Swan Knight's Son

by John C. Wright

  Gil just scratched the dog’s head. “Dog!” he said. “Best animal ever.”

  Ruff looked proud.

  Chapter Four: Tough Training

  1. Bruno

  They hiked and rested and hiked some more. The heat of noon had passed, and the sun was in the west, high in a cloudless blue sky, when Ruff led the way down the rocks of a gorge. As Gil descended from rock to rock, sometimes walking, sometimes going on all fours, he could see a slender waterfall, endlessly roaring. It fell in a series of three great steps from shelf to woody shelf into a deep pool it had carved out over the centuries. One rock, taller than the others, stood up in the middle of the water.

  Around the pool was a fringe of rushes and cattails, brilliant in the sunlight with insects and the scent of mud. Beyond was a circle of waist-high grass and man-high rocks that had fallen in ages past from the surrounding green cliffs.

  A stream meandered from the pool into the surrounding wood. The trees to either side of the stream met overhead, forming a living colonnade with a leafy roof, as shadowy and solemn as the nave of a cathedral. Brilliant glints from slanting sunbeams that pierced that canopy danced on the moving carpet of the waters like flakes of fire.

  Gil walked toward the pool until his feet started making sloppy, wet noises in the grass. He looked down at Ruff. The dog was almost invisible in the tall grass but had his nose sticking up like the periscope of a submarine.

  “There! There!” said Ruff.

  Ahead, Gil could see nothing but a brown lumpish rock looming up between the reeds near the shore of the pond. It had an odd texture. It seemed to be coated with moss that looked brown, as if it had dried up in the sun. But the moss was quite bristly.

  “I don’t see anyone. Is he here? Whoever we are looking for?”

  “Right there!” said Ruff.

  Gil stepped closer, wading through the waist-high grass, his footsteps sinking a bit into the muddy soil. There was something odd about the rock. It was rounded in its main mass, with a smaller hump above that and two lumps to either side that almost looked like shoulders. In fact, the whole mass looked almost like….

  Then it moved.

  The lump was a bear, who was facing away from Gil. The beast straightened up and turned and looked over his shoulder. Instead of a right eye, there was only a mass of scar tissue about an empty socket. In the bear’s muzzle was a live fish, still twitching and dripping pond water.

  The one-eyed bear turned massively and padded forward. Gil backed up step by step but took his hiking staff in both hands. The bear stopped, lowered his head, dropped the fish, and put his paw on it. Gil could not see the fish under the tall grass, but he saw the grassblades shaking as the fish flopped.

  “I was about to eat my lunch,” said the bear. “But here you are, stomping and tramping up like a blind thing. Ready to step on me, eh? You’ve riled up my food.”

  Gil bowed his head without taking his eyes from the bear. “I beg your pardon, Master Bear.”

  The one-eyed bear stared at him without speaking for a while. Then, its small ears twitched. “I was not riled up. I heard your racket coming down the cliffs. You should apologize to the fish.”

  Gil said, “I am not apologizing to your lunch.”

  “Really? What if I say you must?”

  Gil drew a breath and set his feet and tightened his grip on his hiking staff. “Who knows? Try it and see. But ask yourself if the answer is worth it. Curiosity gets men into trouble all the time. Bears can be wiser.”

  “A good answer, but I can smell your fear.”

  Gil nodded warily. “I can smell it, too. But you cannot see my back because I am not running.”

  The bear grunted. “Also a good answer. So. You think you can take me?”

  “No, sir. That thought honestly never entered my mind. But I think I can hurt you, maybe poke out your other eye before you kill me, and I was thinking what a shame that would be.”

  “Why is that a shame? If that happens, I win.”

  “Yes, sir. But at what cost? Is it worth it? I have heard that no man builds a tower without he first counts out the cost, lest he leave off with the tower half-built and be a laughingstock!”

  “Bears don’t build towers. What does it mean?”

  “I am not sure, but I know it is wise.”

  “Hmm. What are you doing in my part of the woods? Man and bear eat much the same stuffs, and I don’t need the competition.”

  “I was following my dog.”

  “Where is he?”

  Ruff came crawling forward on his belly, head down, through the tall grass toward the bear, whining and letting his ears droop. “Sir! Sir! We need someone to train my boy here, see? What do you think? What do you think? To be a knight!”

  The bear sat down heavily on his haunches, still keeping a forepaw on the flopping fish. “Me? I don’t know about stuff like that. Why should I? He smells like an elf, a little bit. What is he? A mongrel? Half an elf? I don’t like elfs. Thieving little pests, elfs.”

  Ruff whined piteously, rolling his eyes, and belly-crawled another foot forward, “Yes! Yes! But what if he beats up some for you? What then? What about that?”

  The bear twisted his head to bring his one good eye around to glare at the crawling, sniveling dog. “You’ve eaten elf food, Son of Old Hemp.”

  “I was hungry! I was hungry!”

  The bear brought his head back up to stare coldly at Gil. “You are the boy who talks to beasts, aren’t you? I heard the rabbits yammering about you.”

  “News travels fast,” said Gil. “What is your name?”

  “Beasts do not have names until a Son of Adam names us,” said the bear. “But, yes, I am the one you were looking for.”

  “What did the rabbits say about me?”

  “Great ones for gossip, rabbits,” continued the one-eyed bear, with no change of expression in his cold eye. “You can step into a meadow with rabbits, and they will ignore you and just go on chewing clover. Even come right up and talk to you if there are a bunch of them, to swap rumors and such. Only come up in pairs, though. Each one thinks you’ll eat his brother first, see. No sense of loyalty. Which is the rabbit you can trust?”

  Gil sighed. “My Mom always asks me riddles like this. I would say none.”

  “Good answer. Why?”

  The bear had not relaxed his gaze. Gil, however, put the heel of his hiking staff to the marshy ground and leaned on it, for he supposed the bear would not attack while waiting for an answer. Gil said, “Rabbits will always say what other rabbits say because they are afraid to disagree, but they will never check to see if what they are repeating is truth.”

  “And bears?”

  “Sir, I expect bears to tell the truth.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “Because I expect no bear fears a disagreement.”

  The bear nodded. “Good answer. I like you.”

  Gil breathed out a pent-up breath he had not realized he was holding.

  “Not sure I can help you, though. The rabbits said you are looking to be taught how to fight?”

  “To be trained as a knight.”

  The bear shook his head. “Knighthood is something men did not learn from any beast of the earth or spirit from below, so I cannot train you in its mysteries. Not me. I can show you a few moves, maybe some basic physical training, but chivalry is really not my field. Let me chow down and think this over. If I agree, what name will you call me?”

  “Um. You are brown. How about Bruno?”

  “I was hoping for something more like bee-wolf.”

  “Master Bear, I can call you Bee-wolf if you like.”

  The bear gave him a cold look. “That is not how it works. To fight, you have to think like a beast, think about what is before your nose here and now, not looking over your shoulder. No regrets, no hopes, no fretting about tomorrow. You named me my name, and you cannot take it back. If you land a blow and break a bone, you cannot take it back. See?”

&nb
sp; “Yes, I see.”

  “And Bruno is a good name. Sounds solid. Not like Moth. That is a name that is neither here nor there. Always flitting, moths. Hmph.”

  “How did you know my name, ah, Bruno?”

  The bear was not listening and did not answer. Instead, Bruno spoke, as if musing aloud, “A good name giver means you have a good eye. So you might make a good fighter. I don’t know. Lots to think over. I’ll be back again after lunch if you are still here.” And he bowed his head, picked up his fish, and moved away heavily but silently through the tall grass to a point near the cliff where the westerly sun was already casting a narrow slip of dark shade.

  2. The Basics

  Lesson One was in how to awe and terrify. Bruno showed Gil how to rear up and raise his arms overhead and roar at the top of his lungs.

  “This part is important,” said the bear. “Critters get stupid when they fight. If you hold your forepaws up like that, you look like you are ten-feet-tall. Also, make as much racket as you can. That shows you are not scared. Do you have any pots and pans to bang together? Works wonders.”

  While Gil was practicing waving his arms overhead and uttering shouts loud enough to echo off the canyon walls, he heard a lilt of girlish laughter in the distance.

  Gil looked.

  Kneeling on the rock in the middle of the pool was a shapely young woman in a skintight black wetsuit.

  She had long hair as dark as her suit which she lay over her shoulder. Even from a distance, Gil recognized from her arm motions that she was combing her locks. Her face and hands, by contrast, seemed very white, white as a lily petal. Her feet were bare.

  And she was giggling at him.

  Without warning, the bear cuffed Gil smartly, knocking him from his feet. “Not paying attention, is it? Look sharp! Keep up with the practice. Roar!”

  The length and thickness of the grass and the softness of the muddy, marshy soil beneath saved Gil from any broken bones, but the blow had dazed him. “But there is someone watching us!”

  The bear growled, “Let ’em!”

  So Gil continued to roar and shout and wave his arms, painfully aware of his audience. Time went by, but whenever Gil stole a glance toward the girl, she was still combing. He wondered how long it took this girl to do her hair. His mother had hair twice as long, and she did not spend hour after hour combing it.

  The bear said, “Now for Lesson Two. Fleeing. Run up a slope if you want to get out of reach, but down slope if you want to wear them out. Bears and horses aren’t built for running down sharp slopes. Bears can climb trees, but knights on horses can’t. Ready to run?”

  Lesson Two lasted a long time. The girl combing her hair on the rock watched as Gil was chased by the galloping bear round and round the pool, splashing through mud and water, trying to lift his heavy legs out of clinging and sticky soil, being lashed in the face by stubborn reeds and grass.

  This running took Gil nearer the pond, and he got a better look at the girl. She wore a pair of round mirrored glasses that hid her eyes, but, strangely enough, they seemed to be sunglasses, not swimming goggles.

  There was a flash of brightness in her hand as she stroked her hair, and Gil realized her comb was a comb of gold.

  She pushed her glasses to the top of her head, revealing eyes that were large, dark, and with very thick lashes. She waved cheerfully when she saw Gil turn his head her way.

  Then, she hid her mouth behind her slender white hand when the bear slapped Gil off his feet, and the peals of her silvery laughter echoed from across the water and mingled with the music of the falls.

  “Look sharp!” bellowed the bear.

  Lesson Three was in how to play dead. Gil, now coated in sweat and mud and bruised from where the bear had cuffed him, was taught how to back up while avoiding eye contact and then throw himself supine. “Don’t resist if a bear flips you over,” said Bruno. “And keep in mind, playing dead only works on my folk. We don’t eat dead meat.”

  Gil said, “What if I fight someone who does eat dead meat?”

  “Play live.” And the bear smote him again, for talking while he was pretending to be dead.

  “But how do I actually fight?” asked Gil.

  “Fight? A man fight a bear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got a cannon? A big gun of some sort? All the humans I meet carry guns.”

  “Nope,” said Gil. “Nothing like that.”

  “A sword? Knights have things called swords. Like a knife, but bigger.”

  “I got a stick,” said Gil.

  So Lesson Four was staff fighting. The sun, by this time, had traveled beyond the cliffs, the whole gorge was in shadow, and the air was cooler.

  Bruno said, “Beasts like me get confused when you humans hit us with something at a distance. Best to use a stick. It is like magic to us. Hold it like I told you. Remember, the hand and leg should agree, which means whichever leg is forward, the same hand should be forward on the staff. No, you are holding it wrong….”

  There followed another long, long period of the bear effortlessly blocking Gil’s best blows and slapping Gil easily to the grass. The bear spoke while Gil struck again and again with his hiking staff.

  “The key is to hit the head, the eyes, the snout, and the chest. Those are the weak spots. A swift kick or hard blow to the foe’s left hind leg is good. Or aim for the top of the neck, just below the jawline. That could stun ’em. Then run away because anyone you knock down like that is not going to be too happy when he gets back up.”

  Gil glanced over at the rock, but the shapely raven-haired maiden was gone. He felt a moment of strange emptiness, but then he saw that she had merely moved to a smaller, flatter rock nearer to the shore. But then the bear swatted Gil again and sent him flying into the wet grass. “Look sharp!” bellowed the bear.

  When the staff broke, it was time for Lesson Five: grappling. “This is a simple move, and it always works. Rear up on your hind legs, get your forepaws around the prey, and hug him. This will crush his lungs and break his ribs. And rip off his face with your teeth while you are doing it; that always demoralizes him.”

  Gil and the bear wrestled, or, rather, the bear crushed Gil helplessly while Gil struggled pathetically. Because the bear could not sheathe his claws, despite his attempts to be careful, Gil ended up with many long, shallow, and very painful lacerations on his back. And each time he climbed up out of the muddy grass, coated with blood and black with contusions, the next bear hug was even stronger, lasted longer, and drove him nearer to blacking out. The final time he did not even remember as the crushing grip was so powerful and so painful.

  But he did remember that he heard the girl laughing a merry peal of laughter as he flopped once more to the soggy, trampled grass and mud. Then, he passed out.

  3. Chow

  When Gil regained consciousness, he leaned forward and shrugged out of the remnants of his torn shirt. Ruff came out of the grass and licked the claw wounds on Gil’s back. Bruno said, “We’re almost done for the day. Come back every day here before dawn, and we do this until the first snow falls, and you might start to get the hang of fighting.”

  The bear was talking about a period of time between ten and fourteen weeks. Gil sighed a long, sad sigh. “I would love nothing better, Master Bear. But my Mom says I have to find honest work. How do I make money?”

  The bear said, “Money? What is that?”

  “You use it to get food.”

  The bear said, “Oh! Come on. I’ll show you.”

  They waded through the reeds into the water of the pool itself, about chest deep on the boy, waist deep on the bear, who was a foot or two taller. “It is a little early in the season, but there are fish here. They are easy to catch, and this is good training for your speed and hand-eye coordination. Don’t try slapping the fish out of the water onto shore. That is a showoff mistake. The fish, even if it is dead, could fall in the water and be carried away by the current. The important part is to snag the fish wit
h the front of your muzzle when you strike, and then hold the fish against the crook of your elbow. This lets you grip the body securely with your molars and carry the fish to the shore.”

  They were closer to the brunette on the rock than they had been all day. The girl, by this time, had finished combing and was starting to braid her hair. She looked quite pretty kneeling on the rock with her elbows above her head as she braided a French braid on herself.

  When she saw Gil once again looking at her, she put her nose in the air and turned partly away from him. Once, he caught her glancing sidelong over her shoulder curiously at him, as if she wanted to see whether he had noticed he was being ignored.

  And then Bruno hit him in the face with a fish. “Look sharp!” bellowed the bear.

  Gil splashed and lunged and slipped and slid and grabbed. Again and again he plunged into the water with his hands or threw himself into the mud, pursuing some elusive shape.

  He looked down and saw, there beneath the waters, her pretty eyes hidden behind the round lenses of her sunglasses, the face of the girl. She stood up, and water sluiced from her head, shoulders, and arms. She had her hair up in a jeweled snood or hair-net so that a bun of twined hair, about the size of her two fists, was held at the back of her neck in a shape like a lobster’s tail. The interstices of the snood were set with pearls and opals, and little scales or flakes of gold and lapis lazuli hung at her temples and ears and between her dark eyebrows.

  The mirrored sunglasses hid her expression. In her hand was a living fish, writhing and gasping. She tossed it lightly to Gil, who, surprised, slapped the slender silvery fish in midair, let it slip out of his grasp, and watched it fall into the water.

  He jerked up his knees in a convulsive motion, lunging through the mass of stubborn water, and threw himself after the fish. He slapped at the darting shape with his hands and managed to yank it toward his mouth. The only way to retain his grip was to clutch the fish with both hands and bite into it with his teeth. The frantic tailfin slapped him in the left cheek and eye as he splashed toward shore.