Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

Up came Skoel’s enormous sword again. It descended, and its stroke would have split a warhorse.

It did not split Svon. He darted forward. When he sprang back, his blade dripped blood from half its length.

Leaping onto Toug’s shoulder, Mani whispered, “The weak must close if they can, while the strong have to try to keep them off. Strange battle, wouldn’t you say?”

Toug surprised himself. “They’re like oxen fighting flies.”

“Sir Garvaon’s cut his opponent’s hands. That’s good! Garvaon’s a shrewd fighter.”

Though Mani’s mouth was at his ear, the Angrborn were making such a din that Toug had scarcely heard him. He kept his own voice down. “Shouldn’t you be with the king?”

“Lady Idnn was waving her arms and knocked me off. I’ll go back when this is over. Look! Garvaon’s down!”

Garvaon was, and for a breathless moment Toug felt sure Bitergarm was about to hack him in two; he turned instead, facing about to aid Skoel as the stone turns in a mill.

The swords of the Angrborn slashed and slashed again, rising and falling like the flails of threshers. Svon’s shining blade—the oiled brand Toug had polished that very morning—flickered and flashed forward.

Bellowing and cursing, the watching giants crowded closer; Toug and Mani climbed hay bales stacked on a wagon. “The ugly one’s trying to get behind him,” Mani remarked.

“They’re both ugly.” Toug strove to sound confident.

“The real ugly one.”

The real ugly one was Bitergarm, and he continued to move, however ponderously, to his left, forcing Svon to edge left and left again as he fought Skoel. As Toug watched, horrified, Svon came too near a spectator, who gave him a shove that sent him stumbling toward Skoel.

Biting into Svon’s shield, Skoel’s blade swept him off his feet and sent him flying. The watching Angrborn tried to move aside but were not quick enough. Svon struck the legs of two, and was kicked under the wagon.

With Idnn weeping on his shoulder, Gilling lumbered into the center of the dim courtyard once more. He raised both hands for silence, and the laughter, cheering, and cursing of the watching giants faded. Wistan was on his knees beside Garvaon. Belatedly, Toug realized that he belonged with his own master, who might still live; he scrambled down.

A hand larger than any human hand plucked him from the bales of hay and raised him higher than he had been when he had stood on them.

“Here he is, Your Majesty. His servant had him.” The voice was Thiazi’s.

“I—I was keeping him for you, Your Majesty.” Toug gulped, wondering whether the king would believe him, and whether it would matter if he did. “He was running loose, and I was afraid he’d get stepped on.”

Idnn, still on Gilling’s shoulder, held out her hand. “Give him to me, Squire. I’ll take care of him.” Her face was streaked with tears and her voice despondent, but that voice did not quaver.

“I don’t want to throw him.”

Idnn gestured. “Thiazi? Is that your name? Bring them over here, Thiazi.”

Thiazi did, and Idnn received Mani, who mewed pitifully.

“Now put Toug down,” Idnn said.

Thiazi lowered him, but maintained his grip.

Gilling’s roar filled the courtyard. “All right, we’ve had our fun. Bitergarm! Skoel! Come here.”

They came, the first licking a gaping wound in his hand, the second wet with his own seething blood.

“You’ve borne yourselves like heroes,” Gilling told them, “and heroes you are. Now, all you sons of Angr, what will you say to these two? Let’s wake the crows!”

The Angrborn cheered until they were hoarse. When the cheers were beginning to fade, one of the iron brackets that held a torch fell with a crash and a shower of mortar; Toug, who saw and heard it, saw too that its torch had gone out, although he paid it no more heed than the Angrborn.

“Silence now!” Gilling raised both his hands. “In celebration of our victory—”

“Your victory is not yet!” The voice was Garvaon’s. His helmet was gone, and a bloodstained rag wrapped his head; as he spoke, he cast away his shattered shield. His left hand drew a long dagger with a wide guard.

Toug, still dangling from Thiazi’s hand, raised a cheer. For a time that was in fact brief though it seemed long, his was the only voice, the cheering of one half-grown squire dangling beside the knee of a giant. Then Wistan joined his voice to Toug’s; and Idnn, still seated on Gilling’s shoulder, where she held Mani, cheered, too—the wild shrieking of a woman hysterical with joy: Svon had emerged from under the wagon to stand beside Garvaon. The right side of Svon’s face was bruised and bleeding, his right eye swollen shut; but his sword was steady in his hand.

The air darkened as a torch behind Thiazi went out.

Beel had joined the cheering, and Garvaon’s archers and men-at-arms, who had come so far and fought so hard, and the servants who had become archers and men-at-arms, too, because there was nothing for it but to fight and no one to fight but them. Papounce, in the fine slashed doublet of scarlet and blue he had brought to wear at court, was standing over Crol’s body red-faced and shouting; and Egr, usually so silent and reserved, was capering and yelling like a boy.

Their cheers were overridden by the hiss and clang of steel on steel, and a new voice murmured, “My Lord Thiazi.” It was husky, yet distinctly feminine. Toug craned his neck to see a woman taller than any he had seen before standing at Thiazi’s right hand. Like most of the giants, she was nearly naked; and indeed, her fiery hair clothed her more than the rags she wore; unlike the giants (whose limbs were thicker than even their towering height would suggest) hers were as spindly as heron’s legs, so that she appeared to stand on sticks, and to gesture from shoulders scarcely wider than Toug’s knees.

“My Lord Thiazi, this is an evil place at an evil time.”

“You...?” He glanced swiftly at her, then looked away. “You’re no true daughter of Angr.”

She laughed—coins shaken in a golden cup.

“Not I, but only a fool who thought she might deceive you. Though I have seen them in Jotunhome, poor creatures—women like dray horses with faces like dough. Thank you.”

Thiazi dropped Toug and took off the long cloak he wore. The impossibly tall woman accepted it and draped it over her shoulders.

“You’ll be ravished,” Thiazi muttered, “if you’re seen.”

“Will they think me a slave woman?”

It appeared that Svon must die, and Toug heard no more. It seemed to take an hour for Sword Breaker to clear the scabbard, another for his feet (clumsy in the overlarge boots Pouk had found him) to carry him into the fight. He gripped Sword Breaker with both hands and clubbed a knee as high as his chin with all his might, saw a beam of steel and felt the hot gush of his own blood.

And it was dark, snow swirled past his face, and there were more swords out than Skoel’s and Bitergarm’s, more swords than Garvaon’s and Svon’s, and his pain was terrible but distant. Once he watched a dark thing strike one of the last torches. And once he saw a lance-long blade descend and raised his arm, knowing that Sword Breaker could never break that sword, which would carry all before it with a blow like a falling tree. Something dark that seemed transparent (for he could make out what might have been a giant’s wrist still) closed on the wrist of the hand that held that sword, and something else circled the giant’s neck, blurring it. And under all the shouting, and all the rough music of blade on blade, he heard the sickening snap of breaking bone.

A giant fell, nearly crushing him; he thought it was Bitergarm until he saw the fallen crown.