Fox and Empire by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub

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VII

"Father!" Ferdulf cried in delight.

Gerin trotted out his halting Sithonian: "I greet you, lord of the sweet grape." He bowed low, looking at the Sithonian god of wine and fertility from under his eyelids.

Mavrix, as usual, wore supple fawnskin. A wreath of grape leaves kept his long, dark hair off his forehead. Ferdulf's eyes had flashed; Mavrix glowed all over, raiment and all. The only darkness in him was his eyes, twin pits of deepest shadow in his effeminately handsome face.

"Well," he said now, voice echoing inside Gerin's head as if the Fox heard him with mind rather than with ears, "I have not been north of the mountains in some little while. I cannot say this benighted excuse for a country has improved much since I last saw it, I must tell you."

"What do you mean?" Now Ferdulf sounded indignant. "I'm here, and I wasn't the last time you came to Fox Keep."

"Well, yes," Mavrix admitted. He seemed something less than delighted to make his son's acquaintance. "Even so-"

"The Gradi don't trouble the northlands these days," Gerin put in. He carefully did not add, No thanks to you. Mavrix had tried to stand against Voldar, the ferocious chief goddess of the Gradi, but had not been strong enough. Baivers, the Elabonian god of barley and brewing, had held off Voldar and the rest of the Gradi pantheon, along with considerable help from the fearsome deities of the monsters under Biton's cave. Gerin wondered whether Mavrix despised Baivers or the monsters' gods more.

"Well, yes." If anything, Mavrix sounded even less thrilled than he had with Ferdulf. "Even so-"

Ferdulf ran over to him and caught him by the hand. "Father!" he cried again.

Mavrix inspected him. If the Sithonian god was impressed, he concealed it exceedingly well. "Yes, I am your father," he said. "You summoned me, so I came. Now what do you want?"

He sounded like Gerin granting a brief audience to a man for whom he could not spare any more time: he wanted Ferdulf to come to the point so he could get back to whatever he had been doing. Ferdulf caught that, too. "Here I am, the son you got on my mother," he exclaimed. "Have you no praise for me? Have you no words of wisdom?"

Words of wisdom were the last thing Gerin would have asked of Mavrix. If the Sithonian god had chosen to give him any, he would have reckoned true wisdom likely to lie in ignoring them. Here and now, the issue did not arise, for Mavrix only shrugged; the sinuous motion put Gerin in mind of a serpent. "I may be your father," the god said, "but I am not your nursemaid."

Ferdulf reeled back as if Mavrix had slapped him. However heartless Mavrix's words sounded, Gerin thought they did hold good advice. At least they told Ferdulf in no uncertain terms that he could not rely on Mavrix for anything but his existence.

Whatever else they did, they infuriated the little demigod. "You can't ignore me!" he shouted.

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