Deathknight

by Andrew J Offutt

  And then Falc almost smiled, and began to mutter, and it was not rite or prayer or psalm. Romantic, admiring poems had been written of the Sons of Ashah, and music had been devised for some. Another song had somehow... developed, and was known to few if any save the knights of O. M. O. Falc sang that one now; rather he chanted it, for he was no good singer:

  Oh how I love the open road!

  The sky above sunlit with gold!

  Honour lies ahead on this long ribbon of dust —

  O let me but ride the open road!

  Oh how I hate the falling rain,

  For I am not a field of grain!

  Weary buttocks tonight and ever more mistrust;

  Oh you may have this rearward pain!

  Oh how I love my slith’ry steed!

  His surly manner I do not need...

  In him is no care that our cause is just,

  But hurries on with jolty speed!

  Oh how I love the open trail!

  The sun cruelly bakes my hot mail...

  1love this life as I love swordblade rust —

  I also love warts and pelting hail!

  Falc sighed and Harr plodded. They would not hurry.

  Why bother to hasten and tire the animals when they could not reach Morazain this night anyhow, or even Colax’s Wayward Inn? Rain would be falling within three hours, while the inn was six hours distant. Colax had planned and built to accommodate travellers from Morazain, not to it. The clever fellow did catch most of both, and had acquired not only a genuinely comely serving-ajmil, but two dargs and a man of weapons as well. Some banker in Morazain must love Colax! So too must he who called himself Arlord and pretended to rule the land called Zain: Morazain, Jayanga, Threeford, and the land round about.

  Harr rounded a long curve flanked on the south by a line of spacklebark trees and the bush called flunder, months now from the puffball stage by which it propagated and spread itself. Now they came abreast an open field.

  Too open, Falc saw. The farmer had unwisely cut his entire two and more hectares of rint, probably day before yesterday. Expecting no rain, he had ricked part of what had to be his main crop and livelihood. This morning he must have risen to smell a hint of moisture in the air, and hurriedly raked the rest into windrows. They stretched from one end of the field to the other in calf-high cupolas, silvery and bluish with green tinges and glints and of course the speckling of bright red grain-husks. Straight, too, Falc noticed. Good for this farmer! Too bad about the rain.

  Did the Arlord of Zain make allowances for crops lessened by rain? Probably not. The farmer was ultimately at fault, with his misjudgement: he should not have done all the cutting at once.

  The fellow was in the field now, with what must be his family. He was not so old as forty, a powerful man in the same way that Falc was, without much bulk. Helping him were two others, and a saggy old darg hitched to a wagon in good repair. Its sideboards were up and its wheels were of wood; though metal was available, one must pay the price for reclaiming it and that price was usually beyond the means of a subsistence farmer. This man did have an iron-tined pitch-fork, while the one wielded by his presumed son of about eleven or twelve was pure wood.

  She who drove the wagon was either a considerably younger wife or the boy’s several-years-older sister. Hers was a dull job. She must guide the darg so as to move the wagon slowly: start and stop and start and stop. She and the boy wore sweatbands and he a bright green kerchief or rag over his lower face. Both males were shirtless but wore the long apron-skirts over boots that were best for this job. The skirts were a fulvous hue, tightly woven.

  “‘Troublous time and woe, tyranny of the hoe,’” Falc murmured, and added, “They will never make it.” He made a little hissing noise.

  Instantly Harr stopped. The gift-darg bumbled into his rump, just missing the broad-based round tail, and Harr hissed a lot more loudly than Falc had done. Both stood still. Perhaps Harr wondered why his master had ordered him to halt. Masters were unpredictable, and dargs were not stupid.

  “Harr, you’re going to get a rest and I am going to go to work.”

  Falc twitched his left knee. Harr glanced leftward, saw no place to turn, and moved forward. They came abreast of the narrow road that ran yellow-beige back to a farmhouse abutted by a ferg-coop and backed by a barn whose roof could use some help. So could its owner, right now.

  Falc would have taken oath that Harr hesitated beside the dusty rutty wagon-wheel road on their left, weeds flaunting their presence in its centre; Falc turned his left leg and let Harr feel just a little heel pressure. Harr turned onto the rut-road. The trio in the field paused to stare.

  “You have another fork?” Falc called.

  “In — in the barn,” the farmer called.

  “Second stall!” the boy yelled excitedly.

  “Join you in a drip or three,” Falc called, and rode on.

  The trio continued to stare. A derlin-clad man riding a good darg wearing black, and leading one as good or better, well equipped. His white hood up. This man would fetch the pitchfork and join them in a few drips of the waterclock? Strange!

  Harr hissed at fergs and sidestepped them. The little creatures were his cousins, off-white or bluish-green with their scarlet topknots and blue tails. Fergs were welcome mutations, which laid one soft-shelled egg per day. The farmer’s boon, fergs. A few of them hissed back, but most made their squeaky noises and got out of the darg’s way. Harr proceeded to the barn, wiggle-waddling. The broad wagon entry way gaped, both doors open. Falc ducked as he rode into the twilight interior.

  The barn smelled of old manure and new hay not yet dry. Dismounting, Falc snubbed the gift-darg to an upright between the half-doors of two stalls and checked the second stall for a pitchfork. It was there. He swept off both derlin and crawk-hued cloak. With a sinfully hurried muttering of rite words, he removed his mailcoat. It and his sword-belt he hung on Harr. He kept the dagger. His helmet he fastened to his belt behind before he resumed the hooded white cloak. Taking the wooden fork with its once-yellow handle, he bade Harr follow him out of the barn.

  He nearly ran into the farmer. Coming in out of the bright sunlight, the fellow’s pupils were shrunken to mere vertical slits. Falc watched him struggle to inspect him.

  “Name’s Falc,” he told the nervous, suspicious man. “You and the rain are in a race and I choose your side. I’ll help. This is Harr. He’s very safe, left loose.”

  “Wh — Harr?”

  “Harr, yes.”

  “Uh — wh-who-o... wh — a Deathknight?”

  “Name’s Falc. Forget the rest, at least until the rint is in.”

  “Uh... ahm... I am Querry... uh...”

  “Falc. Harr, bide around here.” And Falc strode out to the field.

  To Harr, “bide” meant freeze; the word in conjunction with others meant stay close but to move about was all right. Moving about a bit, he had learned; just a bit.

  Confused and spluttery, Querry had no recourse but to follow the white-hooded man in the billowing cloak/robe who bore his weak-handled pitchfork, the one he had been going to fix for months. They strode out between two windrows of fragrant rint, all greenish blue and red-flecked. Falc had already seen that Querry had wisely chosen to start bringing in that which was in the lowest area of the field. As they walked, Falc noted their method: the woman guided the wagon up the cleared aisle between two windrows while Querry loaded from one side and his son from the other. The boy, naturally, could not match his father’s pace. From time to time Querry must mount the wagon and redistribute the rint to balance the load.

  “We could move faster,” Falc muttered to the tan-skirted farmer, pausing without stopping, “if I took the boy’s side and he was up on the wagon.”

  “Chalis, this is... Sir Falc,” Querry told the staring boy. Falc wondered whether his mouth was open behind the scarlet cloth. Likely. “He — he’s going to help. If you’ll get up on the wagon and keep the load spread even, I won’t have to get
up and down so much.”

  Falc was impressed. Rather than tell the boy that this stranger was stronger and longer of arm and would be faster, Querry made it seem that Chalis was doing him a favour; taking some of the strain off his father. That also served to make the boy even more cooperative:

  “Be — be better if he — he took my fork then oh are you a are you a Deathknight?”

  Falc gave him a pleasant look. “We call it knights of the Order Most Old, which abbreviates as O. M. O.; OMO, you see,” he said. “We are omos. My Contractor’s business will wait, though, and the rain will not. Right now I’m a farmer.”

  “Wak!” Chalis said, in the exclamation that seemed universal. “Uh — I mean — here... here, ahm, S’r Falc...” He extended the pitchfork gingerly, handle first.

  Falc did the same. “Good of you to let me have this one,” the omo said.

  “It’s better. Thisun needs a new handle,” Chalis said, indicating the implement he now held. He indicated his good safety-training then, by aiming the fork tines-foremost at a pile of rint on the wagon, and slamming it up and in. Using the hub of the rear wheel, he climbed up.

  “A Deathkni — I mean, omo! Wak! Black gloves and all!”

  Falc thrust his pitchfork into the end of the windrow to hand. Shoving toward the front of the wagon, he twisted and came up with a load which he slung onto the wagon all in one motion.

  “Don’t make fun of my gauntlets now,” he said, knowing Chalis was not and would not. “The work I do doesn’t make my hands good and tough the way yours are.” Pacing forward, he scooped up another forkful.

  More rint came flying up from the wagon’s other side. “You’re going to have a sore back, too,” Chalis pointed out. “Them’s mighty big loads you’re scooping up, uh... Omo.”

  “Call me Falc. This —”

  “Sir Falc,” Querry amended with a grunt, from the other side of the wagon.

  “This afternoon is an extra one in my life, though, Chalis. You must have heard that ‘no god deducts from a man’s allotted span that time he spends personally helping others.’”

  Falc heard Querry chuclde. “He’s heard it,” the man said, and grunted up another forkload.

  The wagon creaked forward, and on it went, and on. Long, stemmy rint piled up on the wagon. The graincrop still smelled ripe and moist, but that was because it had so recently been standing. Rain on it lying here in the field would ruin the crop, or at least considerably lessen its value. A really hard rain would pound much red-jacketed seed off and into the ground, beyond gleaning.

  Querry judged the wagon to be full, and called to the woman. She rein-jiggled their old darg into a long turn and the wagon creaked back toward the barn. Walking along behind, Falc would have liked mightily to call Harr to him and ride in. That, however, would cost face; too much face. He walked.

  “Where have you been, S’r Falc?” That was Chalis, jigging along on Falc’s left.

  “Lango. Been to Lango?”

  “No. That’s almost two days away!”

  “Tall pink walls like quolina blooms. Guards on top in shiny lacquered armour and helmets. People in bright colours everywhere, but you know that. Too many people. You’ve been to Morazain?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Lango has the smell of the sea about it.”

  “The sea,” Chalis breathed, in the same tone he’d have used to talk of gold. “What — what’s the sea smell like, S’r Falc?”

  “Like nothing else. Wet. Moisty humid, and salty. Sort of like saltwater on the stove, only without the feel and smell of the heat.”

  “Let him walk quiet, Chal. Let him catch his breath.”

  “Ohh...”

  At the barn, the process had to be repeated in reverse. It hardly took as long. The wagon was drawn up beside the big bin with the lattice-work bottom, beneath which was the container to catch the grain itself. With the side of the wagon taken out, amid grunts, the rint could merely be forked over into the bin. It was subsequent loads, Falc thought without cheer, that would be harder. Back to forking rint up and over!

  The woman helped. Querry had never introduced her, and she seemed to be ignoring Falc. Querry called her name once: Jinnery. Chalis called her that too, rather than “mother.” Querry was probably thirty-five; Jinnery was about twenty-two, or a year or two less or more. Thin, not just slim. Eyes like burnt almonds and hair medium blue, bunned. She probably had a lot of it. She wore not a hint of cosmetic. That added to the fact that she seemed... grim. She did not wear her thin-lipped mouth attractively or even very pleasantly, but mostly kept it set. Grinding her teeth down and raising headaches, Falc thought, naturally noticing that her nails were chewed. She didn’t look as if she ate much else.

  Jinnery.

  Wife? Daughter? No one said, and the omo certainly would not ask. Two ideas had occurred to him, and when they finished unloading he stepped back and looked and spoke reflectively, so as not to seem too smart.

  “You know... if a man were to make a sort of heavy platform, or even a ramp of earth, unloading the later loads wouldn’t be so hard.”

  “Old Catapin doesn’t have the strength to pull the loaded wagon up a ramp,” Querry said.

  “Oh, sorry; I should have thought of that.”

  For the first time, Jinnery spoke. Her voice was not silver bells or gold; there was more in it of brass. “Catapin is old, and he tires fast,” she said. “We do have a second wagon, though.”

  Falc glanced her way to see that he was being regarded meaningfully, sour-faced. He blinked.

  “And you have two dargs, Deathknight.”

  “Oh.” Falc nodded. “Name’s Falc. But no. This fellow is a gift from a Holder in Lango, for something I did, and is doubtless pampered. He would need much training. My mount is Harr, and Harr is a war-trained darg.”

  She came right back: “A war-darg can’t work?”

  “Harr has his dignity.”

  “Dignity!” Chalis echoed loudly. “A darg?’

  Jinnery looked sour. “The dignity of a darg,” she said, in a way that invited Falc to take offense. “And so he does not work, and you do. The dignity of a darg. And you, Sir Deathknight?”

  “My name is Falc. I am a farmer; anyone can see that. Harr is not. Come. Those clouds have already turned early afternoon to dusk.”

  It was her turn to walk, Falc saw: Querry mounted the wagon and guided Catapin out the barn’s broad rear doorway. Chalis ran and jumped, spinning in mid-air to alight sitting backward on the tail of the wagon. His face showed pride in the minor feat. Abruptly, Jinnery duplicated it. Chalis sat grinning at the omo while Jinnery stared, daring Falc. The wagon rumble-rolled out of the rear of the barn. Falc drew up the hem of his derlin, exposing lots of black boot and leggings. He took four long bounding steps and leaped up between them, past them, into the wagon. He heard Chalis’s “Wa-ak!” and instantly felt ashamed; he had done it to show off and very well knew it.

  Ashah correct me!

  Ashah guide and deliver me from my vanity!

  He went up to sit beside Querry.

  After a moment Querry said, “You work good.”

  Falc saw no reason to say anything.

  “Raised on a farm, I’ll bet.”

  “No. I’ve travelled a lot; seen and done a lot, Querry.”

  Querry swallowed. “You killed? — men?”

  “Yes,” Falc said, and after a moment decided to say more. “When I am attacked, I have no rules except to prevail. I have been attacked. I have not killed every man who has attacked me or made me draw sword. But they were either wounded or fled, or both.”

  The darg plodded and the wagon trundled, rocking. “Only when you’re attacked,” Querry said after a while.

  “That’s true, Querry. Or when armed men have made me draw sword or just take their cuts or blows. The first thing we do is try to avoid fights. You never heard that, did you?”

  “Ahm... no, no... so many tales about D — omos. Do you know what it is I’m th
inking?”

  “Oh no, Querry. I just know some of the tales about ‘Deathknights,’ as others call us, and that gave me an idea why you asked whether I had killed men.”

  “Hmm. But you stop and help a man get rint in before the rain falls.”

  “I stop my darg to let women pass, too. Even men. I doubt that the Arlord’s men do that. Querry: I am probably speaking from ignorance again, as I was about the ramp. But would it not be easier on Catapin if we drove all the way to the other end and turned, and worked back? He’d have less distance to pull the full load. He’d feel better about it too, seeing himself getting ever closer to the barn. To home.”

  “‘Course. Stupid of me not to think of that years ago.”

  Falc shrugged. “A man who lives in the forest can’t see it. A man on the road sees only the forest, not trees. So that I make no mis-assumptions, Querry, will you tell me who Jinnery is?”

  “Oh. Should of told you already. She’s my brother’s child — except that she isn’t a child anymore, ‘course. He’s dead. Killed years ago, in Morazain.”

  “Ah. It’s a good man who takes in his kin.”

  The darg plodded and the wagon-wheels creaked.

  “It’s a more’n good man who stops to help strangers who need it!” Querry twitched the rein. “Nah — keep going there, Catapin. All the way to the end. She needed a place to stay and I needed help. It’s an exchange.”

  “You aren’t calling me anything, Querry. Call me Falc.”

  “Ahm... think I’d feel better calling you Sir Falc.”

  Falc shrugged. “You know I am accustomed to it, but it doesn’t fit present circumstances.”

  Querry glanced at the other man then, and saw that Falc was not smiling. He really did talk that way, then. “My boy’ll go skitty if you don’t tell him a story or two, Sir Falc. He’s a boy. He thinks killing is ... he’ll want to hear some exciting stories. You know.”

  “I’ll not be telling him any you wouldn’t care for him to hear, Querry. Well, to work.”

  They went back to work, in twilight only an hour past midday. When they reached the end of those windrows the wagon was not piled high, but Falc suggested that they unload anyhow. Jinnery seemed inclined to consider that an admission of his weakness; weariness. Falc said nothing to that. The clouds continued to move in and thunder rumbled. Now and again it crashed, distantly. Still, none of them was able to see any rain in the distance.