Gene Wolfe - The Knight

As through the mouth of a dark cave, I beheld a forest of unearthly beauty. Disiri the Moss Queen stood in a glade where strange flowers blossomed, naked, more graceful than mortal women and more fair; her green hair rose twice the height of her head, nodding and flowing in the breeze that stirred the flowers. The younger Toug cowered before her, and I waited on my knees. With a slender silver sword, she touched both my shoulders.

“This is of the past,” I murmured to Beel. “Drop ashes into the wine.”

Beel regarded me with empty eyes; but Idnn brought a pinch of ash and dropped it into the bowl, where it seemed to dull the luster of the surface.

It became the gray coat of a thickset man who walked a long and muddy road across a plain veiled by cloud. Towers, squat and huge, rose in the distance. With his staff, this man struck down a woman no larger than a child. A ragged figure who had been driving before them horses no bigger than dogs threw himself over her, offering his back for hers. The man in the gray coat struck him contemptuously, then nudged both with the toe of his boot.

The toe of the black boot nudging Ulfa grew until it filled the bowl, which held only ashes floating on wine.

“Listen!” Garvaon rose.

I rose, too, and listened; but I heard nothing except the moaning of the wind—an empty moan, as if the thing that had come into it was gone.

Idnn and the servingman were helping Beel to his feet. In another moment Garvaon was in the saddle and clattering away.

“Our camp is being attacked,” I told Idnn; I got Mani off my shoulder and handed him to her. “I have to go. Stay here ’til I come for you.”

She shouted something as I rode away, but whether she had pleaded for me to stay, or wished me good luck, or begged me to keep Garvaon safe, I had no idea. I wondered about it, and other things, as I spurred the stallion down the steep mountain road.

For a minute it seemed trees were walking where the camp had been. No fires remained, and no pavilions. My stallion shied as something large and loud hit the ground beside it.

I got my bow and quiver from behind the saddle and slid off the stallion’s back. Somewhere in the darkness, another bow sang.

A second stone flew, hitting the white stallion. He screamed with pain and galloped away. Bracing the foot of my bow against my own, I leaned my weight on the supple wood and fitted the looped bowstring into the notches at the bowhead.

I pulled an arrow to my ear and let fly. A hundred paces off, the giant who had been stoning the white stallion bellowed, a noise like thunder.

I sent a second arrow after the first, and a third after the second, guessing at eyes I could not see.

The giant crumpled.

Dawn found two weary knights making their way back up to the pass. My white stallion was lame, and I walked more than I rode, giving my saddle (a big armored one that weighed as much as some men) to Uns to carry.

Garvaon could have outdistanced us easily, but he seemed too tired even to urge his horse forward. The scabbard that had held Battle Witch hung empty. Then Idnn waved to us from a point of rock not far below the snow line, and he drove his heels into his horse’s sides and disappeared around the next bend.

“Ah, love!” sighed an insolent voice not far from my ear; I looked around, surprised, and saw Uri on my stallion. “You’re back!”

She grinned at me. “No, that is my sister.”

“Aren’t you afraid Uns will see you up there? He’s not very far behind us.”

“I care not a whit if he does, and I will leave anyway as soon as you are out of this shadow.”

I stopped, biting my lip while I stroked the stallion’s muzzle. “I told Lord Beel about you and your sister. I had to.”

“She is not really my sister. We just say that.”

“Aren’t you angry?”

Uri grinned again. “It will make a lot more trouble for you and for him than for us. Did you explain that my sister and I are your slaves?”

I shook my head. “I called you my friends. I wanted him to come up here when he tried to see where Pouk was for me, and he promised to if I’d answer one question, a complete answer. I’ve forgotten the words he used, but that was what he meant.”

“And did you?”

“Yes. I kept my promise, and he kept his. He wanted to know why I couldn’t use my own powers to look for Pouk, and I had to explain that the only way I had to look for him was to send you two after him.” I paused. “I didn’t tell him your names.”

“That is well.” Uri smiled.

“I said I’d sent Gylf after Pouk and now you two were trying to find out what happened to Gylf.”

“Nothing complicated. A giant had caught him and had his slaves chain him up. We know all about chains, but we had to go back to Aelfrice for tools, and then come back up here, and then find him again because they had moved him. Where’s your cat, by the way? Have you lost that, too?”

“He’s with Lady Idnn.”

“He isn’t.” Mani jumped to the top of a boulder. “He was with Idnn when she waved, but that other knight came running, and I thought the least I could do was come down here to meet you. She didn’t want me around right then anyway.”

Uri said, “I am surprised you knew it.”

“Meaning I’m intruding on a tete-a-tete between you and my own dear much admired master, the renowned knight Sir Able of the High Heart. He has only to ask me to leave, and I’ll vanish in a flash of black far lovelier than your own dingy whatever-it-is color. Master?”

“You may remain if you choose.”

“A lawful decision.” It was Mani’s turn to grin. “The law being that the cat may do whatever he wants. You are his slave, young woman? I believe I overheard you say that.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m his cat, a much higher post.”

I motioned to Uri. “Uns is coming around that last bend, so unless you really don’t care if he sees you—”

She slipped off the stallion and stood under its head. “Baki is returning our tools, and I came to tell you your dog is free.”

“Is he coming back here?”

“No thanks for a hard task well done? I told her you’d be ungrateful.”

“I’m grateful. Very grateful. But I’d hoped to thank you both together, and we haven’t much time.”

“I’ll run down and see to it that Uns falls over me,” Mani suggested.

Uri sneered. “He cannot see two strides ahead. Just look at him.”

I did, and he was bent nearly to the ground. “I’ll put the saddle back on the horse when he gets here.”

“He is a true man, at least, just as I am a true Aelf.”

Mani made a cat-noise of contempt.

“But your dog is something more, Lord, and this cat is less natural than I.”

“The Bodachan gave Gylf to me,” I said, “he says they raised him from a puppy.”

“But was he theirs to give? They fear cold iron.”

A hundred steep strides down the War Way Uns called, “Master! Sar Able! Wait up!”

He had sounded out of breath, and it occurred to me that he might have been calling like that without my hearing him for an hour or more. “I’m waiting,” I yelled, “and we’ll put that saddle back on him when you get here.” I looked around for Uri.

“She skedaddled,” Mani told me, “though I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s hanging around to spy on us.”

“I wanted to ask her whether Gylf was coming back,” I explained. “As a matter of fact, I did ask her. She just didn’t answer.”

“I can,” Mani declared. “Ask me.”

“You can’t possibly—” I looked down the road again, but saw only Uns. “All right, I will. Is Gylf coming back here?”