Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“No. You were hungry. No doubt I’d do the same if I had a mother to run to.”

“We watch the War Way, Heimir and I.” Hela returned her stick and the gobbet of meat it held again back to the fire. “Some give us something, sometimes.”

“You did not beg of me, when I came up it.”

“Didn’t see you, sir. How many horses?”

“Pack horses, you mean? I had none.”

“What would you have given us, sir knight?” She smiled; although it was not a pleasant smile, I sensed that it was as pleasant as she could make it. “Not even beggars work for nothing.”

“Nothing is what I would have given you. Would you have robbed me?”

“A knight? With horse and sword?” She laughed again. “No, not I! Nor Heimir. Small stomach he’d have for such a fight! It’s reavers returning we like best, sir knight, with sulking slaves tied tight as sausages, and heifers and horses to drive before them.” Hela’s voice rose to a whine. “Bless you, true Angrborn all! Blessed be Angr, true mother who bore you! Many a smile you’d have from your mother, for many a morsel you’ve won down the War Way. One morsel for me from you, great men? A bit for my brother? No more than you’d lose in a tooth, my masters.” High already, her voice rose again. “Morsel for me! Bread for my brother! Charity for children’s the kindness of heroes! So we bawl, and follow to steal if they let us.” She shook her head.

I said, “That’s no life for a girl. Not even for one as big as you are, though there are hundreds of beggar maids in Kingsdoom from what I’ve been told. What are you going to do now, once you’ve eaten?”

“Follow you, sir knight, as long as you’ll feed Momma and me. Dig for my dinner, if it’s digging you want.”

She shook her head again, more vehemently, and I turned mine to look behind me. Gylf woke with a low growl.

“I can milk and butcher and churn,” she said quickly, “and bear more than your mule. Try me. And if—you’ve no wench with you? Don’t you shiver, sleeping?”

Thanks to Cloud, my inner eye glimpsed a shadowy figure larger than a man—with a rope between its hands.

From the night surrounding our little clearing, Uri’s laughter showered us with steel bells. “Here is a hot wench if he wants one, one who will not take the whole blanket.”

“What’s this!” Hela stared into the darkness.

“Your victim’s slave.” Uri stepped into the firelight. “Lord, there is a great lout behind you—”

“With a rope, thinking to strangle me.” I nodded. “His sister’s been my protector twice.”

Hela turned from Uri to stare at me. “You knew he was there? By Ymir!”

“So did Gylf. I doubt that he’d have gotten his rope around my neck.”

“Nay, nor wished to. What’s this?”

“An Aelfmaiden.”

“Are they all red?”

Uri said, “None but the best, and we like it better than pink with brown blotches.”

“Call your brother,” I told Hela. “He’s probably as hungry as you were.”

She rose and held up her stick, with its gobbet of pork smoking and sizzling. “Heimir! This’s for you!”

He was larger even than she, with shoulders that made me think of Org, and so thin every rib showed. His massive jaw, broad nose, and owl eyes promised brutal stupidity.

I motioned for him to sit. “Eat something. Gerda will be glad to see you.” Hela offered her stick. He took it, stared at the meat, and at last pulled it off and ate.

“You told me why you left the mountains,” I said to Hela, “but not why your brother did.”

“He’d left our old home with me, sir knight. He left our new one to be with me. You think him thick.”

I said nothing.

“It’s solemn truth he’s slow of speech. Slower than I, though I’m slow enough for two most times.”

Uri said, “I would call you a babbler, rather.”

“You’re the knight’s slave? Slaves need a smoother tongue, or soon come to grief.”

Uri turned to me. “Have you ever had to feed me?”

“No,” I said.

“Or pay me?”

“No.”

“Yet we have served you faithfully? Baki and I?”

“You’re wondering how much she told me. Very little.”

“Is she dead?”

“No,” I said again.

“What happened?”

“We talked about you.” I measured my words. “Why you hadn’t told me her back was broken and asked me to help her.”

Hela giggled, a sound like a small avalanche. “That silenced her, sir knight. Black thoughts to raze her red face. Tell me true, are they underground? It’s what Momma’s gossips told me.”

“They’re from the world under ours. I wouldn’t call it underground.”

“Why doesn’t she go there?”

“Would you,” Uri asked, “if you could mount to Elysion?”

Hela’s hard face looked troubled. “What’s that?”

“Where the Most High God reigns.” Uri rose. “You want me to retire to Aelfrice. Very well, I will go. But Lord, if you must feed this gross slattern—”

“I want you to go, too,” I said to Uri, “but not back to Aelfrice. I want you to go to Utgard. Toug should be there by now, and so should your sister. Bring me word of them.”

“I will try.” Uri shot Hela a parting glance. “She and the lout will beggar you in a week.”

“I hope to beggar myself. Go.”

Uri vanished into the night.

I took the meat from my own stick and began to eat it. Hela asked if she might have another piece, and I nodded.

When she had finished cutting it, she said, “You’re going to the mountains?”

“Yes. To take my stand at a pass. It’s the sentence Duke Marder passed on me, and I must do it before seeking the woman I love.”

“They love us not, that live there.”

I swallowed the last bite of pork and lay down, wrapping my cloak around me. “They don’t like me either. We’ll face them together, if you’re willing.” For the first time Heimir spoke, addressing his sister. “Sleep. I watch.”

Two slave women visited Toug in the turret room to which the king had sent him, one carrying a heavy gold chain and the other a tunic of black batswing. Both knew Ulfa.

“She’s my sister,” Toug explained. “I’m hoping the king will let me take her home. The man who came with her, too.”

“Pouk,” the taller of the women said.

“Yes, Pouk. He’s Sir Able’s servant, and Sir Able would like him back. The king must have a lot.”

“It’s not a bad life,” the taller woman said; and the other, “It could be worse.”

“I’ll free you, too, if I can,” Toug promised them. Both looked frightened and hurried out.

“I didn’t mean to scare them,” Toug said as the huge door banged shut. Mani was composed. “Magic has a way of doing that.”

“I didn’t say anything about magic.” Toug resumed his examination of the room. Among other things, it held a bed slightly smaller than his father’s house in Glennidam, four chairs with rungs he would have to climb in order to sit in them, and a table upon which half a dozen people could have danced.

“There’s a sandbox over here,” Mani remarked. “That’s hospitable of them.”

Slowly, Toug nodded. “We’re going to live here awhile. Or they think we are.”

“If I were to offer a guess, you’d say I cheated.”

“No, I won’t.”

“All right.” Mani paused for dramatic effect. “My guess is that there is a chamber pot under that bed for you, and it’s five times too—”

“What’s the matter?”

“That picture.” Mani was staring up at it with eyes wide. “He’s gone.”

“The man in the black robe?”

“It wasn’t a man, it was a Frost Giant.” Mani climbed a chair back as he might have climbed a wall, and sprang to the top of the table.