The Wizard

Chapter 11. The Second Knight

“Nobody wid him!” Uns reported, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Not nobody a-tall ‘cept fer his horse, sar!”

“But he’s a knight?” the Knight of the Leopards asked. He glanced at me, expecting me to show more interest; but I was fitting a head that had been a dagger blade to the short lance I had shaped, and did not look up.

“Gold armor, sar!” Uns shaded his eyes to peer down the pass. “‘N a gold sun onna shield, sar!”

“This I must see,” the Knight of the Leopards muttered, and scaled the rocks as Uns had.

Heimir came to sit by me. “You don’t like me.”

I shook my head. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m too big.”

“How can a man be too big? He can be too big for this or that purpose, perhaps. Too big to get through a narrow door or too big to ride a donkey. But nobody can be too big or too small in general. It would be like saying a mountain is too small, or a tree too tall.”

“You like my new father better.” It was a challenge.

“I love Bold Berthold, and I love your mother because he does. Loving is different. Do you like me, Heimir?”

“Yes!”

“And I like you. Why should we quarrel?”

I offered my hand; Heimir took it, and though his was twice the size of mine he did not try to crush it.

“I’ll fight him for you,” Heimir said.

“You can’t.”

“Yes, I can. I’m not a good talker.” Heimir nodded his own affirmation. “Hela says so. But I’m a good fighter.”

“He’s alone, Heimir. There may come a time when I’ll need you to fight for me, but this isn’t it. This is my time, the time I’ve waited for.”

Heimir was silent; then, as if uncertain of what to say, he muttered, “I’ll get your horse.”

“Cloud is getting herself,” I told him.

A long bowshot above us, Uns knelt and caught the hand of the Knight of the Leopards, helping him up. Panting, the Knight of the Leopards thanked him.

“Glad ta, sar.” Uns pointed. “Thar he be, sar. Not trottin’ like wen I first seen him.”

“He doesn’t want to tire his charger,” the Knight of the Leopards murmured. “It may mean that he knows Sir Able’s here, or at least that he knows someone’s here. But what’s a lone knight doing riding into...?” The words trailed away.

“How’d he know, sar?” Uns peered as if the answer were on the pennant fluttering at the end of the newcomer’s lance.

“We see him, surely he sees us. He’s wearing his helm.”

“Yessar. Dem do make hit hard ta see, I be bound.”

“I didn’t mean that. Did you see him put it on, Uns?”

Uns sucked his teeth. “Don’t hit go da regular way?”

“I’m sure it does.” The Knight of the Leopards looked thoughtful. “Have you seen his face at all?”

Uns shook his head. “Had hit on first he come, sar.”

“Sir Able has a helm.”

“Yessar, he do, sar.” Uns was more puzzled still.

“You must have handled it, cleaning it or taking it when you unsaddled his horse. Was it heavy?”

“Oh, yessar. ‘Twas dat heavy I like ta dropped hit.”

The Knight of the Leopards nodded. “So is mine. That’s why we don’t wear them constantly. When danger’s constant, we wear the little helm—the helmet, as it’s called. It’s generally an iron cap with a cape of mail to defend the neck, and we wear it because it’s much lighter and still gives a good measure of protection. The helm, weighing three or four times as much, is put on just before battle, and only then. You say this knight’s worn his since he came in view?”

“Yessar. I’se dead sure a’ dat, sar.”

“Because he doesn’t want us to see his face? It’s the only reason I can think of, but who could he be? And why’s he trying to hide it?”

“Wal, sar, dat’s sumpin else p’cular ‘bout him, ain’t hit? ‘Sides bein’ alone like he is.”

“He’s not alone. Look down there, just coming into view. Isn’t that man leading another horse?”

Uns studied him. “Got a spear, ta, I’ll be bound, sar. Ain’t he one a’ dem squires? Like ta ya Valt? Dere’s more behind, ta, mebbe.”

“This is going to be interesting,” the Knight of the Leopards muttered; and more swiftly than he should have, began the climb back down.

“Know ye!” his herald proclaimed, “that this pass is held by two right doughty knights. They are my master, Sir Leort of Sandhill, and Sir Able of the High Heart.” He stood in the middle of the War Way with his clarion positioned to display the seven leopards of its pennon; and if the Knight of the Golden Sun or his great fallow horse impressed him, there was nothing to show it.

That knight leaned forward in his war saddle. “Am I to choose the one I engage?” His golden helm rendered his voice hollow and almost sepulchral.

“That is your right, Sir—?”

“I choose Sir Able,” the Knight of the Sun declared, and wheeled his mount to make ready.

I was in the saddle before the Knight of the Sun reached the point from which he would charge. The Knight of the Leopards caught Cloud’s bridle. “Do you know who he is?”

“No. Do you?”

The Knight of the Leopards shook his head. “It might be well to refuse until he names himself.”

“What if he refused, and rode forward?”

“We’d engage him together.”

“Winning much honor.” I shook my head, and spoke to the herald. “He waits your signal. So do I.”

The silver notes of the clarion sounded. I couched my new lance and readied my shield, things I had done in Skai a thousand times. In the moment—the empty split second before the head of my opponent’s lance struck my shield—I wondered whether the Valfather watched. Certainly he would know of this before an hour passed.

My lance struck the golden sun, and the shock seemed an explosion. Cloud staggered under the impact, and the knight to whom that shield belonged fell horse and all.

I turned Cloud, reined up, and removed my helm.

The herald was bending over the Knight of the Sun. “Yield you, sir knight?”

“No.” He struggled to free his leg from the weight of his charger. “I claim gentle right. Let me rise and rearm.”

“It will be accorded you,” the herald said. The fallen charger regained its feet and limped away.

Its owner adjusted his helm. That done, he rose—a man of great size—and appeared to search the ground for the lance he had dropped; the herald motioned to Hela, near whom it lay; she picked it up like a straw and returned it to the Knight of the Sun.

He bowed. “Fair maid, thank you. It was kindly done.”

Hela colored but said nothing.

His charger came at his whistle; he mounted, vaulting into the saddle with the help of his lance.

I had returned to the point from which I had charged. “I myself rode a lame horse to battle once,” I called, “but having no other I had no choice.”

“Nor have I any,” the Knight of the Sun told me.

“Your squire will be here soon.” I pointed with my lance. “It appears he’s leading a second charger.”

“He has a second mount for me, as you say.” The hollow voice from the golden helm was without inflection. “I have no choice but to ride this one.”

The Knight of the Leopards joined us. “You’ve engaged Sir Able. If you will not yield, you must engage me.”

“I have engaged Sir Able,” the Knight of the Sun said. “When he yields, I will engage you if you wish it.”

Catching his bridle, the herald drew the Knight of the Leopards aside. After a moment he shrugged and nodded.

I watched the herald while readying lance and shield. The fallow charger would be slower; its rider might be slower, too. If my lance found his chest, he would die.

The notes of the clarion echoed from the rocks, and Cloud was off like the wind.

We met as a thunderbolt meets a tower. The golden lance shattered on my shield. The point of my lance passed over the right shoulder of the Knight of the Golden Sun, and its shaft dashed him from the saddle.

With Hela’s help, he rose, nearly as tall as she.

“Yield you?” The herald posed the formal question.

“Not I.” He whistled again for his charger.

The herald glanced at me. I nodded and made a slight gesture, and the herald said, “You are accorded gentle right. Sir Able will wait until your squire arrives with a fresh mount and another lance.”

“I thank Sir Able,” the Knight of the Sun replied. “He is a true and a gentle knight, one whose courage and chivalry are not in question. My squire will not come. I will meet Sir Able’s lance with my sword.”

The herald looked at me again, and I motioned to him. In half a minute more, the herald was mounted and galloping south along the War Way.

“I have ordered my squire to come no nearer,” the Knight of the Sun said.

“Yet he will come,” I said, “with a sound mount for you, and a lance.”

The Knight of the Leopards joined me, with Valt and Uns scarcely a step behind. “You understand this,” the Knight of the Leopards whispered, “and I would understand it too.”

“If I understood it, I might tell you. I understand only a little more than you do.”

“His squire will come at your word?”

I nodded.

“Might it not have been wiser to have my herald fetch horse and lance?”

“He’ll come,” I said.

Uns looked at Valt, and Valt at Uns; but neither spoke.

The Knight of the Leopards persevered. “You know this knight. So much is clear from his own words.”

“I do, though he didn’t have this much gold the last time I saw him.”

At length the Knight of the Leopards said, “Does he fear you’d slay him if you knew him?”

I shook my head and answered no more questions.

Excited, Uns scrambled to the top of a boulder and stood, bent still but as straight as he could manage. “Dey’s comin’, sar! Him ‘n him ‘n more. Oh, ain’t hit da sight!”

Gerda tugged at my surcoat. “You ain’t off my Hela for what she done, are you, sir? She don’t mean no hurt.”

I smiled. “He’s a very big man, isn’t he?”

Whether it was my smile or my words that reassured Gerda, I cannot say; but she smiled in return.

It was indeed a sight, exactly as Uns had said. Two heralds rode in front, each with his silver clarion, the left with a blazing sun on his blue tabard, and the right with the leopards of Sandhill on his. After them, the squire of the Knight of the Sun, a clear-eyed youth with flowing hair and a jerkin of black leather spangled with gleaming gold studs; he carried two golden lances, from each of which floated a blue pennon blazoned with the golden sun.

Behind him, a dozen men-at-arms rode single file, grim-looking men in gambesons of quilted leather and steel arming caps, some with bow and sword and some with lance, shield, and sword. Liveried body servants rode behind them, and behind the body servants, muleteers leading laden sumpters.

I watched as the Knight of the Golden Sun spoke with his squire, accepted a new lance, dismounted, and mounted the unwearied charger his squire had led. Then (as I had hoped) he removed his helm. “You know me.” He said it loud enough for me to hear, though we were separated by a half bowshot.

“Greetings, Sir Woddet!” I called. When Woddet did not reply, I added, “It’s good to see you again, and Squire Yond, and good of you to come so far to try me.”

“I have not come to try you,” Woddet answered, “but to prevail.” He resumed his helm.

Our mounts met with a crash that shook the earth; both fell. My helm was lost, and I was pinned by the weight of Cloud’s side. Woddet had been thrown from the saddle, and was first upon his feet, sword in hand. “Yield!” he cried. He stood over me with sword upraised.

“Now I claim gentle right in my turn,” I said. “I’ve been downed. I claim the right to rise and rearm.”

“Refused! Yield or die!”

As Woddet spoke, Cloud sprang up. Her flailing forefeet knocked him flat and would have killed him.

I rose and offered Woddet my hand. “You’d claim gentle right again, I know. And I’d accord it. Hela, give him back his sword, if you will.”

Woddet accepted my hand. “On my honor, I’ve no wish to kill you, but you must yield—lance, horse, and sword.”

Hela had dropped to one knee. Kneeling so, her head was below Woddet’s own. She held out his sword.

Woddet grasped the hilt. “I beg it,” he said. His voice was a whisper. “Yond and I saved you when they would’ve killed you, and I was your friend when you had no other. Yield to me now.”

“I cannot,” I said. “I have sworn to hold this pass ‘til there’s ice in the Bay of Forcetti. I will hold it.”

“Sir Able...”

I shook my head and stepped back.

“Listen to me.” There was despair in the voice from the gold helm. “Nothing I’ve ever done was harder than refusing gentle right to you. I pray that if I fall again you’ll kill me.”

“Not even those who see the face of the Most High God grant all prayers,” I told him.

I drew Eterne, and eight phantom knights stood around me, four to my right and four to my left; the wind carried the thunder of hooves and the snapping of flags.

Woddet removed his helm and cast it aside. “You told Agr you’d been knighted by the Aelfqueen. I believe it now. Will these knights engage me too?”

“No,” I told him, “but like Sir Leort and his men they will stand by to see that our fight is fair.”

We met sword to shield and shield to sword; the first stroke from Eterne split the blue shield, the next struck the sword from Woddet’s hand, and at the third he fell. Hela came to stand over him with her cudgel poised and death in her eyes. I wiped Eterne with a rag Uns brought before I sheathed her.

“He won’t die,” said the Knight of the Leopards when the moon was high and we sat side by side before the fire.

“He may,” I said; and Gylf, who knew me better than I knew myself, groaned and laid his head in my lap.

“That was a grievous cut you made,” the Knight of the Leopards continued, “and he’s lost a lot of blood. But if the loss were going to kill him, he’d be dead already. Then the giantess would kill us both, or try.”

I smiled at that.

It surprised the Knight of the Leopards, and he said, “Would you fight her? What honor in fighting a woman, even a woman as big as she?”

“Her mother’s human,” I told him.

“The old woman? I know it.”

“The Angrborn are not loved. They hold no spirits.”

The Knight of the Leopards shrugged. “Do we? Yes, I suppose we do. I saw them.”

“When I drew Eterne?”

“When I did. I try not to think about it.”

Some time passed, during which we listened to the wind whistle among the rocks. At last I said, “I may not heal Sir Woddet, but I may implore those who still dwell in Skai to heal him. Will you help me build an altar?”

We labored far into the night, piling stone on stone. Uns, Hela, two servingmen belonging to the Knight of the Leopards, Yond, and some of Woddet’s men-at-arms helped. Heimir, awakened by his sister, went into the mountains, broke stunted pines, and brought the wood.

We sang then, a song of praise for the Valfather, and another for the Lady (whose name may be sung, although it may not be spoken); and when the last song was done, I cut the throat of the lame charger that had been Woddet’s, hewed the head from the neck, and hewed the body to pieces while the shades of a score of fell knights watched sorrowing. We fed the whole to the flames.

When that was done the rest slept; but I sat with Woddet to see if he would be healed, and heard the gasps of one near death, Hela’s sobs, and the whistling of the winter wind.

Then I slept, the first real sleep since I had returned from Skai, and in a dream it seemed I was in Skai still, and the Lady smiled upon me.

Then that I was on Alvit’s steed, charging up a mountain of cloud; I felt Alvit’s lips on mine, and learned that death is both bitter and sweet.

Then that I was on the griffin’s back and springing from it. My fingers slipped, and I fell into the sea.

Garsecg swam with me, and Setr was in Garsecg’s mouth. I knew the battle was coming, and knew Setr knew it too; but this was not the time to think on battles; we gloried in the waves, the scour of the tides, and the strength of the sea.

I was a boy in a garden that stretched very far, searching for a girl who had hidden, and I searched trees and grottoes, looked behind bushes and in the waters of a hundred fountains. At last I turned and saw her behind me, and she was small and green and sweet, with eyes of laughing fire.

I woke at her kiss, and saw Woddet sitting beside me. “You’re better,” I said.

“I’m not the man I was.” Woddet grinned. “But I think I will be in a month or so.”

I sat up (for I had seen that the sun was high) and rubbed my eyes, saying that I had slept long and had many dreams. As I spoke, I heard a shout, and Uns came running to me, and Yond, Valt, Heimir, Hela, the Knight of the Leopards, and many others until at last Gerda and Berthold came, he with a hand on her arm, and there was a great babble of talk.

“What’s this?” I said. “What news is there? Why didn’t you wake me?”

Berthold rumbled, “I wouldn’t allow it.”

Gerda seconded him. “Let him sleep, I said.”

“Your friend said the same,” Berthold continued, “the other knight.”

“Sir Leort?”

“Me,” Woddet told me; and Uns, “Sar Woddet.” Gerda said, “You’ve slept three days,” and I goggled at her.

There was a lot of talk after that; I slipped out of the center of it, went to the stream, and bathed in icy water.

When I left it, blue and shivering, I found Gylf waiting on the bank. “Scared,” Gylf said, and kissed my hand as dogs kiss, and that was best of all.

“I’ve failed,” Woddet told me after the two of us rode out, saying we were going to hunt. “Have you ever failed?”

“You came to kill me?”

“No! To best you and bring you back to Sheerwall, but you would not yield.”

“I remember.”

A narrow cleft grew narrower still, and at last ended. We turned our mounts and began the ride back; and I said, “I remember you, and your sword over me.”

“I should’ve struck.” Woddet turned his head and spat.

“I’d rather we were friends.”

“So would I!”

I smiled. “It’s a long way from Sheerwall to these mountains.”

“It’s longer through the Mountains of the Sun,” Woddet said, “but I went there and fought the Osterlings.”

“And gained much gold by it.”

Woddet nodded. “As you say. We looted Khazneh. Want to hear the whole story?”

“If you’ll tell it.”

Woddet dropped his reins on his horse’s neck and looked at the rocks above us and the steel-blue sky above the rocks. “Well, it was only a day or two after you left. The king asked Duke Marder for five knights and fifty men-at-arms to help against the Osterlings, loaned for two years or ‘til victory. Everybody was mad to go. You know how that is.”

“I can imagine.”

“So His Grace got us together and said he knew all of us wanted it, but any knight who went would naturally want the other four to be men he could trust with his life. He was going into the Sun Room, he said. You know the Sun Room?”

I searched my memory. “I’m sure I should.”

“It catches the light from the east, and there’s a hanging with the sun on it. We were to stay where we were and talk it over. Each of us was to decide on one companion he’d want with him, and go into the Sun Room and tell the duke. Only he wasn’t to tell anybody else who he’d chosen.”

I said, “Then I won’t ask you.”

“Anyway, I decided.” Woddet cleared his throat. “I was one of the last, ninth or tenth—something like that. His Grace was sitting at the table with a parchment before him. He’d drawn devices on it for all of us. Mine was a menhir with a spear through it then. Maybe you remember.”

I nodded.

“There was a gazehound couchant for Sir Swit, pards for Sir Nopel, and so forth. Everyone who was fit to go. His Grace had a cup of barley. When I came in, he told me he wouldn’t have to put my seed where most of them were already, and he showed me his parchment. My menhir had four on it.” Woddet paused, embarrassed. “None of the rest had more than two, and some didn’t have any.”

“Had I been there, I would have named you myself. You have good reason to be proud.”

“Anyway, I named—the knight I’d decided on, and Duke Marder put a grain down, and then he had two. What His Grace did afterward was take the knights who had the most grains. The king had asked fifty men-at-arms, but we brought seventy, counting bowmen.

“The king had marched when we got to Thortower, but we hurried after him and came up in time for the Battle of Five Fates. We beat them there.”

A light had come into Woddet’s eyes that told me more than any description.

“Their horsemen were like wasps, but the longbows would drop a score every time they came. Those little horsebows don’t have the reach of ours. We herded the Golden Caan and his elephants into the angle between two canals and charged him. He had the elephants out front, and they killed a score of us and took that many lances before they fell. I lost my sword and used my mace, and before you could saddle up...”

I said, “The men you killed would have killed you.”

“I know.”

We rode in silence after that, until I said, “Does your wound pain you?”

“Only if I move my arm.”

“Could you wield your sword with your left hand?”

Woddet smiled, a little bitterly. “Not against you. Why do you ask?”

“Against someone like Heimir? To the Angrborn, these are the Mountains of the Mice, and there are many men here as large as he. I just saw one.” I had taken my bow from the bowcase as I spoke; I chose an arrow.

“I told you I used my mace,” Woddet said.

“Yes.”

“I’d been practicing ever since I was a boy. Hacking away at a stancher of soft wood and so on. Sword, mace, ax, and war hammer. I suppose we all have.”

“It isn’t easy for a boy to become a man.”

“I thought I’d become one a long time before that.”

I said nothing, scanning the cliff tops.

“It was like practice. Blow after blow after blow. The head, the shoulder, the head again. Twice the sword arm. My mace had spikes on it—little ones as long as your thumb. I don’t have it anymore.” He reined up.

“I won’t leave you here.”

“You can if you want,” Woddet said. “I can take care of myself.”

I watched the cliffs; and when I did not speak, Woddet said, “That’s when you understand what the practice means. That’s when you grow up, and afterward you can’t go back.”

It seemed to me that I heard Disiri’s laughter echoing from rock to rock.