Gene Wolfe - The Wizard

“From the south?”

“My mother—taken prisoner. Married and stayed.”

The others had stood gaping all this while. I told them they had to learn to fight if they were to be men-at-arms of mine, and offered to engage their best then and there with Qut’s sword. They knelt instead, three bumpkins with not a leader among them.

Taking my foot from Qut’s chest, I said, “I am the new owner, Sir Able of Redhall.”

The three nodded. Qut scrambled up to one knee.

“You.” I pointed. “Take Cloud to the stable. Wake my grooms. She’s been ridden hard. She’s to be unsaddled and turned out to pasture. Tell them I’ll know of any injury to her, however slight, and it’ll be avenged in blood.”

He took her reins and hurried away.

“There’s a steward here?”

Qut said there was, and that his name was Halweard.

“Good. Wake him. Wake the cooks as well.”

“It’s barred, sir. I’ll have to rouse somebody—”

A look and a gesture sent him. Our scuffle, brief as it had been, had ended any thought of sleep. I decided to eat—we had been on short rations, and I was ravenous—and stay up, retiring early the next night.

Which is what I did. I inspected Redhall, finding its barns, fields, and larders in good order but its men-at-arms and archers undrilled and a little slovenly.

Next day we began contests for the bow. I gave a ham to the winner. (I had offered a piece of Marder’s gold to any archer who outshot me; none did.) The one whose score was next to worst was to strike the one with the worst smartly on the bottom with his bow. He struck soft, so I had the next worst hit him for it. That was a whack that made dust fly.

My men-at-arms had been spectators to this and enjoyed it. Recalling the Angrborn, I decided to see whether they had profited as well. There were bows, as well as arrows by the hundred, in our armory. I gave each man-at-arms a bow and arrows, and had each shoot at very moderate range.

After that we held a contest (while the archers laughed and jeered) with the same prizes and punishment.

That evening Qut confided that there was grumbling among those who had done badly. The sword, they said, was their weapon—sword, partisane, and halbert. Thus on the third day we cut saplings for practice swords, as Garvaon and I had, and I drilled them all morning, and fought them that afternoon, knocking them about.

On the fourth day we cut quarterstaves, I explaining that the man who knew the quarterstaff would be a fighter to be reckoned with when armed with partisane or halbert. When I had beaten a round dozen, one knocked me sprawling with such a blow as might have done me real hurt had I not been helmeted. I gave him the promised gold, and engaged him again for another. The storm-surge returned in that match, and it seemed almost that Garsecg swam beside me. I broke his quarterstaff and knocked him to his knees when he tried to defend himself with the halves. After that I had him teach them first, and afterward set them against one another, with us to judge between them. Balye was his name.

That night I ate supper with Gylf. Halweard brought my bread and soup and ale, staying until I should dismiss him. “Winter’s blast tonight, Sir Able,” he said. “It was cold in the north, I’m sure.”

I said it had been very cold at times.

“We haven’t had it here.just a nip to ripen the apples. We’ll get it good tonight. Hear the wind in the chimney?”

I was on my feet in a moment and back in my boots in two. Out the sally port we kept barred but unguarded, and across three meadows. I found her in the wood, and our hugs were sweeter than any wine, and our kisses more intoxicating. She showed me a shelter her guards had woven for us, and in it we lay on moss and kissed a hundred times, and kept each other warm, my fur cloak for her and her great cloak of leaves over us both; we talked of love, and all we said would fill a book thicker than this. Yet all we said was only this: that I loved her and she loved me, and we had waited long and long, would be parted no longer.

At last she told me, “I took you for my instrument, and filled you with the words I’d have you say to Arnthor, and to every king of human kind through all the world, and made of you such a man as might speak to kings, and thought that I did well. It was foolishness, all of it, and there is only love. I’ll be your wife this moment.”

As she spoke, she changed, her green skin white. “No,” I said, and made as if to rise.

“I’ll be your wedded wife—or we’ll tell men so—and live in shadowed rooms, and comb my hair by the pearl of your night, and perfume myself for you.”

“No,” I said again. “I’ll love you in any shape you choose, but I love you best as you were here.”

“Do not speak to the king. Promise me that.”

I laughed. “I’ve faced an army of the Angrborn. Is there worse at Thortower?”

“For you? Yes.”

I thought about that; and at last I said, “What about you? Are you afraid just for me? Would you be safe there?”

She wept.

I returned to Redhall with snow in my hair. Halweard had waited and brought me a pot of hot ale, which was kindly done. I told him I would leave in the morning for Thortower.

“Do you know it well, sir?”

I sat. “Not at all. I’ve never been there.”

“It might be wise to find a friend to introduce you, someone familiar with the court.”

I explained that until Beel came I had no such friend, and sent him off to bed. That was where I should have gone myself. I did not, sipping ale that had been hot enough to hiss, staring into the fire, and thinking of what Disiri had said. She had not made me as Kulili had made her race; my parents had done that. Still she had made me in a sense, teaching me, and most of all teaching me what I was to say in Thortower. I shut my eyes and heard the cries of the gulls outside Parka’s cave, the waves, the fluttering wings. What was I to say?

It was no ordinary message, clearly, since I knew myself no ordinary man. I had burned for renown and skill at arms, and had not known I had burned for them so the king would listen. Toug had met Disiri as well as I; but she had no message for him, and he longed only for the plow—for the slow turn of the seasons and the life his father had, in which ambition was the wish for another cow.

In Redhall I could live for years, shaping my men and overseeing the fields and dairy. If Marder called on me for knight-service I would go. But if he did not, I would stay, visiting Forcetti once a month and Sheerwall three times a year. Disiri would come; and if it seemed to my maids that a woman not quite human frequented our corridors, why, let them gossip. What was it Ulfa had called me? A wizard knight, though Gylf and Cloud were wizardry enough for any man...

The darkest corner of the room, that point farthest from the fire, grew darker. I thought it no more than the failing of the fire, and told myself that there was small point in piling more wood on it; I would go to bed soon, and coals—and fire as well—would remain for morning.

Dark and darker. The hearth rug, the horns of the noble stag on the wall, and the pot that held my ale were lit as before. Yet night had come in and waited in the corner.

I called for Uri and for Baki, thinking it might be some trick of theirs, then to all the Aelf. Several clans were of that color, Mani had said, and they had often played tricks on Bold Berthold. But if the scraps of darkness there were Aelf, they made no reply.

At last I called for Org, although I thought him behind me with Svon and the rest. He answered from behind my chair. “Good Lord!” I exclaimed, and at that there was laughter from the corner, a laugh that made me think of ice in the northern caves, and the icicles that sang (as Borda had told Marder and me) if a spearhead touched them in the dark.