Gene Wolfe - The Knight

“Somebody’s in it.”

I loosened Sword Breaker in her scabbard. “I think the best thing might be to pretend we don’t know he’s there for a while yet. When we’re closer, you might have a look at him.”

“Right.”

“What I was trying to say is that the Kelpies probably could protect people who were with them, but that wasn’t what was protecting me. What was protecting me was something I’d picked up when I was first in Aelfrice, something that looked the same ’til you looked close.”

“Huh!”

“So you don’t change like the Aelf change. Disiri’s tall and slim, but when we were alone—it was in a cave, but you weren’t with me then at all—she made herself, you know, rounder.” My cheeks burned, thinking about it. “And that was nice. Only she had to be shorter, too, to do it. Is there just one person in the hedge?”

“Badger, too.”

“But just one human?”

Gylf sniffed again. “Think so.”

“I told Garsecg about Disiri, how she had to be shorter to be rounder. But I should have thought about him. He turned himself into a dragon, and the dragon was a lot bigger than he was. He made himself look like me, too, although I’m bigger than he was. Could you make yourself look like me?”

“Nope.”

“Could you be that really big thing you are sometimes? Right now?”

Gylf grew. His eyes blazed like coals, and fangs two feet long pushed his lips apart. A moan of fear, faint but not too faint to hear, came from the hedgerow, and he bounded away. I urged my stallion after him.

By the time I reached Gylf, he was his everyday self again, having decided that one large ordinary dog was more than enough to pin and hold an old woman. He backed away from her when I told him to, leaving her weeping and gasping, curled up like a prawn on the dry leaves under the hedge.

“Now, now.” Dismounting, I knelt beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Cheer up, mother. Gylf won’t hurt you, and neither will I.”

The old woman only wept. Something dark connected the hands that covered her face, and examining it more by touch than by sight, I discovered that it was a chain of rough iron a bit longer than my forearm. “I wish I had a lamp,” I said.

“Oh, no, sir! Don’t wish for that!” The old woman peeped between her fingers. “Master’d see us sure, sir, if you was to light a lamp. You won’t, will you?”

“No. For one thing, I don’t have one. Did your master put that chain on you? Who is he?”

“Yes, sir. He done, sir. You’re one a’ them knights, sir, ain’t you? Like down south?”

“That’s right.”

“When I was a girl, sir, I seen some that come to the village. Big men like you they was, on big horses. An’ iron clothes. Has you got iron clothes, sir?” One hand left her face to stroke my arm. “Well, I never.”

“Are you a slave?” An eerie wail filled my mind as I spoke; I shivered, but it soon dwindled to nothing. “I asked your master’s name. Whose slave are you?”

“Oh, him, sir. He’s not a good one, sir, not like his pa, but I’ve seen worse, sir. Hard though, sir. Hard.” The old woman tittered. “He’d like me better if I was younger, sir. You know how that is. His father did, sir, Hymir that was, sir. I didn’t like him, sir, for he was bigger’n your horse twice, sir, only he was kindish to me because a’ it, only I didn’t know it was kindish then, sir, only he wisht I was bigger, sir, you know, an’ I found out after, for I’m too old now, sir, so Hyndle leaves me be. It’s the warm work for women, sir, is what they say, or else cold an’ starve. Only I don’t know which is worse.”

“Hyndle is your master?”

The old woman sat up, nodding. “Yes, sir.”

“Hyndle is Angrborn, from what you’ve said about him.”

“Is that the giants, sir? Yes, sir. They do claim her for their ma, sir.”

“If you’re running away from him—”

“Oh, no, sir!” The old woman sounded shocked. “Why, I wouldn’t do that. Why, I’d starve, sir, an’ never get back to where the regular people live. An’ if I did, I’d starve there, sir. Who’d feed a old woman like me?”

“I would if I could,” I told her. “But you’re right, I couldn’t. Not now, at least. Why are you out here at night, instead of home in bed?”

She tittered.

“Are you an Aelf? Have you taken this shape to have fun with me?”

“Oh, no, sir!”

“Then why are you out?”

“You wouldn’t believe, sir.”

Gylf whined and I stroked his head, telling him we would leave in a minute or two.

“It’s a man, sir. It is, and I shouldn’t have laughed. Only it’s a sore long way, sir, an’ I’m a-weary with working all day. If—if you could ride me on for but a little a’ it, sir, I’ll bless you ’til the day I die, sir.”

I nodded, thinking. “I was about to say that if you were running away I wished you all speed but I couldn’t give you much help. I have to go to Utgard as quick as I can. I hate to put any more weight on this horse, because he’s lame already. You can’t weigh half what I do though, and my armor weighs half as much as I do.” I stood and helped her rise, noticing just how thin and worn she looked in the moonlight. “So we’ll just sit you up here.”

She gave a little squeal as I lifted her onto the white stallion’s war saddle.

“That’s it. You don’t have sit astride, and I doubt that you could in those skirts. Leave your feet where they are and hold on to the cantle and pommel. I’ll lead him, and he won’t be going any faster than I can walk. Where are we going?”

She pointed down the hedgerow. “It’s a long, long way, sir.”

“It can’t be.” I was watching where I stepped, and did not bother to look over my shoulder at her. “Not if you were planning to walk it tonight. You would have gone home after, too? And gone to bed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then it can’t be far.” I started jogging, something I hadn’t done for a while. “Ain’t you a-feared you’ll lose your dog, sir?”

I strained to see him, but Gylf’s seal-brown rump and long tail had disappeared in the moon-shadow of the hedge. “I’m not, mother. He’s run ahead to scout out trouble, which is what I would’ve told him to do if I’d thought of it.”

“Rabbits, too, sir. An’ got a deep mouth from the look a’ him.”

“He does, but he won’t be running rabbits this night.” I jogged a hundred strides or so in silence, then slowed to a walk. “Did you ever tell me what your errand is, mother? A man, you said.”

“Yes, sir.” She sounded terribly sad. “You’ll think I’m cracked, running after a man at my age.”

“There’s only one girl for me,” I told her, “and people think me cracked because of it. So you’re a crazy woman on the charger of a crazy knight. We freaks have got to stick together and help each other, or we’ll be left to howl in the swamp.”

“Will you tell me about her, sir?”

“For a year. But she isn’t around, and your man is. Or he will be soon, we hope. Is he a good man, and does he know you’re coming?”

“Yes, sir.” She sighed. “He is. An’ he do, sir. Can I tell you how it is with him an’ me, sir? ’Twould ease my mind, an’ you can laugh if you want to.”

“May,” I muttered, jogging again. “Yes, I may. But I don’t think I will.”

“Years an’ years ago it were, sir. Him and me lived in a little bit a’ a place down south. Every girl there had a eye for him, sir, but him, he had a eye for me. An’ nobody else’d do. That’s what he said, sir, an’ the way it was, too.”

“I know how that is, mother.”