Fox and Empire

**

Balser Debo's son's driver brought his chariot up alongside the Fox's. "Now we're getting close to my lands," Balser said. "Better country, if you'll forgive my saying so, than what you've got up around your own keep."

"Maybe," Gerin answered. "The timber's a little different-you've got more elms and beeches and such down here, not so many pines. And your peasants can plant a few days earlier in spring and won't have to worry about frost quite so soon in the fall."

"Better country, as I said." Balser sounded smug.

"Maybe," Gerin said. "Or better some ways, might be a truer way to put it. You'll grow a few things we don't. But the Elabon Way here has gone back to gravel, because peasants and local lords plundered the stone paving when there was nobody around to tell 'em they couldn't or shouldn't." As if to prove his point, gravel kicked up from one of the wheels to Balser's chariot and hit him in the hand. He grunted. "Wasn' t even gravel here when this land first came under my suzerainty."

Balser coughed. "Well, lord king, the way that works is, you do what you think you have to do for the moment, and let later on take care of itself."

Gerin knew what that meant. It meant Balser and his vassals-and his serfs, too, if they thought they could get away with it-had been plundering the Elabon Way in his holding for building stone whenever they needed it. He wouldn't do anything about that, not when it had happened before Balser was his subject. He did say, "No more pulling up paving stone. That's all over now. If the road weren't here, Balser, we wouldn't be able to get to your holding fast enough to do you any good about Aragis."

"I suppose not." Balser, plainly, hadn't looked at it in that light before. Just as plainly, he didn't care, either.

"I mean it," the Fox said. "This is part of what you bought when you gave me homage and fealty. The Elabon Way is the one good thing the Empire left behind when it pulled back from the northern lands. I' ve done everything I could to keep it in good shape. It's turning into the backbone for my own kingdom."

"Well, yes, I have seen that you care about it," Balser admitted. "It's only a road, though, after all." He and Gerin looked at each other with complete mutual incomprehension.

"You'll have to get used to some new ways of doing things, now that you are my vassal," Gerin said, and let it go at that.

"Yes, lord king." Balser didn't sound dutiful. He sounded resigned. The Fox had no doubt about what he was thinking: something on the order of, How many of those new ways of doing things will I really have to get used to, and how many will I be able to ignore? Every one of his new vassals had thoughts like that. After a while, they-or most of them, anyhow-got the idea that the new ways-or most of them, anyhow-worked pretty well.

When Gerin had come by this road years before, on his way down to the City of Elabon with Elise and Van, he'd thought the barons here well away from the River Niffet were soft. They hadn't trimmed the brush back from the road as well as they should, they hadn't kept their castles in good repair, they'd half forgotten they were supposed to be fighting men.

The past twenty years and more had changed that. The Trokm? invasion, the eruption of the monsters from under Biton's shrine, and endless rounds of strife among the Elabonians themselves meant barons who weren't alert didn't live long. The ones who did live made sure no one ever got the chance to take them by surprise.

"Still no move from Aragis," Gerin said when they made camp that evening. "That's not like him. He's never been one to bluff and then back down. If he says he'll do something, he does it. He's a bastard, but a reliable bastard."

Not far away, an Elabonian fell on his face, as if he'd tripped over a stone in the grass. But there were no stones in the grass; the meadow was as smooth as an ornamental lawn in front of a high functionary's residence in the City of Elabon. Ferdulf giggled.

Gerin scowled. "Van said it-he does tempt you to find out just how nearly immortal he really is."

"Compose yourself, lord king," Rihwin said. "Could it not be that, by mere rumor of his presence, the demigod intimidates and inhibits Aragis the Archer from trying conclusions with you?"

Remembering how thoughtful Ferdulf had made Marlanz Raw-Meat, Gerin had to nod. "Ferdulf certainly intimidates and inhibits me," he said. "It would be nice if he did it to everyone else."

Van looked around to see if Balser Debo's son was in earshot. Not spotting him, the outlander chuckled and said, "Balser's going to be mighty unhappy if you bring this army down to his holding, eat every storeroom he has empty, lay tight hold on the land that was his, and then don't even have to do any fighting."

"Myself, I wouldn't mind that a bit," Gerin replied. "Fighting is wasteful. But you're right. Balser became my vassal so I could protect him. If he doesn't need protecting-"

"But, had he not come to you for protection, Aragis could have swallowed him at his leisure," Rihwin pointed out.

"That's so," Van agreed, "but he won't think about it. He'll think he never should have come to the Fox at all."

"If wheat and barley were as thin on the ground as thankfulness, we'd all go hungry most of the time, and that's a fact," Gerin said. " Still and all, the crop does grow. Adiatunnus told me one of the reasons he set out on this campaign with me instead of revolting-"

"Being a Trokm?, he's revolting almost by definition," Rihwin broke in.

"You keep quiet," Gerin told him, which, aimed at Rihwin, was good advice almost by definition. "As I was saying, or trying to say, one of the reasons he set out on this campaign was that he was grateful I' d gone to his aid against the Gradi five years ago."

"Aye, that was one," Van said. "The other, if I recall, was a nasty hunch you'd turn around and kick him in the ballocks if he tried stabbing you in the back."

"I never claimed gratitude was the only reason he chose to bring his men along with ours, just that it was a reason," Gerin said. He started to elaborate, but both his old friends were laughing too hard to pay any attention to him. After a moment, he gave up and started laughing himself.