by Gene Wolfe
“I ain’t going to have people running around loose in my dungeon.” Caspar sounded like his mind was made up.
“He’s there already. All you’ve got to do is feed him.”
Caspar’s face got red, and his eyes got small.
“I put him in there last night, and I told him to stay there. He promised he would, and as long as he gets enough to eat I think he will.”
I had been hoping Caspar would relax a little after that, but he did not.
“You might find droppings, I guess. But in a dungeon that shouldn’t matter.”
Caspar wiped his dagger on his sleeve and stuck it back in the scabbard. “He’s there right now.”
“That’s right.” I was glad he was finally getting it. “I put him down there last night. You were asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you up. A friend unbarred your door for me and barred it again after I left.” I tried to remember whether I had really heard Uri put the bar back. I could not be certain, so I said, “Or anyway I told her to. I’m pretty sure she must have done it.”
“This is a different friend,” Caspar said slowly. “This isn’t the one you left for me to wet-nurse.”
“Right.” The man I had knocked down was getting back on his feet and going for a big knife on his belt. I caught his wrist. “If you draw that, I’ll have to take it away from you. You’d better sit down and eat something before all the cheese is gone.”
Caspar stood up when the man was sitting down. “You might get to know Hob better before long.”
“That’s good,” I said. “I’d like to patch things up, if I can. Meanwhile you’ll take care of my servant, won’t you? I know I’m asking a favor.”
He turned and stalked out of the Great Hall.
* * *
Master Agr was standing with his back to the window when I came in. He nodded, cleared his throat, waited as though he were going to talk, then cleared it again. “Good morrow, Sir Able.”
“Good morning, Master Agr. What is it?” They had told me to stand up straight the first time I had been there, and I was careful to do it again.
“Sir Able, I ...”
I said, “Yes, Master Agr?”
Agr sighed. “I cannot conduct our conversation like this. Please sit down.” He motioned toward a chair. “Bring that over here, please.” He sat in his usual chair, behind stacks of reports and ledgers. I carried the chair over, and sat.
“Fighting in the Great Hall is strictly contrary to His Grace’s command. Did you know that?”
I nodded. “Yes, I do. I did.”
“Yet you struck one of the warders with a stool. That is what has been reported to me. I didn’t see it myself.”
“With my fist first, Master Able. With the stool when he started to get up.” Agr nodded. I do not believe I ever saw him looking cheerful, and he certainly did not look cheerful then. “Why did you do that, Sir Able?”
“Because I had to talk to Master Caspar. I knew if I let that warder get up he would interrupt us. What I had to say was hard enough without having to tell him to put a cork in it all the time.” I took a deep breath, feeling like I was going to make things worse but that I had to do it. “Let me say this, and then you can say anything you want. I’m not going to try to defend what I did, but I don’t think it was wrong. Sometimes you’ve got to make an exception, no matter what the rule says. You’re going to punish me for it. I know that, and it’s okay with me. I’m not blaming you. I apologize for raising a ruckus and giving you trouble. But if the same thing happened again, I’d knock him down again just like I did.”
Agr nodded. Nothing in his face had changed. “For those of less than knightly rank, such as I am myself, the customary punishment is dismissal. For knights, it is banishment for a period of months or years.”
“Fine. I’ve been wanting to go north anyway. How long should I stay gone?”
Agr rose and went to his window, where he stood looking out for so long that I began to think he was waiting for me to leave. When he finally sat back down he said, “There have been fights in the Great Hall before, but they were simple matters. This case is fraught with complexities. In the first place, Sir Able, a few of our knights still maintain that you are not one of them. You must be aware of that.”
I said I was.
“They resent your eating at their table. If I punish you as a knight, they will resent that still more. Don’t look like that, please. I’m not going to dismiss you like a servant.”
“I feel that I’ve proved myself.”
“So do I. So does His Grace. I’m simply saying that if I give you knightly punishment, the resentment will be that much greater.”
“There will be none from me, Master Agr. You need not fear my resentment.”
“I fear no man’s resentment in any case,” Agr told me, “but it is my duty to maintain order among you knights. To do that and a great many other things.”
He sucked his teeth. “That is the first complication. The second is that when these fights have erupted in the past they have most often been between knight and knight. I can recall one in which two menials fought. That is the sole exception. I dismissed them both, but I’ve given my word that I will not dismiss you like a menial, Sir Able, and I won’t. Yet if I banish you, the knights will be up in arms. Some because you received a knight’s punishment. All the rest because a knight was banished for striking an insolent churl. They will protest to His Grace, at the very least.”
“I will not,” I said.
“No. I realize that. But there are seasoned knights here of whom His Grace thinks highly. Should they join the protest, and they may ...” Agr shrugged.
“I’m very sorry this happened,” I told him. “I really mean that.”
“Thank you. Lastly, but by no means least, the warders are hated and feared. Not merely by all the knights but by everyone. I don’t want to offend your evident modesty, but I feel quite certain that you are regarded as a hero by nine-tenths of those who know of what took place this morning.”
“I am a hero,” I told him. “I don’t mean for knocking a warder down. That was nothing.”
He smiled, a little bitterly. “Perhaps you’re correct, Sir Able. In fact, I believe you are. But now that I’ve outlined the difficulties, I’d like to hear everything you have to say in your defense. If you’ve a speech in you, this is the time to give it.”
“I don’t.” I thought about what had happened, and how nobody on the Western Trader would have cared. “I know you won’t pay much attention to this, Master Agr, but it really wasn’t fighting. I hit him with my fist, and afterward with the stool. But I wasn’t really fighting him, because he never fought me.”
“Go on.”
“I hit him because he was going to threaten me, and keep on threatening me until I did. His Grace’s ban on fighting is a good idea when everybody acts decently. Is it really worse to have a fight now and then, than to have people like him, people who like to hurt other people when they can’t fight back, spitting in somebody’s face while he’s trying to talk to somebody else?”
“I take your point,” Master Agr said. “Anything else?”
I shook my head.
“Then I have something else, Sir Able. Before I begin, let me say that I like you. I would be your friend, insofar as my office permits. I would like you to be mine.”
“I am,” I told him. “I know you’ve done a lot for me. I owe you.”
“I locked away your weapons after the fight in the practice yard, your bow and quiver, and that—that false sword you’re wearing now. I had to, or they would have been taken. His Grace told me to return them whenever you asked for them. You may recall it.”
I waited, sure I knew what was coming.
“Yesterday it struck me that you had never asked, and I went to look for them, intending to have a page take them to you. They were gone. Today I see that you are wearing your sword belt. I take it you have your bow back as well? And the arrows? Because I no longer have them
.”
“They’re up in my room.” I winced a little, remembering the dreams my bowstring had given me the night before.
“Can you tell me how you got them?”
I shook my head. “We’d only fight, because you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me, Sir Able. I’d like to know how you got into my cupboards.”
“Do you believe that I was knighted by Queen Disiri?”
Agr did not answer. Somebody was running outside, and we both heard him at once. He was heavy, and running pretty badly, because the footsteps were not regular. We heard him stop at the door and gasp for breath.
“The sentry will send him away, whoever he is,” Agr said.
But the sentry did not. Before Agr had finished what he was saying the big oak door banged back and Caspar stumbled in and fell down at my feet.
Chapter 43. The War Way
O ut of all our long trip north, the night I remember best was the one on which we separated. Svon took care of the horses, making Pouk do most of the actual work but watching to see that it was done right. Gylf had gone hunting, and I sat at our fire, looking into the flames and thinking of Sir Ravd, of Muspel, and of nights at our cabin in the woods—how you and I had gathered sticks, building a big fire in the little stone fireplace and roasting weenies and marshmallows.
And wondering, to tell you the truth, how the heck I had gotten from there to where I was now. Agr had told me that if I hurried and had good luck I could be in the mountains in six weeks. When he said it, it had not seemed possible that it was going to take that long.
* * *
We had met in a big, pleasant room in the duke’s private quarters, we being Agr, Caspar, the duke himself, and me. I would have liked to have Hob there, too; and in a way he was, because he was what the rest of us were thinking about. Org had killed and eaten him.
“This pet of yours,” Marder said to me, “this ogre you put into my dungeon, is the least of our troubles. So let us deal with it first. Can you send it away?”
“To send him away would be to doom him, Your Grace.” I had argued the whole thing out with Agr already, before we went in to see Marder. “You’re going to say that he should be killed, and so is Master Agr. Master Caspar, too. All right, maybe the three of you are right. But I’ve accepted him into my service. I can’t send him out to die.”
Marder fingered his beard and Agr tried to pretend that none of this had anything to do with him. Finally Caspar said, “We got to get it out of there, Your Grace. Get it up in the bailey where the knights can get at it.”
Marder shrugged; I had never seen him look so tired and old. “Sir Able will not order it out of the dungeon, knowing that he would be sending it to its death. I can send knights into the dungeon and have them kill it there.”
Caspar shook his head. No way.
“But I could not guarantee their success. From what you say, they might not even be able to find it.”
Agr repeated something he had said already, rephrasing it. “If this ogre is Sir Able’s servant, Sir Able should have given it the strictest instructions, emphasizing that his protection would be lifted if it disobeyed.”
“I ordered Org not to hurt anybody,” I said, “and he promised he wouldn’t. I think he must have heard that I’d hit Hob. He must have thought Hob was my enemy and it would be okay.”
Marder nodded, I suppose mostly to himself.
“Hob would have been, if Hob had lived. Everyone in your castle is afraid of the warders, Your Grace, except me and you. I don’t know what’s behind all that, but it’s got to be more than ugly faces and black clothes. If I go down in your dungeon, Master Caspar and his men will do everything they can think of to see I never come out. I know that. But if you want me to—”
“Your Grace!” Caspar had jumped up. “I swear—he—Sir Able don’t—”
Marder shut him up by moving his hand about an inch.
I said, “I’ll go anyway, if you tell me to. And I’ll make it clear to Org that he shouldn’t kill anybody else, not even Master Caspar.”
Marder hid his mouth behind his hand, but I saw his mustache twitch.
“Only I’ve got a better plan, if I can just get you to agree to it. This will solve all the problems we’ve been talking about. It gets Org out of your dungeon. And it will be my punishment, too, one none of your knights can resent or argue about.”
Marder sighed. “It will get you killed, you mean. The more I see and hear of you, Sir Able, the more reluctant I am to lose you.”
“I hope not, Your Grace. You were going to send me out to make my stand. We talked about that outside my room.”
He nodded. “I recall it.”
“Then you remember you said you might send me to fight the Angrborn. Do it. Do it now. I don’t know exactly how they go when they come into your duchy—”
Agr said, “I’ll draw you a map of the War Way.” (He did that, too, afterward.)
I nodded to show I had heard Agr. “But there can’t be a lot of roads through the mountains. Let me take my stand someplace they have to go through. I’ll take Org along, and I’ll stay there until snow blocks the passes.”
We talked about that for a while, Marder saying that as long as I did not come back before there was ice in the bay he would take my word that I had not left until the passes were closed. Agr sent Caspar for a page, then sent the page to that armorer back in Forcetti to tell him he had to hurry up with all my work.
Then Marder said, “There is another difficulty whose solution I see in this, Sir Able.”
* * *
That was Svon. I remember looking up from the fire that night to get a good look at him, and seeing he was asleep and that Gylf had laid a dead hare pretty close to his head. I got it and skinned it, and stuck one haunch on a long stick the way you do, and held it over the fire.
It was getting brown when Svon sat up. “Are you going to eat all of that, Sir Able?”
I held up the rest. “There’s more here. Take whatever you want.”
“Good of you. We’ve been on short commons, eh?”
I reminded him that he had bought extra food for himself when we had stopped at inns or in villages. It was easy—too easy, to tell you the truth—to get mad at Svon. Maybe it was even as easy for us to be mad at him as it was for him to be mad at us. When I thought about it, I understood him well enough. He was still a squire, when there were a lot of knights younger than he was.
I was one of those myself.
He went off to cut a stick. When he came back, he put the other haunch over the fire too. “I could eat it raw, like your monster, Sir Able. But I’m a man, so I’ll try to soften it up.”
I stayed quiet, knowing he was trying to get me mad.
“Your ogre, I ought to have said. I don’t like him.”
I had another look at my meat, and turned the stick.
“I had a nice nap until I smelled this rabbit. Have you slept at all?”
I said no.
“Because you’re afraid to sleep without your dog and your monster to guard you. Isn’t that right? You’re afraid I might stab you.”
“I’ve been stabbed before,” I told him. His lips tightened. “Not by me.”
“No.”
“Allow me to tell you something, Sir Able. I know you won’t credit it, but I’d like to say it whether you credit it or not. I won’t stab you, not while you sleep at any rate. But your pet ogre will turn on you someday, asleep or awake.”
“Would you defend me, if he did?”
“How am I to take that? Am I to say yes so you’ll have something good to say of me when we return?”
I shook my head. “You’re supposed to take it seriously, that’s all. And answer it honestly—even if it’s just to yourself.” I was trying to get the meat I had been cooking off the stick without burning my fingers; when I did, I took a bite. It was hot enough to burn my tongue, and tough too. It tasted wonderful.
“You always tell the truth. Correct?”
My mouth was full, but I shook my head.
“You know you try to give that impression.” He pointed his forefinger at me. “That impression itself is a lie.”
I chewed some more and swallowed. “Sure. Since you’re awake now, go see to the horses.”
He ignored it. “You told His Grace that you had guided Sir Ravd and me in the forests above Irringsmouth. Another lie.”
The scream of some animal made us both jump up.
Svon took a deep breath and grinned at me. “Your pet’s killed somebody else.”
I walked around the fire and knocked him sprawling.
He may have touched Pouk when he fell, because Pouk sat up. He stared at Svon, blinking and rubbing his eyes.
I picked up the stick Svon had dropped and passed it to him. “Here. The meat’s got ashes on it, but they won’t hurt you.” After that, I went over to where our baggage was piled and got my bow and quiver.
Svon sat up. (Maybe he thought I had gone—I had found out already that I could be hard to see sometimes ever since Baki.) He fingered the back of his jaw and the side of his neck, which was where I hit him.
“Had it comin’,” Pouk told him.
Svon said, “I ought to cut off his base-born head,” and I stepped back a little farther. I did not want to kill him, and I knew that if he saw me I might have to.
Pouk had been looking at the meat I had given him. He decided it needed more cooking, and held it over the fire. “Wouldn’t try, not if I was you, sir.”
“I am a gentleman, and gentlemen avenge any wrongs they suffer,” Svon said stiffly
“Had it comin’,” Pouk repeated, “so it ain’t wrong.”
“You couldn’t know. You were asleep.”
I turned to go. Behind me, I heard Pouk say, “I knows him, sir, an’ I knows you.”
“I’ll kill him!”
Very faintly: “If I thought you meant it, sir, I’d kill you meself.”
Chapter 44. Michael
If I had known where I was going when I walked away from the fire, I would tell you. The truth is that I did not have any idea. I wanted to get away from Svon, and I wanted to get away from Org. That was all there was to it. I wanted to find a place where I could rest and get my head straight before I had to deal with them again. I could have built a fire where I stopped; but working in the dark it would have taken a long time, I was tired, and it was not really very cold at all then, even at night. I suppose it was about the end of June or early July but I do not know.
