Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

"They wanted battle," Baivers answered. "You've given 'em what they wanted, and then some. Bet they'll like you real well when this here is done."

Gerin didn't know whether that prospect was more appealing-if the underground powers felt well disposed toward him, they might be inclined to control the monsters' depredations-or appalling. What he did know was that the Gradi gods were not enjoying themselves. He had the feeling from previous encounters with them that they seldom enjoyed themselves, at least by any standards with which he was familiar.

What they felt now was anger, of a peculiar sort: the anger of those who see plans they had reckoned certain of success suddenly falling to pieces all around them. In his little space inside Baivers' sensorium, the Fox exulted. The Gradi and their gods had reckoned the northlands ripe for conquest and transformation. Now they were finding it wasn't so, and not caring for the discovery.

Here came Smerts, looking more deathly than ever. She seized Baivers as she had seized the death god among the underground powers. As she had with him, she crooned, "You are mine."

Baivers groaned. Dwelling inside him-dwelling, in effect, as part of him-Gerin felt vitality flowing out of him and into Smerts. It was like watching ale leak out of a cracked jar-the level went down, down, down, steadily, inexorably. That gave the Fox an idea. "Feed Smerts more life than she can hold all at once," he thought at Baivers. "You're a god of growing things-make her grow lively if you can."

"If I can," Baivers said doubtfully. He seemed to quiver, gathering himself. Then-it was as if a lightning bolt passed from him to Smerts.

The Gradi goddess gasped. Her eyes opened very wide. The stringy white stood out straight on her skull. Was it the Fox's imagination, or did she all at once look less skeletal than she had?

"You can't do that," she gasped at Baivers. "You can't." But her voice was not the harsh croak it had been a moment before. It was smoother, richer: almost the voice of a being concerned with something other than extinction.

Gerin still wondered if he was more hopeful than he should have been, if he was letting that hope color what his senses (always unreliable on this plane anyhow) told him. No: Baivers sensed Smerts' weakness, too. "Yes I can," he said, fresh confidence in his own voice.

Watching Smerts, Gerin watched years peel away and emaciation flesh out. Contemplating his own middle-aged carcass back in the merely material world, he wished Baivers would put him through a similar course. It soon proved too much for the Gradi goddess. She broke free of Baivers and fled. At each stride, she seemed to age a few years, and was soon back to what she had been, but she did not challenge the god of barley again.

"I thank you," Baivers said to Gerin. "That was right sly. Worst thing for a lot of folks is too much of what they tell you they want." He strode toward Voldar, shouting to her, "You, there! We weren't done, the two of us!"

She whirled to face him. "No, we weren't," she said. Gerin wondered about the wisdom of confronting the queen of the Gradi pantheon so directly. Before he could more than begin to frame that thought, though, Voldar's pale gaze pierced the encystment within Baivers where his own small spirit sheltered. "You!" she cried, and she was not speaking to the Elabonian god.

"Yes, me," Gerin answered, as steadfastly as he could. "I told you that you weren't welcome in the northlands, and that I'd do everything I could to stop you."

Voldar's eyes flashed pale fire. "I never dreamt one mortal could cause so much trouble." Her wave encompassed the chaos all around, chaos with no resolution anywhere near at hand. Then she stabbed out a finger at the Fox. "And I say you may not come to the Gradihome of the gods." Her voice rose to a shrill shriek: "Begone!"

Darkness.

Gerin opened his eyes. He was in the shack again. "Did we win?" Van asked.

Gerin cast a wary eye up to the sky. The day was hot and fair; the sun blazed down like a ball of molten bronze in the middle of a blue enamel bowl. The cold, nasty rain that had plagued the last part of the ride up from Ikos was gone, vanished more suddenly than a natural storm had any business disappearing.

Wiping his forehead with a sleeve, he said, "Unless I miss my guess, Stribog is either still fighting one of the monsters' gods or else laid up from having fought him."

"Been four days now since you and Baivers and all the underground powers went to fight Voldar and her chums," Van said. "Still no notion of how the fight turned out?"

"Not even the slightest," Gerin answered. "Every day since, I've tried to summon Baivers, I've tried to summon the monsters' gods, but I get no answer. Maybe they've been destroyed, but I don't think so. If they had been, the Gradi would be swarming up the Niffet in their war galleys, and we haven't seen a single fire beacon. The weather's too fine to make me think the Gradi gods won, too."

"What then?" Van asked.

"My best guess is that they're still fighting up there, out there, on that plane where the gods can go and we mostly can't," the Fox said. "Neither side looked to have any sort of edge when Voldar booted me off my perch on Baivers' shoulder, you might say."

"A fight that doesn't stop." Van sighed wistfully. "Must be a fine thing to be a god, to never need to eat or sleep, to heal up as fast as you're hurt, to war for as long as you like, for years on end, maybe." He let out a snort of laughter. "But then, I know a bit about warring for years on end. I ought to, married to Fand like I am."

He looked indignant when Gerin didn't chuckle at that. "Warring for years on end," Gerin said. He nodded, more to himself than to Van. "It could be so." He hoped it was so. If the Gradi were locked in battle with the underground powers and with Baivers for years, they'd have neither the time nor the ability to help their human followers. He smacked one fist into the other palm. "We have to hit the Gradi while their gods are busy-can't waste a moment. The more we drive those cursed raiders back, the harder the time they'll have recovering, even if their gods do end up beating the ones I turned loose on them."

Van stared at him. "You sound like you're heading out on campaign this very day."

"Tomorrow will have to do, I think," the Fox said reluctantly. "But I'm going to send out a messenger this instant to let Adiatunnus know we're on our way. We're going across the Venien again, and this time we're not coming back till we've beaten the Gradi."

"You've said that before," Van answered. "It didn't work out."

"I wish you hadn't reminded me," Gerin said, which made the outlander chuckle and bow as if he'd just been thanked for doing a favor. Slowly, Gerin went on, "If we can't beat them on the land they've stolen while their gods are busy, though… I don't think we'll be able to beat them at all. What we'll have to do in that case is not go after them any more, but hunker down in our keeps, fight them as hard as we can for as long as we can when they come to us, and probably end by going down fighting."

"There are worse ways to end," Van said. "I don't think I'd want to get old and creaky and have a fit so one side of my body doesn't want to work and spend my last days gumming gruel on account of I can't chew and I can hardly swallow. Next to that, an axe that splits my skull is kind."

"I wasn't thinking so much of my end," Gerin said. "I don't want to watch everything I've spent my life building fall to pieces, though, and see my children made into serfs for the Gradi."

"If the Gradi win, you won't see any of that, for they'll surely kill you," Van said, and the Fox could hardly disagree. "Still and all, I follow what you're saying," the outlander continued. "I tell you true, there are times I'm glad I don't try to look so far ahead as you do."