Gene Wolfe: The Wizard

Not long after that Garvaon told Toug, “I’ve got nothing to give you. We haven’t so much as a bodkin to spare. What about this hunchback of Sir Able’s?”

“Got a stick ‘n me hatchet what I cut hit wid.” Uns displayed them. “Plenty fer me, sar.”

“That isn’t what I meant. Can you give the boy anything to fight with?” Uns considered. “Cut a stick, mebbe.”

“Do it.” Garvaon turned to Toug. “I have no weapons to give. None. If you can make something for yourself, even if it’s just a quarterstaff like Sir Able’s hunchback has, you must do it.”

Garvaon glanced up at the darkening sky. “When the battle’s joined, some will fall. More may drop their arms and run. If you don’t, you can pick up something.”

“I will.”

Garvaon’s hard, middle-aged face softened. “Try to stay out of harm’s way. Get a bow, if you can, and arrows.”

Toug nodded.

“And be ready to rise early and ride hard. We’re close. We riders will have to hold them ‘til those on foot catch up, not that they’ll be much use. You have Sir Able’s horse.”

Toug nodded, and Uns said, “Got me mool.”

“So you’ll be with us. If you can’t keep up, try to hurry those on foot. They’re women, mostly.”

Toug resolved to outride Garvaon if possible.

“We’ve got sixty-two men,” Garvaon was saying. “We lost a few along the way. Of those, forty are mounted and decent riders. Twenty-seven women, not counting Lady Idnn, who’ll lead them. Our scouts have spied on the Frost Giants, and there seem to be—”

“That doesn’t matter,” Toug said, and left him.

It was nearly dark when he and Uns selected a sapling from the little stand along the wandering steam that marked the eastern edge of their camp. Uns felled it with three mighty blows, working by feel as much as by sight; and they trimmed the top and cut away such small limbs as remained.

After that, when Toug was making a bed on the ground from pine boughs and blankets from my saddlebag, Gylf brought the other saddlebag. Opening it, Toug found a big single-edged knife with a handle of plain black ivy root. It had been wrapped in rags and tied with strips torn from those rags. Toug bound it tightly to the end of his quarterstaff.

They were awakened before dawn. Like Uns, Toug got hard bread for his breakfast, which he washed down with sips from the stream. The rising sun found him trotting north with the others, shivering mightily in the morning chill, with his short spear in the lance-rest and Idnn’s cat half in and half out of one saddlebag.

The cat troubled him. It had not thrust its head and forepaws out of the saddlebag until Idnn and her marching women were a league behind. Toug felt, on the one hand, that he should take it back, on the other that everyone—himself included—would assume that he had shrunk from the fight.

Garvaon rode ahead, half a long bowshot from the tail of the column, where Toug and Uns rode side by side. Garvaon would not see him if he turned back, but someone surely would, and would raise a shout.

What could a cat do in a battle with giants? The cat would be killed, and it was Idnn’s. He would be killed, too. What could one boy do? Nothing.

He had wanted to make one of a Free Company once. He and Haf had declared themselves outlaws, and lain in wait for someone weak enough to rob. Their chosen victim had been a younger boy, who had beaten them both. What could he, a boy who could not even rob a younger boy, do against giants?

As much as the cat.

Bitterly, he recalled his resolve to ride faster than Garvaon and reach the enemy first. Now he wondered whether he would reach them at all. Would he not panic and run at the mere sight of a giant?

The white stallion, that had been mine slacked its pace. “Goin’ ta be trouble,” Uns said loudly enough to make himself heard over the hoofs of three score horses.

“What?” Toug looked around at him.

“We’re gittin’ ta far ahead. Them walkin’ won’t ketch up ‘til hit’s over.”

Toug shrugged. “What good would they be anyhow?”

“How ‘bout us?” Uns’ grin looked sick. “Bet I kills more giants dan ya.”

“You’re scared,” Toug said, and knew it was true.

“Ain’t!”

“Yes you are. You’re scared, and badly mounted. You can’t fight on a mule.”

“I kin try!”

Toug shook his head. “You’ll just get yourself killed. I’ve got an errand for you that’ll save you. See that cat?”

“Ain’t hit Lady Idnn’s?”

Toug nodded. “It must’ve crawled into my saddlebag to sleep, and if it stays where it is, it’ll get killed. I want you to take it back to her.”

Mani ducked out of sight.

“Won’t!” Uns declared.

“I’m ordering you to.”

“I ain’t ya man.” Uns pounded the mule with his heels, and drew ahead of Toug by half its length.

“I’m a knight,” the words startled Toug himself, “and I order you to. Take it back to her!”

Uns shook his head, refusing to look.

Furious, Toug drove his heels into the stallion’s sides and lashed its withers with the ends of the reins.

And the stallion bolted.

To Toug it seemed that someone had thrown the whole column at his head. Before he could catch his breath, they had left the War Way and were galloping over rolling brown grasslands, he bent over the stallion’s neck and clutching the pommel, the stallion stretching nearly flat with every bound, neck out, mouth slavering, and the bit in its teeth.

And Mani triumphant on Toug’s back with his claws deep into Toug’s shirt and thick, tangled hair.

When the stallion was blown, they stopped at last.

“Now that,” Mani announced, “was more like it.”

Toug gaped at him as well as one can gape at an animal clinging to one’s head and back.

“The thing for you to do,” Mani continued, “is to kill all the giants yourself before anybody else shows up. Then you can be sitting on a pile of bodies when Sir Garvaon and the rest get here, and have a laugh on them.”

“You can talk!”

“Indeed I can.” In order to converse more comfortably, Mani sprang from Toug’s shoulder to the rather large space Toug left in my war saddle. “I’m choosy about those I talk to, that’s all.”

Toug shook his head in bewilderment.

“There’s old Huld, whom I used to belong to. She’s dead, but I still talk to her. There’s Sir Able, my newer owner. If I say he’s dead too, will you start crying again?”

Thinking he had lost his wits, Toug shook his head.

“Then there’s Lady Idnn, my current owner. And you, now. Were you afraid she’d worry about me?”

The white stallion had stopped to graze, but Toug scarcely noticed. “I didn’t think animals could talk.”

“You’re responsible for your own mistakes,” Mani told him, “in this life and the others. It’s one of the rules that never change. But you don’t have to worry. Lady Idnn told me to ride on the baggage, what there is of it. She was concerned for my safety, which does her credit.”

Toug managed to say, “You didn’t.”

“I did not. No order given a cat has legal force, you understand. Under the law, each cat is a law unto himself or herself. It’s one of the principal differences between cats and dogs. If she’d told her dog to do it—I mean, assuming she had one. Do you understand?”

“No,” Toug said, and felt that he had never been more truthful in his life.

“Obviously, she does not have a dog.” Mani sounded apologetic. “I would never associate—”

He was interrupted by a bark, sharp though not loud. Toug turned in the saddle to see Gylf trotting over the hill they had galloped down a few seconds ago.