Harry Turtledove - Wisdom of the Fox

A bold front had served him well many times in the past. He tapped Raffo on the shoulder again. "Let's go down and give the grand duke proper greeting."

"Aye, lord prince." Raffo sounded a little doubtful, but steered the car toward the approaching host. The rest of the chariots in Gerin's war party followed. He heard some of his men muttering among themselves at the course he took, but no one challenged him. He had a reputation for being right. The next few minutes would show how well he deserved it.

He waved toward the oncoming chariots. Someone waved back: Marlanz Raw-Meat. A moment later, Fabors Fabur's son waved, too. Then Aragis also raised his hand to greet the Fox.

"Well met," Gerin called when he'd drawn a little closer to Aragis' force. "You're in good time, and here with more cars even than I'd looked for. Well met indeed. We were just out driving the monsters back from one of my villages, and slew several." And left two to an unsure fate , he added to himself. Aragis didn't need to know about that. He would surely have killed the cubs without a second thought.

"Good for you, lord prince," Aragis called back. "And not only have I brought my men and my horses and my cars, I have a present for you—two presents, as a matter of fact."

"Have you now, grand duke?" The Fox hoped he sounded fulsome rather than worried. An unscrupulous man, which Aragis had a reputation of being, might reckon a volley of arrows and a hard charge as presents.

But Aragis didn't order an attack. He reached down into the car and held up a large, tightly tied leather sack. "Here's one of them." Then he reached down again and lifted something else, something heavier. His lips pulled back from his teeth, partly from the effort and partly in a real smile. "And here's the other."

From his arms, Duren squealed, "Father!"

Gerin prided himself on seldom being at a loss. His pride suffered now, but he couldn't have cared less. "Duren," he whispered.

Aragis couldn't possibly have heard that, but nodded nonetheless. His driver reined in. He set Duren down on the stone surface of the road. The boy ran to Gerin's chariot.

The Fox jumped out of his car even though Raffo hadn't stopped it. He staggered a little when he landed, and then again when Duren ran into him full tilt. He picked up his son and squeezed him so tight against his own corseleted chest that he felt the air go out of the boy. "Father, why are you crying?" Duren demanded indignantly. "Aren't you glad to see me?"

"That's why I'm crying," Gerin answered: "Because I'm glad to see you."

"I don't understand," Duren said.

"Never mind," Gerin told him. Aragis' chariot had come up behind Duren. The Fox turned to the hawk-faced grand duke and said, "You know I was afraid you'd taken the boy, or rather kept him after someone else—it would have been Tassilo, wouldn't it?—took him. I never thought to get him back through you. To say I'm in your debt just shows how little words can mean."

"You've yet to open your other gift," Aragis said. He handed Gerin the leather sack without more explanation.

When the Fox undid the knot in the rawhide lashing that held it closed, a foul stench escaped. He nodded; from the weight and heft of the sack, he'd expected it would hold a head. He looked inside, nodded again, and closed it. "Aye, that's Tassilo."

"I packed him in salt for some days after I—mm—took him apart," Aragis said. "I wanted you to be able to recognize him, to be sure he was dead."

Gerin picked up the sack and threw it into the grass by the side of the road. It bounced a couple of times and lay still.

"You gave him too easy an end, you ask me," Van told Aragis.

"I thought on that," Aragis admitted. "Still, though, while he kidnapped the boy, he didn't do anything worse while he had him. That may have been because he wanted to keep his value as hostage high, but whatever the reason, it's so. I let his end be easy on account of it."

"He's dead. That's all that matters," Gerin said. "No, not all." He squeezed Duren breathless again, then asked Aragis, "When did he come to you?"

"As the gods would have it, the day after I sent my vassals to you seeking common cause," Aragis said. "So any of the men here with me will attest." His driver and the other warrior in the car with him nodded, almost in unison.

"I see," Gerin said slowly. He wondered if the grand duke was telling the truth. Had he perhaps had Duren earlier, and contemplated using him against the Fox? Aragis was not a man to cross; no doubt his own vassals would support him. Duren wouldn't know, not exactly; four-year-olds had very strange notions of time. Gerin decided to let it lie for now.

"How fare you here?" Aragis asked. "Your own men down further south were full of stories of hard fighting to hold the road open."

"That's true, but we won the fight," Gerin said, doubly glad Aragis hadn't had to try forcing his way through Bevon's men—and quadruply glad Aragis hadn't tried and failed. The Fox went on, "We've had a few other small things happening, too," and with that airy understatement explained his sweeps through his one holding and the one Schild had so urgently requested.

"You've had a busy time of it," Aragis said, a statement so self-evidently true that Gerin didn't even bother nodding. The grand duke added, "I was taking the omens before I set out, and the bird's flight warned me I'd best leave early rather than late, so here you see me now. Try as I would, I couldn't make sense of why, but I accepted the reading all the same."

"I think you did well," Gerin said, and told him of the near werenight due in a few days.

Aragis' eyes narrowed. "Is that a fact?" he said, then shook his head. "No, I'm not doubting you, Fox. Just that, with so many things closer to home to keep track of, I never thought to worry about the moons."

"Sometimes the things you most need to worry about aren't the obvious ones," Gerin said. For some reason that made him think, not of the untouchably distant moons, but of Elise, who'd given no signs—no signs he'd noticed, anyhow—of discontent until one day she was simply gone.

Aragis said, "I have a hard enough time worrying about the things that are obvious. The rest I leave to the gods and clever fellows like you." His voice rang sardonic, but only slightly. He didn't worry about the long run or the wide picture as much as Gerin did. In the short term, and over the limited space of the northlands, his methods worked well enough.

"Let's head up to the keep," Gerin said. "We'll wait out the moons there, if that suits you, and then do our best to smash Adiatunnus. If his lands aren't a sanctuary for the monsters, we'll stand a better chance of controlling them."

"I wonder if we'll ever be able to do that," Aragis said gloomily. "The damned Trokmê's lands are nowhere near mine, but the stinking creatures plague me as bad as they do you, maybe worse. After we finish up here, I'll want you and yours to ride south and help me clear my hinterlands of 'em."

"That's why we made the pact," Gerin agreed, "though as you say I don't know if we'll ever be able to clear them completely now. Sometimes that strikes me as more a job for gods than for men."

"If prayer were the answer, every monster in the northlands would have died a hundred times by now," Aragis said.

"Isn't that the sad and sorry truth?" Gerin said. "But I wasn't thinking so much of prayer. The gods hear prayer for a double handful of thousands of different things every day. No wonder most of them aren't granted—grant one and a god rejects another in the granting. What's crossed my mind once or twice lately, though, is . . . evocation."

Aragis stared at him. So did his own men. He didn't blame any of them. The last time he'd been at all involved in evoking was five years before, when Rihwin summoned Mavrix to turn sour wine back into sweet. Rihwin hadn't intended to evoke Mavrix then, only to invoke him. When you let a god fully enter the material world, you ran a tremendous risk. Summoning the god was relatively easy. Controlling him once summoned was anything but.