The Knight

“What about Master Crol? The muleteers? Swert there?”

Beel said, “Master Crol may well have fought. It would not surprise me if he had.”

Garvaon said, “He did.”

I nodded. “What about the others, My Lady?”

“I don’t think so.”

“None of them? What about you, Swert? Would you have fought, if you’d been there?”

“I hope so, Sir Able. If I’d had something to fight with.”

That evening I talked to all the servants, and to the archers and men-at-arms.

“I’ve only got three things to say to you,” I told them. “I’ll talk a lot about those three things, because I think you’ll want me to. I’ll answer your questions as well as I can. But everything I’ve got to say will come down to those three things, so I’d like to get them out of the way before we do the rest.” I studied them, hoping my silence would lend weight to my words.

“I’m asking you to fight. All of you. Everyone here. Lord Beel has ordered you to, but he can’t make you do it any more than I can. All he can do is punish you if you don’t. Whether you fight or not is up to you—that’s the first thing I’ve got to say.

“You won’t be fighting alone. Each man-at-arms and each archer is going to take charge of two or three or four of you, depending on how the numbers work out, teach you what you’ll need to know, and lead you when we go to get our goods back from the Angrborn. Lord Beel himself will be leading the men-at-arms and the archers, and so will Sir Garvaon and I. That’s the second thing.”

They were looking at each other by that time, and I let them do it for more than a minute.

“Most of you have heard I killed one of the Angrborn last night. Sir Garvaon killed one too, but he had two archers and a man-at-arms fighting beside him. He likes to pretend that it makes what he did less than what I did. But what he did, and what I did, don’t matter much. What matters is that our men-at-arms and our archers killed two before Sir Garvaon and I came down from the pass. It doesn’t take a knight. A few brave men were able to do it without a knight to lead them. That’s the third thing I have to say, and the most important.” I stopped again.

“Some of you will have questions for me, or for Lord Beel, or for Sir Garvaon. Some may even have questions for Lady Id

A middle-aged servingman rose. “Is anyone not going to fight?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll have to see.”

The servingman sat down quickly.

“Lord Beel is going to fight. Lady Id

Master Crol called, “So am I!”

“And Master Crol is going to fight, of course. I took that so much for granted that I forgot to mention it. But none of us know about the rest of you. That’s one of the things we’re going to find out.”

One of Id

“Didn’t Lady Id

The maid’s nod was timid.

“Then you know the answer. Let me explain. Ordinarily, women don’t fight because they’re not as strong as men. But what’s my strength or Sir Garvaon’s compared to the strength of the giants? You can fight them as well as we do, if you choose to do it. Lady Id

A cook sitting near the maid said, “Do we get to choose the man-at-arms we want?”

“Stand up.” I gestured. “The rest can’t hear you.”

The cook rose, somewhat embarrassed. “You said that each two or three of us would have a man-at-arms to teach us. Do we get to pick which one?”

“Or an archer. No. They get to choose you.”

The servingman who had stood up first stood up again. “I just want to say I’ll fight, if you’ll give me weapons.”

I said, “When Lord Beel heard I’d killed an Angrborn, he asked how I did it. I told him with arrows, and he wondered how I could see to shoot, since we’d fought them at night. I explained that they’re so big that they could always be seen against the night sky—so big I’d have found it hard to miss.”

I held up my bow. “I made this. I didn’t make all my arrows, but I made the best ones. There are trees here, trees tough enough to bend under the mountain winds and stand up again when the wind dies. The Angrborn took a lot of the treasure we had, but they left us a lot in the way of iron grates and pots and bronze fittings for the pavilions. The man who shoes our horses and mules can shape those things into arrowheads, and you’re sitting on more rough stones to sharpen them with than you’ll ever need.”

I shut up to let them think about that. The sun had nearly set, and the grave markers on the hilltop cast long shadows that seemed to reach toward us like so many fingers.

“Some of you may be helped by the Fire Aelf,” I said. “I hope so. If you are, listen carefully to everything they tell you. They’re good metal workers.”

Chapter 62. After The Raiders

The mountains had dwindled to hills before I camped, high brown-and-yellow hills whose sand-colored stones were masked by dead grass. I had ridden—and walked while I led the limping stallion—until the sun was down, hoping for water and wood. The water hole I finally found held water nearly as thick as mud, but the stallion drank it thirstily.

I tied him to his own saddle, spread his saddle blanket on the ground, and laid another blanket over it. A fire would have been nice, but a fire might have caught the dry grass and burned half the world. That was how it seemed, anyway: a barren land that went on and on like the sea.

Besides, there was no wood.

After that, for what felt like hours, I lay shivering, wrapped in my cloak and the other blanket, looking up at the stars and hearing only the slow steps of the grazing stallion and the soft moaning of the wind.

It was late summer. Late summer and warm weather at Duke Marder’s lofty gray castle. Warm weather in the Bay of Forcetti. There would be no ice in that bay for months.

Sweltering late summer in the forest where I had lived with Bold Berthold. The bucks would have begun to grow antlers for the mating season; but those antlers would have a lot of growing to do still, weapons of gallant combat still sheathed in velvet. Knowing that summer lingered along the Griffin had brought me little comfort, and my mail even less. I was on the northern side of the Mountains of the Mice now, far north of the downs, and I believe at an elevation a good deal higher than that of the smiling southern lands.

Waves crashed against a cliff, and I leaped and sported in them, together with the maidens of the Sea Aelf, maidens who save for their eyes were as blue everywhere as the blue eyes of the loveliest maids of Mythgarthr, fair young women who sparkled and laughed as they leaped from the surging sea into the storm that lit and shook the heavens.

That lit and shook Mythgarthr. Why had I not thought of that? I rolled over, seeking to close blanket and cloak more tightly about me.

Garsecg and Garvaon waited on the cliff, Garvaon with drawn sword and Garsecg a dragon of steel-blue fire. The Kelpies raised graceful arms and lovely faces in adoration, shrieking prayers to Setr; they cheered as a gout of scarlet flame forced Garvaon over the edge.

He fell, striking rock after rock after rock. His helmet was lost, his sword rattled down the rocks with him, and his bones broke until a shapeless mass of armor and bleeding flesh tumbled into the sea.