Fox and Empire

**

Morning dawned bright and clear. It also dawned without Lengyel. Both his guards were asleep and remained so despite repeated efforts to shake them awake. "Some drug or other, I judge," Gerin growled, examining the prostrate men with no small annoyance. "Maybe he had it secreted on his person, or maybe he found an herb he could use when he went behind a bush. Either way-" He raised his voice to a shout: " Ferdulf!"

"What now?" the demigod demanded, drifting over from some distance away.

"The wizard escaped," the Fox snapped.

"I didn't know anything about it," Ferdulf said. He looked at Lengyel's unconscious guards, too. "He didn't use magic to do it. That's what I was looking for. That's what you told me to look for, if you'll recall."

Gerin exhaled angrily. "I don't care if the whoreson bored them to sleep reading bad poetry. I didn't want him loose."

"That's not what you said," Ferdulf replied with considerable aplomb. "I can't keep track of everything at once, you know. I'm only superhuman."

In the abstract, Gerin admired the line. He had scant time to worry about the abstract. "Since you let him get away-"

"I did no such thing," Ferdulf retorted.

"You were charged with keeping him here," Gerin said.

"I was charged with making sure he did not escape by magic," the demigod said. "I did as I was charged, and he did not escape by magic. If a couple of witless mortals let him up and wander off when he didn' t even have to bother with sorcery, that's hardly my problem, now is it?" He folded his skinny arms across his narrow chest and floated off the ground till he was staring the Fox straight in the eye.

The expression on his face ached for a slap. Regretfully, Gerin held off from delivering it. Instead, keeping his voice light, he said, "It depends on how you look at things, I suppose. If you don't mind taking the chance that his magic will do worse things to you than Caffer's did, you may be right."

Ferdulf might have had a god for a father, but he wasn't much better than any other four-year-old at looking ahead to the likely consequences of things he did-and things he didn't do. He was unhappy enough at what Gerin said to let his feet scuff the dirt once more. " All right-what should I do about that?" he asked in tones much less toplofty than he usually used.

"Now that he has escaped, can you use your powers to hunt him down, or to help some troopers hunt him down?" Gerin asked.

"I don't think so." Ferdulf frowned. "Or maybe I can. I could try, anyway." Gerin nodded.

He rose into the air now, till he drifted high above the encampment like a bad-tempered cloud. He twisted his body so that he faced due west, then slowly began bearing ever more to the south. Gerin wondered what sort of sense he was using to feel for the vanished Lengyel. Had it been a sense the Fox possessed, he could have done the search himself.

Up in the sky, Ferdulf suddenly stiffened. He dropped a few feet, as he had a way of doing when he wasn't paying full attention to his flying. Were he wholly divine, no doubt he wouldn't have had to worry about such things. Were he wholly divine, Gerin would have had to worry much more about him.

"There!" he called down to the Fox, pointing southwest. "He's going that way."

That way was the direction in which Gerin was almost certain the bulk of the imperial army lay. "How far away is he?" he shouted up to Ferdulf. "Can you tell?"

"Hard to be sure," Ferdulf answered. "I wasn't sure I could find him at all, you know."

"Yes, yes," Gerin said. "But is it worth my while to send a few men after him, or has he got back safe to the enemy's main camp?"

The little demigod dropped a few feet more. "I can't tell," he said, sounding angry at Gerin, Lengyel, and himself. "I wish I could, but I can't."

"A pestilence," Gerin muttered. "I wish you could, too." He looked around for Aragis. The Archer wasn't far away. "Shall we send men after the wizard?" Gerin asked him. "Were it up to me, I'd say yes, but you're the overall commander. If you want to hold back and let him go, I won't quarrel."

"Are you daft?" Aragis growled. "Of course, send men after him. Bringing him back is worth the risk. Send some of your riders. It's the sort of thing they'd be good for-they're faster than men afoot, and they can go places where chariotry can't. Chase him till he wishes he'd never run away."

"Good enough." As Gerin shouted for Rihwin, he reflected that the best way to fight Aragis was liable to be leading him into a trap, a place where he'd think he had an easy victory, but where in fact more foes waited than he'd expect. For the moment, though, he was an ally.

"How many men would you have me send, lord king?" Rihwin asked. " And shall I take Ferdulf?"

"If he'll go with you, certainly," Gerin answered. "That'll make it harder for Lengyel to turn your troopers into toads." He raised an eyebrow. "You're going to lead this chase yourself?"

"By your leave, I am," Rihwin said. "Since I could not even detect the presence of a woman warrior among my men, I'd fain reassure myself that I am on occasion capable of seeing beyond the end of my nose."

"Fair enough," Gerin told him. "But don't just have your eyes open for Lengyel. Remember, the imperials are liable to be waiting for you somewhere out there, too." He hesitated, then asked, "And how did Maeva seem to you?-as a warrior, I mean."

"Oh, I understood you; you need not fret over that." Rihwin looked chagrined. "Had Aragis not noticed what she was, I doubt I should have done so. This, you must follow, disturbs me for not one but two reasons: first, that she performs in every way so much like a man, and second, that I of all people simply failed to note her femininity."

"And what would you have done if you had?" Gerin asked, and then answered his own question: "If she didn't make you sing soprano for trying to do that, her father would have."

"I do not molest women who find my attentions unwelcome," Rihwin replied with dignity. "Given the number who find those attentions most welcome, I have no need to bother, or bother with, the others." What with the number of bastards he'd fathered over the years, that comment held no small grain of truth. With more dignity still, he went on, "In any event, the charms of a woman-or, I should say, a girl-of that age hold little appeal for me."

"All right, I'm persuaded," Gerin said. "Now go off and-"

But Rihwin, once begun, was not so easily headed. "Maeva may well be attractive to someone with fewer years than myself. Your son, for example, immediately springs to mind."

"Aye, he does, doesn't he?" Gerin said, which seemed to disconcert Rihwin-maybe he'd expected indignant denials. Gerin waved his fellow Fox forward. "Go on, get after that wizard. Don't stand around gabbing all day."

Rihwin and a squadron of his riders went trotting south a few minutes later. Ferdulf went along with them. Gerin wouldn't have wanted to be an imperial mage the little demigod flushed out of hiding. On the other hand, he wouldn't have wanted to be Rihwin using Ferdulf as a hunting hound, either. Most hunting hounds had the sovereign virtue of not talking back.

Rihwin and his men had been gone only moments when someone spoke to Gerin in a reedy tenor: "Lord king?"

He turned and found himself facing a fuzzy-bearded youth. He needed a heartbeat to remember the beard was false and the tenor in fact a contralto. "What is it, Maeva?" he asked cautiously.

"When you sent the riders out just now," Van's daughter asked, " did you tell Rihwin not to put me in that squadron?"

"No," Gerin answered. "Maybe I would have if it had occurred to me, but it didn't. I didn't tell him anything one way or the other. Did he say I did?"

"No, he didn't say that," Maeva said. "But when he didn't choose me, I wondered. Can you blame me?"

"I suppose not," the Fox admitted. "If you're going to do this, though, there's something I want you to think about, all right?"

"What?" Either in her own proper person or disguised as a man, Maeva was no one to trifle with.

"This," Gerin said: "Just because you can be chosen to do this, that, or the other thing doesn't mean you will be chosen all the time or that you have to be chosen. It may just mean you weren't chosen this one time, and you may be the next."

Maeva considered that with almost the grave intensity Dagref might have shown. At last, she said, "All right, lord king, that's fair enough, as far as it goes. But if I'm never chosen for anything dangerous, then it doesn't go far enough. If that happens, I'll get angry." Her eyes blazed, as if to warn that getting her angry was not a good idea.

Being acquainted with her parents, Gerin could have-indeed, hadfigured that out for himself. He considered her words in turn. "You're with the army, Maeva. You're fighting. If you think none of the imperials could have killed you in the last battle, maybe I should send you home after all."

She tossed her head, a feminine gesture odd when combined with the false beard stuck to her chin and cheeks. "Nobody knew-well, nobody but Dagref knew-who I was, what I was. I was just another trooper. It' s not going to be like that any more. It can't be like that any more. I wish it could."

"I'm not going to send you back, no matter how much your father wishes I would," Gerin said. "That means you're going forward. You'll get more fighting, believe me you will." He paused. "What will your mother think when you come home?" Fand was formidable, but not in the same way Maeva was.

"My mother? You heard me tell my father I didn't worry about that much, but…" Maeva thought it over. "My mother would probably say I didn't need to put on armor and carry a bow if I wanted to fight with men."

Gerin laughed. "Yes, that probably is what she'd say."

He wondered whether Maeva knew he and Fand had been lovers for a while, in the dark time between Elise's leaving him and his meeting Selatre. If she did, he wondered what she thought. He saw no way to ask. He didn't really want to find out. Some curiosity was better left unsatisfied.

He let out a small snort. Rihwin would surely disagree with him there. But then, Rihwin didn't believe in holding back on anything.

"What's funny now, lord king?" Maeva asked.

"Sometimes the things you don't do are as important as the things you do," he answered. Maeva cocked her head to one side, no doubt wondering how that could possibly be amusing. Would Dagref have understood? Maybe. Maybe not, too. The Fox couldn't think of anyone else so young who might have.

When Gerin didn't seem inclined to explain further, Maeva went off scratching her head. He was unoffended. He'd sent his vassals off bemused more times than he could count. Most of those times had worked out all right. That gave him reason to hope this one would, too.

He peered south and kicked at the dirt. He also hoped Rihwin's chase after Lengyel would work out all right, but he had no particular reason to believe it would. Rihwin could perform far better than anyone who knew him only slightly might imagine. He could also perform far worse. Until he did whatever he did on any given day, no one could guess what that would be.

Trees blocked Gerin's view; he couldn't see as far as he would have liked. He couldn't see Ferdulf in the air any more, either. What was happening, out there where he couldn't see? How foolish had it been to let Rihwin and Ferdulf, each erratic by himself, go off together? How sorry would he be when he found out how foolish he'd been?

Was that a bird in the sky, down there to the south? No-no bird had ever flown with such a smooth, effortless motion. That was Ferdulf. (And what did the birds think of the little demigod who invaded their domain? Gerin would have bet they found him as annoying as everyone else did.) He was coming this way. And, out from behind those trees, here came horsemen.

They had people on foot with them. Gerin took that for a good sign. Also promising was the way Ferdulf kept flying down and darting into the faces of the men on foot, as if they were chariot horses of the soldiery of the Elabonian Empire. The Fox wondered if Ferdulf was doing anything disgusting to them from on high. That didn't seem the best way to treat… prisoners, he supposed they were.

Gerin trotted toward the returning horsemen. So did Aragis. So did a good many ordinary soldiers. A lot of people were still curious to learn what the riders could do.

A horseman detached himself from the rest and approached the Fox at a rapid trot. After a moment, Gerin saw it was Rihwin. "We have him!" Rihwin shouted as soon as he was close enough for his voice to carry.

The soldiers cheered. Gerin clapped his hands together. Aragis looked astonished, and didn't bother hiding it. Gerin called, "Who are all the others you have there?"

"A round dozen of the fanciest whores off the streets of the City of Elabon," Rihwin answered. Gerin blinked. The soldiers burst into louder cheers. Rihwin waved them down. "Would it were so, but alas, it isn't. They're imperial troopers at whose forward camp Lengyel was staying. They offered no resistance, for we not only outnumbered them two to one but also came on them by surprise, thanks going almost entirely to the aid Ferdulf furnished."

"You probably wouldn't have been able to do it in chariots, would you?" Gerin asked, and Rihwin shook his head.

Aragis said, "I never denied horsemen had their uses, Fox. I even said this was one of them. Don't twit me here." He didn't sound so angry as he might have; he couldn't have expected Rihwin to succeed as fully as he had.

Here came Lengyel, looking even more dejected than he had when the men of the northlands captured him the first time. "Hello again," Gerin greeted him. "Aren't you glad we're barbarians and don't know what we're doing?"

"Delighted, I'm sure," Lengyel said sourly, which made Gerin respect him for the first time as a man rather than simply as a dangerous sorcerer.

Rihwin said, "And, lord king-lord kings-we have booty that may prove as valuable and delightful as our victory itself has been." He pointed to the mounts of some of his riders; the animals had skins tied on behind the horsemen. Grinning, he went on, "Here we find precious treasure scarcely seen in the northlands for a generation of men."

"Rihwin, you didn't-" Gerin began.

"Oh, but lord king, my fellow Fox, I did," Rihwin broke in. "Did you think that, after so long, I could resist the allure of so much splendid, glorious, magnificent wine?"

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