Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

He'd carved his tongs himself, of wood, and faced them with bronze so they wouldn't char so fast or even catch fire at an inopportune moment. With them, he lifted the bowl and poured molten gold into the mold he prepared for it. The mold took almost all the metal he had melted; Geroge did indeed have big teeth.

When the metal had cooled, he broke the mold. He used a bronze chisel to cut away the gold that filled the impressions of other teeth near the fang, then polished the fang by shaking it in a hide bag full of fine sand. After he'd attached a couple of thin wires to the base, he took the gold tooth to Geroge.

This time, the monster opened his mouth willingly enough. Gerin put the gold tooth in the gap the monsters' gods had left when they ripped the real fang from Geroge's mouth. He used the wires to anchor the artificial fang to the genuine teeth on either side of it. "What do you think?" he asked Geroge.

The monster explored with his tongue the change in his mouth. "It feels all right," he said. Then he opened his mouth in an enormous smile. "What does it look like?"

"Your other fang, except it's gold," Gerin answered.

That was literal truth, but it wasn't what Geroge wanted to hear. He waved to Tharma, who was walking across the courtyard, and pointed to Gerin's dentistry. "How do I look?"

Like a monster with a gold tooth , Gerin thought, but held his tongue, waiting to see what Tharma would say. "I think you look very handsome," she replied after grave contemplation. Geroge preened and swaggered. Gerin didn't know whether the answer, and Geroge's response to it, pleased or worried him more.

Chariot wheels rumbled on the paving blocks of the Elabon Way. Along with the chariots, Gerin led a good-sized force of men riding horses. The army he headed was smaller than the one he had taken west over the Venien against the Gradi, but more than large enough to be formidable. Like the force that had traveled west, it included both Elabonians and Trokmoi, Adiatunnus having sent a contingent of woodsrunners at Gerin's request.

Van looked back and chuckled. "If this doesn't have 'em ready to piss their breeches, nothing ever will."

"That's the idea," Gerin answered. "Anything worth doing is worth doing properly-or worth overdoing, if you'd rather think of it like that."

"Aye, that suits me pretty well," the outlander said. Considering his excesses whenever he got out of Fand's sight, Gerin had to agree with him.

Duren pointed ahead. "There's the border post between Bevander's holding and Ricolf's."

"No, that's not right," his father told him. "There's the border post between Bevander's holding and yours. And if anyone has any doubts about that, well, I expect we can convince him to change his mind." He waved back over his shoulder to show what he meant.

The guards on Ricolf's side of the border stared in popeyed wonder at the army bearing down on them. Gerin started to tell Duren to stop and parley with them, then decided to hold his tongue: Duren was going to be the baron here, not himself. Duren did stop. In a shaken voice, one of the border guards asked, "Who, ah, who comes to the holding formerly of Ricolf the Red?" He sounded as if he couldn't decide whether to sell his life dear or flee for the nearest woods.

His companion at the border crossing added, "Not just who-why?" He was gawping at the Trokmoi, as if wondering if they'd decided to settle down in the neighborhood.

"I am Duren Gerin's son, grandson to Ricolf the Red and heir to this holding through my mother, Ricolf's daughter Elise," Duren answered. "Having completed the service I owed my father, I have come to take my rightful place as baron here. From this day forth, I stay in this holding."

"Brought a few, ah, friends along, have you, lord?" the first guard asked. He was looking at the Trokmoi, too.

"He has my support, as you might have guessed he would," Gerin put in.

Both border guards nodded. "Oh, yes, lord prince," they chorused.

Gerin, Van, and Duren grinned at one another. Being at the forefront of news was always enjoyable. To the guards, Duren said, "Allow me to present you to my father, Gerin the Fox, king of the north, so proclaimed first by Adiatunnus the Trokm- after we all vanquished the Gradi together."

In a way, Gerin thought, it was too bad the two guards had already been staring. Their eyes couldn't get much wider; they jaws couldn't drop much farther. The first one, the one with the slight hitch to his speech, said, "I would, uh, be glad to have more of that, uh, tale, lord."

"And I would be glad to give it-another time," Duren answered. "Now I want to settle myself in the keep that is mine." He flicked the reins. The horses began to trot. Because he was driving the lead chariot in the army, that was the best signal he could give for the rest of the cars to enter the holding that was now becoming his.

On the way down to the keep that had been Ricolf's, peasants who saw Duren's army fled for their lives. "I don't like that any better than you do, Father," Duren said, pointing to serfs running for the shelter of the woods.

"I worry about it less here than I would otherwise," Gerin answered. "For one thing, this is a good-sized force, and all the more frightening on account of that. And for another, remember, we've got Trokmoi with us. The woodsrunners haven't been seen in these parts since just a little while after they flooded over the Niffet."

"Aye, that's so," Van agreed. "And the reason they haven't been seen in these parts for so long is that you've held them away from these parts-not that anybody around here will want to give you credit for it."

"I didn't do it to get the credit for it," the Fox said. "I did it because it needed doing." He chuckled. "Besides, the only thing a baron in one holding is liable to give his neighbor credit for is catching unpleasant diseases from his sheep." Van snorted. So did Duren, although he, unlike the outlander, tried to pretend he hadn't.

Lying by the Elabon Way, the keep that had been Ricolf's was well positioned for its holder to keep an eye on north- and southbound travelers. The frantic stir and bustle on the walls said nobody there had seen anything like the approaching army for a long time. The cry of "Who comes to this castle?" betokened not just curiosity but genuine alarm.

Duren needed no prompting from Gerin to answer as he had at the border: "Duren Gerin's son, come to claim the lordship here, which passes to me from Ricolf the Red through his daughter Elise, my mother." Then he added, "Let down the drawbridge this instant, Ricrod." He did not say or suffer the consequences afterwards , but his meaning was plain to Gerin.

It was evidently plain to Ricrod, too, for the drawbridge came down in short order. Duren drove over it into the courtyard of the keep, followed by so many other cars that resistance from the men already inside quickly became hopeless. As he snapped orders, some of Gerin's men took charge of the doors into the great hall of the castle, to make sure they could not be slammed shut against the newcomers. Gerin approved: he would have taken charge of the keep the same way.

But instead of a host of armed men, only Ricrod the steward came out of the great hall. He looked round in amazement at the force that had come to install Duren as baron. The size of that force drove from his head whatever objection he might have had. "Welcome, lord," he said to Duren, and then, to Gerin, "And welcome to you as well, lord prince."

"My father's style these days, with the Gradi beaten, is `lord king, " Duren said.

That made Ricrod stare and several soldiers exclaim. In the holding that had been Ricolf's the Gradi had never been more than a name; as he had with the Trokmoi, Gerin had shielded the lands belonging to his former father-in-law from the onslaughts of the invaders. But if only a name, the Gradi were a potent name to the men here, and the importance of the name only grew if beating them had been enough to let Gerin assume a royal title.