Swan Knight's Sword

by John C. Wright

  On the second day, at dawn, his first opponent was one of the squires from Uffern House. It was the handsome Vanir lad, whose name Gil had forgotten. He came riding up on a horse and banged the shield with the butt of his spear, and Gil stepped up on the bridge and blocked his way.

  Because he was on a covered bridge, the Vanir could not come at him without dismounting. Dismounted, the Vanir could not use his lance. He drew his sword and came forward. Gil’s staff had a longer reach than the sword, and Gil had quicker reflexes and stronger arms, so all he had to do was dart backward after every blow to his foe’s helm, kneecap, stomach, wrist, or neckpiece. After the fifth blow Gil was unharmed, and the squire was laid out cold.

  Gil and Drwdydwg (that was who the Vanir had been riding) chatted a while in the friendly fashion while Gil tied the Vanir lad, stripped of his armor, onto the saddle like a sack of laundry.

  Dry said, “You’d best take care! Fjolnir son of Freyr came racing here to find you ahead of the knights! But they will be here ere long!”

  Sir Dwnn son of Dygflwng came at noon. He swelled up to the size of a tree, but Gil waited under the roof of the covered bridge, which the knight was evidently reluctant to destroy. So he shrank down to human size, but then called upon his other peculiarity, which was that he could issue a tremendous heat from his body. He came at Gil with sword and shield, and his skill was greater than that of any squire, so it was after many hard blows taken and received that Sir Dwnn’s foot broke through the smoking and smoldering board where he stood and trapped his leg. Gil stepped on the man’s shield, trapping his arm, and smote him on the helm with a blow like a golfer driving a golfball down the fairway. The helm rang like a bell.

  As before, Gil spoke with the horse, took the armor, and tied the unconscious body to the saddle.

  At dusk came Sir Iaen son of Iscawin, cloaked in invisibility, and riding a jenny small enough to fit under the bridge. He was a skilled and cunning fighter, and if he had fought fairly without fairy tricks, Gil would have fought fairly also, and Sir Iaen might well have defeated Gil.

  As it was, Gil stood facing the other way, pretending to be deceived by Iaen’s illusion (a convincing image shaped out of colored mist of Sir Iaen on a roaring lion), and he waited. When Iaen charged and was halfway across the bridge, Gil asked the she-mule to halt, which she did, suddenly and stubbornly. Gil asked the many bats beginning to emerge from the swamps to flock around Sir Iaen’s head. The man flailed at the bats with sword and shield, ignoring Gil, whom he presumed to be spell-caught. Gil stepped over, took Iaen’s left leg in both hands, and threw him off the mule. Iaen’s head struck the ceiling of the covered bridge, and the mule kicked him on the way down.

  She refused to carry the unknightly elf knight back home, so Gil made Iaen limp home in his linen underthings. He hung the captured armor nicely next to the other suits on the pillars of the bridge.

  That night, two headless men and a headless boy on a horse attacked him.

  Each man came at Gil from opposite sides of the bridge. Each brandished a knife in one hand and his disembodied head in the other, eyes glowing with eerie light.

  Gil was astonished and disappointed at how easy these fearful beings were to defeat. They had no proper fighting stance, no shield, no skill. Aside from the poisonous smoke they blew out of their mouths, Gil was not sure they had any weapons at all.

  With a blow like a batter hitting a homerun, Gil knocked the head out of the closest enemy’s hand. The screaming head was dashed against a bridge post, and the skull was shattered and cracked. Gil was shocked when the headless body fell down lifeless, but then again he could not see how a headless body could be alive in the first place.

  The other Dullahan came at him swiftly with a knife, but Gil’s armor turned the blade. As they struggled, the creature stumbled over in the hole left by Sir Dwnn’s burning foot. Gil broke both his arms with blows from his staff to elbow and wrist, so the demonic being could not pick up his own head. The headless body stood helplessly near the weeping, blubbering, and wailing head and gently tried to roll it away with a series of small kicks as he retreated, cursing each time he kicked himself in the head, broken arms dangling horribly.

  The child, waving in the air the spear on whose end his head was tied, screamed horrible oaths and imprecations at him and spewed up both clouds of poisoned gas and streams of yellow-green venom. Gil made the sign of the cross in the air and called out the names of Saint George and Michael the Archangel. The Dullahan lad screamed as if he were being burned. The horse the child rode reared and plunged and tried to charge and trample Gil, but Gil told the horse to flee and go find Guynglaff Cobweb. The horse ran off, the headless boy clinging to its back and shrieking.

  On the third day, Guynglaff came.

  5. Knight and Cobweb

  Guynglaff pounded on the shield with the mallet. “Come out, come out, Swan Knight!”

  Gil stood at the mouth of the covered bridge. In his hand was the sword he had taken from Sir Iaen, a slender, fair-made elfin blade.

  Guynglaff was as before, dressed in a cloak woven of Gil’s mother’s hair which covered all but his head, which was protected by a round metal cap. Atop the cap was a black stone. His face was apelike, with grisly lips and scalding eyes and one broken tusk. But now he carried no ax. Rather, the great sword Dyrnwen was in his hand.

  Guynglaff looked Gil up and down. “I see spurs on your heels. Are you the father? For I have slain the son. Here in my hand is his sword. I am now second among the Anarchists because of it, because of the power I wield. Soon Euhemerus Cobweb will be no more, and I shall be first.”

  Gil said nothing, but took a step backward, onto the bridge. The wooden slats boomed under his boots with a hollow noise.

  Guynglaff shouted, “Speak to me! I know you are the elder, for had your son lived, he was doomed to go to the Green Chapel….” All the birds within earshot suddenly sang out and took wing at the sound of that name, and Guynglaff looked startled, glancing right and left.

  Gil took another step backward, and raised his hand, and beckoned.

  Guynglaff said, “Speak! You are not the son of the Swan Knight! You have been defeating knights and Dullahan and sending them away defeated in hope of calling me, have you not? You knew my hate for you was too great to allow you to live, once I learned where you hid from me! Why did you hide so many years? Who are you?”

  Gil said nothing.

  “It is no use pretending you are the one who returned from the Green… From that place! You are trying to scare us! Scare the Cobwebs! We are the strength of the world, stronger than the elfs! We are stronger than Erlkoenig and all his court! The spirit of anarchy is loosed in the world and will topple all kings, break all covenants, and end all faithfulness! You cannot stand against us! You cannot! Who are you?”

  Gil saluted him with Sir Iaen’s blade.

  Guynglaff’s eyes narrowed into slits. “You are a fool. No sword can harm me. No sword is finer than Dyrnwen, which I took from your son’s dying hands.” Guynglaff with one stroke cut through one of the pillars of the roof. Wood splintered and exploded under the blow, and the roof tilted. Decorative carved birds with eyes of glass fell to the boards.

  Gil took another step back. He was now in the center of the bridge.

  Guynglaff said, “Do you know what your son’s last words to me were? Begging! He was begging and blubbering for his life!”

  Gil laughed. He could not help it. He remembered what the last thing was he had said to Guynglaff when last he stood on this bridge: he had called Guynglaff a lying coward.

  Guynglaff was stung by that laughter. “Who are you? Tell me now, ere you die!”

  Gil took out of his pouch the ivory tusk of a boar that he had bought in Mr. Yung’s pawnshop with a diamond from his vambrace. He had sanded and shaped the tooth as best he could by memory to look like Guynglaff’s unbroken tusk. Gil held it up into a beam of sunlight slanting into the covered bridge. The false tooth twinkled.


  Guynglaff stared in shock. “Is that my– is that my tooth?”

  Gil pitched his voice low to disguise it. “No. Mine.”

  The Bigfoot, stung both by wrath and fear, now charged at Gil, sword point forward. Gil flung the sword of Sir Iaen aside and picked up the ironwood staff from where it had rested leaning against one of the pillars.

  As with the squire, Gil had reach and could strike Guynglaff while dancing back out of sword reach. Guynglaff was not well trained in the sword and kept instinctively using ax moves. Also, he could not maneuver to the left or right in this narrow space and was too tall to make any broad overhand strokes.

  And his fur was not immune to wood. Gil struck the monster in the face, chest, neck, wrist, ankle, groin. His foe was unarmored, and Gil was very strong.

  Nonetheless, the monster had the advantage of strength, of speed, and of skill. Once and twice he struck Gil, and links broke on his mail under the force of the blows. On the third stroke, he cut through the armor and slashed Gil’s upper arm, drawing blood. The blade ignited with a smoky, foul, dim, and stinking fire. Guynglaff cawed in triumph.

  The pain was too much: Gil flinched, and a darkness passed before his eyes. Before he could blink it away, the monster grabbed him by the throat and raised the flaming blade over head so that the point scraped the ceiling.

  “Tell me now who you are, Swan Knight! Before I kill you with your own blade!”

  “Your death,” said Gil in his own voice. “I am returned from the Green Chapel, and the Green Knight sent me to kill you.”

  Now it was Guynglaff’s turn to flinch in shock. A look, not of fear, but of supernatural horror was distorting his apelike face. Gil swung his staff with one hand and drove the burning blade so that it banged against the knob atop Guynglaff’s metal cap. As before, the blade clung. This time, however, the blazing fire was pressed against the top of Guynglaff’s head. He yowled.

  Gil said, “Helm of Grim, which strengthens thew and limb! Thy cursed brim I pour within, the heavy weight of all of Guynglaff’s sin! In Christ's name, O thou unclean artifice of vile magic, I command you fall!”

  The charm had no effect, but Guynglaff, fearing it would, yanked the sword and the cap off his head. Gil struck him in the bald spot of his brow so heavily he heard the skullbone crack. Guynglaff dropped the flaming sword and metal cap over the side of the bridge into the river, and now he clasped Gil in a bear hug, using his great strength, hoping to shatter Gil’s armor and break his ribs. Gil, in turn, dropped his staff and wrapped his arms around the monster, whose fur did not protect him against empty hands. He hugged the other with the strength and ferocity of a bear as he had been taught.

  Gil was in such pain that he could not breath or think. Guynglaff bit and tried to gnaw on Gil’s face, but his tusk slid off Gil’s helmet. Gil poked him in the eye with a wing of a swan. Guynglaff screamed.

  Rabicane emerged from the wood at that sound and was on the bridge in an instant. He turned, planted his forehooves, and kicked both of them into the river.

  Down and down they went. Their arms were locked around each other. Guynglaff panicked and attempted to break Gil’s hold. Gil in his armor sank to the bottom, and Guynglaff with him.

  Guynglaff struggled and struggled as he ran out of air. Gil clung with hands like hands of iron, without mercy, and without motion.

  Guynglaff ’s struggles grew weaker still. He eyes were wild. His head thrashed back and forth. His invulnerable fur, which no sword could pierce, floated like a brown cloud in the water. Gil clung.

  Guynglaff’s struggles grew weaker yet. Gil did not let go.

  Guynglaff ceased to move. Gil did not relax.

  Gil counted to a hundred, then two hundred, then shifted his grip, and took the motionless monster’s head in his hands and twisted it so sharply that the neck broke.

  He dragged the huge creature to the surface. Rabicane was in the river, swimming, and only his sleek head was above the water. Grunting, Gil managed to drape himself and the monster half across the horse’s neck, and the mighty steed carried the heavy burdens toward shore.

  Gil said, “You were supposed to wait until I called for you to come kick us into the river.”

  Rabicane said, “Folly! How were you supposed to call out if you were being strangled? How did you know the many charms that protected the life of Guynglaff did not excuse him from the need to breathe?”

  “Nerea told me once the elves have no charms against drowning.”

  “So? What if he had simply snapped your neck as you fell? Duke Astolpho never made such bad plans!”

  Gil had no more strength for talking. Every muscle in his body ached, and his upper arm was bleeding freely even though he could not at first recall when he had been struck.

  Gil, panting, tossed the corpse on the bank of the river. He covered Guynglaff in the yeti’s own cloak.

  On the bank, combing her hair, was Nerea. Next to her was the sword, no longer burning, and also the cap of Guynglaff with its black stone.

  The black stone had an iron nail lying atop it. This was an old-fashioned, large square nail, cold hammered into shape by some blacksmith.

  Gil stooped, picked up his father’s sword, and held it up in the sunlight for a moment, glorying in the look of it, the weight and heft in his hand. He saluted Nerea and sheathed the blade.

  She said, “Touching the cursed black stone with an iron nail broke the spell, like you said. Now, come over here so I can look to your wounds. May I have my cap back now? I hate the taste of breathing weed.”

  Gil removed his helm. His silver hair was covered in the pearly and begemmed meshes of the mermaid’s cap. He smiled and said, “Come take it from me.”

  Nerea sighed with exasperation, but when she stood on her tiptoes and put her hands in Gil’s hair to undo the hairpins and recover her cap, he put his arms about her, and caught her, and kissed her.

  Chapter Eight: The Diamond Wine

  1. The Swan Matron

  After a short but pleasant eternity, Nerea made a shrill noise in her nose and pulled her face away from Gil’s. Her eyes were wide with fear and focused over his shoulder.

  Gil, fearing some threat was behind him, spun around, his hand on his swordgrip.

  Hanging in midair, about ten feet away and twenty feet above him, was a woman he did not at first recognize. She was dressed in a white chiton which flowed from shoulders to feet in many folds and pleats. It was pinned at the shoulders and belted at the waist with two diagonal straps between. A second garb overtop this ran from shoulder to hip, cloaking one arm but leaving the other bare. These folds and drapes were always in motion, as if the fabric were weightless or alive. On her feet were slippers of pale glass. From shoulder to knees of the robe spread vast silver-white wings with blue-black tips. Little sparks and sparkles of light, gleaming motes, streamed out from the feathers and surrounded her. She wore a jeweled headdress oddly like Nerea’s, but adorned with a spray of white feathers. Over her nose and mouth was a veil.

  When she pulled the snood and veil aside, the bangs of hair spread out in a weightless cloud of dancing locks, gleaming silver and glittering with sparks. Her ankle-length braid, thick as a limb, floated up and twisted and swayed in midair behind her like a silver river.

  She was looking at Gil and at the girl in the skintight black wetsuit. Gil glanced down. He still had his left arm around Nerea’s slender waist.

  “Uh…” Gil heard his mouth trying to make a noise. He forced himself to speak. “Hi, Mom.”

  2. The Lady of Sarras

  Ygraine landed, looked at Gil’s hand around Nerea’s waist, and raised an eyebrow. Gil cleared his throat and tightened his grip so that Nerea was pulled up more closely to him. “Mother, this is Nerea Moth. Nerea, this is my mother, Ygraine.”

  Nerea impatiently squirmed out of Gil’s grip and curtseyed. She wore no skirt, but held her hands spread wide to delicately cover her hips as she spoke. “I am the daughter of Narissa, who is the daughter of Naus
ithöe.”

  Ygraine said, “Nausithöe is my aunt. I am the daughter of her sister Danaë, who is the wife and queen of King Pellinore of the Grail, Lord, upon a time, of the high and holy city of Sarras before its fall.” She looked at the wound on Gil’s arm, the bruises on his face and neck, and said coolly, “The boy bleeding on you is my son. How do you know him?”

  “I know your son through no fault of his! It was not because of some mistake he made or thoughtlessness. I knew where to seek him out.”

  Nerea, as she spoke, began to unbuckle Gil’s armor.

  “Your cousin Narissa, all these years, refused to believe the report of Sir Alain le Gros that you had returned to the celestial fields and palaces of the upper air while leaving a son behind and sent me to look for him. I hired a detective named Elfine from Troynovant.”

  Nerea pulled Gil’s linens over his head. She inspected his wounds while he stood there, embarrassed and trying not to show it.

  “While she was often less than helpful, once she discovered a wolf protected by the ghost-dance, whom human bullets could not harm, and from him learned a silver-haired boy had been seen walking in the woods near Brown Mountain.”

  She rubbed a poultice on his swollen bruises, and bound up sprained limbs, and cleaned and stitched and bandaged the cut in his arm. As before, Nerea’s herbs and crystals acted remarkably quicker than any human medical arts, sometimes instantaneously.

  “I knew the lights of elfin wars had been seen there, and I supposed that the spies of the elfs also sought the boy. I found him near the smallest of the Four Pools that lead by buried portal into the subterranean Lost River, which runs from Cacapon to the wellsprings of Atlantis.”

  Ygraine said, “And now that you have found him?”

  Nerea blushed. “I mean him good, not ill. He is… not what I was led to expect. I have told no one, not even my own father.”

  Gil, now cleaned and bandaged, stood up, and pulled his linen tunic on. He said, “Mother, Nerea saved my life the first time I fought Guynglaff. There he lies: the one who abducted and mistreated you. I have avenged the wrongs done you!” Gil drew the cloak of mists from off the face of the corpse.