Fox and Empire

IV

Gerin had not been down in the lands over which Aragis the Archer ruled for more than twenty years. For some time, he'd been busy far closer to Fox Keep. Then, after his attention reached so far south, the only way he could have come was at the head of an invading army. Here he was at the head of an army, but, to what would have been his astonishment up until a couple of days before, he wasn't invading.

Before the Empire of Elabon withdrew beyond the High Kirs, the lands closer to the mountains had been more nearly a true part of the Empire than the raw frontier up by the River Niffet. Some of the villages hereabouts had almost deserved to be called towns. Close by the Elabon Way, especially, trade had flourished. It was, in fact, the condition to which the Fox aspired to lift his own holdings.

And Aragis, who had such splendid underpinnings for his kingdom, was letting them slip. Maybe Gerin remembered these lands as having been more prosperous than they really were because he'd been so much younger the last time he'd been through them. But he didn't think so. He hadn't been so young as all that. He could see signs of change, too, and not for the better.

Several villages had buildings standing empty-not just houses, but smithies and potters' works and taverns as well. Some had fallen down into rubble. Some were being torn down to patch other buildings still in use. And only weeds and bushes grew in the blank spaces between houses where others had presumably stood.

Some fields weren't being cultivated, either. In them, scruffy wheat and barley fought what was going to be a losing fight against brambles and saplings and plain, ordinary grass. "You don't seem to have quite so many people as you did," Gerin remarked to Aragis, sounding as casual as he could.

"Just have to make sure the ones who are left work harder to take up the slack." Past that, Aragis was indifferent. Gerin wanted to grab him by the front of the tunic, lift him into the air, and shake some sense into him. What are you doing, you fool? he wanted to shout. Don' t you see that, if this goes on a while longer, the peasants you have left won't be able to feed all your warriors? Then it won't matter how strong your armies are, or would be, because you won't be able to keep them in the field.

Aragis wouldn't listen. Aragis wouldn't have the vaguest idea what he was talking about. Aragis would get angry. Knowing all that, Gerin walked away instead of screaming at him.

Van followed the Fox. "If you could have seen the look on your face there when the Archer said, `So what?'-" the outlander began.

"If he saw it, he didn't know what it meant." Gerin kicked at the dirt. "If he had known what it meant, he wouldn't have let this happen to his lands in the first place." Gerin kicked again. "I wouldn't have had to fight him. In another few years, all this would have fallen under its own weight."

"Maybe," Van said. "Or maybe, if he heard the creaking, he would have fought you. If he won, he'd have your lands to ruin over the next twenty years. Even if he lost, he wouldn't have so many fighters to feed."

Gerin studied him. "That's a cold-blooded way of looking at things. It's more the way I'd look at them than how I'd expect you to."

"And who's been living beside you in Fox Keep these twenty years and more?" Van returned. He shook his head. "I wouldn't have thought that way when I first came there, not when I swam the Niffet with the Trokmoi shooting arrows at me till I got out of range. I'd spent so many years wandering, I didn't expect I'd ever put down roots." His head went back and forth again. "Never would have thought I'd stay attached to the same woman so long, either."

"You don't let that worry you, not when you're off someplace where Fand can't see what you're up to."

"And so what?" Van said. "If I get the itch, by the gods, I scratch it." His chuckle was mordant. "And if I didn't, I'd get no credit for holding back. One campaign we fought over in the southwest, years ago this was, I kept my prong in my breeches the whole time, and when I got back to Castle Fox I said as much to my lady love. What happened? Do you remember what happened, Fox?"

"Sorry," Gerin answered. "You and Fand have had enough dustups that that one doesn't stick in my mind."

"No, eh? Well, it does in mine. She thought I was lying, is what she thought. That put more fire under her cookpot than she gets when I tell her about all the pretty girls I rumple. So I ask you: what am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know," the Fox said. As far as he could see, Van and Fand quarreled as much because they enjoyed quarreling as because they really had anything about which to quarrel. He'd suggested as much to the outlander once or twice. Van had agreed with him, which was alarming, and had done exactly nothing to change his ways, which Gerin found even more alarming.

Dagref trotted by on horseback. He waved to the Fox and to Van. Loping along beside the horse, barely visible over the beast's back, was the fuzzy-bearded youngster Gerin had noticed once or twice before as the army moved south. He didn't wave. Has to be from some keep out in the middle of nowhere, Gerin thought. The king's son isn't far from his own age, so he can be easy with him, but with the king and his old friend-no.

Van said, "One of these days before long, Kor will be coming with us when we go to war, too. Won't be long, not the way time goes by now."

"You're right about that," Gerin said. "He'll be something to watch out for on the battlefield, too."

"That he will," Van said proudly. "My size, or most of it, and Fand's temper, or worse. I tell you the truth, the gods had better help anybody fool enough to stand in his way by the time he's seventeen. And if Maeva were a lad, I'd have two grand warriors to leave behind me when I go." He scratched his chin. "I wonder how many brats I've got that I don't know the first thing about? A few, I shouldn't wonder, but I've never been like Rihwin, ready to keep track of 'em all."

"Rihwin's almost as good at keeping track of his bastards as Carlun is at keeping track of beans," Gerin agreed. He spotted his fellow Fox not far away, and raised his voice a little: "The only thing Rihwin can't keep track of is Rihwin."

"Are you speaking to me or of me or against me?" Rihwin asked. "In sooth, I was but enjoying a vision, a memory of days long past, and nights as well, nights spent in the pursuit of knowledge, nights spent comparing the color and bouquet of one glorious vintage against another, and-"

"-Mornings spent wishing you were dead," Gerin broke in. Rihwin looked indignant. With his flexible features, every expression he assumed was, in a small way, a work of art. Gerin took no notice of him, but pressed ahead: "All you remember about wine is the parts of the drinking of it you enjoyed. The parts that weren't so much fun, you forget."

Rihwin shook his head. "There was," he insisted, "nothing about drinking wine that failed of enjoyment for me. I was a connoisseur." He struck a pose of exaggerated estheticism that would have made Mavrix proud.

"Fanciest word for drunk I ever heard," Van said.

Rihwin looked indignant all over again, giving a rendering full of even more virtuosity than the previous one. Before he could protest out loud, though, Gerin spoke up in agreement with the outlander: "You weren't much of a connoisseur the day we met you down in that horrible dive in the City of Elabon, the one not far from the Sorcerers' Collegium. What you were was somebody trying to climb into a wine jar through the little hole in the neck, and you didn't care a lick about the vintage you were drinking."

"After all these years, I must confess to remembering little about the occasion," Rihwin said with dignity.

"Yes, passing out will do that to you, won't it?" Gerin replied.

"You were as cold as a carp on a snowbank," Van added.

"If you grand and magnificent gentlemen, who of a certainty have been sober every moment of every day of your lives, insist on reviling me and casting imputations upon my character, I shall be forced to take myself off and drown my sorrows-in ale, worse luck." Rihwin marched away, nose in the air.

Behind him, Gerin and Van both started to laugh. "There's nothing we can do with him," Gerin said, and his voice held only admiration. " Not a single thing."

"How about a good swift kick in the arse?" Van suggested.

"If all the knocks Rihwin's taken over the years haven't let in any sense, one more kick won't do the job," Gerin said, and Van laughed again. Nonetheless, Gerin kept a thoughtful eye on Rihwin the Fox. When Rihwin got particularly vehement on the subject of wine, strange things had a way of happening. Gerin didn't want strange things to start happening. Life, at the moment, was quite complicated enough without them. Unfortunately, he had not the slightest idea what he could to do prevent them.