Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  The two went to the cable tier and came back after half an hour.

  “Aĩ, he is resolute,” said Prince Alicio.

  I toyed with my wine-cup for a moment. “I have no desire to kill him,” I said, “but it seems there must be a fight.” I turned to the captain. “Captain Bodil, may we turn your vessel into a dueling arena? For it seems to me that we are on the open sea, and no country’s laws apply to what we do here.”

  “In that case,” said Bodil, “why not knock Wilmot on the head tonight, and drop him over the side?”

  “I don’t wish to be a murderer,” I said.

  Captain Bodil shrugged. “These things happen more often than landsmen imagine,” he said. “Thieves and hexen—witches—do not thrive on sea-craft, and no one asks what becomes of them.”

  There was a witch on board, I thought, but no mortal man could harm her. “A seaman might go overboard in the dead of night,” I said, “but not a knight of the Red Horse and son of the Duke of Waitstill. It would raise too many questions.”

  “Even knights can stumble and fall in the dark,” said Bodil. “But I will refrain from causing that stumble, if you wish it.”

  “Perhaps I can so contrive the fight so that no one is injured,” I said. “I wonder if you gentlemen will give the plan your support?”

  “Insofar as it is compatible with my honor,” said Dom Nemorino. “But why, if he is not harmed, would Wilmot not challenge you again?”

  Prince Alicio looked at me thoughtfully. “I think Dom Keely-Fay thinks of his fight with Sir Edelmir, that was so humiliating that Sir Edelmir dared not show his face in Howel ever again.”

  “There were other reasons Sir Edelmir fled,” said I. “But yes, that is what is in my mind.”

  Captain Bodil asked what happened in the fight with Westley. Hearing it, he nodded. “I hope you will not up-end my boat!”

  “I hope to manage without such a sacrifice,” said I. I offered my notion to the others, and while some were dubious, none could think of a better.

  “Very well,” said Nemorino. “We shall do it! I will offer to stand as Wilmot’s second, and if he does not agree to your conditions, I will fight him myself!”

  I turned to Prince Alicio. “Your Highness,” I said, “will you do me the honor of standing as my second?”

  Alicio viewed the idea without pleasure. “I disapprove of the whole foolish idea,” he said, “but if this will help to resolve the trouble, I will consent.”

  Which is how, the next morning, I found myself standing on the end of the main yard, the sea rolling beneath me, while I held a top-maul in my hand and waited for the man who wanted to kill me.

  * * *

  Dom Nemorino had told Wilmot that, as the duel would be fought on a ship, I had insisted it be fought in a seamanlike way, high on the main yard, and with a sailor’s weapons. Wilmot was so eager for the fight that he consented.

  Prince Alicio had insisted the fight take place the next morning, to give Wilmot a chance to regain his sanity. I doubted that Orlanda would permit such a recovery, but I agreed that the attempt should be made. Once Wilmot assented to my terms, Captain Bodil removed his bonds and made his stay in the cable tier more comfortable, though he posted two strong seamen by the hatch to keep him from escaping and murdering us all in our beds.

  Kiminge was hove to at first light, the spritsail and the foremast sails laid aback, and the mainmast still full, so that the forces on the ship were balanced, and she went neither forward nor back, but sawed gently back and forth. The wind had veered northwest during the night, and the blue-gray swells were regular, so the yard on which I stood pitched slowly to starboard and then to larboard. I steadied myself with one hand on the lift, the heavy rope used to raise or lower the end of the yard. I wore sailor’s trousers and a leather jerkin, which I hoped might provide a bit of padding if things went badly for me. My feet were bare, to provide a sure grip on the yard.

  The crew watched from the deck below, and I saw Countess Marcella and Elisa d’Altrey on the poop, their pale oval faces turned up to me. Smoke from the stove in the camboose reached me, and I knew that the crew would have their breakfast as soon as the fight was over.

  Prince Alicio and Dom Nemorino stood with the captain in the maintop, and we all waited for Wilmot to make his way up the shrouds. Wilmot was stripped to his shirt, and I had a good view of his red bull neck as he climbed steadily, his eyes fixed upward, on his goal. When he encountered the futtock shrouds, he hesitated, then decided against the lubber’s hole and made a slow inverted crawl to the top. I found this display of courage and surefootedness more discouraging than I would have liked.

  Wilmot remained in the maintop for a while, recovering his breath and talking with the others. Then Captain Bodil handed him his top-maul, and for the first time Wilmot turned to face me. Fury seemed to twitch like lightning across his face. He swung himself around the topmast shrouds and took a careful step onto the main yard. The yard was a hundred feet long, and we were at least forty feet apart.

  “Sir Quillifer!” called Captain Bodil. “Are you ready?”

  I affected a casual tone, for all that my heart was beginning to knock at my ribs, and I was beginning to wonder how I found myself here, a hundred feet above the water, trapped on the end of a yardarm while a man glared at me with murderous intent.

  “As Sir Brynley pleases,” I said. “For this affair falls entirely on him.”

  “I am ready!” called Wilmot in a voice of triumphant rage.

  “Then begin!” called Bodil.

  I released the lift, waited till the ship’s roll raised the yard under me, and then advanced toward Wilmot, walking slightly downhill on my bare feet. Wilmot cocked his maul over his shoulder and began a slow advance on his tight-laced latchet shoes. It was safe enough for an experienced sailor to walk here, for the center part of the spar was over a yard across in the middle, wider than the paved walkways on most streets, and it tapered but slightly toward the ends. The main topsail billowed out to my left, out of reach. If the wind veered very suddenly and the sail went aback, it might sweep both of us clean off the yard, but the odds were very much against this ever happening. Should either of us fall, we might make a snatch at the footrope, which lay in its stirrups below the yard. This was a rope the seamen would stand on when making or furling sail, their upper bodies folded over the yard as they fisted the heavy canvas.

  If we failed to seize the footrope, we had a hundred feet to fall to the water. Captain Bodil had launched one of the ship’s boats, and it waited to rescue us if we fell.

  I held the top-maul in both hands as I advanced. It was a wooden hammer with a haft two feet long and a five-pound head that was pointed on one end and blunt on the other. The maul was used to bang home the wooden fid that supported the topmast or, when anchoring, to knock away the bight of the chain that kept the anchor on the cathead, or for any other task that needed a heavy weight, like knocking a half-mad knight off a main yard.

  Wilmot had his maul cocked over his right shoulder, which meant he was restricted in his attack to a sidearm swing at my left side, or an overhand blow straight at my head. Given his homicidal intentions, I was inclined to believe the latter, but I hoped to be ready for the strike at my side as well. I stopped my advance and waited.

  When he was just out of range, he hesitated, and I saw a flicker in his eyes that indicated he was appraising both his position and mine. I didn’t want him thinking at all, so I donned my insolent-apprentice face. “Well, Sir Brynley,” said I. “Here I find you in a common sailor’s place, and with a workman’s tool. Where is your brave knighthood now?”

  Rage drew his lips back from his teeth, and he shuffled forward and let the maul fly at my head. I jumped back, confident that my bare feet would find purchase when they landed. I landed easily enough, but I felt the wind of the top-maul on my face as it whirred past. The maul spun on in its circle, and Wilmot was twisted around by the weight of his weapon, and so compromised was his ba
lance that I had but to advance and prod his shoulder with the head of my maul to push Wilmot clean off the yard.

  Wilmot gave a cry of pure spleen as he tumbled from the yard, but one hand reached out and snatched the footrope, and he bounced sharply in the air like a string-toy dangled before a cat. The crowd of watchers on the deck gave a shout, and I was surprised that his own tumbling weight hadn’t torn his hand free. Wilmot dangled as his top-maul spun into the gulf below, and then he got his other hand on the rope and kicked his feet up to bring one heel over the footrope. With a cry of savage pleasure he rolled himself safely up onto the rope, where he paused for a moment, panting for breath.

  “I will need another hammer!” he called.

  “Sir Brynley,” said Prince Alicio, “to continue the fight would be unseemly. Sir Quillifer spared you when he could have broken your head.”

  Wilmot turned toward the maintop and snarled. “I don’t need a foot-licking giglet of a foreigner to tell me what I may do!” said he. “Someone bring another hammer to the what-d’ye-call-it—the platform.”

  Another top-maul was sent for. I stood over Wilmot as he went through the uncertain business of getting his hands on the yard and both feet on the footrope, and I considered how easily I could crack his skull, and wondered at this aspect of our fine civilization, that in these fights the lunatic is given an equal chance with a sane man.

  Wilmot went back to the maintop on the footrope, then swung himself onto the platform. Prince Alicio turned his back on him, and was no doubt debating in his mind whether his princely honor demanded challenging Wilmot himself, and whether the Compassionate Pilgrim himself would stand for being called a foot-licking giglet.

  I retired to the end of the yardarm, held the lift for balance, and waited until one of the hands brought up a new top-maul. Wilmot took the maul without a word, then went back onto the yard.

  “Are the gentlemen ready?” asked Captain Bodil. I heard scorn in his words.

  Wilmot fixed me with a snarl. “I am ready,” he proclaimed.

  I merely let go of the lift and shrugged. Wilmot came forward, and I advanced toward him. He hadn’t cocked the maul over one shoulder, as he had before, but held it before him like a quarterstaff. Whatever attack he planned would be more deliberate than the swing that had sent him into the abyss, and I suspected he’d been thinking again, a course I hoped to discourage.

  “A fine ape you made, Sir Brynley,” I told him, “dangling from the footrope with one hand and shrieking like a monkey.” I affected to consider him. “What beast will you turn next, I wonder? Perhaps a salmon?”

  “A better beast than you,” he said, and dropped the head of his maul to swing up at me from below, a blow aimed straight for my courting tackle. I jumped back and let my own maul-head fall, and knocked his wide, preserving the next generation of Quillifers. I shifted forward to strike him in the face with the butt-end of the weapon, but he evaded the blow and swung his maul backhand. I blocked with my haft and felt lucky he had not managed to get all his weight into the blow, for it would have knocked me off the yard.

  We both drew back to consider what might follow. “That was a foul blow, Sir Brynley,” said I. “Hardly worthy of an honorable knight.”

  “I need not trouble my honor when fighting a butcher’s son!” he snarled.

  “Sir Brynley”—I smiled—“I am right glad to hear you say that. For here I have striven to fight in a way worthy of an honorable knight, and to cherish mercy and avoid spilling your brains into the sea.” I ventured a snarl. “You claim gentle birth, but you have no more manners than a cockle-seller. And since you insist on viewing me only as a butcher’s son, I will be that son, and I will treat you as my father would treat some old, useless, half-imbecile bull.” And as I saw him turn pale, I added, “You are lucky I have not a shop here, for I would hang you from an iron hook, cut you into pieces, and make pies of you.”

  And though by this point of the encounter I meant every word I uttered, I was in fact delaying the decisive moment, for I knew a swell was about to lift the ship and cock my end of the main yard into the sky. And once the yard became a road leading down to Wilmot, I launched myself at him, thrusting the butt of the top-maul like a lance for his face. He ducked the strike but had no time to attack himself, for I was thrusting at him continually with the maul-butt and backing him down the yard. It was the strike of the peasant that Lipton had taught me, a vicious way of fighting inside an enemy’s guard. He managed finally to swing the maul-head at me, feebly at first, and then with desperation, but I parried each blow and kept thrusting with my weapon. I thrust three times for his face, to get his guard up high, and then I dropped the maul-head low and crushed his knee. I saw the agony on Wilmot’s face as his leg failed him, and I had just time enough before he fell to swing the maul round with both hands and smash him on the breastbone. That was enough force to throw him far from the footrope, and down he plummeted.

  I had forgot that I had backed him up the length of the yard, and the ship was rolling, which put the hull below him rather than the sea. Wilmot fell, his limbs churning the air like those of a chick falling from the nest, until he struck the shrouds below, and from the shrouds he bounced into the water as if the ship itself was shrugging him off. He vanished beneath the waves, and though the ship’s boat rowed straight to the place where he had disappeared, never did they find him.

  Sir Brynley Wilmot, Knight of the Red Horse and third son of the Duke of Waitstill, now lodged in a watery grave.

  * * *

  I spent the day in disgust with myself. I had cudgeled my head with schemes to preserve Wilmot’s life, and they had come to nothing, for at the moment I had swung the top-maul for his heart, I had intended nothing but murder, and I felt my own responsibility keenly.

  I had probably killed men in battle at Exton Scales, but that was in a melee, with swords and pikes slashing at figures half seen in the gunsmoke. I did not know those men, and I had no quarrel with any of them. Whereas Wilmot I knew; the fight had been a personal matter. The quarrel, I thought, was not so much between me and Wilmot, but the result of a far more personal quarrel with Orlanda, who had made Wilmot her creature.

  Everyone from Captain Bodil to Rufino Knott did their best to cheer me, but I was not minded to take consolation.

  Yet one good thing came of it, for I think it finally made you take notice of me. I saw your black eyes on me in the common room, as we sat in silence around the breakfast table, and I felt as if you were regarding me for the first time.

  “Sir Quillifer,” you said, “you are a more interesting man than I suspected.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I remember your words a few months later. “He challenged you, and he died. You tried to save him, and you failed. Yet why blame yourself? It was his choice all along.”

  “At the last, I wanted him dead.”

  “So did I. So did everyone. The hearts of everyone on the ship were lightened when he fell.” Your brows knit scornfully. “The world will not care if there is one halfwit knight the less.” You took my hand and looked close into my eyes. “The world cares not about anyone, and that is why we must care one for another—and in order to do that profitably, we must first decide who is worth caring for.” You leaned close, and I felt the touch of your warm breath as you whispered in my ear. “You and I, and no one else. Between us we are the world, and no one else matters.”

  * * *

  I seem to recall that I played many hands of cards on that voyage. It was the most harmless activity I could think of, and kept my mind occupied with strategies that had nothing to do with death or war or conspiracy. Countess Marcella kindly partnered me in rentoy, against Alicio and Nemorino. She was most charming in sending me signals, winking and twitching her brows, sticking out her tongue and making signs with her fingers. At times the whole table was helpless with laughter, and my melancholy was forgotten.

  Marcella also very kindly let you play in her place, and out of compassion
for your lack of funds, let you play with her money. And so I came to know you as a subtle player, keen at sending false signals to our opponents and playing your own cards with skill. I had thought you haughty, and so you were, but now I realized that the haughtiness was a result of an honest estimation of your own worth. It is not for you to bandy words with lesser mortals.

  We won enough money to buy a fine carriage, and four fine horses to draw it, though I believe we intended to invest it more wisely than in horseflesh.

  Those of us from Duisland did our best to speak the language of Loretto on the voyage. My own knowledge of the language was crude, since it was acquired in various port cities, and my vocabulary was drawn from several local dialects. But yet I had studied in school the language of the Aekoi, who had conquered Loretto and Bonille fifteen hundred years ago, and it was from the tongue called “New Aekoi” that the language of Loretto had descended. After the Aekoi fell, the northern part of the country had been occupied by the Sea-Kings and then the Osby Lords, and they had left their imprint on the tongue, and provided most of the local nobility. In the north they said aĩ for “yes,” but in the south si. In the north a cooking-pot was a caudron, in the south a caldero; and when a northern lord bordered his property with a hedge, it was a fossé, not a haie. When Prince Alicio marched to battle in the north, he went to werre; but if his battlefield were in the south, he fought in a conflitto.

  As the royal family of Loretto had originated in the south, the southern dialect was considered “pure” and free of foreign influence, for all that it was a bastard child of the unrefined tongue spoken not by Aekoi philosophers and rhetoricians, but by the soldiers and merchants who occupied the country. But the vocabulary mattered less than the accent—the northern accent was considered coarse, and so I endeavored to polish the north from my tongue, and learn to make my words mince and strut and dance the pompous pavane. Dom Nemorino said I made good progress, though Prince Alicio withheld his opinion. Both, however, praised Countess Marcella’s mastery of their language.