Harry Turtledove - Fox and Empire

"When you ask it that way, lad, I have no good answer for you," the outlander said with a sigh. "I thought it was a childish thing in her, I suppose, and that she would put it aside when she turned into a woman, and take up the things of a woman instead."

"That didn't happen," Dagref said. "If you'd been paying attention, you'd have noticed she's been a woman for a year, and she hasn't come close to putting aside her practice. She's worked harder than ever, as a matter of fact."

"Has she?" Van's tone was surprised, not so much at the news, perhaps, as at how emphatically Dagref gave it to him. "You've been paying close attention, haven't you?"

"Well, of course I have," Dagref answered. "I've been practicing a good deal myself, you know. If I didn't notice what people did around me, I wouldn't be much use to anyone, would I?"

Van grunted and subsided. Perhaps he was even convinced. Dagref had spoken most convincingly. He might even have believed what he was saying himself. Over the years, Gerin had seen a great many people talk themselves into believing what wasn't so.

Thoughtfully, the Fox shook his head. He was of the opinion that Dagref was concealing from Van rather than deluding himself. He was also of the opinion that Dagref had made special note of Maeva practicing because she was Maeva, not because she was practicing. He'd also caught Maeva noticing Dagref, which made life… less than dull.

The sun sank toward the western horizon. The imperials stopped harassing Gerin's rear guard and drew back. He hadn't thought they would do anything else, but he hadn't thought they would bring a second army over the High Kirs, either. If Aragis had been generous instead of greedy and given the Fox the right instead of the left, the Archer would have had the easier retreat and Gerin would have had to contend with two forces at once. He wondered if Aragis was thinking the same thing at the moment.

Up ahead sat one of those not-quite-towns common here close to the High Kirs. Gerin ordered his men to encamp a couple of bowshots from it. He wasn't worried about feeding them, not tonight. Most of them would have bread or sausage or something on their persons, and those who didn't would be able to get something.

He did need some sort of sacrifice against the night ghosts, though. He walked up toward the village, Dagref at his side. Van stayed behind to talk with Maeva, who'd come through unhurt. Dagref had wanted to do that, too, but Van's presence persuaded him to take himself elsewhere.

When Gerin got to the village, he wondered if anyone would be there at all. His army had passed nearby on the way south, and so had the imperials before them. To his relief, he found that, if the inhabitants had fled as warriors briefly approached the place, they were back now. They were also willing, he discovered, to sell him a couple of sheep.

"How did you keep somebody from stealing them?" he asked.

"Oh, we managed," answered the man who had them. Three words summed up generations of dealing with nobles and warriors, always being the weaker but somehow getting through.

Admiring that resilience, Gerin said, "Well, come to the tavern and have a jack of ale with my son and me."

"I'll take you up on that," the villager said. He led the Fox and Dagref into the tavern, which wasn't too clean but likewise wasn't too dirty. "Three ales," he told the woman who looked to be in charge of the place. He pointed to Gerin. "This fellow here is doing the buying."

She nodded and filled three jacks. She was somewhere in early middle age, brown hair-beginning to go gray-pulled back from her pale face and tied behind her. In the growing gloom inside the tavern, Gerin couldn't make out what color her eyes were.

She carried the jacks over to the table where he, his son, and the villager sat. She didn't set them down till the Fox put money on the table. Then she nodded and said, "Here you are."

Gerin's head came up, so suddenly that Dagref and the villager stared. He knew her voice. Her eyes were green. He still could not see them, but he knew. Hoarsely, he spoke her name: "Elise."

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She set the tarred-leather drinking jacks on the table very slowly and carefully, as if they were cut rock crystal that might shatter at a touch. Gerin felt as if he might shatter at a touch, too.

"Here, what's this?" the villager said. "The two of you know each other? How in the five hells do you know each other?"

"We manage," Gerin said, his voice still ragged. Dagref's eyes were wide as rounds of flatbread.

"Aye, we do." Elise sounded as much taken aback as the Fox did. Turning to him, she said, "I didn't know your face. I didn't know who you were till I heard you speak."

"Nor I you," he answered. He scratched at his beard. He knew how gray it was. "It's been a long, long time."

"Yes." She looked from him to Dagref and back again. Slowly, some small question in her voice, she said, "Surely this isn't Duren. He would be older."

"You're right." Gerin nodded. "This is Dagref, my older son by Selatre, my wife since a few years after you… you left. Did you know that Duren is lord of the holding that belonged to your father?"

Elise shook her head, which meant she was hearing of the death of her father, Ricolf the Red, for the first time. "No. I didn't know," she answered. "News moves slowly, when it moves at all. How long-? How-?"

"Five years ago now," the Fox answered. "A fit of apoplexy. From everything I heard, it was as easy as such things can be. Duren has the holding firmly in his hands these days."

"Does he?" Elise still looked dazed. She had plenty to be dazed about. Gerin was feeling dazed, too. He also felt as if he'd tumbled twenty years back through time, into a part of his life long closed off from that in which he was living now and had been since he'd found Selatre.

The villager who'd come into the tavern with Gerin and Dagref gulped his ale. "Well, I'd best be off," he said, and got up from his stool and hurried out into the sunset.

Dagref, by contrast, stared in fascination from Gerin to Elise and back again. The Fox thought his son's ears curled forward to hear the better, but that might have been his imagination. He hoped it was. Quietly, he said, "Son, why don't you take the sheep back to the camp, so they're sacrificed before the sun goes down?"

"But-" Dagref began. He stopped, then tried again: "But I want to-" Then he realized that what Gerin had phrased as a polite request was in fact an order, and one that brooked no contradiction. The glare Gerin sent his way helped him realize that. Regretfully, resentfully, sulkily, and very, very slowly, he did as his father bade him.

Elise's laugh was nervous. "He wanted to hear everything," she said.

"Of course he did," Gerin said. "And once he'd heard it, he'd know it all, and be able to give back any piece of it you wanted, as near word for word as makes no difference. He'd even understand most of it."

"He takes after you," Elise murmured. By her tone, she didn't altogether intend that as a compliment.

Gerin started to get angry. Before he let the anger show, he saw that half of it-maybe more than half of it… no, certainly more than half of it-was all the things he hadn't been able to say since she'd disappeared, now trying to crawl out of his throat at once. With an effort, he crammed them back. "How have you been?" he asked, a question that seemed unlikely to throw oil on the fire.

"How do I look?" she answered. Everything she said seemed to have a bitter edge to it.

"As if you've seen hard times," Gerin said.

She laughed again. "What do you know of hard times? You've always been a baron in a keep, or a prince, or a king. Your belly's been full. People do what you tell them to do. Even your son does what you tell him to do."