Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“How came you so quickly, Sir Able?”

“I have a good mount, Your Majesty.”

“My queen told me you would come. She is wiser than Beel, though Beel is a good friend. She’s wiser even than Thiazi. She read it in the stars.”

“It’s at her request I come,” I said carefully. “Duke Marder is coming also, with two stout knights, Sir Woddet and Sir Leort, and a hundred men.”

“Will you serve us, Sir Able?”

“I’ll help you if I can, Your Majesty, for her sake and Lord Beel’s.”

Beel himself touched my arm. “Your Majesty, there is someone else here with whom we should speak before we three take counsel further. If your strength does not permit it, Sir Able and I can question him and report to you.”

“We will let you talk,” Gilling told him, “but we will hear him. Who is it?”

“Sir Svon’s squire, Your Majesty. Thinking Sir Able still far away, I sent him out to scout the town for us.”

“Toug?” I looked toward the door and saw him waiting there with a ragged girl, standing between Pouk and Ulfa.

Beel said loudly, “Come, Squire, I must present you.”

Hesitantly, Toug advanced; the girl would have followed him, but Ulfa held her back.

With a hand up from me, he climbed the chair to stand on its seat next to Beel.

“Your Majesty, this young man is Squire Toug. He is the squire of Sir Svon. Sir Svon is the younger of the knights who accompanied me.” In a whisper Beel added, “One knee!,” and Toug knelt.

“You left this castle to spy out my foes, young man?” Gilling’s voice was almost kind.

“To look for scaling ladders, Your Majesty, or battering rams. Anything like that. That was what Lord Beel said to do, and find out who had them.”

Beel nodded. “Those were my instructions, Your Majesty. What did you find, Toug?”

“Neither of those, Your Lordship.” At a slight gesture from Beel, Toug rose. “But they were making mattocks and shovels. Digging tools. They had a lot already, and from what I heard they were going to make a lot more.”

Gilling’s sigh was very nearly a groan. “Common tools for slaves, for farm labor. You found nothing.”

I turned to Toug. “I’m not so sure. You said they had a lot already. What’s a lot? A dozen? Twenty?”

Toug considered. “I’d say sixty or seventy shovels and thirty or forty picks. They were making mattocks when I was there. That’s a thing like a pick, only a wide blade.”

“We know what they are,” Beel told him.

“There were eight or ten of those, and they were making another one when I was there, and—and, Your Majesty...”

Gilling’s eyes opened, looking overlarge in spite of his vast pallid forehead and enormous nose. “What?”

“They weren’t for slaves. They were way too big.”

“They’re going to undermine us!” Beel exclaimed.

Gilling’s head rolled from side to side. “Their slaves would do that. They’ll heap up earth and stones.” His eyes closed again. “So we carried Aegri’s isle.”

Greatly daring, Toug said, “We could go out and get them, Your Majesty. Nobody’s guarding us.”

Gilling did not respond, and Toug turned to me. “Carry them back in here, or burn them.”

I shook my head. “My Lord, I must confer with you. I realize how late it is, but we must talk and I must go. If I had more time, I’d talk to people separately—to Toug here, my servant Pouk, and Ulfa. To this Schildstarr, Lord Thiazi, and you. There isn’t time. Let’s get them together, if they’ll come. Then I’ll have to leave.”

Beel nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

“Ulfa and Pouk are here already,” Toug said. “So is Etela. Maybe you should see her too.”

“Is that the girl?”

Toug nodded, and Beel said, “We’re all here already, in that case, save for Schildstarr and Lord Thiazi. See whether they’ll leave their beds for us, Squire.”

At the suggestion of the lean Angrborn called Thiazi, we met in a room in which the king sometimes entertained friends, a room rather larger than the banquet hall of the Valfather’s castle. Richer too, and far colder, filled not with the trophies of the hunt and the shields of the brave, but with clumsy furniture that must have seemed massive even to the Angrborn, and a wealth of polished silver and pewter platters and cups, things lovely but overlarge, like the shelves that could scarcely hold them crowded and piled together.

“We’ve got to wait for that Schildstarr,” Ulfa murmured at my elbow; I had not known she was there until she spoke. “Unless you need me, I’m going to get something for the girl. Toug says she hasn’t eaten since yesterday.”

I nodded.

“Would you like me to get you something, too?”

“No. But thanks. Please hurry back.”

Pouk appeared at my other elbow. “You was wantin’ to talk to me, sir? Might be a good time.”

“The only time we’ll get, I’m afraid. Our horses—that black charger Master Agr gave me. Where are they?”

“Horses is in the stable, sir. Them stablemen...” Pouk looked as though he wanted to spit.

“I didn’t recognize them. The stable was dark, and I was in a hurry. I should have spotted them just the same.”

“I go out when I can, sir, an’ do what I can. Only I can’t go often as I’d like an’ can’t do much. I fought them stablemen at first, but they got worse to show me an’ you can’t hardly fight a man what runs.”

I murmured agreement, reflecting that Pouk, whose bad eye and squint had always made him appear blind, was blind now in fact. “You can’t have gotten out there since the king was stabbed, I suppose.”

Pouk chuckled. “Oh, I slips out just th’ same, sir. Twic’t, so far. I got a way.”

“Good.”

“Only t’other’s gone, sir. Your traps, or most is.”

“I understand.” I had come to a decision. “I want to get you out, you and Ulfa both. I’m going to take Ulfa with me tonight, if I—”

“Bless you, sir!”

“If I can. I’m going to leave you here for the time being to look after my horses and get my things together, if you can. Find them, even if you can’t move them. I’ll be back with the duke and others before much longer, and next time I go you’ll be with me.”

Ulfa returned with a thick slice of dark bread, a lump of smelly cheese, and a wooden pannikin of what was probably small beer. She gave them to the ragged girl.

I leaned to my left to talk to Toug. “Is this another relative of Ulfa’s?”

“No, Sir Able. I found her when I was out scouting. It’s complicated.”

Beel said, “We should hear it in any—”

An Angrborn entered as he spoke, a giant so big and ugly that for an instant I thought he might be one of the Giants of Winter and Old Night, followed by four more only slightly less hideous Angrborn.

“Yourself alone,” Thiazi told Schildstarr firmly. “Your followers will not be permitted to stay.”

He pulled out a chair and sat, and motioned for the four who had come with him to sit as well.

Wearily, Beel said, “We cannot have this.”

“Then you’ll nae ha’ me.”

“You think we can’t drive you out. You’re wrong. We can, and if necessary we will.”

Schildstarr shook his head. “Fetch thy hotland lads and we’ll go.”

His followers protested.

“You’re hot to fight shieldmates. I’m nae.” He turned to Beel. “Count thy-selves.” He did, raising a thick finger for each man and woman as he pointed to Beel, Toug, Ulfa, Etela, Pouk, and me. “Half dozen. Fer me an’ mine, Thiazi an’ me? I’ll nae stand for’t.”

“You have a point,” Beel conceded.

“It’s our king in the bed, an’ our land you tread.”