The Knight

Chapter 62. After The Raiders

The mountains had dwindled to hills before I camped, high brown-and-yellow hills whose sand-colored stones were masked by dead grass. I had ridden—and walked while I led the limping stallion—until the sun was down, hoping for water and wood. The water hole I finally found held water nearly as thick as mud, but the stallion drank it thirstily.

I tied him to his own saddle, spread his saddle blanket on the ground, and laid another blanket over it. A fire would have been nice, but a fire might have caught the dry grass and burned half the world. That was how it seemed, anyway: a barren land that went on and on like the sea.

Besides, there was no wood.

After that, for what felt like hours, I lay shivering, wrapped in my cloak and the other blanket, looking up at the stars and hearing only the slow steps of the grazing stallion and the soft moaning of the wind.

It was late summer. Late summer and warm weather at Duke Marder’s lofty gray castle. Warm weather in the Bay of Forcetti. There would be no ice in that bay for months.

Sweltering late summer in the forest where I had lived with Bold Berthold. The bucks would have begun to grow antlers for the mating season; but those antlers would have a lot of growing to do still, weapons of gallant combat still sheathed in velvet. Knowing that summer lingered along the Griffin had brought me little comfort, and my mail even less. I was on the northern side of the Mountains of the Mice now, far north of the downs, and I believe at an elevation a good deal higher than that of the smiling southern lands.

Waves crashed against a cliff, and I leaped and sported in them, together with the maidens of the Sea Aelf, maidens who save for their eyes were as blue everywhere as the blue eyes of the loveliest maids of Mythgarthr, fair young women who sparkled and laughed as they leaped from the surging sea into the storm that lit and shook the heavens.

That lit and shook Mythgarthr. Why had I not thought of that? I rolled over, seeking to close blanket and cloak more tightly about me.

Garsecg and Garvaon waited on the cliff, Garvaon with drawn sword and Garsecg a dragon of steel-blue fire. The Kelpies raised graceful arms and lovely faces in adoration, shrieking prayers to Setr; they cheered as a gout of scarlet flame forced Garvaon over the edge.

He fell, striking rock after rock after rock. His helmet was lost, his sword rattled down the rocks with him, and his bones broke until a shapeless mass of armor and bleeding flesh tumbled into the sea.

I woke shuddering. My sea was this rolling expanse of dust-dry grass, lit by a fading moon lost among racing cloud. The cliff from which Garvaon had fallen was the Northern Mountains now, mountains my stallion’s hooves had somehow transformed into southern mountains; and the Kelpies were nothing more than a shrieking wind.

Shivering worse than ever, I tried to sleep again.

The Armies of Winter and Old Night advanced across the sky, monstrous bodies lit from within by lightnings. A flying castle, a thing no larger than a toy, barred their way—and barred their way alone. From its walls a thousand voices pleaded: Able! Able! Able ...

But I slept upon the downs while these greater Angrborn brandished spears of chaos and bellowed hate.

I woke, and found my face wet with rain. Thunder shook the sky, and white fire tore the night. A wave of driving rain wet me like a wave of the sea, and another, and another.

There was no place to get away from the rain, no shelter anywhere. I tightened the studded chin-strap of my helmet and covered my head with the hood of my cloak, blessing its tightly woven wool.

I could not see. It might be night, it could be day—I had no way of knowing. The chain around my neck was held by a staple driven into a crevice in the wall. Once I had tried to pull it out, but I did not do that any more. Once I had shivered. I did not do that any more either.

Once I had hoped some friend would bring me a blanket or a bundle of rags. That the seeing woman who had been my wife once would bring me a crust or a cup of broth. Those things had not happened, and would never happen.

Once I had shivered in the wind, but I had disobeyed, and would shiver no more. I was sleepy now, and though the snow brushed my face and crept up around my feet, I was not uncomfortable. There was no more pain.

Something rough, warm, and wet scrubbed my cheek; I woke to see a hairy, familiar face as broad and as brown as my saddle peering into mine. I blinked—and Gylf licked my nose. “Time to get up. Look at the sun.” It had climbed halfway up a cloudy sky.

“Found him.” Gylf wagged his tail with vigor. “I can show you. Want to go?”

“Yes.” I threw off my blanket; I was dripping wet but only moderately chilled. “But I can’t, not now. I have to delay the Angrborn—and clean my armor and talk to you.”

“All right.” Gylf lay down. “Sore paws anyhow.”

“But first of all, I have to find my horse. He seems to have strayed during the night.” I got up and looked around, my hand shielding my eyes from the sun.

“Upwind. I smell him.”

After half a mile, the track of the dragged saddle was so plain that even I could follow it. Snarling and snapping, Gylf held the stallion until I could grab its tether.

Back at the water hole, I pulled off helmet and hauberk and got rags and a flask of oil from a saddlebag. “I didn’t have these when you and I were lost in the forest,” I told Gylf, “but I’ve learned since. Being a knight’s like being a sailor. You pay for the glory and freedom by oiling and scrubbing and patching and polishing. Or you don’t get to keep them.”

“Those were the days.” Gylf rolled in the wet grass, rose, and shook himself.

“You liked it on the ship?”

“In the woods. I liked that. Just you and me. Good smells. Hunting. Fires at night.”

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.”