by Gene Wolfe
“That was what you were going to tell me to do, wasn’t it? Go home to Kingsdoom. Just a minute ago, before you lost your nerve.”
“You would be a fool to take my advice, My Lady, and worse to take your own.”
“Or I could go to Thortower, and tell the king some cock-and-cow story. You stopped My Ladying me there for a moment. I wish the moment had been longer.”
Summoning all my resolve, I said, “I’ve got to take you back to your father, My Lady.”
Her laughter had gone. “Sir Able?”
“Yes, My Lady?”
“Let me ride with you for an hour, and talk to you while we ride, and I’ll go back to my father without any argument.”
“I can’t permit that, My Lady. You have to return to him now.”
“Half that.”
I shook my head.
“I have a fast horse, Sir Able. Suppose he falls and I’m hurt.”
I caught the wrist of the hand that held the strap.
“I’ll tell my father you laid hands on me!”
I nodded. “It’s the truth, My Lady. Why shouldn’t you say it?”
“Don’t you care for me at all?”
Mani intervened. “Let me judge. I like both of you. If you’ll promise to do what I decide, you won’t have to fight. Wouldn’t that be better?”
Idnn nodded. “You’re his cat, so that gives him the advantage. But I’ll agree to do whatever you say, even if I have to go back right now.”
“Master?”
“I shouldn’t. But all right.”
“Good.” Mani licked his lips. “Hear my judgment. You two have to stay together talking until you get to that big tree down there, the one that’s lost its top. Then Idnn has to ride straight back to her father, and she can’t say you touched her, or anything else to hurt you. Now you have to do it. You promised.”
I shrugged. “That ride will take half the morning, I’m afraid. But I gave my word, and I’ll keep it.”
“No longer than a dance,” Idnn declared, “but before we get there, the Mountain Men will attack. We’ll be taken prisoner, all three of us, and spend the next ten years huddled in a frozen dungeon. By the time we’re released I’ll be ugly and no one will want me, but Mani and I will make you marry me.”
I snorted.
“When we’re both old, bent, and gray and have thirty-three children, we’ll come riding down this road once more. When we reach that tree you’ll ride up into the air or down into the ground, and never be seen again.”
“Mee-yow!” said Mani.
“Oh, yes, I get to keep you.”
I said, “Is this what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“No. Not really. It’s just that I’ve gotten so used to making up stories like that to get my mind off things that I can’t help it. I’ve made up about a thousand, but Mani and my old nurse back home are the only ones who’ve heard any of them. And now you. Have you ever seen one of the Angrborn, Sir Able?”
Coming as it did, the question took me off guard. I scanned the glades to either side of the War Way, suddenly conscious that I should have been doing it—and had not been—ever since I had caught sight of Idnn.
“I don’t mean I see one, I never have. Have you?”
“Yes, My Lady. Not for long.”
“The Mountain Men were huge. That’s what Mani said. As big as you?”
“Much bigger than I am, My Lady.”
“And the Angrborn?”
“As large as I’d be to a little child.”
Idnn shuddered, and after that we rode on in silence. At last she said, “Do you remember what I told you when we met just now? I said I ought to be in back with the mules. You didn’t argue about it at all. Were you trying to be insulting, or did you really understand what I meant?”
“I believe I understood, My Lady.”
“But that doesn’t move you? Not at all?”
Feeling about as miserable as I had ever been in my life, I said nothing.
“Our supplies are on those mules. The food we eat every day, and the pavilions. But most of them are carrying gifts for King Gilling of Jotunland.”
“I know.”
“There’s a big helmet in there, one just like the one you’re wearing now. A helmet the size of a punch bowl, all brave with gold.” Mani said, “And silks and velvets. Jewels.”
Idnn nodded. “We’re trying to buy peace. Peace from King Gilling and his Angrborn. There’s a war in the east and the Osterlings are creeping into the south, as if the nomads weren’t bad enough. Do you know about that?”
I said, “Someone mentioned troubles in the south when I was at Sheerwall, My Lady. Sir Woddet, perhaps. I didn’t pay a lot of attention. I thought they couldn’t be serious, since the south had been pretty peaceful when I was there. I thought that if things were really bad to the east, we’d be sent there to fight.”
“If Marder’s knights were sent away, the whole of the north country would he open to King Gilling.” Bitterly she added, “We’d probably give it to him if he’d pledge to keep his people out of the rest of the king’s lands.”
“If he will not agree to peace, we should go into his lands and fight him and his people there.”
“Bravely spoken. They’re not supposed to have much to steal, though. Have you any idea how much one of those Frost Giants eats?”
“No, My Lady.”
“Neither do I. I only hope I don’t have to cook for mine.”
I did not know what to say to that.
“You’ve known all along. Isn’t that right?”
I shook my head. “Not all along, My Lady. Only since I learned that the Mountain Men, those big men the Angrborn call Mice, were really their children by our women. But—but ...”
“But you couldn’t imagine how such a thing could happen, like the mating of a knight’s charger with a child’s pony.”
“Yes, My Lady.”
“Nor can I. No, I can, it’s just that I can’t talk about what he’d do to her, and how she’d feel afterward.”
Idnn squared her shoulders, tossing back her mane of long, dark hair. “It happened at Coldcliff when I was small, Sir Able. It really did. Coldcliff’s my uncle’s, but we went there to visit. I had a little pony then, and I was wild about her. My father let me ride her. When we got home and her time came, the grooms had to cut her foal out. They found a mare to be wet-nurse to it. They had to, because she died. Do you think I’m making this up?”
“No, My Lady.”
“I wish I were, because it would have a nicer ending. My father wanted me to ride him, because by the time he was big enough to ride I was bigger, too. But I never would, and eventually we sold him.”
Idnn had begun to cry, and I urged my mount ahead of hers.
When I reached the tree, I wheeled my stallion to look back at her. “You’re to go to Lord Beel now, My Lady. That was our agreement.” She reined up. “I have not reached it, Sir Able. Not yet. When you came, I thought my rescuer had arrived.”
“My Lady, I’ve listened to you, and learned more than I ever wished to know. I beg you listen to reason, if only for a minute or two.”
“I owe a duty to my father.” She spat out the words. “That’s what you’re going to say. My father’s the younger son of a younger son. Do you have any notion what that means?”
“Very little, my lady.”
Her lovely voice fell to a whisper. “We were royal, not so long ago. Almost within living memory. My grandfather was a duke, as my uncle is now. My big brother will inherit the barony. My little brother will be a knight. A knight at best, with a poky manor house a week’s ride from any place that matters and a couple of villages.”
Dropping her reins to her gelding’s neck, she wiped her eyes with her fingers. “It devours my father. It’s as if he had swallowed a rat, and it were gnawing his heart. Hear me, Sir Able.”
I nodded.
“He’s served the throne faithfully for twenty-five years, knowing all the w
hile that if only things had fallen out differently differently by the merest trifle, he’d be sitting on it. But the king has not been ungrateful. Oh, no! Far from it. Do you know what his reward is?”
“Tell me, My Lady.”
“Why, I am. His daughter, the daughter of a mere baron, is to be a queen, the Queen of Jotunland. I will be given to King Gilling like a cup, a silver goblet into which he may pour his sperm. So that when my father returns to Thortower he can say, ‘Her Majesty, my daughter.’”
I nodded. “I understand, My Lady. But I wasn’t going to speak of your duty to Lord Beel. I asked you to listen to reason. Duty’s like honor. It lies outside it. You want me to rescue you, you say. By rescue you mean I’m supposed to carry you off to Candyland, where your every wish will be granted. I know no such place, and I wouldn’t know how to get there if I did.”
Idnn had begun to cry again, sobbing like the little girl she had been only a year or two ago.
“You don’t think much of knights. Most of the knights at Sheerwall didn’t think much of me. Look at me. My armor is still rusty from tramping through the forest in the rain and sleeping wherever I could. Wistan’s been instructing me in the best ways to get it bright. My own squire left me in disgust. Half my clothes have been borrowed from Sir Garvaon and his men. Your father gave me this horse. I have no land and no money, and if I were to get one of those manors you think are miles beneath you, I’d be as happy as your father could ever be to see you a queen.”
Idnn only cried; and I rode back to her, took hold of her bridle, and turned her gelding around, then gave its rump a good hard slap.
It trotted off, with Idnn still crying on its back; before they had gone far, Mani sprang from my saddlebow and slunk into the tall, coarse grass beside the War Way.
Chapter 55. Sword And Shield
“See how I’m holding my sword,” Garvaon said, “with my thumb on top? I want you to hold yours the same way.”
What Garvaon was really holding was a green stick that he had cut, and the sword I held was another stick.
“With an ax or a mace, what you want is power. You want to hit as hard as you can with it, because it won’t do much damage unless you do. A good sword will do a lot of damage with just a light stroke, so what you want is finesse. You’re not going to try to split the other man’s shield. That’s not what a sword’s for.”
He paused to study my grip. “A little farther forward. You want your hand up against the guard, not up against the pommel.” I inched my hand forward.
“That’s better. Sometimes you want to drop your shield and hold with both hands for a stronger blow.”
“Like an ax?”
“No. You still don’t chop. You slash.” Garvaon took a step backward, looking thoughtful. “I had a lot of trouble with that as a boy. With slashing instead of chopping, I mean. I used to get beaten for it. So here’s what did it for me. When you chop, you expect your ax to stay there. Think about chopping wood. But when you slash, you expect your blade to go on by. The edge of your blade is going to hit the other man’s neck, maybe a hand back from the point. Then the rest of the edge between that place and point is going to slide along the cut. After that, the point. The whole blade’s going to come free, and you can slash again, backhand or forehand.”
I nodded, although I was not sure I understood.
“You try to put the weight of your arm behind the weight of your blade, but if you lock your wrist you’ll chop. Now that tree right there’s the other man. I want to see you go at him, and I want to see you slash.”
I tried.
“Faster!”
“I wanted you to see what I was doing,” I explained.
“I’ll see it. Listen here.” Garvaon caught me by the shoulders. “Speed isn’t the main thing. It isn’t the most important thing. It’s everything. If you haven’t got it, it doesn’t matter whether you hold your sword right, or how brave you are, or whether you know a couple of dozen tricks.”
I nodded, trying to look surer than I felt.
“Have you ever seen how a bull fights? A couple of really good bulls?” I shook my head.
“They’re fast. It takes your breath, how fast they are. They stand off and paw the ground, testing it so they won’t lose their footing. As soon as one starts, they come together like lightning. I said good bulls, understand? If they’re good they’re fast, because if they’re not fast it doesn’t matter how strong they are. If one’s a little slow, the other will catch him in the side, and then it’s all over. Now do it again. Fast.”
I did, blocking imagined blows with the shield I had borrowed from a man-at-arms and whipping the tree with my stick until I was panting and dripping sweat.
“That was a lot better,” Garvaon told me. “Now let’s see you come at me.”
I rushed him, but found his shield wherever my stick hit, while Garvaon’s stick tapped my knees and calves.
When he had smacked both my ears with it, he stepped back and dropped his point. “You’re fast, but you’re making a couple of bad mistakes. Every cut you make’s a separate operation.”
I nodded.
“That’s not how it’s supposed to be. The next cut has to flow out of the last one.” He showed me, his stick flying and fluid. “This is easy, because the sword’s so light. When I practice back home, I use a practice sword that’s heavier than Battle Witch.”
Reflecting that Sword Breaker was heavier than any actual sword I had handled, I nodded again.
“Now let’s see you do it. Down then back up. Left, then right. Up and across. Keep your arm behind it. You’re not waving a stick, you’re cutting with a sword. He’s wearing mail and there’s a leather jerkin under it ....
“You’re slowing down. Don’t! If you get tired you’ll die. That’s better.”
The cuts became the surges of the clear sea of Aelfrice, the green stick that was the Green Sword, that was Eterne, curling like a wave and breaking like an avalanche, only to return to the sea and rush ashore again.
“That’s it! That’s it!
“All right. Enough.”
Gasping, I stopped.
“That was good. If you can do that every time with a real sword, you’re a swordsman.” Garvaon paused, and for a moment his hard, narrow eyes grew vague. “Master Tung used to say a true swordsman was a lily blooming in the fire.”
He coughed. “Master Tung taught me when I wasn’t any higher than your stick. Do you understand what he meant?”
Recalling the fight on the Osterlings’ ship, I said, “Maybe I do, a little.”
“Every Overcyn in Skai knows I never did.” Garvaon laughed self-consciously. “But he said it over and over, so it must have meant a lot to him, and he was a wonderful swordsman.”
“And a good man. He must have been. If he hadn’t been, you wouldn’t talk about him the way you do.”
“You’re not a wonderful swordsman,” Garvaon told me, “but you’re coming along. Maybe if you can get to the bottom of that business about the lily in the fire you will be.”
With his stick, he tapped my shield. “I said you were doing two things wrong. Remember that? What were they?”
“You said—you said my sword wasn’t like the sea. Not like it enough, anyway.” I groped for another idea. “And you said that ...”
“I didn’t say it. I’m not asking what I said. I’m asking what you were doing wrong. You got the first one. You’ve got to make your sword flow. Now what was the other one?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think about it. Think back on our fight and the way you were fighting me.”
I tried.
Garvaon said, “While you’re thinking, I’ll tell you a little secret. If you want to be good, you’ve got to think about your fights after they’re over. It doesn’t matter if they’re real or practice, or what the weapons were. You’ve got to go back inside your mind and look at it. What did he do, and what did you? How did it work?”
“You kept hitting my l
egs,” I said, “and then you got my head. I was hitting your shield all the time. I didn’t want to and I tried not to, but that’s how it always was.”
“Good enough. When you came at me, you came sword-side first, like this.” Garvaon demonstrated.
“That was because you were thinking sword, sword, sword when you ought to have been thinking shield, sword, shield, sword, shield. Your shield is every bit as important as your sword. Never forget that.”
He paused to look at his own. “Sometimes I’ve fought men who had never really learned it, and I’ve always known after the second breath. They go down fast.”
I swallowed. “Like I would have, if you’d had a real sword. That first cut to my ankle.”
“Right. Now we’re going to try something different. Switch your shield over to your right hand, and hold the sword in your left. I want you to think shield, sword, shield, sword. Understand?”
So I learned to fight left-handed. It sounds dumb, I know, but it was a good lesson. When the shield is on your right arm and the sword is in your left hand, you use the shield as much as the sword, and that is the way to win. Beginners are always thinking about how they are going to stab or cut. Seasoned fighters think about staying in one piece while they do it. What’s more, they know you can make the shield your weapon and the sword your defense.
But first of all speed. Which is what Garvaon stressed over and over. If you cannot do it fast, you cannot do it. A young knight—as I was—has it in him to be faster than an older one like Garvaon. I knew that, and so did he. But he kept on being faster just the same, because he had fought and practiced so much that it was second nature to him. I did not get a lot of lessons from him. I rode ahead into Jotunland before we had gone much farther. But I learned enough that when I got to Skai some of the knights there, knights who were still famous in Mythgarthr, said I was a better swordsman than most newcomers.
Garvaon was a simple man, and it was that simplicity that made him hard to understand, although I am a simple man myself. He practiced with his men whenever he could, and he taught them to the best of his ability, which was great. He told me once that he was always afraid before the battle, but never afraid once battle was joined. That is the thing that makes men attack too soon, sometimes; but if it ever made Garvaon attack too soon, I never heard the story. When it was time to fight, he told them to follow him and waded into the thick of it. He took pride in his appearance, and in the appearance of his men. He did his duty as he saw it, saw that most men did not, and was a little contemptuous of them because of it. He was the kind of fighting man who sees to it that none of the horses has a loose shoe.