Harry Turtledove - Wisdom of the Fox

"I don't like it, either," Gerin answered. "I'm stretched far too wide—seems that's all I say lately. Men and cars off in Schild's holding, more of them down in the south fighting Bevon and his bastard boys—"

"They were born in wedlock, far as I know," said Drago, who could sometimes get the letter and miss the spirit.

"They're bastards all the same," Gerin said. "Lining up with the Trokmoi is bad enough, but anyone who lines up with the monsters deserves whatever happens to him. I intend to happen to Bevon and Bevonis and Bevion, but while I'm dealing with them, I can't be dealing with Adiatunnus and his monster friends. And if my men can't push Bevon off the Elabon Way, and if Aragis' troopers fail too, what then? I can't see anything—except us losing the war, I mean."

"Never happen," Drago said, and fell asleep at the table, his head in his hands.

Gerin wished he had his vassal's confidence—and naïveté. He knew only too well how easy losing the war would be; his nimble imagination, usually an asset, betrayed him with images of blood and defeat and treachery. So many ways things could go wrong. What he had trouble coming up with was ways they could go right.

He emptied his own drinking jack and went upstairs himself. He opened the door to his bedchamber as quietly as he could, expecting Selatre to be asleep. But he found the lamp lit and her sitting up in bed waiting for him. She wasn't spending the time idly, either; she'd gone down the hall to the library and fetched back a codex to read until he returned. She put it down and said, "Biton and the other gods be praised that you're all right. Every time you go out to fight now—"

"Not a scratch," he said, turning to bar the door. "We hurt the monsters worse than they hurt the village, so that's—well, not all right, but better than it might have been." He didn't want to talk about the skirmish; all he wanted to do was forget it. "What do you have there?"

She flipped back to the first leaf of parchment. " On the Motions of the Moons , by one Volatin of Elabon. It was the first volume I saw in the library, the reason being that you left it out on the table there instead of returning it to its proper niche." She fixed him with the severe look of a librarian whose sense of order had been transgressed.

"I'm sorry," he said; rather to his surprise, he found himself meaning it. "So you're trying Volatin, are you? What do you make of him?"

"Not much, I'm afraid," she admitted. "Endless numbers and curious signs you didn't teach me and other obscurities and oddments. What do they all mean?"

"They mean that if I'd looked through his book five years ago I'd have known the werenight was coming, for he showed it beyond doubt in those columns of numbers. But I just thought of the book as a curiosity I'd brought back from the City of Elabon, and so it sat idle and useless on my shelf." He scowled in self-reproach.

"What could you have done about the werenight had you known of it?" Selatre asked.

"Given that I was traveling when it happened, probably nothing," he said. "But it's made me pay close attention to the phases of the moons ever since. Ten—no, eleven—days from now, Math will be full, the day after that Elleb and Nothos, and the day after that Tiwaz. It's not quite a dreadful werenight like the one we had before—from what Volatin says, those come less than once in a thousand years. But men with a were streak in them will come closer to changing then than on any other night for a long time to come. It's—"

"—One more thing to worry about," Selatre finished for him.

He stared at her in surprise and delight. "Well, well," he said. "I didn't know you spoke my language."

"I'm learning," she said.

X

Three days after the monsters attacked Besant's village, the lookout in the watchtower blew a long blast on his horn and shouted, "A chariot approaches from the south!" A few minutes later, he added with some excitement, "It's Utreiz Embron's son, by the gods!"

Gerin was in the stables, fitting a new spoke to a chariot wheel. He dropped the knife with which he was making a final trim of the spoke. Raffo, who was helping him, said, "Well, we'll know one way or the other."

"That we will," Gerin answered, and hurried out into the courtyard.

Men were also bustling out from the keep itself: everyone in Castle Fox—everyone in Gerin's domain—had a vital stake in learning whether the Elabon Way had been reopened. Van caught the Fox's eye and said, "Wishing you luck, Captain."

"I'll take all I can get, thanks," Gerin said.

The drawbridge seemed to be crawling down. Gerin's hands folded into fists; his nails bit into his palms. At last, with a thump, the drawbridge met the ground on the far side of the ditch around the palisade. Utreiz's chariot thumped over it. Even before the warrior spoke, a great weight lifted from Gerin's heart, for he, his driver, and the other warrior in the car were all wreathed in smiles.

"Dyaus and all the gods be praised, we smashed 'em!" Utreiz cried. He tried to go on, but a great cheer from everyone in the courtyard drowned the rest of his words. Rihwin the Fox leaped up into the car and planted a kiss on the startled Utreiz's cheek. He had no designs on the other man's body; that was just a southern way of showing joy at good news. In the rougher northlands, though, it was best used with caution. " Get off me!" Utreiz said, and several other rougher things the hubbub mercifully muffled.

When the din died away a little, Gerin said, "Tell us all that befell. Maybe"—he glanced around pointedly—"we'll be able to hear you now."

"Aye, lord prince." Utreiz turned as if to push Rihwin out of the chariot, but Rihwin had already jumped down. Looking foolish, Utreiz resumed: "In one way, it was just as you said: Ricolf the Red and his men came up from the south to join us and Bevander against Bevon and his other two sons. Since they held the road, we had to sneak through the woods to the west to set up a common attack on the same day. We set out right at dawn, caught 'em by surprise worse than they did when they hit us and grabbed that stretch of road. Bevonis is dead. We caught Bevion; he offered me everything in the world not to let Bevander have him. Bevon, curse him, got away and holed up in his keep."

He had to shout the last part; cheering had erupted again. Through it, Gerin said, "Well done! The road is open, we have our men back from Schild's holding—"

"What's this, lord?" Utreiz asked, and Gerin realized he hadn't heard about Schild's cry for help.

He explained quickly, finishing, "You'd have been just as glad if the men I'd sent to Schild had stayed out a few days more, seeing as Rihwin was one of them. But all we have to do now is await Aragis' troopers." And hope they come , he added to himself.

"This splendid news calls for an equally splendid celebration!" Rihwin shouted, which raised more cheers from the warriors gathered in the courtyard around Utreiz. Even Gerin clapped his hands, not wanting to be thought a wet blanket. If his men felt like roistering where no fight impended, that was all right with him. But then Rihwin went on, "What say we break out the wine with which Schild was generous enough to buy our aid?"

Some of the troopers clapped again. Others—notably Van and Drago—looked to Gerin instead. "No," he said in a voice abrupt as an avalanche.

"But, my fellow Fox—" Rihwin protested.

Gerin cut him off with a sharp, chopping gesture. "No I said and no I meant. Haven't you had enough misfortunes with wine and with Mavrix, my fellow Fox?" He freighted Rihwin's ekename with enough irony to sink it.

Rihwin flushed, but persisted, "I hadn't intended to summon the lord of the sweet grape, lord prince, nor had I intended to do aught more with his vintage than sip it, and not to excess."