The Knight

“See? You can’t. Can’t be broke.” Sha’s grandfather cackled as Scaur returned my bow to me. “There’s not but one fruit on a spiny orange most times, and not but three seeds in it. You chop down the tree and you got to plant them in three places, else the Mossmen’ll come for you.”

“Go on, Able,” Sha said, “tell us about the ghost.”

“This morning I decided to plant the first seed in the garden of Bluestone Castle,” I told them. “There was a stone bowl there that held water, and I decided I would plant the seed first and scoop up water for it. When it seemed to me I had watered it enough, I would drink what was left.”

They nodded.

“I dug a little hole with my knife, dropped a seed into it, replaced the earth—which was pretty damp already—and carried water for the seed in my hands. When there was standing water in the hole, I drank and drank from the bowl, and when I looked up I saw a knight standing there watching me. I couldn’t see his face, but he had a big green shield with a dragon on it.”

“That wasn’t Duke Indign,” Scaur remarked, “his badge was the blue boar.”

“Did you speak to him?” Sha wanted to know. “What did he say?”

“I didn’t. It happened so fast and I was too surprised. He—he turned into a sort of cloud, then he disappeared altogether.”

“Clouds are the breath of the Lady,” Sha’s grandfather remarked. I asked who that was, but he only shook his head and looked into the fire. Sha said, “Don’t you know her name can’t be spoken?”

In the morning I asked the way to Griffinsford, but Scaur said there was no town of that name thereabout.

“Then what’s the name of this one?” I asked.

“Irringsmouth,” said Scaur.

“I think there’s an Irringsmouth near where I live,” I told him. Really I was not sure, but I thought it was something like that. “It’s a big city, though. The only really big city I’ve been to.”

“Well, this’s the only Irringsmouth around here,” Scaur said. A passerby who heard us said, “Griffinsford is on the Griffin,” and walked away before I could ask him anything.

“That’s a stream that flows into our river,” Scaur told me. “Go south ’til you come to the river, and take the River Road and you’ll find it.”

So I set out with a few bites of salt fish wrapped in a clean cloth, south along the little street behind the wattle house where Scaur and Sha lived, south some more on the big street it led to, and east on the highroad by the river. It went through a gap without a gate in the wrecked city wall, and out into the countryside, through woods of young trees where patches of snow were hanging on in the shadows and square pools of rainwater waited for somebody to come back.

After that, the road wound among hills, where two boys older than I was said they were going to rob me. One had a staff and the other one an arrow ready—at the nock is how we say it here. The nock is the cut for the string. I said they could have anything I had except my bow. As I ought to have expected, they tried to take it. I held on, and got hit with the staff. After that I fought, taking my bow away from them and beating them with it. Maybe I should have been afraid, but I was not. I was angry with them for thinking they could hit me without being hit back. The one with the staff dropped it and ran; and I beat the other until he fell down, then sat on his chest and told him I was going to cut his throat.

He begged for mercy, and when I let him up he ran too, leaving his bow and quiver behind. The bow looked nice, but when I bent it over my knee it snapped. I saved the string, and slung the quiver on my back. That night I scraped away at my own bow until it needed nothing but a bath in flax oil, and put his string on it.

After that I walked with an arrow at the nock myself. I saw rabbits and squirrels, and even deer, more than once; I shot, but all I did was lose a couple of arrows until the last day. That morning, so hungry I was weak, I shot a grouse and went looking for a fire. I had a long search and almost gave up on finding any that day and ate it raw; but as evening came, I saw wisps of smoke above the treetops, white as specters against the sky. When the first stars were out, I found a hut half buried in wild violets. It was of sticks covered with hides; and its door was the skin of a deer. Since I could not knock on that, I coughed; and when coughing brought nobody, I knocked on the sticks of the frame.

“Who’s there!” rang out in a way that sounded like the man who said it was ready to fight.

“A fat grouse,” I said. A fight was the last thing I wanted.

The hide was drawn back, and a stooped and shaking man with a long beard looked out. His hand trembled; so did his head; but there was no tremor in his voice when he boomed, “Who are you!”

“Just a traveler who’ll share his bird for your fire,” I said.

“Nothing here to steal,” the bearded man said, and held up a cudgel.

“I haven’t come to rob you, only to roast my grouse. I shot and plucked it this morning, but I had no fire to cook it and I’m starved.”

“Come in then.” He stepped out of the doorway. “You can cook it if you’ll save a piece for me.”

“I’ll give you more than that,” I told him; and I was as good as my word: I gave him both wings and both thighs. He asked no more questions but looked at me so closely, staring and turning away, that I told him my name and age, explained that I was a stranger in his state, and asked him how to get to Griffinsford.

“Ah, the curse of it! That was my village, stripling, and sometimes I go there still to see it. But nobody lives in Griffinsford these days.”

I felt that could not be true. “My brother and me do.”

The bearded man shook his trembling head. “Nobody at all. Nobody’s left.”

I knew then that the name of our town had not been Griffinsford. Perhaps it is Griffin—or Griffinsburg or something like that. But I ca

“They looked up to me,” the bearded man muttered. “Some wanted to run, but I said no. Stay and fight, I said. If there’s too many giants, we’ll run, but we got to try their mettle first.”

I had noticed the word giants, and wondered what might come next.

“Schildstarr was their leader. I had my father’s tall house in those days. Not like this. A big house with a half-loft under the high roof and little rooms behind the big one. A big stone fireplace, too, and a table big enough to feed my friends.”

I nodded, thinking of houses I had seen in Irringsmouth.

“Schildstarr wasn’t my friend, but he could’ve got into my house. Inside, he’d have had to stand like I do now.”

“You fought them?”

“Aye. For my house? My fields and Gerda? Aye! I fought, though half run when they saw them comin’ down the road. Killed one with my spear and two with my ax. They fall like trees, stripling.” For a moment his eyes blazed.

“A stone ...” He fingered the side of his head, and looked much older. “Don’t know who struck me, or what it was. A stone? Don’t know. Put your hand here, stripling. Feel under my hair.”

His hair was thick, dark gray hair that was just about black. I felt and jerked my hand away.

“Tormented after. Water and fire. Know it? It’s what they like best. Took us to a pond and built fires all ’round it. Drove us into the water like cattle. Threw brands at us ’til we drowned. All but me. What’s your name, stripling?”

I told him again.

“Able? Able. That was my brother’s name. Years and years ago, that was.”

I knew it was not my real name, but Parka had said to use it. I asked his name.

“Found a water rat’s hole,” he said. “Duck and dig, come up to breathe, and the brands, burnin’ and hissin’. Lost count of the duckin’s and the burns, but didn’t drown. Got my head up into the water rat’s house and breathed in there. Waited ’til the Angrborn thought we was all dead and went away.”