Fox and Empire

**

In the morning, Dagref and Ferdulf were missing. Gerin didn't fret so much over the demigod. For one thing, he thought Ferdulf likely able to take care of himself. For another, the camp was a good deal quieter without Ferdulf around.

But Dagref-for Dagref to run off struck Gerin as highly unlikely. And then, all at once, it didn't. Dagref could have had a perfectly good reason for slipping out of camp, a reason named Maeva. That he should have been so foolish as not to come back before things started stirring was another matter, one over which Gerin intended to have some pointed conversation with him.

The Fox couldn't even lose his temper, not so thoroughly as he would have liked, unless he wanted to alert Van to the reason he was upset. The outlander, seeing he was worried but not fully grasping why, said, "To the five hells with me if I like the notion of Dagref and Ferdulf going off together. Who can guess what mischief they're liable to get into till they go and do it?"

And that gave Gerin something new to worry about. He'd been thinking so much about Dagref and Maeva together, the prospect of Dagref and Ferdulf together had entirely escaped his mind. That was an oversight on his part, he realized. "You don't suppose they've gone off to conquer the imperials all by their lonesome, do you?"

He hadn't intended Van to take him seriously. But the outlander said, "The gods only know what they've gone off to try and do. I don't think they can conquer the bloody imperials by themselves, seeing as the whole lot of us haven't been able to do that. What they think they can do-who knows?"

"Who knows?" Gerin echoed mournfully. Dagref was at the age where he thought anything was possible. As for Ferdulf, almost anything was possible around him.

Since his driver had gone off, Gerin borrowed a horse from Rihwin' s men and rode, slowly and carefully, down to the horsemen who were holding the line against Swerilas' imperials. The Fox wished he'd put in more time on horseback over the years. He managed a simple ride well enough, but wouldn't have wanted to try to fight while mounted.

One advantage of going by horse rather than by chariot was that he went by himself. Without Van along, he didn't have to come up with fancy and fanciful explanations for why he wanted to see Maeva. But he got no satisfaction from seeing her, nor did it seem that Dagref had got any satisfaction from her the night before.

"No, lord king," she said, her eyes widening. "I haven't seen either Dagref or Ferdulf. Why do you think Dagref would have come to me?"

"For the obvious reasons," he answered, and watched her flush. " He's not back at the camp, and he didn't tell me he was going anywhere. My first guess was that that meant a tryst with you."

"If it meant a tryst, it wasn't with me." Now Maeva sounded dangerous for reasons that had only a little to do with warfare.

"If it didn't mean a tryst with you, I don't think it meant a tryst with anyone," Gerin said. Maeva relaxed-a little, and grudgingly. The Fox scratched his head. "If it didn't mean a tryst with you, I don't know what it did mean."

All at once, he remembered the peculiar dream he'd had, the dream where he'd been on the fringes of things and unable to figure out what was going on no matter how important figuring out what was going on was. Maybe he'd had to stay on the fringes of things because the dream had truly been aimed at Dagref. The two of them had both remarked on how much they thought alike; Gerin didn't find it unreasonable that he should catch the edge of a dream meant for his son. That, though, only raised the next interesting question: who or what was aiming dreams at Dagref?

Two answers came to mind-the imperials and Biton. No, three, for Mavrix might have done it, too, which would, or could, have accounted for Ferdulf's absence-assuming, of course, Ferdulf's absence was connected to Dagref's.

"Too much I don't know," Gerin muttered with a sigh.

"What's that, lord king?" Maeva asked. "Is Dagref all right?"

"I don't know that, either," Gerin said. Awkwardly, he swung up onto the horse and rode back to the town of Ikos.

He hoped against hope Dagref would be there when he got back. He even hoped Ferdulf would be there when he got back. If that wasn't a mark of desperation, he didn't know what was.

But neither Dagref nor Ferdulf was there. "Where in the five hells have they gone? What in the five hells do they think they're doing?" he asked of Van, who had already shown he didn't know the answers, either.

"We'll just have to see if the imperials ask us for ransom," the outlander said. "If they've got Ferdulf, as far as I'm concerned they can keep him."

"There are people who would say the same about Dagref," Gerin said gloomily, "but I'm not any of them. If they have him, I'll pay what they want to get him back."

"The price they want is liable not to be gold or copper or tin," Van said. "It's liable to be a bended knee."

"Whatever the price is, I'll pay it," Gerin answered. "Do you think I'm so much in love with having people call me `lord king' that I'd throw away my son so they'd keep on doing it?"

"No," Van said at once. "And if you were fool enough to throw your son away, no one would call you `lord king' afterwards anyhow, for everybody would sicken at being led by such a man."

"Here's hoping you're right," Gerin said. He had his doubts, but did not pass them on to the outlander. Van would surely sicken of being led by such a man, but plenty of truly vicious people had gone on to long and successful reigns. The Fox, though, had no desire to emulate them.

He wondered if Dagref and Ferdulf hadn't gone south after all, if instead they'd chosen to head west along the track through the haunted woods back toward lands within Gerin's suzerainty. He had trouble imagining why they would want to do such a thing-the fighting here would be over long before they could bring back reinforcements-but he had trouble imagining why they would go see the imperials, too.

He slammed one balled-up fist into the palm of the other hand. What had that dream been? If he'd been able to see more of it…

Some time in the middle of the morning, his son and Ferdulf came walking into the town of Ikos: up from the south, not from the forest and hills to the west. No one escorted them, which Gerin took to mean that no one had seen them while they were coming from wherever they had been.

That was his first to the two of them: "Where were you?"

Neither answered right away. Dagref's silence was thoughtful. Silence from Ferdulf struck Gerin as most uncharacteristic. At last, Dagref said, "We went down to see Swerilas the Slippery."

"Just like that?" Gerin said. "You didn't have any trouble getting through my pickets? You didn't have any trouble getting through the imperials' pickets? You went right ahead and walked in to have a chat with Swerilas?"

"Aye, we did," Ferdulf said. The unemphatic nod he gave lent credence to his words.

"We did," Dagref echoed, sounding a bit surprised about it. "We had no trouble doing it. I knew we would have no trouble doing it. I had a dream that told me we would have no trouble doing it, and it was a true dream."

"Ha!" Gerin said. "I was right. The dream was aimed at you. I had it, too, or rather the ragged fringe of it."

"Did you?" Now Dagref looked interested. "I thought you might have, or someone might have. I thought someone on the outside was trying to look in, you might say."

"I didn't notice anyone else when I had the dream," Ferdulf said with more than a trace of hauteur. "I was alone, communing with the god."

"Which god?" Gerin asked. "Your father?"

"Not likely," Ferdulf exclaimed. "My wretch of a father communes with his hand on my fundament, not with a dream in my mind."

"With whom, then?" the Fox demanded.

"Why, with Biton, of course," Ferdulf said, and Dagref nodded. "He did indeed tell us to go to see Swerilas the Slippery-who is truly as oleaginous an article as I have ever set eyes on-and so we did. Biton has more power than I could hope to oppose, and I daresay more power than my father, too."

Gerin didn't know whether that last was true or not. Either way, it wasn't his problem. He kept on trying to find out about the things that were his problem: "And what did you tell Swerilas when you saw him?"

"Why, we told him to attack your army, of course, and not to waste any more time doing it." Ferdulf and Dagref spoke together, smilingly confident they had done the right thing.

"You told him what?" Gerin shouted. "How could you tell him that? Why would you tell him that?"

"It was what farseeing Biton told us to tell him," Ferdulf and Dagref chorused. Only after the words were out of his mouth did Dagref's smile slip on his face. "I wonder why Biton told us to tell him that."

"To ruin me?" Gerin suggested. "I can't think of any other reason, can you? If Swerilas attacks me, he'll push this army right along the path through the haunted wood west of here. He'll probably push us to pieces, too, trying to get onto that one path. How are we supposed to hold him off? We haven't got the men to hold him off. Don't you know that?"

"We do know that," Dagref said. "Of course we know that. We knew it then, too." Ferdulf nodded. "It didn't seem to matter then, though," Dagref added in some perplexity, and Ferdulf nodded again.

"Why does Biton hate me?" Gerin didn't direct the words at his son and the little demigod, but at the indifferent sky.

"He doesn't hate you, Father." Now Dagref tried to sound reassuring. "Why would he hate you? My mother was his Sibyl on earth."

"Maybe he hates me for taking her away from him." But Gerin frowned and shook his head. Biton had never shown any sign of disliking his match with Selatre. But if this wasn't such a sign, what was it? He couldn't answer that question, so he found another one to ask Dagref and Ferdulf: "What else did the farseeing god tell you to tell Swerilas?"

"Nothing much," Dagref answered. "We were supposed to make it plain to him that we came with Biton's message, but we didn't have any trouble convincing him of that."

"I'll bet you didn't," Gerin said. He thought for a while, then asked, "Did Biton tell the two of you to tell me anything? Why he decided to do this to me might be interesting to learn, in a morbid sort of way."

"You?" Ferdulf had some of his arrogance back. "Why on earth would the god want us to speak to you? If he had wanted you to know anything, he would have sent you a dream. But he didn't, did he? He left you on the outside looking in, didn't he? No, he wanted nothing to do with the likes of you."

Gerin didn't get insulted, as he might have done. He just shrugged and said, "Well, the god might have sent a dream straight to Swerilas the Slippery, too, but he didn't choose to do that, so I thought I'd ask about this."

"Nothing for you," Ferdulf repeated. "Nothing, do you hear?"

"Ferdulf, you need never doubt that, when you say something, people do hear you," Gerin said. "They may sometimes-they may oftenwish they didn't, but they do."

He'd hoped that would make Ferdulf glower at him. Instead, the little demigod's childlike face took on an altogether unchildlike look of satisfaction. As far as Ferdulf was concerned, the Fox had paid him a compliment.

Dagref frowned. "Wait," he said. "There was something. I think there was something."

"No, there wasn't," Ferdulf said indignantly. "I just told him there wasn't. I ought to know. I'm half a god myself, and the better half at that. If I say there wasn't anything, there wasn't, and that's flat."

"Maybe we didn't have exactly the same dream," Dagref said. "Maybe I got this because I'm my father's son."

"Maybe you think you have this because what's really between your ears is rock, not brains," Ferdulf retorted, and stuck out his tongue.

Dagref remained unperturbed, which perturbed Ferdulf. "Whatever the reason, there was something," the youth said. He turned to Gerin. "Here it is, for whatever it maybe be worth: it's something like, Pick the right path, stay on the right path, don't go off the right path no matter what."

"What a stupid message," Ferdulf said. "You must have made that up yourself. Why would a god say anything that foolish?"

"I don't know," Dagref answered. "I've certainly heard a demigod say a good many foolish things lately."

Ferdulf did glower at that. Gerin said, "What path?"

His son shrugged. "I couldn't begin to tell you. Until you asked, I didn't even know I had any message for you at all."

"Maybe it's the path through the wood west of here," Gerin said. But then he shook his head. "I really don't see how it could be. There's only the one path through that wood. No right or wrong about it: you're either on the path or in the forest, and if you're in the forest, well, too bad for you. So what in the five hells is Biton talking about?"

"Something you're too ignorant to understand," Ferdulf said.

"I'm too ignorant to understand a great many things," the Fox said. "Why I put up with you immediately springs to mind."

Before Ferdulf could find a retort to that, a horseman came galloping up from the south. "Lord king!" he cried. "Lord king! The imperials are attacking, lord king!"