by Gene Wolfe
“The outlaws?”
He nodded.
“How do you know that?” I asked him.
“Smell it.”
Thinking about what he said, I remembered your telling me dogs could smell fear. I asked Gylf if they were afraid, and he nodded again. “How did they find out we were coming?”
He did not answer; as I got to know him better, I came to understand that it was the way he generally reacted when he did not know the answer to a question (or thought the question foolish). Probably they had lookouts. I would have, if I had been their captain.
“Thought you wouldn’t catch up,” old man Toug said when we overtook him.
I told him we had wanted to see whether he would tell the outlaws about us.
“You and the dog did?”
I nodded.
“Kill it straight off, they will.”
“I suppose you’re right, if he finds them before we do.”
“I seen a knight once that had one of them shirts of iron rings for his dog, even.”
“I’ll try to get one for Gylf, if he wants one,” I said, “but from here on I want you to stay back with him, and make him stay back with you. I’ll go first.”
“You only got eight arrows. I counted ’em.”
I asked how many he had and ordered him to stay well in back of me. After that, I told Gylf to keep back and to keep old man Toug with him.
* * *
Until now, I have been recounting what I did and what others did, and reconstructing what we said. Now I think I had better call a halt to that, and explain how I felt then and later, and why I did what I did. I have been a general, sort of, and I can tell you that good generals march hard, but they do not march night and day. There is a time for marching, but also a time for halting and making camp.
I went forward alone, as I told you, with my bow strung and an arrow already on the string, listening to the murmur of the many, many lives that made up that string—to the noise of the people, if I can say it like that. To life. Those men, women, and children who made up Parka’s string knew nothing about me, nothing about my spiny orange bow, nothing about the arrow they would send whistling at some outlaw; but they sensed all of it, I think, sensing that their lives had been drawn tight, and the battle was about to start. There was fear and excitement in their voices. They sat at their fires or did the work they did each day; but they sensed that there was going to be a battle, and how it came out would depend on them.
It was not much different for me. I knew that I would probably have to fight half a dozen men, and that they would have bows, too, with plenty of arrows, and swords, axes, and spears. If I turned right or left, I would save my life; and Gylf and the man with him would know nothing about it unless they turned too, because they would both die when they got to the outlaws. If I turned back, they would know but I would save their lives as well as mine. Saving the lives of the people with you is supposed to be the big thing, and killing the people who are trying to kill you (and them) does not really count.
I went forward anyway.
If you ever read this, you are going to say it was because of what Sir Ravd had said. You will be mostly right—that was a lot of it. I wanted to be a knight. I wanted to be a knight more than I ever wanted to make the team or make the honor roll. I do not mean that I only wanted to call myself a knight the way I had been doing, or make other people call me one. I wanted to be the real thing. There were a couple of people on our team who were there because we could not find anybody good. There was a person on the honor roll who was there because his whole idea was to be there. He took gut courses, and if he did not get an A, he went to the teacher and argued and begged and maybe threatened a little until she raised his grade. The rest of us knew it, and I did not want to be a knight like that. This was the big test. This was one behind in the ninth, two out, and a man on second. It was not the way I would have chosen if I could have chosen, but you never get to choose.
That was only the smallest part of it, though. Let me tell you the truth right here. I thought Bold Berthold was dead. I thought his body was someplace around where his hut had been and I just had not been able to find it. I might not have found Disira’s if it had not been for Ossar, and there would not have been anything like that to tell me where Bold Berthold was. If I had been there, I might have run away when the outlaws came, and I might have tried to get Bold Berthold to run away too; but I knew Bold Berthold pretty well by that time, and he would not have done it.
The Angrborn had hurt him so much it seemed like he should be dead. He could not stand up straight. His hands shook, and sometimes it was so bad he could hardly feed himself. He could be kind of crazy, forgetting things that had happened a little while ago or remembering things that had never happened. He had been so sure I really was his brother Able that I had to answer to his name, and sometimes he had almost made me think it was true—and he thought I was still Able when I came back older-looking and bigger than he was.
All that was true, and there was more; but you could not scare him. The outlaws could have killed him, and I thought probably they had, but they would have to. They would not have scared him, and he would have protected Disira and Ossar until he died.
So Bold Berthold was dead.
He had taken me in when I had no place to go. He had loved me like his brother, and taught me everything he knew—how to farm, how to handle cattle and horses and sheep. How to hunt, and how to set snares. How you fought with a spear if a spear was all you had, and how you fought with a club if a club was all you had. He had not known a lot about shooting a bow, but he had taught me what he knew about that, too, and he had understood when I practiced and practiced, and helped me every way he could. When you have to hit what you are aiming at if you want to eat, you get to be a pretty good shot pretty quickly. When you have got to hit it or somebody who loves you will not eat either, you learn all the other stuff: how to get in a little closer, how to miss that branch without missing the deer, and how to follow a wounded deer even when it seems like it is hardly bleeding at all, because sometimes they bleed inside.
How to guess where it will go before it decides itself. Once I had a wounded deer go to a hiding place where I was hiding already and get so close I could grab it and throw it down. I had learned all that fast, like I said, and I owed it to Bold Berthold, every bit of it. The guys who killed him were going to have to deal with me, and I was not old or sick.
There was Disira, too. I had never been in love with her. I loved Queen Disiri, always, and nobody else; and if you do not understand that, you will never understand all the things I am going to tell you at all, because that was always the main thing. Just about everything else changed as time went on. I made new friends and lost old ones. Sir Garvaon taught me how to use a sword, and Garsecg showed me how I could be stronger and quicker than I had ever known—quiet sometimes, or so fierce and wild that brave men who saw me ran. But that never changed. I loved Disiri and nobody else but Disiri, and there was never a minute in the whole time when I would not have died for her.
There was one other thing, and I am going to talk about it, too. I knew I was just a kid inside. Toug always did think that I was a man, even when I told him I was not. His father thought I was a man, too (and so did Ulfa), younger than he was, but a man, and I was a lot bigger. I knew it was not true, it was just something Disiri had done, and I was really a kid. There were a lot of times when I wanted to cry. That time when I was coming up on those outlaws and looking for men hiding behind rocks or up in the trees like Aelf with every step I took, that was one of them. There was another one when I really did cry, and I’ll tell you about it in a minute. When you are a kid and you are in a tight place like I was you cannot ever admit it, because if you ever once admit it everything is going to come loose.
So I did not. I just kept going toward the big cave, one slow step at a time, and thinking, well, if they kill me they kill me and it will all be over.
But the main thing wa
s still Disiri. That is how it has always been with me, all through going to Jotunland and the River Battle and everything that happened. I loved her and I wanted her so bad it tore me up.
If you do not understand about Disiri, it will not matter what you understand, because you will not understand a thing. The outlaws were between me and her, and anything that came between us was going to get shoved out of the way and stamped into the mud, and that was the way it always was, the whole time.
Chapter 14. The Broken Sword
I had told Gylf to keep way behind me, and I had told old man Toug to stay back, too; but neither of them were very good at it. The first thing I knew old man Toug was right beside me (and scaring me so much I just about put an arrow through him) trying to whisper something. And when I turned around to see what it was, Gylf sneaked past me, not making hardly any noise but going fast.
“See the black rock?” Old man Toug pointed with his spear. “When we get there, they’ll see us if they’re there, and we’ll see them.”
I pointed behind us. “You see that round rock off to one side?”
He nodded.
“You go back there and wait, or I’ll take away your spear and stick it up your nose. Get going!”
He did, and I stood there and watched until he was all the way to it.
About then Gylf came back. He did not say anything, but I knew from the way he looked and the way he had come back so fast, that the outlaws were right up ahead. I made him get behind me, but he would not go back to the round rock. As soon as I started going forward again, he was right behind me.
Pretty soon something happened that I had not figured on at all. One of them stood up on a big rock maybe fifty paces ahead and asked who I was and did I want peace or a fight. I pulled the arrow back to my ear and let it go so fast he had no time to duck down. It got him in the chest and went right through, and he fell off his big rock.
I still had not seen the rest of them, but they had seen him, and I heard them yell. I ran to the black rock because it looked like I could climb it, and went right up it like a squirrel, scared half to death the whole time and thinking I was going to get an arrow in my back. When I got up on top I lay down flat, sort of hugging the rock.
They came around it, and it was not six or seven like we had been talking about, it was more like twenty. They saw old man Toug standing back there where I had told him to wait, and they went for him, shouting and waving spears and swords. He dropped his spear and ran like two hares, and I got up fast, shot the last one, and got two in front of him, all in a lot less time than it takes me to write the words. The last had a bow and a quiver, and when I saw the quiver I jumped.
It was a long jump. When I think back, I am surprised I did not break a leg, but I did not—just landed with my feet together and fell down. I got his arrows and put them in my own quiver with the ones that did not have heads, and I pulled my arrow out of the dirt and rocks and put the nock to the string. That arrow had blood on it, and the feathers did not look as nice as I would have liked, but the point had not bent and I knew it would still work.
I took back my other arrows, too. One of the men was still alive, but I did not kill him. I could see he was going to die anyway and pretty quickly, and I left him where he lay. The first had not been Seaxneat, and neither of these were, either.
After that I followed the ones chasing old man Toug. I could still hear them yelling, so it was not hard. Pretty soon I found a man almost as big as I was with his head torn off. It was dead, but the fear was still on his face. He had been so scared when he died that I felt sorry for him, although I would have killed him myself.
Maybe I ought to talk about that. Where you are, people kill people all the time just like they do here. Then they talk like it was the worst thing in the world. Here it is murder that is bad, and fighting is just fighting. Our way, people do not feel bad about doing what they had to do; Sir Woddet killed so many Osterlings once that it made him sick for a long time, but killing Osterlings never did bother me. How can you feel bad about killing somebody who would cook and eat you? Killing outlaws never bothered me either.
When Gylf and I found old man Toug, they had hung him upside-down and were throwing their knives at him. I told Gylf to get around on the other side where he could get them if they ran. When he did, I started shooting. They rushed me, and I ran back almost to where the round rock was, and got up on another rock. I stood up straight then and waited for them to catch up, feeling Parka’s string with my fingers. It seemed like it was no thicker than a thread—so thin it almost cut me; but it whispered beneath my fingers with a thousand tongues, and I knew that no matter what happened it would never break.
An outlaw came out of the woods that had a bow too. I let him shoot, and his arrow hit the rock right where I was standing. A couple more outlaws had come out of the trees by that time. I held my bow over my head and shouted, “I am Sir Able of the High Heart!” (Because that was what Parka had said.) “Give up! Swear you’ll be loyal, and I promise not to hurt you!”
The one with the bow had another arrow out, but so did I. I shot him as he was pulling back the bowstring, and my arrow cut his string, went through him, and split a sapling behind him, and it scared the others halfway to Muspel. I was proud of that shot, and I still am. I have made others just about as good as that since, but I have never made a better one.
“Don’t have to stay with me,” old man Toug whispered when I had cut him down and freed his hands and feet.
I told him I was going to anyway, and I cut up the shirt his daughter had made for me for bandages.
“They kill the dog?”
“No,” I said. “Didn’t you see him?”
He tried to smile. “Guess I wasn’t lookin’. Somethin’ troublin’ you?”
“My dog.”
“‘Fraid he won’t come back?”
I was afraid he would, but I built a fire for us there. I could have carried old man Toug back to Glennidam, but it was getting dark and I would have had to put him down fast if we had been jumped. It seemed to me that if he could rest overnight, he might be able to walk in the morning. That would be a big help.
When the fire was burning pretty well I brought him water, carrying it in his hat; and when he had drunk it he said, “You ought to go to their cave. Might be treasure in there.”
I doubted it because it seemed to me that the outlaws had probably spent whatever they got as soon as they got it; but I promised we would go in the morning.
Gylf came with two rabbits, fading away into the night as soon as he laid them down. I skinned them and rigged a spit of green shoots the way Bold Berthold had showed me; when I had them cooking, old man Toug said, “Your dog looked different. Firelight, maybe.”
“No,” I said.
“Still your dog?”
I nodded.
“One time you asked if I wanted my boy to grow up like me, or did I want to be a boy again myself. I wanted him to be like me, only now I’d sooner be like him.” He sighed.
I told him I had been a boy myself not very long ago.
“Know what you mean.”
“When I found out I’d been turned into a man, I was scared, but after that I was so happy I jumped all around, yelling. Tonight I’d go back, if I could.”
“That’s it.”
“I told you how your son and I went to Aelfrice. We met Disiri there, and she took him. When I was a boy, I spent years in Aelfrice, but when I had gone I couldn’t remember what had happened there, and I looked the same way I had when I got there. All those years hadn’t changed me at all.”
“Happens,” old man Toug muttered.
“But when I was there alone, when I was waiting around for Disiri to return with your son, some of it began to come back. I can’t remember exactly what it was now, but I can remember remembering it. Do you know what I mean? And it was happy. I had been really, really happy there.”
“You ought to of stayed and remembered more.”
“I didn’t mean to leave. But I think you may be wrong. Terrible things have been nibbling at the edges of my mind. Maybe that’s why I went looking for Disiri. I wanted her to reassure me. To tell me everything was all right after all.”
A new voice said, “I can’t do that, but I can help nurse my father.”
I looked around. It was Ulfa.
Old man Toug said, “Followed us, didn’t you? Thought you might. Ma couldn’t keep you?”
“I left while she was busy with Ve, Pa. I didn’t even ask her.” Ulfa turned to me. “You frightened poor Ve half to death.”
I said I had not meant to. I had just wanted to scare Ve enough to make him do what I told him, because I did not have any money, and I could not think of any other way to keep him from warning the outlaws.
“Kindness might have done it.”
“I suppose.”
I do not think old man Toug had been listening, or at least not paying much attention, because right about then he said, “Gold, Ulfa! Real gold! There’s treasure in the cave. You’ll see.”
“Will Sir Able let you share in it?”
I said, “Yes, if there’s any to share.”
Old man Toug said, “I kilt two out ‘a Jer’s company, Ulfa. Two! Believe that?” She sighed, and shook her head. “I’ve been stumbling over bodies for—I don’t know, Pa. It seems like half the night. If you only killed two, Sir Able must have killed two score.”
I told her that Gylf had killed more than both of us.
“His dog,” old man Toug explained. “I kilt and run and kilt and run, and then they put a arrow in my leg. Hung me on a tree. He cut me down, cut me loose. Got water for me and everythin’.” Tears spilled from the corners of old man Toug’s eyes, soaking the matted hair that barred them from his ears. “I said, you go off. You get that gold. He wouldn’t go, stayed here with me.”
I turned the rabbits one last time and took them off the fire, waving them to help them cool. Neither Ulfa nor old man Toug spoke, but I saw the way they looked at them, and as soon as I could I tore off a hind leg and gave it to old man Toug, cautioning him that it was still hot.