by Garth Nix
The encounter made her even more determined. She bore an urthkin blade, wore good armor, and had taken in much of Biter’s training. Sir Saskia probably hadn’t wanted her because of Odo, who was already a knight and would cause problems. But a squire alone, a very promising squire, Sir Saskia would take her on at once …
These daydreams evolved into the pleasant fantasy that it might be Eleanor herself who slew the dragon. Then Sir Saskia would undoubtedly knight her on the spot. Eleanor could see it: She would be kneeling by the dragon’s severed head, a little blackened and perhaps with a cut above her eye, and Sir Saskia would have her sword upon her shoulder.
“I dub thee Sir Eleanor. Sir Eleanor the Dragonslayer!”
The sky was growing light by the time Eleanor found Sir Saskia’s encampment. She was surprised to find the knight’s company on the southern side of Hryding, only three leagues from that village, when she had expected they would be going north towards the dragon. The pavilion was pitched in a field bordered on three sides by low hedges, with soldiers sleeping all around the tent, out under the sky.
There was only one sentry, leaning against her spear. She was upright, but looked to be asleep.
There were a lot more soldiers in the field than Eleanor had seen with Sir Saskia before, a good score more. These fighters were not as well kept as the others, their armor dirtier and more ragged, and they did not wear the red sashes. They looked more like bandits than soldiers.
The sight of them made Eleanor pause. She’d thought to simply announce herself and ask to speak to Sir Saskia. But now that she was here, she hesitated. All these extra soldiers unnerved her. It was likely if she stepped out of the hedge now, they might spring up and attack her. At the very least they would turn her away.
No, she needed to get closer to Sir Saskia. This would prove something too — that Eleanor was clever enough to infiltrate the camp. If she could reach the pavilion through all those warriors, Eleanor would surprise the knight. In a good way.
Eleanor slipped through a gap in the hedge and crawled on her hands and knees past the first group of sleeping soldiers. One grunted and half-raised his head as she drew near. Eleanor froze as he spoke without opening his eyes.
“What goes?”
No one answered. Eleanor lowered herself to the ground, as if she too was just another sleeping soldier.
“Not my watch,” grumbled the man. He opened one eye and gazed up at the sky, which had only just begun to fill with the pre-dawn light.
“Ugh,” said the man, and settled down again.
Eleanor waited a full minute before rising up to crawl again towards the pavilion. Every now and then she glanced at the sentry, but the woman still leaned on her spear. It seemed that she was not afeared of any attack by bandits or the like.
As Eleanor reached the side of the pavilion, a light flared inside. A lantern, just lit. She could see its glow through the cloth as it was raised up and hooked onto one of the tent poles.
A moment later, Eleanor heard Sir Saskia herself.
“We’ll have a share-out after the troops break their fast,” said the knight. “What did we take?”
“A helmet full of copper, twenty-seven silver pence, one gold noble,” said Mannix.
“A noble?” asked Sir Saskia. “Who had that?”
“The reeve,” chuckled Mannix. “He was loath to give it over, but I helped him see reason.”
They both laughed.
“What else?”
“Eighteen chickens, a goat, two sheep, a wheel of cheese — all for the commissary, of course.”
“Go on.”
Eleanor listened, puzzled. They were discussing supplies, but what was the talk of a share-out?
“Four dozen eggs. Two barrels of ale, so that’s good. A pig and a pig’s head.”
“We’ll eat all right, but surely there was more to share? Jewelry, raw metal, something?”
“None of value.”
“You should’ve squeezed them harder,” said Sir Saskia. Dishes clattered, as though she had thrown something. “Those onion-eyed misers … all they needed was a good reminding of what we did for them!”
“I pushed as hard I could,” Mannix protested. “They’re beginning to starve around here. The pickings get leaner with every village. Maybe it’s time for all of us to be simple bandits, instead of playing at driving them off.”
“That would attract too much attention,” Sir Saskia said, “even in this sleepy corner of the world. There are real knights not much farther to the south, maybe even King’s Wardens and the like. No, we’ll just have the bandits kill a few people in the next village. An old goodwife or someone like that. They’ll give us anything then, their children even.”
“Like those two brats who wanted to join us?” Mannix crowed. “What was it? ‘Sir’ Oddkin and the would-be squire girl. You know, we could’ve used them to dig latrines and hump loot.”
“Not with that sword. I’ve seen one before. They’re more dangerous than a yearling dragon. If I killed the boy, it would find a way to get to me. No, better to send them back with their little tails down. Think of them helping me kill Quenwulf!”
“The mighty Quenwulf at that,” said Mannix. There was something sly about the way he said that.
“Even a glimpse of the beast would scare the britches off those two,” replied Sir Saskia. “In all my forty years, I don’t think I’ve seen anything more pathetic.”
They laughed and laughed.
Eleanor wanted to bury herself into the ground like a mole, and never emerge again.
She had been so wrong.
No, she told herself firmly. It was Sir Saskia, not her, who was in the wrong. Sir Saskia was a liar and a thief and … and maybe she wasn’t even a real knight at all! If she was, she wasn’t a very good one. Exploiting the threat of the dragon to extract tribute from starving people, sending her own “bandits” to terrorize them first, was about the most monstrous thing Eleanor could imagine. It was as bad as Fyrennian. No, worse, because people looked up to knights. They were supposed to serve as good examples. If they couldn’t be trusted, everything would fall apart.
Everything Eleanor believed in, anyway.
“What’s that sound?” asked Mannix.
Eleanor stifled her sobs. It was the sound of her heart breaking, but Sir Saskia could never know that.
There was silence from within the tent. Eleanor’s hand went to her urthkin sword-knife. If she was discovered, she would take someone with her, she thought fiercely. Maybe even the false Sir Saskia —
“Bah! One of our sluggards waking,” said Sir Saskia. “Warm me another pot of ale and then rouse the camp. I want to make what’s-it’s-name … Spedgap … Spayedban —”
“Spedigan,” said Mannix. He was deeper inside the tent now, his voice less clear.
“Spedigan, then. I want the bandit party to hit them an hour before dusk tonight, then we’ll come in at sunset and make a brave show.”
“As you will, Sir Saskia,” answered Mannix.
Eleanor had heard enough. She turned around and crawled back the way she had come. But even in the scarce few minutes she’d been listening, the sky had grown lighter. More of the soldiers were stirring. None had gotten up, but the sentry was no longer leaning on her spear. She was walking backwards and forwards along the hedge, as if she’d been doing it all night.
The fifty yards back to the hedge was a nightmare for Eleanor. While the sentry was looking the other way, the girl scurried forward, dropping flat as the sentry turned. Every time, Eleanor felt sure she would be discovered. There were noises all around her, soldiers beginning to wake, close enough to trip over her.
Somehow she made it to the hedge and slid through a gap, even then expecting the alarm to be raised. But there were no unusual sounds until Eleanor was well out of sight, down near the river. Then she heard the sudden blast of a trumpet and, distantly, Mannix’s voice, his words carried by the wind.
“Up! Wake and ready yours
elves! Wake!”
It wasn’t an alarm. Just the usual morning call.
Eleanor hurried down the road away from the camp, her head hanging low, her mind spiraling. She’d put her faith in Sir Saskia, so much misplaced faith, she now knew, and betrayed Odo in the bargain. What could her path be now?
“Halt!”
Eleanor’s gaze snapped up and her hand reached for her urthkin blade. She was alone on a road frequented by thieves and starving refugees and hadn’t been paying attention —
But it wasn’t a person who spoke.
It was a sword.
A sword with a flashing green emerald on his pommel and a tiny nick out of the blade, held in the unswerving hand of a young knight who did not look at all like the friendly companion Eleanor knew. He was even wearing his armor again.
“Biter! What are you doing here?”
“You abandoned your duty!” roared Biter, while Odo himself was grimly silent. “You deserted your knight! What kind of squire do you call yourself?”
“My knight gave up!” shouted Eleanor. “I didn’t have a knight to follow anymore!”
“So you went looking for one,” said Odo in a deathly calm voice. “Did she refuse you again?”
“No,” muttered Eleanor. “It’s a lot worse than that. Sir Saskia’s a fake. Those bandits are her own soldiers; she pretends to defeat them to get tribute from the villages. She’s not going to take on Quenwulf or do anything for the river. Nothing at all.”
Odo nodded slowly, his expression unreadable.
“So,” said Eleanor. “We have to do it, right?”
Odo still didn’t say anything.
“Odo?”
“You ran off without me. I imagined terrible things happening to you. Death, slavery …”
Eleanor hung her head.
“I did run off,” she admitted in a very small voice. “I thought … I thought if there was any chance left to be a knight, I had to take it.”
Odo sighed. “You are meant to be a knight. It’s in your nature more than mine. Me? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be.”
“Whatever you’re supposed to be,” said Eleanor, “you are a knight. A good one. Unlike the false Sir Saskia.”
The faintest hint of ease flitted across Odo’s face. Very slowly, he nodded. Eleanor moved close and gave him a quick hug.
“Eww!” she said. “You smell!”
“I did run half the night to get here,” said Odo. “And I put my armor on, just in case … well, just in case you needed rescuing.”
“I’m glad you didn’t leave it behind … and I’m grateful,” said Eleanor. She hesitated, then asked, “Will you take me back as your squire? I presume you are going to go on against the dragon now, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” said Odo. “All I’ve been thinking about was rescuing you. There wasn’t room to think about anything else.”
“Well, do it now,” said Eleanor.
“Could it be my destiny to take on the dragon?” he said. “I thought I’d avoided it when we met Sir Saskia, but now … she’s something to be dealt with as well. Somehow. Like I’m being reminded of what I know I should do. And I think I do know, now.”
Biter flew into his hand with a cry of, “Indeed, Sir Odo. We must vanquish the false knight once and for all!”
“As for a squire,” said Odo, “are you sure you want to be mine?”
Eleanor smiled, then bowed like the urthkin did. Odo gravely responded in kind.
“So, what now?” he said once the bow was over. “I’m asking my squire for advice.”
“We’ll have to leave Sir Saskia for the moment,” Eleanor replied. “She has more than two score soldiers. There’s no way we could sneak up on them, not you anyway, believe me. At least with the dragon there’s a chance we could do it.”
“I suppose so. The unknown enemy is better than the enemy we know is too powerful?”
“Something like that.” Eleanor hesitated, then added, “The dragon is our true goal. I mean, we started out to find and fix the problem with the river. But we will still need to do something about Sir Saskia. I suggest we send messages. Warn the villages downstream. Sir Halfdan too.”
Odo nodded. “Yes. We can send runners from Hryding, though it will take a good part of our coin. And we will go on, against the dragon. Come what may.”
“Come what may,” echoed Eleanor. She smiled and raised her fist. “That’s a very knightly thing to say.”
Odo looked embarrassed.
“It’s nothing to do with being a knight. It’s just doing what’s right.”
“Accomplish this and no one will ever doubt our valor again,” said Biter. “Or our mettle.”
“Our metal?” asked Odo.
“M-e-t-t-l-e,” spelled Biter. “But come to think of it, it is much the same thing. For a sword.”
“Onward!” said Eleanor.
She’d always wanted to say that.
They hid in a ditch near the road as Sir Saskia’s party went by in the opposite direction, heading to Spedigan with a clank and a rattle, a long, sprawling train of ill-disciplined soldiers. Odo watched the men and women of Sir Saskia’s band of brigands with his jaw tightly clenched, telling himself firmly that their time would come. Biter twitched at his side, imagining, no doubt, how it would feel to enact a more immediate revenge. Neither of them relaxed until Sir Saskia was long out of sight.
“When Biter woke me up and told me that you were gone,” Odo said to Eleanor as they headed off again, “I never felt so awful, because I knew exactly what you’d done. I should’ve seen it coming, but I was too wrapped up in myself and my own problems. Promise me that that won’t happen again. I’ll listen to you and you won’t give up on me. All right?”
“I should have talked to you first as well,” said Eleanor. “I’m sorry.”
“Let’s just agree that neither of us will head off alone,” said Odo.
Eleanor nodded. Odo smiled in relief, and they walked on in companionable silence. After they’d gone on a league or more, Eleanor suddenly spoke.
“If we can … I mean, when we kill Quenwulf, are you still going to give up being a knight? And give up Biter?”
Odo frowned. The most likely future he could think of was one where he was killed by the dragon, but he didn’t want to say that to Eleanor.
“I’m not sure,” he answered instead. “I think so. I’d like to not think about it for now. Just take each day in its turn.”
“All right,” said Eleanor. And that was a relief too. His decision was entirely out of her hands. Worrying about it would only distract her from what needed to be done now.
In Hryding they found the reeve bemoaning how much the village had to pay in order to be saved from the bandits. When they told him about Sir Saskia, he jumped up and almost threw himself in the town well before he could be restrained. On calming down, he happily agreed to send word to all the southern villages, and to the far-off town of Eldburgh, in the hope that there might be King’s Wardens there.
“Don’t you have your own knight?” asked Eleanor curiously.
“Not for decades,” said the reeve. “She died in my grandfather’s time, and we got on fine without one. We’ve never had any trouble here, until the river began to dry up. Then these bandits …” He stopped, grinding his teeth too hard to talk.
“Make sure your messengers stay away from Sir Saskia’s people … and also Spedigan,” Odo advised. It was too late for Spedigan. The “bandits” would strike there before any messengers could warn them. Odo felt very bad about that, even though he knew there was nothing he could do.
“Can you also make sure these letters get to Symon the healer and Sir Halfdan, both of Lenburh?” asked Eleanor, handing over two rolled-up scrolls of parchment. She’d been writing busily for the last half hour. Her hand was much neater and more precise than Odo’s, and she supposed that it was more of a squire’s business anyway. “What do we owe you?”
“Nothing!” spat the
reeve. “We thank you for the warning about the false knight. To think we were so taken in!”
“We were taken in too,” said Odo.
“Yes,” said Eleanor, feeling herself turn red. “Good speed to your messengers, Sir Reeve. And luck to your village.”
“Luck to you, good squire,” said the reeve. “And you, Sir Odo, in your venture.”
With Hryding behind them, and heading north once more, Odo and Biter resumed their practice with furious intensity, Eleanor mimicking their every move. It was harder for her, lacking an enchanted sword. She had to use her own muscles and wits to learn each pattern.
It was exhausting.
When they halted, Eleanor checked the map to see what was coming up next. There were some familiar names: Nægleborg, where Firman, the first person they had met on their journey, had come from; Sheppy, home of the refugee sheep they had scared (along with their shepherd). The Upper Valleys were still some distance away, but the foothills were close. In fact, if the map was to be believed, the landscape ahead was about to undergo some dramatic changes.
“There’s a fork in the road coming up,” Eleanor told Odo. “One way keeps following the river. The other goes into the Old Forest. It looks to be the quicker way to the Upper Valleys and … the dragon.”
“Through the forest? That’d be slower, surely?”
“No, really. Look, if we take the Old Forest road, it actually gets us to the mountains in fewer miles. See? The river bends right out the west, and we’d bend with it if we took that road, going the wrong way. The Old Forest road cuts right across, saving us leagues. We’d meet the river again here, in Welmder Vale.”
Her finger traced out the two routes, demonstrating the considerable difference between them.
Odo had to admit that her suggestion looked a lot shorter.
“The Old Forest,” he mused. “The road is probably much worse than the one next to the river.”
“Maybe for carts,” said Eleanor. “But for us, afoot? Even a track would be all right. And people live there. They must go back and forth.”