The Knight twk-1

by Gene Wolfe

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Besides, I know Setr can. I’ve seen him do it. So if Garsecg could turn into a dragon, which he did, why not a big dragon with wings? He could have chased the Khimairas. You can’t change yourself like that, can you? Besides getting a lot bigger and fiercer the way I’ve seen?”

  “Nope.” Gylf stopped, one forefoot up, to point with his nose at the enormous steeple-roofed house of rough boards we were headed for. “Maybe we should go ’round.”

  I thought, then shook my head.

  Chapter 67. You Lose Track

  T he interior of the barn was as black as pitch, but Gylf’s nose found corn for the white stallion, and the stallion, almost as quickly, found a water trough for himself; I removed his saddlebags, saddle, and bridle. And while I was searching for a place to put them, by sheer good luck I bumped into the ladder to the hayloft. Moonlight crept in there, so that after the blind dark below it seemed bright enough to read in. I forked down half a cartload of hay for Gylf and the stallion, took off my boots, and fell asleep as soon as I lay down.

  Thunder woke me up—thunder, lightning, and driving rain that came through every crack in the roof of the barn. I sat up, afraid and not knowing what had happened, and the next time the lightning flashed I was looking squarely into the ugly face of the Frost Giant I had seen years ago beside the Griffin—the giant whose face and towering stature had sent me running back to Bold Berthold’s to warn him.

  “Thought I wouldn’t see your horse’s tracks.”

  The giant’s voice was deep and rough, and would have been terrifying if heard thus suddenly on a sunny summer day. It suffered now in comparison to the thunder. “Thought the rain’d wash ’em out, didn’t you?”

  I shook my head, yawned, and stretched. He wanted to talk before he fought, and that was fine with me. “I didn’t know it was going to rain, and didn’t care whether you saw my horse’s hoofprints or not. Why should I?”

  “Sneaking. Hiding.”

  “Not me.” I rose and dusted off the hay in which I had slept, wondering all the while where Gylf was. “Traveling late is what you mean. I’ve got urgent business with King Gilling, and I rode ’til my horse was fit to drop. If you had been awake, I’d have begged food and accommodation from you, but your lights were out. I came in here and did what I could. Can you spare a bite of breakfast?”

  The lightning flashed again, and I realized with a sort of sick relief that his head was not severed and standing on the floor before me, but thrust up the hatch in the floor.

  “Knight, ain’t you?”

  “That’s right. I’m Sir Able of the High Heart, and your hospitality has earned my gratitude.”

  Another lightning flash showed a hand coming at me. I drew Sword Breaker and struck at the darkness where that hand had been; the sickening crack of breaking bone was followed by a bellow of pain from the giant.

  The whole barn shook when he crashed into some part of it. For a second I could hear the thudding of his footsteps through the rattle of the rain. A distant door slammed.

  He would doctor his hand, I decided, and perhaps fetch some weapon; the question was whether he had barred his door as well as slamming it.

  No, I decided as I climbed down the ladder, there were really two questions. The other one was could I beat him?

  Bold Berthold was outside, between the house and the barn, feeling his way through the driving rain with a stick and hugging something wrapped in rags to his chest.

  “Here I am,” I called, and trotted over to him, wet to the skin and nearly blown off my feet the minute I left the barn.

  The stick found me, and he tried to give me his bundle. “Come lookin’ for you last night, but you wasn’t there. In the barn, you said, and I poked everywhere and called your name, only I never could find you.”

  “I was in the hayloft, asleep.” I felt a sudden shame. “I should have thought about you. I’m sorry.”

  He took me by the arm. “You hurt my master?”

  “I tried to. I think I broke a bone in his hand.”

  “Then you got to get away!” A flash of lightning showed Bold Berthold’s contorted face and the empty sockets that had held kind brown eyes.

  “Was he the one who blinded you?”

  “Don’t matter. He’ll kill you!”

  ‘“It does matter. Was it?”

  “They all do it.” His voice shook with urgency. “You got to run. Now!”

  “No. You’ve got to get me into the house. Into the kitchen would be best.”

  There were half a dozen knives in there, but they were of a size for the trembling women who served Bymir and not for Bymir himself, knives hardly bigger than my dagger.

  “He’s coming,” one of the women called as I rummaged through a clattering drawer; and in desperation I snatched a spit long enough for oxen from a vast fireplace. One end was offset to make a crank, the other sharp so it could be run through the carcasses. I put that end into the glowing coals, feeling the sea of battle pounding in my veins, and waiting for the storm.

  When Bymir lumbered through the doorway at last, his groin was level with my eyes; I rammed the sharp end of the spit into it.

  When he bent double, into his throat.

  He would have fallen on me, if I had not jumped to one side. When I got the spit out, I saw that he had bent it a little in falling. I straightened it over my knee.

  “Was that him?” Bold Berthold gasped. “That what fell?”

  The women (there were three, all slatternly and thin) assured him it had been.

  I had taken hold of Bymir’s left boot and pulled the leg straight. “He doesn’t seem so big now that he’s lying here.”

  “Lookit the blood,” one of the women whispered. “Don’t slip in it, sir.”

  “I’ll try not to.” I had been avoiding the seething mess anyway for the sake of my boots, although I was tempted to stamp on the ugly little creatures that swam in it. “Four and a half steps. I’m going to say a yard for each step, so he was thirteen and a half feet tall, or about that. It’s good to know.”

  I turned to face Bold Berthold, laying my hand on his shoulder. “I have to go to Utgard, as I told you last night, but I’ll come back as quick as I can. In the meantime, I want you and these women to cut up this body and get rid of it in any way that works. If other Angrborn ask ...”

  “Yes, lad. What is it?”

  “The wind. The wind is in the chimney.”

  A wild north wind moaned there as I spoke, as though it had heard me. “In a storm like this’n? ’Tis a big chimney, sir, an’ the wind always gets in there.”

  “I’ve got to go. Gylf’s gone already, it seems. After the Valfather’s pack, though I didn’t hear them tonight. Is my horse still in the barn?”

  “‘Spose so, sir. Found it there when I was lookin’ for you. Your saddle’s there, too.”

  “I’ll come back as soon—as soon as I do.” I snatched the rag-wrapped bundle Bold Berthold been holding, clamped it under my arm, and dashed out into the storm again.

  The nearest wood, I felt sure, had been the one where Gerda and Bold Berthold had met; I recalled that it had been on the side of the house opposite the barn. Keeping the wind to my left as well as I could, I spurred the stallion until water and mud exploded from under his hooves.

  Lightning showed me moss-grown trunks, and I shouted for Disiri. There was no reply, but the rain stopped.

  Not slacked, but stopped altogether. No lightning flashed, no thunder boomed, and no icy drops fell from the leaves above my head even when I stirred them with my hand. The darkness remained; but it was darkness less black than green. From the slope of some far mountain, a wolf howled.

  I rode on, and crossed a purling silver stream that was never the small river of Jotunland. No sun rose, and no stars shone; yet the green dark seemed to fade. Although the air around me hung motionless save where my breath disturbed it, a wind soughed among the treetops, chanting a thousand names. Among them, both of mine
.

  I reined up to listen, and rose in the stirrups to be nearer the sound. “Walewein,Wace,Vortigern, Kyot.

  The names that I had heard, my own, were not repeated.

  “Yvain, Gottfried, Eilhart, Palamedes, Duach, Tristan, Albrecht, Caradoc ...”

  Someone was running toward me—running, stumbling, and running again. I heard the runner’s gasps and sobs before the leaves parted and a teenager with staring eyes and torn clothes stumbled through to cling to my boot.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  His mouth opened and closed, but only sobs came out.

  “You’re dirty enough, and scared almost to death, it seems like. Is somebody chasing you?”

  Still sobbing, he shook his head.

  “This is Aelfrice, isn’t it?” I paused to look around. “It’s got to be, but if that’s your natural shape, you’re no Aelf. Why were you running?” Pointing to his mouth, he shook his head again. “Hungry?”

  He nodded, and it seemed to me that a glimmer of hope came into his eyes. “I don’t ... Wait a minute.”

  Bold Berthold’s bundle was a good-sized loaf of coarse bread and a lump of cheese. I tore the loaf in two, broke the cheese, and gave the smaller halves of each to him. It was fresh bread and good cheese.

  “It’s polite to talk at table,” I told him when I had swallowed the first bite. “When I was little, my brother and I just dug right in, but that’s not the way they eat at Duke Marder’s castle. You’re supposed to talk about the weather, or hunting, or somebody’s new horse.”

  Pointing to his mouth as he had before, he shook his head.

  “You can’t talk?”

  He nodded.

  I dismounted. “Swallow that cheese and open your mouth. I want to have a look.”

  He did as he was told.

  “Still got your tongue. I thought maybe somebody’d cut it out.” He shook his head.

  “Lord Beel told me once that if you hit somebody’s face with witch hazel, you see the true shape. Maybe that would work on you, but I don’t see any around here. Is that your true shape?”

  He nodded.

  “Maybe you were born like this?” He shook his head.

  “You know, you look familiar.” He did, too; I tried to recall the boy Modguda had sent for Pouk. “How’d you get to Aelfrice?” He pointed to me. “I brought you?” He nodded, still crying.

  “Just now?” Taking a bite from what remained of the cheese, I thought about that. “You followed me from Bymir’s farm?” The boy shook his head. “But I brought you?” Another nod.

  I snapped my fingers. “Toug!” A round dozen joyful nods.

  “I was here with you—it’s been years ago. It doesn’t seem like it, but I guess it has been. How long have you been here?” He shrugged.

  “It seems like that’s the way it always is. You lose track here. Maybe there really isn’t any time. Let’s see. Queen Disiri took you?” Looking frightened, Toug nodded.

  “She said she had something to tell you, or to ask you. The two of you went off together, and you never came back.” Toug shook his head.

  “You did? When?”

  Toug pointed to the ground at his feet.

  “Now?”

  Toug nodded.

  “You just left her?”

  He nodded again.

  “Can you take me to the place?”

  Another nod.

  “Then let’s go!”

  He pointed to the stallion, his eyes questioning.

  “You’re right.” We can ride faster than we can walk, even through these trees.” I let him climb into the saddle and got up behind him. “Hold on to the pommel and point. Which way? I won’t let him trot much.”

  Crying again, he pointed; I clapped my borrowed spurs to the stallion’s sides.

  Chapter 68. In The Grotto Of The Griffin

  T wilight found us among mountains, camped beside a rushing stream.

  “This isn’t Aelfrice.” It was something I had said before; Toug nodded miserably, as he had the other time.

  “It was in this gorge that things changed, I think. One end is in Aelfrice and the other here. For us. For today. That’s how it seems to me, anyway. I’ve been in mountains like these before, and it wouldn’t surprise me if these are the same ones, though I haven’t seen the War Way. Was it near here you parted from Disiri?”

  Toug rose and began to walk, pointed, then indicated by a gesture that I was to follow. With a worried glance back at the tethered stallion, I did.

  By the time we reached the carved stone from which the stream issued, the light had failed. The place where water came out was a big cave, I thought at first, a cave with an overhanging, downward-curved roof, so that the long smooth expanse of stone over which the water flowed seemed almost a portico. It was not until I returned to our fire and came back with two burning sticks that I saw the eagle eyes and the pointed ears. I would have gone in then, as Toug urged by eager smiles and gestures.

  “There is danger within!”

  I turned, but the location and identity of the speaker were lost in darkness.

  “It was my home once.”

  The voice was deep and slow and lisping; I felt sure it came from no human lips. I raised my burning sticks, moving them to fan the flame. Something huge clung to the cliff face, something ghostly white and assuredly not human.

  “Strength will not avail against Grengarm,” the great voice announced, “until you grasp Eterne. As you will. Nor will cunning, once you have her.”

  Wings sprouted from the white form on the cliff face, each wing larger than Beel’s pavilion. It sprang into the air. Lightnings played about its wings; the wind those wings raised blew out my sticks and knocked Toug off his feet and nearly into the rushing water. For seconds that seemed whole minutes, that ghostly shape eclipsed the moon; then it was gone.

  I helped Toug stand up and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Disiri isn’t here, is she?”

  He could not speak, and if he nodded or shook his head, it was too dark for me to catch it.

  “Listen now,” I told him, “and listen good. I told you to take me to Disiri, not here. She talked about this sword—getting it for me. I wouldn’t wear a sword because of it. I didn’t want a substitute. I didn’t want a compromise. I wanted Eterne, the sword she’d promised me. But that’s not what I want now. I want her.”

  Toug had begun to sob, and realizing that I had been shaking him hard, I dropped him.

  “Only her.” I poked Toug with the toe of my boot to make sure he had understood. “You can wait here if you want to. I’m going back to the fire.”

  He clung to me all the way back, and when we got there and I had thrown all the wood we had collected onto it, I said, “You’re afraid of that thing that talked to us. So am I. What was it?”

  He just stared.

  “A griffin?”

  He nodded.

  “You saw it before, I suppose, when you were here with Disiri. There aren’t suppose to be any, not really. Not anymore, and most people would say not ever. Sensible people never believe in things like that.” Half to myself I added, “Of course there aren’t supposed to be ogres, either, but Org’s real enough. Probably you’re afraid the griffin’s going to eat you.”

  Toug nodded again.

  “Or the dragon will, because there’s a dragon in there. That’s what the griffin said. Grengarm—he’s a dragon, the one who has my sword. Did you see him, too?” Toug shook his head.

  “Well, you’re not going to. We’re going to Utgard. Your sister’s there, for one thing, and you and I are going to get her out. You don’t have a blanket.”

  He nodded, looking hopeless.

  “You can use the saddle blanket, but you’d better get more wood for the fire before you even try to sleep.”

  While he was collecting fallen branches from the sparse growth near the water, I got my bedding out of my saddlebag and lay down. “If you decide to head back to Glennidam on your own,” I said, “bon
voyage and I hope you have a fun trip. But if you take anything of mine, I’ll come after you. If the Mountain Men don’t get you, I will. Remember that.”

  * * *

  In dream I was a boy I had never been, running over the downs with other boys. We caught a rabbit in a snare, and I wept at his death and for some vast sorrow approaching that I sensed but could not see. We skinned and cleaned the rabbit, and roasted it over a little fire of twigs. I choked on it, fell unconscious into the fire, and so perished. I had wanted to save the bones for my dog, but I was dead and my dog had followed the Wild Hunt, and the rabbit’s steaming flesh was burning in my throat.

  * * *

  It was still dark when I woke, but no longer quite so dark as night should have been once the moon had set. Toug crouched weeping on the other side of the fire, a small fire now, although there were a score of charred stubs around it.

  Rising, I gathered them up and tossed them into the flames. “What are you afraid of?” I asked; and when he made no gesture in reply, I sat down beside him and put my arm over his shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

  He pointed to his mouth.

  “You can’t talk. Do you know why you can’t?”

  Sobbing, he nodded and pointed to my side.

  “Did Disiri do this to you?”

  He nodded again; and after that, I sat up with him until the renewed fire had very nearly burned itself out; and since he could not talk, I talked a good deal, all about Disiri and my most recent adventures. At last I said, “You wanted me to go into the mountain where the dragon is. Was that because Disiri told you you’d be able to speak again if I did?”

  He picked up a scrap of charred wood and smeared a long mark on a flat stone, with a smaller one across it.

  “The sword?”

  He nodded.

  “You’ll be able to talk again if I can get Eterne?”

  Nodding vigorously, he smiled through his tears. His eyes shone.

  I rose. “You stay here. You’ll have to look after my horse, but you can use my blankets. Don’t touch my bow or my quiver. You grew up in the forest, didn’t you? Of course you did. You ought to know how to set snares. You must be hungry, and now that the bread and cheese are gone we don’t have anything here.” I stopped for a minute to think things over, then added, “I wouldn’t try to get back to Aelfrice, if I were you.”