Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

Instead I looked for the golden knight who had led us. He had dwindled to Svon—Svon with half a shield still on his left arm, and half a swan on it, and a swan on his helm, a swan of gilt wood that had lost a wing in the fight. We embraced, something we had never done before, and he helped me get the Earl Marshal into the manor, with Gylf gamboling to cheer us by his joy, and wagging his tail.

Twenty or thirty people came crowding into the room, drawn by the news that a nobleman of high station had joined them. They hoped, I am sure, that he had brought substantial reinforcements; but they were gracious enough not to grumble when they learned that Gylf, Uns, and I comprised the whole. (Some may even have been relieved, for they were on short rations.) We made them stand back and be quiet, and finding Payn among them let him attend his father. Other wounded were carried in. The many women cared for them, while Svon and I with others went out to search the field for more, and collect such loot as the dead might provide.

Outdoors again, I asked Svon who commanded.

“You do, Sir Able, now that you’re here.”

I shook my head. “I saw Her Majesty among her guard.”

“My wife will defer to you, I’m sure. This is Redhall, and Redhall is yours. Your duke is not present, and you are no subject of ours.”

I congratulated him on his marriage, and he smiled, weary though he was. “It was my hope, my dream, to rise to the nobility. You remember, I’m sure.”

“To return to it. Your sire was noble.”

“I thank you. To return.” The bitter smile I had come to detest in my squire twisted his lips. “I would have been overjoyed to die a baronet. Now I find I am a prince.”

I congratulated him again, saying Your Highness.

“A fighting prince far from his wife’s realm, who finds his experience as a knight invaluable. Do you want to hear our story?”

I did, of course. Idnn, as I knew, had taken a hundred young Skjaldmeyjar with her when she came south. They had astonished Kingsdoom and had attended the nuptials of their queen, attestation to her royal status—a status Arnthor had readily recognized, seeing an ally who might restrain Schildstarr. When he had refused to free me, they had fought the Osterlings, the most feared troops in his host, in the hope that he would grant Idnn a boon.

The first warm days had shown only too plainly that the dreaded Daughters of Angr could not continue to fight. Idnn had marched north with Svon, Mani, and a few others, but was stopped short of the mountains by the Caan’s northern army which had already ravaged Irringsmouth and was scouring the countryside for food to send south. Driven back, they had joined others who fled or fought, taking refuge in manors and castles that the Osterlings had quickly overwhelmed, and so come to Redhall. Of the hundred Skjaldmeyjar, twenty-eight remained before our battle, and twenty-seven after it. The unseasonable cold had made it possible for them to fight, and Svon had ordered the sally; but it was certain they would be unable to fight again until the first frost.

“Would you like to meet the leader of those who joined our retreat?” Svon asked. “He’s over there.” He gestured, the rain (warmer now) running from his mail-clad arm.

I said, of course, that I would very much like to make his acquaintance. In my own defense, I add here that the day was still dark, and the man Svon had indicated was wearing a cloak with the hood up.

“Sir Toug! Sir Able is eager to speak with you, and I’m surprised you’re not at least as eager to speak with him.”

Toug managed to smile at that, and gave me his hand. I asked about his shoulder, and he said it had healed. That was not the case, as I soon discovered; but it was better.,

“I said I didn’t want to be a knight, and you said I was one, that I couldn’t help it,” he told me, “and we were both right. The Osterlings came, and there was nobody to lead our village who knew fighting except me, so I had to do it. They didn’t want me at first, so I led by being in front. We beat off a couple parties and a Free Company joined us. Our stock was gone and the barley stamped flat, so we went south. We got to where Etela was, but they’d only started fixing it back up. She’s here, and her mother and father, too.”

I asked whether Vil were her father, and Toug nodded. “They didn’t want to say it ’cause they weren’t married, Sir Able. Only now they are. He won’t let you say my lord, though. He’s still Vil.”

“Quite right,” Svon muttered.

“But I’m Sir Toug and Sir Svon’s Prince Svon now. He knighted me—I was his squire up north. You did that.”

I nodded again.

“So he did, and Etela and I are going to get married next year if we’re still alive.”

Gylf leaped up, putting his forepaws on Toug’s chest and licking his face. It amazed and amused me like nothing else. I cannot help laughing when I think of it, even now.

“There’s somebody else here I ought to tell you about,” Toug said, “you always liked them. It’s the old couple from Jotunland, the blind man that was a slave on some farm.”

A thousand things came rushing at me then—the ruin of the land, Arnthor’s eyes, the drunken smile of his sister, and the empty, lovely face of his queen. Sunless days in the dungeon, cold that was the breath of death, Bold Berthold’s hut, wind in the treetops—Disiri’s kiss, her long legs and slender arms, the green fingers longer than my hand. Gerda young, as Berthold had remembered her, with flaxen hair and merry eyes. Mag in Thiazi’s Room of Lost Love.

The Lady’s hall in the flowering meadows whose blossoms are the stars, and, oh, ten thousand more. And I, who had been laughing only a moment past, wept. Toug clasped me as he would a child, and spoke to me as his mother must have to him: “There, there... It don’t matter. It don’t matter at all.”

A rider came, the same Lamwell of Chaus who had played at halberts with me in the tournament, so worn that he could scarcely hold the saddle, on a horse so nearly dead it fell when he dismounted. The king lived—was in the south in need of every man. We held a council and I said I would go, that the rest might go or stay, but the king who had freed me had need of me and I would go to him. Pouk and Uns stood by me, and their wives by them; they must have shamed many. Idnn said she could not go, the Daughters of Angr could not fight in summer and could scarce march in it—they would have to march by night, and short marches, too. She and Svon would go north now that the enemy in this part of Celidon had been beaten, and hope for cooler days in the hills. They had lost three-quarters of their number in service to a foreign king, as she reminded us, and overturned the siege tower. We agreed, some of us reluctantly.

Afterward I spoke with Idnn privately; it was then that she told me of her visit from Uri and her interview with the Valfather. When we had talked over both, I asked a boon. “You may have any in our power,” Idnn said, “and we’ll stay if you ask it. But aside from our husband we shall be of scant service to you.”

“You may be of greatest service to me, Your Majesty, at little cost to yourself. I gave Berthold and Gerda to serve you in the north. Will you return them?”

She did most readily.

And did more with it, creating Payn a baron of her realm—this sworn before witnesses. When it was done, the Earl Marshal declared that if he died, Lord Payn of Jotunhome was heir to his castle and lands, and all he had.

I would have left next morning, but could not. There could be little provision in the south. Two days we spent in gathering all we could. There was another matter, too. I hoped Cloud would join me. If she had, I would have left the rest and ridden straight to the king; she did not, though I called every night. She had been the Valfather’s last gift, and it seemed to me that she knew I had broken the oath I had given him and was executing his mild justice. After we left Redhall, I called to her no more.