The Knight. Part 25

I said, "I'm sure you did, Your Grace. That was your time, like you just said. Now it's my turn, and I'd like to try it."

For a second, Marder frowned at me. The frown faded and he roared with laughter. "From a raw stripling with a broken head!" He nudged Agr. "Want to send those shoulders against the Angrborn? He'd go, I swear!"

Agr nodded gloomily "He would, Your Grace, if you'd give him a horse." I said, "On foot, Your Grace, if you will not."

"Now hear my judgment." Marder had stopped laughing. This was dead serious.

"For a fortnight you are to remain here at Sheerwall to mend. When that time is done, Master Agr will furnish you with whatever you may require. Go to some remote bridge, ford, or mountain pa.s.s as you have suggested, and take your stand. Remain at your post until winter--until there is ice in the harbor. When winter has set in, return to tell us how you fared."

Agr said, "Suppose that he loses his first combat, Your Grace. Everything I give him will be lost as well."

"Look at his smile, Agr."

Agr did, although he did not like it much.

"He will be risking his life. We can risk a few horses, some lances, and a hauberk."

Pouk came that afternoon, finding me in the Practice Yard watching mock fights with 240.

quarterstaffs. He had brought clean clothes. "Tried to fetch along everythin', sir, only landlord won't let me 'til he's paid. Couple o' nights, an' tuck."

"We'll see about that this afternoon," I told him. "It's just out the gate and down the hill."

"Bit farther nor that, sir."

"Not much. Before we go, though, I want to get in a bit of jousting practice. Watch, and tell me if it seems to you that I'm doing anything wrong." He did; and that afternoon, as we were riding back to Forcetti on borrowed horses, he said, "That's what knights do, ain't it? The way you an' Sir What's-his-name was riding at each other."

"Sir Woddet." I nodded. "Yes, it is."

"Well, it looks grand, sir, but I don't see the sense of any of it." I started to explain, but he interrupted at once. "Say I was on foot. When I seen you comin' with your long spear--"

"It's a lance," I told him.

"An' your big horse, I'd jump out o' th' way, wouldn't I? I don't like horses nohow." He looked down at his own with marked disfavor. "An' if I was on a good 'un myself, I'd ride around behind."

"I'm not yet skilled with the lance," I told him, "but a knight who is will put the point through a swinging ring no bigger than the palm of your hand while riding at full gallop. So if you jump, you'd better jump far."

Pouk looked dubious.

"As for circling around behind, a well-mounted knight would catch you in the side ten times out of ten. You'd have no chance to defend yourself before you were spitted on his lance. That is, if you and he were alone."

"I suppose."

"In battle, there would be a long line of knights riding at you, with another line in back of theirs, if it were King Arnthor's army. Light horse made up of squires and men-at-arms would guard their flanks, and there would be footmen and archers to guard the wagon-fort. I know all this, you see, because I asked Master Thope the same questions. Knights can be beaten, of course, particularly in the mountains where the enemy can get above them to throw spears and roll down logs. But it's never easy." Pouk nodded slowly. "Aye, sir. I hope you never are, sir."

"So do I. But I know that there are no safe battles. I hope for honor from Duke Marder, Pouk. Honor and good horses and much more. A manor of my own. Although I can never come to Queen Disiri as an equal, I'd like to narrow the distance between us. Lord Olof told me that queens have wed knights more than once. It's not u n-Gene Wolfe - The Knight 241 heard-of."

Pouk shook his head. "I hope you don't get yourself killed, sir. That's all."

"Thank you," I said, and for a while we rode through the hot spring suns.h.i.+ne in s ilence. My conscience was bothering me, however, and eventually it made me speak.

"Remember what I said about the footmen back at the wagon-fort, Pouk? If you stay with me, you'll be one of them. You'll have an ax, a coat of boiled leather, and a steel cap, I hope. More, if I can afford it."

"No worse 'n fightin' them Osterlin's at sea, sir." We were topping a rise just then; shading my eyes with my hand I saw a farmhouse in the valley below, a prosperous-looking place I remembered pa.s.sing on my way to Sheerwall. I said, "There's a farm with a good well down there, Pouk. We can water the horses, and get a drink ourselves."

242.

CHAPTER 35.

THERE WAS OGRES.

P ouk's mind was still on the imaginary battle. "If I'm goin' to be back at th' wagons, how'm I s'pposed to look out for you? S'ppose you're th' 'un gets stuck on somebody's lance, sir? How'm I goin' to get to you an' find you in all that?"

"That will be my squire's task, if I have one."

"An' I still don't think it makes no sense for knights to come at each other the way you do, you an' Sir--Sir . . ."

"Woddet."

"Aye. You never did hurt th' other 'un a-tall, just you knocked him off his horse." I corrected the record. "He knocked me off mine, Pouk. Three times."

"Only twice 'twas, sir. That other time--"

"Which makes three. There are half a dozen holes in your argument, Pouk, and I doubt that it's worth our while to plug them all."

"If you say so, sir."

"Besides, we'll be at the farm before I could do it. But I ought to tell you that I've never been in a real battle in which knights fought on horseback. What I've said about 243.

them, and what I'm about to say about knights fighting, I learned from Sir Ravd, Master Thope, and Sir Woddet. From Master Thope particularly. He's a regular goldmine of information, and I could listen for hours."

"Looks a pretty decent place, sir," Pouk said, regarding the farmhouse. Its mud-and-wattle walls were whitewashed, and its thatch looked new.

"They're doing better than a lot of people I've seen." I paused, recalling Master Thope's impa.s.sioned growl. "Your complaint is that Sir Woddet and I didn't actually hurt each other much, much less kill each other. He knocked me off my horse, and once I got lucky and knocked him off his."

"Aye!" The syllable bore a world of satisfaction.

"The first thing, the main thing you've got to get, is that Sir Woddet and I weren't trying to kill each other, or even trying to hurt each other. In a battle the knights are out to kill one another."

Pouk nodded reluctantly.

"We used practice lances made of wood not strong enough for real ones. You don't want a practice lance to be strong. Somebody might get hurt or killed. A real war lance is as strong as it can be made. It has a sharp steel head, too. Ours were blunt. By hitting me hard with a stout dagger, one of the Osterlings was able to stab through my mail, remember? His stab opened a couple of rings, and that was enough."

"Aye. We was a-feared you'd die, sir."

"I just about did, and maybe I would have eventually if it hadn't been for Ga.r.s.ecg. Now suppose instead of a dagger that mail was. .h.i.t by a heavy war lance, with the weight of a knight and a galloping horse behind it."

Pouk scratched his head. "Go through it like it was cheese, sir."

"You've got it. What's more, Sir Woddet and I aimed at each other's s.h.i.+elds. The s.h.i.+eld's what's generally hit with a lance in a real battle."

"An' what good does that do? It's just like what I was sayin', sir."

"Pretty often, none. But the s.h.i.+elds used in battle are a lot lighter than our prac tice s.h.i.+elds, and the lance-point will go through sometimes. Even if it doesn't, the knight whose s.h.i.+eld got hit may get knocked out of his saddle the same way I was. Remember what I said about a second line of knights behind the first? Now pretend you're a knight who's been knocked off his horse, pretty well stunned by the fall." We had reached the house. Pouk said, "If it's all th' same to you, sir, I'd just as soon not." He dismounted, by that act alarming several ducks and a goose. "Maybe I ought to run in front, sir, an' tell 'em who you are."

A middle-aged farmwife had appeared in the doorway. I called, "We're harmless travelers looking for water for our horses and ourselves. Let us have that, and we won't 244.

ask for anything else."

She did not answer, and I added, "If you'd rather leave us thirsty, say so and we'll go."

Pouk trotted toward her, leading his horse. "This here's Sir Able, the bravest knight Duke Marder's got."

She nodded, and seemed to weigh me with her eyes. "You look brave enough. 'N strong."

"I'm thirsty, too. I've been jousting, and riding without a hat. May we have some water?"

She reached a decision. "We've cider, if you want it. It'll be healthier. Maybe a couple hard-boiled eggs 'n some bread 'n sausage?"

I had not known I was hungry, but when she said that I found out quick. I said, "We can pay you, ma'am, and we'll be glad to. We're going into Forcetti to pay an innkeeper what we owe him, and we can pay you as well."

"No charge. You come in."

She ushered us into her kitchen, a big sunny room with a stone floor and onions hanging in braided strings from the rafters. "Sit down. We get you knights up 'n down the road every day, almost, 'n that's good. The robbers don't bother us, only the tax man. But most knights don't stop here. Or speak, neither, when we wish them good morrow."

"They're not as thirsty as we are, maybe."

"I'll fetch the cider right away. Keg's in the root cellar." She bustled out. "Hard cider, it might be." Pouk licked his lips.

I agreed, but I was thinking about the woman, and what she might want from us. She came back with three ba.s.swood jacks, which she set on the table. "Fresh bread. Nearly fresh, anyhow. I baked yesterday." She took a sausage from the pocket of her ap.r.o.n and laid it on a trencher, where it fell in thick slabs under the a.s.sault of a long knife. "Summer sausage. We smoke it three days, 'n after that it keeps if it don't get wet."

I thanked her and ate some sausage, which was very good.

"Sir Able? That's you? You seem like a down-to-earth person, for a knight." I interrupted my cider drinking to say I tried to be.

"You really the bravest knight the duke's got?"

"Aye!" Pouk exclaimed.

"I doubt it," I said, "but I don't really know. To tell you the truth, I don't believe there's a knight in Sheerwall Castle that would hesitate to cross swords with me. But I wouldn't hesitate to cross swords with them, either."

245.

"Scared of ghosts?"

I shrugged. "There's no man I'm afraid of, and it doesn't seem likely that a dead man would be worse than a live one."

"Not a man." She glanced at Pouk, who had drained his mug and was looking u nwontedly sober. "Little more of that?" He shook his head.

"If it's a woman's ghost," I said, "she may be after some property or something she thinks is coming to her. I talked to an old lady down south who knew a lot about ghosts, and she told me that women's ghosts generally mean the woman was mu rdered. More often than not, justice is all they want."

"Not a woman." The farmwife got up to fetch a loaf of bread.

"A child's ghost? That's sad."

"I wish 'twas." She sawed her bread with exaggerated care, I thought to keep her feelings under control.

"Are you talking about the Aelf? They're not ghosts."

"Guess you know how you knights got started?"

I admitted I did not, that I had never even wondered about it, and added that I would like to hear the story.

"No story. There was ogres all around here in the old time. Dragons, too. Monsters. These here giants that's in the ice country now. Lots of them. A man that killed one, he was a knight, only after a while they was all killed off, so it had to be other things."

"You still haven't told me what the ghost is."

"A ogre. Must have been one killed right here, 'cause it's been haunting my farm." Pouk looked around as if he expected to see it.

"You don't have to worry," the farmwife told him. "He don't come but at night." I said, "In that case we can't help you. We've got to go to Forcetti." I took another piece of her summer sausage, thinking she might pull it out of reach soon. "We can't stay in Forcetti tonight, though. Or here, either. I promised Master Agr he'd get his horses back tonight."

Her face fell.

"It will be late, I suppose, when we pa.s.s your house again. Dark, or just about. We could stop in for a moment, just to make sure everything was okay."

"Me 'n my sons would be pleased as pigeons, Sir Able. We'd give you a bite to eat then, 'n your horses, too."

I snapped my fingers. "That's right, the horses haven't been watered. See to them, please, Pouk."

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"Not good to give 'em too much, sir."

"That's when they're warm from galloping. They can't be hot now, they've been standing in the shade whisking flies while we ate. Give them all they want."

"Aye aye, sir." He hurried out.

The farmwife said, "Me 'n my sons work this farm, Sir Able. They're strong boys, both of them, but they won't face the ghost. Duns did, 'n it almost killed him. He was bad for more'n a year."

I said I would not have thought just being scared could do that.

"Broke his arms, 'n just about tore one off."