by Gene Wolfe
“You’re right, I ought to cook that. I’ll give you some meat, and all the bones, okay?”
Of course he nodded.
In a few minutes more I had a whole leg-of-lamb roasting on a pointed stick. It was not until I smelled it that I found out how hungry I was. My mouth watered, and it seemed to me I had never smelled anything as good as it was going to be.
The dog came closer, lying down next to me. I said, “Gylf? Is that your name?”
He nodded as if he had understood every word.
“You’re a hunting dog, or that’s what it sounded like. What do you hunt?”
He nuzzled me as if to say you.
“What? Me? Really?”
He nodded.
“You’re putting me on!”
Eyeing the sizzling meat, he licked his lips. His tongue was Day-Glo pink in the firelight, and about as wide as my hand.
“I’ll give you some, but we’ll both have to wait before we eat any. It’ll be very hot.” I took it from the fire while I was talking to him; you can cook meat more if it needs it, but if you cook it too much, you cannot cook it less. When it was clear of the fire, I petted the big dog that had become mine so fast. His flat brown coat was soft, and thicker than it looked. “You’ll be nice to sleep with on cold nights,” I told him.
He nodded and licked my knee. Big as it was and rough as it was, his tongue was warm and friendly.
“When we’re through eating, we’ll go to Glennidam. I want to find Seaxneat and kill him, if I can. Besides, Toug may be back home by now. I hope so. We’ll see about that. If you stay with me, you’re my dog ’til the Valfather comes for you. If you don’t you’re not, but I wish you luck just the same.”
I touched the meat, and licked my fingers, then waved it around on its stick to cool it. “Are you as hungry as I am?”
He nodded, and I noticed he was drooling quite a bit.
“You know, I’ve been wondering what killed that wolf. That was dumb of me, with the answer lying right next to me. It was you. You don’t have to nod, Gylf. I know it was.”
He nodded anyway.
“Then you left the lamb for me, instead of eating it yourself. Maybe the brown girl had something to do with it, but it was nice of you anyhow.” I tore the lower part of the lamb’s leg from the upper and gave it to him.
He held it down with his forepaws, the way dogs do, and tore it with teeth that would have surprised me in a lion’s mouth. Seeing them, I wondered why the wolf had not dropped the lamb and run. “Well, how is it?” I asked him.
And he grunted, “Good!”
Chapter 12. Old Man Toug
Glennidam looked just about the same. There was a kid in the street who tried to beat—when he saw Gylf and me, but Gylf headed him off and I caught him. “Is your name Ve?”
He looked scared and shook his head. He was quite a bit younger than I used to be, if you know what I mean.
“You know him, though.”
He nodded, although I could see he did not want to.
“Don’t gape at me. You’ve seen strangers before.”
“Not nobody big as you.”
“My name’s Sir Able,” I told him, “and you and me will get along much better of you use it. Say, yes, Sir Able.”
“Yes, Sir Able.”
“Thanks. I want you to find Ve for me. Tell him I’ll be at Toug’s house, and I’ve got to talk to him.”
Gylf sniffed the kid’s face, and he shook like Jell-O.
“Tell him I’m no enemy. I’m not going to hurt him, and neither is my dog here.” I let him go. “Now go find him and tell him what I told you.”
“I, um—uh ...” the kid said, then he managed to add something more that might have been, “Sir Able.”
“Out with it, if it’s important. If it isn’t, find Ve and tell him.”
The kid touched his chest with a grimy finger and bobbed his head.
“You are Ve.”
“Y-y-y ...”
I made him come with me, saying I wanted to talk to him and Ulfa together.
The house was right down the street. I rapped the door with my bow and grabbed the lather by the front of his dirty shirt when he answered it, shook him as I pushed him in, and ducked under the lintel. “Where’s your daughter?”
She must have heard me, because she looked in from one of the little rooms in back.
I wished her good morning. “Get your mother, please, and both of you sit down.”
Her father’s hand was flirting with the hilt of a big knife. I saw it and shook him hard. “If you pull that, I’ll kill you.”
He scowled, and I was tempted to knock him down again; I shoved him down on a bench in front of the fire instead. I made Ve sit with him, and got Ulfa and her mother on a couple of stools.
“Now then.” I sat on the table. “Ulfa, I took your brother with me the last time I was here. Maybe your father told you.”
She nodded, looking scared.
“I don’t have him anymore. Disiri took him. I doubt that she’s going to hurt him, but I have no idea how long she’ll keep him. She didn’t say what she wanted with him. You may see him again today You may never see him again, and I have no way of telling which way it might go. If I see her, I’ll ask about him. That’s all I can do.”
I waited for one of them to talk, stroking Gylf’s head but keeping my eyes on them. After a minute or two, I said, “I’m sure all of you have questions. Probably I can’t answer them. But I’ll listen, and answer if I can. Ulfa?”
Her chin went up. “How long was he with you?”
“Less than a day. We were in Aelfrice for part of it, and it’s not easy to tell how long things take there, but a little less than a day should be about right.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“I twisted his arms enough to make him squeal once when he wouldn’t obey, but I did no permanent damage. Neither did anybody else while we were together.” I took a long look at Ulfa’s mother and decided she was not the kind to speak to a scary stranger.
Her husband said, “He’s in Aelfrice?”
“I don’t know where he is. That’s where he was the last time I saw him. He may have come back here—to this world or planet or whatever you call it. I don’t know.” As you can see, I was thinking then that Mythgarthr was probably not just some other country. For one thing, nobody called the country Mythgarthr—the country was Celidon. Another thing was that I was pretty sure that other countries on Earth did not have Aelf. I felt like I would have heard about them.
But there was a lot against that idea, too. One was that the moon in Myth garthr looked exactly like ours, and if the stars were different, I could not tell it. The Big Dipper was still there, and the North Star, and some other things I was really sure of.
About then, Ulfa said, “You let Disiri take him.” It was not a question.
“I wouldn’t have stopped her if I could,” I told Ulfa, “and I couldn’t if I’d wanted to. Yeah, I let her take him.”
“Will you try to get him back? He’s my brother.”
“If I can, sure. Now I’ve got questions of my own for all of you. Is Seaxneat here? By here, I mean here in this village or near it, right now.”
Ulfa’s father shook his head. “Out lookin’ for his wife.”
“He found her. That’s why I’m here.”
Ulfa said, “What happened?” very softly. I think she guessed.
“I’ll tell you in a minute. First I want to tell you about Ossar. I want to tell you—that’s Ulfa and Ve—particularly. Ossar’s in Aelfrice too, and I put him there, or I pretty much did. I left him with the Bodachan, the little brown Aelf. My brother” (that was what I said) “used to help them sometimes, and they used to help him. He said they were nice and pretty harmless unless you got them mad. Anyway, they wanted Ossar and said they’d take care of him, and I had no milk to give him and no food he’d keep down. So I gave him to them.”
Nobody said anything.
“Time goes slower in Aelfrice,
so he might show up again in twenty years, still a little kid. It could happen. If it does, I want you to remember that he’s Disira’s son just the same, and look after him.” I made all four of them promise they would.
Then I said, “Seaxneat killed Ossar’s mother, and I’m going to kill Seaxneat for it if I can. But maybe I can’t, and maybe he’ll be here when Ossar comes back. Tell him Ossar’s been nursed by the Aelf, and they’re likely to get even for anything Seaxneat does to him. That may help. I hope so.”
Ulfa’s mother spoke. I think it was the only time she did. “By the queen who took my son?” she wanted to know. “By Disiri?”
I shook my head. “One of the Bodachan, I never learned her name. Ve, your dad sent you to get the outlaws the night I took Toug. It can’t have taken you very long, since they were after us the same night. Where did you go?”
“You mean my father? I—I’m not supposed to say. Sir Able.”
Ulfa’s father rasped, “Tell him!”
I said, “I can get it out of your father if I have to, Ve, but I might have to hurt him. It’ll save a whole lot of trouble for you both if you tell me now.”
Ve gulped. “He’s not here, Sir Able.”
“Is he off looking for Seaxneat’s wife too?”
“I d-don’t know, Sir Able.”
“But you know where he told you to go to find the outlaws. You’d better tell me.”
Gylf growled, and Ulfa’s father got Ve’s arm. “Your father’s away,” he told Ve, “and I’m here in his place. I say to tell him. It’s on my head, not yours.”
“To the c-cave. The big cave.”
I nodded. “I see. Do they stay there often?”
“S-some do, Sir Able. One of the Free Companies.”
“Where is it?”
“Th-that way.” Ve pointed. “You t-take the path to the little pond and go ’round it through the b-beeches, only turn at the big stump—” Ulfa’s father said, “I’ll show you.”
It took me by surprise.
“You’d make the boy do it, and maybe get him kilt. With me there’ll be two men, if they’re there.”
Gylf growled again, louder this time.
“Dog thinks I might turn on you,” Ulfa’s father said. “Maybe he will, but I won’t.”
I thought about that. “You sent Ve for the outlaws when I was here before.”
He shook his head. “Vali did. Not me. I wanted to kill you myself.” He paused to stare at the floor, then looked up to meet my eyes. “If I’d of believed you was a real knight, it’d of been different. Only I didn’t and thought me and my boy could do for you, and with Vali we could do it sure. Only he wanted to fetch Jer’s Free Company and sent his boy, and I didn’t stop him.”
“You don’t like them?”
Ulfa’s father shook his head.
Ulfa started to speak, but I raised a hand to silence her. “What’s your name?”
“Toug. Same as my boy.”
“That’s right, I remember now. What is it, Ulfa?”
She said, “They make a lot of trouble, and take anything they want. Sometimes they trade with us, and sometimes they give us things, but it’s mostly Seaxneat, the trading and the giving, too.”
Old man Toug added, “Vali’d like to be him.”
“I see.” I was still studying him, and wishing I could see under that black beard. “How many outlaws will there be in the cave, assuming they’re still there?”
He shrugged. “Five, could be. Could be ten.”
I asked Ve how many there had been when he went to fetch them.
“S-seven, Sir Able.”
“Will you run to warn them as soon as we leave? You look fast, and you know the way. You may get there before we do.”
“No, S-Sir Able. Not unless you say t-to.”
“I can’t risk it. Ulfa, you and your mother will have to hold him here. Two hours should be enough. Will you do it?”
Ulfa’s mother nodded. Ulfa herself said, “I’ll do it for your sake, Sir Able, as well as my father’s.”
He stood up. “We can be there in a hour or not much over. You broke my bill.”
I nodded.
“I still got my spear, though, and my knife. All right if I take ’em?”
I said yes, and he went into one of the back rooms and returned with the spear his son, Toug, had dropped when he ran from the fight.
Ulfa said, “Tell us what happened to Disira.”
“Don’t matter,” old man Toug muttered. “Dead now.”
“Well, Pa, I’d like to know, and Sir Able said he’d tell us.”
I nodded. “Your brother and I went to Aelfrice, as I said earlier. Disiri took him, and I returned alone. I wanted to find Disiri again, and called her name. Disira answered, thinking I had been sent to search for her. She and Ossar had been hiding in the woods, probably for the second time and maybe more than that. She was hungry and worn out, scared, and lost. I should have taken her back here, but I didn’t. For one thing, Bold Berthold’s was closer and I thought I could get her something to eat there. For another, the outlaws had been after Toug and me. It seemed to me that there was more risk of their finding me here than at Bold Berthold’s hut.”
I stroked Gylf’s head and waited for one of them to speak until Ulfa said, “I understand. Go on.”
“She and Ossar stayed there with Bold Berthold and me. She was afraid of Seaxneat. He had treated her badly, and I believe she thought he might hurt Ossar when they came home. A couple of days ago, I went out to hunt and saw one of the Angrborn—”
Old man Toug said, “Where?”
“By the river, quite a way upstream. I thought I ought to warn Bold Berthold and Disira, so I went back to the hut. It had been burned, and at first I thought the Angrborn had done it. I found footprints made by men our size, though. One had walked with his toes turned in. I thought that was Seaxneat, and I still do. I heard Ossar crying, and found Disira’s body—she’d been hit with an ax. That’s easy to say, easy for me to talk about in here, where I don’t have to see her. But it was pretty horrible. I didn’t like to look at it, and I don’t like to think about it.”
Ve whispered something to Ulfa. She nodded and said, “He’s afraid to ask you, but he’d like to know why you took Disira to a hut, if you’re a knight. Aren’t you supposed to have a big house?”
“Because I’m not a wealthy one,” I told Ve. “Not yet, anyhow. But I’m a slow one, sometimes, and way too fond of talking, which isn’t the way a true knight ought to be.” I put my hand on old man Toug’s shoulder. “Not so long ago you wanted to kill me.”
He nodded reluctandy.
“I broke your bill, and could have killed you with the head of it. I didn’t.”
“I ‘preciate that.”
“You say you want to be my follower. I’ll be loyal to you as long as you’re loyal to me, but no longer.”
He nodded. “I got it.”
We left after that, I motioning for him to come with us.
Chapter 13. Caesura
Side by side we went down the village street, through fields, and into the forest; and Gylf trotted ahead of us, exploring every thicket and clump of brush before we reached it. Soon the path narrowed, and I went before old man Toug with an arrow at the nock; but even then, Gylf ranged ahead of me. Near Glennidam the trees were small and mean, the better ones having been cut for lumber and firewood. Farther on, they were bigger and older, though there were still stumps where men had felled them for timber. Beyond those lay the true forest, the mighty wood that stretches for hundreds of miles between the Mountains of the Sun and the sea, and between the Mountains of the North and the southern plowlands—trees that had been old when no man had walked among them, trees thicker through than the biggest house in Irringsmouth, trees that push their pleasant green heads into Skai and nod politely to the Overcyns.
Springs well from their roots, for in their quest for water those roots crack rocks deeper than the deepest well. Wildflowers, small one
s so delicate you cannot see them without loving them, grow around the springs. The north sides of the trunks are covered with shining green moss thicker than bear fur. Every time I saw it I thought of Disiri and wished she was with us, but my wishing did not bring her, not there or anyplace else, ever.
To tell the truth, I was afraid I was going to choke up, so I said, “Now I see how it is that the air in Aelfrice seems full of light. This air looks full of light too.”
“Ah,” said old man Toug, “this what Aelfrice’s like?”
“No,” I said. “Aelfrice is much more wonderful. The trees are bigger and of incredible kinds, strange, dangerous, or welcoming. The air doesn’t just seem to shine, it really does.”
“My boy can tell me ‘bout it, maybe, if I get him back.”
I asked whether he had given his son his name because he wanted his son to be like him, or because he wanted to be a boy again; and now I cannot help wondering what he thought of the young knight who came back to him wounded, and what each said to the other.
Not long after that, a white stag, already in antler, darted across the path; Gylf did not bay on its track, nor did I loose an arrow. We both felt, I would say, that it was not a stag to be hunted.
“Cloud buck,” said old man Toug.
“What do you mean by that?”
“What they call ’em,” said old man Toug, and nothing more.
The land rose and fell, gently at first as it does in the downs, then more abruptly, making hills like those among which I found Disiri. The trees sank their roots in such stone as a dog, a boy, and a man might walk upon.
At last we climbed a hill higher than any we had seen before, and its crest was bald except for wisps of grass; from its top I could make out, to the north, peaks white with snow. “Not far now,” old man Toug told me.
Gylf whined, and looked back at me. I knew he wanted to talk, but would not talk as long as old man Toug was with me; so I told old man Toug to go forward until he could no longer see us, then wait until we caught up with him. Naturally he wanted to know why, but I told him to do it or return to his wife and daughter, and he did it.
“They know,” Gylf cautioned me.
