Fox and Empire

by Harry Turtledove

  He hadn't intended Van to take him seriously. But the outlander said, "The gods only know what they've gone off to try and do. I don't think they can conquer the bloody imperials by themselves, seeing as the whole lot of us haven't been able to do that. What they think they can do-who knows?"

  "Who knows?" Gerin echoed mournfully. Dagref was at the age where he thought anything was possible. As for Ferdulf, almost anything was possible around him.

  Since his driver had gone off, Gerin borrowed a horse from Rihwin' s men and rode, slowly and carefully, down to the horsemen who were holding the line against Swerilas' imperials. The Fox wished he'd put in more time on horseback over the years. He managed a simple ride well enough, but wouldn't have wanted to try to fight while mounted.

  One advantage of going by horse rather than by chariot was that he went by himself. Without Van along, he didn't have to come up with fancy and fanciful explanations for why he wanted to see Maeva. But he got no satisfaction from seeing her, nor did it seem that Dagref had got any satisfaction from her the night before.

  "No, lord king," she said, her eyes widening. "I haven't seen either Dagref or Ferdulf. Why do you think Dagref would have come to me?"

  "For the obvious reasons," he answered, and watched her flush. " He's not back at the camp, and he didn't tell me he was going anywhere. My first guess was that that meant a tryst with you."

  "If it meant a tryst, it wasn't with me." Now Maeva sounded dangerous for reasons that had only a little to do with warfare.

  "If it didn't mean a tryst with you, I don't think it meant a tryst with anyone," Gerin said. Maeva relaxed-a little, and grudgingly. The Fox scratched his head. "If it didn't mean a tryst with you, I don't know what it did mean."

  All at once, he remembered the peculiar dream he'd had, the dream where he'd been on the fringes of things and unable to figure out what was going on no matter how important figuring out what was going on was. Maybe he'd had to stay on the fringes of things because the dream had truly been aimed at Dagref. The two of them had both remarked on how much they thought alike; Gerin didn't find it unreasonable that he should catch the edge of a dream meant for his son. That, though, only raised the next interesting question: who or what was aiming dreams at Dagref?

  Two answers came to mind-the imperials and Biton. No, three, for Mavrix might have done it, too, which would, or could, have accounted for Ferdulf's absence-assuming, of course, Ferdulf's absence was connected to Dagref's.

  "Too much I don't know," Gerin muttered with a sigh.

  "What's that, lord king?" Maeva asked. "Is Dagref all right?"

  "I don't know that, either," Gerin said. Awkwardly, he swung up onto the horse and rode back to the town of Ikos.

  He hoped against hope Dagref would be there when he got back. He even hoped Ferdulf would be there when he got back. If that wasn't a mark of desperation, he didn't know what was.

  But neither Dagref nor Ferdulf was there. "Where in the five hells have they gone? What in the five hells do they think they're doing?" he asked of Van, who had already shown he didn't know the answers, either.

  "We'll just have to see if the imperials ask us for ransom," the outlander said. "If they've got Ferdulf, as far as I'm concerned they can keep him."

  "There are people who would say the same about Dagref," Gerin said gloomily, "but I'm not any of them. If they have him, I'll pay what they want to get him back."

  "The price they want is liable not to be gold or copper or tin," Van said. "It's liable to be a bended knee."

  "Whatever the price is, I'll pay it," Gerin answered. "Do you think I'm so much in love with having people call me `lord king' that I'd throw away my son so they'd keep on doing it?"

  "No," Van said at once. "And if you were fool enough to throw your son away, no one would call you `lord king' afterwards anyhow, for everybody would sicken at being led by such a man."

  "Here's hoping you're right," Gerin said. He had his doubts, but did not pass them on to the outlander. Van would surely sicken of being led by such a man, but plenty of truly vicious people had gone on to long and successful reigns. The Fox, though, had no desire to emulate them.

  He wondered if Dagref and Ferdulf hadn't gone south after all, if instead they'd chosen to head west along the track through the haunted woods back toward lands within Gerin's suzerainty. He had trouble imagining why they would want to do such a thing-the fighting here would be over long before they could bring back reinforcements-but he had trouble imagining why they would go see the imperials, too.

  He slammed one balled-up fist into the palm of the other hand. What had that dream been? If he'd been able to see more of it…

  Some time in the middle of the morning, his son and Ferdulf came walking into the town of Ikos: up from the south, not from the forest and hills to the west. No one escorted them, which Gerin took to mean that no one had seen them while they were coming from wherever they had been.

  That was his first to the two of them: "Where were you?"

  Neither answered right away. Dagref's silence was thoughtful. Silence from Ferdulf struck Gerin as most uncharacteristic. At last, Dagref said, "We went down to see Swerilas the Slippery."

  "Just like that?" Gerin said. "You didn't have any trouble getting through my pickets? You didn't have any trouble getting through the imperials' pickets? You went right ahead and walked in to have a chat with Swerilas?"

  "Aye, we did," Ferdulf said. The unemphatic nod he gave lent credence to his words.

  "We did," Dagref echoed, sounding a bit surprised about it. "We had no trouble doing it. I knew we would have no trouble doing it. I had a dream that told me we would have no trouble doing it, and it was a true dream."

  "Ha!" Gerin said. "I was right. The dream was aimed at you. I had it, too, or rather the ragged fringe of it."

  "Did you?" Now Dagref looked interested. "I thought you might have, or someone might have. I thought someone on the outside was trying to look in, you might say."

  "I didn't notice anyone else when I had the dream," Ferdulf said with more than a trace of hauteur. "I was alone, communing with the god."

  "Which god?" Gerin asked. "Your father?"

  "Not likely," Ferdulf exclaimed. "My wretch of a father communes with his hand on my fundament, not with a dream in my mind."

  "With whom, then?" the Fox demanded.

  "Why, with Biton, of course," Ferdulf said, and Dagref nodded. "He did indeed tell us to go to see Swerilas the Slippery-who is truly as oleaginous an article as I have ever set eyes on-and so we did. Biton has more power than I could hope to oppose, and I daresay more power than my father, too."

  Gerin didn't know whether that last was true or not. Either way, it wasn't his problem. He kept on trying to find out about the things that were his problem: "And what did you tell Swerilas when you saw him?"

  "Why, we told him to attack your army, of course, and not to waste any more time doing it." Ferdulf and Dagref spoke together, smilingly confident they had done the right thing.

  "You told him what?" Gerin shouted. "How could you tell him that? Why would you tell him that?"

  "It was what farseeing Biton told us to tell him," Ferdulf and Dagref chorused. Only after the words were out of his mouth did Dagref's smile slip on his face. "I wonder why Biton told us to tell him that."

  "To ruin me?" Gerin suggested. "I can't think of any other reason, can you? If Swerilas attacks me, he'll push this army right along the path through the haunted wood west of here. He'll probably push us to pieces, too, trying to get onto that one path. How are we supposed to hold him off? We haven't got the men to hold him off. Don't you know that?"

  "We do know that," Dagref said. "Of course we know that. We knew it then, too." Ferdulf nodded. "It didn't seem to matter then, though," Dagref added in some perplexity, and Ferdulf nodded again.

  "Why does Biton hate me?" Gerin didn't direct the words at his son and the little demigod, but at the indifferent sky.

  "He doesn't hate you, Fat
her." Now Dagref tried to sound reassuring. "Why would he hate you? My mother was his Sibyl on earth."

  "Maybe he hates me for taking her away from him." But Gerin frowned and shook his head. Biton had never shown any sign of disliking his match with Selatre. But if this wasn't such a sign, what was it? He couldn't answer that question, so he found another one to ask Dagref and Ferdulf: "What else did the farseeing god tell you to tell Swerilas?"

  "Nothing much," Dagref answered. "We were supposed to make it plain to him that we came with Biton's message, but we didn't have any trouble convincing him of that."

  "I'll bet you didn't," Gerin said. He thought for a while, then asked, "Did Biton tell the two of you to tell me anything? Why he decided to do this to me might be interesting to learn, in a morbid sort of way."

  "You?" Ferdulf had some of his arrogance back. "Why on earth would the god want us to speak to you? If he had wanted you to know anything, he would have sent you a dream. But he didn't, did he? He left you on the outside looking in, didn't he? No, he wanted nothing to do with the likes of you."

  Gerin didn't get insulted, as he might have done. He just shrugged and said, "Well, the god might have sent a dream straight to Swerilas the Slippery, too, but he didn't choose to do that, so I thought I'd ask about this."

  "Nothing for you," Ferdulf repeated. "Nothing, do you hear?"

  "Ferdulf, you need never doubt that, when you say something, people do hear you," Gerin said. "They may sometimes-they may oftenwish they didn't, but they do."

  He'd hoped that would make Ferdulf glower at him. Instead, the little demigod's childlike face took on an altogether unchildlike look of satisfaction. As far as Ferdulf was concerned, the Fox had paid him a compliment.

  Dagref frowned. "Wait," he said. "There was something. I think there was something."

  "No, there wasn't," Ferdulf said indignantly. "I just told him there wasn't. I ought to know. I'm half a god myself, and the better half at that. If I say there wasn't anything, there wasn't, and that's flat."

  "Maybe we didn't have exactly the same dream," Dagref said. "Maybe I got this because I'm my father's son."

  "Maybe you think you have this because what's really between your ears is rock, not brains," Ferdulf retorted, and stuck out his tongue.

  Dagref remained unperturbed, which perturbed Ferdulf. "Whatever the reason, there was something," the youth said. He turned to Gerin. "Here it is, for whatever it maybe be worth: it's something like, Pick the right path, stay on the right path, don't go off the right path no matter what."

  "What a stupid message," Ferdulf said. "You must have made that up yourself. Why would a god say anything that foolish?"

  "I don't know," Dagref answered. "I've certainly heard a demigod say a good many foolish things lately."

  Ferdulf did glower at that. Gerin said, "What path?"

  His son shrugged. "I couldn't begin to tell you. Until you asked, I didn't even know I had any message for you at all."

  "Maybe it's the path through the wood west of here," Gerin said. But then he shook his head. "I really don't see how it could be. There's only the one path through that wood. No right or wrong about it: you're either on the path or in the forest, and if you're in the forest, well, too bad for you. So what in the five hells is Biton talking about?"

  "Something you're too ignorant to understand," Ferdulf said.

  "I'm too ignorant to understand a great many things," the Fox said. "Why I put up with you immediately springs to mind."

  Before Ferdulf could find a retort to that, a horseman came galloping up from the south. "Lord king!" he cried. "Lord king! The imperials are attacking, lord king!"

  **

  After that, everything seemed to happen at once. The Fox shouted for his men to form a battle line in front of the town of Ikos. They were still forming it when Rihwin's riders came back to them. "Sorry, lord king," one of the horsemen said, wiping at a bleeding cut on his forehead. "There's just too many of the cursed buggers for us to hold back, and they're coming hard, too."

  "Swerilas has a way of doing that," Gerin answered absently.

  "Now what?" Ferdulf exclaimed. "Now what?" He hopped up into the air. Anyone might do that while excited. Ferdulf, though, was not just anyone. He didn't come down again.

  Dagref answered him before Gerin could: "Now we fight. What else can we do? Even if you float like a pig's bladder, you wits should be better than the ones a bladder, or even a pig, comes with." Ferdulf's venomous glare showed that even the Fox would have had a hard time being more pungently sarcastic.

  "Aye," Gerin said. "Now we fight. Now we…" His voice trailed away. He looked from Dagref to Ferdulf and back again. After stroking his beard for a moment, he walked over to Dagref and kissed him on the cheek. Then he did the same with Ferdulf.

  "What was that in aid of, Father?" Dagref asked. Ferdulf's comments were a good deal more pungent, but had the same general meaning.

  "Understanding," Gerin answered. "At least, I hope it's understanding." If it's not understanding, if it's anything but understanding, I'm in even more trouble than I was already-and here I' d been thinking that couldn't possibly happen. He didn't say that out loud. What he did say was, "Come on. We have to meet that templerobbing whoreson of a Swerilas with edged bronze before-"

  "Before what, Father?" Dagref broke in.

  "Before anything else happens," the Fox said-not the sort of reply calculated to satisfy his son. Satisfying his son was not the most urgent matter on his mind right then, though.

  Dagref gave him an irked stare. "You're being as deliberately obscure as the Sibyl when Biton speaks through her," he complained. " You're…" And then, as his father's had done, his voice trailed away. "Wouldn't that be interesting?" he murmured.

  "What are the two of you talking about?" Ferdulf sounded even more irritable than usual.

  "You're a demigod. Use your semidivine wisdom to figure it out," Gerin told him. "While you're at it, why don't you fly up and tell me what Swerilas is trying to do to us?"

  "You don't need me for that. You can see him from here," Ferdulf answered, which was depressingly true. But the little demigod did pop into the air, perhaps as much for the chance that gave him to wave his backside at Gerin and Dagref as for any other reason. Off he flew.

  "I hope you're not wrong, Father," Dagref said.

  "So do I," Gerin said. "Believe me, so do I."

  Before the Fox could say any more-not that there was much more to say-Van came rushing up demanding to know why in the five hells he and Dagref weren't in the chariot yet, and why they weren't charging forward to smash Swerilas into some large number of small pieces. "We do have to try, Father," Dagref added.

  "I know we do," Gerin answered. "Well, let's be about it, then." He stepped up into the chariot, where Van was already waiting and fuming. So did Dagref, who flicked the reins and got the horses moving.

  Van gave Gerin a dubious look. "Are you going fey on us, Captain?" he demanded. "Do you think we're as done as a slab of beef over a fire? Are you riding out expecting to be killed?"

  Gerin shook his head. "No. Very much the opposite, as a matter of fact. I don't think we're going to win this battle, but I haven't lost hope for the war. In fact, I have more than I did a little while ago."

  Now the outlander's stare was quizzical. After a moment, he shrugged. "All right-you've got some sort of scheme cooking in that beady little mind of yours. I don't need to know what it is right now. As long as it's something, and you haven't given up on us."

  "I've never quite done that," Gerin said. "I've come close a few times over the years, but I've never given up."

  Ahead of his force of chariotry, Rihwin's riders and some of the temple guards were righting to slow the force Swerilas the Slippery led. "Elabon! Elabon! Elabon!" the imperials shouted, their war cries ringing through those of the men from the northlands.

  "Let's hit 'em!" Gerin yelled to his own troopers. He plucked an arrow from his quiver, let fly, and pitched an imperia
l out of the chariot. His men cheered. They didn't seem to have any particular hope of victory, either, but they went into the attack with a will.

  And, for a while, they drove the imperials back toward Biton's shrine. "Temple robbers!" was the shout Biton's guards raised. They fought with a fury that made them stronger than their numbers. Rihwin' s riders strove mightily to keep the warriors from the Elabonian Empire off balance. Gerin began to wonder what he would do if his army beat the foe. That would mean he'd been wrong in the way he'd thought things would go.

  He shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong," he muttered.

  "What's that, Fox?" Van asked.

  "Nothing much, believe me," Gerin answered.

  Just out of bowshot of the wall of the temple, the momentum of his counterattack faded. Swerilas had too many men and was too good a leader to let an inferior force beat him. His men rallied and began to push not only forward but out to either wing. The Fox's troopers had to fall back to keep from being outflanked and cut off.

  Gerin stayed calmer about this retreat than he had during earlier fights in which the imperials had used their numbers to gain the upper hand. "You know something," Van said. "What is it?"

  "Saying I know something probably pushes things further than they should go," the Fox answered. "I have some ideas, though."

  "Ah, that's good. That's fine." Van beamed. He didn't even ask what the idea were. Instead, he stuck a finger in his friend's face. " There, you see? Didn't I tell you you'd come up with something. And you, walking around with a rain cloud over your head, you told me I was wrong. You told me I was crazy."

  "I don't know whether you were wrong or not," Gerin said. "In case you're wondering, though, I still think you're crazy."

  When he ordered the army to fall back through the town of Ikos without making a stand protected by the houses and other buildings, Van shook his head and said, "You don't need to wonder if I'm crazy. I'm the one who needs to wonder whether you're daft."

  "Maybe I am," Gerin said. "We'll know pretty soon."