Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

He meant it. Adiatunnus could see he meant it. The Trokm- chieftain bit his lip. Gerin coldly stared his way, trying to make Adiatunnus more afraid of him than of the Gradi. After a long moment, Adiatunnus said, "I am no oathbreaker. We fight beside you."

"Prove it," Gerin said, and jumped down out of his chariot. Van thudded to the ground beside him. A moment later, so did Duren, who tethered the horses to a bush that wouldn't hold them more than a moment if they seriously decided to try breaking free.

"To the crows with you, lord prince!" Adiatunnus said, and jumped down, too.

Seeing their foes descend to the ground, the Gradi began shouting, "Voldar! Voldar!" The goddess' name rang in Gerin's ears. But however loud the Gradi yelled, the Fox felt no hum of power in the air, no sign that Voldar was near. He would not have to fight against an angry goddess, merely against her angry followers, who were apt to be quite bad enough.

He turned to his own men. "Our cry is `Baivers! " He didn't think the Elabonian god any more likely to take part in the fighting than Voldar, but, for one thing, he might have been wrong, and, for another, maybe those cries would reach and aid Baivers up in the divine Gradihome. After a moment, he went on, "If we win this fight, I think we win the war. We've pushed them a long way back. Now we can make sure what we've done doesn't slip out of our hands. What do you say, lads?"

"Baivers!" The war cry drowned out the shouts of the Gradi and also seemed to startle the raiders, who might still have been unused to the idea that anyone or any god could presume to stand against them or their pantheon. Too bad for them , Gerin though. Life is full of surprises . He waved his arm. Elabonians and Trokmoi trotted toward the trees.

When the Gradi saw their foes on foot, some of them came out into the field to fight there. Several Elabonians and Trokmoi snatched bows from their chariots and started shooting at their enemies. After two or three Gradi went down, the rest retreated back into the woods.

Two or three we won't have to fight in there , Gerin thought. He tried to stay in front of Duren. This, whatever else it turned out to be, was going to be an ugly fight. His son had a man's courage without a man's full strength or a man's full caution. If the Fox could shield him from danger in the forest, he would. Rationally, he knew worrying about two persons' safety at the same time made it less likely either one of them would stay safe. To the crows with being rational , he thought.

A Gradi sprang out from behind the trunk of an oak. Shouting Voldar's name, he swung his axe in a deadly arc. Gerin batted it aside with his shield. He had to be careful not to let the axehead hit the shield square, lest it bite through thin bronze facing, through leather, through wood, and perhaps into his arm.

He cut at the Gradi. The fellow parried with his axe, beating Gerin's blade to one side. He backed up a pace, his eyes intent, wary: he wasn't used to facing a left-handed swordsman, while Gerin had had a lifetime of struggle against right-handed foes.

The Gradi chopped again. This time, Gerin used his sword to turn the axe. He rushed in close, pushing at the Gradi with his shield till the big man from the north tripped over a root and went down. Gerin used his sword as if it were a dagger, stabbing the Gradi in the throat. The man let out a bubbling scream that quickly cut off as he choked on his own blood.

Gerin scrambled to his feet. He looked around. He couldn't see Duren, and cursed foully. The one plan he'd had in this fight was to watch over the youth, and it hadn't lasted past his own first encounter with the Gradi. The only thing left to do, then, was sweep through the woods till there were no more Gradi left to encounter.

He'd never been in a battle like this. He had scant control over it. He couldn't see more than a few feet in any direction, nor could any of the other warriors, on his side or among the Gradi. He ran from one nasty little fight to the next, helping Elabonians and Trokmoi and doing his best to stretch Gradi dead on the ground.

He was used to maneuvering scores, even hundreds of chariots as if they were war galleys out on the sea, all of them moving in accordance with his will. Not now. This was two Gradi leaping out from behind trees set close together and hacking down an Elabonian, or three Elabonians and a Trokm- slashing and stabbing at two Gradi fighting back to back till one of them fell and then swarming over the other. The woods were full of shouts and screams, full of the outhouse stink of pierced guts and the metallic odor of fresh-spilled blood.

Whenever he saw his men, he sent them toward the last band of Gradi he had spotted. Whenever he saw Gradi, he shouted for his men to come and fight them. He soon noted that he saw very few wounded men down on the ground. He didn't need long to realize each side was finishing off the other's injured men it found. He bit his lips. Fights among Elabonians, even fights between Elabonians and Trokmoi, weren't commonly so savage.

His heart jumped. There up ahead strode Duren, sword in one hand, shield on the other arm, prowling forward, his head going back and forth as he picked his way west through the woods. When the youth heard Gerin coming up behind him, he whirled around, ready to fight.

"I'm not the enemy," Gerin said, although, to a boy first sprouting his beard, any older relative, and especially his father, was liable to look like a foe a lot of the time.

Here, though, Duren understood him as he'd intended. He asked the same question as had been in Gerin's mind: "Are we winning?"

"Drop me into the hottest of the five hells if I know," the Fox answered: quietly, so as not to draw the attention of the Gradi. That might have been excess caution, for the woods rang with cries of every description. Still, caution did no harm if exercised when not needed, while needing it and not exercising it often led straight to disaster. "I don't know," he repeated. "But we're well into the woods, and they haven't thrown us back, so I'd say we're not losing."

When the words were spoken, he remembered Baivers' telling him much the same thing in the middle of the fight against Voldar and the Gradi gods. No, he though, it probably wasn't the middle of the fight, but only the beginning-by all the signs, that fight was still going on. It might go on for days more, or, for all Gerin knew, for years more. Gods didn't need to eat or sleep in any ordinary senses of the words, and they were a lot harder to kill than mere men.

He reached out and tapped Duren's shield with his sword. "Come on," he said. "Let's see what sort of lovely company we have waiting for us."

They hadn't gone far before they came to a screen of bushes around the edge of a small clearing. Again, the scene eerily reminded Gerin of the clearings in the divine Gradihome. The battle going on in the clearing was hardly less confused and no less savage than the one from which Voldar had expelled him.

"Baivers!" Duren shouted, and ran for the fighting. Gerin, had he had his way, would have gone into the fight without shouting first, and might have cut down a Gradi or two before the enemy knew he was there.

Well, no help for it now. "Baivers!" he cried, and sprinted after his son.

One Gradi who turned to meet Duren's onslaught died a moment later, the victim of the Trokm- from whom he'd been distracted. Maybe outrageous openness was as good at inducing surprise as stealth. Gerin reminded himself to think that one over if he ever found a moment when no one was trying to slaughter him.

If he did find such a moment, it wouldn't be any time soon. Here in the clearing, his men and the Gradi could find and fight one another. That was just what they were doing, with sword and spear and knife and axe, with stones grubbed from the ground with their hands, and with those broken-nailed hands themselves.