by Gene Wolfe
I was almost asleep when I heard Disira say, “I was all alone out there, and he came from nowhere, calling me. He’d been with the Queen of the Wood.
That’s what he said.”
Bold Berthold muttered, “Aye?”
“He calls himself a knight, but his bowstring talks to him in the dark, and he talks while he’s sleeping. He’s really a wizard, isn’t he? A mighty wizard. I see it every time I look into his face.”
“He’s a man like I was once,” Bold Berthold said, “and better than I was, and my brother. Go to sleep.”
So we slept, all four of us, until I woke up thinking that Disiri had called me.
I got up as quietly as I could, slipped out, and wandered through the rain and the mist calling for her. I saw strange faces peer up at me from the swirling waters of the Griffin and from a dozen ring-marked forest pools. More peeped from behind bushes or looked down from the leaves of trees—faces that might have come in a flying saucer, green, brown, black, or fiery. Glass faces too, and faces whiter than snow. Once I nearly shot a brown doe that got all smoky and turned into a long-legged girl; and many times I heard the howls of wolves, and once the nearer baying of something that was never a wolf.
But Disiri, the green woman I love, I never found.
Chapter 10. Frost
Days had passed while Toug and I had knelt in Aelfrice. Now weeks slipped by while Disira, her baby, and I remained with Bold Berthold. I hunted and he trapped, for he was clever at making snares. Disira swept and cleaned, skinned the game we got, stretched and tanned the hides, cooked, and played with Ossar. We were not husband and wife; but I might have had her, I think, at any time; and no passerby (had there been any) would have guessed that we were not.
Seaxneat had treated her badly and had beaten her more than once while she was carrying their child, so that she had been in terror of a miscarriage. Moreover, he had been in league with the outlaws, just as Ravd had been told; and the longer she was separated from him, the less eager she was to go back to him. I learned a whole lot about them just by listening to her, for she knew much more than she believed she knew. I hoped for an opportunity to tell Ravd all that I had learned, though I never saw him and had no way of knowing whether he and Svon were nearby or back in his beloved manor of Redhall.
There came a morning—fine and sunny—on which the air was touched with something new. As I prowled the wood, a leaf, a single leaf, the broad leaf of a maple, fell at my feet. I picked it up (I still remember this very clearly) and examined it, and though largely green it was touched with red and gold. Summer was over; fall had come, and it would have been foolish not to plan for it.
First came the need to store food, and if we could, to buy more. We could take our hides to Irringsmouth this time. The trip would be longer, but we might get a better price, and might not be cheated. We could buy flour, salt, and hard bread, cheese and dried beans there, but we would need more meat to smoke, and hides to sell. The nuts would ripen soon—beechnuts, chestnuts, and walnuts. Bold Berthold had taught me that we could even eat acorns if they were properly prepared, and it would be smart to lay in as many nuts of all kinds as we could manage.
Second, Disira. If she wanted to go back to Glennidam at all, she would have to do it now. Traveling with a baby would be hard enough; traveling with one in winter ...
I began to hunt in the direction of Glennidam, something I did not do very often, telling myself it would serve two purposes. If I got game, well and good; but even if I did not, I would refresh my memory on the paths and turnings. I was near the Irring when I saw a head with a face that looked almost human above some little trees. Its glaring eyes swept over me, leaving me paralyzed—too frightened to run and too frightened to hide.
In half a minute, the whole monster came into view. I am going to have to talk about the Angrborn a lot, so let me describe this one to stand for his whole tribe. Imagine the most heavily built man you can, a man with big feet and thick ankles, massive legs, and broad hips. A great swag belly, a barrel chest, and enormous shoulders. (Idnn perched on King Gilling’s shoulder the way she might have set on a bench; of course Idnn was a bit under average size.) Top the shoulders with a head too big for them. Close-set eyes too big for the sweating face—eyes so light-colored they seemed to have no color at all, with pupils so tiny I could not see them. A big splayed nose with nostrils you could have shoved both your fists in, a ragged beard that had never been trimmed or even washed, and a mouth from ear to ear. Stained tusks too big and crooked for the thin black lips to cover.
When you have imagined a man like that and fixed his appearance in your mind, take away his humanity. Crocodiles are not any less human than the Angrborn. They are never loved, neither by us, nor by their own kind, nor by any animal. Disiri probably knows what it is in people, in Aelf, in dogs and horses, and even houses, manors, and castles that makes it possible for somebody to love them; but whatever it is, it is not in the Angrborn and they know it. I think that was why Thiazi built the room I will tell you about later.
Now that you have stripped all humanity away from the figure you thought of as a man, replacing it with nothing at all, imagine it far larger than the biggest man you have ever seen, so big that a tall man riding a large horse comes no higher than its waist. Think about the stink of him, and the great, slow thudding steps, steps that shake the ground and eat up whole miles the way yours take you from our door to the corner.
When you have thought of all that, you ought to have a picture of the Angrborn that will do for the rest of the things I have to tell you; but remember that it is not quite true—that the Angrborn have claws instead of fingernails and ears too big for their heads—that their hands and arms, backs, chests, and legs are covered with hair the color of new rope, and that in the flesh they are worse than any picture could show.
As soon as I could, I ran. I ought to have put a couple arrows in its eyes. I know that now, but I did not know it then, and seeing it the way I had, with no warning, was a jolt. I do not think I ever really believed Bold Berthold the way I should have. No matter what he said about them, I kept thinking of them as about eight feet tall; but Hela was as big as that, and her brother was a head taller than she was. They were half-breeds, and real Angrborn call people like that Mice. Hela was not all that bad-looking, either, once I got used to her size.
I smelled the smoke before I ever saw the place where Bold Berthold’s hut had been. It was the smell of burned leather, a lot different from wood smoke. As soon as I got wind of it, I knew I was too late. I had come to tell him that there were Angrborn around, and I was going to try to get him to hide, and going to hide Disira and her baby in a place I knew where there were big thornbushes all around. But when I smelled burning leather, I thought the Angrborn had been there already.
After that I found some footprints and knew it had not been Angrborn after all. They were human-sized, made by feet in boots—feet turned in, for one pair. After that I heard Ossar crying. I looked for him and found his mother. Dead, she was still holding him. I never found out why Seaxneat had not killed him too. He had hit Disira in the head with a war-ax and left his little son there to die, but he had not killed him. I suppose he lacked the courage; people can be funny like that.
I had to pry Ossar out of her hands, and I kept saying, “You have to let him go now, Disira.” I knew it did no good, but I kept saying it just the same. I can be funny too, I guess. “You have to let him go.” I tried to keep my eyes on her hands, and not look at her face.
Right after that, Ossar and I found the place where Bold Berthold’s hut had been. They had taken what they wanted and burned the rest, a circle of smoking ash in the wild violets that had stopped blooming while it was still spring.
I took off Ossar’s diaper and cleaned him up as well as I could with river water, and wrapped him in a deerskin that had only burned at one edge. I looked everywhere for Bold Berthold’s body, but I never found it. I wanted to bury Disira, but there was nothing to d
ig with. Eventually I cut a big stick and whittled it flat at the wide end. There was a stub I could put my foot on, and I dug a shallow little grave down by the Griffin with that, and covered her up, and piled stones from the river on her. I made a little cross by tying two sticks together to mark the grave. It is probably the only grave marked with a cross in Mythgarthr. It was pretty late by then, but I started for Glennidam anyway. I had nothing but water to give little Ossar, and I knew I had to get him to somebody who had cow’s milk or goat’s milk in a hurry; besides, I thought I might find Bold Berthold in Glennidam. I wanted to find Seaxneat, too, and kill him. That night, when it was so dark we had to stop, I heard something that was not a wolf howling at the moon. I knew it wasn’t a wolf and I knew it was big, but I had no idea then what it was.
Here is something I cannot explain. I am tempted to leave it out altogether; but if I leave out everything I cannot explain I will be leaving out so much you will get no idea of what it is like here, or what my life has been like since I came here. One was the doe. I saw a doe and a fawn the next day, and I was hungry and I knew I had better get some meat and cook it—for me, because I was getting weak, and so I could chew some up good and give it to little Ossar before he starved to death. He had not had anything but water since his father killed his mother. So when I saw the doe I knew that I ought to shoot her or the fawn, but I remembered the brown girl, and somehow I knew this was her again, and I could not do it. I found blackberries instead, and mashed them, and gave them to Ossar; but he spit them up.
I had been hoping to get to Glennidam before night. We did not, and I think I knew we would not. Glennidam was an easy two days from where Bold Berthold’s hut had been, but I had not had two days, only three or four hours the first day, and a day after that, and Ossar had slowed me down. So we camped again, and I could see he was getting weak. I was, too, a little, and although I had eaten all the blackberries I could find, I was hungry enough to eat bark. I wanted to go out looking for something to eat; but I knew it was a waste of time in the dark, and the best thing for us to do was sleep if we could and hope no bear or wolf found us, and get to Glennidam as fast as we could in the morning.
Chapter 11. Gylf
“Sir Able?”
I sat up, suddenly wide awake, shivered, and rubbed my eyes. A north wind was in the treetops, and there was a full moon that seemed almost as bright as the sun, with no warmth at all in it. I stared up at it the way you do sometimes, and I thought I saw a castle floating in front of it, a castle with walls and towers sticking up out of all six sides, merloned walls and pointed towers with long, dark pennants streaming from them.
This is something else I cannot explain, although I did it myself. Disira was dead, Ossar was likely to die, and Bold Berthold was gone; and all that hit me then, harder than it ever had before. I did not know who owned that castle that had brought me here, or why I ought to ask for anything from him. But I raised my arms and shouted for justice, not just once, but maybe twenty times.
And when I finally stopped and put some more wood on our little fire, I heard somebody say, “Sir Able?”
There was nobody there but Ossar, and Ossar was too young to talk, starved and worn out and sound asleep. I picked him up and told him we were leaving, night or not. With the moon as bright as it was, I knew I could follow the path, and maybe three or four more hours would get us to Glennidam.
Just as we started out, a little voice right behind me said, “Sir Able?”
I turned as fast as I could. Getting big as suddenly as I had made me clumsy, and I still was not entirely over that. I was pretty fast just the same, and there was nobody.
“There is a lamb.”
This time I did not look.
“There’s a lamb,” repeated the little voice. It sounded as if he were right in back of me.
“Please,” I said. “If you’re afraid of me, I won’t hurt you. If you want to hurt me, just don’t hurt the baby.”
“Upstream? A wolf dropped it, and we thought ... We hope ...”
I was trotting upstream already, with my bow in one hand and Ossar in the other. I found the wolf first, just about tripping over it in spite of the moonlight, If there was an arrow in it, I couldn’t see it. I laid Ossar down and felt around. No arrow, but its throat was torn. Hoping that the person who had told me about it had come with me, I said, “We could eat this, but the lamb would be better. Where is it?”
There was no reply.
I picked up Ossar, stood up, and started looking for it. It was only a dozen steps away, just harder to see than the wolf because it was smaller. I put it behind my neck the way I did when I killed a deer, and carried it back to our fire. That had almost gone out, and by the time I had built it back up and skinned the lamb, the sky was getting light.
“There is something we have to give you.”
Without looking around, I said, “You’ve already given me a lot.”
“He is rather large.” The speaker coughed. “But not valuable. I do not mean valuable. Well, he is, but not like gold. Or jewels. Nothing like that.”
I repeated that he did not have to give me anything.
“Not only me. All of us, our whole clan. I am our spokesman.”
A new voice said, “And I am our spokeswoman.”
“Nobody appointed you,” the first protested.
“I did. We want to make it plain that it is not only the Woodwives, just as it is not only the Woodwives in the wood. We are in this too, along with them, and we are not powerless.”
“Well said!”
“Thank you. Not powerless no matter what anybody says. We do not have to hide, either.”
“Be careful!”
“He has seen me twice, and he did not shoot either time, so what are we frightened of?”
“Suppose he does not like it?”
“He is too polite to give it back.”
“Well, it is of the best breeding. A whelp from the Valfather’s own pack.”
I froze. “What can you tell me about him?”
“Nothing!” (That was the male voice I had first heard.)
“Nothing at all, really.” (This was the female voice.) “You know much more about him than we do. A lot of you think him the Most High God.”
“Thus they know less. We cannot remain after sunrise, you know.”
I said, “Bold Berthold says he’s master of the flying castle, and it’s in Skai.”
“Really?”
“We have never seen it.” The male speaker cleared his throat. “Besides, we wish not to talk about it. Here, Gylf! Here boy!”
“What do you want to do? Hide behind him?”
“If necessary, yes. Sit! Good boy!”
I said, “May I look around? I won’t hurt anyone.”
“Did I not say you could?”
She was tall, so slender she seemed like a collection of flexible sticks about the color of milk chocolate. He was a lot shorter, brown too, with an enormous nose and beady eyes; but at first I did not see him all because of the dog.
It was the biggest dog I ever saw, very dark brown with a white blaze on its big chest, and smiling. You know how dogs smile? It had soft ears that hung down, a head as big as a bull’s, I-can-take-care-of-myself eyes, and a mouth I could have put my whole head in.
“This is Gylf.” For a minute I thought the dog was talking, but it was the male voice coming from behind him.
The brown woman said, “He is a puppy really.”
“But he can—you know.”
“Would you like us to take care of the baby?”
“We will have time on our hands now, you know.” The owner of the male voice peeped cautiously around Gylf as he spoke. He was terribly ugly. “It is not as if we have never raised your children before.”
“I will do the work,” the brown woman said, “and he will take the credit.”
“The sun will be up any moment.”
I said, “You’ll feed him? And—and ... ?”
“
Educate him,” the brown woman said firmly. “You shall see.”
“Only not soon. He will be in Aelfrice.”
“Well, so will he!”
I wish I could say why his saying that made me decide, but it did. Partly I was thinking that if I left Ossar in Glennidam Seaxneat might kill him when I was gone. Partly, I was thinking of something I could not remember, something I knew even if I could not remember it. “Take him!” I said.
She did, cradling him in her arms and crooning to him.
Immediately both Aelf began backing away. Instead of sloping up, the riverbank was sloping down, and they went down that slope into a mist. “Have no fear brown woman called, “I will teach him all about you.”
“About Gylf,” the owner of the male voice said, “it happens all the time. After a storm someone finds such whelps.”
“As we did,” the brown woman added.
“But they are his.”
“We are to take care of them until he whistles.”
“Which we have ....”
They were gone and little Ossar with them, and the riverbank sloped up normally again.
I was looking at the dog, I suppose because there was nothing else left to look at. “Those were Bodachan, weren’t they? Earth Aelf?”
He seemed to nod, and I grinned at him. “Well, I’m an earthman. See how brown my arms are? It shouldn’t be too much of a change for you.”
He nodded again, this time unmistakably, and I said, “You’re a real smart dog, aren’t you?”
He nodded and smiled.
“Were you really the Valfather’s? I think that’s what they said.” He nodded the same way he had before.
“I see. Somebody’s trained you to nod when you hear a question. Is there any question that wouldn’t make you nod?”
As I expected, he nodded to that too. He also looked inquiringly at the lamb I had skinned, and then back at me, cocking his head.
