Gene Wolfe: The Knight

“Yes, Sir Able.” His teeth chattered. “Anything.”

“Say, ‘granted, whatever it may be.’”

“Granted, whatever it may be,” he repeated. “Just don’t ask me to jump.” He was looking down at the slate-green sea so far below.

“I want you to have this griffin painted on your shield. Will you do that?”

“You—you should have it, Sir Able.”

“No. Will you not grant my boon?”

“Yes, Sir Able. I—I will.”

The griffin looked back at us, then down; and following the direction of his gaze I saw Grengarm in the sea.

Like a thunderbolt, the griffin dove with outstretched claws; and Grengarm dove too, diving as the whale dives, but not before my arrow found him.

We skimmed the waves; and I, seeing them and feeling their warm salt breath upon my face, loved them as a man loves a woman.

“He must rise to breathe,” the griffin told us. His words were timed to the beating of his wings, each syllable the thunderous downstroke that kept us up. “But the time may be long, and when he rises he will be far away.”

We rose too, slowly and by wide circlings,’ and the air about us grew cool again. “If he rises by night,” I said, “we won’t see him.”

“I will see him,” the griffin promised us.

The sun was low and dim when the griffin dove again and my arrow caught Grengarm behind the head.

The third time he surfaced, at an hour when the sun was hidden behind the western isles, he did not dive but beat his vast black wings against the tossing waves and rose into the air as a pheasant rises before dogs. Long we pursued him and high we rose, and saw a million stars under us like diamonds cast on a blanket of cloud.

Between the moon and the Valfather’s castle we overtook our prey. Griffin and dragon met in a battle only one could survive, at a height so great that the castle (whose shining towers rise from all six sides so that to the undiscerning it appears a spiky star) looked far larger than dark Mythgarthr. Its battlements were lined with men who watched and cheered; and every window of every tower displayed a fair face.

As Grengarm’s fangs closed on the griffin’s throat, I scrambled from griffin to dragon with the wind of their wings singing in my ears, the sword Eterne in my hand, and a score of phantom knights blown like brown leaves around me. And I drove that famous blade to the hilt where my arrow had shown the way, and felt Grengarm die beneath me. His thundering wings grew flaccid, and the griffin, unable to bear him up, released his grip. As we fell, I pulled Eterne from the grievous wound that she had made and washed her in the wind, scattering drops of the dragon’s blood across the sky.

And I sheathed her, thinking that though I perished the sword and scabbard should remain together.

It was at that moment, when the phantoms had vanished, that Grengarm turned his terrible head toward me, craning it upon a neck a thousand times mightier than any crane’s, and opened his maw wide. And I, staring into it as into the face of death, understood certain things that had been hidden.

A galloping horse dove for me as I stared, its silver-shod hooves driving it earthward more swiftly than even the griffin’s wings. The maiden who rode that horse snatched at me and missed her grip; but a second rode hard behind her, and a third hard behind the second, shouting for joy as she galloped down the starry sky and lashing her steed with its reins; and this third maiden caught me up, one strong arm across my back and beneath my own right arm, and set me on the saddle before her as I myself had set Toug, when Toug could not speak. I looked back at her; and I saw that though I might be counted a fighting man to match the best, my head was no higher than her chin.

“Alvit am I!” the maiden shouted. “Your name you need not tell! We know it!”

So low had we come that the clouds were above us, and up a lofty mountain of cloud Alvit’s white steed cantered, never stumbling and never tiring. From the summit of that cloudy mountain it launched itself again on hooves that drummed a road of air.

“This is the finest thing in the world,” I said, and thought that I spoke solely to myself, words to be lost in the swift wind of the white steed’s passing.

But Alvit said, “It is not, but a thing outside the world. Love you a good fight, Sir Able?”

“No,” I said, and looked squarely into my own soul. “I fight when honor says I must, and with everything I’ve got. And I win whatever way I can.”

She laughed and held me tighter, and her laughter was that strange and thrilling sky-sound men hear sometimes and puzzle their heads over afterward. “That is enough for us, and you are a man after my heart. Will you defend us from the Giants of Winter and Old Night? Will you, if we lead you in battle?”

“I will defend you against anything,” I told her, “and you don’t have to lead me. Nobody does. I’ll lead myself, and fight on, when any leader you may give me falls.”

Bending over me, she kissed me as the last syllable left my lips; and it was such a kiss as I had never known, and will never feel again, a kiss that turned all my limbs to iron and lit a fire behind my ribs.

Soon after, her steed rolled over as it ran in a most peculiar way, and it could be seen that the Valfather’s castle, which had seemed to be above it, was in fact beneath it; and in a moment more its silver shoes rang on the crystal cobbles of a courtyard.