let me tell you Ferdulf had done something to the wine. But no-you went ahead and took what you wanted and enjoyed it less than you might have done. I'd say, both as your friend and as your king, that you have no complaint coming."

  Rihwin wiped his mouth on his sleeve, which couldn't have done much good. "And I'd say, both as your friend-for some indecipherable reason or other-and as your subject, that you haven't the faintest notion of what you're talking about." He wiped his mouth again.

  "Maybe you should go drink some ale," Dagref suggested. "That would get rid of some of the taste."

  "Aye, maybe I should go and-" Rihwin gave Gerin's son a horrible look. "You take altogether too much after your father." He strode away, his back as stiff as an offended cat's.

  "Thank you," Dagref called after him, which only made his back grow stiffer-it wasn't what he'd wanted to hear. Dagref turned to Gerin. "He'll be a while getting over that."

  "So he will," Gerin agreed. "So he ought to be." He scowled at the wagon, then let out a long sigh. "We can pickle all the cabbages and cucumbers we like, but we're not going to be drinking wine."

  "That's so," Dagref agreed. "I wonder why Mavrix hasn't descended on us in a cloud of fury. He's not usually one to ignore insults, is he?"

  "No, he's usually one to pay them back," Gerin answered. "That's why my heart fell into my sandals when Ferdulf decided to take his petty revenge."

  "Well, why isn't Mavrix here, then?" Dagref demanded, as if his father were somehow responsible for the absence of the Sithonian god of wine and fertility.

  "If I knew, I would tell you," Gerin answered. "Maybe he's finally decided he doesn't care what happens here in the northlands any more. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Or maybe he's raising a rebellion down in Sithonia, and doesn't have time to fret about this part of the world for a while."

  "But didn't you say he told you he didn't think the Sithonians could successfully rise against the Elabonian Empire?" Gerin asked.

  "Yes, I did say he told me he didn't think they could," Gerin answered, and stuck out his tongue at his son. "Doesn't mean he wouldn't try to raise one anyhow. The Sithonians have revolted against the Empire a good many times over the years, even if they've always lost."

  "If the Sithonians are revolting," Dagref said, both thoughtfully and with malice aforethought, "that could be very convenient for us."

  "We're guessing, you know," Gerin said. Dagref nodded. Gerin went on, "We're guessing with our hearts, not our heads." He sighed. "It would be nice, but we don't dare believe it. It's like believing a pretty girl you've never seen will come looking for you. It happens every once in a while, maybe, but not often enough that you can expect it for even a heartbeat."

  "I understand," Dagref said. "What happens anywhere else doesn't matter anyhow, not unless we beat the imperials here."

  "That's also true," Gerin said. "In fact, that's the truth about this war. And we were on the point of doing it, too, till they threw another army into the fight. Nasty and rude of them, if anyone wants to know what I think. They want to win, too, worse luck. Very inconsiderate."

  "Can't trust anyone any more, can you?" Dagref asked.

  "Who said I ever did?" the Fox returned.

  **

  The next morning, Ferdulf was loud and triumphant and obnoxious: in other words, not far removed from his usual self. "I gave my father a proper black eye," he boasted, "and he hasn't had the nerve to come do anything to me. I guess he sees who's boss in the northlands now."

  "You've done better guessing," Gerin told him.

  Ferdulf stuck his nose in the air. Following that nose, the rest of him floated off the ground. "I do not have to stay here to listen to myself being insulted," he said haughtily, and drifted away like an indignant dandelion puff.

  "He hasn't the faintest notion how big a fool he is," Van said.

  "Fools never do," Gerin answered. "That's what makes them fools."

  "Strange, thinking of a half-god as a fool," the outlander said, " but Ferdulf gives us plenty of chances to do it."

  "So he does," Gerin said. He could easily think of a few gods he'd met whom he considered fools, but he didn't mention that. Whether gods were fools or not, they were vastly stronger than mortals. A man insulted a god, even a god as cowardly as Mavrix, at his peril. A demigod insulted a god, even a god who was his father, at his peril. Ferdulf hadn't figured that out-another proof Ferdulf was a fool.

  "What now?" Van asked.

  "I don't know what we can do but keep on with what we've been doing," Gerin answered. "If we can keep riders moving along the Elabon way, the imperials are going to have a harder time supplying their armies up here. And if we can keep pushing back the outposts of that force that was dogging us, maybe we'll be able to join hands with Aragis."

  "Aye, maybe we will," Van said. "And maybe, once we do, we ought to count the fingers on the hand we join with his, too."

  Gerin, once more, would have argued with his friend more had he agreed with him less. The men from the northlands did drive in a couple of more imperial positions, which gave them new land from which to forage. The men from the Elabonian Empire hadn't been on the land long enough to pick it bare, nor were they as good at the job as Gerin and his followers. Combining what they took from the land with what they captured from the imperial supply column, the warriors from the northlands were for the moment comfortable.

  He ate sausages and gnawed on chunks of journeybread and tried to decide what to do next: probably about the same thing as his imperial opposite number was doing.

  He could do one thing his opposite number couldn't: he could send riders west to slide around the imperial forces between him and Aragis. Men on horseback could go at least as fast as men in chariots, and could go crosscountry on tracks and through fields and woods chariotry couldn't use.

  Maeva was not one of the riders he sent toward Aragis. As she had before when she wasn't chosen for a duty, she complained. He did his best to look down his nose at her; it wasn't easy, not when they were very much of a height. "You're right," he said. "I didn't pick you. So what?"

  "It's not fair," she insisted. "I deserve to go into danger the same as any other rider."

  "You deserve to have your backside walloped," the Fox said, now truly starting to get annoyed. "And `It's not fair!' is the battle cry children use. I'm tired of it from you. If you want to be a warrior, act like one when you're not in the middle of a fight, not just when you are."

  "You're holding me back because I'm a woman," Maeva said.

  "No, I'm holding you back because you're a girl," Gerin said. She stared at him, astonished and furious at the same time. He went on, " This is your first campaign, remember? Take a look at the riders I sent west. What do you notice about them, pray tell?"

  "They're all men," Maeva said angrily.

  "That's right," Gerin agreed. "They're all men. There isn't a boy among them. They've all been riding horses as long as you've been alive; a couple of them have been riding horses as long as anyone in the northlands has been doing it. They've all done a lot of fighting, and a lot of fighting from horseback. If you're still in the army ten or twelve years from now" -if I'm still alive ten or twelve years from now- "you'll have a real chance of getting sent on a ride like this."

  He wondered how Maeva would take that kind of dressing-down. Fand would have flown into a fury at him. Van would have been angry, too, but not with the same sort of deadly rage. But Gerin had a great many years on Maeva, which made her take him more seriously than either of her parents would have done. "Very well, lord king," was all she said before going off disappointed but not obviously irate.

  Watching her go, the Fox nodded in reluctant app
roval. He almost wished she had thrown a tantrum; that would have given him the excuse he needed to send her home. But she offered him no such excuse, however much having one would have pleased him and delighted Van. All things considered, she'd taken the tongue-lashing… like a soldier.

  No sooner had that comparison crossed his mind than he wished it hadn't. Too late. He'd started thinking of Maeva as a soldier even before he saw how well she handled herself when she was wounded. He couldn't very well change his mind now.

  Not all the riders he sent out came back. Before any of them came back, he had to try to withstand an assault from the imperials, who had begun to concentrate against him once he started rolling up their outposts. Their commander was about as unsubtle as Aragis the Archer. He simply gathered his force and rolled toward where he thought Gerin had the bulk of his army. He turned out to have a pretty good notion of that, too.

  Mounted scouts brought the Fox the word. "They can't be a quarter of an hour behind us, lord king, coming down that road there," one of the riders said, pointing west along the dirt road up which he'd come.

  "Well, all right." Gerin's grimace held annoyance, but no real surprise. He'd poked the men from south of the High Kirs; they were going to hit back if they could-and they could. He surveyed the ground through which the road ran. It was mostly open country-grain fields and and meadows-with a forest of oaks and elms off to the left. "We'll stay right here," he said. "It's as good a spot as any, and better than most."

  "I think you're doing the right thing, Father," Dagref said. "We' ve shown that, man for man, we're more than a match for the imperials."

  "So we have," Gerin agreed. "Unfortunately, they've shown they've got more men than we do."

  He started shouting orders, shaking his men out from line of march into line of battle. He barely had time to post a couple of dozen chariot crews in among the trees, with orders to burst forth against the enemy's flank and rear when the time seemed ripe, before a rising dust cloud and horn calls through it announced the imperials were at hand.

  "Elabon! Elabon! Elabon!" the men of the Empire shouted, as if to leave no doubt who they were. Gerin's men were not in any doubt: his riders plied the leading chariots from the Elabonian Empire with arrows and javelins. The horsemen in front of them kept the imperials from charging as ferociously as their commander probably would have liked. The men from south of the High Kirs were still learning how to face mounted foes.

  One thing they'd learned was that, when there were enough of them, their foes had to give way. Archers shooting from tightly bunched chariots put enough arrows in the air to discourage anyone-on foot, on horseback, or in other chariots-from doing much to hinder their passage.

  Seeing their numbers-sure enough, they were going to have more men in the fight than he did-Gerin waved and yelled to extend his line to either side and lap round them. If he could hit them from three sides at once, those numbers wouldn't do them much good: his troopers could slay men in the middle of that rumbling herd of chariots without their having the chance to do him any harm.

  "There's a lot of them, Captain," Van said.

  "I'd noticed that myself," Gerin answered. "We scraped together all the men we could, Aragis and I. The Empire of Elabon is bigger than the northlands, and has more people, too. They've sent a bigger force over the mountains than we can hope to equal."

  "Most places, that's a recipe for a lost war for the side that doesn't have the big army," the outlander said.

  "Thank you so much," the Fox snapped. "I never would have realized that if you hadn't pointed it out to me."

  "Glad to help, Captain," Van said imperturbably.

  He did not stay imperturbable after an arrow ticked off the side of his helm, scratching a brighter line on the brightly polished bronze. He cursed and bellowed and brandished his spear at the imperials, though he couldn't have had the slightest idea which of them had shot at him.

  Gerin started shooting at the soldiers and horses of the Elabonian Empire in front of him. One way to reduce the odds his men faced was to kill or disable as many of the imperials as he could. One of his shafts struck the right-hand horse of a team square in the breast. The horse went down. The chariot slewed leftwards, colliding with the car and team next to it. They slewed away in turn. Because the main body of the imperial was so tightly packed, they ran into the team on their left, too: one arrow fouling three chariots, half a dozen horses, and nine men.

  "Well shot," Van said, seeing what the Fox had done.

  "Thank you." The Fox sounded modest, letting the shot speak for itself. "Come on, men!" he shouted. "Lay into them."

  Lay into them the men from the northlands did. The imperials' charge slowed as collisions and casualties took their toll of the cars in the front ranks. The fight became a melee, the sort of struggle in which Gerin's troopers had consistently proved to own the advantage.

  Gerin shot an arrow at an imperial officer with a red cloak draped around his shoulders. The fellow was inconsiderate enough to lean to one side at the moment the shaft hissed past him. Gerin cursed. "How in the five hells am I supposed to get rid of the imperials if they keep trying not to get killed?" he demanded of no one in particular.

  Dagref, as usual, had an answer: "Pretty rude of them, isn't it, Father? They aren't behaving the way the enemy-whoever the enemy isusually does when the minstrels sing their songs."

  "To the five hells with the minstrels, too," Gerin growled. He had a couple of reasons for despising minstrels. First and foremost was that one who had practiced that calling had kidnapped his eldest son fifteen years before. But the way they distorted the truth to fit into what made a good song grated on him, too.

  He wondered how the historians who recorded events down in the City of Elabon would mention this clash. To them, of course, he and his followers would be that highly variable creature, the enemyrebels, they'd call the warriors of the northlands, and semibarbarians allied to true barbarians. He knew their style. Being the enemy, he probably wouldn't get any credit from the historians no matter what he did. If he lost, that he was the enemy would be enough to explain a great deal. If he won, they'd chalk it up to guile or trickery, not courage.

  As long as he won, he didn't care how they chalked it up. He wondered what sort of guile or trickery he could use to rouse the future historians' ire.

  Looking around the crowded field, he didn't see much opportunity for anything of the sort. His men did have some advantage of position, but the imperials had the advantage of numbers. They seemed at least as liable to win as did the men of the northlands.

  He sighed. He hadn't wanted this particular battle, not here, not now. He sighed again. Life had given him any number of things he didn' t want. The trick was to get through them as well and as quickly as he could, to have the best chance to return to what he did in fact want.

  He shot at that imperial officer again-and missed again, at a range from which he should not have missed. He cursed in disgust. The fellow seemed to lead a charmed life, though Gerin knew of no magic that would keep an arrow from piercing a man if properly aimed.

  Arrows would not pierce Ferdulf, but Ferdulf's immunity was not the sort to which an ordinary man could readily aspire. Ferdulf swooped down on the officer from the Elabonian Empire, for all the world like a ill-mannered hawk. He shouted in the officer's ears. He waved hands in front of the officer's face. He flipped up his tunic in front of the driver's face, giving the fellow a charming view of a semidivine backside.

  With such distractions, the officer couldn't do much in the way of commanding and the driver couldn't do much in the way of driving. Both men, and the soldier in the car with them, did their best to grab, shoot, or otherwise get rid of Ferdulf. They paid so much attention to him, they didn't notice their chariot was about to collide with another till it did. The officer and the soldier fell out the back of the car. The driver got yanked over the front rail and under the horses' hooves. Ferdulf flitted off to work more mischief elsewhere on the field.
>
  Gerin looked toward the forest in which he'd placed those couple of dozen chariots. He wished he had them in the fight, either bursting from ambush or simply in the line with the rest of his men. The imperials weren't doing anything fancy, but he didn't have enough men to drive them back. That was becoming more and more obvious as the fight wore along. All the imperials had to do was stolidly keep on fighting and odds were he'd lose unless he came up with something spectacular. For the life of him, he had no idea what that might be.

  He looked toward the oaks again. He didn't want to send a messenger over there; that was liable to draw the imperials' attention to the wood, which was the last thing he wanted.

  A moment later, he changed his mind about that. Truly, the last thing he wanted was to be hacked to bloody pulp in the chariot. A car full of imperials pulled alongside of his. One of them cut at him with a sword. The blade turned slightly, so that the flat thudded against his ribs.

  He hissed in pain anyhow, and snatched out his own sword. He and the imperial traded strokes till their chariots pulled apart from each other. He thought he would have beaten the fellow had they fought longer; being left-handed, he hadn't had to bring the sword across his body as they battled. But what might have been didn't matter. The truth was, the trooper remained alive and hale to fight someone else.

  Gerin wondered how hale he was himself. Breathing hurt but didn't stab, so he doubted he'd broken ribs. He could go on fighting. He laughed, which also hurt. Even if he had broken ribs, he had to go on fighting.

  Dagref snapped his whip at one of the horses harnessed to another imperial chariot drawing near. The horse screamed and reared and flinched aside, despite the driver's best effort to force an attack.

  "You are getting good with that thing," Van said in admiring tones, and then half spoiled the compliment by adding, "You must have got the practice flaying the hide off folk with your tongue."

  "I haven't the faintest notion what you're talking about," Dagref replied with more dignity than a stripling had any business owning.