Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“I’ll find out.” Gylf loped off. Faint and far, I heard the wind rise; snow stirred at the feet of a group between Gylf and the glow of the charcoal.

When he returned he said, “Man and a girl.”

“At the forge?”

“Yep.”

I nodded. “The men have stopped work to talk to them? They’re probably telling her to get to bed. Kids shouldn’t be up this late.”

“Not much of a fighter.” The slave called Vil declared. “Where’s your stick?” He had been feeling Toug’s arms.

“I haven’t got one,” Toug explained. “I couldn’t carry Etela and a stick, too.”

The slave grunted. His face was thin, but his arms were thick with muscle. The hands that pinched and squeezed Toug felt as hard as iron.

“I should get back to my master,” Toug said.

Without looking at her, another slave addressed Etela. “You goin’ to bed like a good girl?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your ma’s sleepin’, or she’d been here botherin’ us about you.”

Etela looked doubtful. “Well, I hope.”

Vil said, “We’ve got to make more.”

Toug cleared his throat. “I’ve been wondering about that. What do you make here? Horseshoes?”

“It’s mattocks now,” Vil said. “Want to get the feel of one?”

“Yes, I’d like to find out what they’re like.” Toug sensed that the more eager to stay and talk he appeared, the more willing Logi’s slaves would be that he go.

“Come along,” Vil told him; and indeed Vil’s grip on his arm left him no choice.

The forge was every bit as lofty as the house to which it was attached, dirt-floored and open at the side opposite the house, presumably so that horses could be led into it. There were no lights save the ruddy glow of burning charcoal, but a hundred candles could not have lit it as well.

“Right there,” the slave said. “You like it? How’d you like to swing that all day?”

It was huge. Toug drew his hand back hurriedly. “It’s still hot.”

“Not all that hot.” Effortlessly, the slave picked it up. “Hold out your hands.”

“No,” Toug said.

All three laughed.

“How you goin’ to know how big it is if you don’t feel of it?”

“Your hands are tougher than mine,” Toug said. “If you say it’s big, I’ll take your word for it.”

“Wait. I’ll get you a cold one.” Walking slowly but confidently, Vil went to the back of the forge and returned carrying a mattock whose blade was as long as Etela was tall, and whose handle had not long ago been a considerable tree. Toug took it, but quickly let its head fall to the ground.

“Think you could swing that?”

“He’s real strong, Vil,” Etela declared loyally.

“I’m not,” Toug told her, “and not nearly as strong as your friends here. I wish I were.”

“You come work with us,” Vil said.

“I’m glad I don’t have to. Is Etela’s mother here? I’d like to talk to her.”

“Inside. I’ll take you.” He led Toug and Etela to the back of the forge, past stacks of enormous picks and spades, and opened a door big enough for the largest Angrborn.

As they went through Toug said, “You’re working late.”

“Got to.” The slave closed the door behind them and offered his hand. “Name’s Vil.”

“Toug.” Toug took it, telling himself that any pain he suffered in Vil’s grasp would be pain deserved, that a future knight should be as strong as any smith.

“Stout lad. You might swing a hammer yet.”

Toug thanked him.

Vil’s voice fell. “Got eyes, don’t you?”

Here it was. “Yes,” Toug said. “The Angrborn have never enslaved me. I can see.”

“Tried to fool us.”

“Yes,” Toug repeated. “I should’ve known better.”

“He’s from the castle,” Etela put in.

“One of King Arnthor’s men?”

“I’ve never seen him,” Toug confessed, “but I am.”

“We were his people. All of us.” Vil’s empty sockets stared at something to the left of Toug’s face, and a trifle lower, but his hand found Toug’s shoulder.

“I was born in Glennidam,” Toug told him.

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s smaller than lots of villages.” Toug paused. “We kept the secrets of the Free Companies—gave them food and and beer and anything else they wanted, because they promised to protect us. Sometimes they just took it.”

“You revered us,” a new voice said, “because Disiri was kind to you, offering to hide your children when the Angrborn came.”

“Baki?”

Someone stepped from a dark corner, in form a human woman with hair so red it seemed to glow in the dim light, and now and then leaped like a flame.

“This is a—a friend of mine, Etela.” Toug gulped, drew a deep breath, and plowed on. “She’ll be a friend of yours, too, I’m sure. Baki, this girl is Etela, and I’ve been taking her back to her mother. I’m going to bring her to the castle and feed her if her mother lets me. And this is Vil. He works here, and I’m sure he’s a very good smith. Don’t you like smiths?”

Etela said, “How come she hasn’t got clothes?”

“I’m Baki’s sister, and I love smiths.” She was running her fingers down Vil’s arm. “Smiths as hard as their anvils. Do you make swords, Vil?”

“Not—” His voice cracked. “Not good ones.”

“I can teach you to forge a sword that will cleave the head of the hammer.”

Toug drew Etela to one side. “Where’s your mother?”

“Well, I think she’s in the next room listening.”

“Really? What makes you think so?”

“I just do.”

Toug nodded. “Let’s find out.”

Leaving Uri in Vil’s embrace, they hurried through the kitchen. There was a fireplace in the next room, a little, niggardly fireplace by the standards of the castle Toug had left, but a large one just the same. The coals of a fire smoldered there, and two slave women slept in its ashes.

A third, a white-faced black-haired woman in a dress of black rags, sat bolt upright on a tall stool. In the firelight her wide eyes seemed as dark as sloes.

“That’s Mama,” Etela announced.

Toug cleared his throat. “I’m pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Squire Toug.”

The seated woman did not move or speak.

“I found Etela in Utgard—in the town, I mean, all alone. Something might have happened to her.”

Not knowing whether the seated woman heard him, he stopped talking; she said nothing.

Etela filled the silence: “Well, something ‘bout did.”

Toug nodded. “So I brought her back. But she was cold and she’s hungry, and if it’s all right with you I’d like to take her to the castle and feed her.”

It seemed to Toug that the angle of the seated woman’s head had altered by a hair.

“To your king?” Toug plowed on. “To King Gilling’s. Maybe I can find some food for her and warmer clothes.”

One hand stirred as the feathers of a dead dove might stir in a draft, and Etela hurried over. The woman seemed to whisper urgently, her whispers punctuated by Etela’s I wills and Yes, Mamas.

Etela returned to Toug. “Well, she says we can, only we better go now ‘n quick.”

Toug agreed. He averted his eyes from the impassioned couple in the kitchen and tried to hurry Etela. Behind them, something had awakened; the timbers of the barnlike house creaked and groaned.

In the smithy two slaves were shaping a mattock, one gripping the red-hot iron with tongs while the other hammered it, sensing its shape (it seemed to Toug) with light taps of the hammer. Toug and Etela dashed past; and if the pair at the anvil heard them, they gave no sign of it.

“What did you mother say to you?” Toug asked when they were trotting down the street.