Gene Wolfe - The Knight

“Just now?” Taking a bite from what remained of the cheese, I thought about that. “You followed me from Bymir’s farm?” The boy shook his head. “But I brought you?” Another nod.

I snapped my fingers. “Toug!” A round dozen joyful nods.

“I was here with you—it’s been years ago. It doesn’t seem like it, but I guess it has been. How long have you been here?” He shrugged.

“It seems like that’s the way it always is. You lose track here. Maybe there really isn’t any time. Let’s see. Queen Disiri took you?” Looking frightened, Toug nodded.

“She said she had something to tell you, or to ask you. The two of you went off together, and you never came back.” Toug shook his head.

“You did? When?”

Toug pointed to the ground at his feet.

“Now?”

Toug nodded.

“You just left her?”

He nodded again.

“Can you take me to the place?”

Another nod.

“Then let’s go!”

He pointed to the stallion, his eyes questioning.

“You’re right.” We can ride faster than we can walk, even through these trees.” I let him climb into the saddle and got up behind him. “Hold on to the pommel and point. Which way? I won’t let him trot much.”

Crying again, he pointed; I clapped my borrowed spurs to the stallion’s sides.

Twilight found us among mountains, camped beside a rushing stream.

“This isn’t Aelfrice.” It was something I had said before; Toug nodded miserably, as he had the other time.

“It was in this gorge that things changed, I think. One end is in Aelfrice and the other here. For us. For today. That’s how it seems to me, anyway. I’ve been in mountains like these before, and it wouldn’t surprise me if these are the same ones, though I haven’t seen the War Way. Was it near here you parted from Disiri?”

Toug rose and began to walk, pointed, then indicated by a gesture that I was to follow. With a worried glance back at the tethered stallion, I did.

By the time we reached the carved stone from which the stream issued, the light had failed. The place where water came out was a big cave, I thought at first, a cave with an overhanging, downward-curved roof, so that the long smooth expanse of stone over which the water flowed seemed almost a portico. It was not until I returned to our fire and came back with two burning sticks that I saw the eagle eyes and the pointed ears. I would have gone in then, as Toug urged by eager smiles and gestures.

“There is danger within!”

I turned, but the location and identity of the speaker were lost in darkness.

“It was my home once.”

The voice was deep and slow and lisping; I felt sure it came from no human lips. I raised my burning sticks, moving them to fan the flame. Something huge clung to the cliff face, something ghostly white and assuredly not human.

“Strength will not avail against Grengarm,” the great voice announced, “until you grasp Eterne. As you will. Nor will cunning, once you have her.”

Wings sprouted from the white form on the cliff face, each wing larger than Beel’s pavilion. It sprang into the air. Lightnings played about its wings; the wind those wings raised blew out my sticks and knocked Toug off his feet and nearly into the rushing water. For seconds that seemed whole minutes, that ghostly shape eclipsed the moon; then it was gone.

I helped Toug stand up and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Disiri isn’t here, is she?”

He could not speak, and if he nodded or shook his head, it was too dark for me to catch it.

“Listen now,” I told him, “and listen good. I told you to take me to Disiri, not here. She talked about this sword—getting it for me. I wouldn’t wear a sword because of it. I didn’t want a substitute. I didn’t want a compromise. I wanted Eterne, the sword she’d promised me. But that’s not what I want now. I want her.”

Toug had begun to sob, and realizing that I had been shaking him hard, I dropped him.

“Only her.” I poked Toug with the toe of my boot to make sure he had understood. “You can wait here if you want to. I’m going back to the fire.”

He clung to me all the way back, and when we got there and I had thrown all the wood we had collected onto it, I said, “You’re afraid of that thing that talked to us. So am I. What was it?”

He just stared.

“A griffin?”

He nodded.

“You saw it before, I suppose, when you were here with Disiri. There aren’t suppose to be any, not really. Not anymore, and most people would say not ever. Sensible people never believe in things like that.” Half to myself I added, “Of course there aren’t supposed to be ogres, either, but Org’s real enough. Probably you’re afraid the griffin’s going to eat you.”

Toug nodded again.

“Or the dragon will, because there’s a dragon in there. That’s what the griffin said. Grengarm—he’s a dragon, the one who has my sword. Did you see him, too?” Toug shook his head.

“Well, you’re not going to. We’re going to Utgard. Your sister’s there, for one thing, and you and I are going to get her out. You don’t have a blanket.”

He nodded, looking hopeless.

“You can use the saddle blanket, but you’d better get more wood for the fire before you even try to sleep.”

While he was collecting fallen branches from the sparse growth near the water, I got my bedding out of my saddlebag and lay down. “If you decide to head back to Glennidam on your own,” I said, “bon voyage and I hope you have a fun trip. But if you take anything of mine, I’ll come after you. If the Mountain Men don’t get you, I will. Remember that.”

In dream I was a boy I had never been, running over the downs with other boys. We caught a rabbit in a snare, and I wept at his death and for some vast sorrow approaching that I sensed but could not see. We skinned and cleaned the rabbit, and roasted it over a little fire of twigs. I choked on it, fell unconscious into the fire, and so perished. I had wanted to save the bones for my dog, but I was dead and my dog had followed the Wild Hunt, and the rabbit’s steaming flesh was burning in my throat.

It was still dark when I woke, but no longer quite so dark as night should have been once the moon had set. Toug crouched weeping on the other side of the fire, a small fire now, although there were a score of charred stubs around it.

Rising, I gathered them up and tossed them into the flames. “What are you afraid of?” I asked; and when he made no gesture in reply, I sat down beside him and put my arm over his shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

He pointed to his mouth.

“You can’t talk. Do you know why you can’t?”

Sobbing, he nodded and pointed to my side.

“Did Disiri do this to you?”

He nodded again; and after that, I sat up with him until the renewed fire had very nearly burned itself out; and since he could not talk, I talked a good deal, all about Disiri and my most recent adventures. At last I said, “You wanted me to go into the mountain where the dragon is. Was that because Disiri told you you’d be able to speak again if I did?”

He picked up a scrap of charred wood and smeared a long mark on a flat stone, with a smaller one across it.

“The sword?”

He nodded.

“You’ll be able to talk again if I can get Eterne?”

Nodding vigorously, he smiled through his tears. His eyes shone.

I rose. “You stay here. You’ll have to look after my horse, but you can use my blankets. Don’t touch my bow or my quiver. You grew up in the forest, didn’t you? Of course you did. You ought to know how to set snares. You must be hungry, and now that the bread and cheese are gone we don’t have anything here.” I stopped for a minute to think things over, then added, “I wouldn’t try to get back to Aelfrice, if I were you.”