Harry Turtledove - Fox and Empire

Slowly, with another groan, Ferdulf sat up. "Why did you come when I called?" he asked in a voice full of despair. "I hoped you would see me and be proud of me. I hoped-" He shook his head, as if to clear it.

"What a naive little creature you are," Mavrix said, which brought one more groan from Ferdulf. The Sithonian god turned to Gerin. "I should have thought he would have learned better, dwelling by you as he does. For a mortal, you have a moderate amount of sense."

"Even if he is a demigod, he's only four years old," Gerin said, concealing his own bemusement at hearing anything even remotely resembling praise from Mavrix.

Ferdulf heard it, too, heard it and did not like it. "How dare you talk to him, talk to this, this man, more kindly than you do to me?"

"I dare because I am a god. I dare because I am your father," Mavrix returned evenly. By early appearances, Ferdulf annoyed him even more than the Fox did. His dark, dark eyes stared at, stared through, his son. "How dare you presume to question me?"

"I am flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood," Ferdulf said. "If I have not got the right, who has?"

"No one," Mavrix answered. "Now be quiet for a little while."

Ferdulf tried to speak, but produced only squeaks and grunts, not intelligible words. Gerin was impressed he could do even so much; when Mavrix commanded silence of a mortal man, silence was what he got. Seeing Mavrix relatively well-disposed to him, the Fox asked, "Lord of the sweet grape, what aid can you give me against the Elabonian Empire?"

At that, Ferdulf did fall silent. He wanted to hear the answer, too, being anything but enamored of the Empire.

Mavrix looked troubled. That troubled Gerin. Sithonian legend spoke of what a coward Mavrix was. But what was on the god's face did not look like fear to the Fox. It looked like resignation. That troubled Gerin more.

"I can do less than you might hope," Mavrix said at last. "If I could do more than you might hope, do you think I would not have done it for fair Sithonia rather than for this grapeless and otherwise unattractive wilderness?"

"But-" Gerin shook his head. "You Sithonian gods are still very much a part of your own country, while the gods of Elabon hardly seem to notice this world any more: one has to shout to get their attention, you might say."

Mavrix nodded. "That is so. And, once gained, their attention is frequently not worth having." He sniffed scornfully.

"As may be," Gerin said, not wanting to disagree openly with the Sithonian god of wine and fertility. Once he'd summoned Baivers, the Elabonian god had done more for him than Mavrix had. In any case, that wasn't what he wanted to know. He asked, "With the gods of Sithonia immanent in the world while those of Elabon are not, how have the Elabonians"-he carefully did not say we Elabonians-"ruled your land so long?"

"That is a cogent question-a painfully cogent question," Mavrix said. "The best reply I can give is that the folk of Sithonia, while they have a great many gifts from their gods, conspicuously lack that of governing themselves. Elabonians, on the contrary, have next to no discernible gifts of any sort… save only that of government. It would take a stronger god than any known in Sithonia to make its people unite."

Regretfully, Gerin nodded. That fit too well with what the imperial wizards had told him. "Is there nothing you can do?" he said, wondering, What good is an impotent god, especially an impotent fertility god?

"I have already done all you require of me, and more besides," Mavrix answered. "Without my son-who may, by the way, speak again-you would have no hope whatever of repelling the forces of the Elabonian Empire. With him, you have that hope. Nothing in the mundane world is altogether certain, however, either for gods or for men. Do not be smug; do not be overconfident; you may yet lose this fight, too."

"You're talking in riddles," Gerin said accusingly. "I thought you despised Biton."

"And so I do," Mavrix said with a curl of the lip. "But how am I to speak with certainty when I cannot see everything that lies ahead?"

Gerin wondered if he ought to go up to Ikos to hear what the farseeing god had to say. Maybe he'd made a mistake, not doing that when Duren suggested it. He wondered when-and if-he'd have the chance to leave the army and try to puzzle out one of Biton's notoriously ambiguous oracular verses.

Ferdulf said, "But what must I do to drive the Empire out of the northlands?"

"I don't know," Mavrix answered. "I haven't the faintest idea. I don't much care, either, if the truth be known. That anyone would be mad enough to wish to live in a land where the grape grows not is beyond me." He turned his head toward Ferdulf. "You will manage, I expect-unless, of course, you don't." A sigh rippled out of him. "For some reason, I am frequently disappointed in my offspring. It must be the fault of the mortal women on whom I sire them."

"Nothing is ever your fault, is it?" Ferdulf said, a thought also in Gerin's mind but one he found it politic not to mention. "When things go your way, you take the credit; when they go wrong, someone else gets the blame."

"You, for example, my charming child, are entirely to blame for that unseemly temper of yours," Mavrix returned, which, to Gerin, proved only that the Sithonian fertility god was not so perceptive as he thought he was.

Ferdulf started to curse him. Gerin had heard some fancy curses in his time, but very few to match the ones spewing from the little demigod's lips. When the Fox closed his eyes for a moment, he could easily imagine he was listening to a veteran abusing a man he'd hated for twenty years.

If the abuse bothered Mavrix, he didn't show it. On the contrary: he beamed at Ferdulf as if proud of him. "I love you, too, dear son of mine," he said when the demigod finally paused for breath. He stuck out his tongue even farther than Ferdulf could have-and then he was gone.

Ferdulf kept on cursing for quite some time, even though only Gerin stood beside him near the wineskins. Without warning, he stopped cursing and burst into tears.

"I was afraid something like this might happen," Gerin said, as consolingly as he could. "That's why I didn't want you to try summoning your father."

"He didn't care." Ferdulf spoke in tones of astonished disbelief. "He just didn't care. I am his son-and he didn't care."

"He's a fertility god," Gerin answered. "He's had lots of sons-and lots of daughters, too. He doesn't see much reason why a new one should particularly matter to him."

"I hate him," Ferdulf snarled. "I'll hate him forever. He'd better not show his ugly face around here again, or I'll make him sorry, that's what I'll do."

"Easy," Gerin said. "Easy. You don't want to talk that way about your father, no matter who he is. You especially don't want to talk that way about your father when he's a god."

"I don't care what he is," Ferdulf said, and then began to cry again. "I'll pay him back for not caring about me if it's the last thing I ever do."

"If you try that, it's liable to be the last thing you ever do," Gerin said.

Ferdulf ignored him. The little demigod kept crying as if his heart would break-no, as if it were already broken. The men guarding the wine stared at him. They were Gerin's subjects, and knew about Ferdulf. They no more expected this behavior from him than they expected the Fox to go on a four-day drunk and rumple every peasant girl he could get his hands on.

Gerin stared at Ferdulf, too. After staring, he did what he would have done for any other crying child: he walked over, squatted beside Ferdulf, and put his arms around the demigod. Even as he did it, he wondered how foolish he was being. Like any other crying child, Ferdulf could do all sorts of unpleasant things if he didn't feel like being held. Unlike any other crying child, he could do all sorts of dangerous things if he didn't feel like being held.