Harry Turtledove - Wisdom of the Fox

"Aye, lord prince. You have to understand, I didn't know it at the time when your man came asking." Schild licked his lips. "That minstrel—Tassilo was his name, not so?—he came through my holding. You know that much already, I daresay. He didn't stop at my keep, though; he guested with a couple of my vassals before he passed out the other side of my lands. Lord Gerin, I learned not long ago he had a boy with him. If I'd known that then—"

"What would you have done, lord Schild?" Gerin asked, his quiet fiercer than a scream. "What would you have done? Sent Duren back to me? Or would you have kept him for a while, to see what advantage you might wring from him?"

"Damn me to the five hells if I know, Fox," Schild answered, formal politeness forgotten. "But I didn't have the chance to find out, which is likely just as well. Now I know, and now I'm here, and now I've told you."

"If I ever find out you lied to me about this—" Gerin let that drop. He had a score to settle with Schild even if Schild hadn't lied—but not now. Other things had to come first.

"Not here," Schild said. "I know what my life would be worth if I tried." He spoke with as much assurance as if he'd looked at rapidly approaching clouds and announced, "It looks like rain." Gerin had always done his best to give his neighbors the idea he'd be a dangerous man to cross. Seeing he'd succeeded should have been more gratifying than it was.

He said, "Duren came into your holding, then, and was alive and well when he went out again?"

"So far as I know, Fox, that's the way of it," Schild answered.

Selatre came up to Gerin, set a hand on his arm. "The prophecy Biton spoke through me said your son's fate would be mild. I'm glad we begin to see the truth of that now."

Schild's eyes widened when he realized who Selatre had to be, and then again when he realized what her touching Gerin was likely to mean. The Fox noted that without doing anything about it; his thought swooped down on Selatre's words like a stooping hawk. "Biton said Duren's fate might well be mild," he answered with a sort of pained precision he wished he could abandon, "not that it would be. We still have to see."

She looked at him. As if Schild—as if everyone but the two of them—had receded to some remote distance, she asked quietly, "You're afraid to hope sometimes, aren't you?"

"Yes," he answered, as if speaking to her ears alone. "Expect much and you're too often disappointed. Expect little and what you get often looks good."

Selatre made an exasperated noise. Before she could carry the argument further, though, Schild broke in: "Well, Fox, what can I expect from you?"

That hauled Gerin back to the world of chariots and monsters and red-mustached barbarians: not the world in which he would have chosen to spend his time, but the one in which the gods had seen fit to place him. He started calculating, and did not care for the answers he came up with. He'd been stretched too thin before he'd had to commit men to reopening the Elabon Way; he was thinner now. Fixing Schild with a glare, he growled, "Why couldn't you have forgotten you were my vassal a while longer?"

"Because I need your aid, lord prince," Schild answered, more humbly than the Fox had ever heard him speak.

He suspected a great deal of that humility was donned for the occasion, but that didn't mean he could ignore it. "Very well, lord Schild, I shall defend you with such forces as I can spare," he said. "I shall not do so, though, until you furnish me this year's feudal dues, in metal and grain and ale, for your holding. You haven't paid those dues lately; I hope you remember what they are."

By the sour look Schild gave him, he remembered only too well. "I knew you were a cheeseparer, Fox," he ground out, "so I started the wagons rolling as soon as I left my keep. They should be here in a day or two with the year's dues. To try to make up for its being my first tribute in a while, I even put in a couple of flagons of wine I found in my cellars."

"Don't tell Rihwin that," Gerin exclaimed.

"The way you're using me now, I hope they've gone to vinegar," Schild said, scowling still.

"If you want aid from your overlord, you'd best give him service with more than your lips," Gerin answered, unperturbed at Schild's anger. He went on, "Speaking of which, though you swore me fealty after I slew Wolfar of the Axe, you've given me precious little."

"I've demanded precious little till now, either," Schild retorted.

"That may be so, but the aid I send you is liable to cost me more than this year's dues alone," Gerin said. "My other vassals—my true vassals—pay what they owe whether they call on me for aid or not, for they don't know when they'll need me. Collecting all I'm due now would break you, so I shan't try, but what I take from you each year will go up hereafter—and if you don't render it, you'll see my chariots in ways you won't like so well as riding to your rescue."

Schild's expression was bright with hatred. "I wish Wolfar had wrung your neck instead of the other way round."

Gerin's blade hissed free. "You're welcome to try to amend the result, if you like."

For a moment, he thought Schild would draw, too. This once, the clean simplicity of combat looked good to him. If he slew Schild, the other's land would pass to him . . . and if he didn't, he wouldn't have to worry about alliances and feudal dues any more.

But Schild took a step back. Gerin did not think it was from fear. Few barons shrank from a fight on account of that—and the ones who did commonly had enough sense that they didn't go provoking their neighbors. The Fox's reluctant vassal said, "Even if I slay you and get out of this keep alive, I can't fill your shoes fighting the creatures, worse luck."

Gerin clapped a hand to his forehead in genuine amazement. He sheathed his sword. "An argument from policy, by the gods! For that I'll gouge you less than I would have otherwise—having a neighbor who can think will pay off for itself, one way or another."

"I have to think you're right about that," Schild answered. "I've got one, and it's costing me plenty."

That crack was almost enough of itself to make Gerin like him. The Fox said, "Come into the great hall, drink some ale with me, and we'll try to figure out what we can do for you." He'd turned and taken a couple of steps before he remembered Schild had been less than forthcoming about his son. He kept walking, but resolved not to like or trust his neighbor no matter what sort of cracks Schild made.

* * *

Schild poured ale down his throat. He watched Gerin warily, too; coming to the Fox for aid could not have been easy for him. "How many cars will you send?" he demanded. "And how soon will you send them? We're hurting badly, and that's the truth. If I'd thought we'd have anything to eat this winter—" He let that hang. No, asking for help hadn't been easy.

Gerin didn't answer right away. He'd been weighing the question even before Schild asked it. "I want to say eight, but I suppose I can spare ten," he said at last.

"What, why you tightfisted—" Schild cursed with an inventiveness and a volume that had men running in from the courtyard and coming down from upstairs to see what on earth had gone wrong now.

Van said, "You don't have a moat, Captain, but shall I chuck him in the ditch for you?"

"No," Gerin answered. "He's pitching a fit because he doesn't know all the facts yet. For instance," he continued with a certain amount of spite, "I haven't told him the chariots and crew I do send will have to be back here in fifteen days' time. They can sweep his holding, but they can't stay there and fight all the way up till harvest time."

"That does it!" Schild sprang to his feet. "I'm for my own lands again, but the gods. And to the five hells with you, Fox, and a murrain on your ten stinking cars and your fifteen stinking days. We'll manage somehow, and after we do—"