The Knight. Part 2

There was no town. No town at all.

"Right here," he waved his staff, "right there's where the street run. Houses on this side, back to the water. On that other, back to the fields. This right here was Uld's house, and across from it Baldig's." He took me by the hand. "Recollect Baldig?" I do not remember what I said, and he was not listening anyway. "Uld had six fingers, and so'd his daughter Skjena." Bold Berthold released my shoulder. "Pick up my stick for me, will you, stripling? I'll show where we met 'em." It was some distance away, through bushes and saplings. At last he stopped to point. "That was our house, yours and mine. Only it used to be Pa's. Recollect him?

Know you don't recollect her. Ma got took 'fore you was ever weaned. Mag, her name was. We'll sleep there tonight, sleep where the house stood, for the old times' sake." I had not the heart to tell him I was not really his brother.

"There!" He led me north another hundred yards or so. "Here's the spot where I first seen Schildstarr. I'd boys like you to shoot arrows and throw stones, but they run, all of 'em. Some shot or threw first, most just run soon as the Angrborn showed their faces."

He had stayed, and fought, and fallen. Conscious of that, I said, "I wouldn't have run."

He thrust his big, bearded face into mine. "You'd have run too!" 34."No."

"You'd have run," he repeated, and flourished his staff as if to strike me. I said, "I won't fight you. But if you try to hit me with that, I'm going to take it away from you and break it."

"You wouldn't have?" He was trying not to smile.

Having convinced myself, I shook my head. "Not if they had been as tall as that tree."

He lowered his staff and leaned on it. "Wasn't. Up to that first big limb, maybe. How you know you wouldn't run?"

"You didn't," I said. "Aren't we the same?"

Long before sundown we had cleared a s.p.a.ce to sleep in where the old house had stood, and built a new fire on the old hearth. Bold Berthold talked for hours about the family and about Griffinsford. I listened, mostly out of politeness at first; as the shadows lengthened, I became interested in spite of myself. There had been no school, no doctor, and no police. At long intervals, travelers had crossed the Griffin here, wading through cold mountain water that scarcely reached their knees. When the villagers were lucky, they had sold them food and lodging; when they had been unlucky, they had to fight them to protect their homes and herds.

If the Angrborn had been giants, the Osterlings who sometimes came in summer had been devils, gorging on human flesh to restore the humanity they had lost. The Aelf had come like fog in all seasons, and had vanished like smoke. "Mossmen and Salamanders, mostly," Bold Berthold confided. "Or else little Bodachan. They'd help sometimes. Find lost stock and beg blood for it." He bared his arm. "I'd stick a thorn in and give a drop or two. They ain't but mud, that kind." I nodded to show I understood, although I did not.

"You was here with me then, only you didn't talk so high. Pa raised me, and I raised you. You got to feeling like you was in the way, I'd say, 'cause of me runnin' a fter Gerda. Prettiest girl ever seen, and we had it all planned out." I did not have to ask what happened.

"You went off, and I thought you'd be back in a year or two when we got settled. Only you never come 'til now. How'd you like it where you was?" I tried to recall, but all that I could think of was that the best times in my life had come when I had been able to get out under the sky, out on a boat or among trees.

"Nothing to say?"

"Yes." I showed him the arrowheads I had saved. "Since we'll have a few more hours of daylight, I'd like to fit new shafts to them." 35."Old ones broke?"

I nodded. "When the stag fell. I was thinking that if I could find more wood of the same kind as my bow, my new shafts wouldn't break."

"You'd cut one, for a couple arrows?"

I shook my head. "I'd cut a limb or two, that's all. And if I could find one of last year's fruits, I'd plant the seeds."

Laboriously he climbed to his feet. "Show you one, and it ain't gone." He led me into the brush, and kneeling felt through the gra.s.s until he discovered a small stump. "Spiny orange," he said. "You planted it 'fore you went away. It was on my land, and I wouldn't let n.o.body cut it. Only somebody done, when I wasn't loo king." I said nothing.

"Thought it might have put up shoots." He rose again with the help of his staff.

"They do, sometimes."

I knelt, took one of the two remaining seeds from my pouch, and planted it near where the earlier stump had grown. When I rose again, his face was streaked with tears. Once more he led me away, then stopped to wave his staff at the wilderness of saplings and bushes that stretched before us. "Here was my barley field. See the big tree way in back? Come on."

Halfway there he pointed out a speck of s.h.i.+ning green. "There it is. Spiny orange don't drop its leaves like most do. Green all winter, like a pine." Together we went to it, and it was a fine young tree about twenty-five feet high. I hugged him.

It seems to me that I should say more about the spiny orange here, but the truth is that I know little. Many of the trees we have in America are found in Mythgar thr too--oaks and pines and maples and so on. But the spiny orange is the only tree I know that grows in Aelfrice too. The sky of Aelfrice is not really strange until you look closely at it and see the people in it, and (sometimes) hear their voices on the wind. Time moves very slowly here, but we are not conscious of it. Only the trees and the people are strange at first sight. I think the spiny orange belongs here, not in Mythgarthr and not in America.

CHAPTER 4.

SIR RAVD.

L ad!" the knight called from the back of his tall gray. And again, "Come here, lad. We would speak to you."

His squire added, "We'll do you no hurt."

I approached warily; if I had learned one thing in my time in those woods with Bold Berthold, it was to be chary of strangers. Besides, I recalled the knight of the dragon, who had vanished before my eyes.

"You know the forest hereabout, lad?"

I nodded, giving more attention to his horse and arms than to what he said.

"We need a guide--a guide for the rest of this day and perhaps for tomorrow as well." The knight was smiling. "For your help we're prepared to pay a scield each day." When I said nothing, he added, "Show him the coin, Svon." 37.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."

"n.o.bly 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 i nto 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 s.h.i.+eld on the other. The s.h.i.+eld 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, with-Gene Wolfe - The Knight 38 out 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 39.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 n.o.body reads, and records n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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 gra.s.s. "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?" 40."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."

I shook my head. "I have to stay and take care of Bold Berthold. But sometime? If I stay here?"

"You're very nearly a knight now, I believe. What makes a knight, Able? I'd like your ideas on the matter."

He reminded me of Ms. Sparreo, and I grinned. "And set them right." 41.Ravd smiled back. "If they need to be set right, yes. So tell me, how is a knight different from any other man?"

"Mail like yours."