Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

I watched the herald while readying lance and shield. The fallow charger would be slower; its rider might be slower, too. If my lance found his chest, he would die.

The notes of the clarion echoed from the rocks, and Cloud was off like the wind.

We met as a thunderbolt meets a tower. The golden lance shattered on my shield. The point of my lance passed over the right shoulder of the Knight of the Golden Sun, and its shaft dashed him from the saddle.

With Hela’s help, he rose, nearly as tall as she.

“Yield you?” The herald posed the formal question.

“Not I.” He whistled again for his charger.

The herald glanced at me. I nodded and made a slight gesture, and the herald said, “You are accorded gentle right. Sir Able will wait until your squire arrives with a fresh mount and another lance.”

“I thank Sir Able,” the Knight of the Sun replied. “He is a true and a gentle knight, one whose courage and chivalry are not in question. My squire will not come. I will meet Sir Able’s lance with my sword.”

The herald looked at me again, and I motioned to him. In half a minute more, the herald was mounted and galloping south along the War Way.

“I have ordered my squire to come no nearer,” the Knight of the Sun said.

“Yet he will come,” I said, “with a sound mount for you, and a lance.”

The Knight of the Leopards joined me, with Valt and Uns scarcely a step behind. “You understand this,” the Knight of the Leopards whispered, “and I would understand it too.”

“If I understood it, I might tell you. I understand only a little more than you do.”

“His squire will come at your word?”

I nodded.

“Might it not have been wiser to have my herald fetch horse and lance?”

“He’ll come,” I said.

Uns looked at Valt, and Valt at Uns; but neither spoke.

The Knight of the Leopards persevered. “You know this knight. So much is clear from his own words.”

“I do, though he didn’t have this much gold the last time I saw him.”

At length the Knight of the Leopards said, “Does he fear you’d slay him if you knew him?”

I shook my head and answered no more questions.

Excited, Uns scrambled to the top of a boulder and stood, bent still but as straight as he could manage. “Dey’s comin’, sar! Him ‘n him ‘n more. Oh, ain’t hit da sight!”

Gerda tugged at my surcoat. “You ain’t off my Hela for what she done, are you, sir? She don’t mean no hurt.”

I smiled. “He’s a very big man, isn’t he?”

Whether it was my smile or my words that reassured Gerda, I cannot say; but she smiled in return.

It was indeed a sight, exactly as Uns had said. Two heralds rode in front, each with his silver clarion, the left with a blazing sun on his blue tabard, and the right with the leopards of Sandhill on his. After them, the squire of the Knight of the Sun, a clear-eyed youth with flowing hair and a jerkin of black leather spangled with gleaming gold studs; he carried two golden lances, from each of which floated a blue pennon blazoned with the golden sun.

Behind him, a dozen men-at-arms rode single file, grim-looking men in gambesons of quilted leather and steel arming caps, some with bow and sword and some with lance, shield, and sword. Liveried body servants rode behind them, and behind the body servants, muleteers leading laden sumpters.

I watched as the Knight of the Golden Sun spoke with his squire, accepted a new lance, dismounted, and mounted the unwearied charger his squire had led. Then (as I had hoped) he removed his helm. “You know me.” He said it loud enough for me to hear, though we were separated by a half bowshot.

“Greetings, Sir Woddet!” I called. When Woddet did not reply, I added, “It’s good to see you again, and Squire Yond, and good of you to come so far to try me.”

“I have not come to try you,” Woddet answered, “but to prevail.” He resumed his helm.

Our mounts met with a crash that shook the earth; both fell. My helm was lost, and I was pinned by the weight of Cloud’s side. Woddet had been thrown from the saddle, and was first upon his feet, sword in hand. “Yield!” he cried. He stood over me with sword upraised.

“Now I claim gentle right in my turn,” I said. “I’ve been downed. I claim the right to rise and rearm.”

“Refused! Yield or die!”

As Woddet spoke, Cloud sprang up. Her flailing forefeet knocked him flat and would have killed him.

I rose and offered Woddet my hand. “You’d claim gentle right again, I know. And I’d accord it. Hela, give him back his sword, if you will.”

Woddet accepted my hand. “On my honor, I’ve no wish to kill you, but you must yield—lance, horse, and sword.”

Hela had dropped to one knee. Kneeling so, her head was below Woddet’s own. She held out his sword.

Woddet grasped the hilt. “I beg it,” he said. His voice was a whisper. “Yond and I saved you when they would’ve killed you, and I was your friend when you had no other. Yield to me now.”

“I cannot,” I said. “I have sworn to hold this pass ‘til there’s ice in the Bay of Forcetti. I will hold it.”

“Sir Able...”

I shook my head and stepped back.

“Listen to me.” There was despair in the voice from the gold helm. “Nothing I’ve ever done was harder than refusing gentle right to you. I pray that if I fall again you’ll kill me.”

“Not even those who see the face of the Most High God grant all prayers,” I told him.

I drew Eterne, and eight phantom knights stood around me, four to my right and four to my left; the wind carried the thunder of hooves and the snapping of flags.

Woddet removed his helm and cast it aside. “You told Agr you’d been knighted by the Aelfqueen. I believe it now. Will these knights engage me too?”

“No,” I told him, “but like Sir Leort and his men they will stand by to see that our fight is fair.”

We met sword to shield and shield to sword; the first stroke from Eterne split the blue shield, the next struck the sword from Woddet’s hand, and at the third he fell. Hela came to stand over him with her cudgel poised and death in her eyes. I wiped Eterne with a rag Uns brought before I sheathed her.

“He won’t die,” said the Knight of the Leopards when the moon was high and we sat side by side before the fire.

“He may,” I said; and Gylf, who knew me better than I knew myself, groaned and laid his head in my lap.

“That was a grievous cut you made,” the Knight of the Leopards continued, “and he’s lost a lot of blood. But if the loss were going to kill him, he’d be dead already. Then the giantess would kill us both, or try.”

I smiled at that.

It surprised the Knight of the Leopards, and he said, “Would you fight her? What honor in fighting a woman, even a woman as big as she?”

“Her mother’s human,” I told him.

“The old woman? I know it.”

“The Angrborn are not loved. They hold no spirits.”

The Knight of the Leopards shrugged. “Do we? Yes, I suppose we do. I saw them.”

“When I drew Eterne?”

“When I did. I try not to think about it.”

Some time passed, during which we listened to the wind whistle among the rocks. At last I said, “I may not heal Sir Woddet, but I may implore those who still dwell in Skai to heal him. Will you help me build an altar?”

We labored far into the night, piling stone on stone. Uns, Hela, two servingmen belonging to the Knight of the Leopards, Yond, and some of Woddet’s men-at-arms helped. Heimir, awakened by his sister, went into the mountains, broke stunted pines, and brought the wood.

We sang then, a song of praise for the Valfather, and another for the Lady (whose name may be sung, although it may not be spoken); and when the last song was done, I cut the throat of the lame charger that had been Woddet’s, hewed the head from the neck, and hewed the body to pieces while the shades of a score of fell knights watched sorrowing. We fed the whole to the flames.