by Gene Wolfe
* * *
About the time sunrise should have come, it started to rain, and the rain woke me up fast. I was cold—it was the first time I had been cold in quite a while—and wet and shaking. And hungry, with nothing to eat and Gylf gone. I piled sticks on our fire and cussed the smoke, and tried to get as warm and dry as I could for quite a while.
Finally it got lighter. I put out the fire and went off down the road in the rain, knowing Gylf would catch up.
Which he did after two or three hours. But the weather got worse and worse. It rained all the time, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. The rain washed away the smells of the animals, so Gylf could not catch anything. After days of that, I stopped being hungry and started getting weak, and I knew we had to hold up and hunt—and get something, too, or we would die.
The next day we did, a young aurochs, the first I had ever seen. Gylf pinned him, and I ran up and stabbed him in the neck with my dagger. They look a little like a bull and a little like a buffalo. The place where he died was about as bad as it could possibly be, a thicket at the bottom of a steep little hollow. I could have asked Gylf to carry the aurochs like he had the elk, but I did not. I hacked off a haunch, and carried it to a place where it might be possible for us to build a fire if we were really, really lucky. That haunch probably weighed about a hundred pounds or maybe a hundred and fifty but it felt like two tons by the time we found the place and I finally set it down. We built our fire and ate as much as we could hold, and listened to the wolves fighting over the rest.
* * *
A storm got me up the next morning, a real howler with driving rain and thunder walking from hill to hill. Trying to make a joke, I told Gylf I was afraid Mythgarthr was going to be dismasted.
“Like home,” he said; our fire was out, but his eyes glowed crimson every time the lightning flashed.
I said, “What do you mean, home? We never lived any place with weather as bad as this.”
“My mother. My brothers. My sisters, too.”
I wanted to know where it was, but he stopped talking. All right, I knew he meant Skai; but I wanted him to talk about it. He never would say much about Skai.
We sat out the whole day, waiting for the rain to stop, and when it got dark I heard them. I think that was the only time I ever did until I got to Skai myself. I heard the baying of a thousand hounds like Gylf, and the drumming of the hooves as the Valfather’s Wild Hunt swept across the sky. Gylf wanted to follow them, but I would not let him.
The weather was a little better the next day, but we could not find the War Way again. I knew we had turned west when we had left it to hunt, so we tried to walk east or northeast; but you could not see the sun so a lot of it was guesswork. Then too, there were about a hundred things in that forest to make us go south instead. Or north, or even west—thickets, tangles of briars, creeks high and fast with rainwater, and gulches.
Finally we hit a pretty good path and decided to follow it as long as it was not clearly going wrong. It ended at the door of a stone cottage that looked like it had been empty for years. Half the roof had fallen in. The shutters had fallen off or been blown off and were rotting in the grass and weeds. The door was open, hanging by one hinge.
“Nobody lives here,” I told Gylf. “Let’s stop and build a fire and hunt around for something to eat. Maybe we can get dry tonight.”
“Path,” he said.
“You’re right, somebody made the path. But he doesn’t live here. He couldn’t. Probably he just comes around sometimes to look at it.” I had no idea what for, but Gylf did not ask me.
“Knock,” he told me when I got to the doorway.
It seemed silly, but I did, tapping on the ruined door with the pommel of my dagger. There was no welcome and no challenge from inside. I knocked harder to show my heart was in it, and called, “Hello? Hello?”
Gylf had been sniffing. He said, “Cat.”
I looked around, surprised. “What?”
“Stinks. Cat’s in there.”
I stepped inside and said, “So am I.”
Gylf came in after me, and a big black cat at the far end of the room hissed loud enough to scare you and ran up the wall into the loft.
The fireplace was full of dead ashes, but there were a couple of dry logs beside it, and some dry leaves and sticks in the kindling box. I stood one log on end and hit it with Sword Breaker hard enough to split it.
“Good one!” Gylf growled; and right when he said it, it seemed like somebody else said, “Food ...” I looked around, but I did not see anyone.
I arranged the wood and the kindling, and got everything to burning good with my flint and firesteel. We had a little meat left from the aurochs. I got it all out and laid it on the hearth. “Take whatever you want,” I told Gylf, “as long as you leave a couple pieces for me.”
After that I went out into the rain again to cut a green stick.
Chapter 46. Mani
C utting a stick probably did not take me very long, but standing out there in the rain and the cold, when I knew, there was a fire in the cottage, it seemed like forever. I got one and ran back in, and it seemed to me I could hear somebody talking that shut up as soon as I came through the door.
Two of the pieces of meat I had laid on the hearth were gone. I picked up one of the others and put it on my stick and held it over the fire, trying to dry myself at the same time. Gylf came over and lay down, and I said, “Who were you talking to?”
He shook his head and went over to the dry corner and lay down there. “You know,” I said, “sometimes I wish you were just a regular dog that couldn’t talk. If you were, I’d never be mad at you for not talking. Like now. You know there’s somebody else in here with us, and I know it too. Only you won’t tell me.”
He did not say anything; I would have been surprised if he had.
When my meat was about done, I said, “I know there’s somebody in here. I’m a knight, and my word means a lot to me. Whoever you are, I don’t want to hurt you. If you’d like this nice piece I barbecued, just come out and say hello, and I’ll give it to you.”
Nothing.
I looked around carefully after that, the room being lit up by the fire and a whole lot brighter than it had been when we came in. There was nobody there but Gylf and me, and no furniture or anything that somebody might be hiding behind.
I bit off a piece of meat, chewed, looked around some more, and thought. Nobody was out on the path. I put my head out the one little window and looked around, and there was nobody there either. A dark doorway led to a little back room. There was an old string bed in there falling apart, with nothing on it but a bundle of dirty rags. “If there wasn’t anybody here,” I said out loud, “my dog would talk to me. But since you want to hide, I’m not going to look for you. I’d like to eat and dry my clothes. Is that okay? As soon as the rain lets up, we’ll go. No hard feelings.”
Nobody said anything, but Gylf went to the door and wagged his tail, which meant that he would like to leave right now. I said, “You’re not tied up, are you? If you want to go I’m not about to stop you.”
He went back to his corner.
“Is this somebody who might hurt us?” I asked him. He shut his eyes.
“Up to you.” I put the last piece of meat on my stick. “You won’t talk to me? All right, I’ll stop talking to you.”
That meat was just about done when somebody whispered, “Please ... ?”
I looked around. “If you’d like some of this, come and get it.” (You used to say that when you were dishing up, remember?)
“Please ... ?”
That time I knew where the whisper was coming from. There was somebody in that back room after all. I took the meat in there. “Are you too sick to walk?”
Nobody answered, but the bundle of rag on the bed moved. I held out the meat, and all of a sudden I was as scared as I had ever been in my life.
“I ... Thank you. You ... kind to an old woman.” Here there is something I know
you will never believe. It was the rain outside talking. The way the drops hit made the words. They said, “Her blessing ... wherever ...”
I crouched down beside the bed thinking I was letting the whole thing spook me, that there was somebody there—that there had to be—who needed help.
“I ... bless. Curse.”
I said, “How about if I pull off a little piece for you?”
“Never die ...”
I thought that might be a yes, so I pulled off a little bit of the meat. A mouth—a hole, really—opened in the rags. I put that little piece of meat into it. Her head came out of the rags after that. Only her head. It rolled to a place where the strings were broken and fell through onto the floor, and that piece of meat I had pulled off fell out of the mouth.
I will never forget that. I wish I could. I have tried to, but no go. It is always there.
Picking up that head was as hard as anything I have ever done, or almost. I did it just the same. The skin was like old leather; it did not feel dirty, or anything like that. I carried it back into the other room to show Gylf, and because of the firelight I had a better look at it in there. There were still a few dirty gray hairs on it, but the eyes were gone.
“This was talking to me, too,” I told him. “I don’t think it’s going to talk any more, though. When I put some meat in its mouth it found out it was dead, or anyhow that’s what it seems like. So it’s gone, and you can talk now.”
I really thought he was going to. That was why I said it. But what he really did was get up and go out into the rain.
I had been going to throw the head into the fire. That had been in the back of my mind all the time, but I did not do it. I set it down on the hearth and went to the door so I could wash my hands with rain, and I just kept going—out into the rain with Gylf.
* * *
It finally stopped a little before sundown. I took off my clothes and wrung them out. They had been pretty dirty, but the rain had given them a good washing and washed me too. “My armor’s going to rust,” I told Gylf, “but there’s nothing I can do about that. Sand will take the rust off, if we ever find any. And oil will keep it from rusting more. Oil or grease, if we can’t find oil.” I was shivering.
“Fire?” That was the first time Gylf had talked since he had clammed up in the cottage.
“If I can find stuff dry enough to burn. I’ll look.”
“I’ll hunt,” Gylf told me.
I said go ahead, but keep an eye out for the road.
He started to leave, and an idea hit me. “Wait. You weren’t talking to that dead person, were you? Because if you had been, you’d have told me when I brought in the head. So who was it?”
He would not look at me.
“I thought that’s who it had been. But the voice you talked to was inside. When she talked the voice was outside, the raindrops talking for her somehow. Besides, the voices weren’t the same. Okay, if you weren’t talking to the dead person, who was it?”
Gylf had left before I finished. I cussed a little, calling him a stiff-necked fool dog and so on; and when I finally shut up, somebody who sounded scared sort of whined, “It was I.”
I grabbed for Sword Breaker, but there was nobody around.
“You have wonderful muscles,” the new voice said. “Do you stretch a lot?”
I nodded, still looking around and not seeing anybody.
“So do I. I can show you a kind of tree that will burn when it’s wet. Would you like to see it?”
I had been trying to decide whether it was a woman or a man; but the voice could have been either one, and there were tones in it that did not sound like a real person at all. I said, “Yes, we could really use wood like that. Please show me where it is.”
“It’s not much farther than you could roll a ball.” The soft voice had gotten fretful, like a tired little kid. “Do you think we could dry ourselves in front of the fire?”
I said, “Sure. I’m going to put my boots on, but I’ll leave my armor and clothes here. Is that okay?”
He did not say anything, so I said, “Listen, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but could you maybe let me in on what you and Gylf were talking about back there?”
“He doesn’t like me.”
I was pulling on my boots. That is never much fun, but now my feet were wet and so were they, and it was flat mean. When I got the left one on, I said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“How do you feel? About me, I mean.” It was a purling, puling, mewling sort of a voice, and sometimes it reminded me of seagulls.
I did not like it much, but I had the feeling I would get used to it pretty soon. Besides, it was going to show me that wood, so I said, “Really friendly. If you’re right and this kind of tree you’re talking about will burn for us, hey, I’ll be your friend for as long as you want me.”
“Do you mean it?” It was a little closer now.
“Absolutely.” I was getting my other boot on.
“You were kind to the witch, but I’m not dead.”
“I didn’t know she was dead ’til afterward,” I said. “I didn’t know she was a witch, either. Gylf and I thought she was still alive, because of the path.”
“Oh, she got up and went out sometimes.”
That shook me, and he saw it. He laughed. It was not a nice laugh, and was not like any other laugh I ever heard in my life.
When I stood up, he said, “It’s called pitch pine. Did you mean that? About being friends? You’ll have to whittle some shavings first. I never promised you wouldn’t have to do that, you know.”
“No problem.”
“About being friends,” he asked, “was that serious?”
“You bet,” I said. “You and me are pals for life.”
“Well, I need a new owner, and a knight might be nice, but you’ve got that big bow. Did the string get wet?”
“The string’s in my pouch here.” I picked it up and showed him. “It’s probably still pretty dry, but I’m not about to take it out to see.”
“You wouldn’t like me.”
I said, “I do like you. Honest.”
“To eat. Possibly you hate us. Many men do, and your dog does.”
I tried then to think of something I really hated. When I had been where they kept the ropes on the ship I had hated the rats, but after a while it came to me that it was crazy. They were just animals. I tried to kill them, sure, because once or twice they bit me when I was asleep. But there was no point in hating them, and I quit. Finally I said, “I try not to hate anything, even rats.”
“I am not a rat.”
“I never said you were.”
The limbs of a bush over to my right trembled a little, spilling a few drops of water. When I saw that, I figured he was pretty small. In a way, that was right. But it was wrong too.
I said, “Are you invisible?”
“Only at night. Follow me.”
“I can’t see you.”
“Follow my voice.”
I did the best I could, leaving the glade where I hoped to build a fire and tramping though the wet forest. I felt like I was going to freeze solid. “Over here.”
That was the first time I saw him (except it was really the second). There had been something black on a fallen log, but it was gone before I got a good look.
“Right here. See the little tree?”
I said, “I think so.”
“Break a twig and smell it. Remember the smell. The sap will get on your hands and make them sticky.”
The little knife I had carved my bow with was in the pouch with my bowstring. After I had broken a twig like he said, I got it out and cut off eight or nine branches.
“See how the sap runs wherever the tree is hurt?”
“Sure,” I said. “Will it burn?”
“Yes, it will. So will the needles.”
I carried everything back to where I had left my sword belt and so on, and whittled away at the branches until I had a big pile of shaving a
nd pine needles, with everything soggy with sap. By the time I finished, my knife was black. So were my hands.
“I don’t like it either,” his soft voice told me, “but it’s a nice color.”
“The sap color you mean. It only looks black because dirt sticks to it.” I was rubbing my hands with wet leaves, which hardly helped at all.
“Black is the boldest color and the best. The most dramatic.”
I said, “Okay, if this stuff burns good I’ll love it no matter what color it is.” I quit rubbing and got out my flint and firesteel. The first good shower of sparks got me a hissing, popping yellow flame.
“See?”
“I sure do.” I was picking up dead wood to throw on my fire. “You know, you’re a really nice cat.”
“You saw me?”
“Yeah, when you ran up into the loft. That was you.”
“You don’t hate us? Many men do.” The cat popped up out of some wild-flowers on the other side of the glade. It was awfully small for a person, and it was a darned big cat, maybe the biggest I ever saw.
“I like you,” I said. “I’d like to pet you. I mean, when I get my hands clean.”
“You could lick them, couldn’t you?” The cat did not seem very sure about that but was willing to try it on me. “My name’s Mani, by the way.”
“I’m Sir Able of the High Heart,” I said. “Pleased to meet you, Mani.”
By the time I had a good big fire going, Mani was rubbing up against my legs.
Chapter 47. Good Master Crol
“Rabbits. Best I could do.” Gylf dropped them near my head. “But I found it.” I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “You found the War Way?”
“Yep.”
“That’s wonderful!”
Gylf grunted and lay down. I could tell he was tired. “People, too.” I was cutting off the head and paws of the biggest rabbit so I could skin it.
“Nice people?”
“Tried to tie me up.”
“I see. Were they woodcutters or something?”