The Knight

“I’ll try, Father.”

He turned back to me. “I must explain to you what has been ru

“It’s really nice for you to say that,” I began, “but—”

“Examining you more closely, however, I feared you might prove overly attractive to Id

I felt my face get hot. “My Lord, you do me too much honor.”

His thin smile came again. “Of course I do. But so might she.” He glanced sidelong at her. “Id

Thinking how it had been with me I said, “For her sake, I hope she stays right where she is a while longer.”

“As do I, Sir Able. When I had considered those things, I thought to give you the horse you asked of me and hurry you on your way.”

“That’s—”

“But a peasant!” Beel’s smile was wider than it had been. “A peasant lad could not hold the smallest attraction for the great-granddaughter of King Pholsung.”

Id

“Therefore, Sir Able, you are to remain with us for as long as we have need of you. Sir Garvaon’s pavilion will hold one more cot. It must, and Garvaon himself will welcome a companion of his own rank, I know.”

“My Lord, I can’t.”

“Can’t ride with us, and eat good food, and sleep like a human being?”

Id

That made it rough. “My Lord, My Lady, I promised—no, I swore—that I’d go straight to the mountains to take my stand, as His Grace Duke Marder and I had agreed.”

“And stay there,” Beel said, “until midwinter. Nearly half a year, in other words. Tell me something, Sir Able. Were you riding swiftly when you came to us? Did you gallop up to this pavilion and leap from the saddle to stand before me with Master Crol?”

“My Lord—”

“You had no horse. Isn’t that the fact? You came to me to borrow one.”

Not knowing what to say, I nodded.

“I am offering to give you one. Not a loan, a gift. I will give it on the condition that you will travel with my daughter and me until we reach the pass you intend to hold. I ask you this single question. Will you travel faster by riding with us, or by walking alone? Because you must do one or the other.”

Mani poked his head above the table to grin at me, and I wanted to kick him.

Chapter 49. The Sons Of The Angrborn

Upward, always upward sloped the land that day and the next, and as day fol lowed day I came to understand that we were among the towering, rocky hills which I had glimpsed a time or two from the downs north of the forest in which I had lived like an outlaw with Bold Berthold, and that the true mountains, those mountains of which we had scarcely heard rumors, the mountains that lifted snow-covered peaks into Skai, were still before us, and still remote.

Then I left the War Way and Beel’s lumbering train of pack horses and mules, and rode up one of those hills as far as the white stallion he had given me could carry me, and dismounted when my stallion could go no farther, and tied him to a boulder and scrambled up to the summit. From there I could see the downs, and the dark forest beyond them, and even glimpse bits of the silver thread that was the Griffin. “Tomorrow I’ll find the spring it rises from,” I promised myself, “and drink from the Griffin in honor of Bold Berthold and Griffinsford.” I did not say that to Gylf, because Gylf had stayed behind to guard my stallion. Or to Mani, because Mani was riding with Id

I said it to myself, as I said, and even though I knew how foolish it was, I did not laugh. The wind was cold enough up there to make me wrap myself in the gray boat cloak Kerl had kept for me and pull up the hood, and blowing hard enough to make me wish the thick wool was thicker, too; but I stayed up there for more than an hour looking, and thinking about the kid I used to be, and what I was now. I was all alone, the way I used to be when I told Bold Berthold I was going hunting and wandered off hunting memories through the forest and sometimes out to the edge of the forest and onto the downs, where I always sighted elk but the elk were always too far.

All right, I was not going to write this, but I will. When I had been up there a long time and settled everything in my mind, I remembered Michael; and I tried to call Disiri to me the way he had called the Valfather. It did not work, and I cried.

The sun was low in the west by the time I got back to Gylf and the stallion. “They went on,” Gylf said, and I knew he meant that the last mule and the rear guard—I was supposed to be bossing the rear guard—had passed him on the road below a long time ago.

I said I knew it, but that we would catch up to them pretty quick. “Want me to scout?”

I thought about that while I rode down the hill. I had been alone for quite a while and had enough of it. I wanted company and somebody to talk to. But I knew Gylf pretty well by that time, and I knew he did not volunteer to go hunting or protect something, or anything else, unless he was pretty sure it ought to be done. So he had heard something or seen something or most likely smelled something that worried him. Naturally I started listening, and sniffing the wind, and all that, even though I knew perfectly well that his ears were sharper than mine and I might as well not have had a nose.

“Want me to?”

So he was really worried. “Yeah,” I said, “go right ahead. I’d appreciate it.” As soon as I said that, he was off like an arrow. It was a brown arrow at first, but a black arrow before it had gone very far. Then I heard him baying as he ran, that deep bay you hear from clear up in Skai, when the lead hound is all alone out in front of the pack and even the Valfather on his eight-legged hunter ca

He woke the thunder. You will say no way, but he did. It boomed way off among the real mountains; but it was there, and getting closer. I wanted to spur my stallion then, but he was still picking his way among the rocks. Finally, just to make myself feel better, I told him, “Go as fast as you can without breaking your legs or mine. I don’t think a broken leg’s going to be much help out here.”

He nodded like he understood. I knew he did not, but it was nice just the same. Mani liked to brag and he liked to argue, and right then I liked my white horse a lot better.

“Hey,” I said, “I get to do all the talking. Cool!”

His ears turned to me. I think it was his way of saying that he was a good listener.

As soon as he had grass under his hooves, I gave him the spurs (gilded iron spurs that Master Crol had found somewhere for me) and he galloped hard until we got to the War Way, and harder after that, up and up through a cleft that seemed just about as high as that hilltop I had been on, and then along a narrow gorge until I caught the rumble of stones. I pulled up sharp when I heard that, because I already had a pretty fair idea what it might be.

The side of the gorge was a shorter climb than the hill had been, but I was tired already, it was cold, and the first stars were coming out. I could not see handholds, and when I did they were usually just shadows or something. I had to feel my way up, and it seemed like it was taking hours.