Gene Wolfe: The Knight

From a burse at his belt the squire extracted a broad silver piece. Behind him, the great bayard charger he led stirred and stamped with impatience, snorting and blowing through its lips.

“We’ll feed you, too,” the knight promised. “Or if you feed us with that big bow, we’ll pay you for the food.”

“I’ll share without payment,” I told him, “if you’ll share with me.”

“Nobly spoken.”

“But how can I know you won’t send me off empty-handed at the end of the day, with a cuff on the ear?”

Svon shut his fist around the scield. “How do we know you won’t lead us into an ambush, ouph?”

“As for the cuff at sunset,” the knight said, “I can give you my word. As I do, though you’ve no reason to trust it. On the matter of payment, however, I can set your mind at rest right now.” A big forefinger tapped Svon’s fist; when Svon surrendered the coin, the knight tossed it to me. “There’s your pay for this day until sunset, nor will we take it from you. Will you guide us?”

I was looking at the coin, which bore the head of a stern young king on one side and a shield on the other. The shield displayed the image of a monster compounded of woman, horse, and fish. I asked the knight where he wanted me to take him.

“To the nearest village. What is it?”

“Glennidam,” I said; I had been there with Bold Berthold.

The knight glanced at Svon, who shook his head. Turning back to me, the knight asked, “How many people?”

There had been nine houses—unmarried people living with their parents, and old people living with their married children. At a guess, three adults for each house ... I asked whether I should include children.

“If you wish. But no dogs.” (This, I think, may have been overheard by some Bodachan.)

“Then I’ll say fifty-three. That’s counting Seaxneat’s wife’s new baby. But I don’t know its name, or hers either.”

“Good people?”

I had not thought so; I shook my head.

“Ah.” The knight’s smile held a grim joy. “Take us to Glennidam, then, without delay. We can introduce ourselves on the road.”

“I am Able of the High Heart.”

Svon laughed.

The knight touched the rim of his steel coif. “I am Ravd of Redhall, Able of the High Heart. My squire is Svon. Now let us go.”

“If we get there today at all,” I warned Ravd, “it will be very late.”

“The more reason to hurry.”

We camped that night beside a creek called Wulfkil, Svon and I putting up a red-and-gold tent of striped sailcloth for Ravd to sleep in. I built a fire, for I carried flint and steel now to start one, and we ate hard bread, salt meat, and onions. “Your family may worry about you,” Ravd said. “Have you a wife?”

I shook my head, and added that Bold Berthold had said I was not old enough yet.

Ravd nodded, his face serious. “And what do you say?”

I thought of school—how I might want to go to college, if I ever got back home. “A few more years.”

Svon sneered. “Two rats to starve in the same hole.”

“I hope not.”

“Oh, really? How would you support a family?”

I grinned at him. “She’ll tell me how. That’s how I’ll know when I’ve found her.”

“She will? Well, what if she can’t?” He looked to Ravd for support, but got none.

I said, “Then would she be worth marrying?” Ravd chuckled.

Svon leveled a forefinger at me. “Someday I’ll teach—”

“You must learn yourself before the day for teaching comes,” Ravd told him. “Meanwhile, Able here might teach us both, I think. Who is Berthold, Able?”

“My brother.” That was what we told people, Ben, and I knew Bold Berthold believed it.

“Older than yourself, since he advises you.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Where are your father and mother?”

“Our father died years ago,” I told Ravd, “and my mother left soon after I was born.” It was true where you are, and here as well.

“I’m sorry to hear it. Sisters?”

“No, none,” I said. “Our father raised my brother, and my brother raised me.”

Svon laughed again.

I was confused already, memories of home mingling with stories Bold Berthold had told me of the family here that had been his and was supposed to be mine. It was all in the past, and although America is very far from here in the present, the past is only memories, and records nobody reads, and records nobody can read. This place and that place are mixed together like the books in the school library, so many things on the wrong shelf that nobody knows what is right for it anymore.

Ravd said, “You and your brother don’t live in Glennidam, from what you said. You’d know the name of Seaxneat’s wife, and the name of her new child, too, since there are only about fifty people in the village. What village do you live in?”

“We don’t live in any of them,” I explained. “We live by ourselves, and keep to ourselves, mostly.”

“Outlaws,” Svon whispered.

“They may be.” Ravd’s shoulders rose and fell by the thickness of a blade of grass. “Would you guide me to your house if I asked you, Able?”

“It’s Bold Berthold’s, not mine, sir.” I was glaring at Svon.

“To your brother’s then. Would you take us there?”

“Gladly. But it’s no grand place, just a hut. It’s not much bigger than your tent.” I thought Svon was going to say something; he did not, so I said, “I ought to become a bandit, like Svon says. Then we’d have a nice house with thick walls and doors, and enough to eat.”

“There are outlaws in this forest, Able,” Ravd told me. “They call themselves the Free Companies. Do they have those things?”

“I suppose they do, sir.”

“Have you seen them for yourself?”

I shook my head.

“When we met, Svon feared you would lead us into an ambush. Do you think the Free Companies might ambush us in sober fact? With three to fight?”

“Two to fight,” I told him. “Svon would run.”

“I would not!”

“You’ll run from me before the owl hoots.” I spat into the fire. “From two lame cats and a girl you’d run like a rabbit.”

His hand went to his hilt. I knew I had to stop him before he drew. I jumped the fire and knocked him down. He let go of the hilt when he fell, and I drew his sword and threw it into the bushes. We fought on the ground the way you and I did sometimes, he trying to get at his dagger while I tried to stop him. We got too close to the fire and he broke loose. I thought he was going to draw it and stab me, but he jumped up and ran instead.

I tried to clean myself off a little and told Ravd, “You can have your scield back if you want it.”

“May.” He had never stirred. “May governs permissions, gifts, and things of that sort. You speak too well, Able, to make such an elementary mistake.”

I nodded. I had not figured him out, and I was not sure I ever would.

“Sit down, and keep my scield. When Svon returns, I’ll have him give you another for tomorrow.”

“I thought you’d be mad at me.”

Ravd shook his head. “Svon must become a knight soon. His family expects it and so does he. So do His Grace and I, for that matter. Thus, he will. Before he receives the accolade, he has a great deal to learn. I have been teaching him, to the best of my ability.”

“And me,” I told him. “About can and may and other things, too.”

“Thank you.”

For a while after that, we sat with our thoughts. Before long I said, “Could I become a knight?”

That was the only time I saw Ravd look surprised, and it was no more than his eyes opening a little wider. “We can’t take you with us, if that’s what you mean.”