The Knight

Chapter 52. To Pouk

“Missed!” somebody shouted.

“Hit!”

“Hit the center!”

That too was contradicted, and I opened my eyes.

Frowning, Beel had raised both hands for silence. “If Sir Able’s shot struck the iron boss of the target, his arrow will have rebounded, and there will be damage to the point. The iron may be scarred as well. Master Papounce? Will you investigate for us?”

Papounce was in the saddle already. At Beel’s nod he galloped away. Someone near me said, “If it hit the middle it would’ve bounced off and I’d have seen it.”

“The distance was only a hundred paces when my archers and I were shooting against each other,” Garvaon whispered. “His Lordship had it moved way back for you and me, but he wouldn’t hear of Papounce standing near it and signaling any more. Armor and a few steps away, and he’d have been safe enough.”

I did not think so, but I nodded out of politeness; I was watching Papounce, who had reined up at the target and dismounted, seemingly to look at its boss. While I watched him, he walked behind it, and seemed to look at the trunk of the tree from which the target hung. “Going to win that steel cap, Sir Able?” It was Crol, still carrying his trumpet.

I tried not to smile. “I doubt it. To tell the truth, I’ll be happy if I don’t disgrace myself.”

“The king had one like it made for King Gilling,” Crol explained. “Bigger than my washbasin. His Lordship liked it so much he had one made for himself.” Crol gestured toward the helmet on the pole. “That’s it up there. King Gilling’s is on one of the mules.”

“It will look good on you,” Garvaon told me, “but you’ll have to beat me first.”

Papounce had mounted again and was trotting back to the camp. Idnn caught my sleeve and pointed.

“Yes,” I said. “We’ll know soon, My Lady.”

She got up on tiptoe; I saw she wanted to whisper and bent so she could talk into my ear. “Something’s happened! He’s not galloping. He needs time to think.”

I stared, then bent again.

“Your cat told me, and he’s right! Trotting, with Father’s eyes on him? Something’s afoot!”

Papounce dismounted and drew Beel aside. For at least two minutes they conferred, and I (I had been trying to edge nearer) caught Beel’s incredulous, “Split the rock?”

Then he raised his hands for silence. “Sir Able has three.” There were murmurs and shouted questions, all of which he ignored. “Sir Garvaon has the next shot. Clear the way for him!”

It missed the target, falling to the right.

This time Beel spoke to Crol, who bawled, “Sir Garvaon has three!”

I had shot my best arrow first. I picked a good one from those I had left and nocked it, telling myself firmly that I did not need to hit the middle again. If I hit the target at all, that would be enough.

I shot, and Papounce was sent off exactly as he had been before, and there was another wait while he galloped to the target and looked it over. I unstrung my bow and made myself relax, trying to keep from catching the eye of anybody who might want to talk to me.

I got another three. That made my score six.

Garvaon shot again. His third arrow hit near his first.

I was starting to feel like I was cheating, and I did not like that. Instead of shooting at the target, I aimed for the top leaves of the scrubby little tree they had hung it on. I shot, and watched my arrow fly true to aim. It passed through the leaves and hit the cliff-face behind them. A few pebbles fell, then a few more.

All at once the cliff face gave way, collapsing with a grinding roar.

Gylf found me about a mile away from our camp, and woke me by licking my face. I sputtered and sat up, thinking for a minute that I saw the old woman from my dream, the one who had owned the cottage, behind him. It was very dark. “Why here?” Gylf demanded.

“Because it’s sheltered, and I hoped it wouldn’t be quite so cold.”

“It” was a crevice in the rocks.

“Hard here,” Gylf explained. “Tracking.”

“Hard sleeping, too. I’m p-pretty stiff.” The fact was that my teeth were chattering.

“Fires back there. Food.”

I said sure. “But I wouldn’t have gotten anything much to eat before. Everybody wanted to talk to me. I told Lord Beel I’d meet him in his pavilion later—”

“Give it to you?”

“The pretty helmet?” I stood up and stretched, and wrapped myself in my cloak, adding the blanket I had taken from camp. “I don’t know. Or care, either.”

“All asleep.” Gylf wagged his tail, and looked up at me hopefully.

“You want me to go back, don’t you? It’s nice of you to worry about me.”

Gylf nodded.

“But if I stay here ...”

“Me, too.”

“You’d keep me warm, anyhow. I wish I’d had you here earlier.”

He trotted ahead to show the way; and I followed more slowly, still cold and tired. I had hoped to find one of the caves the Angrborn called Mouseholes, and was mad at myself for having failed. Gylf would have found one for me, and I knew it. Or Uri and Baki probably could have, if I had called them and they had come. But that would have been Gylf finding it or them finding it. I had wanted to do it myself.

The moon had not yet risen, and the camp looked ghostly—Beel’s scarlet pavilion dead black, Garvaon’s and Crol’s canvas pavilions as pale as ghosts, the bodies of sleeping servants and muleteers like new graves, and the few tortured cedars like Osterlings come to eat the bodies.

A picketed mule brayed in the distance.

“I’m going to send you to Pouk,” I told Gylf. I had not decided until then. “Not right now, because you deserve food and a good rest before you leave. In the morning. I want you to find him and show yourself to him, so that he’ll know I’m nearby. Then you can come back here and tell me where he is and whether he’s all right.”

Gylf looked back and whined, and a sleepy sentry called, “Sir Able? Is that you, sir?”

When I finally got to my cot in Garvaon’s pavilion, I found the gold-trimmed helmet on it. After I had adjusted the straps inside, it fit like it had been made for me.