The Knight

I nodded.

“Not another knight?”

“No, My Lord. Just a friend. Knights can have friends that aren’t knights, can’t they?”

“Not a man-at-arms?”

“No, My Lord. Pouk’s a sailor.”

“I see.” Thunrolf drank some more wine.

I did, too, but then I decided I had better stop. My lips felt fu

I tried to smooth it over. “Pouk is afraid people won’t think I’m very important, My Lord, and of course I’m not. He wants them to think I am, so he says that. Maybe it would be true if I could afford to pay him, but I can’t.”

“You’re poor?”

“Very, My Lord.”

“I thought as much. Here is the other difficulty I mentioned. We have a custom here. I ought to say my knights do. Barbaric, if you ask me, but the custom is the custom.” Thunrolf belched. “A new knight—you are a knight?”

“Yes, My Lord. As I told you.”

“I know you did. I hadn’t forgotten that. A new knight must fight their champion. With blunted swords, on the table before supper. He must fight him—excuse it—for a wager of one ceptre. You look stricken, Sir Able. Are you afraid to fight?”

“No, My Lord. But ...”

“But what?”

From the way he was looking at me, I knew he thought I was scared and I did not like that, but there was not a lot I could do about it. I said, “Well, for one thing, I don’t have a ceptre, My Lord.”

He opened a drawer in the table and rummaged around in there and pulled one out. “I do,” he said. He held it up. “Should I lend it to you?”

“Yes, My Lord. Please. I’ll pay you back if I win, I promise.”

“And if you lose?” He was looking at me with his eyes almost closed. “Because you will lose, Sir Able. Never doubt it.”

“I won’t be able to.” Talking about bets like that, I remember the forfeits Pouk and I had paid with when we raced. I said, “Maybe I could do you a favor instead, My Lord. I’d do just about anything you wanted.”

“Anything, Sir Able?”

I was pretty sure I was getting into trouble, but right then I did not care much. “Yes, My Lord. Anything.”

“Well and good.” He tossed me the ceptre. “I have been nurturing a little notion. We will have to go to the top of my mountain, which should suit you very well. A good plan, you see. Good plans fit together, like—oh, stones in a wall. That sort of thing. So you will get to go to the top of my mountain, as you wish, and I will have my plan, as I wish.” He poured me some more wine and made me clink glasses with him.

I drank a little bit more. “There’s another problem, My Lord, only I don’t think it’s as bad. You said blunted swords, and I won’t use a sword. Can I use this instead?” I took out Sword Breaker then and showed her to him. He held it for a minute and sort of waved it around the way you do, and gave it back. “I am afraid not, Sir Able. It’s a mace. You said so yourself.” I said okay.

“Which makes it much too dangerous. I don’t want to see anyone killed. I will find something else for you. Have you got a shield, by the way?” I said no, and he said he would see about that, too.

It was already time for supper, so we went down to the hall. There were a lot of people there already and a lot more coming in, and we were standing there watching them when Pouk found us. He said he had not found anything for us to eat or drink, either, but maybe somebody there would let us have something.

So I explained that we could eat with the others as soon as I fought up on the table like Thunrolf wanted.

Thunrolf pointed to a place and made Pouk sit down. Then we went up to the head of the table and he explained to me that knights sat up front close to him at the high table. A knight’s friend that was not a knight himself ought to sit at the far end of the high table with the men-at-arms, so that was where he had put Pouk. Servants sat at the low table that was close to the door, and did I want to change anything? I said no.

Somebody, I guess Master Aud, brought us the blunted swords. They were just regular old swords, pretty plain with the points and edges ground flat. The knight that was going to fight me took one, and I explained again about how I was not going to use a sword, even one like that, that was not sharp. So Thunrolf sent somebody for the chief cook, and he came, and Thunrolf explained and told him to bring me a shield and something I could use that was not a sword. That was when they took Sword Breaker and my bow.

The chief cook came back pretty quick, and for a shield he had one of those pewter covers they put over a dish, and for a sword a long iron spoon. I did not like it, but I had to get up on the table and take them. Everybody was telling me to by then and yelling and laughing, and to tell the truth they picked me up and set me up there. I thought, all right, I am bigger and stronger than this guy and I am going to show them.

Right here let me get rid of the excuses. I had drunk too much wine with Thunrolf and I was none too steady. That is the plain truth. Also they were grabbing my ankles and trying to trip me. That is the truth, too. Only neither one of those was what really did it. He was a swordsman, a good one, and I was not. Until I tried to fight him, I did not even know what a good swordsman was or what one could do. I hit his shield hard enough to bend my spoon, and so what? He never hit my serving dish cover at all. He hit around it, and he could make me move it whenever he wanted, and wherever he wanted. He was probably a pretty nice guy, because I could see he felt sorry for me. He hit me three or four times, not too hard, and then he knocked me right off the table. I got up and gave him the ceptre I had borrowed, and that was the end of our bet. Thunrolf was laughing, everybody was, and he slapped my back and made me sit by him. There was beer and more wine, and soup, meat, and bread. There was a kind of salad, too, that had cut-up roots in it or something crunchy like that, and oil and salt fish. That was pretty good, and so was the meat and bread.

Afterward there was fruit, I think the same mangos we had ridden on that morning. I ate a lot, but Thunrolf did not eat much at all. He just kept drinking, but he never seemed really drunk. Later I got to know Morcaine, and she was like that, too. She drank brandy instead of wine, and she drank quite a bit of it.

It put a lot of color in her face and she swayed sometimes when she walked, but she never sang or got silly or passed out. I never understood why she drank so much, or why Thunrolf did either.

Chapter 30. The Mountain Of Fire

When supper was about over, Thunrolf stood up and banged on the table with one of those silver glasses until everybody quieted down. “Friends!” he said. “True knights, brave men-at-arms, bold archers.” He sort of stopped and looked hard at them before he said, “Loyal servants.”

He kicked over his chair and went down to the servants’ table, and his voice got slow and serious. “I have reason to believe that offense has been given. Given to us all, but to you loyal servants most of all.”

He spun around after he said that, and came close to falling down, and pointed to Pouk. “Aren’t you a servant? Sir Abie’s servingman?”

Pouk jumped up. “Aye, sir!”

The other servants sort of growled at that, and so did the men-at-arms Pouk had been eating with.

“You have pushed in among your betters,” Thunrolf told him, “and turned your back on your comrades. If I left your punishment to them, you would get such a beating as would cripple you for life. Would you like that?”

“No, sir,” Pouk said. “I just—”

“Silence! I will spare you the beating. Is the smith here?” He was with the men-at-arms too, and stood up. Thunrolf whispered to him, and he went out. “I want six intrepid knights. Six in addition to Sir Able there.” He named the ones, and said that anybody else could come who wanted to see it.