Gene Wolfe - The Knight

I woke from terrible dreams of death to the music of wolves. Bow in hand, I made my way among the trees, then paused to shout “Disiri!”

At once an answering voice called, “Here! Here!”

I hurried toward it, feeling my way with my bow, entered a starlit clearing, and was embraced with one arm by a woman who clasped an infant in the other, a little woman who rushed to me weeping. “Vali? Aren’t you Vali?” And then,

“I’m so sorry! Did Seaxneat send you?”

It was a moment before I understood. When I did I said, “A gallant knight sent me to find you, Disira. His name is Sir Ravd, and he was concerned for you.

So am I, if you are out here alone.”

“All alone except for Ossar,” she told me, and held her baby up so I could see him.

“Seaxneat told you to hide in this forest?”

She nodded, and cried.

“Did he say why?”

She shook he head violently. “Only to hide. So I hid and hid, all day and all night. There was nothing to eat, and after the first day I wanted to go back, but—”

“I understand.” I took her elbow as gently as I could and led her forward, although I had no idea where we were or where we might be going. “You tried to find your way back to Glennidam and got lost.”

“Y-yes.” A wolf howled as she spoke, and she shuddered.

“You don’t have to be afraid of them. They’re after fawns, and the new calves of the forest cattle. They won’t dare attack as long as I’m with you. I’m a knight too. I’m Sir Able.”

She huddled closer.

At dawn we found a path, and in the first long beams of the rising sun I recognized it. “We’re not far from Bold Berthold’s hut,” I told Disira. “We’ll go there, and even if Bold Berthold has nothing for us, you and Ossar can sit by his fire while I hunt.” Looking down at Ossar, I saw he was at her breast, and asked if she had milk.

“Yes, but I don’t know if it will last. I’m awfully thirsty and I haven’t eaten.

Just some gooseberries.”

We both drank deep at the crossing of the Griffin, and I shot a deer not a hundred strides after it, and merrily we came to Bold Berthold’s hut. He welcomed us and said he had thought, because of the wound that he had gotten from the Angrborn, that I was much too young to be his brother. Now he was glad to see I was as old as I ought to be, and bigger than I ought to be, too

(I was much larger than he was), and felt sure he was getting well at last. There was mead and venison (that some people would call tough, although we did not), and the last hoarded nuts to crack. Bold Berthold played with little

Ossar, and talked about how life had been when his brother was no bigger than

Ossar, and he himself (as he put it) only a stripling.

In the morning Disira begged to stay one more day; she was exhausted; her feet still hurt; and I, knowing how long our return to Glennidam was likely to be, said it would be all right.

I made myself new arrows that day, four for which I already had steel heads, and four more that I hoped to get heads for from the smith in her village. We slept under deerskins at Bold Berthold’s, and she crept under mine that night when Ossar and Bold Berthold were asleep. I did not betray Disiri, although I know Disira expected me to; but I put my arms around her and kissed her once or twice. That was what she wanted mostly: to be loved by somebody strong who would not hurt her.

Next day we stayed too, because I wanted to try my new arrows and hoped to get something Bold Berthold could eat when we were gone. The day after that we did not go because it rained. As we sat around the fire, singing all the songs we knew and talking when we felt like it, I said something about your mother and mine, Ben, and Bold Berthold hugged me and cried. I had already started to wonder if America had ever been real and not trust the life I remembered there with you (school and the cabin, my Mac and all that) and this made it worse. I lay down, and to tell the truth I pretended I was asleep, wondering if

I was not really Bold Berthold’s brother Able.

I was almost asleep when I heard Disira say, “I was all alone out there, and he came from nowhere, calling me. He’d been with the Queen of the Wood.

That’s what he said.”

Bold Berthold muttered, “Aye?”

“He calls himself a knight, but his bowstring talks to him in the dark, and he talks while he’s sleeping. He’s really a wizard, isn’t he? A mighty wizard. I see it every time I look into his face.”

“He’s a man like I was once,” Bold Berthold said, “and better than I was, and my brother. Go to sleep.”

So we slept, all four of us, until I woke up thinking that Disiri had called me.

I got up as quietly as I could, slipped out, and wandered through the rain and the mist calling for her. I saw strange faces peer up at me from the swirling waters of the Griffin and from a dozen ring-marked forest pools. More peeped from behind bushes or looked down from the leaves of trees—faces that might have come in a flying saucer, green, brown, black, or fiery. Glass faces too, and faces whiter than snow. Once I nearly shot a brown doe that got all smoky and turned into a long-legged girl; and many times I heard the howls of wolves, and once the nearer baying of something that was never a wolf.

But Disiri, the green woman I love, I never found.

Days had passed while Toug and I had knelt in Aelfrice. Now weeks slipped by while Disira, her baby, and I remained with Bold Berthold. I hunted and he trapped, for he was clever at making snares. Disira swept and cleaned, skinned the game we got, stretched and tanned the hides, cooked, and played with Ossar. We were not husband and wife; but I might have had her, I think, at any time; and no passerby (had there been any) would have guessed that we were not.

Seaxneat had treated her badly and had beaten her more than once while she was carrying their child, so that she had been in terror of a miscarriage. Moreover, he had been in league with the outlaws, just as Ravd had been told; and the longer she was separated from him, the less eager she was to go back to him. I learned a whole lot about them just by listening to her, for she knew much more than she believed she knew. I hoped for an opportunity to tell Ravd all that I had learned, though I never saw him and had no way of knowing whether he and Svon were nearby or back in his beloved manor of Redhall.

There came a morning—fine and sunny—on which the air was touched with something new. As I prowled the wood, a leaf, a single leaf, the broad leaf of a maple, fell at my feet. I picked it up (I still remember this very clearly) and e xamined it, and though largely green it was touched with red and gold. Summer was over; fall had come, and it would have been foolish not to plan for it.

First came the need to store food, and if we could, to buy more. We could take our hides to Irringsmouth this time. The trip would be longer, but we might get a better price, and might not be cheated. We could buy flour, salt, and hard bread, cheese and dried beans there, but we would need more meat to smoke, and hides to sell. The nuts would ripen soon—beechnuts, chestnuts, and walnuts. Bold Berthold had taught me that we could even eat acorns if they were properly prepared, and it would be smart to lay in as many nuts of all kinds as we could manage.

Second, Disira. If she wanted to go back to Glennidam at all, she would have to do it now. Traveling with a baby would be hard enough; traveling with one in winter ...

I began to hunt in the direction of Glennidam, something I did not do very often, telling myself it would serve two purposes. If I got game, well and good; but even if I did not, I would refresh my memory on the paths and turnings. I was near the Irring when I saw a head with a face that looked almost human above some little trees. Its glaring eyes swept over me, leaving me paralyzed—too frightened to run and too frightened to hide.