Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

The Plain of Jotunland is a strange and unsettling place, as I have tried to make clear. One sees phantoms, at dawn and twilight particularly. One hears strange sounds, and finds inexplicable things—paths going nowhere, and sometimes broken pieces of earthenware pots that were once crudely beautiful.

Hela found such a pot about noon, running some distance from the War Way to pick it up, and exhibiting it to Woddet and me when she came trotting back. It had been broken at the lip, losing a segment of clay the size of my hand. The rest was complete. “Is it not lovely, good Sir Able?”

I agreed it was, but explained that I dared not burden Cloud with anything beyond the most necessary.

Heimir said that it recalled Idnn, which surprised me.

“It’s red and—something like blue.” Woddet took it from him and turned it so its winding stripe took the bleared light of the winter sun, azure, aquamarine, and royal. “I’d have said that Her Majesty’s white and black, mostly except for the diamonds.”

I said, “I suppose so,” or something of the sort. The truth was that I was scanning the road ahead and had stopped paying much attention to Hela’s find.

“Red lips, of course,” Woddet finished lamely, “but her eyes are dark, not blue.”

“Do you count her friend?” Hela asked him.

He grinned at her. “I don’t like her like I like you. That’s Sir Svon.”

“And do you care for him, Dearest Lord?”

Woddet looked to me, baffled, and I said, “He does, but not in the sense you mean.”

“I meant what I said. No whit the more.” Hela tossed the pot aside. “Do you count him friend, dearest Lord?”

“More than that.” Woddet cleared his throat. “He’s someone I’ve wronged, Hela. Or I think he is.”

I said, “So do I.”

“There were rumors. I didn’t like him, so I found it easy to believe them.”

If Hela understood, nothing in her broad, coarse face showed it.

“Easy and a lot too convenient. It’s wrong. It’s something a knight shouldn’t do. A man’s honor is sacred, even if he’s not a knight. You believe the best, until you see for yourself it’s not right.”

On that morning, the morning of the day after we had left Utgard, this talk of ours seemed no more significant than Hela’s broken pot. I have re-created it, however, as well as I can; reading it over, it seems clear that I ought to have realized that Hela was planning to do Idnn and Svon some favor, and that her favor would prove no small thing.

We traveled all that day, the warmest any of us had enjoyed in some time. There was no sign of pursuit, but we agreed that there were surely Angrborn behind us, a war band formed around the survivors of the battle, strengthened from Utgard and gathering more from each of the lonely farms we had passed.

These Angrborn would (we thought) trail us like hounds until we reached the marches of Jotunland, then fall upon us. If we ran, only the best mounted would escape—and perhaps not even they. If we fought, we might prevail; but ruinous defeat was more likely. If we scattered, we would be hunted down, and those who escaped the true Angrborn would almost certainly fall to the outcasts the Angrborn called Mice.

We decided to fight, of course, if we could not out-travel them; but I, privately, resolved to ride back that night—not to see whether the Angrborn did in fact pursue us, but to hinder their march if I could.

The day grew warmer still, the sort of winter day one gets occasionally in Celidon, when it seems spring cannot be far behind, though spring is months away. The snow on the War Way softened to slush, and the horses’ legs were muddy to the knees. Gylf panted as he trotted beside me.

“This will slow them, dear Lord,” Hela said. “It turns me sluggard even now.” Her face was streaming sweat.

Woddet reined up. “If you cannot keep the pace—”

“By all that I hold dear, Sir Woddet, I will never leave you.” There was steel in her voice.

He seemed taken aback. “I wasn’t going to suggest it. I was going to say that you and I—your brother, too—might go more slowly and join Sir Leort.”

I do not weary,” Hela insisted; it was clear she did.

I told her such weather could not last.

“Nor can I, Sir Able?”

Discomfited, I said nothing.

“Know you...” Hela was panting in a way that recalled Gylf her tongue lolling from her mouth. “Why you name... My sire’s folk Frost Giants?”

“Certainly,” I said. “It’s because their raids begin at the first frost.”

“Would they not... War rather... In fair summer...?’”

I tried to explain that we supposed they could not leave their own land until their crops were in.

“I’d thought... Might teach you better...”

I slowed Cloud’s pace, telling Woddet we gained too much on Garvaon. He agreed, though he must have known it false.

“They swelter...”

I considered that for a time. Old Night, the darkness beyond the sun, is the realm of the Giants of Winter and Old Night, and it is ever winter there, as their name implies. Winter, and ill lit—for them, the sun is but another star, though brighter than most. Thus huge eyes, which like the eyes of owls let them see in darkness; and huge bodies, too, hairy and thick-skinned to guard against the cold.

Telling Woddet to go slow, I went to speak to Marder. “We needn’t fear the Angrborn’s pursuit in such weather as this, Your Grace. Hela and Heimir can hardly keep up with us, though they’re of our blood as well. The greater danger is that we’ll tire our horses. We used them hard yesterday.”

“I was thinking the same. If they overtake us with our chargers blown, they’ll slaughter us like rabbits.”

“I agree, Your Grace. Wholeheartedly.”

“Then stop wherever you find water and grass,” he said.

We did and quickly, although we would not have found the spot at all if it had not been for Hela, who told us of it. It was some distance from the War Way, which was an added point in its favor—it is difficult for any but a hound to track by night, and if our pursuers were not sharp-eyed they might pass us by. If that happened, we would take them from behind the next day, while our mounts were still fresh. Uns and Pouk made our camp while I saw to Cloud, and Mani offered to climb a tree—tall ones are rare in Jotunland, but there were a few there—and keep watch; for cats, as he said, see by dark nearly as well as Angrborn.

Woddet’s camp he and his men made for themselves, while Heimir and Hela stretched sweating on the clean, soft grass. We had camped so early that the pavilions were up and every rope tight while the sun was still a hand’s breadth above the horizon.

Uns had gone to Svon’s fire to borrow a light for ours, for it seemed that Vil was uncommonly clever at fire-making, which I thought extraordinary in a blind man. “‘Taint no trick, Master,” Uns explained. “You’d look fer smoke. So’d I. Dat Vil smells hit, ‘n blows, ‘n feels fer hit.”

Idnn came, with Berthold to carry her chair. I taught Uns and Pouk to drop to one knee, as one does for a queen, and bow their heads in the proper style. Gylf made his own bow, the dog-bow we are too quick to call groveling when it is in fact simple canine courtesy.

“Arise, good people.” Idnn smiled on all of us. “Will you dine with us tonight, Sir Able? His Grace will not be there, nor Sir Woddet, nor Sir Leort. Our noble father may attend, though we’ll discourage it if we can.”

I had planned to be off as soon as I had eaten, and muttered something stupid about honor and my allegiance to Marder.

“That’s what we thought you’d say—we’ll dine with you instead. Have you royal fare, Uns? Answer us honestly.”