Fox and Empire

**

Going back to the field, Gerin found laughter harder to come by. The dead back there, some of them men he'd known most of his life and others, not so old, men he'd known all their lives-they were every bit as dead as if he'd been defeated. The only consolation he found was that not so many of them were dead as if he'd been defeated. That might suffice for him. He didn't think it would for them.

Nor did victory ease the torment of the wounded. They still screamed or groaned or wailed or hissed or stood or lay silent, biting their lips against the pain till blood ran from the corners of their mouths. There would have been more of them whom the Fox knew and liked had the imperials won, but that didn't help the ones who had been hurt. Moreover, wounded men who'd fought for the Elabonian Empire didn't look or sound any different from those who'd followed Gerin or Aragis.

As he had at the earlier battle, Gerin did what he could to help the wounded, extracting arrows, washing cuts out with ale despite the curses of the men who'd acquired those cuts, and, once or twice, quietly cutting the throat of a man who could not live but would, without help, be a long, slow, painful time dying. He hated that, but hated their suffering more.

Presently, he came upon a young fellow with a fuzzy beard who was limping around with a bloody bandage on his right calf. No, not a fellow; though his own arms were bloody to the elbow, Gerin's stomach did a slow lurch. "Maeva!" he exclaimed.

"Hello, lord king," she said, her voice a little wobbly but firmer than a lot of others he'd heard. "They wanted to draw the shaft, but I wouldn't let them. I know you have a good hand for such things." She sat down on the ground, pale yet determined.

"I'll do the best I can," the Fox said. She'd given him a compliment, but not one of a sort he'd ever wanted to get. In the hope that talking would keep her mind off the pain, he asked, "How did it happen?"

She looked at him as if he'd asked a very stupid question. On reflection, he realized he had. "How do you think?" she asked irritably. "I was riding along, doing what I was supposed to be doing, and my leg started to hurt. When I looked down, I saw why-an arrow was sticking out of it."

He nodded. Of itself, one of his hands went to the other shoulder. He'd felt that same absurd surprise when he'd been shot. Then it had started to hurt. He reached down and undid the bandage, saying, "Let's see what we've got."

It was about what he'd expected. Whoever had slapped the bandage on Maeva had also cut the shaft of the arrow off short so it wouldn't be in the way. That was as it should have been, but it kept the Fox from gauging how deep in the meat of her calf the arrowhead lay. "Can you pull it out?" Maeva asked.

"I'd rather not," he answered, his voice troubled. "The imperials use barbed arrowheads, same as we do. Pulling it back will make the wound a lot worse."

"What will you do, then?" Maeva sounded calm, but ragged at the edges. She was liable to start screaming any time. Gerin didn't hold that against her, or blame it on her sex. He'd heard plenty of wounded men scream on the battlefield. He'd been a wounded man screaming on the battlefield.

He used his knife to cut her trousers away from the wound so he could feel of it. He also cut the checked wool on the inner side of her calf. When he gently pressed there, he felt something hard under his fingertip. He grunted. Maeva flinched and hissed and let out a small fragment of a shriek before she could bite down on it.

"It's almost through," he said. "Actually, that's pretty good. If I push it all the way through, the head will be out, and then the rest of the shaft will come with it without much trouble." He was telling the truth. He knew he was telling the truth. He'd had plenty of practice sounding cheerful with wounded men, too. Somehow, this was different. It was harder.

"Go ahead," Maeva said, her voice more ragged now. She set herself. Gerin had set himself, too, before they started working on that shoulder. It hadn't done him much good. He didn't think it would do her much good, either.

He set his hand on the stub of the arrow and pushed hard-soonest over, he'd found, was best. Maeva did shriek then. He'd expected she would; pain deliberately inflicted was harder to bear than that which came by accident.

The barbed bronze arrowhead stabbed out through her skin. Though it was slick with her blood, Gerin seized it and drew the shaft after it. "There," he said. "It's done-well, almost." He carried a jar of ale with him. When he poured it on both wounds in Maeva's leg, she screamed again, and tried to kick him. "Easy," he told her. "Now I'm going to bandage it again."

He did, with fresh rags. Blood started soaking into them from the old wound and the new. Maeva took a long, shuddering breath. "Thank you," she said. "It's… better now. I'm sorry I made so much noise."

"I didn't hear anything," Gerin assured her. He knew it wasn't necessarily better yet. The wound could still go bad, in which case she would be very sick and might even die. He'd done what he could do, and made himself sound reassuring: "It won't be long before you're on your feet and running hard again. It didn't cut the tendon; you wouldn't have been on both feet if it had. You should heal nice and clean."

"Thank you, lord king," she said. That made him feel worse rather than better. If he hadn't let her stay and fight, she would have been angry instead of grateful-but she would have been unwounded. He knew which way he would rather have had her. But, as if picking that thought from his mind, Maeva went on, "I'm glad you gave me the chance to fight, even if it turned out like this. Next time, I hope I'll be luckier."

Gerin looked down at his hands. They had her blood on them, literally and now, he supposed, figuratively as well. He kept trying to think of her as just another warrior; he'd had plenty of wounded young men tell him more or less the same thing she'd said a moment before. Try as he would, it wasn't easy. That thought kept recurring.

"Fox!" a deep voice boomed, from over on another part of the battlefield. "Where in the five Elabonian hells have you gone and got to now?"

"Here!" Gerin answered, and waved. Maeva was frantically shaking her head. Had Gerin thought before he waved, he wouldn't have done it. Too late now: Van was already on the way over, crimson horsehair plume nodding above him to make him even more unmistakable than he was already.

"Hullo, Fox," he called, still from some distance away. "Patching up another-" By the way the outlander's voice cut off, Gerin knew exactly when his friend realized exactly whom he was patching up. Van came the rest of the way at a pounding trot. He stooped beside his daughter. "What happened?" he demanded, a question no more useful than Gerin's had been.

"Arrow," she said, doing her best to make light of it. "The king says it should heal well."

"Through the meat of the calf," Gerin said when Van looked a query his way. "No tendon cut-I'm sure of that. She should heal clean." The gods willing, he added to himself. Maybe saying it over and over would help make the gods more willing.

Van was still looking at him, not with a question in his eyes any longer but with rising anger. Gerin had seen him aim that look at scores, likely hundreds, of enemies over the years. The Fox had never had it aimed at him. Run went through his mind, as it was no doubt meant to do. Van growled, "If it hadn't been for you, Fox-"

That Gerin had had the identical thought would have done little to console the outlander. Gerin was sure of it. But, before Van could say anything more, Maeva broke in sharply: "Leave him be, Father. How old were you when you took your first wound?"

"Sixteen or so," Van answered. "I was lucky for a while. I've made up for it since." That was, if anything, an understatement. He bore a great many scars. Gerin wondered how he'd ever survived one wound that had gashed his chest and belly.

"Well, then," Maeva said, as if that said everything that needed saying.

But Van shook his head. "It's not the same, chick," he said: the same thought that had been troubling the Fox.

"Why not?" Maeva said. "I fought well enough-oh, maybe not so well as you, Father, because I'm not the size you are, even though I'm not small. I kept fighting after I got hurt, too; it wasn't bad enough to make me quit the field."

"What am I supposed to do?" Van sounded plaintive, something he very rarely did. He looked to Gerin. "Curse it, Fox, help me. She sounds like I did when I was the same age."

"And why are you so surprised at that?" Gerin asked. "She's your daughter, after all. Dagref sounds more like me than I ever thought anyone could. He sounds more like me than I ever thought anyone would want to."

"Oh, aye, I can see that," Van said. Gerin laughed. Dagref, perhaps fortunately, was nowhere nearby. Van went on, "But it's not the same." He'd said that before, and sounded most sincere. He still did. "Dagref's your son. Of course he'll follow in your track."

"Am I not your child because I have no stones?" Maeva asked.

Before Van could answer, Gerin said, "I've seen men with beards down to their belts who had less in the way of stones than you do, Maeva."

"Thank you, lord king," she said quietly.

Van glared at Gerin. "Fat lot of help you are," he growled, and stomped off shaking his head.

"Thank you, lord king," Maeva said again, more firmly this time. " I think you're a great deal of help."

"I know you do," Gerin answered. "The trouble is, I still don't know whether I'm supposed to be helping you or your father." He gave her a sudden, sharp bow. "And I have other wounded to help. If I am supposed to treat you like a soldier-and I'm still a long way from sure that I am-then I have to go on, as I would from another soldier."

"Why, of course, lord king," she said, as if surprised he could imagine thinking any other way. That surprised him in turn, and made him begin to believe he might in fact be able to think of her as a soldier.