Harry Turtledove - Tale of the Fox

Winter was the quiet time of the year, serfs and lords alike living on what they'd stored up in summer and fall. When they hadn't stored enough, what they got was famine, which, all too often, brought peasant uprisings in its wake. To try to head them off, Gerin did send what grain he could west of the Venien, to the lands where unnatural summer weather, courtesy of the Gradi gods, had ruined the crops. He scored another negative success: the serfs there did not revolt.

"In a horrid sort of way, I understand why things are quiet there," he said to Selatre one day. "They don't have much food, but there aren't many of them left, either, not after living under the Gradi for a while and then after the war. What little they've got, along with what little we could give them, is somewhere close enough to get them by."

His wife nodded. "Life for farmers is never easy." Having grown up a peasant's daughter, she knew whereof she spoke. After a moment, she added, "You've done everything you could, and more than most lords would have dreamt of trying."

"It sounds like an epitaph," Gerin said, laughing. A moment later, as with Duren, his hand and Selatre's twisted in a sign to avert the evil omen. That done, he let out a long sigh. "We got through it."

Selatre nodded again. "So we did. And after what we got through, it has to get better, because how could it get worse?"

"That's why we go on living," he answered: "to find out how it could get worse." Selatre poked him in the ribs, and he had to admit (though he didn't have to admit out loud) he deserved it.

As winters went, this one was mild, again to Gerin's relief: he'd feared the Gradi gods, if they got free at that season of the year, would do their best to freeze the northlands solid. Nothing of the sort happened, though, and in due course winter gave way to spring. Leaves came out on the formerly bare branches of oaks and maples, apples and plums; fresh grass sprouted on the meadows, pushing up through the yellow-brown dead growth of the year before. The peasants yoked their oxen to the plow and planted wheat and rye, oats and barley. Gerin blessed Baivers, and hoped the god heard him.

He had one more worry in the middle of spring: Elleb, Math, and Tiwaz came to fullness on successive nights. No reports of werebeasts ravaging flocks or peasants reached him, though. He hoped Marlanz Raw-Meat hadn't given way to his lycanthropic tendencies during the run of full moons.

And then, when for once he saw no trouble on the horizon at all, the midwife came rushing up from the peasant village near Fox Keep to let him know Fulda had been delivered of a baby boy. He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, angry at himself for letting the imminence of the event slip his mind. "What's Mavrix's bastard like?" he asked.

"Lord king, you'd better come see for yourself," said the midwife, a sturdy, middle-aged woman named Radwalda.

And so the Fox followed her down to the village. She pointed the way to Fulda's hut, but showed no eagerness to go into it herself. Shrugging, Gerin stepped through the low entrance, ducking his head as he went.

His eyes needed a moment to adjust to the gloom. When they did, he saw Fulda sitting up on the bed. She didn't look nearly so worn as other women he'd seen just after childbirth: one more advantage of divine parentage, he supposed.

Smiling, she held up the newborn baby. "Isn't he beautiful, lord king? I'm going to call him Ferdulf."

"Hello, Ferdulf," Gerin said.

Ferdulf's eyes, which had been closed, came open. "Hello yourself," the infant demigod said in a distinctly unbabylike baritone.

Gerin looked at Fulda. She nodded. "Oh, dear," the Fox said.

Up in the watchtower, the lookout winded his horn: a long, unmelodious blast. "Two chariots approach from the south, lord king!" he bellowed.

From the courtyard far below, Gerin the Fox, king of the north, cupped a hand to his mouth and replied: "Thanks, Andiver. We'll see who they are when they get here."

"Aren't you going to go up on the palisade and have a look?" the sentry demanded indignantly.

"In a word, no," Gerin answered. "If two chariots' worth of warriors can conquer Fox Keep, either they're gods, in which case looking at them won't do me any good, or else we're all such cowards that the men who are on the palisade now would be running away, and that's not happening, either. So I'll wait for them down here, thanks very much."

Andiver said something the height of his perch kept Gerin from understanding. The Fox decided it was probably just as well.

His son Dagref smiled at him. "That was very logical," he said. Dagref, at fourteen, was as remorselessly logical as the most terrifying Sithonian philosopher who'd ever made a living lecturing in the Elabonian Empire. Up until twenty years before, Gerin's kingdom, as well as the rest of the land north from the High Kirs to the River Niffet, had been a frontier province of the Empire. Elabon, though, had abandoned the land north of the mountains in the face of the devastating werenight caused by all four moons' coming full at the same time and, almost incidentally, the barbarous Trokmoi swarming south over the Niffet.

"It was indeed," Gerin said. "So what?"

Dagref stared at him. Man and youth shared a long face, long nose, and swarthy complexion. Dagref, though, had only fine down on his cheeks and chin, and his hair was a brown almost black. Gerin's neat beard and his hair were gray, and getting grayer by the year: he was past fifty now, and often knew it by the creaking in his bones.

"Logic is the greatest tool, the greatest weapon, in the world," Dagref declared.

"That depends on what you're doing," Gerin replied. "If you're in the middle of a brawl, you can't slay a Gradi or a Trokm- or one of Aragis the Archer's jolly henchmen with a well-aimed syllogism. That's why we carry these things every now and then."

He hefted his sword. The sun glinted, red as blood, from the polished edge of the bronze blade. Dagref held a sword, too. He enjoyed fencing with it much less than fencing with his wits. He was very dangerous with the latter, only somewhat so with the former.

"Come on." Gerin made as if to attack him. "If some big ugly lug carves chunks off you, it doesn't matter that he's never heard of the law of the excluded middle. You won't be around to instruct him afterwards."

Dagref parried the slash. His answering cut made Gerin give back a pace. They did not work against each other as often as Gerin would have done had he not been left-handed: learning how to fight him went only so far in teaching Dagref how to fight others. His son was left-handed, too, which gave Gerin the rare chance to see what others faced when they met him.

"Keep the blade up!" the Fox cautioned. "You don't keep the blade up, I can do something like this-" He snapped a cut at Dagref's head, so quick and sharp that his son had to stagger back. "Or even this." The Fox feinted another head cut; if he hadn't stopped his thrust, he would have put it into Dagref's chest.

"Yes, I see." Dagref nodded. And he did see, too. He had the makings of a good swordsman; he had long arms and quick feet and didn't do the same thing wrong over and over again. But he didn't automatically do the right thing, either, and, when he did do it, he didn't do it fast enough. Only years of patient practice would give him the speed he needed. Intellectually, he realized that (he was very good at realizing things intellectually). "Let's try it again, Father."

Those were the words Gerin wanted to hear. Before he could go through the passage again, though, one of his men up on the palisade called a challenge to the approaching chariots: "Who comes to Castle Fox?"

The answer made Gerin forget about swordplay and hurry up onto the palisade after all: "I am Marlanz Raw-Meat, emissary of King Aragis the Archer, come to have speech with King Gerin."