The Knight

In the morning Disira begged to stay one more day; she was exhausted; her feet still hurt; and I, knowing how long our return to Gle

I made myself new arrows that day, four for which I already had steel heads, and four more that I hoped to get heads for from the smith in her village. We slept under deerskins at Bold Berthold’s, and she crept under mine that night when Ossar and Bold Berthold were asleep. I did not betray Disiri, although I know Disira expected me to; but I put my arms around her and kissed her once or twice. That was what she wanted mostly: to be loved by somebody strong who would not hurt her.

Next day we stayed too, because I wanted to try my new arrows and hoped to get something Bold Berthold could eat when we were gone. The day after that we did not go because it rained. As we sat around the fire, singing all the songs we knew and talking when we felt like it, I said something about your mother and mine, Ben, and Bold Berthold hugged me and cried. I had already started to wonder if America had ever been real and not trust the life I remembered there with you (school and the cabin, my Mac and all that) and this made it worse. I lay down, and to tell the truth I pretended I was asleep, wondering if I was not really Bold Berthold’s brother Able.

I was almost asleep when I heard Disira say, “I was all alone out there, and he came from nowhere, calling me. He’d been with the Queen of the Wood.

That’s what he said.”

Bold Berthold muttered, “Aye?”

“He calls himself a knight, but his bowstring talks to him in the dark, and he talks while he’s sleeping. He’s really a wizard, isn’t he? A mighty wizard. I see it every time I look into his face.”

“He’s a man like I was once,” Bold Berthold said, “and better than I was, and my brother. Go to sleep.”

So we slept, all four of us, until I woke up thinking that Disiri had called me.

I got up as quietly as I could, slipped out, and wandered through the rain and the mist calling for her. I saw strange faces peer up at me from the swirling waters of the Griffin and from a dozen ring-marked forest pools. More peeped from behind bushes or looked down from the leaves of trees—faces that might have come in a flying saucer, green, brown, black, or fiery. Glass faces too, and faces whiter than snow. Once I nearly shot a brown doe that got all smoky and turned into a long-legged girl; and many times I heard the howls of wolves, and once the nearer baying of something that was never a wolf.

But Disiri, the green woman I love, I never found.

Chapter 10. Frost

Days had passed while Toug and I had knelt in Aelfrice. Now weeks slipped by while Disira, her baby, and I remained with Bold Berthold. I hunted and he trapped, for he was clever at making snares. Disira swept and cleaned, ski

Seaxneat had treated her badly and had beaten her more than once while she was carrying their child, so that she had been in terror of a miscarriage. Moreover, he had been in league with the outlaws, just as Ravd had been told; and the longer she was separated from him, the less eager she was to go back to him. I learned a whole lot about them just by listening to her, for she knew much more than she believed she knew. I hoped for an opportunity to tell Ravd all that I had learned, though I never saw him and had no way of knowing whether he and Svon were nearby or back in his beloved manor of Redhall.

There came a morning—fine and su

First came the need to store food, and if we could, to buy more. We could take our hides to Irringsmouth this time. The trip would be longer, but we might get a better price, and might not be cheated. We could buy flour, salt, and hard bread, cheese and dried beans there, but we would need more meat to smoke, and hides to sell. The nuts would ripen soon—beechnuts, chestnuts, and walnuts. Bold Berthold had taught me that we could even eat acorns if they were properly prepared, and it would be smart to lay in as many nuts of all kinds as we could manage.

Second, Disira. If she wanted to go back to Gle

I began to hunt in the direction of Gle

In half a minute, the whole monster came into view. I am going to have to talk about the Angrborn a lot, so let me describe this one to stand for his whole tribe. Imagine the most heavily built man you can, a man with big feet and thick ankles, massive legs, and broad hips. A great swag belly, a barrel chest, and enormous shoulders. (Id

When you have imagined a man like that and fixed his appearance in your mind, take away his humanity. Crocodiles are not any less human than the Angrborn. They are never loved, neither by us, nor by their own kind, nor by any animal. Disiri probably knows what it is in people, in Aelf, in dogs and horses, and even houses, manors, and castles that makes it possible for somebody to love them; but whatever it is, it is not in the Angrborn and they know it. I think that was why Thiazi built the room I will tell you about later.

Now that you have stripped all humanity away from the figure you thought of as a man, replacing it with nothing at all, imagine it far larger than the biggest man you have ever seen, so big that a tall man riding a large horse comes no higher than its waist. Think about the stink of him, and the great, slow thudding steps, steps that shake the ground and eat up whole miles the way yours take you from our door to the corner.

When you have thought of all that, you ought to have a picture of the Angrborn that will do for the rest of the things I have to tell you; but remember that it is not quite true—that the Angrborn have claws instead of fingernails and ears too big for their heads—that their hands and arms, backs, chests, and legs are covered with hair the color of new rope, and that in the flesh they are worse than any picture could show.

As soon as I could, I ran. I ought to have put a couple arrows in its eyes. I know that now, but I did not know it then, and seeing it the way I had, with no warning, was a jolt. I do not think I ever really believed Bold Berthold the way I should have. No matter what he said about them, I kept thinking of them as about eight feet tall; but Hela was as big as that, and her brother was a head taller than she was. They were half-breeds, and real Angrborn call people like that Mice. Hela was not all that bad-looking, either, once I got used to her size.