Gene Wolfe - The Knight

I smiled. “It was kind of nice.”

“Bad place.” Gylf sneezed.

“The forest? I thought you liked it.” My mail, well oiled when I left Beefs company, had not yet begun to rust. I shook it, dislodging a shower, then dried it with a clean, soft rag, working corners of the rag between the close-packed steel rings wherever I suspected a hidden drop.

“Here,” Gylf explained.

I considered that. “Yes and no. I understand what you mean. It’s too bare to have much game, and there isn’t much water, though you couldn’t say that last night. Then too, there’s the Angrborn. This is their homeland, Jotunland, and they’re terrible enemies. But Lord Beel talked about leading hundreds of knights against them, and this would be wonderful country for it. Give Lord Beel or Duke Marder five hundred knights and two thousand archers, and you might get a battle people would sing about ’til the sky fell.”

Gylf grunted.

“Brave knights well mounted, with long, strong lances. Archers with long bows and a hundred arrows apiece. This is lovely country for charging horses, and lovely country for bowmen, too.” Just thinking of it made me want to be there. “A year from that day, the Angrborn might be as rare as ogres are now. A hundred years from that day, half the people in Forcetti would think they were just stories.”

Gylf brought me back to solid ground. “You’re hunting them. You said so.”

“Yes, I am. They jumped Lord Beel’s company while Sir Garvaon and I were gone, and Lord Beel and his daughter, too. We killed four, but the rest got away with the gifts we were bringing their king.”

“Get ’em anyhow,” Gylf remarked.

“Perhaps he may, or some of them. But it won’t be the same as Lord Beel giving them on behalf of King Arnthor. So we’re looking for those Angrborn. I rode on ahead, and the rest are following as quick as they can, although that isn’t very quick since a lot are on foot now.”

“I could find ’em. Want me to?”

“You have sore paws.”

Gylf licked a front paw as if testing it. “Not bad.”

“I want you to stay with me,” I decided. “You were gone a long time looking for Pouk, and I didn’t like it. Besides, you could use a few good meals.”

“Sure!” Gylf wagged his tail.

“I’ve got some dried meat here.” I took it from his saddlebag and gave Gylf a piece. “It’s kind of salty. Can you drink the water in that hole? It’s not so bad now, after the rain.”

Busy chewing, Gylf nodded vigorously.

“You’re probably wondering what happened to Mani.”

Gylf shook his head.

“He’s back with Lady Idnn.”

Gylf swallowed. “Bad cat! Bad!”

“Not really. We talked it over. He wouldn’t have been much use while I was out giant hunting, but he can keep an eye on things in Lord Beel’s company for me. It might not be necessary, and I hope it isn’t. But it’s always better to be safe when you can.”

A cloud veiled the sun, and Gylf muttered, “Aelf.”

“You mean Uri and Baki?”

Starting on his second strip of dried meat, Gylf nodded again.

“They’re out looking for the Angrborn who robbed us.”

“Nope.”

“You mean they found you and freed you. I had them do that first. Now they’re looking for those Angrborn.”

“Smell ’em,” Gylf muttered.

There were giggles behind me, and I turned.

“Here we are,” Uri announced.

Baki said, “If we had been Angrborn, we could have stepped on you.”

“You Aelf can sneak up on anybody”

Baki shook her head. “Only on you stupid ones.”

Uri added, “The rest always know when we are around.”

I asked whether the Angrborn knew.

“No, Lord.”

The sun, which had slipped behind a cloud, showed its face again for a few seconds, rendering Baki (as well as Uri) transparent as she said, “They are stupid, too.”

“In that case you must’ve found them.”

“We did. But, Lord ...”

“What is it?”

“They are traveling fast. They can walk very fast, and they keep the mules trotting most of the time.”

Baki said, “These hills level out up north, and there is the plain of Jotunland after that.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

“That is where their king’s castle is. It is a very big building they call Utgard. The town is called Utgard, too.” I nodded again.

“We have been in there,” Uri said somberly. “It is very, very big. Did you think the Tower of Glas was big?”

“Yes. Huge.”

“You should see this. This is no joke, Lord, what you are doing.”

Baki said, “It is a terrible place, and we want you to stop.”

“Because you think I’ll be killed?”

Both nodded.

“Then I’ll be killed.”

Gylf growled deep in his throat.

“Lord, this is foolish. You—”

I raised my hand, and finding the rag still in it began to clean my hauberk again. “What’s foolish is spending your whole life being scared of death.”

“You believe that because some knight told you.”

“Sir Ravd, you mean. No, he didn’t tell me that. Only that a knight was to do what his honor demanded, and never count his foes. But you’re right just the same, a knight told me. That knight was me. People who fear death—Lord Beel does, I guess—live no longer than those who don’t, and live scared. I’d rather be the kind of knight I am—a knight who has nothing—than live like he does, with power and money that can never be enough.”

I got up and pulled on my hauberk. “You’re afraid the Angrborn will get to Utgard before I catch them. Isn’t that what you were going to tell me?”

Uri shook her head. “No, Lord. They are not far. You can overtake them today, if you wish.”

“But you would be alone,” Baki added, “and you would surely die. Those others, this Lord Beel you talk about and the other old gods who march with him, will never overtake the giants.”

“Not if Utgard were a thousand times farther than it is,” Uri confirmed.

“Then we’ve got to slow them down.” I rolled up my own blankets and picked up the saddle blanket. “I told Lord Beel I would, and I wish that was all I had to worry about.”

“Pouk,” Gylf explained to Uri and Baki.

“Exactly. We’ve got to set Pouk and Ulfa free. They’ll be slaves here ’til they die if these Angrborn kill me. You found them, Gylf?”

He nodded.

When I had saddled the stallion, I put on my helmet and buckled on Sword Breaker. “All right, where are they?”

“Utgard.”

Night had fallen before we reached the Angrborn’s camp; but it lay upon the bank of a wooded stream, and the fire they had built there—a fire of whole trees, some so thick through the trunk that a man with an ax would not have felled them after an hour’s hard work—lit all the countryside. Two mules turned on spits above that fire.

I had taken off helmet and hauberk and crept far into the firelight to see the Angrborn for myself. When I got back to the woods where Uri, Baki, and Gylf were waiting, I had already formed a plan.

“There are only seven.” I seated myself upon a log I could only just see. “We argued about their number, and everybody thought there were more.”

“In that case you will not need our help,” Uri declared. “A mere seven giants? Why, you and your dog will have put an end to them before breakfast.”

“Won’t you fight them?”

Uri shook her head.

“You and Baki fought the Mountain Men.”

“We distracted them, mostly, so that you could fight them.”

“We are really not very good at fighting on this level, Lord.” Baki would not meet my eyes.