Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

When that was done the rest slept; but I sat with Woddet to see if he would be healed, and heard the gasps of one near death, Hela’s sobs, and the whistling of the winter wind.

Then I slept, the first real sleep since I had returned from Skai, and in a dream it seemed I was in Skai still, and the Lady smiled upon me.

Then that I was on Alvit’s steed, charging up a mountain of cloud; I felt Alvit’s lips on mine, and learned that death is both bitter and sweet.

Then that I was on the griffin’s back and springing from it. My fingers slipped, and I fell into the sea.

Garsecg swam with me, and Setr was in Garsecg’s mouth. I knew the battle was coming, and knew Setr knew it too; but this was not the time to think on battles; we gloried in the waves, the scour of the tides, and the strength of the sea.

I was a boy in a garden that stretched very far, searching for a girl who had hidden, and I searched trees and grottoes, looked behind bushes and in the waters of a hundred fountains. At last I turned and saw her behind me, and she was small and green and sweet, with eyes of laughing fire.

I woke at her kiss, and saw Woddet sitting beside me. “You’re better,” I said.

“I’m not the man I was.” Woddet grinned. “But I think I will be in a month or so.”

I sat up (for I had seen that the sun was high) and rubbed my eyes, saying that I had slept long and had many dreams. As I spoke, I heard a shout, and Uns came running to me, and Yond, Valt, Heimir, Hela, the Knight of the Leopards, and many others until at last Gerda and Berthold came, he with a hand on her arm, and there was a great babble of talk.

“What’s this?” I said. “What news is there? Why didn’t you wake me?”

Berthold rumbled, “I wouldn’t allow it.”

Gerda seconded him. “Let him sleep, I said.”

“Your friend said the same,” Berthold continued, “the other knight.”

“Sir Leort?”

“Me,” Woddet told me; and Uns, “Sar Woddet.” Gerda said, “You’ve slept three days,” and I goggled at her.

There was a lot of talk after that; I slipped out of the center of it, went to the stream, and bathed in icy water.

When I left it, blue and shivering, I found Gylf waiting on the bank. “Scared,” Gylf said, and kissed my hand as dogs kiss, and that was best of all.

“I’ve failed,” Woddet told me after the two of us rode out, saying we were going to hunt. “Have you ever failed?”

“You came to kill me?”

“No! To best you and bring you back to Sheerwall, but you would not yield.”

“I remember.”

A narrow cleft grew narrower still, and at last ended. We turned our mounts and began the ride back; and I said, “I remember you, and your sword over me.”

“I should’ve struck.” Woddet turned his head and spat.

“I’d rather we were friends.”

“So would I!”

I smiled. “It’s a long way from Sheerwall to these mountains.”

“It’s longer through the Mountains of the Sun,” Woddet said, “but I went there and fought the Osterlings.”

“And gained much gold by it.”

Woddet nodded. “As you say. We looted Khazneh. Want to hear the whole story?”

“If you’ll tell it.”

Woddet dropped his reins on his horse’s neck and looked at the rocks above us and the steel-blue sky above the rocks. “Well, it was only a day or two after you left. The king asked Duke Marder for five knights and fifty men-at-arms to help against the Osterlings, loaned for two years or ‘til victory. Everybody was mad to go. You know how that is.”

“I can imagine.”

“So His Grace got us together and said he knew all of us wanted it, but any knight who went would naturally want the other four to be men he could trust with his life. He was going into the Sun Room, he said. You know the Sun Room?”

I searched my memory. “I’m sure I should.”

“It catches the light from the east, and there’s a hanging with the sun on it. We were to stay where we were and talk it over. Each of us was to decide on one companion he’d want with him, and go into the Sun Room and tell the duke. Only he wasn’t to tell anybody else who he’d chosen.”

I said, “Then I won’t ask you.”

“Anyway, I decided.” Woddet cleared his throat. “I was one of the last, ninth or tenth—something like that. His Grace was sitting at the table with a parchment before him. He’d drawn devices on it for all of us. Mine was a menhir with a spear through it then. Maybe you remember.”

I nodded.

“There was a gazehound couchant for Sir Swit, pards for Sir Nopel, and so forth. Everyone who was fit to go. His Grace had a cup of barley. When I came in, he told me he wouldn’t have to put my seed where most of them were already, and he showed me his parchment. My menhir had four on it.” Woddet paused, embarrassed. “None of the rest had more than two, and some didn’t have any.”

“Had I been there, I would have named you myself. You have good reason to be proud.”

“Anyway, I named—the knight I’d decided on, and Duke Marder put a grain down, and then he had two. What His Grace did afterward was take the knights who had the most grains. The king had asked fifty men-at-arms, but we brought seventy, counting bowmen.

“The king had marched when we got to Thortower, but we hurried after him and came up in time for the Battle of Five Fates. We beat them there.”

A light had come into Woddet’s eyes that told me more than any description.

“Their horsemen were like wasps, but the longbows would drop a score every time they came. Those little horsebows don’t have the reach of ours. We herded the Golden Caan and his elephants into the angle between two canals and charged him. He had the elephants out front, and they killed a score of us and took that many lances before they fell. I lost my sword and used my mace, and before you could saddle up...”

I said, “The men you killed would have killed you.”

“I know.”

We rode in silence after that, until I said, “Does your wound pain you?”

“Only if I move my arm.”

“Could you wield your sword with your left hand?”

Woddet smiled, a little bitterly. “Not against you. Why do you ask?”

“Against someone like Heimir? To the Angrborn, these are the Mountains of the Mice, and there are many men here as large as he. I just saw one.” I had taken my bow from the bowcase as I spoke; I chose an arrow.

“I told you I used my mace,” Woddet said.

“Yes.”

“I’d been practicing ever since I was a boy. Hacking away at a stancher of soft wood and so on. Sword, mace, ax, and war hammer. I suppose we all have.”

“It isn’t easy for a boy to become a man.”

“I thought I’d become one a long time before that.”

I said nothing, scanning the cliff tops.

“It was like practice. Blow after blow after blow. The head, the shoulder, the head again. Twice the sword arm. My mace had spikes on it—little ones as long as your thumb. I don’t have it anymore.” He reined up.

“I won’t leave you here.”

“You can if you want,” Woddet said. “I can take care of myself.”

I watched the cliffs; and when I did not speak, Woddet said, “That’s when you understand what the practice means. That’s when you grow up, and afterward you can’t go back.”

It seemed to me that I heard Disiri’s laughter echoing from rock to rock.

Toug asked, “In here, Master Crol?”

Crol nodded. “With His Lordship and Lady Idnn, and Sir Garvaon. I can’t tell you what they’re talking about, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t knock. If they don’t want to hear your news, they’ll tell you so.”