Fox and Empire

**

Gerin approached Duren's keep with more than a little apprehension. His riders had come back to let him know Elise hadn't been there then, but he would still have to tell his son by her about their meeting. And strife between Duren and Dagref was one more thing that was liable to come too bloody soon. If it ever came, that was too bloody soon for him.

Duren's vassal barons had been anything but delighted about accepting him as their overlord. Gerin had wondered if they would see his own preoccupation with the south as an opportunity to rise against his son. That hadn't happened; everything looked peaceful as he led his army up the Elabon Way toward Duren's keep. Either Duren's vassals had thought the Fox would win and punish them for rebelling against his son, or else they'd figured Duren could put them down by himself. Gerin hoped for the latter.

"Who comes to the castle of Duren Ricolf's grandson?" a sentry shouted as the Fox's army drew within hailing distance. The question had a certain formal quality to it-either it was Gerin, or someone was about to lay siege to the keep. But, Duren not owing his father homage and fealty, he treated with him as one equal with another.

"I am Gerin the Fox, king of the north, returning from my campaign against the Elabonian Empire," Gerin answered, again as one equal to another.

"Congratulations on your victory, lord king," the sentry said. The Fox's messengers would have told of that. Without any orders Gerin heard, the drawbridge began to lower. "Enter into the keep of Duren Ricolf's grandson. The baron eagerly awaits you."

Sure enough, Duren stood just inside the wall. He looked to be about ready to burst, waiting for Gerin to dismount from his chariot. When the Fox and Van and Dagref did get down, Duren couldn't at once ask Gerin what was so plainly on his mind, either; he had to go through polite greetings first.

Then those greetings turned more interesting than Duren might have thought they would be. He gave Dagref a long, long look as the two of them clasped hands. "You were on your way to turning into a man when you came down from Fox Keep. Now, unless I'm much mistaken, you've gone and done it." Duren sounded almost accusing.

Dagref answered, "Well, now I've done more of the things men do than I had then, anyhow." He looked at his half brother out of the corner of his eye. "I even picked up an ekename. I don't know if it will stick, but I don't know that it won't, either."

"What is it?" Duren asked warily. He used no ekename-styling himself Ricolf's grandson had helped him gain control of the holding formerly his grandfather's.

"Dagref the Whip." Dagref was still holding the lash he'd used to urge on the horses and with such effect against the imperials. He hefted it, to show the source of the sobriquet. Duren looked something less than delighted. Then he looked astonished, for Maeva came up and placed herself alongside Dagref in a marked manner. Gerin, who had become something of a connoisseur of astonishment, and who had seenand caused-a great deal of it over the years, judged that Duren's had at least three flavors: seeing Maeva there at all, seeing her there as a warrior, and seeing her there so solidly beside Dagref.

When Duren turned away from Dagref and Maeva, he spoke plaintively to his father: "Fall out of touch for even a little while, and things go all strange by the time you get another look at them."

"Even if you don't fall out of touch, things have a way of going all strange behind your back," Gerin answered, also more than a little plaintively.

"Father, you speak nothing but the truth," Duren said. "Come into my great hall-come into my great hall, all of you-and have some ale. And then"-he looked toward Gerin-"then I will hear about my mother." He spoke the last word slowly, and with some hesitation, for which the Fox could hardly blame him.

As they were walking into the castle, Gerin said, "Elise didn't come up here, then? She told me she might."

"She didn't." Now Duren's voice was flat, uninflected. He went on, "If she set out this way, she never got here. Do you suppose something happened to her along the way? That would be terrible."

Gerin wasn't convinced it would be so terrible as all that, but he understood how his son had to feel. The idea that something might have happened to Elise when she was on her way to see him for the first time since abandoning him as an infant had to eat at Duren. As consolingly as he could, Gerin said, "She's been traveling through the northlands for a lot of years, and she's always been able to take care of herself. I think it's likelier that she went south to visit her kin down in the Empire. She was talking about that, too."

He did not mention the other possibility that had occurred to him: that Elise might have suffered misfortune at the hands of the imperial warriors who'd come through her village after his own army retreated out of it. Some soldiers did whatever they pleased in their foes' country. Elise was no longer young and beautiful, but she wasn't ancient and ugly, either. She might not have gone-she might not have had the chance to go-anywhere at all.

Perhaps fortunately, Duren's mind was running in a different channel. In an indignant voice, he said, "I'm her kin, too."

"That's so," Gerin agreed, "but one thing about your mother was always plain, as long as I knew her-and now, too, from the little I saw of her-and that is that she was going to do what she was going to do, and she wasn't about to listen to anyone who tried to tell her anything different."

"What would she say about you?" It wasn't Duren who asked the question but the avidly curious Dagref.

"Most likely, she would say that I never cared what she wanted to do, and that I never wanted to do anything interesting myself," Gerin answered, doing his best to be just.

"Would she be telling the truth?" Dagref asked.

"Well, I don't think so," the Fox said, "but I don't expect that she thinks I'm telling the truth about her now, either. Truth is easy enough to find when you're talking about things you can see or count on your fingers. It gets a lot harder when you're trying to figure out why people are the way they are and how they truly are. Half the time, they don't know themselves."

"Hmm," Dagref said, plainly unconvinced. "I always know precisely why I do what I do."

Maeva nodded vigorous agreement, as much because he was very young as because she was enamored of Dagref. Gerin and Van laughed. Duren looked thoughtful, as if wondering which side was right.

"Is that so?" Van rumbled. Dagref nodded. He might not always have been right about such things, but he was always sure. Van cocked his head to one side and said, "Then tell me precisely why you've formed an attachment with my daughter." He stared down at the Fox's son.

Dagref did precisely what Gerin could have done in the same circumstances: he spluttered and turned red and said nothing intelligible. Maeva set her hand in his. Most times, that would have steadied him. Here, it only seemed to make matters worse.

"Well, Father, how, precisely, did you beat the imperials?" Duren asked. "Not everything your couriers told me was as clear as it might have been." Maybe he was helping ease his half brother off the hook, in which case he had more charity in him than his father would have had at the same age. Or maybe, having learned everything he couldsurely not close to everything he wanted-about his mother, he was just moving along to the larger events that had taken place down toward the High Kirs.

Gerin told him the oracular verse the Sibyl at Biton's temple had delivered, how he'd interpreted it, and the role Dagref and Ferdulf had played in fulfilling it. That made Duren give Dagref another sharp look. Dagref looked back with a bland, blank expression he might have stolen from Gerin's face. He wasn't immune to discomfiture, but he got over it in a hurry.

Getting no satisfaction there, Duren turned to Gerin and said, "By what I have seen and heard of Dagref and what I have seen and heard of Ferdulf, the two of them must be… lively together."

"And so they are," Gerin agreed. "They're pretty bloody lively apart from each other, too."

"I can see that." Duren gave Dagref another measuring, speculative stare, which his half brother returned. Duren turned back to the Fox. "We need to talk, the two of us."

"The three of us," Dagref corrected.

Gerin shook his head. "I need to talk to both of you. I need to do it with each one separately. My mind's not made up about any of these things, and I don't expect it to be any time soon."

"It should be-I'm your eldest," Duren said. With no small bitterness, he went on, "But I'm not your son by Mo-by your wife, who raised me. I can see how that makes a difference."

"Less than you think," Gerin answered. "Selatre has never once pushed me to shove you aside and put him in your place. She knows you' d do well. And I know you'd do well, come to that. I'm also coming to know Dagref would do well, too."

"If no one shortens him by a head, he would," Van put in.

"And what will you do?" Duren asked. "Split the kingdom between us?"

"I couldn't find a better recipe for civil war if I brought a cook up from the City of Elabon," Gerin said with a shudder. "Remember the barony north of you that used to be Bevon's, and how all his sons squabbled over it for years? Whatever else I do, I aim to make sure that doesn't happen with or to everything I've spent so long building up."

"What does that leave, then?" Duren asked. "What will one of us do if you leave the whole kingdom to the other?"

"It could be that you'd stay content with this barony if Dagref held the kingdom." Gerin held up a hand before either of his sons could say anything. "And it could be that Dagref might want to study down in the City of Elabon while you took on the burden-and it is a burden, believe me-of ruling. That would depend on what the Empire decides to do about the northlands, of course."

"And there's Blestar to figure into all this," Dagref said. "He's only a little fellow now, but I was only a little fellow when you went off to take over this holding, Duren."

"I'd almost forgotten about Blestar," Duren admitted. "Not forgotten he was there, but forgotten he could mean something in all this."

"I hadn't," Gerin said. "The gods only know now how he'll turn out when he's a man, though. As a boy, he's better natured than either of the two of you was, not that that's saying much."

Duren and Dagref joined in giving their father a dirty look. That didn't bother the Fox, who wanted the half brothers as united as they could be: if in annoyance at him, fair enough.

Dagref said, "Do you really suppose, Father, that the Empire would let me go down to the City of Elabon to study?"

Before Gerin answered that, he let his eyes flick to Maeva for a moment. By her expression, she didn't realize she had a rival in learning, very possibly a rival more dangerous than any woman, no matter how beautiful, no matter how passionate. Gerin smiled a little. If she didn't realize it yet, she would before too long.

And Dagref had asked a good question. The Fox gave it the best answer he could: "If the Empire decides to take another shot at conquering us, then you won't be able to go south of the High Kirs, no. But the revolt in Sithonia and the drubbing the imperials took up here are liable to make them think twice. My guess is, that's more likely. Crebbig I may never recognize Aragis and me as kings, but I don't think he'll come up and try to knock us over again, either."

Dagref and Duren both thought that over. Duren said, "What do you expect from Aragis after this?"

"I hope he'll lick his wounds for a while," Gerin answered. "He has plenty of them. He also has plenty of vassals who've seen me, which means they've seen that a man doesn't have to be a bronze-arsed son of a whore to make a proper ruler. If some of them rise up, or if the serfs on Aragis' land decide they've had enough of being squeezed to bits, then Aragis will find he has the same sorts of troubles as Crebbig."

"You'd weep and wail over that, wouldn't you?" Van said, setting a finger by the side of his nose.

"So I would," Gerin said dryly. "I'd weep till my eyes were all red and swollen." He let out an exaggerated sob. Everyone laughed.

Some time later, after roasted mutton and fresh-baked bread and berry tarts and a good many jacks of ale, Duren waved for Gerin to walk out from the great hall into the court between the outer wall and the castle itself. Darkness had fallen. Tiwaz, a medium-fat crescent, hung low in the southwest; ruddy Elleb, just past first quarter, shone in the south; pale Nothos, nearly full, climbed above the eastern wall. Math would not rise for another hour or two.

Duren said, "I wish you'd found out more about my mother-either more, or nothing at all."

"I understand," Gerin said, setting a hand on his shoulder. "But we do what we can do, not what we wish we could do. I didn't expect to find out anything at all. I didn't even know her till she spoke, nor she me." He started to add, Maybe she'll turn up one day, but decided that would do more harm than good. Duren was no doubt thinking it, too, but the gulf between thinking something and saying it yawned wide and deep.

"Now I wish I'd come along with you," Duren said.

"Maybe it's just as well you weren't there. We've all changed a good deal, these past twenty years. Last time your mother saw you, you were making messes on the floor." That was not his principal concern. His principal concern was how much damage Elise might do if she turned Duren against him. He still didn't know whether she could, but he still didn't want to find out, either.

"I've changed," Duren said. "My mother must have changed, or she wouldn't have gone away from you."

"Honh!" Gerin said, borrowing the useful not-quite-word from Van.

Before he could add anything to it, Duren went on, "But you, Father, you've hardly changed at all."

"You only say that because you're watching me with a son's eyes," Gerin answered. "I'm like anybody else. I'm soup in a pot, and the years boil away more and more of the water, so my flavor gets stronger and saltier, the same way my beard keeps right on getting grayer. The longer you live, the more you go about the business of turning into yourself."

Duren didn't fully follow that. Gerin hadn't expected that he would. Duren said, "I suppose I'll have to go on as best I can. I don' t see what else I can do. Do you, Father?"

"I don't think there is anything else you can do," Gerin told him. "Nothing useful, anyhow: pining away over might-have-beens doesn't help." He clicked his tongue between his teeth. "Other thing I'll say is, you're Elise's son, aye, but you're my son, too, or you wouldn't think that way. Remember it."

"I always do," Duren answered. Not quite for the first time, Gerin thought that, whatever happened to his kingdom, he'd leave some good behind.