The Wizard

Chapter 16. Into Danger

Ah, there you are.” Svon caught Toug by the shoulder. “By the Lady! What were you up to under there?”

“The king’s bleeding,” Toug gasped. “It’s soaked the mattress and it’s dripping through.”

Ulfa heard him and called, “The stitches pulled out!” In a moment, Pouk and half a dozen other men had climbed the bed to furl woolen blankets thicker than carpets.

“They’ll tend him,” Svon said, drawing Toug to one side. “We should go to the battlements. Thiazi and Sir Garvaon are up there with Schildstarr.” As they hurried out, Svon added, “I don’t suppose you know where Sir Garvaon’s squire is? He seems to have disappeared, and Garvaon’s asking for him.”

“I’ll look for him.” Toug hesitated, recalling things said upon the stairs. “I’d like to find him myself.”

“Later.” They started up yet another stair built for Angrborn. “Thiazi wants Schildstarr to show himself to the Frost Giants outside,” Svon explained. “They haven’t seen many of their own kind here since the king was struck, and some of them claim we’re holding him captive.”

Toug nodded and panted, his torn face throbbing under its soiled bandages.

“Schildstarr wants to tell his giants to come to the big doors—that they’ll be admitted. It means we have to scrape together enough men to keep hundreds of others from forcing their way in.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if Schildstarr’s giants came back to the sally port?”

“A thousand times, but Schildstarr won’t agree to it. This is going to give him lots of prestige. He wants to milk it, and the king wants us to let him have his way.”

“What will we do if the crowd gets in?”

Behind them Beel said, “We will do all we can to save my son-in-law’s life, Squire. If they see how badly he’s hurt, that alone may doom him by beginning a new rebellion. Still worse, they may kill him outright. A quarter if not half of them would be delighted to see him dead, and little courage is needed to murder a man who’s gravely wounded already.”

On the battlement, Schildstarr was addressing the crowd—about three thousand, Toug decided, and possibly more—gathered on the enormous stair that led up to the brazen doors of Utgard, and in the bailey at the foot of that stair. “Thiazi’s tellin’ you facts.” It was like stones sliding from a mountain. “The king’s sore struck, but he’ll have me and mine wit’ him night and day. My own to the door, every one a’ you, an’ nae one nae ours.”

There was much more after that, but Toug soon found its hoarseness and hatefulness wearying, and shut his ears to it. The sea of savage faces below and the dizzy abyss of freezing air filled him with sick dismay, and he jumped down from the crenel into which he had clambered to see them.

After that there was nothing to do but pull his cloak about him and heartily wish that he were out of the wind, in a room with a fire; the turret room where he had slept with Mani seemed a haven of comfort as he stood on the battlement.

“Have you seen Wistan?” That was Garvaon.

Toug shook his head. “Not lately, sir.” Belatedly, it occurred to Toug that Wistan was securing Sword Breaker and my old sword belt, in a place where they would not be discovered by chance. Or taking them to the cistern. “Would you like me to find him, Sir Garvaon?”

“No, you’ll have to run with my message yourself. I’ll tell Sir Svon—don’t worry about that. Go to the guardroom and tell the sergeant he’s to pull the entire guard off post. Every man. Understand?”

“Yes, Sir Garvaon. Every man-at-arms in the guard, and every bowman. The whole guard.”

“Right. They’re to assemble in the big hall, and wait. Get moving.”

Toug did, but Beel stopped him on the stairs. “You’re overworked, Squire.”

“I like to keep busy, Your Lordship, and this gets me out of that wind.”

“No small consideration, I agree. Tonight you’ll have various little tasks to do for Sir Svon. Polishing his mail and so on. Isn’t that right?”

Wondering what Beel was about to ask, Toug nodded. “Yes, Your Lordship, all the things I do every night.”

“Do you know where we’re lodged? Where Queen Idnn and I were lodged before she became queen?”

“A floor above the great hall, Your Lordship. Left at the top of the stair. Is it the second door?”

Beel nodded. “Exactly. I must speak with you tonight when your work is done. Knock, and you’ll be admitted.”

“I will, Your Lordship.” Toug turned to go.

“Wait. I won’t order you to lie to Sir Svon. But there will be no need to tell him about this unless he inquires.”

Toug agreed that there would not be, heartily wishing that he had never left the battlement.

Marder had decided that the largest tent, the pavilion he had brought for his own use, should be Idnn’s; the lack of servingwomen was a problem not so easily overcome. Idnn agreed readily to be served by Gerda and Bold Berthold, but flatly refused to accept Hela and Heimir. “We fear them,” she told me. “Call us cowardly. We know you fear nothing.”

I shook my head. “I know you too well to think you cowardly, Your Majesty.”

“We fear her wit and his lack of any. Brave as Thunor, you men say, and cunning as a Frost Giant. They are not all cunning as we know. But those who are, are slippery as eels, and your Hela is her father’s daughter. Besides, she’d sell her virtue for a groat, if she had a jot of it.”

I waited.

“Gerda can help us dress and her husband is better than a man with eyes—we don’t have to worry about his seeing us dressing and he’s too old for rape. But we don’t think he can put up the pavilion by himself, or take it down either. Duke Marder’s men put it up tonight. We don’t want to have to beg help every night. You men say that women are always asking help anyway. And if that’s not entirely true, it’s not entirely false. Do you think we like it?”

I shook my head.

“Correct. Still, we’re begging, just as we begged you to come to Utgard.” The dark eyes that had flashed like gems softened. “It’s easy, asking you. There’s something about you that says even a queen needn’t be ashamed of asking your help.”

“That’s good.”

“So lend us Uns? Please? We ask it as a great favor, and only ‘til we reach Utgard. You’ll still have Hela and Heimir—or have you loaned Hela to Sir Woddet? But you’ll have Heimir. Uns too, anytime you need him.”

“I’m honored. You may have Uns, of course. Have him as long as he’ll serve you, if you want. But I can’t help being curious. His Grace brought eight serving-men. He’d lend you seven if you so much as hinted you wanted them. Why Uns?”

Idnn sighed. “Because he’s yours, and closer to you than anyone else.”

“You may have him, Your Majesty. But you’re wrong about his being closest to me. Bold Berthold is closer, and so is Gylf.” I laid my hand on Gylf’s head.

Idnn smiled. “Berthold we have already, and dogs are not so easily borrowed. You’ll tell him? It’s only until we get to Utgard, as we said.”

“Certainly, Your Majesty.” I stepped back, expecting to be dismissed.

“Wait! Sit down. Please, good Sir Able, hear us out. The door is open—no one will think us compromised if we talk for an hour.” Idnn’s voice fell. “We must tell you.”

“As Your Majesty commands.” I sat on the carpet before Idnn’s folding chair.

“We told you yesterday we’d had a visitor.”

I nodded. “An Aelf?”

“No. One of our people. An Angrborn. You weren’t long in Jotunland, Sir Able, yet you must have seen something of it. Did nothing seem odd to you?” I shrugged. “A dozen things.”

“We won’t trouble you to name them. You saw our people, our giants, and their slaves?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Of course.”

“Giantesses?”

I cast my mind back; for me, it had been long ago. “I was in Bymir’s house, but he had no wife and no children.”

“His Majesty,” Idnn told me, “has no children. And no wife but us. The wives and children of the rest are hidden. The girls will remain hidden throughout their lives, the boys ‘til they are old enough to understand that they’re hidden, and where they are hidden, and why. Then they’re put out.”

“If I were to ask where—”

“We could not tell you. There’s a women’s country. We call it Jotunhome; scholars say Vollerland, the Land of Wise Women. Because we’re His Majesty’s wife, we are ruler of Jotunhome. Not just Queen of Jotunhome, but monarch. They came on our wedding night, while our husband groaned and bled in our bed.”

I suppose I nodded. “I see...”

“You don’t. You don’t even think you do—you’re too wise for that. If we’d ordered a guard of women to come with us, running beside our horse as Hela and Heimir run beside yours, we could have had them. But we’d have been attacked, and we wouldn’t be here.” Idnn sighed. “They can fight, they say, and knowing how they live we know it must be so.”

That night, when all the tasks Idnn had given him were done and everyone was asleep, Uns came to my fire. Heimir was asleep, his big body half covered by his bearskin. As Uns watched I saddled Cloud, whistled for Gylf, and galloped north across the night sky. All this Uns told me afterward.

“Be seated,” Beel told Toug. “We need not stand on ceremony, you and I.”

“I’ll stand just the same,” Toug said, “if it please Your Lordship. I’d be ashamed to sit in your presence.”

“As you wish. You must be tired, though. The stairs of this castle would tire anyone.”

Toug did not reply.

“My task is dangerous, but it shouldn’t take long. You help Sir Svon, don’t you, when he has charge of the guard?”

“Yes, Your Lordship.”

“Thus the sentries are accustomed to obeying you. You know we fear an assault on this castle. Not a mere crowd hammering the doors and yammering to see the king. We’ve had plenty of that already. But a serious assault by rebels.”

Toug nodded wearily. “I understand, Your Lordship.”

“Have you ever seen a siege, Squire Toug? A proper one, I mean, directed by a king or great lord, with sappers?”

“No, Your Lordship. I haven’t.”

“I didn’t think so. There are all sorts of engines that can be employed. Catapults, for example. Wooden towers on wheels, a mole, and so forth and so on. I’ve taken part in a siege like that.” Beel laced his fingers. “We need fear nothing of that kind. His Majesty—I refer to my son-in-law—will have recovered long before such devices could reduce this keep. What we must fear is a sudden assault. Thus the guards. Thus I’m delighted that we have Schildstarr and his Angrborn, in spite of all the trouble they’ve given.”

Toug, who wished that Schildstarr and his Angrborn were in Muspel, nodded loyally.

“Weak though we are, no assault can succeed without rams and scaling ladders—long ladders that can be put against our walls to let the attackers to reach the battlements and upper windows. Since the attackers would be Angrborn, such ladders would have to be very large.”

Feeling he was expected to nod again, Toug did.

“Very large indeed, and strongly built. Have you a stick, Squire?”

“A stick, Your Lordship? No, Your Lordship.”

“Get one. A stick about so long, eh?” Beel’s hands measured the length of a war arrow. “If you’re seen, you must feign blindness. A blind slave wandering that town beyond the walls should arouse no suspicion.”

“Your Lordship wishes me to go out tonight to look for scaling ladders.”

Beel smiled. “Will you do it, Squire?”

“When Your Lordship wishes it? I’ll go at once.”

“Not quite so fast as that, please.” Beel raised a hand. “I not only wish to find these ladders, if in fact ill-intentioned persons among the Angrborn are preparing them, but to learn the identities of these persons.”

Toug nodded. “I’ll do my best, Your Lordship.”

For a moment, Beel appeared troubled. “You’re tired. It cannot be otherwise. Fatigue makes us careless. If you’re careless tonight you may be caught and killed.”

Toug stepped backward. “Queen Idnn left on horseback, Your Lordship, and she must have ridden through town, since we know she reached Sir Able. I doubt that it’s dangerous.”

“They may have been less well organized then.”

Beel waited for Toug to speak; seconds ticked by, and at last Beel said, “Go then. Good luck.”

Toug thanked him, and went out—stopping abruptly when he saw Wistan in the corridor.

“If you’re going out,” Wistan said, “I’m going in.” Toug shut the door behind him. “Why?”

“He sent for me.” Wistan yawned and stretched. “Now get out of my way.”

Toug’s fist caught the side of his neck. A moment later Toug had seized his doublet. His forehead hit Wistan’s nose with all the force he could give it. He jerked his left knee up, and when Wistan bent double, clubbed the back of Wistan’s neck with the side of his fist. “I ought to kick you,” he muttered when Wistan lay at his feet, “but I’ll let you off this time. Next time, you get kicked.”

The dark stair built for giants seemed less dark when he went down it and far less wearying. On the guardroom level, he found that the sentry at the sally port nearest the stair was a bowman he knew, and greeted him cheerfully.

“You still up, Squire Toug? It’s gettin’ late.”

“Oh, the night’s hardly begun.” Toug grinned, and then, recalling Wistan, stretched and yawned. “I suppose I’ll feel it in the morning, but when I said sleep Nott heard leap. How long have you been on post, Arn?”

“Just got here.”

“That’s good. I have to run an errand. When I come back I’ll knock three times, and then twice. Like this.” Toug demonstrated, rapping the iron door with his knuckles. “Let me in when you hear my knock.”

“Yes, sir.” The bowman refrained from asking questions.

“It could be a while, so tell your relief.” Toug lifted the bar and tugged at the oversized iron door.

The passage would have been cramped for an Angrborn but seemed spacious to Toug in the moment before the door shut. In the dark it was neither great nor small, only forbidding. One hand he kept on the rough stones; with the other he groped the air, wondering whether his eyes could adjust to a dark so profound, and at last concluding that no eyes could. Too late, he recalled the stick Beel had suggested.

“If I’d had a stick,” he told himself, “or a bow like Sir Able’s, I could have beaten Wistan with it.” It would not have been honorable, perhaps, but he found he no longer cared much about honor where Wistan was concerned. Wistan had a sword. Could it have been dishonorable to use a stick when the other had a sword? For two steps, Toug weighed the matter before concluding that it could not.

The enormous bailey seemed bright with starlight as well as white with snow. He had planned to lurk in the darkness of the passageway until he saw a chance to slip out unseen. There was no need. The snow, pristine in spots, was dented and rutted in others by the feet of Frost Giants; but the giants who had left their footprints had withdrawn to their beds, leaving the snow to him. It creaked under his rough, new, too-large boots so loudly that he expected to hear a sentry sound the alarm. There had been four at the bronze double doors atop the entrance stair—a man-at-arms, a bowman, and two armed servants. These were reinforced now by two of Schildstarr’s Angrborn; but it seemed that no one had heard him, and with those doors closed and barred they had no way of seeing him. Pursued only by the hanging ghost of his own breath, he trotted toward the distant gate.

The guards who had saluted Thrym when Thrym had brought him to Utgard were gone. The gate, through which two score knights might have ridden abreast, stood wide open. Beyond the long black arch of the bridge across the moat, the clumsy overlarge houses of Angrborn (windowless or nearly) showed no gleam, of light.

Panting, Toug stopped to study the sullen mountain that was Utgard’s keep. Near its top, a crimson glow showed that some slave still fed a bedroom fire. For a moment he stood motionless, staring up at the tiny beacon, a constricted slit as remote as a star. It was eclipsed. He waved and waved again, and at last turned away, knowing his sister had seen him, that she too had waved, though he had not seen her face.

The houses of Utgard were three times the size of the biggest barns, built of planks overlapped and fastened with pegs or great black square-headed spikes; this Toug learned by running his hands over several when even by starlight he noticed their prickly appearance. Although bigger than many a manor, they huddled against the gapping moat like beggars’ huts and were dwarfed to insignificance.

Unseen and seeing no one, he passed from house to house. Scaling ladders big and strong enough to hold the weight of Angrborn would require massive timbers. Scaling ladders long enough to let Angrborn attain the battlements of Utgard would have to be a bowshot long. Huge as the houses were, none could have held such ladders; he passed them with growing confidence, reflecting that he could return to the keep in another hour with his honor intact, and report to Beel next morning that he had searched diligently but found nothing.

A shadow, it seemed, flitted from one of the hulking houses to another. He blinked, and it was gone; yet he felt sure he had seen it. Less boldly, he moved to the next house and the next, then paused, pulling up the hood of his cloak.

The shadow moved again, a shadow much smaller than a giant—indeed, smaller than he. He flattened himself against a wall, grateful for the pegs that poked his back but broke up his silhouette. The shadow did not wholly vanish: he could see it, darker black, in the shadow of a house.

It moved, and something moved with it, something much larger, something even less distinct. An arm, a huge and twisted hand—

“No!” Toug shouted. “No, Org! Don’t!”

The small shadow froze and he sprinted toward it. He glimpsed frightened eyes in a pale face and picked the owner of that face up without breaking stride. At a noise from the house he passed he dodged down a new street, one so narrow it seemed impossible for Angrborn to walk it, then chose a new street at random and stopped to set his burden down.

“What was that?” The voice was a girl’s.

“Org.” Toug gulped freezing air. “He’s a... I don’t know. A kind of animal, I guess. He’s sort of a pet of Sir Svon’s. I—we... Who are you?”

“Well, I’m me. Etela.” (Her head came nearly to his chin.) “You got eyes.”

“I’ll take you home. You’d better get inside before you meet Org again—he might not remember.”

“Are you from the castle?”

Toug nodded.

“’Cause you’ve got eyes ‘n our men don’t, ‘less they’re new. Not even then, mostly.” Etela paused. “If you’re one of the ones that have the king, I can tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Well, ‘bout the shovels ‘n picks they’re making. They done lots, ‘n going to be hundreds ‘n thousands.”

“Is that what you came out at night for?”

“Uh-huh. Mama said tell you. Are you a knight?”

“No, but my master is. Where do you live, Etela?”

“Master’s house. I’ll show you.” She set off. “I’m not ‘fraid now ’cause you’re with me. See how brave I am?”

“You wanted to tell us about the shovels.”

“Uh-huh. Mama says they’re going to dig ‘n pile up dirt on the castle ‘til they bury it.”

“Nobody could do that,” Toug objected.

“Well, it’s what she says. Only nobody’s s’posed to know. I’m scared of ’em, but I’m scared worse of that Org what tried to g-g-grab me.”

Her teeth were chattering. Toug picked her up again and wrapped his cloak about her. “I’ll carry you awhile, and we’ll both stay warmer. What’s your master’s name?”

“Logi. Aren’t I heavy?”

“You don’t hardly weigh anything. How old are you?”

“‘Most old enough to get married.”

Toug laughed softly.

“That’s what Mama says. Because of the hair ‘n getting big up here. It’s a real long way to where I live. Are you going to carry me the whole way?”

“Maybe. Did you come this far tonight?”

Etela nodded. He felt the motion of her head.

“Then I think I can carry you back. We’ll see. Maybe Org could carry us both. Be faster.” She trembled, and he said, “I was just teasing, and I don’t think Org would do it anyhow. Maybe for Sir Able or Sir Svon, but not for me.”

“Was he going to kill me?”

“Sure. Eat you, too. Me and Sir Svon are supposed to feed him, but we haven’t been doing it lately. There isn’t much, and we’ve been busy. Sir Svon told him not to eat the slaves, but he’s got to eat something, I guess. So that’s something else to worry about. Getting lots of food quick. I don’t know how we’re going to do it.”

“You don’t eat people?”

Toug grinned. “Not unless they’re cleaner than you.”

“You shouldn’t try to fool me. It’s mean.”

“All right.”

“You got to turn up here at the corner.”

“Which way?”

“Well, there isn’t but one. What’s your name?”

“Toug. Squire Toug, if you want to be formal, but you don’t have to be formal with me.”

The crooked, rutted street he had been following ended, and he turned left. “Only you’ve got to be formal when you talk to Sir Svon or Sir Garvaon. Or Lord Beel. I mean, if you ever get into the castle you’ll have to.”

“Are you going to marry me?”

Toug halted in midstride. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, I do. When I’m bigger.”

“It’s not very likely, Etela.” He began to walk again. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get married.”

“It is too, ’cause when Mama said I thought who’ll it be ‘n there wasn’t nobody. But here you are, only you got to court me. Sing under my window, Mama says.”

He smiled. “When you’re older.”

“Uh-huh, ’cause I haven’t got windows at home.” Pushing a painfully thin arm through the parting of his cloak, Etela pointed. “See that? That’s the last house. Right up there. Go over the little hill, then it’s where we live.”

“Is that where the tools are? The picks and shovels?”

“I’ll show you. Our forge’s right on the house, like, ‘n that’s good ’cause it’s so hot, so it’s a good place only there’s not much to eat. Are you hungry?”

Toug shook his head.

“Well, I am. I’m real hungry. I thought maybe you thought Mama could give you something. Only Mama won’t talk to you, most like, ‘n couldn’t give you a thing anyhow.”

Feeling her shiver, Toug said, “You’re cold.”

“Well, it’s always cold outside.”

Toug had come to his decision, and he announced it. “After you show me the tools I’m going to take you to the castle. We haven’t got a lot of food, but I can give you mine in the morning and find you better clothes.”

“Well, I was hoping to get in.” Etela sounded wistful.

“Sure. Pouk can find you clothes. Pouk’s my brother-in-law, and he got me these boots. If Queen Idnn were here, she might—who’s that?”

“Well, that’s Vil,” Etela whispered. “I guess he heard us.”