Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

Carlun agreed at once. Whenever he got out of Fox Keep these days, he seemed a flower spreading itself in the bright sunshine. And the sunshine remained bright and hot. The drubbing Mavrix had given Stribog did keep the Gradi god from meddling with the weather.

"Here we are," Gerin said. "I asked you once, so I'll ask you twice: what's troubling you?"

"Lord prince, how long will Fox Keep be full of warriors?" Carlun asked. "How much longer will they stay here?"

"How long?" The Fox frowned. "Till we've beaten the Gradi, or till they've beaten us, whichever happens first. Why?"

"Because, lord prince, they are eating us-eating you-out of house and home," Carlun answered. "If you hadn't been so prudent about storing up food, your larder would long since have been bare. As things are, this will be a hungry, thirsty winter even without your vassals here."

"What do you suggest I do, then?" Gerin asked. "Shall I send everyone home, with the Gradi still on the Niffet east of here? Shall I surrender to the Gradi? Is that better than letting them make me poor instead of prosperous?"

Carlun licked his lips. "That's not, uh, what I had in mind, lord prince. But you do need to know that even the supplies you have stored up won't last forever."

"Oh, I know that all too well," Gerin said. "Every time I go down into the cellars and see another storage jar opened or another jar gone, it gives me something new to worry about, and I have plenty of things already, thanks."

"Every time you go down into the cellars-" Carlun repeated. He stared at the Fox. "Lord prince, I didn't know you did that. As far as I could see, lords know only about taking, not about saving and watching."

"That's because you've looked at things with the eyes of a serf," Gerin answered. It's also because I look further ahead than most lords , he thought, but he didn't say that out loud. What he did say was, "I have to manage this entire holding the way you ran first your house and then the village. Here, I'll tell you what I have left down there-" He started reeling off jars of ale, of wheat, of barley, of rye, of beans, of peas, of salted beef and mutton, of smoked pork, so many hams, so many sausages, so many hung joints of beef, and on and on till Carlun's eyes all but popped from his head.

"Lord prince," the peasant-turned-steward whispered when the Fox was finally through, "I couldn't have done that without checking the latest records, nor come close to it, but I think from what I do remember of those records, your memory is as near perfect as makes no difference."

"I would have made a splendid scholar," Gerin said, "since I have a jackdaw's memory for useless bits of this and that. Every now and again, it comes in handy in the world where I find myself."

"Lord prince, if you remember all these things, why did you put me in the place where you put me?" Carlun asked. "Not that I'm not grateful mind, when I think what you could have done, but you don't need me. You could do the job yourself."

"Of course I could," Gerin said, with confidence so automatic he didn't notice it himself. "But with you doing it, I don't have to. And so I don't, not really. If we do run low, you're the one who's going to make sure we lay in more supplies from… somewhere. And if you do a bad job at it, I'll throw you out on your ear."

"Oh, I've known that all along, lord prince," Carlun said. Both men smiled, although they both knew Gerin hadn't been joking: he expected no less from those around him than he did from himself. Carlun's smile faded first. He asked, "How am I to pay for whatever I have to bring in?"

"You have my leave to spend my gold and silver," Gerin answered. "I wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't intend to let you do that. I do expect you to spend as little of it as you can."

Carlun bowed his head. "I wouldn't think of doing anything else." He grinned wryly. "I wouldn't dare do anything else."

"No, eh?" Gerin hadn't said one word about checking on Carlun. He didn't intend to say one word about checking on Carlun. He did, however, intend to check on him. If Carlun couldn't figure that out for himself, the Fox had made a mistake in promoting him rather than sending him off to some other village. And if Carlun tried cheating, he'd find he'd made a mistake himself.

They were almost out to the village where he had been headman not long before. Abruptly, he spun on his heel and started walking back toward Fox Keep again, much faster than he'd left it. "I don't want to go back to the hut that used to be mine," he said. "I don't even want to see it, not up close. Do you understand that, lord prince?"

"Maybe I do," the Fox said. "Is it that you don't want to be reminded of how you started out-and of how you could end up?"

Carlun jerked as if Gerin had stuck him with the pin from a fibula. "Did you work magic to see that, lord prince?"

"No," Gerin answered, and immediately wished he'd said yes -if Carlun thought his magic better than it was, he might be more tempted to walk the straight and narrow. But, having answered honestly, he went on, "Seeing that one wasn't hard. When you were headman, you had to know what the rest of the people in the village were thinking, didn't you?" When Carlun nodded, the Fox finished, "I've had to do that for my holding, and for much longer than you needed to do it. I've seen a lot, I've remembered a lot, and I can put all that together. Do you follow me?"

A lot of men-some of them his vassal barons-wouldn't have. They remembered little and learned less, going through life, or so it seemed to Gerin, more than half-blind. But Carlun, whether honest and reliable or not, was anything but stupid. "You may not be casting a spell," he said, "but that doesn't mean it isn't magic."

Since Gerin had had the same thought about the craft of ruling men as recently as Aripert's arrival at Fox Keep, he glanced toward Carlun with considerable respect. As they came back to the keep, he said, "I have your gracious permission to keep the garrison here a while longer, eh?"

"Of course, lord prince," Carlun said, sounding on the lordly side himself. When Gerin gave him a sharp look, his burst of bravado collapsed and he added, "Not that you need it, mind you."

"There is that," Gerin agreed, happy Carlun knew his place after all.

Dagref, Clotild, and Blestar were playing with Maeva and Kor. Gerin watched the game with faint bemusement. Dagref was not only oldest but sharpest witted. A lot of the time, he couldn't be bothered playing with his sibs; his mind, though not his body or spirit, was nearly that of an adult. When he did join them and Van's children, the role he saw for himself was halfway between overseer and god: he invented not just rules but a whole imaginary world, and put himself and them through their paces in it.

"No, Maeva!" he shouted. "I told you. Don't you remember? The bark of that tree" — a stick- "is poisonous."

"No, it's not," Maeva said. To prove her point, she picked up the stick and whacked Dagref with it. "There. You see?" But for the high pitch of her voice, that self-satisfied directness might have come straight from Van. "Didn't hurt me a bit."

"You're not playing right," Dagref said angrily: by his tone, he could imagine no felony more heinous.

"Be careful, son," Gerin muttered under his breath. Dagref was older, but Maeva, girl or no girl, was both stronger and more agile. If Dagref forced a confrontation, he'd lose. If he wanted to get his way here, he'd have to figure out how to do it without getting into a fight.

Just then, Geroge and Tharma came out of the great hall. All the children greeted them with glad cries. The brewing quarrel between Dagref and Maeva was forgotten. The two monsters, though now approaching adulthood, had always been part of the children's games at Fox Keep. They were bigger and stronger than any of the others, which more than balanced their also being duller. Had they been bad-tempered, their strength would have made them terrors. Since they weren't, they became companions all the more desirable.