The Knight

Chapter 35. There Was Ogres

Pouk’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 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 impassioned 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 Garsecg. Now suppose instead of a dagger that mail was hit 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 shields. The shield’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 shields used in battle are a lot lighter than our practice shields, and the lance-point will go through sometimes. Even if it doesn’t, the knight whose shield 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 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 basswood jacks, which she set on the table. “Fresh bread. Nearly fresh, anyhow. I baked yesterday.” She took a sausage from the pocket of her apron and laid it on a trencher, where it fell in thick slabs under the assault 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.”

“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 unwontedly 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 murdered. 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 pass 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.”

“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.”

As soon as I heard that, I wanted to talk to the son, but he was out seeing to something or other; it stuck in my mind, though.