The Knight twk-1

by Gene Wolfe

  It was not real easy to push through all of them without hurting anybody, but I did it. I got to him and told him we needed to talk, and the two of us went into the cabin.

  “By Ran’s ropes!” he said. “By Skai, wind, and rain!” Then he hugged me. I have been really, really surprised a lot in the time I have been in Mythgarthr and Aelfrice, but I do not know if I have ever been any more surprised than I was when Kerl hugged me, unless it was by that one knight with the skull for a crest I fought up in the Mountains of the Mice. I do not believe there has ever been a human man that could squeeze me hard enough to break my ribs, not even Hela’s brother Heimir, and Heimir was not strictly human. A lot of people would say he was not human at all, and as soon as it got to be hot summer he would sweat like a horse even sitting under a tree.

  Only Kerl came pretty close. I could hear them creak.

  “I’ve been in Aelfrice,” I told him when he finally let me go. “I don’t know for how long. I mean, I don’t know how many of their days.”

  “Sit down! Sit down!” Kerl got out a bottle and pulled the cork, and found glasses for us.

  I was thinking about the island that had come up out of the tear in the sea, the one where I had seen Disiri, and how I had watched the trees grow on it. So I said, “Maybe it was years there, too. I don’t know if they have years, really. They talk about them, but maybe it’s just because we do.”

  “Drink up!” Kerl shoved a glass at me. “This calls for a celebration.”

  I shook my head, because I was still thinking about Garsecg and that had reminded me of Uri and Baki and the whole thing with the Isle of Glas. I sipped the wine, though, and it was really good wine, the best I had ever tasted up to then, and I told Kerl so.

  “Gave somebody that needed ’em a couple casks of water.” He grinned. “He gave me five bottles of this. Hard not to have three or four glasses with my dinner every night, but I don’t let myself do it. This is different. It’s a special occasion, and I wouldn’t want to die and leave one of those bottles wet.”

  “I’m lucky you feel like that.” I drank some more. “Can you take me to Forcetti? Will you?”

  “Aye! We’re way down south here, and headin’ back. We can stop off there.” Kerl’s grin faded. “I’m goin’ to have to make some stops on the way though, sir. That all right?”

  I said okay. I had been going to Forcetti because Duke Marder would probably need another knight, and sitting there naked in that cabin it hit me that if he had needed somebody to take Ravd’s place he probably had him already, and I was going to need a lot of stuff when I got there. Like clothes. So I asked Kerl if they had anything on the ship that I could wear.

  That brought the grin back. “We kept yours for you,” he told me. He opened a chest and held up Sword Breaker, still in her scabbard, and the scabbard still on my old sword belt. “I don’t guess you’ve forgotten this?”

  That made me smile. “I remember it pretty well.”

  “Clothes, too.” Kerl lifted out a double armful. “Saved ’em all for you. Put cedar shavin’s on ’em to keep the moths off, and they ought to be good as new.” He put them on the bed for me to look at.

  I thanked him, and told him how much I meant it (and I really did) and said I would sleep on deck and do whatever work I could to pay for my food.

  “You’ll sleep right here, sir.” Kerl sounded like he meant that, too. “This here’s your cabin just like these here are your boots, sir. Your cabin ’til you get off at Forcetti, sir, and I’m proud to give it to you.”

  “I can’t pay—wait just a minute. I left money here when I went away with the Aelf. If you kept it for me too—”

  Kerl could not meet my eyes. “I spent it, Sir Able. I had to. We was stove off Needam, and laid up seven weeks for repairs, sir. I’ll pay it all back, I swear. Only I can’t pay you back but a little right now.”

  He opened his strongbox for me and showed me what he had, and there was so little in there, just copper and brass and four pieces of silver, that I almost let him keep all of it. Only I knew I was going to have to have something, and I took half.

  A couple of days after that we came in sight of the Mountain of Fire. I was curious about it because of what Garsecg had said, and I asked Kerl and some people in the little port nearby, where we sold some cloth Kerl had not been able to sell farther south. It had belonged to the Osterlings, and they had pushed people into the opening at the top because it bypassed Aelfrice and went straight to Muspel where the dragons are. If it had just been their own people, we probably would not have cared, but they raided, and ate people they captured the way they do, and pushed in the ones they would have liked to eat most so the dragons would help them.

  King Arnthor had taken the Mountain of Fire, fortified it, and left a garrison there. Some of the men-at-arms were in the town when we were, drinking and trying to pick up girls. They were the first men-at-arms I had seen, and I was anxious to see knights. There were donkeys for rent at the stable, but I had very little money and Pouk had none, so we decided to walk.

  Chapter 29. My Bet

  I f I had known what was in store for us, I would never have gone. And if I had gone anyway , there is no way I would have let Pouk come with me. As it was, we had a nice time of it, setting out early in the morning before the sun was hot, and holding walking races for forfeits. It got warmer and we slowed down a lot, basically walking from shade to shade if you know what I mean. We were lucky, because there was a lot of shade, but we were unlucky, too, because there were a lot of bugs. The bugs were not so lucky themselves, though. We must have swatted about a hundred, and I got to wishing I could put them all together in one big bug and shoot arrows at it.

  I was trying to figure out some way to do that when a farmer came along with a cart full of fruit he was taking to the Mountain of Fire. He gave us a ride, and let us eat mangos as we rode along. We promised to help him unload when he got to the mountain, but when he found out I was a knight he would not let me. When we got there, Pouk had to unload for both of us.

  While he was doing that, I was talking to some of the men-at-arms there about the walls and towers and so on, and who was there. Lord Thunrolf was in charge of everything. We were already inside the first wall, a kind of little one but long, that walled off the whole side where the mountain could be climbed. I told them I was a knight, which I was, and said I wanted to go on up the road and see the big walls and towers up higher, and maybe even climb on up to the place where the smoke was coming out. Kerl had said the smoke came from Muspel, and I thought that was pretty tough to believe and it was probably just a story somebody had told him, so I wanted to see for myself.

  They said I could not go up unless Lord Thunrolf said it was all right. I said fine, where is he? Of course he was up quite a ways in the castle they called the Round Tower, so I got to see a lot while they were taking me up to him. It was beautiful and scary, both at once. You looked up and up, and what you mostly saw was towers and more towers, and walls one on top of the other, and big spaces of bare rock. There were flags on the tallest towers, the king’s flag, and Lord Thunrolf’s, and the banners of some of the knights that were knights banneret, and the pennants of the other knights. There were shields hung on the battlements of the towers, too, with each knight’s arms on them. The stone everything was built of had been quarried right there on the mountain, and it was of all sorts of colors, mostly red and black and gray. And up above everything was the top of the mountain, with snow on it and smoke coming up out of the snow. Black smoke that drifted up and up into Skai as if the dragons of Muspel were trying to smoke out the Valfather and the other Overcyns. I will never forget it. It was a steep climb, but after a while it got cooler and there was a lot more wind, and before we had gone halfway I felt like I understood why Thunrolf bunked up there where he did instead of down in the lowlands. There were no more bugs, either.

  With only one road going up to the top, it was pretty clear the Osterlings could not take back the Mount
ain unless they took all the fortifications along that road, one after another, or starved out the garrison. I never even tried to find out how much food and water they had up there, but Thunrolf told me there were big cisterns cut into the rock, and since it rained a lot they were generally full. But storming the walls and towers looked about as bad to me as storming the Tower of Glas. Back then I did not know that the Osterlings were going to take it away from us, or that we were going to take it back. If you had told me I was going to be the one that gave the order to give it up and retreat south, I would have said you were crazy.

  Building more walls and more towers was the main thing Thunrolf and his men did there when Pouk and I were there the first time. They built up all the walls more and built new ones. The men-at-arms had to work on them some, and they had hired local people too. The knights bossed the job, and Thunrolf bossed the knights. Knights are not supposed to work with their hands, just fight and train to fight. I thought I knew about that from certain things I had picked up on in Irringsmouth, but I never really knew how strong it was until we got to Forcetti.

  Anyway, they were taking every place where the road was narrow and the mountainside was really rough, and building walls with gates for the road, and towers so archers could shoot down on everybody. They had started at the bottom, and they were working their way up.

  We got to the big tower and climbed four or five flights of stairs to get to the floor where Thunrolf was. Then we had to wait and wait. We had eaten a couple of mangos each on the cart, but that seemed like it had been years ago. We were both hungry, and really thirsty.

  Every so often somebody would come and talk to one or the other of us, asking who we were and what we wanted. I was tired and did not pay a whole lot of attention when they were talking to Pouk, and maybe that was a mistake. Finally I told him to go off and find us some food and something to drink, and after that I waited by myself. It got later and later, and I wondered whether Thunrolf or somebody would let us stay overnight and give us a place to sleep.

  I was about to try leaving to see if anybody would stop me when a serving-man came out and told me to come in. I had seen him before, he had been in and out of that room where Thunrolf was half a dozen times. But this time he had a kind of smirk when he looked at me. I did not like it, but I could not do anything about it, so I followed him inside.

  Thunrolf was sitting at a table with a bottle of wine and some glasses on it. I had told the servingman my name, and he told Thunrolf. Thunrolf told me to sit down and motioned to the servingman to pour me some wine, which I thought was nice of him. He was a tall man with long legs. Most men his age have beards or mustaches, but he did not, and looking at him I decided he probably drank too much and did not eat enough.

  “So, you’re a knight.”

  I said yes.

  “Here on a ship bound for Forcetti. You’ve come a long way out of your way.”

  I tried to make a joke out of that. “I generally try to go straight to the place I’d like to get to, but I don’t seem to be good at it.”

  He frowned. “Has no one taught you to say My Lord when you speak to a baron?”

  “I’m sorry, My Lord. I guess I haven’t been around barons very much.” He waved his hand like it did not matter and drank some wine, which gave me the chance to drink a lot of mine. My mouth felt like the inside of an old shoe, and the wine was cool and tasted great.

  “You wish to go to the summit of my mountain and look over the countryside.”

  I said, “Yes, My Lord. If it doesn’t put you to a lot of trouble.”

  “It might be arranged, Sir ... ?”

  The servingman had told him, but I said, “Sir Able of the High Heart.”

  “So now you want to carry your heart high, and the rest of you, too.” Thunrolf laughed at his own joke. His laugh did not make me like him better, but pretty soon he said, “Have you supped?”

  “No, My Lord.”

  “You’re hungry? You and the man with you?”

  “We sure are.”

  “I see. You might sup with us, Sir Able, but if you do, two points must be settled before supper. The first is the rank of your companion. You told Master Egorn that he was a friend.”

  I nodded.

  “Not another knight?”

  “No, My Lord. Just a friend. Knights can have friends that aren’t knights, can’t they?”

  “Not a man-at-arms?”

  “No, My Lord. Pouk’s a sailor.”

  “I see.” Thunrolf drank some more wine.

  I did, too, but then I decided I had better stop. My lips felt funny. “Say, rather, that I don’t see. Your friend told Atl he was your servant. I sent Master Aud to speak with him, and he told Master Aud the same thing. One of you is lying.”

  I tried to smooth it over. “Pouk is afraid people won’t think I’m very important, My Lord, and of course I’m not. He wants them to think I am, so he says that. Maybe it would be true if I could afford to pay him, but I can’t.”

  “You’re poor?”

  “Very, My Lord.”

  “I thought as much. Here is the other difficulty I mentioned. We have a custom here. I ought to say my knights do. Barbaric, if you ask me, but the custom is the custom.” Thunrolf belched. “A new knight—you are a knight?”

  “Yes, My Lord. As I told you.”

  “I know you did. I hadn’t forgotten that. A new knight must fight their champion. With blunted swords, on the table before supper. He must fight him—excuse it—for a wager of one ceptre. You look stricken, Sir Able. Are you afraid to fight?”

  “No, My Lord. But ...”

  “But what?”

  From the way he was looking at me, I knew he thought I was scared and I did not like that, but there was not a lot I could do about it. I said, “Well, for one thing, I don’t have a ceptre, My Lord.”

  He opened a drawer in the table and rummaged around in there and pulled one out. “I do,” he said. He held it up. “Should I lend it to you?”

  “Yes, My Lord. Please. I’ll pay you back if I win, I promise.”

  “And if you lose?” He was looking at me with his eyes almost closed. “Because you will lose, Sir Able. Never doubt it.”

  “I won’t be able to.” Talking about bets like that, I remember the forfeits Pouk and I had paid with when we raced. I said, “Maybe I could do you a favor instead, My Lord. I’d do just about anything you wanted.”

  “Anything, Sir Able?”

  I was pretty sure I was getting into trouble, but right then I did not care much. “Yes, My Lord. Anything.”

  “Well and good.” He tossed me the ceptre. “I have been nurturing a little notion. We will have to go to the top of my mountain, which should suit you very well. A good plan, you see. Good plans fit together, like—oh, stones in a wall. That sort of thing. So you will get to go to the top of my mountain, as you wish, and I will have my plan, as I wish.” He poured me some more wine and made me clink glasses with him.

  I drank a little bit more. “There’s another problem, My Lord, only I don’t think it’s as bad. You said blunted swords, and I won’t use a sword. Can I use this instead?” I took out Sword Breaker then and showed her to him. He held it for a minute and sort of waved it around the way you do, and gave it back. “I am afraid not, Sir Able. It’s a mace. You said so yourself.” I said okay.

  “Which makes it much too dangerous. I don’t want to see anyone killed. I will find something else for you. Have you got a shield, by the way?” I said no, and he said he would see about that, too.

  It was already time for supper, so we went down to the hall. There were a lot of people there already and a lot more coming in, and we were standing there watching them when Pouk found us. He said he had not found anything for us to eat or drink, either, but maybe somebody there would let us have something.

  So I explained that we could eat with the others as soon as I fought up on the table like Thunrolf wanted.

  Thunrolf pointed to a place and made Pou
k sit down. Then we went up to the head of the table and he explained to me that knights sat up front close to him at the high table. A knight’s friend that was not a knight himself ought to sit at the far end of the high table with the men-at-arms, so that was where he had put Pouk. Servants sat at the low table that was close to the door, and did I want to change anything? I said no.

  Somebody, I guess Master Aud, brought us the blunted swords. They were just regular old swords, pretty plain with the points and edges ground flat. The knight that was going to fight me took one, and I explained again about how I was not going to use a sword, even one like that, that was not sharp. So Thunrolf sent somebody for the chief cook, and he came, and Thunrolf explained and told him to bring me a shield and something I could use that was not a sword. That was when they took Sword Breaker and my bow.

  The chief cook came back pretty quick, and for a shield he had one of those pewter covers they put over a dish, and for a sword a long iron spoon. I did not like it, but I had to get up on the table and take them. Everybody was telling me to by then and yelling and laughing, and to tell the truth they picked me up and set me up there. I thought, all right, I am bigger and stronger than this guy and I am going to show them.

  Right here let me get rid of the excuses. I had drunk too much wine with Thunrolf and I was none too steady. That is the plain truth. Also they were grabbing my ankles and trying to trip me. That is the truth, too. Only neither one of those was what really did it. He was a swordsman, a good one, and I was not. Until I tried to fight him, I did not even know what a good swordsman was or what one could do. I hit his shield hard enough to bend my spoon, and so what? He never hit my serving dish cover at all. He hit around it, and he could make me move it whenever he wanted, and wherever he wanted. He was probably a pretty nice guy, because I could see he felt sorry for me. He hit me three or four times, not too hard, and then he knocked me right off the table. I got up and gave him the ceptre I had borrowed, and that was the end of our bet. Thunrolf was laughing, everybody was, and he slapped my back and made me sit by him. There was beer and more wine, and soup, meat, and bread. There was a kind of salad, too, that had cut-up roots in it or something crunchy like that, and oil and salt fish. That was pretty good, and so was the meat and bread.