Gene Wolfe - The Knight

Ve gulped. “He’s not here, Sir Able.”

“Is he off looking for Seaxneat’s wife too?”

“I d-don’t know, Sir Able.”

“But you know where he told you to go to find the outlaws. You’d better tell me.”

Gylf growled, and Ulfa’s father got Ve’s arm. “Your father’s away,” he told Ve, “and I’m here in his place. I say to tell him. It’s on my head, not yours.”

“To the c-cave. The big cave.”

I nodded. “I see. Do they stay there often?”

“S-some do, Sir Able. One of the Free Companies.”

“Where is it?”

“Th-that way.” Ve pointed. “You t-take the path to the little pond and go ’round it through the b-beeches, only turn at the big stump—”

Ulfa’s father said, “I’ll show you.”

It took me by surprise.

“You’d make the boy do it, and maybe get him kilt. With me there’ll be two men, if they’re there.”

Gylf growled again, louder this time.

“Dog thinks I might turn on you,” Ulfa’s father said. “Maybe he will, but I won’t.”

I thought about that. “You sent Ve for the outlaws when I was here before.”

He shook his head. “Vali did. Not me. I wanted to kill you myself.” He paused to stare at the floor, then looked up to meet my eyes. “If I’d of believed you was a real knight, it’d of been different. Only I didn’t and thought me and my boy could do for you, and with Vali we could do it sure. Only he wanted to fetch Jer’s Free Company and sent his boy, and I didn’t stop him.”

“You don’t like them?”

Ulfa’s father shook his head.

Ulfa started to speak, but I raised a hand to silence her. “What’s your name?”

“Toug. Same as my boy.”

“That’s right, I remember now. What is it, Ulfa?”

She said, “They make a lot of trouble, and take anything they want. Sometimes they trade with us, and sometimes they give us things, but it’s mostly Seaxneat, the trading and the giving, too.”

Old man Toug added, “Vali’d like to be him.”

“I see.” I was still studying him, and wishing I could see under that black beard. “How many outlaws will there be in the cave, assuming they’re still there?”

He shrugged. “Five, could be. Could be ten.”

I asked Ve how many there had been when he went to fetch them.

“S-seven, Sir Able.”

“Will you run to warn them as soon as we leave? You look fast, and you know the way. You may get there before we do.”

“No, S-Sir Able. Not unless you say t-to.”

“I can’t risk it. Ulfa, you and your mother will have to hold him here. Two hours should be enough. Will you do it?”

Ulfa’s mother nodded. Ulfa herself said, “I’ll do it for your sake, Sir Able, as well as my father’s.”

He stood up. “We can be there in a hour or not much over. You broke my bill.”

I nodded.

“I still got my spear, though, and my knife. All right if I take ’em?”

I said yes, and he went into one of the back rooms and returned with the spear his son, Toug, had dropped when he ran from the fight.

Ulfa said, “Tell us what happened to Disira.”

“Don’t matter,” old man Toug muttered. “Dead now.”

“Well, Pa, I’d like to know, and Sir Able said he’d tell us.”

I nodded. “Your brother and I went to Aelfrice, as I said earlier. Disiri took him, and I returned alone. I wanted to find Disiri again, and called her name. Disira answered, thinking I had been sent to search for her. She and Ossar had been hiding in the woods, probably for the second time and maybe more than that. She was hungry and worn out, scared, and lost. I should have taken her back here, but I didn’t. For one thing, Bold Berthold’s was closer and I thought I could get her something to eat there. For another, the outlaws had been after Toug and me. It seemed to me that there was more risk of their finding me here than at Bold Berthold’s hut.”

I stroked Gylf’s head and waited for one of them to speak until Ulfa said, “I understand. Go on.”

“She and Ossar stayed there with Bold Berthold and me. She was afraid of Seaxneat. He had treated her badly, and I believe she thought he might hurt Ossar when they came home. A couple of days ago, I went out to hunt and saw one of the Angrborn—”

Old man Toug said, “Where?”

“By the river, quite a way upstream. I thought I ought to warn Bold Berthold and Disira, so I went back to the hut. It had been burned, and at first I thought the Angrborn had done it. I found footprints made by men our size, though. One had walked with his toes turned in. I thought that was Seaxneat, and I still do. I heard Ossar crying, and found Disira’s body—she’d been hit with an ax. That’s easy to say, easy for me to talk about in here, where I don’t have to see her. But it was pretty horrible. I didn’t like to look at it, and I don’t like to think about it.”

Ve whispered something to Ulfa. She nodded and said, “He’s afraid to ask you, but he’d like to know why you took Disira to a hut, if you’re a knight. Aren’t you supposed to have a big house?”

“Because I’m not a wealthy one,” I told Ve. “Not yet, anyhow. But I’m a slow one, sometimes, and way too fond of talking, which isn’t the way a true knight ought to be.” I put my hand on old man Toug’s shoulder. “Not so long ago you wanted to kill me.”

He nodded reluctandy.

“I broke your bill, and could have killed you with the head of it. I didn’t.”

“I ‘preciate that.”

“You say you want to be my follower. I’ll be loyal to you as long as you’re loyal to me, but no longer.”

He nodded. “I got it.”

We left after that, I motioning for him to come with us.

Side by side we went down the village street, through fields, and into the forest; and Gylf trotted ahead of us, exploring every thicket and clump of brush before we reached it. Soon the path narrowed, and I went before old man Toug with an arrow at the nock; but even then, Gylf ranged ahead of me. Near Glennidam the trees were small and mean, the better ones having been cut for lumber and firewood. Farther on, they were bigger and older, though there were still stumps where men had felled them for timber. Beyond those lay the true forest, the mighty wood that stretches for hundreds of miles between the Mountains of the Sun and the sea, and between the Mountains of the North and the southern plowlands—trees that had been old when no man had walked among them, trees thicker through than the biggest house in Irringsmouth, trees that push their pleasant green heads into Skai and nod politely to the Overcyns.

Springs well from their roots, for in their quest for water those roots crack rocks deeper than the deepest well. Wildflowers, small ones so delicate you cannot see them without loving them, grow around the springs. The north sides of the trunks are covered with shining green moss thicker than bear fur. Every time I saw it I thought of Disiri and wished she was with us, but my wishing did not bring her, not there or anyplace else, ever.

To tell the truth, I was afraid I was going to choke up, so I said, “Now I see how it is that the air in Aelfrice seems full of light. This air looks full of light too.”

“Ah,” said old man Toug, “this what Aelfrice’s like?”

“No,” I said. “Aelfrice is much more wonderful. The trees are bigger and of incredible kinds, strange, dangerous, or welcoming. The air doesn’t just seem to shine, it really does.”

“My boy can tell me ‘bout it, maybe, if I get him back.”

I asked whether he had given his son his name because he wanted his son to be like him, or because he wanted to be a boy again; and now I cannot help wondering what he thought of the young knight who came back to him wounded, and what each said to the other.