Fox and Empire

**

Van's daughter whipped her head around. Dagref spun toward his father and Aragis, then, resigned, turned back to face Maeva. Gerin caught a few words of what he was saying: "-bound to happen sooner or later."

"Well, Fox," Aragis said, chuckling still, "is that a woman, or have you forgotten what they look like?"

"That is a woman," Gerin agreed seriously. "That is a woman who, now that you've found her out, is liable to kill you for doing it."

Aragis started to laugh some more, then looked at him. The Archer looked at Maeva, too. She stood a couple of digits taller than he did, and was wider through the shoulders, too. And, as Gerin had recognized her face, Aragis recognized her name. "Considering who her father is, you're likely the one who isn't joking now," he said.

"Not even a little bit," the Fox answered. "I tell you, my fellow king, I shouldn't want her angry at me." He raised his voice: "Maeva, come here, if you'd be so kind. Dagref, you'd better come, too. You seem to have known what was going on."

"Yes, I knew, Father," Dagref said with impressive artificial calm. "What of it? You never forbade Maeva to come on campaign with us, and-"

"I never thought I'd have to forbid her to come on campaign with us," Gerin said, "because I never thought she'd do it."

Dagref talked right through him: "-and she killed at least one imperial, and wounded three more. If that doesn't show she can hold her own on the field, what does she have to do to prove it?"

Gerin started to answer that, then stopped when he realized he had no good answer handy. He turned to Maeva. "What will your father say when he finds out you've come to war?"

She shrugged, which only made her shoulders seem wider. "He'll probably shout and scream at me," she answered, "but what can he say now? I'm here, and I've already fought. He would have done the same thing. He did do the same thing, back when he was my age."

"Younger," Gerin said absently. "But he was a man. You're-"

"-Here and alive and with a dead foeman," Dagref put in. "That is what you were going to say, isn't it, Father?"

Aragis snorted. Gerin gave him a dirty look and Dagref another. Then the Fox spotted a tall, nodding horsehair crest of crimson. He waved in that direction. Van waved back. Gerin waved again, this time to bring his friend over. "I'm not going to say anything right now," he said as Van ambled toward him. "I'll leave that to Maeva's father."

Maeva herself gave him a look he would sooner not have had. But she stood straight and waited for Van to arrive. He towered over her, but he towered over almost everyone. "Hello, Fox," he boomed. "What do you need me for now? I was just about to…"

He followed Gerin's glance toward Maeva. For a moment, the Fox didn't think he'd recognize her under the false whiskers she'd stuck to her face. Gerin was ready to twit Van for that before remembering he hadn't penetrated Maeva's disguise, either. And then Van did. His gray-blue eyes got very wide. He started to say something, but all that came out of his mouth was a wordless, coughing croak of astonishment.

"Hello, Father," Maeva said. By then, she had her voice under control. It was a strong contralto that could easily have been mistaken for the treble of a youth whose voice hadn't broken-although such a youth probably wouldn't have sprouted so thick a beard.

Still, Gerin wasn't altogether astonished she'd managed to pull off the imposture. Most people saw what they expected to see, heard what they expected to hear. Maeva was as big as a man, she was in a place where only men were expected to be, she handled her weapons like a man, so what else but a man was she likely to be? An illustration of the difference between what's likely and what is, the Fox thought.

Van finally found words: "What are you doing here?" They weren't the best words, perhaps, but Gerin would have been hard pressed to come up with better on the spur of the moment.

Maeva had had the chance to compose herself. "Why, spinning thread and baking bread, of course," she answered with irony she must have learned from Dagref.

Van stared and spluttered. Dagref, sounding helpful when in fact he was anything but, said, "She's one of Rihwin's riders. She killed an imperial, and wounded a couple of more."

"What will your mother say?" Van demanded of his daughter. That made Gerin stare. He couldn't ever remember hearing Van use Fand's name in such a fashion before.

Evidently, Maeva couldn't, either. With a shrug, she replied, " When you go on campaign, you don't pay attention to what Mother says. Why do you think I'm going to?"

Listening with an analytical ear, Gerin admired that. It assumed Maeva had as much business going on campaign as anyone else. The Fox waited to see if Van would accept, or even notice, that unspoken assumption.

The outlander shook his head, like a bear bedeviled by bees. "It's not the same, not the same at all," he said. "Fine woman that your mother is, there's only so long I can stand being in the same place with her."

"Do you think it's any different for me?" Maeva asked.

Van coughed, then turned red beneath his bronzed hide. "Well, aye, it's some different," he answered, and let it go at that rather than explaining how it was different. That would have involved explaining how adultery ranked alongside fighting as his favorite campaign sports. He coughed again, then said, "Now that I know you're here, I' ll say you've had your fun, and now you're to go back to Fox Keep where you belong."

Maeva set her chin. "No," she said, a reply remarkable for simplicity and succinctness.

Somehow, the shade of red Van turned was different this time. "I am your father, I'll have you know, and what I tell you, that you shall do."

"No," Maeva said again. "Did you pay any attention to what your father told you once you'd killed your first man?"

"He was dead by then," Van said, an answer that was not really an answer. He turned to Gerin. "You're the king, Fox. If you tell her to go home and keep herself safe, she'll have to do it."

Gerin suffered his own coughing fit then. In all the years he'd known Van, the outlander had never appealed to his authority till now. Thoughtfully, he said, "I don't know. Isn't a lone girl on the road liable to face more danger than one in the middle of our own army?"

"She can take care of-" Van began, and then, a couple of words too late, stopped in his tracks.

Dagref, as was his way, drove home the logical flaw with a mallet: "If she can take care of herself, what point to sending her home?"

Maeva sent him a grateful look. The one Van sent him was anything but. Gerin said, "I don't think you're going to win this one, old friend. If she were a boy, you wouldn't be trying."

"But she's no boy, which is the point to the business," Van said stubbornly. "I know soldiers, and-"

"Wait." The Fox held up a hand. "I know Maeva, too. Don't you think anyone who tried to touch her if she didn't care to be touched would end up a eunuch like the priests of Biton, and that bloody quick?"

Van kept frowning. "Not right," he said again. "Not even close to right." After a moment, Gerin figured out what was likely troubling him. No doubt Maeva could protect herself if she didn't want to be touched. What if she did want to be touched, though? That had to be in Van's mind.

Aragis said, "You're not going to send her home." He sounded as if this was the first time he'd imagined that possibility.

Gerin bowed to him. "Lord king, there she is." He pointed to Maeva. "If you think you can order her home and make it stick, go ahead. Me, I don't like to waste orders that won't be obeyed. It weakens every other order I give after that."

"One way to do it would be to forbid her from any future fighting here," Aragis said, "and to post guards around her to make sure she cannot join it."

He was not a fool. He would never have done so well for himself had he been a fool. Maeva's face fell. Gerin could indeed do that. Van saw as much, too. Where his daughter wilted, he beamed. "That's the way, by the gods," he said, and bowed to Aragis. "I thank you, Archer. That's just the way."

"Oh, yes, a splendid suggestion," Dagref said. Had Gerin loosed his own sarcastic tones quite so freely when he was younger? On reflection, he decided he had. No wonder no one had liked him much. Dagref went on, "Not only does it take one proved fighter out of the army, it takes half a dozen or however many more out to watch her and make certain she doesn't do what she's already shown she's good at doing."

Maeva had eyed him with a certain speculation back at Fox Keep. He hadn't noticed then. If he didn't notice now, he was blind. Besides, his education in such things had advanced since then.

But maybe he didn't after all, for Aragis was eyeing him, too. "I am a king, young fellow," the Archer said coldly. "Do you cast scorn on me?"

"On you, lord king? Of course not," Dagref answered. "But a king can spout foolishness like anyone else. If you don't believe me, listen to my father for a while."

Aragis pursed his lips, then turned back to Gerin. "If that one can fight as well as he talks, he will be dangerous-if you let him live."

"Honh!" Van broke in. "We've said the same thing about Ferdulf, close enough. No wonder those two get on pretty well."

Dagref took no notice of that. He spoke to Gerin, who hadn't managed to get a word in edgewise about Aragis' suggestion: "Father, one of the things you always talk about is giving people the chance to do what they're good at. Why else would you have made Carlun your steward?"

"Because you weren't old enough yet to do the job?" the Fox suggested, perhaps a fourth in jest.

His son ignored him. His son was good at ignoring him, and getting better. "Why else do you teach peasants to read and write? If Maeva's good at fighting and wants to do it, why shouldn't she have the chance?"

"You can't get maimed with a pen and a scrap of parchment in your hands, curse it," Van said.

Gerin still hadn't said anything. No matter what he did say, he realized, he was going to make people he cared about unhappy. He hated having to speak in circumstances like that. Too many times, though, he had no choice. This was one of them. Slowly, he said, "Maeva has proved what she can do. That she came south with us proves she wanted to do it. Much as I'd like to, I can't see any justice in sending her back."

"Thank you, lord king," Maeva said quietly. Dagref looked as pleased as if he'd invented her. Van looked like a thunderstorm about to spill over. Maeva went on, "Now I peel this fuzz off my face."

"Were I you, I wouldn't," Gerin said. "With the beard, you look like any other northern warrior, near enough. Without it, the imperials will see you're something out of the ordinary and take special care against you. That's the last thing you ever want on the battlefield. I've got rid of a good many foes who didn't think I was dangerous till too late."

"I don't know," Van said. "I want 'em afraid of me." With his tall-plumed helm, his gleamingly polished corselet of solid bronze, and his great size and bulk, he smashed Gerin's principle to smithereens. He had the strength and skill to get away with it, too.

Dagref said, "A lot of the southerners shave their faces. They might not take Maeva for a woman, just for a northerner who does likewise."

"If you'll remember, son," Gerin said with a certain relish, "I didn't say they were liable to take her for a woman. I said they were liable to take her for something out of the ordinary. A man from north of the High Kirs without a beard is out of the ordinary, too."

"Why, so he is," Dagref said. "You're right, Father." He was not least disconcerting because he had no trouble admitting he was wrong.

Gerin rubbed his own chin. He'd shaved his face when he came back up from the City of Elabon, but harsh, ceaseless teasing had made himand Rihwin, too-conform in outward appearance, if not in what lay beneath.

"Thank you, lord king," Maeva said again. "I will do everything I can to show myself a worthy warrior for you."

"I shall have words for you presently, young lady," Van said, and stomped off. Somehow, that particular salutation seemed out of place when aimed at someone in a leather shirt with bronze scales sewn into pockets on it.

"You handled that smoothly," Aragis said to Gerin; the Fox supposed he meant it for a compliment. "I wouldn't have decided as you did, but I can see how and why you did it, which I never would have guessed when I spied… your new warrior." With a nod to Maeva that might have been ironic or might not, he took himself off, too.

Maeva went back toward the rest of the riders. Gerin expected Dagref to follow her, but the youth stayed. "I want to thank you, Father, for keeping Maeva with the army," he said. "If you'd ordered her back to Fox Keep, I would have used the promise I won from you to make you change your mind."

"Would you?" Gerin said, and his son nodded. Half the Fox-maybe more than half-wished he had ordered Maeva back. That would have rid him of the promise at a price he could afford. Now- Who could say what Dagref would come up with now? Gerin eyed his son in a speculative way. "You must think a lot of her, if you'd give up the promise for that."

"She's like a sister to me," Dagref said. Then, a moment later, he turned pink. With characteristic honesty, he corrected himself: "Maybe not quite like a sister." He didn't so much leave as flee. Rubbing his chin once more, Gerin stared after him.