The Knight

Finally I thought, well, there is no Mac and no TV and no books or magazines to read. But there are feather pens in the desk, and paper and ink. I could write myself notes or make lists or something.

So I lit one of the lamps and got the stuff out of the drawer and started writing down the most important things that had happened to me, like finding a spiny orange tree in the woods, Parka, and seeing the knight that blew away in that wrecked castle. I wrote up to Disiri leaving and me finding Disira and Ossar. Then I decided to give it up.

Only there was one other thing. When I picked up the list I had been writing, meaning to wad it up and toss it out the window, I looked at it. And all of a sudden I saw it was not the way we wrote at school at all. It was Aelf writing. I had not known I could do it, but I had done it and I could read it.

Chapter 19. The Cable Tier

Here is where I am going to make you mad. I know I am going to do it, and I do not like it, but I am. I am not going to tell you about the fight with the Osterling pirates. It still hurts, and it would hurt a lot worse if I had to write all about it. So I will not. That it happened is the main thing, and you already know that. We were only three days out of port.

The other main thing was that I got stabbed. I had bought a mail shirt and a helmet in Irringsmouth, and I was wearing them. The shirt was not a real hauberk like a knight would wear. It had short sleeves and came down a little bit below my waist; but I was proud of it, and while our crew was putting up the net I pulled it on and put on my helmet. When I got stabbed I thought the blade had come up under it. Only it had not. It had gone right through. I saw that later.

One night down in the cable tier, when they thought I was going to die, I dreamed the whole thing over again and kept looking around for a machine gun I had lost. And the truth is I remember that dream a lot better than the real thing, and maybe some parts are mixed up. I do not know.

We were sailing as fast as we could go, with sticks tied on the yards and extra sails on them and the ship heeling way over and turning a streak of sea to cream, if you know what I mean. But the Osterlings were rowing hard and sailing too, and their ship was really narrow and had four masts, with the one in front raked way forward, and they must have had two hundred men at the oars. In a gale we might have outsailed them; I know that now. But it was pretty calm, just a good breeze, and we did not stand a chance.

I asked Kerl what they wanted, and he said, “They want to cook you and eat you.” That was just in my dream, I am pretty sure, but it is the truth anyway. They wanted all of us. That is the way it works here. What you eat makes you more like it, and the closer it is to you, the more it moves you that way, if you know what I mean. You take Scaur and Sha. They ate a lot of fish, but it did not make them very much like fish, just quick and graceful, and knowing a lot about the sea. They never said their hands were cold either, or tried to warm them in front of the fire. But when they touched you, their hands were as cold as sea-water. Deer are closer, and if you eat a lot you smell things more and your ears get sharper and you can run faster. That is how it works, and sometimes I think it must be mostly in the blood, because when I drank Baki’s blood it healed me a lot in just a day or so, and in certain ways I was more like one of the Aelf. I guess I still am.

That had not happened yet. At the time I am telling about it was the Osterlings that mattered. They are people, only they are not much like regular people, especially lower down. The Caan and the princes and so on are pretty human, I guess because they can get whatever they want. But the more ordinary Osterlings have faces like skulls and horrible eyes that look like they are burning holes in you.

Here I am going to say something that maybe I should not say. They are thin, too. You can count their ribs and see where all the bones are underneath their skin. In America we liked people to be really thin and all the girls I knew were always trying to lose weight. West of the mountains it is not like that, and I think it is because of the Osterlings. Men are supposed to have muscles and wide shoulders and big, thick arms and legs, sort of like football players. (We are not supposed to have thick heads too, but pretty often that is the case.) Women are supposed to have big round breasts like grapefruits, two-balloon hips, and lots of meat on their arms and legs. Id

So that was the way most people were in Celidon, which is where we were until we put out to sea, and it just made the Osterlings want to kill us that much more. But the fact was (I did not know this back then) that they would kill just about anything and eat it: horses and dogs, rats and cats.

The net I was talking about was made out of good-sized ropes and it was there to keep people out. It was a good idea, because the ropes were hard to cut and I could shoot arrows through the holes, which I did. But they could be cut after a while, which the Osterlings did, wanting to get at us, so chain would have been better.

In my dream I could see the one who stabbed me, and see the dagger’s blade coming at me, and all that. After I was stabbed I lay on the deck of the Osterling ship and bled and bled, and after a long, long time our captain came, shuffling his feet, and when he was standing beside me he kicked me in the face. But I do not think that really happened.

I woke up, and I had not been kicked. It was Pouk, and for a minute I did not know where I was (I thought I was back in my bedroom at home) or who Pouk was. You know how it is, sometimes, when somebody wakes you up from a dream.

“It’s me, sir, Pouk Badeye. I got some water here, sir, thinkin’ you might like it.”

I took it, the kind of wooden mug they call a ca

“It ain’t good water, sir, but you can drink it. I been drinkin’ it. They feedin’ you, sir?”

It was hard to remember. Finally I said, “I don’t think so. I’ve been sleeping most of the time. Dreaming.” Back in a corner of my mind I was still trying to figure out how my bed had turned into a big coil of rope.

“I didn’t think so. I’ll try an’ get you somethin’, sir. Cook’ll give me somethin’ if he knows it’s for you.”

It was so dim in there that I could just barely make out Pouk’s face. That was when I asked Pouk where I was, and he told me, “Cap’n wanted to kill you, sir, only we wouldn’t let him. We’d o’ mutinied, sir, if he’d tried it. He was goin’ to, sir. He come up to where you was layin’ an’ raised up his sword, sir, and I felt it go all though the ship, men standin’ up that had been sittin’, an’ feelin’ for axes an’ knives an’ pikes. So he couldn’t, sir, not then. He had some carry you down here, sir, with Nur to watch ’em. Only I got to go, sir, ‘fore I’m missed.”

Pouk had become another dream. I heard him say, “I’ll bring you somethin’. I will that.” But the Osterlings were gaining on us, their thin black ship leaping across the sea, and the arrow was at my ear.

A friend came and licked my face.

Next time I woke up I was myself again. Weak, and scared when I saw how weak I was. It was damp in the cable tier; my wound was hot, but I shivered there for hours.

“Here y’are, Sir Able, sir. Sprat dumplin’s, sir.”

I looked up at the sound of a stranger’s voice. It was too dark to make out his face, but metal clinked on metal and there was a good smell. In another second or so it was under my nose, crisp outside and soft inside, full of flavor, greasy and wonderful. I chewed and swallowed and had to fight to keep from swallowing without chewing. When I had finished, I asked who he was.