Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

"We're all different," Gerin said with a shrug, "and we're all still free. Now we'll find out how long we get to stay that way."

In times gone by, the guards at the eastern border of Adiatunnus' holding would have fled at the approach of the Elabonian army Gerin led-either fled or, with mad Trokm- courage, tried to sell their lives dear. Now, instead, they let out whoops of delight. Their voices broke as they cried out: they had hardly more than Duren's years, with only light down on their faces.

"What word from the Venien?" Gerin called to them in their own language.

" 'Twas said the Gradi were after moving men up toward that stream," one of the youths replied. "How any man could be sure, though, with the bad weather we've been having and all, is past me, indeed and it is."

"What's the weather like on the other side of the river these days?" the Fox asked, remembering the summer blizzard that had done more to defeat him than the axes of the Gradi.

Both the young sentries shrugged. "Been warmer here o' late," said the one who hadn't spoken before. "And you're only a day and a little bit behind the chariot you sent out, the which, I've no doubt, our chief will be right glad to see."

"And even gladder to see the whole lot of you," the other youngster added. "Adiatunnus is after gathering all the men he may, to hold the Gradi back, that being the reason the two of us get to do a soldier's job so soon."

"Do well. Do as well as you can," Gerin told them. "But we don't aim to hold back the Gradi. We aim to go after 'em and beat 'em." The Trokm- sentries cheered again. So did his own men.

On into Adiatunnus' holding rode the Elabonian army. The Elabonian serfs in the fields, seeing soldiers, mostly fled into the woods regardless of whether they spoke the same language. Soldiers were soldiers, and all too liable to be dangerous. "We might as well be Gradi or Trokmoi ourselves, as far as they're concerned," Duren said, watching them run.

"Remember that," Gerin told him. "My serfs don't think of my warriors that way, and yours shouldn't, either, once you've taken over at the holding your grandfather ruled."

Mischief in his voice, Van said, "But these are your serfs, too, Fox, for isn't Adiatunnus your vassal?"

"When he feels like it," Gerin answered dryly, which made his son and his friend laugh. Gerin drummed his fingers on the chariot rail. "If we win against the Gradi, he may have to decide whether he's my vassal or my foe-I may make him decide that, I should say. Till then, I'm just glad he hasn't sided with them instead of with me."

They passed that night camped by a keep that had held an Elabonian petty baron in the days before the Trokmoi swarmed south over the Niffet and was now home to woodsrunners who lorded it over the serfs at a nearby village. A lot of the men were gone from the keep, summoned by Adiatunnus to protect his western border. The Trokm- women, bolder in their habits than Elabonians would have been, wasted little time in getting friendly-or more than friendly-with the newcomers.

The night was made for such games, being unusually dark in its early states: all four moons were past full, the first of them, Nothos, not rising till almost halfway between sunset and midnight. Gerin was anything but surprised to see Van heading upstairs with a brash Trokm- woman who put him in mind of Fand. He had no doubt Fand would guess, one of these days before too long, what the outlander was up to. His ears rang in anticipation.

He sighed. He couldn't do anything about that. He wasn't Van's nursemaid. If the outlander didn't get so drunk as to make himself too hung over to stay in the chariot come tomorrow, the Fox had no call to upbraid him.

"But it's-untidy, that's what it is," he said to no one in particular. Finding exactly the right phrase satisfied him in a way even shouting at Van couldn't have done. He wrapped himself in a blanket and went to sleep.

Outriding the news of its coming, the Elabonian army descended on Adiatunnus' keep and the village-almost the town-close by it. "If I'd done as well as this when I was the Trokm-'s enemy, he'd have feared me more," Gerin said.

As he'd been doing all along, he looked up into the sky. The weather remained hot and dry. He and his men were close to the Venien now. If Stribog interfered with the normal run of things, they would know it sooner and more surely than back at Fox Keep. He saw no sign of any such thing, and was relieved.

Adiatunnus rode out from his castle to greet Gerin and the men with him. "The fellow you sent ahead, he said you're after thinking of fighting the Gradi on their own ground again," he said, sounding anything but delighted at the prospect.

"It's not their ground," the Fox answered. "Some of it, in point of fact, is mine. I intend to take it back, and to drive them off it."

"You intended the same earlier in the year, and had nobbut bad cess," Adiatunnus said. "Why d'you think your luck'll be better on a second go?"

"I'll tell you why," Gerin said, and did. He finished, "I don't know whether Baivers and the monsters' gods have beaten Voldar and the Gradi crew, but I'd say they haven't lost. If they had, the weather would be worse."

Adiatunnus tugged at one side of his drooping mustaches. "It could be so," he said at last, after some thought. "Not long ago, the cold storms came rolling over the Venien one after t'other, you might say, and the Gradi looked to be gathering for a push right at us." He scowled. "Shamed as I am to own it, we'd have broken and run without your Widin. On our own, we canna stand against the Gradi. But he said he'd fight 'em with us or without us, and so I called up all the men, to give him what help we could."

Making himself stand against a foe who had trounced his folk time after time had taken courage, and courage of an unusual sort. "Widin's not the only man here with spirit," the Fox said, acknowledging that. "What happened then? I haven't heard of the Gradi crossing the Venien."

"They didna," Adiatunnus said. "Not so many days ago, the storms stopped and it was summer again, as fine a summer as any I've seen. And the Gradi drew back a ways from the Venien. We slipped a few o' Widin's men and mine over the river to see if they could find out what was toward, and they tell me the reivers seem all in an uproar, like as if summat they'd expected hadna happened after all."

"Maybe, just maybe, I kept it from happening," Gerin replied. "And if I did, the best thing we can do now is hit them as hard a blow as we can, give them something else they aren't expecting."

"Can we do it?" Adiatunnus asked.

"Of course we can," Gerin said heartily, though he did not think the Trokm- chieftain had in fact aimed the question at him. Adiatunnus sounded more as if he were putting it to his own gods, the gods whom Voldar and the Gradi had beaten and terrified. What sort of answer would he find, whether from them or in his own heart?

After a long pause, Adiatunnus said, "Well, we'd best have a go. If we dinna go to them, they'll come to us, sure as sure, and no good will spring from that."

The endorsement, while anything but ringing, was an endorsement. "We'll move against them tomorrow, your men and mine together," Gerin said. Adiatunnus stared at him. Now the Fox glared, playing to the hilt the role of outraged feudal overlord. "Tomorrow I said and tomorrow I meant. And I mean in the morning, too, even if I have to boot every one of you lazy, sleepy woodsrunners in the arse to make it happen."

"Lazy!" Adiatunnus clapped a hand to his forehead. "Sleepy? We'll show you, you black-hearted spalpeen!"

"I hope you do," Gerin said. "But if you don't" — he waved back at his army- "I've brought enough Elabonians along to get you moving."