Fox and Empire

**

"Bronze and wood." Van touched his sword hilt, then set his hand on the chariot rail. "Here we have the one thing and the other. Now we have to go forth and lick the cursed imperials."

"You make it sound so easy," Gerin said, his voice dry.

"It was easy," Van said. "Twice in a row, it was easy. Why shouldn't it be once more?"

"You're forgetting something," Gerin replied, even more dryly than before. "The two battles we won, Aragis and I were together, and together we matched the number of imperials we were fighting. They have more men now, and they've split us in two. Attacking when you're outnumbered doesn't strike me as the best idea I've ever heard."

"And have you got a better one?" the outlander asked.

And Gerin didn't. The imperials had not pressed the pursuit so hard as they might have. While he wasn't eager to attack them, they still weren't eager to attack him, either. Those two victories he and Aragis had won over them made them wary even with the advantage of numbers. Even so…

"We're going to get hungry pretty soon if we don't do anything but stay where we are," Van said, driving home the point. "It's either knock 'em back and find some new land to forage over or else fall back into the valley of Ikos-and farseeing Biton isn't going to be happy about that."

"I know." Now Gerin's voice was somber. "His guardsmen couldn't have made that much plainer, could they?" He sighed. "If it's fighting the Elabonian Empire or fighting the farseeing god, there's not much choice, is there?"

Rihwin's riders in the van, the Fox's army moved out the next day. Those of Aragis' vassals who had not gone to war along with their king held their keeps shut tight against Gerin. They were holding their keeps shut against everyone. They no doubt wished Gerin and the imperials would all go away and leave them at peace, or as close to it as they had known while living under Aragis' rule. No matter what they wished, they had not the strength to enforce their wishes.

The Fox's forward move seemed to catch the imperials by surprise. The riders drove back the scouts the forces of the Elabonian Empire had posted to keep an eye on them. They killed a few, too, and captured several more.

Maeva, beaming from ear to ear, brought one of those prisoners back to the Fox-and, not coincidentally, to her father and Dagref. "I caught him myself," she said, pride ringing in her voice.

The prisoner looked indignant, perhaps at being captured by a woman, perhaps at being captured at all. The latter, it proved, for he burst out, "You cursed rebels are a tougher nut to crack than they told us you were going to be when we came over the mountains. They said some of you would want to come back under the City of Elabon, and the rest wouldn't be able to fight."

"People say all sorts of stupid things," Gerin answered. "The trick is knowing whether they're stupid. For instance, I'll know if you lie, because I've already asked these questions to other prisoners. How many men have you got?…"

He got the answers he wanted. They largely agreed with the answers he'd had from other imperials his men had captured. The soldiers of the Elabonian Empire outnumbered his own men, but not overwhelmingly. He had some reason to hope he could knock them back on their heels.

"What will you do with me?" the prisoner asked.

"What will you do with me, lord king?" Dagref and Maeva spoke together, in the tones they would have used to reprove younger siblings who'd said something stupid. They looked at each other, both seeming surprised and pleased.

"What will you do with me, lord king?" For his part, the prisoner seemed grateful enough to be corrected with words rather than with something hard slammed against the side of his head.

"Take him back that way, Maeva," Gerin said, pointing over his shoulder. "Don't do anything to him as long as he behaves himself. If he doesn't behave himself… well, the ghosts will have fresh blood to drink tonight." To the captured imperial, he went on, "I don't quite know what we'll end up doing with you. We may let you farm on a peasant village, but I won't lie to you-you may end up in the mines. It depends on where we can get the most and the most useful work out of you."

"Lord king, if it's use you're after, I know something of smithcraft," the prisoner said.

"If that turns out to be true, you won't go to the mines," Gerin said. "And if it turns out not to be true, you will, for having lied." The imperial didn't quail, from which Gerin concluded he was either telling the truth or had some small practice lying. "Take him away, Maeva."

"I do thank you for getting her out of the brawling for a while," Van said.

"You're welcome, for whatever it may be worth," Gerin answered, his voice mild; he understood what was in the outlander's mind.

Dagref, on the other hand, spoke to Van in the same hectoring tones he'd used on the prisoner Maeva had taken: "You do understand, don't you, that she gets to go out of the brawling now because she was in it before?"

"Oh, aye, I understand that, lad," Van said, manfully resisting the temptation to break Dagref over his knee or offer him some other form of great bodily harm. "Now if you want to ask me whether I like the idea or not, I may just have a different answer for you. Aye, I may."

For a wonder, the brittle edge in his voice got through to Dagref, who suddenly made himself very busy steering the chariot. Gerin caught Van's eye and raised an eyebrow. Van coughed a couple of times. They both laughed.

"Stop talking about me," Dagref said without looking back, which only made his father and Van laugh harder.

More prisoners came back as the Fox's advance drove in the scouts the imperials had set up to keep an eye on him. He was mournfully certain his horsemen and chariots were not capturing all those scouts. He pushed south and west harder, to hit the main imperial army before the foe was ready for him.

Instead of finding the imperial force concentrated to receive his men, he found it scattered in detachments. He hit them one after another, glad of his good fortune. They would skirmish with him and then draw off, retreating toward the west every time. The peasants in the eastern part of Aragis' kingdom did not seem delighted to have him foraging from the countryside rather than the soldiers of the Elabonian Empire.

Some of them, in fact, probably would have preferred to have the imperials remain. Being strangers in the northlands, and unused to some of the ways of the peasants there, the men from south of the High Kirs missed stores that Gerin and his men had no trouble sniffing out. They'd dealt with the local peasants all their lives, and knew their tricks.

Flatbread made from coarse-ground flour baked in the hot ashes of a campfire was not the most appetizing meal, but it kept a man going. Van said, "We may run those buggers right out of here yet. If they keep giving us ground, by the gods, we'll take it."

"So we will," Gerin said, gnawing on flatbread. He kept looking toward the west. His expression was glum.

Van noted that. "You ought to be glad we've broken out of that cramped little stretch of ground where they'd pinned us back. If you are, you've not told your face of it."

"I am glad. We would have got hungry after a bit. But I'm not delighted. You see what they're doing, don't you?"

"Running," Van said with a sniff.

"Running, aye," the Fox said. "But running with a purpose." Van let out an interrogative grunt. Gerin explained: "They're keeping themselves between Aragis and us. They don't want us joining up with him until their other force has hit him hard, unless I miss my guess."

"Ah." Van took a bite of flatbread, too. He chewed on the bread and the idea at the same time. By the look on his face, he didn't much care for the taste of either. He tried to make the best of things: " Well, they'll be the ones with the harder foraging now."

But the Fox shook his head. "I have my doubts about that. If they can bring two armies up over the High Kirs, they'll have a supply train with 'em, too, to keep them fed." He listened to his own words. A smile slowly stole over his face. "And they've gone and let us out."

Van's smile spread till it matched Gerin's. "Wagons and wagons full of good things to eat-that's what you're saying, isn't it, Fox?"

"Good things to eat," Gerin agreed. "Probably more wine, to help Rihwin get drunk. Probably arrows and such, too. All sorts of things we could use. All sorts of things we'd be happier if the imperials didn't have. And they're falling back toward the west, to keep us away from Aragis the Archer."

"Don't they realize you'd think of the supply train?"

"Do you know, I don't believe they do," Gerin said. "To them, after all, I'm just a backwoods half-barbarian." He winked. "But I'll tell you something: I'm going to show them they're wrong."