Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“Be seated,” Beel told Toug. “We need not stand on ceremony, you and I.”

“I’ll stand just the same,” Toug said, “if it please Your Lordship. I’d be ashamed to sit in your presence.”

“As you wish. You must be tired, though. The stairs of this castle would tire anyone.”

Toug did not reply.

“My task is dangerous, but it shouldn’t take long. You help Sir Svon, don’t you, when he has charge of the guard?”

“Yes, Your Lordship.”

“Thus the sentries are accustomed to obeying you. You know we fear an assault on this castle. Not a mere crowd hammering the doors and yammering to see the king. We’ve had plenty of that already. But a serious assault by rebels.”

Toug nodded wearily. “I understand, Your Lordship.”

“Have you ever seen a siege, Squire Toug? A proper one, I mean, directed by a king or great lord, with sappers?”

“No, Your Lordship. I haven’t.”

“I didn’t think so. There are all sorts of engines that can be employed. Catapults, for example. Wooden towers on wheels, a mole, and so forth and so on. I’ve taken part in a siege like that.” Beel laced his fingers. “We need fear nothing of that kind. His Majesty—I refer to my son-in-law—will have recovered long before such devices could reduce this keep. What we must fear is a sudden assault. Thus the guards. Thus I’m delighted that we have Schildstarr and his Angrborn, in spite of all the trouble they’ve given.”

Toug, who wished that Schildstarr and his Angrborn were in Muspel, nodded loyally.

“Weak though we are, no assault can succeed without rams and scaling ladders—long ladders that can be put against our walls to let the attackers to reach the battlements and upper windows. Since the attackers would be Angrborn, such ladders would have to be very large.”

Feeling he was expected to nod again, Toug did.

“Very large indeed, and strongly built. Have you a stick, Squire?”

“A stick, Your Lordship? No, Your Lordship.”

“Get one. A stick about so long, eh?” Beel’s hands measured the length of a war arrow. “If you’re seen, you must feign blindness. A blind slave wandering that town beyond the walls should arouse no suspicion.”

“Your Lordship wishes me to go out tonight to look for scaling ladders.”

Beel smiled. “Will you do it, Squire?”

“When Your Lordship wishes it? I’ll go at once.”

“Not quite so fast as that, please.” Beel raised a hand. “I not only wish to find these ladders, if in fact ill-intentioned persons among the Angrborn are preparing them, but to learn the identities of these persons.”

Toug nodded. “I’ll do my best, Your Lordship.”

For a moment, Beel appeared troubled. “You’re tired. It cannot be otherwise. Fatigue makes us careless. If you’re careless tonight you may be caught and killed.”

Toug stepped backward. “Queen Idnn left on horseback, Your Lordship, and she must have ridden through town, since we know she reached Sir Able. I doubt that it’s dangerous.”

“They may have been less well organized then.”

Beel waited for Toug to speak; seconds ticked by, and at last Beel said, “Go then. Good luck.”

Toug thanked him, and went out—stopping abruptly when he saw Wistan in the corridor.

“If you’re going out,” Wistan said, “I’m going in.” Toug shut the door behind him. “Why?”

“He sent for me.” Wistan yawned and stretched. “Now get out of my way.”

Toug’s fist caught the side of his neck. A moment later Toug had seized his doublet. His forehead hit Wistan’s nose with all the force he could give it. He jerked his left knee up, and when Wistan bent double, clubbed the back of Wistan’s neck with the side of his fist. “I ought to kick you,” he muttered when Wistan lay at his feet, “but I’ll let you off this time. Next time, you get kicked.”

The dark stair built for giants seemed less dark when he went down it and far less wearying. On the guardroom level, he found that the sentry at the sally port nearest the stair was a bowman he knew, and greeted him cheerfully.

“You still up, Squire Toug? It’s gettin’ late.”

“Oh, the night’s hardly begun.” Toug grinned, and then, recalling Wistan, stretched and yawned. “I suppose I’ll feel it in the morning, but when I said sleep Nott heard leap. How long have you been on post, Arn?”

“Just got here.”

“That’s good. I have to run an errand. When I come back I’ll knock three times, and then twice. Like this.” Toug demonstrated, rapping the iron door with his knuckles. “Let me in when you hear my knock.”

“Yes, sir.” The bowman refrained from asking questions.

“It could be a while, so tell your relief.” Toug lifted the bar and tugged at the oversized iron door.

The passage would have been cramped for an Angrborn but seemed spacious to Toug in the moment before the door shut. In the dark it was neither great nor small, only forbidding. One hand he kept on the rough stones; with the other he groped the air, wondering whether his eyes could adjust to a dark so profound, and at last concluding that no eyes could. Too late, he recalled the stick Beel had suggested.

“If I’d had a stick,” he told himself, “or a bow like Sir Able’s, I could have beaten Wistan with it.” It would not have been honorable, perhaps, but he found he no longer cared much about honor where Wistan was concerned. Wistan had a sword. Could it have been dishonorable to use a stick when the other had a sword? For two steps, Toug weighed the matter before concluding that it could not.

The enormous bailey seemed bright with starlight as well as white with snow. He had planned to lurk in the darkness of the passageway until he saw a chance to slip out unseen. There was no need. The snow, pristine in spots, was dented and rutted in others by the feet of Frost Giants; but the giants who had left their footprints had withdrawn to their beds, leaving the snow to him. It creaked under his rough, new, too-large boots so loudly that he expected to hear a sentry sound the alarm. There had been four at the bronze double doors atop the entrance stair—a man-at-arms, a bowman, and two armed servants. These were reinforced now by two of Schildstarr’s Angrborn; but it seemed that no one had heard him, and with those doors closed and barred they had no way of seeing him. Pursued only by the hanging ghost of his own breath, he trotted toward the distant gate.

The guards who had saluted Thrym when Thrym had brought him to Utgard were gone. The gate, through which two score knights might have ridden abreast, stood wide open. Beyond the long black arch of the bridge across the moat, the clumsy overlarge houses of Angrborn (windowless or nearly) showed no gleam, of light.

Panting, Toug stopped to study the sullen mountain that was Utgard’s keep. Near its top, a crimson glow showed that some slave still fed a bedroom fire. For a moment he stood motionless, staring up at the tiny beacon, a constricted slit as remote as a star. It was eclipsed. He waved and waved again, and at last turned away, knowing his sister had seen him, that she too had waved, though he had not seen her face.

The houses of Utgard were three times the size of the biggest barns, built of planks overlapped and fastened with pegs or great black square-headed spikes; this Toug learned by running his hands over several when even by starlight he noticed their prickly appearance. Although bigger than many a manor, they huddled against the gapping moat like beggars’ huts and were dwarfed to insignificance.

Unseen and seeing no one, he passed from house to house. Scaling ladders big and strong enough to hold the weight of Angrborn would require massive timbers. Scaling ladders long enough to let Angrborn attain the battlements of Utgard would have to be a bowshot long. Huge as the houses were, none could have held such ladders; he passed them with growing confidence, reflecting that he could return to the keep in another hour with his honor intact, and report to Beel next morning that he had searched diligently but found nothing.