Harry Turtledove - Fox and Empire

From everything Gerin had gleaned by intently watching his rival over the years, Marlanz was telling the truth. When Aragis said he would do something, he would do it, no matter how appalling it might be. He was not a man who deviated from his declared purposes. That made him more dangerous than someone who might be intimidated, but also made him more vulnerable because he was more predictable.

But the lands he controlled and those acknowledging the Fox's overlordship already marched over a long stretch of the northlands. If he went to war with Gerin, he could pick the spot for the first assault. "Tell Aragis one thing more from me," the Fox said, and Marlanz Raw-Meat nodded attentively. "Tell him that if he starts this war, I will finish it, and he won't care for that."

By Marlanz's expression, he didn't care for it, either. "I will take your words to him just as you say them, lord king," he promised. His face got longer yet. "I don't think it will help, but I'll do it."

"All right. I'll tell you one thing, too, Marlanz," Gerin said: "I don't hold this against you personally. You're doing as a good vassal should, following the orders of your suzerain. I think you'll be sorry for doing it even so."

"That's in the hands of the gods," Marlanz said, and then looked as if he wished he could have the words back. They must have made him think of Ferdulf, and from Ferdulf go on to Mavrix. He wouldn't know Mavrix was none too well disposed toward Gerin. Aragis did know thator had known it some years before. But Aragis had also seen Gerin cozen Mavrix into doing what the Fox wanted him to do. He might well reckon that meant man and god had patched things up. With luck, the prospect-even if it wasn't a true prospect-of facing an irate god would give even the Archer pause.

The prospect of facing an irate god had given Gerin pause several times. That didn't mean he hadn't done it. It didn't mean he hadn't got away with it, either. He had no reason to assume Aragis couldn't get away with it, too. He wished he did have such a reason.

"Try to make Aragis see that I don't want this war, will you?" the Fox persisted. "If I did want it, I'd hold you here, and the first thing Aragis would know was that my men were coming over the border at him."

"As I say, lord king, I'll pass on everything you say to me," Marlanz replied. "I don't think it will do much good, as I told you before. King Aragis will answer that it only means you don't want war now, right this minute, not that you don't want war at all." He sat a little straighter, a little more defiantly. "Can you tell me my king would be wrong?"

"Yes," Gerin said. "If I'd wanted war, I could have had it whenever I chose, and I've never chosen war with Aragis, not down through these past twenty years." He sighed; he was blessed-or perhaps cursed-with the ability to see the other fellow's point of view. "And he'll say the only reason I didn't do it was because I wasn't ready all this time, and now I finally am." He felt tired. "Go on home, Marlanz. Pretty soon Aragis and I can try killing each other, and then we'll find out who's better at that."

The warriors who had accompanied Aragis' envoy up to Fox Keep had their chariots ready for the return journey. Gerin's resignation to the prospect of war ahead seemed to reach Marlanz where his earlier denials had been brushed aside. As Marlanz stepped up into his car, he spoke urgently: "I'll urge him to hold the peace-by Father Dyaus, I swear it. Whether he listens to me…"

"If he doesn't listen to you, maybe he'll listen to edged bronze." Gerin waved to the gate crew. "Let down the drawbridge." The men in the gatehouse turned the capstan. Bronze chain rattled out, a link at a time. Down went the bridge. The Fox waved again, this time to Marlanz Raw-Meat.

Marlanz looked to be on the point of saying something more. Instead, he bowed stiffly and tapped his driver on the shoulder. The fellow flicked the reins. The horses got moving. The chariot's axle squeaked as it began to roll. The other car, the one with a crew of warriors, followed. Horses' hooves thundered and wheels boomed on the drawbridge. Marlanz was still peering back over his shoulder at the Fox when his driver swung south and took the car out of the narrow line of sight the gate offered.

Gerin could have mounted to the palisade and watched Marlanz till he was out of sight, but what point to that? He went back into the great hall and called for ale instead. Carlun Vepin's son sat in there, cutting a length of sausage into identical bite-sized chunks before he ate them. He looked up from that fussily precise task and said, "There will be war then, lord king?"

"I'm afraid there will," Gerin answered. "I don't see how I can turn Balser down. Evidently Aragis doesn't see how he can let me accept Balser's vassalage. If that's not a recipe for war, I don't know what is."

Carlun stabbed one of those chunks of sausage with the knife he'd used to cut it. He brought it up to his mouth, chewed, swallowed. Only then did he deliver his verdict: "It will be expensive."

"Thanks so much-I hadn't realized that," Gerin snapped. The steward choked on another bite of sausage; he'd always been vulnerable to sarcasm. Gerin slapped him on the back. "Steady there-expensive, yes; fatal, no."

"I suppose not, lord king," Carlun said. "Nothing else you've undertaken has been fatal-though the gods can drop me in the hottest of the five hells if I understand why not." He cocked his head to one side. "Maybe it's magic."

Gerin turned his most enigmatic stare on the steward. "Maybe it is," he answered, which made Carlun look nervous. Gerin had studied sorcery down in the City of Elabon before the Elabonian Empire severed itself from its fractious northern province. He'd had to return to the northlands with his magical studies, like all the rest, incomplete: the Trokmoi had slain his father and brother, leaving him baron, a job he'd wanted about as much as a longtooth wanted an aching fang.

Despite insatiable curiosity, he hadn't intended to practice much sorcery after coming back to the north. The only thing more dangerous, commonly to himself, than a half-trained mage was… The Fox backed up and started that thought again, because he couldn't think of anything more dangerous than a half-trained mage.

That didn't mean he hadn't practiced magic every now and again. Amazing what desperation will do, he thought. When faced with a Trokm? wizard bent on destroying him for a fancied slight, or with the eruption of the monsters from under Biton's temple down at Ikos, or with the invasion of the Gradi and their ferocious gods, the risks of sorcery suddenly seemed smaller.

He hadn't killed himself yet. That was the most he could say for his sorcery. After a moment, he shook his head, rejecting false modesty. In hair-raising fashion, the magic had done what he'd wanted it to do. Balamung the Trokm? mage was destroyed, the monsters-except Geroge and Tharma-were made to return to their gloomy caverns, the Gradi were pinned back to a single castle at the edge of the ocean.

And because Gerin hadn't killed himself once-though not for lack of effort, he thought-both his friends and his foes had conceived the notion that he really was a formidable wizard in his own right. So long as he didn't conceive the same foolish notion and try to act on it, he figured he'd be fine. Thinking he had a true sorcerous talent also made people think twice about crossing him.

As now: Carlun said, "Then I will prepare for war sure everything will turn out right, even if I don't see how."

That went too far. Gerin shook his head again. "Prepare as if you think everything will go wrong. In your mind, make things look as black as you can. Figure out how we'd come through that. Then, when something works out better than you expect-if anything works out better than you expect," he added from the depths of a deeply pessimistic nature, "you can take it as a bonus."