The Knight

Chapter 4. Sir Ravd

“Lad!” the knight called from the back of his tall gray. And again, “Come here, lad. We would speak to you.”

His squire added, “We’ll do you no hurt.”

I approached warily; if I had learned one thing in my time in those woods with Bold Berthold, it was to be chary of strangers. Besides, I recalled the knight of the dragon, who had vanished before my eyes.

“You know the forest hereabout, lad?”

I nodded, giving more attention to his horse and arms than to what he said.

“We need a guide—a guide for the rest of this day and perhaps for tomorrow as well.” The knight was smiling. “For your help we’re prepared to pay a scield each day.” When I said nothing, he added, “Show him the coin, Svon.”

From a burse at his belt the squire extracted a broad silver piece. Behind him, the great bayard charger he led stirred and stamped with impatience, snorting and blowing through its lips.

“We’ll feed you, too,” the knight promised. “Or if you feed us with that big bow, we’ll pay you for the food.”

“I’ll share without payment,” I told him, “if you’ll share with me.”

“Nobly spoken.”

“But how can I know you won’t send me off empty-handed at the end of the day, with a cuff on the ear?”

Svon shut his fist around the scield. “How do we know you won’t lead us into an ambush, ouph?”

“As for the cuff at sunset,” the knight said, “I can give you my word. As I do, though you’ve no reason to trust it. On the matter of payment, however, I can set your mind at rest right now.” A big forefinger tapped Svon’s fist; when Svon surrendered the coin, the knight tossed it to me. “There’s your pay for this day until sunset, nor will we take it from you. Will you guide us?”

I was looking at the coin, which bore the head of a stern young king on one side and a shield on the other. The shield displayed the image of a monster compounded of woman, horse, and fish. I asked the knight where he wanted me to take him.

“To the nearest village. What is it?”

“Glennidam,” I said; I had been there with Bold Berthold.

The knight glanced at Svon, who shook his head. Turning back to me, the knight asked, “How many people?”

There had been nine houses—unmarried people living with their parents, and old people living with their married children. At a guess, three adults for each house ... I asked whether I should include children.

“If you wish. But no dogs.” (This, I think, may have been overheard by some Bodachan.)

“Then I’ll say fifty-three. That’s counting Seaxneat’s wife’s new baby. But I don’t know its name, or hers either.”

“Good people?”

I had not thought so; I shook my head.

“Ah.” The knight’s smile held a grim joy. “Take us to Glennidam, then, without delay. We can introduce ourselves on the road.”

“I am Able of the High Heart.”

Svon laughed.

The knight touched the rim of his steel coif. “I am Ravd of Redhall, Able of the High Heart. My squire is Svon. Now let us go.”

“If we get there today at all,” I warned Ravd, “it will be very late.”

“The more reason to hurry.”

We camped that night beside a creek called Wulfkil, Svon and I putting up a red-and-gold tent of striped sailcloth for Ravd to sleep in. I built a fire, for I carried flint and steel now to start one, and we ate hard bread, salt meat, and onions. “Your family may worry about you,” Ravd said. “Have you a wife?”

I shook my head, and added that Bold Berthold had said I was not old enough yet.

Ravd nodded, his face serious. “And what do you say?”

I thought of school—how I might want to go to college, if I ever got back home. “A few more years.”

Svon sneered. “Two rats to starve in the same hole.”

“I hope not.”

“Oh, really? How would you support a family?”

I grinned at him. “She’ll tell me how. That’s how I’ll know when I’ve found her.”

“She will? Well, what if she can’t?” He looked to Ravd for support, but got none.

I said, “Then would she be worth marrying?” Ravd chuckled.

Svon leveled a forefinger at me. “Someday I’ll teach—”

“You must learn yourself before the day for teaching comes,” Ravd told him. “Meanwhile, Able here might teach us both, I think. Who is Berthold, Able?”

“My brother.” That was what we told people, Ben, and I knew Bold Berthold believed it.

“Older than yourself, since he advises you.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Where are your father and mother?”

“Our father died years ago,” I told Ravd, “and my mother left soon after I was born.” It was true where you are, and here as well.

“I’m sorry to hear it. Sisters?”

“No, none,” I said. “Our father raised my brother, and my brother raised me.”

Svon laughed again.

I was confused already, memories of home mingling with stories Bold Berthold had told me of the family here that had been his and was supposed to be mine. It was all in the past, and although America is very far from here in the present, the past is only memories, and records nobody reads, and records nobody can read. This place and that place are mixed together like the books in the school library, so many things on the wrong shelf that nobody knows what is right for it anymore.

Ravd said, “You and your brother don’t live in Glennidam, from what you said. You’d know the name of Seaxneat’s wife, and the name of her new child, too, since there are only about fifty people in the village. What village do you live in?”

“We don’t live in any of them,” I explained. “We live by ourselves, and keep to ourselves, mostly.”

“Outlaws,” Svon whispered.

“They may be.” Ravd’s shoulders rose and fell by the thickness of a blade of grass. “Would you guide me to your house if I asked you, Able?”

“It’s Bold Berthold’s, not mine, sir.” I was glaring at Svon.

“To your brother’s then. Would you take us there?”

“Gladly. But it’s no grand place, just a hut. It’s not much bigger than your tent.” I thought Svon was going to say something; he did not, so I said, “I ought to become a bandit, like Svon says. Then we’d have a nice house with thick walls and doors, and enough to eat.”

“There are outlaws in this forest, Able,” Ravd told me. “They call themselves the Free Companies. Do they have those things?”

“I suppose they do, sir.”

“Have you seen them for yourself?”

I shook my head.

“When we met, Svon feared you would lead us into an ambush. Do you think the Free Companies might ambush us in sober fact? With three to fight?”

“Two to fight,” I told him. “Svon would run.”

“I would not!”

“You’ll run from me before the owl hoots.” I spat into the fire. “From two lame cats and a girl you’d run like a rabbit.”

His hand went to his hilt. I knew I had to stop him before he drew. I jumped the fire and knocked him down. He let go of the hilt when he fell, and I drew his sword and threw it into the bushes. We fought on the ground the way you and I did sometimes, he trying to get at his dagger while I tried to stop him. We got too close to the fire and he broke loose. I thought he was going to draw it and stab me, but he jumped up and ran instead.

I tried to clean myself off a little and told Ravd, “You can have your scield back if you want it.”

“May.” He had never stirred. “May governs permissions, gifts, and things of that sort. You speak too well, Able, to make such an elementary mistake.”

I nodded. I had not figured him out, and I was not sure I ever would.

“Sit down, and keep my scield. When Svon returns, I’ll have him give you another for tomorrow.”

“I thought you’d be mad at me.”

Ravd shook his head. “Svon must become a knight soon. His family expects it and so does he. So do His Grace and I, for that matter. Thus, he will. Before he receives the accolade, he has a great deal to learn. I have been teaching him, to the best of my ability.”

“And me,” I told him. “About can and may and other things, too.”

“Thank you.”

For a while after that, we sat with our thoughts. Before long I said, “Could I become a knight?”

That was the only time I saw Ravd look surprised, and it was no more than his eyes opening a little wider. “We can’t take you with us, if that’s what you mean.”

I shook my head. “I have to stay and take care of Bold Berthold. But sometime? If I stay here?”

“You’re very nearly a knight now, I believe. What makes a knight, Able? I’d like your ideas on the matter.”

He reminded me of Ms. Sparreo, and I grinned. “And set them right.”

Ravd smiled back. “If they need to be set right, yes. So tell me, how is a knight different from any other man?”

“Mail like yours.”

Ravd shook his head.

“A big horse like Blackmane, then.”

“No.”

“Money?”

“No, indeed. I mentioned the accolade when we were talking about my squire. Did you understand me?” I shook my head.

“The accolade is the ceremony by which one authorized to perform it confers knighthood. Let me ask again. What makes a man a knight, Able? What makes him different enough that we have to give him a name differing from that of an ordinary fighting man?”

“The accolade, sir.”

“The accolade makes him a knight before the law, but it is a mere legality, formal recognition of something that has already occurred. The accolade says that we find this man to be a knight.”

I thought about that, and about Ravd, who was a knight himself. “Strength and wisdom. Not either one by itself, but the two together.”

“You’re closer now. Perhaps you are close enough. It is honor, Able. A knight is a man who lives honorably and dies honorably, because he cares more for his honor than for his life. If his honor requires him to fight, he fights. He doesn’t count his foes or measure their strength, because those things don’t matter. They don’t affect his decision.”

The trees and the wind were so still then that I felt like the whole world was listening to him.

“In the same way, he acts honorably toward others, even when they do not act honorably toward him. His word is good, no matter to whom he gives it.”

I was still trying to get my mind around it. “I know a man who stood his ground and fought the Angrborn, with just a spear and an ax. He didn’t have a shield, or armor, a horse, or anything like that. The men with him wanted to run, and some did. He didn’t. Was he a knight? This wasn’t me.”

“What was he fighting for, Able?” It was almost a whisper.

“For Gerda and his house. For the crops he had in his fields, and his cattle.”

“Then he is not a knight, though he is someone I would like very much to count among my followers.”

I asked if he had many, because he had come into that forest alone, except for Svon.

“More than I wish, but not many who are as brave as this man you know. I’d thank every Overcyn in Skai for a hundred more, if they were like that.”

“He’s a good man.” I was picturing Bold Berthold to myself, and thinking about all that we would be able to buy with two scields.

“I believe you. Lie down now, and get some rest. We’ll need you well rested tomorrow.”

“I want to ask a favor first.” I felt like a little kid again, and that made it hard to talk. “I don’t mean anything bad by it.”

Ravd smiled. “I’m sure you don’t.”

“I mean I’m not going to try to steal it, or hurt you with it either, or anybody. But could I look at your sword? Please? Just for a minute?”

He drew it. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask when we had sunlight, when you could have seen it better. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to wait?”

“Now. Please. I’d like to see it now. I promise I’ll never ask again.”

He handed it to me hilt first; and it seemed like a warm, living thing. Its long straight blade was chased with gold and double-edged; its hilt of bronze and black horsehide was topped with a gold lion’s head. I studied it and gripped the sword to flourish it, and found with a sort of shock that I had stood up without meaning to.

After a minute or two of waving it around, I positioned the blade so that the firelight fell on the flat, just ahead of the guard. “There’s writing here. What does it say?”

“Lut. You can’t read, can you?”

I knew I could. I said, “Well, I can’t read this.”

“Lut is the man who made it.” Ravd held out his hand, and I returned his sword. He wiped the blade with a cloth. “My sword is Battlemaid. Lut is a famous bladesmith of Forcetti, the town of my liege Duke Marder. Your own duke, Duke Indign, is dead. Did you know?”

“I thought he must be.”

“We’re attempting to assimilate his lands, and finding them a bit too much to chew, I’m afraid.” Ravd’s smile was touched with irony.

“Was that Duke Marder on the scield you gave me?”

Ravd shook his head. “That’s our king, King Arnthor.”

“What was that on his shield?”

“A nykr. Lie down and go to sleep, Able. You can save the rest of your questions for tomorrow.”

“Is it real?”

“Sleep!” When Ravd sounded like that, you did not argue. I lay down, turned my back to the fire, and fell asleep as soon as I shut my eyes.