Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

Ferdulf let out a squeal of pure outrage. "I said you wouldn't dare!" he cried. The probing fingers vanished from Gerin's mind. If nothing else, the Fox had managed to distract him.

"Just because you said it doesn't make it so." Not without a certain amount of trepidation, Gerin brought down the hand that wasn't restraining Ferdulf.

The demigod's howl was quite satisfactory. Ferdulf tried to rise straight up into the air, as he had while playing at Fox Keep. He did rise, too, but not very far, not with the Fox holding onto him.

"Have I got your attention yet?" Gerin asked. Even with his feet off the ground, he retained enough presence of mind to administer another dose of the medicine he had chosen. "Why don't you put us both down, and we can talk about it some more instead of fighting?"

"Oh, very well." Ferdulf's petulant tones were an echo of those Mavrix used when, as did happen once in a while, the Sithonian god was compelled to change his ways.

"Thank you," Gerin said, most sincerely, when his feet touched the ground again.

"You're welcome," Ferdulf answered, an unexpected bit of politeness he must have acquired from his mother. He gave the Fox a dirty look. "Why are you so much harder to change than pigs and ducks?"

As the implications of that sank in, Herris Bigfoot and Fulda gasped. Gerin gulped. Ferdulf had been trying to give him a duck's head, then. "I don't know why," he said. "I'm just glad I am. And I want you to remember I am. The next time you try to change me-or anything else-you're going to be in trouble. Have you got that?"

"Yes, I've got it." Ferdulf didn't look happy about it, either, which was a long way from breaking Gerin's heart. The little demigod glared up at him. "How come you get to tell me what to do, when you're only a mortal?"

"Why?" The Fox considered that. "I can think of a couple of reasons. One is, I may be just a mortal, but I've been around a lot longer than you have. I know more about the world than you do."

The first of those statements was undoubtedly true. The second would undoubtedly have been true were Ferdulf an ordinary four-year old. Were Ferdulf an ordinary four-year-old, though, he wouldn't have tried flying off with the Fox, and he wouldn't have tried decorating him with a mallard's head, either.

Whatever else Ferdulf was, he wasn't trained to catch logical flaws. He accepted what the Fox told him more readily than Gerin would have. "That's one," he said. "What's two?"

"Two is very simple," Gerin answered. "I just showed you I'm strong enough to do it, didn't I?"

Besides being Aragis' argument over Balser's allegiance, that also had its logical flaws. How long would Gerin go on being stronger than Ferdulf? What would happen when he wasn't stronger any more? Gerin didn't know the answers to those questions. He could think of things liable to be more pleasant than discovering what those answers were.

But Ferdulf, though a demigod, was a four-year-old demigod. As with any other four-year-old, things as they were now seemed close to the way they would be forever. "Yes, you're stronger," he said, angry resignation in his voice. "But not everybody is."

If that aside didn't want to make Herris, and maybe Fulda, too, run somewhere far, far away, maybe it should have. Gerin carefully chose a different issue. "I'm not the only one who's stronger than you, Ferdulf. What about Selatre, my wife?" Despite her disclaimer to Marlanz, Ferdulf had been known to heed what she said.

"That's not fair!" he exclaimed now. "The god she knows still keeps an eye on her, and my father won't pay any attention to me."

"You can tell that farseeing Biton still holds Selatre in his mind?" Gerin asked.

"Of course," Ferdulf said. "Can't you?"

He didn't altogether grasp how limited the ordinary human sensorium was. He'd also said something else interesting, though he probably didn't know it. So Mavrix was less than attentive to his offspring, was he? That didn't surprise Gerin, though he hadn't known it before. A god of unbridled fertility didn't strike the Fox as likely to make the most devoted parent for any one child.

"Will you behave yourself?" he demanded of the little demigod.

"I suppose so," Ferdulf answered.

"No more pigducks or duckpigs?" Gerin said. Having Dagref in his household, he'd learned better than to leave loopholes open: "And no more mixing any other creatures-or people-together, all right?"

"All right," Ferdulf said, not too much sulk in his voice. Gerin didn't trust his promise very far, but didn't altogether discount it, either. From what he'd seen of Ferdulf, the promise was worth about as much-and as little-as that of any other child of the same age. Sooner or later, the demigod would forget he'd made it and do something else appalling. That was how children behaved, even children of large powers. But the Fox didn't think Ferdulf would go out and deliberately break his word.

"Fair enough," he said. "We have a bargain, then." Ferdulf nodded and went off to play. Gerin didn't think he walked a couple of feet off the ground intending to intimidate. More likely, he just wasn't thinking about what he was doing.

Herris Bigfoot, by now, took such minor impossibilities in stride. He said, "Thank you, lord king. We are grateful to you, believe me, for keeping him under what control you do."

Gerin looked him straight in the eye. "Quack," he answered seriously. "Quack, quack, quack." Herris looked horrified. Fulda gasped in dismay. Gerin let both of them stew for a moment, then started to laugh.

"That wasn't nice, lord king," Fulda said, sounding more sorrowful than angry.

He thought about it. When Ferdulf terrorized the villagers, he didn't know any better. Gerin did. "You're right, of course," he told Fulda. "I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry."

If anything, the apology-the second in the space of a few minutes-disconcerted her more than the quacks had. "You're the king," she blurted. "You don't have to say you're sorry to the likes of me."

He shook his head. "No, you're wrong. It's Aragis who never needs to say he's sorry. That's the difference between us, right there." Fulda didn't understand. He hadn't expected she would.

"Who comes to Fox Keep?" called the sentry up on the palisade.

"I am Balser Debo's son," came the reply from the chariot outside the keep. "I am here to give homage and fealty to Gerin the Fox, the king of the north, to acknowledge him as my suzerain and overlord of my barony."

The sentry whirled to see where Gerin was. As it happened, he was standing in the courtyard not far away. "Did you hear that, lord king?" he exclaimed, his voice going high and shrill with excitement. "Did you hear that?"

"I heard it," the Fox answered. He'd been waiting for this moment for some time, waiting for it and at the same time half hoping-maybe more than half hoping-it would not come. Now that it was here, though, he would have to make the most of it. He raised his voice: "Balser Debo's son is welcome at Fox Keep. Let him enter!"

Bronze chain clattered as the gate crew lowered the drawbridge. Balser's chariot rolled into the courtyard. The driver reined in the fine two-horse team. Balser got down from the car and walked over to the Fox. He was a young man, dark, slim, not very tall but well put together, who wore his beard in the forked style that had long been out of date but was suddenly all the rage again.

Like the first stone sliding down a mountain to start an avalanche (Gerin remembered how the Elabonian Empire had blocked the last pass through the High Kirs with just such an avalanche, leaving the northlands to their own devices when the Trokmoi invaded), Balser was going to cause a lot more trouble than he ever could have accounted for by himself. His coming here, in fact, was no doubt the beginning of the rockslide.