Harry Turtledove - Wisdom of the Fox

"A good thought," Aragis said. "Do it." He was so direct, he even used words like soldiers, sending forth no more than he needed to carry out his plans.

"Might we not broach even one of the jars of wine we have from Schild to help us rejoice in this alliance?" Rihwin asked.

"No," Gerin and Van said in the same breath. Gerin pretended not to see the curious look Aragis sent him for quashing the question so quickly. He was heartily glad he'd taken those jars out of the cellar and hidden them deep under straw in the stables. To Rihwin, he went on, "Ale suffices for the rest of us, so it will have to do for you, too." Rihwin's pout made him look positively bilious, but he finally gave a glum nod.

Duren kept running around the courtyard and in and out of the great hall, as if making sure things hadn't changed while he was gone. Every once in a while, his voice would rise in excitement: "I remember that!" He'd been gone a quarter of a year, no small chunk of a four-year-old's life.

Selatre came over to Gerin and said, "He's a promising boy."

"Thank you. I've always thought so," the Fox answered. "I just praise Dyaus and all the gods that he doesn't seem to have suffered badly in Tassilo's cursed hands. The minstrel must have reckoned he'd need him hale and not too unhappy as a hostage." That sparked a thought in him. He called his son over and asked, "How was it that you went away with Tassilo when he took you away from here?"

"He promised he'd teach me his songs and show me how to play the lute," Duren answered. "He did, too, but my hands are too small to play a big one. He said he would make me a little one, but he never did do that." And then, to the Fox's surprise, Duren started chanting what Tassilo had called the song of Gerin at his visit to Fox Keep. He did it better than he'd ever sung before he was kidnapped; in that, at least, the minstrel had kept his promise. It wasn't remotely enough.

One of the cooks came out and said, "Lords, the feast begins!" The warriors streamed into the great hall. Even with chairs and benches brought down from upstairs, it was still packed tight.

Fat-wrapped thighbones smoked on Dyaus' altar by the hearth. When a servant brought Gerin a jack of ale, he poured a libation to Baivers and the rest of the ale down his throat. A serving woman picked her way down the narrow space between benches, pulling rounds of flatbread from a platter piled high and setting one in front of each feaster in turn.

She would have gone faster had more than a few men not tried to pull her down onto their laps or to grab at her as she went past. One of them wound up with flatbread draped over his face instead of on the table before him. "I'm so sorry, noble sir," she said, very much as if she meant it.

A cook with a sheep's head on a spit carried it to the fire and carefully started singeing off the wool. "Oh, that will be fine when it's finished," Drago said. He thumped his thick middle. "Have to remember to save some room for it."

Servants with meat more quickly cooked—steaks and chops and roasted slices of hearts and kidneys and livers—came by and set the sizzling gobbets on top of the flatbreads. The feasters attacked them with belt knives and fingers. They threw gnawed bones down into the dry rushes that covered the floor. Dogs growled and snarled at one another as they scrambled for scraps.

Aragis the Archer raised his drinking jack in salute to Gerin, who sat across the table from him. "You're a generous host, lord prince," he said.

"We do what we can, grand duke," the Fox replied. "Once in a while, for celebration, is all well and good. If we ate like this every day, we'd all starve, serfs and nobles together, long before midwinter rolled around."

"I understand that full well," Aragis said. "Between war and hunger and disease, we live on the edge of a cliff. But by the gods, it's fine sometimes to step back from the edge and make life into what it was meant to be: plenty of food, plenty of drink—you brew a fine ale—and no worries, not for today." He raised his jack again, then drained it. A servant with a pitcher made haste to refill it.

Selatre turned to Gerin. Under the noise of the crowd, she said, "Surely there's more to life than a full belly."

"I think so, too," he said, nodding. "So does Aragis, no doubt, or he'd be content to stay in his castle and stuff himself. If you ask me, he'd sooner drink power than ale." But then, trying to be just, he added, "If you don't have a full belly, not much else matters. Years the harvest fails, you find out about that." He paused thoughtfully. "What civilization is, I suppose, is the things you find to worry about after your belly's full."

"I like that," Selatre said. Now she nodded. "Well said."

Van sat at Gerin's right hand, with Duren between them. He'd been talking with Fand, and missed Gerin's words. Selatre's brisk statement of approval caught his notice. "What's well said, Fox?" he asked.

Gerin repeated himself. Van thought it over—perhaps a bit more intensely than he might have at other times, for he'd emptied his drinking jack again and again—and finally nodded. "Something to that." He waved a big arm in a gesture that almost knocked a plate out of a servant's hands. "You Elabonians, you've a great many things past farming. I give you so much, that I do."

Fand rounded on him. "And what o' my own folk?" she demanded. "Sure and you're not with the southrons who call us woodsrunners and barbarous savages and all, are you now?"

"Now, now, lass, I said nothing of the sort. I didn't speak of the Trokmoi at all, just of the folk of my friend here," Van answered, mildly enough. Gerin breathed a silent sigh of relief; he'd seen trouble riding Fand's question as sure as rain rode a squall line. Then, to his dismay, the outlander, instead of leaving well enough alone, went on, "Though now that you ask me, I will say that, since I traveled the forests of the Trokmoi from north to south, I'd far sooner live here than there. More good things to life here, taken all in all."

"Would you, now?" In the space of three words, Fand's voice rose to a screech that made heads whip around. "Well, have some fine Elabonian ale, then!" She picked up her drinking jack and poured it over Van's head, then got up from the bench and started to stalk off.

Snorting and cursing and blinking because the stinging stuff ran down into his eyes, Van reached out a meaty hand and hauled her back. She squawked and swung at him. He blocked the blow with his other arm, slammed her down into her seat hard enough to make her teeth come together with a loud click. "Here, see how you like it," he said, and drenched her with his jack of ale.

She cursed him in Elabonian and the forest tongue, loudly and ingeniously. He just sat there grinning, which fanned the fires of her wrath.

"Go on, both of you, and dry yourselves off," Gerin said, uncomfortably aware a common role for a would-be peacemaker was taking arrows from both sides. "Van may say what he thinks—"

"I'd like to see anyone stop me," the outlander put in.

"Shut up, will you?" Gerin hissed at him before continuing, "—and you, lady, may agree or not, as you judge best. But if you drench someone, you shouldn't be surprised or even angry to get drenched in return."

He waited for her to flare back at him, but every once in a while logic reached her. This proved one of those times. "Aye, summat to that," she said, tossing her head so little drops of ale flew from her coppery hair. She looked warily at Van. "Quits for now?"

"Aye, for now." This time, the outlander got up first. Fand followed him. Gerin wondered if they'd look for a towel or the nearest bedchamber. He laughed a little. Even if Fand wasn't his woman any more, he still got involved in her quarrels.

After a while, Duren said, "Why aren't Van and Fand coming back?"