The Knight

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.

Thunrolf had a horse, and so did his knights, but Pouk and I had to walk, and so did most of the ones that came with us. The road got steeper and steeper, and finally there was a long flight of stairs where the ones that had horses had to leave them, and then more road, and then more stairs with snow and ice on them clear to the top. Some people stopped there and went back, but there were men-at-arms watching us, and we did not try. I told Pouk it was not much to somebody who had climbed to the top of the Tower of Glas, and he told me it was not much to somebody who had climbed to the top of the mainmast as often as he had. We cheered each other up like that, but the truth was that it was a stiff climb, and when I had gone up the stairs in the Tower of Glas with Uri and Baki we had stopped to rest every so often. Going up the Mountain of Fire, nobody stopped at all.

We got to the top, and it was beautiful, just beautiful. Down in the lowlands it was already night and you could see lights in the towers along the bottom wall, and here and there out past it, out in the jungle, where somebody had a little house or maybe just a campfire. Up where we were, there was a fresh cool wind and it was still sunset. The clouds over the sea were gold and gray, and I looked at some and thought, you know, a bunch of knights might ride down that valley any minute. And when the sun got just a little lower some knights did. They were tiny and way far away, but I could see their flags and the gleam of their armor and it was just beautiful. I will never forget it.

Only I never got to see where they were going, because I heard a hammer and looked around to see what it was. The smith had locked a gyve (a kind of iron ring) around Pouk’s ankle, and he was pounding a staple into a big rock so that Pouk would be chained to the rock.

When he was through, Thunrolf told Pouk to pick the rock up and carry it. Pouk tried, but it was so heavy he had to drop it after a couple steps. Finally one of the servants who had come along to watch helped him carry it, and we all went up to the very top. There was a sort of stone terrace there, shaped like a fingernail-cutting, that the Osterlings had built. When you stood on the edge you could look down into the Mountain of Fire. It was not straight down, but a steep slope with rocks jutting out of it in places. It went down and down. You could see way down deep because it was lit up by fire at the bottom. The opening up where we were standing was a long bowshot across, or a little more. But it got narrower as it went down.

Thunrolf made Pouk come over to the edge, and I kept telling myself he was not going to throw him in, because that was what the Osterlings did. I believed it, too. Then the servant who had been helping carry let go and Thunrolf gave Pouk a little push, and he went over the edge.

He rolled and banged around down the slope and tried to grab on to things and hold on, but the rock always pulled him loose. That was when I went for Thunrolf.

The men-at-arms would have killed me then if he had let them, but he made them stop. I had knocked down one and broken the arm of another, but the other knights were holding on to me so I could not fight, and there were too many men-at-arms between me and him. They had the points of their pikes and halberds up against my face and my chest. The knights were holding me, and all they had to do was shove them in. Thunrolf got the smith to put a gyve on my right hand. There was another gyve on the other end of the chain, and he held it up and showed it to the knights.

“Now then, bold Sir Able,” he said. “Do you still maintain that man is your friend, and not your servant?”

I said, “Yes. I told you the truth.”

“My Lord.” Thunrolf sort of smirked when he said that.

The knights that had my arms were trying to twist them, but the strength of the sea was building in me like a storm. I could hear the surf and feel the pounding of the waves. I did not want them to find out they could not twist them, not even with three holding each arm, so I said, “My Lord,” very quick. “I told you the truth, My Lord. He’s my friend.”

“That’s better.” Thunrolf smiled at me. He was still holding up the empty gyve, and he was having a good time. “If he is really your friend, he has been wrongly accused—accused by his own tongue, but wrongly still. Look down, can you see him?”

The knights let go so I could go over to the edge and look. I could not see Pouk at first, but pretty soon I did. The rock he was chained to had gotten stuck on an outcrop, and he was trying to get it loose. I yelled to him to stay where he was, that I would climb down and get him out.

Thunrolf said, “Ah!” You could tell he liked that a lot. “You will if I permit it. Not otherwise.”

I was about ready to rush him again, just trying to get a clear shot at him, but I said, “Please, My Lord, please let me. He hasn’t done anything wrong. Let me go down and bring him back up.”

Thunrolf nodded. “I will, Sir Able, if you mean it. You are willing to risk your life in my Mountain of Fire to save your friend?”

I said, “I sure am, My Lord,” and started to climb over the edge.

He motioned to the other knights, and they stopped me. I felt like pushing them in, and I could have done it, too.

“You may go,” Thunrolf told me, “but not alone. You shall have a companion, another bold knight to help you with your friend and the stone. Who will volunteer?” He held up the gyve again.

Nobody said a thing.

“Let me have a volunteer. Any knight present.” Thunrolf waved the gyve.

I was like him. I thought that two or three would, and maybe all of them, and he would have to choose. But none of them did and you could see some of them backing away a little bit. I did not say anything, but I knew Sir Ravd would have volunteered, and I wanted to tell them.

Thunrolf got mad then. He called them poltroons and cowards, and I could see they wanted to kill him for it, but even so there was no one who would let him put the other gyve on him.

About then I looked down again, and Pouk was gone. I could not see him at all, and I knew he had gotten his rock loose and tried to climb up holding on to it, and had fallen down deeper than ever.

I grabbed on to Thunrolf’s arm then. “I’m going,” I told him. “You can put the other one on me.”

“No,” he said, “one of these cravens must go with you. I want to see—and I want them to see—who turns back first.”

They would not even start, and I told him so and climbed over the edge. He still had the other end of my chain and one of the men-at-arms grabbed it too, and they stopped me. It was going to be a tough climb with two hands, and I knew that if I tried to pull them in, more would grab hold.

“This is your last chance,” Thunrolf told his knights, “your final opportunity. Speak now.”

I stuck my head up over the edge and yelled, “Put it on my other hand! I’ll go!”

I have been awfully surprised here, and more than just once or twice. I know I have said that already, and it is the truth. That was one of them, because Thunrolf put that gyve on his own wrist and snapped it shut, gave his knights one last look, and climbed down with me.

As we went deeper and deeper the air got hotter and hotter and it was harder and harder to breathe. There was smoke in it, and we coughed a lot. I knew there was a good chance we would both die, and I did not want to.

(This is one of those places where it is hard to tell the truth. It may be the hardest of all. I think it is. I went outside and walked around and looked at the sea and the mountains and the beautiful place where we live. If Disiri or Michael had been there I would have talked to them about it, but they were not, and I had to decide for myself. I have, and this is the truth.)

If the Mountain of Fire had been a volcano like we have back home I would never have done it. I knew it was not, and that was one thing that kept me going. I knew that there was another world under Aelfrice, and that it was the sixth world and was called Muspel. I knew that the hole in the middle of the Mountain of Fire went there, and that was where the fire we saw was, and where the smoke was coming from.

So that was one thing. The other one was that I did not think we would have to go clear down to Muspel. Pouk had stopped partway the first time, so I thought he had probably stopped partway again, which was wrong. When Thunrolf got to coughing bad and wanted to go back up, I kept hustling him along. I knew he was trying to tell me that he would have me killed, and sometimes he was able to get most of it out. But I pretended I could not understand and kept pulling the chain on our wrists and telling him to keep moving.

After a while the hole started opening out again, and we were not climbing down the inside of a mountain anymore, we were climbing down a cliff. Thunrolf fell again. He had fallen a dozen times, but that was the worst. I caught the chain, and he was hanging by it. While I was trying to work him over where he could find a toehold, I saw Pouk far below us, with one of the dragons of Muspel coming for him.

I do not believe any two men ever went down a cliff any faster than Thunrolf and I did after that. We got to the bottom and I yelled to Pouk, and I yelled at the dragon, and that was when Thunrolf drew his sword and tried to kill me. I caught his wrist and bent his arm back and he dropped the sword.

This is hard to put down on paper because it happened so quickly. I could not watch the dragon while I was wrestling Thunrolf, but I knew it was coming for Pouk and coming fast. I wanted that sword. I knew I had been saying I would never use one until I got the one Disiri was going to find for me, but I wanted it anyway. That sword seemed to be our only hope, and if Thunrolf had it instead of me he was going to kill me with it and not the dragon.

He dropped it, as I said, and it fell into a crevice in the rock. There was fire coming out of that crevice, and it had fallen so far in I could not see it. I turned as quickly as I could, and the dragon had Pouk pinned under one of its forefeet. Think of a big snake, a crocodile as big as a boat, and one of those flying dinosaurs. Mix all the worst parts together and that is the way a dragon looks. It is worse than any of them, and worse than all of them at once.

I picked up a stone. It was almost too hot to hold, but I threw it. The dragon hissed like a steam pipe and opened its mouth wide, and Garsecg’s face was in there instead of a tongue. He said, “Sir Able, why war you against me?” It was still his voice, but it sounded like a whole rock band.

I explained that Pouk was my friend, and said that if he killed Pouk he was going to have to kill me, too.

“If I do not?” Garsecg smiled, there in the dragon’s mouth. His face was three times the size that it had been.

“Then I’ll be alive to keep my promise. I said I would fight Kulili for you, and I will.”

At that he opened his wings. I had thought that he was big before, but with his wings open he was bigger than any airplane I have ever seen. He took off, and the wind was a hurricane. It blew sand and rocks and fire and us, knocking us down so that we were rolling across level ground as if we were falling down the inside of the Mountain of Fire.

Then he was gone. I looked up, and I could see him high in the sky, and his wings were so big that he looked big even up there. It was a terrible sky, red with dust and lit by the fires below. But up above it, where we see the highest clouds, you could see Aelfrice, beautiful trees and mountains and snow and flowers, and Kulili deep in the cool blue sea.

I could not break the chain that held Pouk to the rock, but I stood on it with both feet and pulled the staple out. If I had not, I do not think that Thunrolf and I could ever have carried him up the cliff and up the inside of the Mountain of Fire.

We almost failed anyway. Sometimes we stopped to rest a little, coughing and choking. We were both so thirsty that we could hardly talk, but I tried to explain to him that the time we had been in the Mountain of Fire might seem like just a few days to us, but it was going to be a lot longer when we got out of it.

“If we get out, Sir Able,” he said, and he picked up Pouk and slung him over his shoulders the way I had carried him, and started climbing again. Pouk’s legs were broken, and sometimes he was conscious and sometimes he was not. Thunrolf could carry him a little, then he would get shaky and I would have to carry him again; but Thunrolf never once asked me to. Not once. After a while I noticed that.

We climbed and climbed. It seemed something was wrong, we could not have climbed down as far as we had climbed up already, and we were noplace near the top. We were no longer in Muspel, but in another world of rock and stone and heat and smoke, one bent around us. I knew that we were going to die, and I could drop Pouk and dying would be faster for him and easier for me. I was too stubborn to do it. That went on so long it seemed like forever. It seemed to me that I had never been anybody’s kid brother in America then, that I had never gone looking for a tree or lived in a hut in the woods with Bold Berthold. That there had never been anything for me, really, but climbing and choking and weariness.

I felt a cool wind. It smelled wrong and tasted wrong, but it was cool and I had burns everywhere, and I had been hot so long I did not notice anymore. I looked up, trying to see where it was coming from and how tough the slope was going to be up above, and I saw stars. I will never forget that, and I can shut my eyes right now and see them again. You do not know what stars are, or how beautiful they can be.

But I do.