Sir Apropos of Nothing

by Peter David

  The other knights, however, held a contrary view.

  I quickly learned that Umbrage was widely considered a joke among the nobles. Oh, they never said as much to his face, although they probably could have since he would have forgotten it a short time later. Instead they were content to speak of him behind his back. Once several knights were grouped together, making cutting remarks about Umbrage that I could not help but overhear as my “lord” and I approached. Umbrage, on the other hand, appeared oblivious. In fact, when he heard the laughter, he joined in merrily without even knowing what they were laughing about. This, of course, made them laugh all the more.

  Umbrage was maintained at the castle out of the king’s sense of gratitude. In the king’s youth, you see, he once found himself at the hands of a rather merciless group of marauders. Umbrage was a freelance at that time, and stumbled upon the sight of a beardless youth defending himself as best he could against a pack of brutes and thieves. Umbrage stepped in and smote them, rather handily to hear the king’s description of the encounter. Young Runcible learned his savior’s name and swore that, should he ever become a mighty king, Umbrage would always have a place in his service. Umbrage thought nothing of the vow at the time, but years later Runcible did indeed fight his way to the throne of Isteria, and he made good on his promise.By that time, many years had passed, and they had not been especially kind to Umbrage. That did not matter to the king, however. Whenever he looked at the elderly knight, he saw him only through the eyes of his own youth, viewing him as a still-vital warrior and canny gladiator who was deserving of all honors and respect that could possibly be laid at his feet.

  All of that was well and good in the abstract. But the knights did not see Umbrage as anything other than a walking, talking joke.

  I should not have cared, and would not have, save that it had direct impact upon me. Since I was the squire of such a knight, naturally I held the exalted rank of Idiot-By-Association. Therefore I was viewed with the according contempt. In retrospect, I suppose I cannot really blame them. Had I been in their position, I likely would have regarded me in the exact same way. My own infirmities did not help my status, of course, and my ties with the most ludicrous knight in the realm didn’t improve matters.

  As for the other squires, naturally they followed the lead of their lords and masters. They saw that whenever Umbrage was spoken of, it was with disdain, so of course they imitated that attitude when it came to dealing with me. The ringleader of them all, and not coincidentally the squire for the ever-belligerent Sir Coreolis, was a squire who called himself Mace Morningstar. I doubt very much that that was his real name, but rather a nom de guerre that he had adopted for reasons passing understanding. Perhaps he felt that it gave him something to live up to.

  Mace was everything I would have wanted to be, had I actually wanted to be anything. Mace walked with a permanent swagger, and when he spoke, it never seemed as if he was speaking just to one person. Instead he had a tendency to declaim to whomever happened to be in earshot. Furthermore, his voice ascended and descended to peaks and valleys in such a way that it seemed as if the fellow were constantly singing. What he was singing, more often than not, was his own praises.

  Mace was tall, sandy-haired, and powerfully built, and insufferably convinced that he could do just about anything. The most annoying thing was that he was apparently correct. The squires, as a whole, were a fairly tough bunch, but Mace was the toughest of them all, their acknowledged leader. He set the tone to which the others responded.

  Unlike the toughs of my youth, however, Mace and the others felt no need to beat the crap out of me. They made great pretensions over the proper way that “gentlemen” were supposed to act. Whereas as a child I had received bruises and cuts, as a squire I sustained only cutting remarks. I have to admit, I almost preferred the former type, for the latter took much longer to heal. Indeed, sometimes they never did.

  “How fares the brave squire of Sir Umbrage?” Mace would ask with derision. “Get much fighting in? Much training? Slay any dragons today, Apropos? Off on any quests, are you? Look, Apropos! A damsel needs saving! Get to, quickly!” This would, of course, be quickly followed by laughter and looks of disdain.

  I hate to admit it, but it got to me.

  It should not have. Really, I did not care overmuch for the ways of knights. For the most part, I held them in contempt, remember. I knew their dark underbelly, I knew the evil of which they were truly capable. My own presence in the world was a constant reminder.

  But I would watch them during their training periods. Observe their combat skills growing under the careful tutelage of their mentors. They would practice with jousting machines, or with each other. I was never invited to participate in such activities, because we always had to have the knights to which we’d been assigned overseeing us, and since Sir Umbrage was never awake for more than a few minutes at a time, that made my participation somewhat problematic.

  Day passed into month, slipping over into year, and with each day my resentment grew. I believe it surprised the other squires that I continued to remain in their presence. One would have thought that they would admire my dedication. Far from it. They simply assumed that I was too stupid to know when to leave, so they treated me with even greater scorn than ever.

  There were two fairly hideous occurrences during that time. First: Meander the Vagabond King left the area. That was inevitable, of course. It was his nature. Truth to tell, King Runcible played it precisely right. Left to his own devices, facing no challenge or overt threat from the regional monarch, Meander’s attention wandered much as he himself tended to. So off he went with his Journeymen to seek new climes, new challenges, new regions to engage his interest. And with him marched away the unknown murderer of my mother. A great, dangling loose end had just been affixed to my life, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it. After all, I was busy training to be a knight so that I could learn the skills necessary to engage such an enemy, except that the skills were not being given me.

  The second hideous occurrence was when a regional warlord named Shank decided to flex his muscles and muster an army as a means of testing Runcible’s defenses and resolve. Runcible gathered his knights, and announced to them that such a challenge could not go unmet and that he was immediately going to assemble a small army by means of the Draft. The Draft was Runcible’s customary way of choosing who would fight in a war. All the names of the knights were written on small pieces of parchment, and placed in a large circle drawn on the floor in one of the draftiest sections of the castle. It never took very long for a good, stiff breeze to come through, at which point the names would swirl about in a small whirlpool of wind, and a number of them would invariably be blown outside of the circle. These names, selected by the Draft, would be the knights chosen for the army. Odclay the jester would gather the names up, gallivanting and japing as he did so, and then the king with great ceremony read each of the names accompanied by much cheering.

  That particular day, for that particular mission, Sir Umbrage’s name was called. There were the requisite huzzahs, yes, but also an undercurrent of snickering and amusement. It was clearly felt that Umbrage would be less than useless in the endeavor. I also noticed an assortment of sympathetic looks in my direction, accompanied by shaking of heads and sad clucking noises. All of which Mace neatly managed to summarize by sidling up to me, patting me on the back, and saying “Nice knowing you” in that damnable singsong voice.

  Thank God I was drinking heavily by that time. I had Odclay to thank for that.

  The jester had come upon me one evening, sitting in the stables, where I’d been shoveling Titan’s manure, looking and smelling about as pleased over the situation as one might assume me to be. Having had enough of that joyful activity, I had plopped myself down in a far corner and was just staring off into space, probably looking rather forlorn. Odclay rang his little bells in my face. I glared up at him and said, “Get those things away from me or I will shove them
so far up your ass that you’ll jingle when you think.”

  He laughed. It was not, however, a condescending laugh. It sounded almost commiserating.

  “You,” he said after a moment, “need a drink.” He had not spoken with his customary jester gibe. Instead he almost sounded as if he were talking man-to-man.

  I looked at him askance. “Indeed. And what of it?”

  “Can you keep a secret?” He hunkered closer to me and looked most conspiratorial.

  I thought of my origins, of the things that I had wanted to blurt out to the knights but had kept securely tucked away within my breast. “More than you can possibly believe.”

  “Come, then.”

  He rose, shoving his bell stick into his belt to secure it so that it wouldn’t continue to jingle and betray his whereabouts. He paused at the door to the stable, saw that I was just sitting and watching him, and waved with impatience. With a mental shrug, I stood and followed him out, pausing only long enough to shove my hands into the trough outside in order to cleanse them.

  He led me across the courtyard to one of the far walls of the castle and stood there a moment, his hands resting against the structure. Then he pulled, and I realized that he was yanking on some sort of grip in the stony face that I had not seen before, even though I had passed that wall a thousand times during my stay. Without a sound, the section of the wall slid aside on oiled hinges, and he gestured for me to follow. Since he was a jester, he couldn’t help but tiptoe in a mincing manner into the darkness. For my own amusement, I imitated his walk as I followed him.

  We crept down, down a winding stairway that was so dry and dusty that I could barely breathe. Moments later, however, we emerged into an area that I had never ventured into before. We were deep in the castle’s wine cellars. I couldn’t believe it. Barrels, kegs stretching as far as I could see, and no one was guarding it because, really, who would dare drink from the king’s private stock? Well, the jester would dare, of course. Jesters dare all. As for me, I was the titleless, landless squire of a joke-of-a-knight. I had naught to lose.

  Odclay and I drank in silence. He didn’t seem much for conversation, and really, he was a jester. What was there to discuss? Jokes? Mindless cavorting? We simply sat in quiet contemplation of our own progressive inebriation.

  Still … as he drank, somehow Odclay seemed … sad somehow. One wouldn’t expect such from a jester, but this misshapen little man nevertheless came across as something of an object of pity. I wasn’t sure why I pitied him … but I did.

  I would like to tell you that Odclay became my drinking buddy, but I would be lying. I didn’t see him again in the cellars after that. Indeed, he didn’t even appear to acknowledge that we’d spent any time together at all. The next time I spotted him, doing his usual gallivanting for the king, he barely glanced my way. And when he did, it was with no hint of recognition. There was no secret look between us, no wink, no indication that we shared some mysterious and confidential bond. It might as well have not happened at all.

  But it had happened, and I did not forget that secret entrance. I snuck down to the wine cellars every so often, drowning my ennui and boredom in the king’s impressive wine stock. No one noticed. Keep in mind, I had worked and lived in a tavern for my formative years. I knew what was what in terms of the best wines and such, even if I had never seen most of them firsthand before. I knew that if certain bottles disappeared, it would cause a hue and cry that would run the length and breadth of Isteria, and none would rest until the culprit had been found. But no one was keeping track of the contents of ale and mead casks, and it was with those that I concentrated the majority of my imbibing. Once or twice I was almost caught out as unexpected footsteps warned me that the wine steward or some other servant was approaching through the more normal means of entrance. But the wine cellar was vast and I never had any trouble secreting myself away until the danger of detection had gone.

  The day of the departure to fight the dreaded Warlord Shank came upon us apace. I should have been panicked or terrified. I should have been considering packing up everything I owned and vanishing into the nothingness from which I had come. But I was surprisingly calm as the morning sun shone down upon me when our departure date dawned. I can only attribute that composure to the extreme boredom that had enshrouded me during the year or two (time had blurred) that I had spent in useless residence at the castle. One day had become so much like another, with my lack of knightly education and the daily sneers of the other squires, that anything—even personal risk—seemed preferable.

  Besides, I knew that I had a secret fall-back plan. In the event of true, mind-boggling danger … I would simply fall back. Retreat. Run like hell should the need arise. What did I have to lose? No one was going to pay attention to the actions of a mere squire. Besides, if matters looked that disastrous, anyone who saw me flee would likely wind up spitted and gutted by an enemy blade anyway, and would only be able to speak against me if he happened to find a means back from the great beyond. In the absolute worstcase scenario, any survivors who claimed that I had run … why, I would simply say that Sir Umbrage had ordered me to try and maneuver around behind enemy lines, an action that I—as obedient squire—had to oblige. Heaven knew that Umbrage wouldn’t be around to gainsay me. After all, if pitched battle broke out, one did not need to be an oracle to know that Umbrage would be among the first to fall.

  Little did I suspect that he would be, in fact, the very first to fall.

  We were to assemble in the main courtyard at ten in the morning to prepare for the great move-out. Naturally this meant rousting Sir Umbrage earlier than his customary noon. I went to his chambers and woke him, and then woke him again, then again and again, repeatedly, every ten minutes from dawn until about nine. Finally he sat up, blinking away the last vestiges of sleep, and he looked up at me with slightly glazed eyes and said, “And you are … ?”

  “Apropos,” I said.

  “Indeed,” grunted Umbrage. “I’d consider you damned irrelevant, actually, insofar as a good night’s sleep is concerned. Why wake you me at this ungodly hour?”

  It was the most coherent I’d ever heard the old soldier. It almost gave me cause for hope. “War calls, sir. Duty. Battle in the king’s name against a foul enemy.”

  “Oh.” He considered that a moment. “Well … nothing for it then,” he sighed. He swung his veined legs from under the covers and hobbled off to immerse his wrinkled body in a morning bath. When one is engaging an enemy with the intent of slaughtering him, one does not need to offend with bodily odors as well.

  I watched out a high window as the knights assembled. Everyone’s armor was polished to an impressive sheen. I even spotted Mace Morningstar secretly admiring his reflection in Sir Coreolis’s back. There was laughter and raucous merriment, and they exuded such confidence that I almost wanted to be one of their number. Almost. Then sense and reality reasserted their grip upon me. I never wanted to lose sight of the fact that they were, at heart, the enemy. To destroy my enemy, I had no intention whatsoever of becoming him as well.

  “Squire,” came Sir Umbrage’s voice. I turned and saw that the old man had bathed and was now wearing the appropriate undergarments. “My armor, if you please.”

  I went to the cabinets where the armor was stored. I had taken the precaution of polishing it the night before. It did not shine as much as the armor tended to by obsessive squires who lovingly treated it every day, but ‘twas enough. ‘Twould serve. Umbrage looked it over and then nodded with brisk approval. “You’ll help me on with this, then?” he asked.

  There was something about him … a sense of lost nobility, of inherent tragedy. Somehow I instinctively knew that he was not one of those number who had assaulted my mother that stormy night long ago. I knew that such an action would be beneath Umbrage. He, of all the knights in the castle, was so “old school” in his manner that he would probably have been repulsed by the deeds done that awful evening. For the first time in our association, I found m
yself not only warming up to the old man, but to the very concept of knighthood itself.

  “It’d be an honor, sir,” I said, and I meant it.

  “Good. You’re a much brighter lad than that fool who woke me this morning out of a sound sleep.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, and meant it somewhat less.

  I armored him. The suit was still loose on him, apparently held over from a time when he was more muscular and filled it out better. But there was nothing to be done for it at that point. We headed out to join the others in the main courtyard.

  If the other knights held Umbrage in contempt, as I knew they did, they did not let that sentiment show. Instead, as Umbrage slowly made his way through the assemblage, he received only nods of acknowledgment and kind words about how healthy he looked. He was silent throughout, nodding and accepting the comments without reply. I, in the meantime, brought Titan from the stable. The horse looked tall and proud, and I suspected that of the three of us—Umbrage, the horse, and myself—it was the beast who was the most likely to acquit himself honorably in combat. As the king prepared to address us from the upper balcony, from where he made all such speeches, I helped Sir Umbrage climb aboard Titan. I had my own equipment, meager as it was, with me as well. I gripped my trusty staff with my right hand. My sword was slung over my back. Since my right leg was still quite weak, I had no desire to impede my already questionable ambulatory skills by weighing down my stride. I saw little likeihood that I would have need of the blade anyway; I had no real formal training with it, and besides, I had no intention of dueling with some monstrous soldier. My main use for it would be cutting through underbrush. I noticed the sidelong glances from other squires, the barely contained snickering, but chose to ignore it.