Fox and Empire

**

By dribs and drabs, vassals started coming into Fox Keep. They slept in the rushes of the great hall, they slept in the courtyard, and, as the army grew, they began setting up tents on the meadow near the keep and sleeping there. Every time a new contingent arrived, Gerin would look delighted and Carlun Vepin's son appalled. The Fox thought of them as fighting men; to his steward, they were but extra mouths to be fed.

"I'll tell you what they are," Van said one day after a dozen or so warriors led by a young baron named Laufram the Lean stared in wonder at the nondescript keep of their overlord, and at the swelling host. "They're peculiar, that's what."

"How do you mean?" Gerin asked.

"I don't quite know," the outlander confessed. "But they're different from the way they used to be when I first came to Fox Keep."

"We're different from the way we used to be when you first came to Fox Keep," Gerin said. "We were young men ourselves then, or near enough."

Van shook his head. With some impatience, he answered, "I know that. It's not what I mean. I've taken it into account, or I think I have."

"All right." Gerin spread his hands. "But if that isn't what you mean, and you can't tell me what you mean, how am I supposed to make sense of it?"

Van shrugged a massive shrug and walked off muttering into his beard. A little while later, though, he came up to Gerin at a pounding trot. "I have it, Captain!" he said; he'd never called his friend lord or lord prince or lord king. "By all the gods, I have it!"

The Fox raised an eyebrow. "Do you suppose taking a physic will cure you of it?" When Van made as if to hit him, he laughed and said, "All right, you have it. Now that you have it, what is it?"

"It's this," the outlander said importantly: "Back in the old days, your vassal barons would just as soon spit in your eye as look at you. Is that so, or isn't it?"

"Oh, it's so, all right," Gerin agreed. "A lot of them had been used to dealing with my father. To them, I was nothing but a puppy sitting in the big dog's place. I had to prove I belonged there every day." The smile he wore was slightly twisted. Some of his memories of the early days after he took over the barony were fond ones, others anything but.

"That's right." Van's head bobbed up and down. "That's exactly right. But these troopers coming in now, and the barons leading them, too-what do they treat you like? To the five hells with me if they don't treat you like a king."

Gerin thought about it. Then he too slowly nodded. "Maybe they do," he said. "The ones who are lordlets now are the sons and grandsons, most of them, of the lords who held those keeps back twenty-odd years ago. You and I, Van, we've outlived most of the men who started with us."

"We haven't outlived Aragis," Van said. "Not yet, anyway." His big fist folded around the hilt of his sword in grim anticipation.

"No, nor Adiatunnus, either." Gerin plucked at his beard. Outlasting the competition wasn't a very dramatic way of gaining the upper hand, but it worked. How many young men died long before they were able to show all they could do? How many times had he nearly died himself? More than he cared to think of, that was certain.

"Ah, Adiatunnus." Van spoke with a certain fond ferocity. Gerin often heard the same note in his own voice when he talked about the Trokm? chieftain. The outlander went on, "And what will you do if himself himself"-he put on a Trokm? lilt for a moment-"doesn't care to come when he's called, as a good vassal should?"

"Worry," the Fox answered, which made Van laugh. "It's not funny," Gerin insisted. "I was talking about this with Balser, too, and fretting over it before I talked with him. If Adiatunnus waits till I' m all tied up with Aragis and then rises against me… I don't think I'd enjoy that much."

"Neither would he, after you were through with him," Van said. Gerin thought that even his friends got the idea he could do more than he knew to be humanly possible. Van continued, "If he betrays you, you could loose the Gradi against him."

"Oh, now there's a fine notion!" Gerin exclaimed. "If you have a sore toe, take an axe and whack off your foot."

"Well, you could make him think you were going to do it," Van said.

And that, when you got down to it, wasn't the worst idea in the world. Ferocious as they were, the Trokmoi feared the Gradi, who had often beaten them in battle and whose gods had trounced their own. If they hadn't feared the Gradi so much, Adiatunnus would have gone to war against Gerin years before, instead of asking him for aid. Nevertheless "I hope I don't have to think about it," Gerin said. "I hope he shows up here with a whole great whacking unruly lot of Trokmoi in chariots." He laughed at himself. "And if I'd said anything like that a few years back, everyone would have been sure I was out of my mind."

"Don't you fret about it, Captain," Van reassured him. "Everyone was sure you were out of your mind anyhow."

"It's such ringing endorsements that have made me what I am today," the Fox said, "which is bloody fed up with people who use friendship as an excuse to insult me."

He did not intend to be taken seriously, and Van obliged him. " Don't fret about that, either. I'd insult you even if we weren't friends." Both men laughed.