Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“I’m glad you understand. Don’t tell anyone. This is only a dream, after all.”

“Uns is coming, Sir Able. See there?” Toug pointed; Uns’ bent figure was only just visible as it topped a rise, hurrying along crab wise, but making good time for all that.

“We must go,” I said, and the green hills of Dream, crowned with poplars and drooping cypress, were visible only as the reflection of the sun in water.

Toug blinked and sat up. The fire was scarcely more than embers. Cloud stood over Uns’ twisted form, her noble head bent until their lips nearly touched. A moment more and Cloud had faded to mist and was gone.

Toug rose and put more wood on the fire, then knelt by me. “Are you still going for my sister?”

“I’m sending you,” I said.

“I have the right to raise others to knighthood,” I told Beel’s followers. “If anyone doubts me, let him challenge me now.”

Nobody spoke, though faces were turned toward Garvaon.

“I wish I could say I have lands to give as well, fair manors to bestow on such knights as I make. I have none, but Lord Beel has most nobly offered to make up the deficiency.”

The watchers murmured, their voices less forceful and distinct than that of the wind. I raised my hand, and they quieted down.

“There are those who become knights in the great castles of the south,” I continued. “There’s a ritual bath, at which three knights stand near to counsel them. From dark to dawn they watch their arms. There are banners, prayers, and songs, and there are ladies in silk to watch it. We have a lady here, but she wears leather, and a quiver on her back.”

Toug turned to look at Idnn, and saw that everyone else was as well. Her head was high, her eyes as bright as those of the big black cat on her shoulder.

“When the ceremonies are done, and the knight-to-be has been properly admired and gossiped about, a carpet is spread before the giver of the accolade. The knight-to-be kneels on it, and for that reason those who are knighted this way are called carpet knights.”

Crol laughed, but fell silent almost at once.

“There are knights of another kind, too. Those who’ve watched the weapons of foes instead of their own, knights who get the accolade because all who know them know they’re knights already, brave and honorable and skilled at arms.”

A bar of sunlight raced across the plain, and was gone.

I had spoken loudly enough for everyone to hear; now I let my voice fall. “Come forward, Svon, and kneel.”

Svon advanced, neither quickly nor slowly. For a moment that only seemed long he stood, before dropping to his knees. Maybe it was the wind that made his eyes water.

Eterne sprang from her jeweled scabbard into my hand, and I no longer stood alone. A score of knights, old and grim or young and gallant, stood with me. A woman who was not Idnn screamed among the onlookers.

The long black blade touched Svon’s right shoulder, then his left. I said, “Arise, Sir Svon.”

Svon stood up, looking dazed; Eterne shot back into her scabbard, and the phantom knights vanished.

I said, “Toug, step forward, please.”

Proudly, Toug took his place beside Svon. His clothes were those of the village boy he had been, but on his arm was a beautiful green shield bearing a white griffin.

“Here stands a squire, Sir Svon. Will you have him?”

“Gladly,” Svon answered, “if he will have me.”

“Will you serve this knight loyally, Toug? As your father once served me?”

“I swear it!” Toug’s voice was loud, and possibly for that reason cracked as he spoke.

No word of mine summoned Cloud. With Gylf at her heels, she cantered through the onlookers to stand before me.

I mounted. “I’m going south, taking Uns and two more. I promised Duke Marder I’d take my stand in a mountain pass, and have yet to do so. When you free my servant from the Angrborn, send him to me. He’ll know where to find me.”

That night Toug hoped to dream as he had when we slept side by side. No such dreams came to him, but the warm pink tongue of a cat instead. He rolled onto his back. “Hello, Mani. What is it?”

“Come with me,” Mani said softly; and when Toug rose he led him from the camp to a place not greatly different from any other on that haunted plain, save that Idnn was there on a little folding stool, with another such stool before her.

“I need to speak with you, Squire,” she said, “you and I have not been great friends until—Sit, please. I brought that stool out here for you.”

Toug bowed and sat. “You gave me my shield and made me your friend as long as I live.”

She smiled, a smile just visible in the moonlight. “That was courteously said.”

“I don’t know anything about manners. How to talk to a lady or a nobleman like your father, or any of that. I just said the truth.”

“Sir Svon can teach you.”

“I know, but he hasn’t had time yet.”

As though she had not heard him, Idnn said, “He has beautiful manners, when he chooses.”

“The wise know how to be polite,” Mani informed Toug, “but the wise know when to be polite as well.”

“And do not choose to be courteous always,” Idnn finished for him. “Sir Svon is brusque with me, Squire, unless my father is at my side. Why is that?”

“He hasn’t told me.”

“Of course not. I know I’m not beautiful—”

“Yes, you are,” Toug told her; Mani purred approval.

“Beautiful women don’t have noses like mine!”

“There were women and girls in our village, and there are your women and girls here, and most of the slaves the giant had were women. But when I try to think of somebody else like you, the only one I can think of is Queen Disiri, and you’re a lot nicer than she was.”

“You met her? Sir Able introduced you or something?”

Toug nodded.

“I’d love to. Do you think he’s coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Address her as ‘My Lady,’” Mani whispered; and Toug repeated, “I don’t know, My Lady.”

“But you could guess, Squire, if you were made to?”

“I don’t think so,” Toug said slowly. “He said to send his servant when we rescued my sister. I don’t think he’d have said that if he were coming back.”

Idnn nodded reluctantly.

“And he made Sir Svon a knight. Sir Svon used to be his squire, but now I’m Sir Svon’s squire. Sir Svon’s being a knight means you’ve got two, like you did when you had Sir Garvaon and Sir Able.”

“Have you heard what Sir Garvaon said about that?”

Toug shook his head, and drew the cloak she had given him more tightly about him. “No, My Lady. I haven’t.”

“Garvaon said Sir Able thinks this will make Sir Svon or break him, and you, too. He thinks Able may come to Utgard to see how well you acted. Or how badly.”

“That’s wrong,” Toug said, surprising himself. “I mean he’s a knight and he knows a lot, My Lady, but I don’t think he knows Sir Able as well as I do. He’s not like that.”

Mani asked, “May I speak, Lady Idnn?”

“Later.” She picked Mani up, stroking his head. “I want to hear Toug now. What’s Sir Able like, Toug?”

“I don’t know a word for it,” said Toug, who thought he did, “but he wouldn’t test us like Sir Garvaon says. He knows already. He knows we can do it, or anyhow he knows Sir Garvaon and Sir Svon can.”

“Two knights against a castle full of Frost Giants?”

“Sir Garvaon and Sir Svon and all of us,” Toug amended. “You, My Lady, your father, Mani, Org, and everybody else.”

“Org?”

“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”