Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“Go fast!”

“I know, but what else?”

“Master’s up,” Etela panted. “If he heard you—”

The rest was lost in an earthshaking roar from behind. Toug turned long enough to catch sight of an Angrborn as wide as he was high, with three arms. Scooping up Etela like a puppy, Toug ran for all he was worth but was jerked off his feet by his cloak. For a moment that seemed an eternity, he struggled to withdraw his arms from the slits and prayed that it would tear and free him. Two more hands closed about his waist.

The Angrborn spoke. (Or might have believed he spoke.) All Toug heard was the voice of a beast, snarls that would have sent the biggest bear that ever walked into panicked flight. He shrieked, and could no more have repeated what he had said afterward—what he had promised Org or any Overcyn who would send Org—than he could have repeated what Logi had said to him.

It was effectual, whatever it was. A black shape left a shadow less dark and took Logi from behind.

Toug was dropped or thrown or both, and struck the snow-covered ground with force enough to leave him stunned. When he had recovered sufficiently to get to his feet, Org and Logi were grappling, Logi with a dagger as long as a sword, and Org with a scaly hand locked on Logi’s wrist. Toug had never seen Org’s face clearly before that moment; he saw it then and would have recoiled in horror if he had not known it for the face of their defender.

“Run!” Etela was tugging his arm.

He shook his head as the point of the dagger crept nearer Org’s throat.

“Run! We gotta run!”

“I’m a knight. I can’t run.” He brushed Etela aside and threw himself at Logi, wrestling with a leg, then heaving at the ankle as a man would struggle to uproot a tree.

Org was struggling too, his free hand raking Logi’s back and side so that blood and flesh rained down. A moment more, and Logi fell. He and Org rolled through snow, and though all Logi’s hands circled Org’s neck, so thick was that bull neck with muscle that Org fought on.

Until Toug drove the sword-long dagger he had snatched up into Logi’s left eye.

Cloud and I might have cantered down to the top of one Utgard’s towers. The thought amused me and for a moment I considered it. Cloud would have been safe there, but a less comfortable spot could scarcely be imagined.

Coming to earth outside the town and riding through it was liable to be dangerous; but I was tempted to do that as well. The safest course was probably to touch ground just beyond the moat and trot through the open gate, around the bailey, and so to the stables I had seen behind the keep. Rejecting that, we cantered a long bowshot above the highest spires, and down to the cobbles.

The rattle of Cloud’s hooves awakened no dutiful groom. I dismounted and went in search of a clean stall. A horse nickered at my step. I found it—the white stallion I had been given in a time that seemed long ago.

The grooms, blind slaves, were sleeping behind the tack room. I woke them with the flat of my sword, filling the place with phantoms they sensed but could not see. When they were cowering in a corner, I addressed them. “There’s not a horse in this stable that has water or corn, save one. That one horse—he belongs to an old friend—has water and corn because I watered and fed him. When I saw the way you’d treated him, I wanted to kill you. I still do.”

They moaned.

“Your king is barricaded in Utgard. Is that right?”

“Y-yes.”

“Thus you have felt yourselves at liberty to do as you wished, and what you wished has been to neglect the animals. Filthy stalls and empty mangers. Horses, mules, and oxen half dead of thirst. I’d pity you if you hadn’t proved that you deserve blindness and worse. I’m going into the keep. You’ll find my mount and my hound outside. Unsaddle my mount and care for her. Feed my hound and see that he has water. Is that understood?”

The slaves muttered assent.

“You’re to clean every stall, and feed and water all the animals. I can’t say how long my business with King Gilling will take. An hour, maybe. Maybe longer. No more than half the night though, and when I come back I’ll check every stall to see if my orders have been carried out.”

Leaving the stable I began the long walk around Utgard to the main entrance; then, finding the broad arch of a sally port sized for Angrborn, I entered its pitch black passage and pounded the iron door.

The archer who opened it looked at me with surprise. “Sir Able! I was expectin’ Squire Toug.”

“You really wanta hear what Mama said?” Etela asked as they hurried through the town.

“Yes,” Toug told her. “I want to ask you about her too. Why she wouldn’t talk to me and some other things.”

“That’s good, ’cause I wanna ask ever so much ‘bout your face ‘n the castle. You’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”

“I’ll try,” Toug promised. He had taken Logi’s dagger and its sheath, and was carrying them over his shoulder.

“‘Bout Org, too. Will you answer ‘bout him?”

“If I know the answer.”

“All right, after Master was dead, you ‘n Org talked. Only I was scared to get close. What’d you say?”

“He wanted to know if it was all right for him to feed from your master’s body,” Toug explained. “I said it was, but he’d have to look out for the Angrborn because they would kill him if they saw him. He said he’d take it someplace and hide it, and that way he could come back later and have some more. I said that was fine.”

“He’s not with us no more?”

Toug shrugged. “I don’t see how he could be.”

“S’pose somebody wants to hurt us?”

“I’ll do what I can. I have this now.” He indicated Logi’s dagger. “So we’re better off than we were. I got one of these before. It wasn’t nearly as nice as this, and when my horse finally got to Utgard I stuck that one under the bed and forgot it. I won’t forget this, ever.”

“It’s awfully big,” Etela said practically.

“It’s too big for me to hold right,” Toug admitted, “but I think this handle’s bone, maybe from one of the Angrborn or just from a big animal. Whichever, I ought to be able to cut it down and sand it smooth. It’ll take work, but it’ll be worth it. Now tell me, what did your mother say to you?”

“All of it? There’s lots.”

Toug nodded. “Yes, everything.”

“Well, she said to go to the castle with you, only not to come back ever at all. To do whatever I had to, to stay with you. ’Cause you were my own kind of folks ‘n the closer I got to my own kind the better it was going to be for me. She said get cleaned up ‘n get pretty clothes if I could, ‘n be extra nice ‘n maybe you’d let me stay. Only if you said I had to go, don’t do it, hide ‘til you forgot.”

“I won’t make you go back,” Toug declared.

“Well, all of you is what she meant.”

When Toug had walked a score of paces, he asked, “What about her? Shouldn’t we try to get her out, if we can?”

“She said don’t come back for her, she’s dead anyway.” Hopelessness crept into Etela’s voice. “It’s how she talks. Well, I mean when she does, ’cause sometimes she don’t talk at all, not even to me. Only Vil will take care of her, he always does, ‘n Gif and Alca will too.”

“Is Vil your father?”

Etela shook her head. “My papa’s dead. Only Vil likes Mama ‘n me, ‘n takes care when he can.”

“Logi’s dead too,” Toug remarked thoughtfully.

“Uh-huh.”

“I was wondering what would happen to your mother and the other people he owned.”

“Well, I don’t know.”