Gene Wolfe - The Knight

When the fire was burning pretty well I brought him water, carrying it in his hat; and when he had drunk it he said, “You ought to go to their cave. Might be treasure in there.”

I doubted it because it seemed to me that the outlaws had probably spent whatever they got as soon as they got it; but I promised we would go in the morning.

Gylf came with two rabbits, fading away into the night as soon as he laid them down. I skinned them and rigged a spit of green shoots the way Bold Berthold had showed me; when I had them cooking, old man Toug said, “Your dog looked different. Firelight, maybe.”

“No,” I said.

“Still your dog?”

I nodded.

“One time you asked if I wanted my boy to grow up like me, or did I want to be a boy again myself. I wanted him to be like me, only now I’d sooner be like him.” He sighed.

I told him I had been a boy myself not very long ago.

“Know what you mean.”

“Whn I found out I’d been turned into a man, I was scared, but after that I was so happy I jumped all around, yelling. Tonight I’d go back, if I could.”

“That’s it.”

“I told you how your son and I went to Aelfrice. We met Disiri there, and she took him. When I was a boy, I spent years in Aelfrice, but when I had gone I couldn’t remember what had happened there, and I looked the same way I had when I got there. All those years hadn’t changed me at all.”

“Happens,” old man Toug muttered.

“But when I was there alone, when I was waiting around for Disiri to return with your son, some of it began to come back. I can’t remember exactly what it was now, but I can remember remembering it. Do you know what I mean? And it was happy. I had been really, really happy there.”

“You ought to of stayed and remembered more.”

“I didn’t mean to leave. But I think you may be wrong. Terrible things have been nibbling at the edges of my mind. Maybe that’s why I went looking for Disiri. I wanted her to reassure me. To tell me everything was all right after all.”

A new voice said, “I can’t do that, but I can help nurse my father.”

I looked around. It was Ulfa.

Old man Toug said, “Followed us, didn’t you? Thought you might. Ma couldn’t keep you?”

“I left while she was busy with Ve, Pa. I didn’t even ask her.” Ulfa turned to me. “You frightened poor Ve half to death.”

I said I had not meant to. I had just wanted to scare Ve enough to make him do what I told him, because I did not have any money, and I could not think of any other way to keep him from warning the outlaws.

“Kindness might have done it.”

“I suppose.”

I do not think old man Toug had been listening, or at least not paying much attention, because right about then he said, “Gold, Ulfa! Real gold! There’s treasure in the cave. You’ll see.”

“Will Sir Able let you share in it?”

I said, “Yes, if there’s any to share.”

Old man Toug said, “I kilt two out ‘a Jer’s company, Ulfa. Two! Believe that?” She sighed, and shook her head. “I’ve been stumbling over bodies for—I don’t know, Pa. It seems like half the night. If you only killed two, Sir Able must have killed two score.”

I told her that Gylf had killed more than both of us.

“His dog,” old man Toug explained. “I kilt and run and kilt and run, and then they put a arrow in my leg. Hung me on a tree. He cut me down, cut me loose. Got water for me and everythin’.” Tears spilled from the corners of old man Toug’s eyes, soaking the matted hair that barred them from his ears. “I said, you go off. You get that gold. He wouldn’t go, stayed here with me.”

I turned the rabbits one last time and took them off the fire, waving them to help them cool. Neither Ulfa nor old man Toug spoke, but I saw the way they looked at them, and as soon as I could I tore off a hind leg and gave it to old man Toug, cautioning him that it was still hot.

“What about you, Ulfa? You must be hungry.”

She nodded, and I gave her the other hind leg. We were eating when she said, “Don’t you need money?”

I wiped my mouth on the back of my arm. “Sure. I need it more than you or your father do. I have plenty of arrows now, and a really good bow. The knife I used to skin these rabbits, and my dog. But I need everything else a knight ought to have. A charger to fight on. A good saddle horse to get from place to place, and a pack horse to carry all the stuff I haven’t got.” I tried to grin to show her it was not getting me down. “Even a horse like that, a horse a knight wouldn’t even get on, would cost a good deal. And I haven’t got anything.”

Ulfa nodded. “I see.”

“You remember Svon—you told me how well dressed he was. He said one time that a charger like Blackmane costs as much as a good field. Svon didn’t always tell the truth, but I don’t think he was lying about that. And besides the three horses, I ought to have mail, a good shield, and five or six lances.”

Ulfa nodded again. “A manor for your lady.”

“My lady has her own kingdom. But you’re right, I don’t own enough land to grow a turnip.” It was not hard to smile that time, because I was thinking how nice it was to have two friends to talk to and something to eat after all that had happened that day “A dagger like the ones knights wear would be nice, and maybe a battle-ax.” That brought back Disira with her hair full of blood. “No, a club. A club with spikes would be good. But as for a manor or anything like that, I can’t even think about it. If you were to sew me a new shirt, that would be more than enough to make me happy.”

“I’ll try. What about a sword? When I made your other shirt, that was what you said you needed.”

I shook my head. “Someone’s seeing to that. I don’t think it would be smart for us to talk about it.”

When we had finished the second rabbit, we lay down to sleep; Ulfa and old man Toug were soon snoring, but I was still awake when Gylf returned with a hind in his jaws, and I lay awake another hour listening to him breaking the bones.

Dawn came. The light woke me, and I sat up rubbing my eyes. The Gylf who lay beside me seemed an ordinary dark brown dog, just bigger than any other dog I had ever seen.

We went to the outlaws’ cave, walking very slowly because old man Toug could only limp along leaning on the shaft of his spear. Ravens had already been at the bodies of the dead outlaws we found, but Ulfa had brought a leather burse and she dropped such silver and gold as she could get from them into it; it was not a very large burse, but by the time we reached the cave it was heavy. I suppose I could have done that if I had to, but I would not have liked it. I did not even like to look at them.

“I see now why people turn outlaw,” I told her when she showed me how much she had, “but if people can get that much by stealing from the kind of people you see around here, how much could a knight get from a good war?”

She smiled. “A manor house, Sir Able, and twenty farms.”

The elder Toug snorted. “Pike head though the gut.”

At the mouth of the cave you could see the ashes of a lot of fires; bones, spoiled food, and empty wineskins were scattered all around. Farther in we found some heavy winter coats wrapped up in oiled parchment, and some other clothes that had just been thrown down and walked on. There were blankets, too, mostly rough forest wool, but thick and tight.

Beyond those there was a big jumble of silver platters and tumblers, some really good saddles and saddle blankets, harnesses of the best leather with copper or silver bosses, daggers (I took one), forty or fifty pairs of embroidered gloves, a hunting horn with a green velvet strap, and last of all, very hard to see because it was so dark back there and it had fallen between a couple of stones, a broken sword. It was Ulfa who found that, but I was the one who carried it out of the cave to look at in the light. There was a gold lion’s head on the pommel, and up against the guard the blade was stamped Lut.