The Knight

“Yes. Huge.”

“You should see this. This is no joke, Lord, what you are doing.”

Baki said, “It is a terrible place, and we want you to stop.”

“Because you think I’ll be killed?”

Both nodded.

“Then I’ll be killed.”

Gylf growled deep in his throat.

“Lord, this is foolish. You—”

I raised my hand, and finding the rag still in it began to clean my hauberk again. “What’s foolish is spending your whole life being scared of death.”

“You believe that because some knight told you.”

“Sir Ravd, you mean. No, he didn’t tell me that. Only that a knight was to do what his honor demanded, and never count his foes. But you’re right just the same, a knight told me. That knight was me. People who fear death—Lord Beel does, I guess—live no longer than those who don’t, and live scared. I’d rather be the kind of knight I am—a knight who has nothing—than live like he does, with power and money that can never be enough.”

I got up and pulled on my hauberk. “You’re afraid the Angrborn will get to Utgard before I catch them. Isn’t that what you were going to tell me?”

Uri shook her head. “No, Lord. They are not far. You can overtake them today, if you wish.”

“But you would be alone,” Baki added, “and you would surely die. Those others, this Lord Beel you talk about and the other old gods who march with him, will never overtake the giants.”

“Not if Utgard were a thousand times farther than it is,” Uri confirmed.

“Then we’ve got to slow them down.” I rolled up my own blankets and picked up the saddle blanket. “I told Lord Beel I would, and I wish that was all I had to worry about.”

“Pouk,” Gylf explained to Uri and Baki.

“Exactly. We’ve got to set Pouk and Ulfa free. They’ll be slaves here ’til they die if these Angrborn kill me. You found them, Gylf?”

He nodded.

When I had saddled the stallion, I put on my helmet and buckled on Sword Breaker. “All right, where are they?”

“Utgard.”

Chapter 63. The Plain Of Jotunland

Night had fallen before we reached the Angrborn’s camp; but it lay upon the bank of a wooded stream, and the fire they had built there—a fire of whole trees, some so thick through the trunk that a man with an ax would not have felled them after an hour’s hard work—lit all the countryside. Two mules turned on spits above that fire.

I had taken off helmet and hauberk and crept far into the firelight to see the Angrborn for myself. When I got back to the woods where Uri, Baki, and Gylf were waiting, I had already formed a plan.

“There are only seven.” I seated myself upon a log I could only just see. “We argued about their number, and everybody thought there were more.”

“In that case you will not need our help,” Uri declared. “A mere seven giants? Why, you and your dog will have put an end to them before breakfast.”

“Won’t you fight them?”

Uri shook her head.

“You and Baki fought the Mountain Men.”

“We distracted them, mostly, so that you could fight them.”

“We are really not very good at fighting on this level, Lord.” Baki would not meet my eyes.

“Because they used to be your gods?”

Baki sighed, a ghostly whisper in the darkness beneath the trees. “You were our gods, Lord. They never were.”

“We could appear in their fire,” Uri suggested, “if you think it would do any good.”

“But the giants are not afraid of us,” Baki added. “They would order us out, and we would have to go.”

“If they did nothing worse, Lord.”

Gylf growled.

“Then you’re not willing to help us? If that’s how matters stand, you might as well go back to Aelfrice.”

“We will if you order it, Lord,” Uri told me, “but we would rather not.”

I was disgusted. “Tell me why I ought to keep you.”

“Be reasonable, Lord.” Uri edged toward me until her hip pressed mine; her hip was as warm and as soft as that of any human woman. “You yourself did not wish to fight them until you had rescued your servant—”

“Mate, too,” Gylf added.

“From Utgard. Suppose we fought, all four of us. Baki and I, who can achieve next to nothing, and you and your dog. What would be the upshot? We would be killed, or more likely you and your dog would be, while Baki and I would have to flee to Aelfrice or die.”

She stopped, inviting me to speak; I did not.

“What would be the good of that? A dead giant? Two? None, if you trust my judgment. A knight and a dog to feed the crows. Let us delay them, instead. Is that not what we set out to do?”

Ten minutes later, crawling through high grass toward a group of tethered mules, I found myself thinking that what I was doing was probably more dangerous than fighting. Every move I made rustled the grass; and if the Angrborn had not heard me, the mules tied to the gnarled birch I was creeping up on certainly had. They were pretty easy to see because of the firelight; their ears were up and forward, and their heads high. Their nervous stamping sounded louder than the purling of the stream. It seemed that the Angrborn must certainly hear it, and it struck me when I was very close that mules could kick and bite as well as or better than horses. They thought something was about to attack them, and they were by no means defenseless.

“Those Frost Giants are cooking a couple of you this very minute,” I whispered.

Mani had said once that a few animals could speak; I had not believed him then and did not believe him now, but it was at least possible that he had been truthful.

“You’re supposed to be sensible animals. Don’t you want to get away from here?”

I had continued to crawl while I talked; now a rope touched my cheek. I drew my dagger and cut it and heard a little snort of satisfaction from the mule whose tether it had been.

Then I was at the tree and dared stand up, keeping the trunk between me and the fire. My dagger was good and sharp, but the tethers were tough; I was still sawing at them when a loose mule wandered by. With a sort of overwrought absentmindedness, I wondered whether it was one I had freed or one freed by Uri or Baki.

The tether I had been cutting parted, and I found the next one.

There was a rumble of angry voices, deep and loud, from the direction of the fire. One of the Angrborn stood up, another shouted, and a third snarled. I slashed at the tough tethers frantically.

Half a bowshot off, a mule crossed a patch of moonlight, galloping clumsily but fast, urged on by an Aelfmaiden lying like a red shadow on its back.

Another tether parted. Nearly dropping my dagger, I searched the trunk for more, but every one I found hung limp. Three Angrborn had left the fire and were walking toward me by that time, two shoulder-to-shoulder, the third lagging behind.

“Gylf!” I shouted. “Gylf!”

The bay of a hound on the scent answered me; in a moment that seemed long, it became the excited yelp of a hound with its prey in view. Somewhere a mule screamed, a stark cry of animal terror, and a dozen scattered in every direction. One of the giants dove for one as a man my size might have dived at a runaway goat, but it slipped through his hands. For a moment he held its tail; it kicked at his arm and vanished into the darkness.

The black beast that had killed so many Mice sprang at the throat of another Angrborn. Arms thicker than any man’s body closed around it.

“Disiri!” I ran to the fight. The third Angrborn was lumbering toward me when a mule with a crimson shadow on its back dashed in front of him, and he tripped and fell.

An Angrborn rolled toward me, wrestling a creature that was neither hound nor wolf, an animal far larger than a lion. Like a boulder tossed by a wave, Sword Breaker’s hard-edged, diamond-shaped blade struck and struck again. Without time or preparation that I could recall afterward, I found myself astride the ravening beast I had fought to save, and racing like the wind across the hills.