Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“It’s just that it’s a name I’ve never heard.”

Mani’s voice was melted butter. “If you will allow me, Lady Idnn, I can set your mind at rest concerning the entire matter, presently or privately.”

“Please let him, My Lady. That way, I can say I didn’t tell you.”

“Org is a terrible man one rarely sees,” Mani explained. “He’s larger than a mule, silent, and lives on human flesh—”

“You’re making this up!”

“I, My Lady? I assure you, no one is less inclined to prevarication than I, your most worshipful Cat.”

“You know you are, Mani. You’re fibbing!”

“Squire Toug’s eloquent protestations have given away my little game, I see,” Mani said stiffly. “I shall proffer no more unneeded details. The facts you require, My Lady, are these. Org is a servant of Sir Able’s, one normally seen to by the hunchback. Before he left, however—prior to his brief yet gracious speech elevating Sir Svon to knighthood—he instructed Org to remain at Sir Svon’s side, obeying Sir Svon as if he were Sir Able himself. I thought that I, with the hunchback and Sir Able’s dog, was the sole witness to the conversation, but Squire Toug knows of it, clearly.”

“I saw it.” Toug wished the ground would swallow him. “I saw it and asked Sir Svon, and he said I’d better know but not to tell anybody.”

“He’s awfully handsome, isn’t he?” Idnn’s eyes shone.

Toug gawked.

“Sir Svon, I mean. He broke his nose fighting giants, and it will probably be crooked when it heals, but one must expect scars on a bold knight. Blue eyes...” She sighed. “He has a cleft chin. Did you notice, Squire?”

Toug managed to say, “Yes, My Lady.”

“My praise is not to be repeated. You realize that, I’m sure. Both of you.”

Mani said, “Most certainly not. Your Ladyship may rely on me absolutely.” To which Toug added, “Me, too.”

“I’ve had Mani’s opinion of Sir Svon already. If you want to hear it, no doubt you will. You may hear it even if you don’t want to. But I’d like to have yours. I realize you’ve been his squire for only one day.”

When Toug did not speak, Idnn added, “You must’ve formed some estimate of his character just the same.”

“I knew him before.”

“So you did. I won’t tattle, on a maiden’s honor.”

“And I,” Mani announced, “speak to you and Lady Idnn alone. And to Sir Able, but he isn’t here.”

“A lot’s what Sir Able told me,” Toug said, “but he’s right. I know he’s right.”

“About Sir Svon?” Idnn was clearly interested. “Better and better. What did he say?”

“Well, he’s proud. Sir Svon, I mean.”

“Anyone with half an eye can see that.”

“He ought to be a nobleman, but he’s a younger son, and then his mother died and his father married again. They’re just trying to get him out of the way, really. He looks down on everybody, even the king, because he feels like everybody looks down on him, and he’s got to learn—this’s what Sir Able said when we talked one time.”

“I understand. Go on.”

“He’s got to learn it’s not all looking up or looking down. He said people keep hurting Svon because they think he needs his pride humbled. He said he’d done that, too. But Sir Svon’s been hurt so much already that it only makes him worse and I shouldn’t do it anymore.”

“Have you humbled him, Squire?”

Toug looked around him, at the frigid northland night and the distant lights of the camp. It was time for a good solid lie, he knew, and he lied manfully. “I said something, My Lady. Only I took it back, after. I don’t think he’s forgotten; but I don’t think he’s mad anymore, either.”

The wall and towers of Utgard could be seen for a full day’s ride before they reached them, and neither was as Toug had expected. The base of the wall was a range of mountains, or at least seemed so, low mountains but steep. From it rose a second wall of fitted stones, in which the stones were larger than cottages. Atop that rose a palisade of trunks so great as to make the stones look small. The towers beyond the wall were blue with distance—and immense, so wide they seemed squat, and often topped by spidery scaffolding, half walled. The men on them looked as small as ants; but when Laemphalt had trotted another league, Toug realized they were not human beings but giants.

“No wonder our king wants to make friends with them,” he told Laemphalt. “We could never beat them, not in a thousand years, or even stop them from doing anything.”

Svon turned in his saddle. “If you can’t talk like a man, be quiet.”

Toug nodded. “I’m sorry, Sir Svon. It slipped out.”

“I killed one of those creatures a few days ago, and I’d like to make it a score.”

At the head of their column, Master Crol sounded a trumpet and shouted, “We come in peace!” Privately, Toug hoped they would be received the same way.

The plain on which they had heard so many mysterious sounds and seen ghostly figures at dawn was given over to farms here, for the most part; and poor farms they seemed to Toug, although his father’s fields had been scarcely fertile enough to feed his family. There were giants in these fields; but the reapers were human slaves, and mostly women.

“Look at that fellow.” Svon pointed. “He doesn’t know what he’s about.”

Toug touched his heels to Laemphalt until he and Svon rode side by side. “He’s blind, Sir Svon.”

“He is? How can you tell from here?”

“He’s a man. See his beard?”

“Of course. What does that have to do with it?”

“The giants blind their men slaves,” Toug explained. “Berthold told me. Didn’t you see him?”

“Yes, and he was blind. But he’s old. I thought...”

“They burned his eyes out. They do it to all the men.”

Something frightening came into Svon’s face.

Toug gulped. “They’ve got my sister. I told you.”

“Yes. But your sister won’t have been blinded, will she? The women at the farm were all right.”

“They weren’t all right, they just weren’t blind. We’re supposed to free Sir Able’s servant, and find his horses and baggage, and send them to him. My sister was with Sir Able’s servant, and he will have been blinded by now.”

“It may be impossible. I hope it isn’t, but it may be.”

“Sir Able... He knew about these things, Sir Svon.”

Reluctantly, Svon nodded.

“He knew you could do it. I told Lady Idnn after the battle, and maybe I—”

Svon had raised a hand for silence. “You told Lady Idnn? Did she ask about me?”

Toug nodded. “She wanted to know a lot about you. She likes you, Sir Svon.”

“We’ll have no more such talk as that!”

“No, sir. I’m sorry, Sir Svon.”

“I’d be a landless man, if it weren’t for her father’s generosity. As it is, I own a manor I’ve never seen. She’s the daughter of a baron, and you might circle Celidon without finding a fairer woman. She’ll wed the heir to a dukedom.”

“There can’t be many of those around here,” Toug said practically.

“Her father, and all of us, will return to the king when we’ve delivered his gifts, I’m sure.”

Toug nodded, hoping Svon was correct.

“She was interested in me? She asked about me?”

Toug nodded. “She likes you, Sir Svon. I know what you said, but she does.”

“An unproven knight.”

“Can I say something? You won’t get mad?”

Svon’s smile was grim. “Try it, and we’ll see.”

“When Lady Idnn looks at you, she sees what the rest of us see, not what you see when you think about yourself.”