Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

He hadn't intended Van to take him seriously. But the outlander said, "The gods only know what they've gone off to try and do. I don't think they can conquer the bloody imperials by themselves, seeing as the whole lot of us haven't been able to do that. What they think they can do-who knows?"

"Who knows?" Gerin echoed mournfully. Dagref was at the age where he thought anything was possible. As for Ferdulf, almost anything was possible around him.

Since his driver had gone off, Gerin borrowed a horse from Rihwin's men and rode, slowly and carefully, down to the horsemen who were holding the line against Swerilas' imperials. The Fox wished he'd put in more time on horseback over the years. He managed a simple ride well enough, but wouldn't have wanted to try to fight while mounted.

One advantage of going by horse rather than by chariot was that he went by himself. Without Van along, he didn't have to come up with fancy and fanciful explanations for why he wanted to see Maeva. But he got no satisfaction from seeing her, nor did it seem that Dagref had got any satisfaction from her the night before.

"No, lord king," she said, her eyes widening. "I haven't seen either Dagref or Ferdulf. Why do you think Dagref would have come to me?"

"For the obvious reasons," he answered, and watched her flush. "He's not back at the camp, and he didn't tell me he was going anywhere. My first guess was that that meant a tryst with you."

"If it meant a tryst, it wasn't with me." Now Maeva sounded dangerous for reasons that had only a little to do with warfare.

"If it didn't mean a tryst with you, I don't think it meant a tryst with anyone," Gerin said. Maeva relaxed-a little, and grudgingly. The Fox scratched his head. "If it didn't mean a tryst with you, I don't know what it did mean."

All at once, he remembered the peculiar dream he'd had, the dream where he'd been on the fringes of things and unable to figure out what was going on no matter how important figuring out what was going on was. Maybe he'd had to stay on the fringes of things because the dream had truly been aimed at Dagref. The two of them had both remarked on how much they thought alike; Gerin didn't find it unreasonable that he should catch the edge of a dream meant for his son. That, though, only raised the next interesting question: who or what was aiming dreams at Dagref?

Two answers came to mind-the imperials and Biton. No, three, for Mavrix might have done it, too, which would, or could, have accounted for Ferdulf's absence-assuming, of course, Ferdulf's absence was connected to Dagref's.

"Too much I don't know," Gerin muttered with a sigh.

"What's that, lord king?" Maeva asked. "Is Dagref all right?"

"I don't know that, either," Gerin said. Awkwardly, he swung up onto the horse and rode back to the town of Ikos.

He hoped against hope Dagref would be there when he got back. He even hoped Ferdulf would be there when he got back. If that wasn't a mark of desperation, he didn't know what was.

But neither Dagref nor Ferdulf was there. "Where in the five hells have they gone? What in the five hells do they think they're doing?" he asked of Van, who had already shown he didn't know the answers, either.

"We'll just have to see if the imperials ask us for ransom," the outlander said. "If they've got Ferdulf, as far as I'm concerned they can keep him."

"There are people who would say the same about Dagref," Gerin said gloomily, "but I'm not any of them. If they have him, I'll pay what they want to get him back."

"The price they want is liable not to be gold or copper or tin," Van said. "It's liable to be a bended knee."

"Whatever the price is, I'll pay it," Gerin answered. "Do you think I'm so much in love with having people call me `lord king' that I'd throw away my son so they'd keep on doing it?"

"No," Van said at once. "And if you were fool enough to throw your son away, no one would call you `lord king' afterwards anyhow, for everybody would sicken at being led by such a man."

"Here's hoping you're right," Gerin said. He had his doubts, but did not pass them on to the outlander. Van would surely sicken of being led by such a man, but plenty of truly vicious people had gone on to long and successful reigns. The Fox, though, had no desire to emulate them.

He wondered if Dagref and Ferdulf hadn't gone south after all, if instead they'd chosen to head west along the track through the haunted woods back toward lands within Gerin's suzerainty. He had trouble imagining why they would want to do such a thing-the fighting here would be over long before they could bring back reinforcements-but he had trouble imagining why they would go see the imperials, too.

He slammed one balled-up fist into the palm of the other hand. What had that dream been? If he'd been able to see more of it…

Some time in the middle of the morning, his son and Ferdulf came walking into the town of Ikos: up from the south, not from the forest and hills to the west. No one escorted them, which Gerin took to mean that no one had seen them while they were coming from wherever they had been.

That was his first to the two of them: "Where were you?"

Neither answered right away. Dagref's silence was thoughtful. Silence from Ferdulf struck Gerin as most uncharacteristic. At last, Dagref said, "We went down to see Swerilas the Slippery."

"Just like that?" Gerin said. "You didn't have any trouble getting through my pickets? You didn't have any trouble getting through the imperials' pickets? You went right ahead and walked in to have a chat with Swerilas?"

"Aye, we did," Ferdulf said. The unemphatic nod he gave lent credence to his words.

"We did," Dagref echoed, sounding a bit surprised about it. "We had no trouble doing it. I knew we would have no trouble doing it. I had a dream that told me we would have no trouble doing it, and it was a true dream."

"Ha!" Gerin said. "I was right. The dream was aimed at you. I had it, too, or rather the ragged fringe of it."

"Did you?" Now Dagref looked interested. "I thought you might have, or someone might have. I thought someone on the outside was trying to look in, you might say."

"I didn't notice anyone else when I had the dream," Ferdulf said with more than a trace of hauteur. "I was alone, communing with the god."

"Which god?" Gerin asked. "Your father?"

"Not likely," Ferdulf exclaimed. "My wretch of a father communes with his hand on my fundament, not with a dream in my mind."

"With whom, then?" the Fox demanded.

"Why, with Biton, of course," Ferdulf said, and Dagref nodded. "He did indeed tell us to go to see Swerilas the Slippery-who is truly as oleaginous an article as I have ever set eyes on-and so we did. Biton has more power than I could hope to oppose, and I daresay more power than my father, too."

Gerin didn't know whether that last was true or not. Either way, it wasn't his problem. He kept on trying to find out about the things that were his problem: "And what did you tell Swerilas when you saw him?"

"Why, we told him to attack your army, of course, and not to waste any more time doing it." Ferdulf and Dagref spoke together, smilingly confident they had done the right thing.

"You told him what ?" Gerin shouted. "How could you tell him that? Why would you tell him that?"

"It was what farseeing Biton told us to tell him," Ferdulf and Dagref chorused. Only after the words were out of his mouth did Dagref's smile slip on his face. "I wonder why Biton told us to tell him that."

"To ruin me?" Gerin suggested. "I can't think of any other reason, can you? If Swerilas attacks me, he'll push this army right along the path through the haunted wood west of here. He'll probably push us to pieces, too, trying to get onto that one path. How are we supposed to hold him off? We haven't got the men to hold him off. Don't you know that?"