by Gene Wolfe
Once I had shivered in the wind, but I had disobeyed, and would shiver no more. I was sleepy now, and though the snow brushed my face and crept up around my feet, I was not uncomfortable. There was no more pain.
* * *
Something rough, warm, and wet scrubbed my cheek; I woke to see a hairy, familiar face as broad and as brown as my saddle peering into mine. I blinked—and Gylf licked my nose. “Time to get up. Look at the sun.” It had climbed halfway up a cloudy sky.
“Found him.” Gylf wagged his tail with vigor. “I can show you. Want to go?”
“Yes.” I threw off my blanket; I was dripping wet but only moderately chilled. “But I can’t, not now. I have to delay the Angrborn—and clean my armor and talk to you.”
“All right.” Gylf lay down. “Sore paws anyhow.”
“But first of all, I have to find my horse. He seems to have strayed during the night.” I got up and looked around, my hand shielding my eyes from the sun.
“Upwind. I smell him.”
After half a mile, the track of the dragged saddle was so plain that even I could follow it. Snarling and snapping, Gylf held the stallion until I could grab its tether.
Back at the water hole, I pulled off helmet and hauberk and got rags and a flask of oil from a saddlebag. “I didn’t have these when you and I were lost in the forest,” I told Gylf, “but I’ve learned since. Being a knight’s like being a sailor. You pay for the glory and freedom by oiling and scrubbing and patching and polishing. Or you don’t get to keep them.”
“Those were the days.” Gylf rolled in the wet grass, rose, and shook himself.
“You liked it on the ship?”
“In the woods. I liked that. Just you and me. Good smells. Hunting. Fires at night.”
I smiled. “It was kind of nice.”
“Bad place.” Gylf sneezed.
“The forest? I thought you liked it.” My mail, well oiled when I left Beefs company, had not yet begun to rust. I shook it, dislodging a shower, then dried it with a clean, soft rag, working corners of the rag between the close-packed steel rings wherever I suspected a hidden drop.
“Here,” Gylf explained.
I considered that. “Yes and no. I understand what you mean. It’s too bare to have much game, and there isn’t much water, though you couldn’t say that last night. Then too, there’s the Angrborn. This is their homeland, Jotunland, and they’re terrible enemies. But Lord Beel talked about leading hundreds of knights against them, and this would be wonderful country for it. Give Lord Beel or Duke Marder five hundred knights and two thousand archers, and you might get a battle people would sing about ’til the sky fell.”
Gylf grunted.
“Brave knights well mounted, with long, strong lances. Archers with long bows and a hundred arrows apiece. This is lovely country for charging horses, and lovely country for bowmen, too.” Just thinking of it made me want to be there. “A year from that day, the Angrborn might be as rare as ogres are now. A hundred years from that day, half the people in Forcetti would think they were just stories.”
Gylf brought me back to solid ground. “You’re hunting them. You said so.”
“Yes, I am. They jumped Lord Beel’s company while Sir Garvaon and I were gone, and Lord Beel and his daughter, too. We killed four, but the rest got away with the gifts we were bringing their king.”
“Get ’em anyhow,” Gylf remarked.
“Perhaps he may, or some of them. But it won’t be the same as Lord Beel giving them on behalf of King Arnthor. So we’re looking for those Angrborn. I rode on ahead, and the rest are following as quick as they can, although that isn’t very quick since a lot are on foot now.”
“I could find ’em. Want me to?”
“You have sore paws.”
Gylf licked a front paw as if testing it. “Not bad.”
“I want you to stay with me,” I decided. “You were gone a long time looking for Pouk, and I didn’t like it. Besides, you could use a few good meals.”
“Sure!” Gylf wagged his tail.
“I’ve got some dried meat here.” I took it from his saddlebag and gave Gylf a piece. “It’s kind of salty. Can you drink the water in that hole? It’s not so bad now, after the rain.”
Busy chewing, Gylf nodded vigorously.
“You’re probably wondering what happened to Mani.”
Gylf shook his head.
“He’s back with Lady Idnn.”
Gylf swallowed. “Bad cat! Bad!”
“Not really. We talked it over. He wouldn’t have been much use while I was out giant hunting, but he can keep an eye on things in Lord Beel’s company for me. It might not be necessary, and I hope it isn’t. But it’s always better to be safe when you can.”
A cloud veiled the sun, and Gylf muttered, “Aelf.”
“You mean Uri and Baki?”
Starting on his second strip of dried meat, Gylf nodded again.
“They’re out looking for the Angrborn who robbed us.”
“Nope.”
“You mean they found you and freed you. I had them do that first. Now they’re looking for those Angrborn.”
“Smell ’em,” Gylf muttered.
There were giggles behind me, and I turned.
“Here we are,” Uri announced.
Baki said, “If we had been Angrborn, we could have stepped on you.”
“You Aelf can sneak up on anybody”
Baki shook her head. “Only on you stupid ones.”
Uri added, “The rest always know when we are around.”
I asked whether the Angrborn knew.
“No, Lord.”
The sun, which had slipped behind a cloud, showed its face again for a few seconds, rendering Baki (as well as Uri) transparent as she said, “They are stupid, too.”
“In that case you must’ve found them.”
“We did. But, Lord ...”
“What is it?”
“They are traveling fast. They can walk very fast, and they keep the mules trotting most of the time.”
Baki said, “These hills level out up north, and there is the plain of Jotunland after that.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
“That is where their king’s castle is. It is a very big building they call Utgard. The town is called Utgard, too.” I nodded again.
“We have been in there,” Uri said somberly. “It is very, very big. Did you think the Tower of Glas was big?”
“Yes. Huge.”
“You should see this. This is no joke, Lord, what you are doing.”
Baki said, “It is a terrible place, and we want you to stop.”
“Because you think I’ll be killed?”
Both nodded.
“Then I’ll be killed.”
Gylf growled deep in his throat.
“Lord, this is foolish. You—”
I raised my hand, and finding the rag still in it began to clean my hauberk again. “What’s foolish is spending your whole life being scared of death.”
“You believe that because some knight told you.”
“Sir Ravd, you mean. No, he didn’t tell me that. Only that a knight was to do what his honor demanded, and never count his foes. But you’re right just the same, a knight told me. That knight was me. People who fear death—Lord Beel does, I guess—live no longer than those who don’t, and live scared. I’d rather be the kind of knight I am—a knight who has nothing—than live like he does, with power and money that can never be enough.”
I got up and pulled on my hauberk. “You’re afraid the Angrborn will get to Utgard before I catch them. Isn’t that what you were going to tell me?”
Uri shook her head. “No, Lord. They are not far. You can overtake them today, if you wish.”
“But you would be alone,” Baki added, “and you would surely die. Those others, this Lord Beel you talk about and the other old gods who march with him, will never overtake the giants.”
“Not if Utgard were a thousand times farther
than it is,” Uri confirmed.
“Then we’ve got to slow them down.” I rolled up my own blankets and picked up the saddle blanket. “I told Lord Beel I would, and I wish that was all I had to worry about.”
“Pouk,” Gylf explained to Uri and Baki.
“Exactly. We’ve got to set Pouk and Ulfa free. They’ll be slaves here ’til they die if these Angrborn kill me. You found them, Gylf?”
He nodded.
When I had saddled the stallion, I put on my helmet and buckled on Sword Breaker. “All right, where are they?”
“Utgard.”
Chapter 63. The Plain Of Jotunland
N ight had fallen before we reached the Angrborn’s camp; but it lay upon the bank of a wooded stream, and the fire they had built there—a fire of whole trees, some so thick through the trunk that a man with an ax would not have felled them after an hour’s hard work—lit all the countryside. Two mules turned on spits above that fire.
I had taken off helmet and hauberk and crept far into the firelight to see the Angrborn for myself. When I got back to the woods where Uri, Baki, and Gylf were waiting, I had already formed a plan.
“There are only seven.” I seated myself upon a log I could only just see. “We argued about their number, and everybody thought there were more.”
“In that case you will not need our help,” Uri declared. “A mere seven giants? Why, you and your dog will have put an end to them before breakfast.”
“Won’t you fight them?”
Uri shook her head.
“You and Baki fought the Mountain Men.”
“We distracted them, mostly, so that you could fight them.”
“We are really not very good at fighting on this level, Lord.” Baki would not meet my eyes.
“Because they used to be your gods?”
Baki sighed, a ghostly whisper in the darkness beneath the trees. “You were our gods, Lord. They never were.”
“We could appear in their fire,” Uri suggested, “if you think it would do any good.”
“But the giants are not afraid of us,” Baki added. “They would order us out, and we would have to go.”
“If they did nothing worse, Lord.”
Gylf growled.
“Then you’re not willing to help us? If that’s how matters stand, you might as well go back to Aelfrice.”
“We will if you order it, Lord,” Uri told me, “but we would rather not.”
I was disgusted. “Tell me why I ought to keep you.”
“Be reasonable, Lord.” Uri edged toward me until her hip pressed mine; her hip was as warm and as soft as that of any human woman. “You yourself did not wish to fight them until you had rescued your servant—”
“Mate, too,” Gylf added.
“From Utgard. Suppose we fought, all four of us. Baki and I, who can achieve next to nothing, and you and your dog. What would be the upshot? We would be killed, or more likely you and your dog would be, while Baki and I would have to flee to Aelfrice or die.”
She stopped, inviting me to speak; I did not.
“What would be the good of that? A dead giant? Two? None, if you trust my judgment. A knight and a dog to feed the crows. Let us delay them, instead. Is that not what we set out to do?”
Ten minutes later, crawling through high grass toward a group of tethered mules, I found myself thinking that what I was doing was probably more dangerous than fighting. Every move I made rustled the grass; and if the Angrborn had not heard me, the mules tied to the gnarled birch I was creeping up on certainly had. They were pretty easy to see because of the firelight; their ears were up and forward, and their heads high. Their nervous stamping sounded louder than the purling of the stream. It seemed that the Angrborn must certainly hear it, and it struck me when I was very close that mules could kick and bite as well as or better than horses. They thought something was about to attack them, and they were by no means defenseless.
“Those Frost Giants are cooking a couple of you this very minute,” I whispered.
Mani had said once that a few animals could speak; I had not believed him then and did not believe him now, but it was at least possible that he had been truthful.
“You’re supposed to be sensible animals. Don’t you want to get away from here?”
I had continued to crawl while I talked; now a rope touched my cheek. I drew my dagger and cut it and heard a little snort of satisfaction from the mule whose tether it had been.
Then I was at the tree and dared stand up, keeping the trunk between me and the fire. My dagger was good and sharp, but the tethers were tough; I was still sawing at them when a loose mule wandered by. With a sort of overwrought absentmindedness, I wondered whether it was one I had freed or one freed by Uri or Baki.
The tether I had been cutting parted, and I found the next one.
There was a rumble of angry voices, deep and loud, from the direction of the fire. One of the Angrborn stood up, another shouted, and a third snarled. I slashed at the tough tethers frantically.
Half a bowshot off, a mule crossed a patch of moonlight, galloping clumsily but fast, urged on by an Aelfmaiden lying like a red shadow on its back.
Another tether parted. Nearly dropping my dagger, I searched the trunk for more, but every one I found hung limp. Three Angrborn had left the fire and were walking toward me by that time, two shoulder-to-shoulder, the third lagging behind.
“Gylf!” I shouted. “Gylf!”
The bay of a hound on the scent answered me; in a moment that seemed long, it became the excited yelp of a hound with its prey in view. Somewhere a mule screamed, a stark cry of animal terror, and a dozen scattered in every direction. One of the giants dove for one as a man my size might have dived at a runaway goat, but it slipped through his hands. For a moment he held its tail; it kicked at his arm and vanished into the darkness.
The black beast that had killed so many Mice sprang at the throat of another Angrborn. Arms thicker than any man’s body closed around it.
“Disiri!” I ran to the fight. The third Angrborn was lumbering toward me when a mule with a crimson shadow on its back dashed in front of him, and he tripped and fell.
An Angrborn rolled toward me, wrestling a creature that was neither hound nor wolf, an animal far larger than a lion. Like a boulder tossed by a wave, Sword Breaker’s hard-edged, diamond-shaped blade struck and struck again. Without time or preparation that I could recall afterward, I found myself astride the ravening beast I had fought to save, and racing like the wind across the hills.
I felt I rode a storm.
* * *
Before the sun rose, Gylf had dwindled to his ordinary size; and not too long afterward, he and I found the white stallion where I had tied it the night before. Instead of mounting, I untied it and took off its saddle.
“You’re tired,” Gylf commented. “You want to sleep. I’ll watch.”
“I am tired,” I conceded, “but I don’t want to sleep and don’t intend to. I want to talk.”
“I’ll go.”
“I don’t want you to go. You’re mine, assuming that the Bodachan had a valid claim on you, and I like you very, very much and want to keep you. But there are things I’ve got to know.”
“I scare you.”
“You’d scare anybody.” Finding no log or stone to sit on, I sat in fern not far from the edge of the water.
“I’ll go.”
“I said I don’t want you to. I don’t even want you to hunt up a rabbit for us. We’re still too near those Frost Giants for that. I want you to tell me what you are.”
“Dog.” Gylf sat too.
“No ordinary dog can do what you do. No ordinary dog can talk, for that matter.”
“Good dog.”
I groped for some way to frame a question that might get a useful answer but had to settle for, “Why is it you get big when you fight something at night?”
“’Cause I can.”
“When we got Mani, I wanted to think you were like him.”<
br />
Gylf growled.
“Okay, maybe I should’ve said I wanted to think he was like you, only a cat. That’s how it seemed lots of times, but I’m pretty sure it’s wrong.”
Gylf lay down and offered no comment.
“Mani knows a lot about magic from watching the witch who used to own him. You don’t know anything about magic, so what you do isn’t. I don’t know what it is but I know I need to think about it. Unless you tell me.”
“Can’t.”
“Then maybe Uri can. Or Baki.” I called for them, but neither appeared.
“That’s not good,” I said. “We’ve got to go to Utgard to get Pouk and Ulfa, and get back before Lord Beel’s bunch gets here. We’re going to need Uri and Baki but we may not have them.”
Gylf raised his head. “Think they know? Might know?”
“They might,” I said, “and they might even tell us. The Aelf can change shape.” I paused to think. “Only not in the sunshine. But in Aelfrice, Setr changed into a man called Garsecg, and Uri and Baki had been turned into Khimairas. Or maybe turned themselves into Khimairas. I don’t know which.”
Seeing Gylf’s look of incomprehension, I added, “Flying monsters. Only there’s something wrong about all this. I can’t put my finger on it, but I know there is.”
“Sleep,” Gylf suggested.
I shrugged. “You’re right. I need sleep, and if I sleep I might think of it. Only just ’til dark, all right? Wake me when it starts to get dark, if you’re awake.”
It was dangerous, I thought as I stretched myself on the cool fern. We were within a few miles of the Angrborn camp; if they searched the woods for the mules, they might find us. More likely, the white stallion might be seen and caught and used for a pack horse. But pushing myself, and the stallion, and even Gylf to the point of exhaustion would be worse yet; and the lands nearer Utgard, from what I had been told, would have a lot more giants living in them than this dry hill country did.
As sleep came nearer and nearer, I tried to imagine one of the Angrborn plowing with oxen the way one of our farmers would with a toy tractor. Try as I might, I could not do it.
