Harry Turtledove - Fox and Empire

"Oh, Ferdulf," Gerin called sweetly, "come and say hello to these nice people, would you please?"

"What nice people?" Ferdulf snarled. "All I see is a bunch of Elabonians who think they're smarter than they really are-idiots who think they're halfwits."

As if his rumbling baritone wouldn't have been enough to alert the southerners that he was something out of the ordinary, he also strolled along a couple of feet off the ground. Efilnath gaped at him. So did the wizard, in a different, more intensely concentrated way. " Who are you?" he demanded, and then, a moment later, "What are you?"

By way of reply, Ferdulf stuck out his tongue. It went out improbably far. The tip wiggled like a serpent's tongue for a moment. Then he drew the whole thing back in with a wet plop. He smiled unpleasantly at the Elabonian sorcerer.

Sweetly still, Gerin said, "Lord Efilnath, lord wizard-"

"Call me Caffer," the wizard said. As the Fox knew, it was not his real name. Wizards warded those, to keep enemies from working magic with them.

"Lord Efilnath, lord Caffer, then," Gerin resumed, "allow me to present you to Ferdulf, the son of Mavrix, who, when he is not accompanying me, dwells in the village by Fox Keep."

"A son of the lord of the sweet grape, here?" Efilnath exclaimed. "Impossible!"

"Not impossible," Caffer said. "It is truth." He and the Elabonian envoy conferred again, more urgently this time.

Gerin hoped the idea that Ferdulf was at least in some measure under his control would get through to the imperials. Ferdulf didn't help, remarking, "And a bloody boring hole that village is, too."

"Yield to the Empire's might, pay the tribute long owed us, and all shall be forgiven concerning these usurpations of authority you have perpetrated," Efilnath said with what he obviously thought was true generosity. "Return to your own barony, abandon any false claims to suzerainty over your neighbors, and live under the beneficent splendor of Crebbig, justly styled the Magnificent."

"Pay twenty years' tribute?" Gerin shook his head. "Not likely, not when the Elabonian Empire wasn't here for a day of that time."

"Twenty years' tribute, yes," Efilnath said, "plus whatever you may have owed prior to that time. Our records indicate that you northern barons were shockingly lax in paying your dues even before such time as we temporarily fell out of touch with you."

"That's a nice way to put it," Gerin said. "Before you forgot all about us, you mean. Before you left us to the tender mercy of the Trokmoi, you mean. Before you weren't here to help us fight the monsters or the Gradi, you mean. And if you go away again now, you'll expect us to pay you again for being gone, won't you?"

Ignoring the sarcasm, Efilnath said, "You did not, as I have noted, contribute your fair share before we temporarily fell out of touch with you."

With a shrug, Gerin answered, "It all depends on how you look at things. I never saw any imperial soldiers on the Niffet helping me hold the Trokmoi at bay. If the crops failed, I never saw any grain hauled up from south of the High Kirs to help us. I don't know about you, Efilnath, or about your Emperor Crebbig, either, but I'm not in the habit of paying for what I don't see."

"Crebbig is your Emperor as well as mine." Efilnath sounded shocked-artfully shocked-that Gerin could imagine otherwise.

Caffer broke in: "Speak to me of the Gradi, lord baron. South of the High Kirs, we know less of them than we would like."

"The Fox's style is lord king, even as is mine," Aragis said. " Best you remember it, lest he take your rudeness to heart and avenge himself on you."

Aragis was likelier than Gerin to do something like that. Gerin started to say he wasn't offended, but then checked himself. Why not give the imperials something else to worry about? He laughed scornfully instead. "I'll answer," he said. "They think they can rule this province, and they don't even know who lives in it."

"They temporarily fell out of touch, that's all," Dagref said. He struck the perfect tone. It wasn't even scorn. It said the Empire's envoy and wizard didn't rate scorn, only amused disdain.

It struck home, too. In a voice less suave than he had used before, Efilnath demanded, "Lord baron, will you then yield to the authority of the Emperor Crebbig and beg his forgiveness for the autonomy you have usurped?"

"In a word, no," Gerin answered. "This would look to be a word you people don't know well, since your comrade heard it from Aragis without listening to it."

Ferdulf's yawn was as extravagant and as anatomically unlikely as the distance to which he'd stuck out his tongue. "Go away, you foolish people," he said. "You only prove how dull Elabonians can be." And then, without warning, all the gentleness disappeared from his mockery. "Begone. Get out of this land. You have no right to it. I, a god's son, so declare."

Efilnath flinched. Gerin would have flinched, too, had an angry demigod growled at him. But the Empire's envoy was not without spirit. "The gods of Elabon say otherwise, and I serve them and the Emperor."

"What do you suppose the gods of Elabon do say, Father?" Dagref whispered to Gerin. "Efilnath and his friends here are Elabonian, but so are we. How do the gods choose one side or the other?"

"My guess is, they probably don't," the Fox whispered back. The gods of Elabon, from everything he'd seen, intervened in human affairs as little as they possibly could. Most of the time, that suited him fine. Against the Gradi, whose own gods were as aggressive as they were, he'd wished the Elabonian deities had done more. Now, he'd be just as well pleased to have them keep on doing nothing in particular.

While he and Dagref talked, Efilnath and Caffer were also holding their own low-voiced colloquy. Gerin couldn't make out what the Elabonian envoy was saying. Whatever it was, Caffer agreed with it: he nodded several times, each more vigorously than the one before.

"Quit jabbering, the two of you," Ferdulf growled at the men from south of the High Kirs. "I told you once, get out of here. Now I tell you twice. Leave while you can still take your clothes with you, which is better luck than the last imperial envoy had, isn't it?"

Now Efilnath nodded to Caffer. The wizard pointed in Ferdulf's direction. His lips moved. So did his right hand, in passes Gerin knew he would never be able to match for swift fluidity. As Aragis had said, this was a mage from the Sorcerers' Collegium, the most highly trained and skilled band of sorcerers this part of the world knew.

Ferdulf shouted in rage. "Try and silence me, will you?" he roared, and suddenly, despite staying the same size, seemed much larger and fiercer than he had a moment before. He pointed two fingers at Caffer, a vulgar gesture straight from the alleys of the City of Elabon.

It was a vulgar gesture with power behind it. Caffer staggered, and had to snatch at the rail of Efilnath's chariot to keep from falling. He looked astonished that his sorcery had failed. The one flaw Gerin had sometimes noted in trained Elabonian wizards was a belief that, because they could do so many things, they could do everything.

But Ferdulf looked astonished, too. He, evidently, had expected to flatten the Elabonian wizard.

"Enough, both of you!" Gerin said sharply. "We met here behind a shield of truce. Shall we fall to blows now, and save the waiting?"

"No," Efilnath said. Caffer gave a shaky nod to show he agreed with his superior. Ferdulf, on the other hand, looked ready-looked eager-to continue the battle of powers. Gerin glared at him. He glared back. His eyes blazed with more power than the Fox had ever seen in them. Resolutely, Gerin kept staring. To his everlasting relief, Ferdulf finally nodded, too.

"Go back to your soldiers, then," Gerin told the imperial envoy. " When we meet again, we shall be at war."