Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“I see I’ve got to tell all of you more than I’d like to. As a reward I’ll have Hela’s counsel, or anyway I hope so. If her counsel’s as pointed as her questions, it’ll be worth a lot.”

Uns nodded and edged nearer to hear.

“There is a man called Garsecg. Not a human man. Will we all agree that Hela’s sire was no human?”

“I am,” Heimir declared. “I’m human just like you.”

“I haven’t denied it.” I tried to make my voice gentle. “But Bymir was not human. However good he may have been, or brave, or generous. Nor was this man Garsecg human.”

I waited for more objections, but got none.

“He befriended me. I owe him a lot. I think that he acted as he did to recruit me—as he did—against an enemy, one I wouldn’t fight if I had a choice.”

The Knight of the Leopards asked what troubled me.

“You know about the woman I love. She’s where Garsecg is, and I wish I were with her now.”

“Go to her then!” the Knight of the Leopards exclaimed. “Are you the only man in Mythgarthr who doesn’t know the tale of the knight and the tumbrel?”

“I’ve sworn to stay until midwinter. I’m also bound by an oath sworn to the greatest and best of men. It’s only by his grace that I’m as near her as I am.”

“Now say, sir knight, think you more of your honor than your lady?” Hela’s smile held something like pity. “Think well before you answer.”

“For one smile from her, I would throw all honor in a ditch,” I said. “Yes, and stamp on it. But I couldn’t ask her to marry a dishonored knight.”

Trying to understand, the Knight of the Leopards said, “You value her honor more than your own. You would die to preserve it.”

Woddet began, “Now see here, how does this—?”

“We’ll talk of that when the time comes. Let me finish. The lady is where Garsecg is. The person who came last night said her sister wanted to get me to fight him. She wanted me to bind myself not to.”

“Deeper and deeper,” Hela muttered. “Would this paltry cup were half so deep.” She held it out, and Woddet poured more wine for her.

Old Gerda asked, “An’ did you swear, sir?”

“No, mother. I’ve given oaths enough already. I want to be with the woman I love.” I sighed. “If I fight him, it’s possible she’ll try to kill me. I’d welcome it.”

“We wouldn’t,” Berthold rumbled.

“Wounded though I am,” Woddet said, “I may throw my parole to the winds and kill you myself, if you won’t get to the point. The King of Jotunland is sorely wounded. Isn’t that what you said? What has that to do with us?”

“Do you think they may blame my cousin for it?” asked the Knight of the Leopards.

“We’ve had raids by no more Angrborn than we could count on our fingers,” I explained. “By twenty at most, and more often by fewer than a dozen. It was these raids that your cousin hoped to persuade King Gilling to stop. Berthold, you were captured by Angrborn. How many were there?”

Bold Berthold fingered his beard. “Eight they was, when the outlaws sold me to em.

“What about you, Gerda? How many took you?”

“Lard an’ Lovey, I can’t say, sir, it’s been that long.”

“Twenty?”

“Oh, bless you, sir. Not half so many. Five it might a’ been. Or six. Some was kilt, sir, for our men fought. So comin’ or goin’, sir? Comin’ they might have been ten.”

I nodded, and spoke to Woddet. “Suppose King Gilling dies? Might not his successor—we know little enough about Gilling and nothing about the successor—send a hundred?

“Berthold, Gerda. What about five hundred? Would you call that an impossible figure?”

Bold Berthold only shook his head, whether in denial or bewilderment. Gerda said, “Well, sir, I never seen that many all to onest, but when I think back on them I seen one time or the other, it’s hundreds. More’n that, even.”

“Hela? Perhaps I should have asked you first.”

“As to their number? Five hundred I would think no very great figure. We have frequented this road, my brother here and I, and seen fifty one day, and twenty the next. Look up, you bold knights. What flies above?”

“Geese,” the Knight of the Leopards answered her, “but they are too high for any arrow of mine.”

“How many?”

“Thirty, it might be.”

“Forty,” Woddet offered.

“Forty-three and their leader, making forty-four in all. Forty-four that the three of us see now, for brave Sir Able will not look. How many geese do you suppose there are in all the world, knights? Hundreds?”

No one spoke while Hela gulped half her wine, coughed, and drank the rest.

At length I said, “Let us say one hundred and no more. Could we stand against a hundred? We three, and Gylf, and the men who follow the leopards, and those who follow the sun? And Hela, Heimir, and Uns? Would we?

The silence grew until the Knight of the Leopards said, “Would you, Sir Able? Would you lead us? Answer truly.”

I told him, “I’ve sworn to hold this pass.”

“A rider on a blown horse, Sir Leort!”

The Knight of the Leopards cupped his hands around his mouth. “Just one?” There was a lengthy pause, during which Woddet, Valt, and Yond hurried over. “Just the one, sir!”

“Coming from the north?” Valt inquired of everyone and no one. “Do the giants ride horses?”

Yond shook his head. “They’re too big.”

The Knight of the Leopards silenced them with a gesture. “How do you know his horse is blown?”

Woddet snorted.

“She’s tryin’ to get it to trot, sir!”

The Knight of the Leopards opened his mouth, then shut it again, staring at Woddet while Woddet (his honest face a mask of confusion) stared back at him.

“A woman?” Valt muttered.

The Knight of the Leopards whirled. “Fetch my horse!”

North of the pass the War Way angled down, descending the mountainside in a score of breakneck curves. The Knight of the Leopards took them all at a gallop, and many a stone, dislodged by the flying hooves of his spotted warhorse, dropped down an abyss of air.

The last twist of that coiling road was behind him when he caught sight of the rider; when he did, she (topping a rise on a drooping palfrey dark with sweat) was so near that he nearly rode her down. She screamed, and seeing the shield he carried burst into a flood of tears.

He dismounted and lifted her from her saddle, holding her as he had when he was no older than Valt, and she a pretty child with flashing eyes and raven locks.

Pure white was the tabard of the herald who brought the Black Knight’s challenge to me, and the charge on it was a sable. “My master,” he announced to our own herald, “would pass into the north. His affair is urgent,” he paused to smile, “and his purse heavy. Here are twenty pieces of broad gold, so that your own master stands aside.”

“I am acting for Sir Able of the High Heart,” our herald responded stiffly. “My master, Sir Leort of Sandhill, abides with him until his ransom is paid.”

The Black Knight’s herald lifted an eyebrow the breadth of a stem of clover. “Should you not be galloping south to attend to it?”

“Another is seeing to that. You will, I take it, see to your master’s? Our brother left this place days ago. It is too late, I fear to ask him to act for you.”

“He need not.” The herald of the Black Knight held up the purse he had proffered a moment before, jingling it so the mellow chink of gold on gold could be heard through the deerhide. “My master pays his ransom in advance.”

The herald of the Knight of the Leopards shook his head.

“Will you not examine them, so as to give report to this Sir Able you speak of?”