Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

That was a lesson serfs sucked in with their mothers' milk. Most serfs, seeing an army on the move, whether made up of the enemy or of their overlord's warriors, ran for the woods and swamps with whatever they could carry. Women ran faster than men-and had better reason to run.

The serfs who labored in the Fox's holding, though, watched the chariots come forth from the keep without fear. A few of them even waved from the fields and vegetable plots where they labored. Slowly, over the years, they'd let Gerin convince them his soldiers were likelier to mean protection than rapine and rape.

As Dagref drove past the village, a small figure came out of one of the huts there and trotted after his chariot. No child should have had any business gaining on a two-horse chariot. This one did so with effortless ease. "Father," Dagref asked in a small, tight voice, "did you intend for Ferdulf to campaign with us?"

"Of course not," Gerin answered. He waved to the little demigod. "Go back to your mother!"

"No," Ferdulf answered in his utterly unchildlike tones. "The village is boring. And with you and all your soldiers gone from the keep, it'll be boring there, too. I'll go with you. Maybe you won't be boring." He sounded as if, with some reluctance, he was giving the Fox the benefit of the doubt.

Gerin's reaction was that life with Ferdulf wasn't likely to be boring, either, but that didn't mean it would be more enjoyable. "Go back to your mother," the Fox repeated.

"No," Ferdulf said, in his stubbornness not only childlike but godlike, a point in common between the two aspects of his nature Gerin had noticed before. Ferdulf stuck out his tongue. Like Mavrix, he could stick it out improbably far when he wanted to. "You can't make me, either."

As if to emphasize that, he leaped into the air and flew along ten or fifteen feet above Gerin's head, jeering all the while. "If the little bugger doesn't knock that off," Van muttered behind his hand, "he's liable to find out just how close to immortal he is when he comes in for a landing."

"I know what you mean," Gerin said. He didn't expect Van to try wringing Ferdulf's neck, or to succeed if he did try. He understood-he understood down to the ground-the reasons the outlander had for contemplating semideicide.

Glaring up at Ferdulf, the Fox declared, "If you don't come down from there this minute, I'll tell your father on you."

"Go ahead," Ferdulf answered. "He doesn't like you, either."

"That's true," Gerin said calmly, "but he wouldn't pick such foolish ways of showing it." He thought he was even telling the truth. Whatever else could be said about him-and a great deal else could have been said about him-Mavrix had style.

Ferdulf did hesitate. In his hesitation, he fell a few feet-almost low enough for Gerin to reach up and try plucking him out of the air. At the last minute, he thought better of it. He'd laid hold of Ferdulf on the ground, and had got away with it there. Doing the same thing from a moving chariot struck him as imperfectly provident.

Dagref spoke over his shoulder: "Aren't you going to make him go back to the village?"

"I'm open to suggestions," Gerin snarled. "Right now, I'd be satisfied with making him shut up."

"Oh, I can do that," Dagref said. "I thought you wanted what you said you wanted in the first place."

"One of these days, you'll learn the difference between what you want and what you'll settle for," Gerin said, to which his son responded with only a scornful toss of his head. Nettled, the Fox snapped, "What forfeit will you pay if you don't make the little bastard shut up?"

"Why, whatever you like, of course," Dagref replied.

Van whistled softly. "He's asking for it, Fox. You ought to give it to him."

"So I should." Gerin tapped Dagref on the shoulder. "Go ahead. Do it. Now."

"All right," Dagref said. "What forfeit will you pay if I do?"

"Whatever you like, of course." Gerin spoke in mocking imitation of his son.

"Hmm." Dagref looked up to Ferdulf, who was still flying along making a hideous racket. "You know, right now you'd annoy my father much more by keeping quiet than you do with all that noise."

Silence.

After a minute or so, Van broke that silence with a thunderous guffaw. Gerin glared up at Ferdulf, who flew along, still silent, but made a horrible face back at him. Merely human features could never have accommodated that sneer. Of course, a merely human being wouldn't have been flying along above the chariot, either.

"Have I won, Father?" Dagref asked.

"Aye, you've won," Gerin admitted, more than a little apprehensively. "What will you ask of me?"

He'd promised too much. He knew he'd promised too much. Now he had to deliver. If Dagref said something like Declare me your successor on the spot , he didn't see how he could do anything else-unless he could talk his son out of it. Talking Dagref out of anything was no easy task.

He couldn't see his son's face; Dagref was concentrating on driving the chariot. More silence stretched. Gerin knew what that meant. Dagref was thinking things over. One thing he seldom did was speak too soon. In that he was very like his father. Gerin had broken his own rule, and now he would have to pay for it.

"I don't know right now," Dagref answered after that pause for thought. "When I decide, I'll tell you."

"All right," Gerin said. "You'll know best. Whatever it turns out to be, make sure it's what you really want now and what you really want years from now, too."

"Ah." Dagref rode on for another little while, then said, "You're not going to tell me you were only joking and you didn't really mean it?"

Had he and Dagref been having a purely private argument, Gerin might have tried telling him just that. With a demigod as witness, he thought the consequences of granting whatever Dagref asked for would be less than those of trying to break his word. "No, I'm not going to tell you that," he said. "I'm going to count on your good sense."

Van poked him in the ribs. He grimaced. The outlander's face bore an unseemly smirk. The Fox knew what he was thinking: at Dagref's age, good sense was hard to come by. With anyone of that age but his contemplative son, he would have had little hope himself. As things were, he had… some.

Dagref said, "All right, Father." His chuckle was eerily like the one Gerin would have used under the same circumstances. "I'm not likely to get another promise like that out of you, am I?"

"You weren't likely to get the first one," Gerin answered. "That was a sneaky bit of business you used, playing Ferdulf off against me."

"I learned it from you," Dagref said. "You've been playing foes off one against another for years now. Sometimes they even notice you're doing it, but never till too late."

He spoke matter-of-factly. He knew what he knew. That Gerin's foes-all of them men grown-had failed to see it till too late was their misfortune, not his. In his own rather withdrawn way, he was formidable.

Rihwin and a squadron of his riders came up and surrounded the chariot just then. Gerin was glad to watch them for a while. They took his mind off both Dagref and Ferdulf. The horseriders were staring up at Ferdulf and exclaiming; not all of them had paid the little demigod much heed till now. Ferdulf responded with a series of aerial maneuvers that would have left an eagle dizzy. The riders clapped and cheered. Ferdulf's face bore a smug grin. Like Mavrix, he was vain.

Dagref, having used Ferdulf to score his point against his father, paid no more attention to him. He watched the riders, too. Gerin understood that: most of them were young men, a good number hardly older than Dagref. Gerin hadn't seen so many nearly smooth cheeks and chins since his days in the City of Elabon, where shaving was the custom.