Harry Turtledove: Fox and Empire

"Yes," Gerin answered, and let Marlanz make whatever he would of it. Duren was his son by Elise, Ricolf's daughter. He hadn't seen her since Duren was a toddler; she'd run away with a traveling horse doctor. Dagref, his sister Clotild, and his brother Blestar were his by Selatre, the former Sibyl at the farseeing god Biton's shrine down at Ikos. The Fox sighed. Life was never so simple as you wished it would be.

"Yes to which?" Marlanz demanded: he was, Gerin knew, persistent. The Fox just smiled at him. After a bit, Aragis' vassal figured out he wouldn't get a straight answer. He smiled back, shrugged, and emptied his jack of ale. A serving woman-not the one he'd tried to pawrefilled it for him.

Gerin took a pull at his own ale. He wondered where Dagref had gone. His eldest child by Selatre had a curiosity as fierce and ruthless as a longtooth: he should have been besieging Marlanz with every sort of question. The Fox wondered what he'd found more interesting than the arrival of a near-stranger.

Had it been Duren at the same age, Gerin would have guessed he was off with a girl. But Dagref's curiosity was, as yet, more of the intellect than of the body. One day soon, the Fox suspected, a serving girl would kick his feet out from under him. What happened after that would be interesting.

No sooner had Gerin thought of his son than Dagref, as if summoned, came running into the great hall. He spared Marlanz Raw-Meat no more than a hasty glance. "Father, come quick, out back by the stables," he exclaimed. "It's Ferdulf again."

"Oh, by the gods," Gerin said, which, where Ferdulf was concerned, had alarmingly literal implications. The Fox sprang to his feet. Dagref, the message delivered, was already dashing away. Gerin pounded after him, aware with every step that he wasn't as fast as he had been.

Behind him, he heard Van and Rihwin exclaiming, too. A moment later, they followed the Fox. And Marlanz came right on their heels. He hadn't a clue about what was going on, but he wanted to find out.

Dagref sprinted around Castle Fox, then pointed with a dramatic forefinger. "There!" he said.

There were Clotild and Blestar. There too were Maeva and Kor, Van' s children. Maeva, though a year younger than Dagref, was already blossoming into ripe womanhood-but womanhood of heroic proportions. Van's blood told in her temperament as well as her size and strength; she wanted to be a warrior, and Gerin, rather to his own alarm, thought she would make a good one. Kor was even more alarming. He also had his father's build, but took his incendiary temper straight from Fand, the Trokm? woman with whom Van lived in something less than wedded bliss.

And there were Geroge and Tharma. The two monsters towered over all their companions, even Maeva. They were large and hairy and remarkably ugly, with clawed hands and feet, low foreheads, little eyes under beetling brow ridges, and long jaws full of big teeth (though Geroge's right upper canine was of gold rather than being a natural fang). They both waved to Gerin, who had raised them from.. . he supposed cubs was the best word.

He didn't see Ferdulf. And then, just before Dagref said "There!" again, he did. The preternaturally beautiful four-year-old had doffed his tunic and was walking around in the air about twenty feet off the ground.

"Magic?" Marlanz asked from behind Gerin with what was, under the circumstances, commendable calm.

The Fox shook his head. "Not exactly." He raised his voice to Ferdulf: "Come down from there this instant, before you-" He stopped. Before you hurt yourself didn't work, as it had with his own children. Ferdulf wasn't going to hurt himself. Gerin wasn't sure Ferdulf could hurt himself. He tried a different tack: "-before you drive everybody down here crazy."

"What do I care?" Ferdulf stood on his head, supported by exactly nothing. His voice was not a four-year-old's, but the same rude, rich baritone he'd had since he was a newborn babe.

Marlanz said, "Lord king, will you please tell me what's going on here?" He took Geroge and Tharma in stride; he'd met them before. Ferdulf, however, was new to him. Like most men in the northlands, he viewed the new with suspicion.

Gerin didn't, in most cases. With Ferdulf, he made an exception. Trying to sound casual, he answered, "That's Mavrix's son by Fulda, a peasant woman here. Now do you understand?"

For a moment, Marlanz didn't. Then he did, and his eyes got wide. "Mavrix?" He tried his best to imitate Gerin's flat, unemphatic tones, but didn't have much luck. "The Sithonian god of wine?" Calm crumbled into astonishment: "You've got a god's get here, lord king?"

"Yes, the little bastard," Gerin said, which, in dealing-or trying to deal-with Ferdulf, had proved true in any number of ways.

Dagref plucked at his father's sleeve. "I brought you out here so you could do something about him," he said pointedly. "The last time he started going around up in the air this way, he piddled on all of us, and I wanted to see if we could keep that from happening again." The glare he gave the Fox said his father's reliability had just come down a peg for him.

"What exactly do you want me to do?" Gerin asked in some exasperation. "I can't lean a ladder against the air, the way I would against the palisade." He cast a cautious eye up toward Ferdulf's little pecker. Mavrix's get had divine powers and a four-year-old's sense of humor; the Fox was hard pressed to imagine a more terrifying combination.

Dagref took a deep breath. "If you don't come down from there this instant," he told Ferdulf, "none of the rest of us is going to play with you for a long time." His voice broke in the middle of the threat, so he didn't sound so fierce as he might have, but he did sound as if he meant what he said. He always sounded as if he meant what he said. He gestured to his comrades. Clotild and Blestar nodded. So did Maeva and Kor. And, a beat late, so did Geroge and Tharma.

"Oh, all right," Ferdulf said sulkily, sounding very much like his own father, who raised petulance to an art. He came floating down and put his tunic back on.

"That was bravely done," Maeva said. She eyed Dagref with a thoughtful interest to which he as yet remained in large measure blind.

"That was bravely done," Gerin agreed; telling Ferdulf what to do took nerve. Well, his son had never lacked for that. Sense, possibly, but not nerve. The Fox went on, "But why did you call me when you could handle it by yourself?"

"I didn't know if that would work," Dagref answered, "and I thought you would have a better idea. When you didn't-" He raised one eyebrow, as Gerin might have done. You should have had a better idea, he said without words.

In a much more cautious voice than he'd used till now, Marlanz Raw-Meat asked, "What all can the little godlet do besides fly?"

"What all?" Gerin clapped a hand to his head, as if it ached. When he thought about Ferdulf, it soon did ache. "Who knows? I'll tell you this much: I went to see him as soon as I got word he'd been born, and he said hello to me in that same voice you heard him use now. Life hasn't been dull since, believe me."

"Is his mother a goddess, too, or a demon, or-?" Marlanz fell silent, seeming to guess how little he could guess.

Gerin's smile was ironic. "I told you, his mother's name is Fulda. She still lives down in the village close to the keep here. She has a pretty face and a ripe body, which is why I used her when I was summoning Mavrix against the Gradi-which, in case you're wondering, was a good idea that didn't work. Ferdulf listens to her when he feels like it and ignores her the rest of the time, which is about what he does for everybody else."

"You told me you'd summoned Mavrix the last time I came up here," Marlanz said, remembering. "You didn't tell me he'd got a woman with child."