Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“I will,” Ulfa said, and took him from Toug.

The sentry opened the big iron door with a grunt, and Toug and I stepped out. “It was Org,” Toug said as soon as the door closed. “I didn’t say it up there because I know Sir Svon doesn’t want people to know about him.”

“I see. Org actually killed the smith?”

“No, I did. But Org saw he was chasing Etela and me and went for him. I said he fell down and dropped his dagger and I stabbed him, and that was all true. But it was because he was fighting Org.”

I set off for the stable, motioning for Toug to follow.

“Maybe you’re worried because Etela’s sleeping in my bed for now. I know Ulfa is, but I’m not going to hurt her, and it’s a real big bed.”

“I’d hardly thought of it,” I admitted. “I was talking with Sir Svon and Sir Garvaon while you and your sister were putting her to bed.”

“Then I don’t know what we’ve got to talk about, but there’s one thing I ought to tell and I should whisper it.”

I stopped at the stable door. “Go ahead.”

“Pouk isn’t really blind. I mean, only in one eye, and he was that way before.”

“I noticed that myself.” I felt suddenly that I was as tired as any of them, and reminded myself that I could not afford it—that I had a long ride ahead.

“You did?”

Gylf trotted up before I could reply. “There you are.”

“At last. Is everything all right?”

“I bit one.” Gylf yawned.

“He’ll recover, I’m sure.” I turned back to Toug and asked how he had hurt his cheek. He was telling me all about the fight in courtyard and the attempted assassination of King Gilling more or less as Idnn had, when iron-shod hooves on the wooden stable floor interrupted us. Cloud had trotted out to greet me, and for a second or two we hugged, I with my arms about her neck and she squeezing me between her neck and chin.

Toug patted her flank. “She’s such a beautiful horse. I’ll bet you were worried about her.”

“I was, but she could have told me if anything had gone wrong. We don’t exactly talk, but each of us knows what the other’s saying. Have I told you about that?”

“Kind of.”

“Come with me.” I led the way into the stable, followed by Gylf and Cloud. Their footfalls mingled with the scrape of shovels.

“This is the room where the stablemen sleep.” I took a stick from the fire and swung it until it burned brightly. “We want light, and I think there must be candles or lanterns here somewhere, even though the stablemen don’t use them.”

“Right here, Sir Able.” Toug had opened a cabinet; a large lantern of pierced copper held a candle equally large.

I lit it. “Thanks. I suppose they must use this when they have to light their masters’ way, and we’ll use it too.” I tossed the stick back into the fire.

“I think I know what you want to show me.”

“If I were a teacher, I’d have left that stall the way I found it,” I told him. “I’m a knight, and can’t treat a good horse like that. I got this so you can see that his stall’s clean—it had better be—and that he has water and food.”

We found the white stallion that had been mine, and Toug stared at him for a minute or more, holding the lantern high.

“He’s dirty.” Toug might have been choking.

“And thin.”

“Yes. Sir Able...”

“I’m listening.”

“We—everything was barricaded. They’re plotting against the king. Nobody could go out. Lord Beel said so.”

I took the lantern from him and hung it on a nail. “Lord Beel isn’t a knight.”

“I guess not.”

“Neither are you. I expected you to say that.”

“You said it, Sir Able. I know it’s true, but I won’t say it.” Toug wiped his hands on his cloak. “There must be things to clean horses with around here somewhere. Sponges or rags or something. Water. I’ll get some.”

I shook my head. “You’re a squire, and there are men here who’ve neglected their duty. Tell them what you want done, and see that they do it.”

“You made them shovel this out, didn’t you?” Toug stooped, and picked up a handful of clean straw. “What was it like before?”

“You wouldn’t have wanted to see it. I have to go now. Sir Garvaon and Sir Svon have been waiting too long already. So have your sister and her husband.”

Toug nodded. “I’ll see about Laemphalt.”

“I want to say one more thing before I go. It’s that you went out of this castle tonight.”

“Lord Beel told me to.”

“You risked your life and fought like a hero.”

“Org—”

“I know about Org. Any of us who kills an Angrborn is a hero. Most men would have stood aside and let Org do the fighting. You didn’t. But neither did you spare a thought for your mount. And you should have.”

Toug nodded again.

“Pouk came out here from time to time to see about my horses, the horses he had when the Angrborn captured him. If he had not, things would have been worse than they were. Did Sir Svon ever attend to his own mount?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then he didn’t.” I sighed. “You’d know if he had. He was my squire, and Sir Ravd’s. Neither of us trained him the way we should have. What about Sir Garvaon and his squire? I don’t recall the squire’s name.”

“Wistan, sir. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Neither do I,” I said, and left.

I was leading Cloud when I met the knights, Pouk, and Ulfa in the cold moon-shadow of Utgard.

“We thought we’d better have a look for you,” Garvaon told me. “We were afraid something might have happened.”

I smiled. “I’m okay, just tired. I guess we all are, Toug especially.”

Garvaon nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Ulfa touched my arm. “Where is he?”

“In the stable, seeing to his horse. Pretty soon it will hit him that he ought to see to Sir Svon’s. Maybe it already has.” I paused. “You belong to him now. Do you feel you’ve got to have his permission to leave here?”

“You—you’re...?” Her mouth was open.

“I’m going to take you where you’ll be free. Pouk, you agreed I could. Have you changed your mind?”

“No, sir!”

Dropping Mani, Ulfa kissed and embraced Pouk.

“The two of you will be back together soon,” I promised them. “I hope so, anyway.”

Svon said, “I came down because I want to ride with you. I know you said you met no resistance, but we may have to fight our way out, and you’ll be burdened with this woman.”

“You can’t ride where we ride,” I told him.

I lifted Ulfa onto Cloud’s back and swung into the saddle behind her. So mounted, my eyes were not as high as the eyes of Schildstarr or Thiazi; yet I felt that I looked down on Svon, Garvaon, and Pouk from a great height—that Cloud stood upon an invisible tower, but a real tower just the same. I whistled for Gylf and watched him leap into the air, running toward the palisade of logs that crowned the curtain wall; and then (the palisade passed) toward a bank of somber winter cloud and the pale moon that peered around it.

Ulfa blew a kiss to Pouk, and he came forward and caught her hand and kissed her fingers.

Then I touched Cloud’s flanks, and pictured myself (and Ulfa, too) on Cloud’s back as she galloped across the sky. And at once it came to be, and the pennant on my lance, the green pennant the old captain’s wife had sewn from scraps, snapped in the cold wind of Cloud’s passage.

Ulfa moaned and shut her eyes, clinging with all her might to the high steel pommel of the war saddle. I wrapped my cloak around her, and turned to look back at Utgard as it dwindled and faded into night, becoming scattered points of light, a few stars in the general darkness of Mythgarthr.