Gene Wolfe - The Knight

The needle stopped in mid stab, and Ulfa looked up at me. “You, sir?” I nodded.

She laughed. “That boy that was here yesterday? I could’ve shut my hand “round his arm, almost. I doubt I could get both ’round yours, sir.”

Pushing the trousers she had been making for me to one side, she rose. “Can I try?”

“May I try. Yes, you may.”

Both her hands could not encircle my arm, but they could caress it. “You should be a knight yourself, sir.”

“I am.” My declaration surprised me, I think, much more than it surprised her; yet I recalled what Ravd had said—“We find this man to be a knight”—and it carried an inner certainty. “I am Sir Able,” I added.

Hidden by her shift, her nipples brushed my elbow. “Then you ought to have a sword.”

“Others have swords too,” I told her, “but you’re right just the same. I’ll get one. Go back to your sewing, Ulfa.”

When the trousers were finished and she had begun the shirt, I said, “Your father was afraid Sir Ravd would rape you. So you said.”

“Ravish me.” She nodded. “Only not because of his name. I don’t think he knew it then.”

“Neither do I. Isn’t your father afraid I’ll ravish you myself?”

“I don’t know, Sir Able.”

“A man intent on rape could do much worse. Have you no mother, Ulfa?”

“Oh, yes. By Garsecg’s grace she’s still among us.”

“But being blind, or crippled in her hands, she can no longer sew?”

Ulfa bit her thread, waking a memory. “She can, Sir Able, I swear to you. She sews better’n I, and taught me. Only skillful sewing takes sunlight.”

“I see. Who’s in this house, Ulfa? Name them all.”

“You and me. Ma, Pa, and brother Toug.”

“Really? They’re uncommonly quiet. I haven’t heard a voice or a step, other than yours and mine. Where is your mother, do you think?”

Ulfa said nothing, but I followed the direction of her eyes, and opened the door of a wretched little room that appeared to be a sort of pantry. A woman Brega’s age was huddled in its farthest corner, her eyes wide with fright.

I said, “Don’t worry, Ma. However this falls out, I’ll do you and your daughter no hurt.”

She nodded and compelled her lips to smile, and the pain of her effort made me turn away.

Ulfa joined us, eager to distract me. “Try it on now. I have to be sure it’s not too small.”

I did, and she ticked like a beetle in the wall, saying I had the shoulders of a barn door.

I laughed, and said I had not known barn doors boasted shoulders.

“You think you’re ordinary, I s’pose, and the rest of us dwarfs.”

“I saw myself in the water,” I told her. “I had been with a woman called Disiri, and—”

“Disira?”

“No. Disiri the Mossmaiden, who I imagine must have given Disira her dangerous name. She wanted to lie in the shade, but she left when the sun was high. I happened to stand in the sunlight, and I saw my reflection. I was ... I was held back once, Ulfa. Not allowed to grow with the years. She said something about that, and she undid that holding back.” It hurt, but I added, “I would guess for her own pleasure.”

Ulfa’s mouth formed a small circle. She said nothing.

“Anyway I am as I am, and I have to make myself longer arrows.”

Hesitantly, Ulfa said, “We try to stay on good terms with the Hidden Folk.”

“Do you succeed?”

“Oh, a bit. They heal our sick sometimes, and watch the forest cattle.”

“As long as you speak well of them, and put food out for them?”

She nodded, but would not meet my eye.

“Bold Berthold and I leave them a bowl of broth and a bite of ash-cake now and then.”

“We sing songs they like, too, and—and do things, you know, in places we can’t ever talk about.” Ulfa’s needle was fairly flying.

“Songs that can’t be sung for strangers, and things you can’t speak of even among yourselves? Bold Berthold told me something about it.”

After a long pause, she said, “Yes. Things I can’t talk about.”

“Then talk about this. Is Disiri great among the Aelf?”

“Oh, yes.” Ulfa rose, holding up the shirt for me to admire.

“A great lady?”

“Worse.”

I tried to imagine Disiri worse. “Perhaps she punishes bandits and the like. Liars.”

“Anybody that offends her, sir.”

I sighed. “I love her, Ulfa. What am I do?”

Ulfa put her mouth to my ear. “I don’t know ‘bout love yet, Sir Able.”

“And I won’t teach you—or at least, not much. Give me my shirt. I promise to try not to get my blood on it.”

I pulled it over my head and flexed my shoulders; it was as loose-fitting as I could have wished. “Didn’t Pa tell you to make it tight, so as to bind me?”

Ulfa shook her head.

“He hadn’t time to think of that, perhaps, or perhaps he thought I would not be wearing it. I suppose it must be easy to kill a man between a woman’s legs.”

“I—I wouldn’t have a thing to do with ... You know. With nothing like that, sir Able. Queen Disiri my witness.” Her small, strong hands caressed shoulders that thanks to her were no longer bare.

“I believe you,” I told her, and kissed her.

A wolf howled in the distance, and in a strangled voice she said, “A Norn-hound. It’s a bad omen. If—if you was to stay with me tonight, I would stay awake to warn you.”

I smiled. “I won’t. But you’re right, the hunt is on. Warn me of what? Your father and your brother?” Wordlessly, she nodded.

“I thought they might burst in when I kissed you. Hoped they would, because it would be better to fight where I’ve got light. Let’s try again.”

I kissed again and held her longer. When we separated, I said, “So that’s the taste of human women. I didn’t know.”

She stared but did not speak. I went to the window and looked out into the street. It was too dark to see anything.

“I know a little something about love now, Sir Able.” She was rubbing herself against me, reminding me of grandma’s cat. “There’s something down here that’s hot as the steam from the kettle.”

“Your father and brother didn’t rush in. You must’ve noticed.”

“Your servant girl didn’t notice a thing right then, Sir Able. Except for you.”

“So it will be outside in the dark. But this house has a rear door. I saw it when we looked in on Ma.”

I opened the door to the pantry, nodded to the cowering woman, and threw open the door in the opposite wall.

Outside were a boy with a spear and two men with brown bills. The men poked at me as if I were a burning log, but I caught a bill in each hand, snatched them from their owners (though I had to kick the larger), and broke the shafts over my knee. The boy dropped his spear and fled.

He did not get far. I snatched up my bow and ran after him, and caught him in a little meadow near the forest. “Are you Toug?”

Perhaps he nodded; if so I could not see him; and if he spoke, it was so softly I could not hear him. I pinned his arm behind his back and rapped his ear with my bow when he screamed. “You have to answer my questions,” I told him, “and answer honestly. Promptly, too, and politely. Is this forest safe by night?”

“No, sir,” he muttered.

“I didn’t think so. We need each other, you see. While I’m with you, you get my protection—a needed safeguard, at least ’til the sun’s back. I, on the other hand, need you to warn me of danger. Suppose I got annoyed and killed you.”

He trembled, shaming me. He was only a little kid.

“I wouldn’t get your warning then, and things might be bad for me. We’ve got to be careful. And look out for each other. Your name’s the same as your dad’s?”