Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

"Puts me in mind of something that happened to me a good many years ago, back in my wandering days," Van said as they waited for the attendants to bring back their chariots.

"Probably something that didn't happen," Ferdulf said, "if it's anything like most of your stories."

Van glared at him. "I ought to pop you like the blown-up pig's bladder you are," he growled.

Ferdulf rose into the air. "I am the son of a god, and you would be wise to remember it, lest we discover who pops whom." He was not much more than half as tall as the outlander, and couldn't possibly have weighed a quarter as much, but that little body held power of a different sort from Van's brute strength.

Glaring still, Van said, "I don't care whose son you are, you bigmouthed little weed-I'd like to see you show that even one of my stories, even one, mind you, has the smallest bit of falsehood in it."

Ferdulf fell a few inches, a sign of dismay or chagrin. "How am I supposed to show that?" he demanded. "I wasn't born yet when you were having these adventures you tell lies about, and I haven't been to the preposterous places where you had them."

"Then why don't you shut up?" Van asked sweetly. "Why don't you shut up before you open your mouth so wide, you fall right in?"

Now Ferdulf glared. Before he could say anything, Adiatunnus said, "I'm fain to hear the outlander's tale. He's never dull, say what else you will of him." His comrades nodded; Van's stories had long been popular along the border.

"Shall I go on, then?" Van asked. When even Ferdulf did not say no, go on he did: "This was out in the Weshapar country, east of Kizzuwatna and north of Mabalal. The Weshapar have the most jealous god in the world. He's so crazy, he won't even let them call him by his name, and he has the nerve to claim he's the only real god in the whole wide world."

"Foosh, what a fool of a god he is," Adiatunnus than. "What does he think of the gods of the folk who are lucky enough not to be after worshiping him?"

"He thinks they aren't real at all-that the people around the Weshapar country are imagining them," Van answered.

"Well! I like that!" Ferdulf said indignantly. "I'd like to fly over his temple and piss on it from on high. Maybe he would think that was his imagination, too. Or else I could-"

"Do you want to say what you would do, or do you want to hear what this god and I did do?" Van gave Mavrix's son a dirty look. The attendants fetched the chariots then; everyone but Ferdulf got into them. He floated along beside the one Dagref drove.

"Oh, go on." Now Ferdulf sounded very much like his father, which is to say, petulant.

"Thank you, most gracious demigod." From living with Gerin, Van had learned to be sardonic when it suited him. It didn't suit him very often, which made him more dangerous when it did. While Ferdulf sputtered and fumed, the outlander went on, "This god of the Weshapar put me in mind of a jealous husband. He was always sneaking around keeping an eye on his people to make sure they didn't worship anyone but him, and-"

"Wait," Dagref said. "If this strange god said none of the other gods around him was real, how could people worship them? They wouldn't be worshiping anything at all. Logic."

"I don't think this god ever heard of logic, and I'm starting to wish I'd never heard of you," Van said. "Between you and Ferdulf, we'll be all the way back with the rest of the army before I'm through. Anyhow, there I was, on the way through the Weshapar country-it's hills and rocks and valleys, hot in the summer and cold as all get-out in the winter-trading this for that, doing a little fighting on the side to help keep myself in food and trinkets, when one of the Weshapar chieftains got on the wrong side of this god."

"How'd he do that?" Gerin asked.

"To the five hells with me if I know," Van answered. "A god like that, any little thing will do the trick, same as a jealous husband will think his wife is sleeping with somebody else if she sets foot outside the front door." He sighed. Maybe he was thinking of Fand, though he wasn't a jealous husband of the type he'd described-and though he gave her plenty of reason for jealousy, too. Gathering himself, he went on, "Like I say, I don't know what Zalmunna-this Weshapar chief I was talking about-did to get his god angry at him, but he did something, because the god told him he had to cut the throat of his son to make things right-and to show he really did reverence that foolish god."

"And did this Zalmunna spalpeen tell him where to head in?" Adiatunnus asked. "I would ha' done no other thing but that."

"But you and your people hadn't been worshiping this god for who knows how many generations," Van said. "Zalmunna was in a state, I'll tell you. He was in an even worse state because his son was all ready to let himself be used like a goat or a hog, too. If the god wanted him, he was ready for it. Ready? — no, he was eager as a bridegroom wedding the loveliest wench in the countryside."

"You would think he would have had better sense," Dagref said.

"No, lad- you would think he had better sense, because you have better sense yourself," Van said. "What you haven't figured out yet is how many people are fools, one way or another. What you haven't figured out is how many people are fools one way and another."

"I wonder why they are," Dagref said, a question aimed not so much at Van as at the world around him.

The world around him did not answer. Van went on, "Like I say, the lad was ready to be offered up like a beast. Most of the Weshapar were ready for him to be offered up, too. They were used to doing what their god told them. He was their god. How could they do anything else? Even Zalmunna was thinking he might have to do it. He didn't want to, you understand, but he didn't see that he had much choice.

"We got to talking the night before he was supposed to go into this overgrown valley where that god had his shrine and kill the boy. He'd got himself drunk, the same way you would have if this was happening to you. He knew what I thought of his god, which was not much, so he came to me instead of to any of the rest of the Weshapar.

"Well, since their god was as jealous as he was, and as stupid as he was… like I say, we got to talking. When the time came for him to take his son down into the valley, I went along. His son didn't want me to come. He was fussing and fuming like anything. Sometimes, though you can't pay much attention to what these brats say."

Dagref ignored him. Ferdulf stuck out his tongue at him. Van grinned. "Miserable little excuse for a shrine this god had, too-nothing but a few piled-up stones and a shabby stone table for the throat-cutting business. We got there, and the god's voice came from out of the stones. `Get on with it, he said, and he sounded like my old grandfather about two days before he died.

"Zalmunna laid his son down on the stone table. He took out his knife. Before he used it, though, I hit his son in the side of the head with a little leather sack full of sand and pebbles. The lad went out like a torch you'd stick in a bucket of water. I'd led a sow along, too. I lifted her up onto the table instead of Zalmunna's son, and Zalmunna cut her throat."

"What happened next?" Gerin asked. "The god didn't strike you dead." He took a long, careful look at the outlander. "At least, I don't think he did."

"Honh!" Van said. "What happened was, that god said, `There. You see? Next time you'd better pay attention to me. He felt Zalmunna's son stop thinking, you understand, and then there was blood all over the place. It was just like we'd hoped: he thought Zalmunna really had killed the boy. I slung Zalmunna's son over my shoulder and carried him back to the Weshapar village we'd started out from."

"What happened when he woke up?" Gerin asked.