The Wizard

Chapter 14. Utcard And The Plain

The hour was just past dawn. “Small enough there can’t but one get in at a time, Sir Svon,” the sergeant said as he hurried along, “an’ I’ve three bowmen there an’ two swords.”

Nodding, Svon limped after him, with Toug in his wake.

The men-at-arms held drawn swords; the bowmen had arrows ready. All seemed vastly relieved by Svon’s arrival. When the sergeant threw wide the iron door, Toug understood. That doorway would allow two knights to stride through abreast, or let a mounted knight to ride through with head unbent; but the Angrborn in the freezing passage beyond it had to stoop, and looked too big to enter. His great, bearded face was like the head of a war drum, scarred, pocked, and dotted with warts; his nose had been broken, and his eyes blazed. Seeing him, Toug drew Sword Breaker.

“Who is your king?” Svon demanded.

“Gilling.” It might have been a war drum that spoke. “Gilling’s true king,blood a’ the right line a’ Bergelmir.”

Although Toug had been watching his eyes, fascinated and terrified, he could not have said whether he lied.

“So say we all,” Svon told him. “Enter, friend.”

“What about the rest?”

“Tell them to return tonight.”

“I’m Schildstarr. Tell the king.”

“His Majesty is sleeping,” Svon replied stiffly “Do you wish to enter—alone—or do you not?”

“I’ll tell ’em.” Schildstarr took a step back. “You better shut this door.”

It swung shut with a clang, and two bowmen heaved the great bar into place.

“Did their king really marry Lady Idnn?” The sergeant whispered, although it seemed impossible for Schildstarr to overhear even if he had crouched with an ear to the door.

Svon nodded, his face expressionless.

“By Thunor!”

“She’s nursing him,” Toug ventured, “with slave women and her maids to help, because it can’t be easy to take care of someone as big as he is. I feel sorry for her—we all do.”

Svon told him, “Fetch Thiazi.” Toug lit a torch in the guardroom and hurried away.

The knee-high steps of the lightless stair that led (through stone enough for a mountain) to the upper levels seemed interminable; the pulse in his wound and the labored scrape of his boots mocked him with his own fatigue.

After a hundred steps or more, he heard feet other than his own, and though he told himself that it was the echo of his own steps returned from the upper reaches of the stair, he soon realized that it was not. Someone or something was descending, moving lightly from step to step.

The air grew colder still, and though he drew the thick cloak Idnn had provided around him, it had lost its warmth. Seeing Mani’s emerald eyes on the step above, he guessed what those eyes portended. “It’s her, isn’t it? It’s the witch.”

“My beloved mistress,” Mani announced solemnly.

“That’s what you call Lady Idnn.”

“Queen Idnn is my beloved mistress too,” Mani explained. “My loyalty to both is boundless.”

A voice from the dark asked, “Would you see her?” It might almost have been the voice of the wind outside, had it been possible for that wind to make itself heard.

“Yes.” Toug leaned against the wall, wishing he could sit. “If we’ve got to talk again, that might be better.”

An Idnn who was not Idnn descended the stairs, more visible than she should have been by the smoky light. “King Gilling is a beast.” The false Idnn spoke as winter speaks. “He must not possess me—that I have come to tell you. I bring Sir Able, and Sir Able may save me.”

“Sir Svon would,” Toug offered.

“So would you. You have not lain with a woman.”

Toug shook his head. “Not yet.”

“You speak truth. Is he truthful, Mani?”

“Oh yes!”

“I’ve seen it,” Toug explained. “I—know what to do.”

“You have not seen King Gilling receive a bride. He will lie upon his back, his member standing.”

Hesitantly, Toug nodded.

“Disrobed, I will love it as if it were a dwarfish man. I will draw staring eyes and a smiling mouth. I will anoint it with sweet oils, cozen and kiss it, beg its love. Gilling will reply, speaking for the dwarf I kiss. Erupting it will bathe me in semen, and I will praise and kiss the more, saying how happy it has made me and begging it not to go.”

“Lady Idnn will not do that.” Toug spoke as confidently as ever in his life.

“If I do not, or show disgust by any word or act, I will die,” the false Idnn told him. “I will not be the first to perish so, you may believe. Do you think she cannot bear him a child?”

Toug managed to say, “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“His semen will violate her. When she grows big with child, know you how big she will grow?”

The false Idnn began to swell. Toug shut his eyes but found he saw Idnn still, her body monstrous, misshapen, and surmounted by a weeping face. Unseen hands stripped away her clothing and opened her from breast to thigh. He pressed his hands to his eyes to shut out the blood; she writhed behind their lids, trembled, and lay still.

When he came to himself, he found he was sitting as he had wished, sitting on the cold and dirty floor of a landing, rocking and weeping.

“It hasn’t happened yet,” Mani told him; and Mani’s voice, not normally kind at all, was kinder than Toug had ever heard it. “It may never happen.”

“It won’t,” Toug declared through his tears. “I won’t let it. I’ll kill him. I don’t care if it’s murder, I’ll kill him.”

“It isn’t. Now pick up that torch, and puff the flame before it goes out.” Mani sprang from the last step to the landing, and to Toug’s surprise rubbed his soft, furry side against Toug’s knee. “It’s murder when I kill another cat, except in a fight. It would be murder for you to kill, oh, Sir Garvaon or Lord Beel, except in a fight. But King Gilling is no more like you than Org.”

Suddenly frightened, Toug rose. “Is he down here?”

“Org? Not that I know of.”

“But that’s what happened, right? When Sir Svon and Sir Garvaon fought the giants. Org was there, and he was pulling down the torches so the giants wouldn’t see him.”

Mani yawned, concealing his mouth with a polite black paw. “Certainly.”

“And he... Did he hold them from behind, or something? Was that how the knights won?”

“I don’t know. It became a riot in the dark.”

Toug scrambled up the step from which Mani had jumped. “I’ve got to get Thiazi. Sir Svon wants him.”

“Then get him, by all means. May I ride your shoulder?” Toug held out his free arm. “Come on.”

When they had climbed another score of steps, Toug asked, “Was it Org who stabbed the king?”

“I don’t know who it was,” Mani told Toug. “I didn’t see it happen, though I wish I had.” After another step, he added, “I doubt it. Org breaks necks, mostly, from what I’ve seen. You might not think anybody would be strong enough to wring the necks of these giants, but he is.”

“The king was stabbed. Stuck deep, so a sword or a big dagger.”

“The king killed Master Crol,” Mani said thoughtfully.

“I know.” Toug struggled to the top of another step. “This would be easier if there was something to hold on to.”

“I’ll speak to them.”

“Org’s supposed to do what Sir Svon tells him. Somebody told me that. I think it was you.”

“It may well have been.”

“Killing Master Crol wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all. So why shouldn’t Sir Svon tell Org to kill the king?”

“I see no reason at all,” Mani conceded. “However, he did not. I was eavesdropping, you see, when Svon gave Org his instructions. No mention was made of the king.”

“It’s not nice to listen in when other people talk.”

“Though I hesitate to disagree, I must. I often find it pleasant, and at its best it can be quite educational. A cat who keeps his ears open learns a great deal.”

Toug climbed farther; he was nearing the floor he wanted and their talk would soon be at an end. He stopped, waving his torch to brighten its flame. “I think you ought to tell me everything. I need to know a lot more.”

“About what Sir Svon told Org?” Mani sprang from Toug’s shoulder and stretched. “Well, it was while Sir Svon—”

“About what you and the witch are doing. She wants me to kill the king. If I do, we’re going to be in a lot more trouble here than we are already.”

“She wants you to save Queen Idnn,” Mani objected. “That’s rather a different thing.”

“But she wants Sir Able to come back. She told Thiazi.”

“Whom we’re supposed to fetch? Didn’t I hear that? I assume Sir Svon wants him, since he sent you.”

Toug would not be deterred. “She told him the king ought to hire him if he wants to stay king, and that sounds like she’s on the king’s side.”

Mani smoothed his whiskers. “I doubt it.”

“Doesn’t she tell you?”

“She confides in me from time to time,” Mani said stiffly. “However, she has not confided that. I was to accompany Sir Able and his awful dog. I was to serve Sir Able to the best of my poor ability, as I have. Sir Able gave me to Queen Idnn, and I transferred my loyalty to her without a murmur. She in turn gave me to her royal husband, another step up the social scale. You agree?”

“But you’re still the witch’s,” Toug declared bitterly.

“Certainly.” Mani sprang up the next step. “Oh, I see. You’re afraid I’ll tell King Gilling you plan to kill him.”

Toug, who had not thought of that, gaped.

“I won’t, of course. The point you fail to grasp is that I’m a loyal friend. If someone tried to kill him again in my presence, I might interfere. Or not. It would depend on the circumstances.”

“It was a scene of indescribable confusion,” Idnn had told us the previous evening. “You can’t understand what happened if you don’t understand that. The torches had gone out, or most had. Sir Svon and Sir Garvaon were fighting the champions His Majesty had matched them against, and others, too, because others had joined the fight. Some were fighting each other, drunken quarrels and settling old scores. His Majesty straightened up as if in a fit. He threw his head back and shook. That’s when we knew something was terribly wrong. He bent double, and we slid off his shoulder. A moment later he was lying at our feet. His minister came, and we supposed our screams had brought him, but he told us afterward that an Aelf had said our husband was in danger.” Idnn paused, searching my face and Marder’s. “He wasn’t our husband then. Have we explained that?”

“No!” The Knight of the Leopards could keep silence no longer.

I said, “Proceed, please, Your Majesty.”

“It was horrible. Thiazi told us to look after him and disappeared. He’d gone to get people to help carry him into the castle, but we didn’t know that. We stood beside him and shouted, trying to keep the rest from stepping on him. Our father came, and Thiazi with a litter and slaves to carry it. They were blind—blind men, and we want to put a stop to it. But they were blind and it was dark and everyone yelling and fighting, and the blind men and Thiazi rolled him onto the litter and they carried him away, with us trying to guide them, and we thought he was dead.”

Gerda said gently, “You haven’t eaten nothin’, Queen Idnn, when that deer haunch is awfully good. And there’s onions! Onions is a real treat up here.” Idnn pecked at her food dutifully.

Watching her, I wished I could paint. The rocks behind her caught the dying light, and she in her diamond diadem and black velvet, with Duke Marder’s aged face to her right and the Knight of the Leopards in his leopard-skin pelisse to her left, would have made such a picture as artists dream of.

Woddet whispered, “Are we going there?”

“I believe I am,” I replied. “I would not compel you.”

“If you go, I go.”

“And I,” the Knight of the Leopards declared.

Marder looked up from his plate. “We must comprehend the situation. Do you, Sir Able?”

I shook my head, and Marder spoke to Idnn. “Do you know who struck the blow?”

“No.” Idnn laid aside the silver-mounted dagger she had produced when we sat down, a bite of venison still impaled on its point. “We were on his shoulder. Some of the... of our folk were fighting, and he was commanding them to stop when he was stabbed from behind. It was dark, very dark, though a few torches were still lit.”

“That’s the key,” Marder said. “If we’re to help you, Your Majesty—and I for one will do everything in my power—we must grasp it. Questions cannot but seem impertinent, yet I must ask them. Will you forgive me?”

“Certainly.” Idnn’s fingers warred in her lap.

“We must know, and I am a friend no matter what answer you make. Did you yourself stab him?”

She looked up, her hands extended to the sunset clouds of purple and gold. “Lady of Skai, witness our innocence! If we have done this thing, strip us of all favor!” Slowly she lowered her hands, stared at the palms, and held them up to Marder. “We will not ask whether you’ve cut off a woman’s hands, Your Grace. You have not, we’re sure. But if our husband’s blood is found on these, you may cut them off and welcome. Or have the headsman do it.”

Marder nodded. “I understand, Your Majesty. It had to be asked, though I expected no other reply. Another now, repellent as the first. Who do you think the assassin might be? I understand that you did not see the blow struck and can offer no proof. But have you no conjecture?”

“None, Your Grace.”

From the other side of their fire, Hela gave me a significant look. “Sir knight?”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “Your Majesty, I must speak. Hela there knows all that I intend to tell you. Sir Woddet and Sir Leort know but a part, as do these others save His Grace, who knows nothing of it. Will you hear me out?”

“Gladly,” Idnn said, “if it will cast any light on our husband’s misfortune.”

“It may cast more darkness,” I told her. “I’m afraid it will. This chief minister, is he trustworthy?”

Hela muttered, “Is anyone?”

Bold Berthold rumbled, “My stepdaughter talks too much truth, Sir Able. You can trust me, but no Frost Giant can.”

Idnn nodded. “Just so. Our husband trusted Thiazi, and we would guess that he was right to do it—Thiazi wouldn’t betray him. But he’s a son of Angr’s. We’re a human woman.”

“He told you that one of the Aelf had told him King Gilling was in danger?”

“So we said.”

“Then I believe I’ll trust him in that, at least. An Aelfmaiden came to tell me that her sister had stabbed the king. I told Sir Woddet, Sir Leort, and some others, though I didn’t tell them that this woman is of the Fire Aelf. Her name’s Uri, and I know her pretty well. Her sister’s name is Baki. I know her too.”

Hope shone in Idnn’s eyes. “This is news indeed!”

“If it’s true. I don’t trust it.”

Marder shook his head ruefully. “Coming from the Aelf? Neither would I.” He turned to Idnn. “A new question, Your Majesty. Can the king speak?”

“When we left him, no.”

“Then we cannot know whom he believes struck him down, though that would be a most useful thing to know. What of this Thiazi? What does he say?”

“That it was one of our people, one of the Angrborn. There were rebellions when my royal husband ascended to the throne, which a dozen claimed. Most of his reign has been spent putting them down. Thiazi believes a rebel has tried to win by stealth what he could not win by war.”

The Knight of the Leopards said, “What of you? What do you believe?”

Idnn sighed. “Let us say first that Thiazi’s an adept. His art confirms his opinion, thus we give it great weight.”

“Lying spirits,” Marder muttered.

The Knight of the Leopards would have spoken, but was silenced by Idnn’s upraised hand. “Second we must tell you, Sir Able, that we, too, have been visited by a messenger. We’ll speak of that when we’re alone.

“Third we should tell all of you that our noble father believes that one of our party struck down our husband. He’s loath to say it, but he’s our father and we know it’s what he believes. He’s sick with worry, and we must give weight to his opinion. Our father’s a knowing man of wide experience, and an adept himself.”

Idnn paused to smile at me. “Lastly, we must give some weight to what Sir Able told us. We’d give it more if he gave it more himself.”

“As for me,” Marder said, “I give most weight to your own opinion. We have what? The Aelf, the Angrborn, and Lord Beel’s folk. Which do you favor?”

Idnn sighed. “None. We—it’s one reason we fled.”

“We will give you escort to your father’s castle or to King Arnthor—wherever you wish to go.”

Idnn’s eyes flashed. “Do you imagine that we’d abandon our wounded husband? Never! We come in search of aid for him, for knights with the courage to ride to Utgard. Will you come, Sir Able? If you’ll come he will live and we triumph. We know it!”

“I can’t,” I said, “‘til there is ice in the Bay of Forcetti. Until then, I have to hold this pass. I’m sorry.”

Marder’s hard blue eyes searched my face. “What if I release you?”

“I’d go, of course, Your Grace. Do you?”

Marder shook his head. “I’d intended to when I came here—it was part of my purpose. Now I must hear more.”

“Then ask,” Idnn told him. “Have you any notion how hard we’ve ridden these past days? Or the dangers we’ve escaped? For Sir Able alone we’d talk all night.”

“He will not be alone,” Sir Woddet told her.

The Knight of the Leopards: “Sir Able holds my parole. If he frees me, I’ll go with him. If he won’t free me, I must go with him.”

Hela said softly, “My master has no men-at-arms save my brother, and not a bow save his own. Those the Black Knight brought outnumber good Sir Woddet’s and Sir Leort’s together. What does the Black Knight say?”

Idnn chewed and swallowed. “That he must hear more. Your Grace, we’re learning how famished we are. Ask, and let us eat, and when you’re done we’ll lay aside our meat.”

“Your Majesty, it was not my intent—”

“After that we’ll sleep, for we’ve slept in our saddle these past three nights, and once we fell for sleeping. At sunrise we’ll ride north again. Alone if need be.”

“We need to speak of that, perhaps.” Marder sipped his wine. “Sir Woddet and Sir Leort honor their paroles. I’ve given none, Sir Able, yet you have not bound me. I give you mine now. I shall remain your prisoner until my ransom is paid, set it as high as you will. Is that sufficient?”

I nodded. “It is, Your Grace, and if you’ll free me from my vow, that’ll be ransom enough.”

Marder shook his head. “I want to know more. There’s Sir Leort’s question and some of my own. Your Majesty, how did you come to wed King Gilling? Why did you undertake so arduous a journey?”

The blade of Idnn’s dagger paused halfway to her mouth. “Brave Sir Leort, you must pardon us. We had forgotten.”

“I withdraw my question,” the Knight of the Leopards said hastily, “and I regret most heartily any pain it has given you.”

Marder said, “Yet we must have an answer. You wanted all my questions, Your Majesty, and now I have another. You cannot name the assassin. Still, it would give you pain even to voice your opinion. Why is that?”

Idnn laid down her fork. “Because so many innocent men may die. You have not been to Utgard, Your Grace?”

Marder shook his head. “No. Never.”

“Our folk take slaves from the kingdoms to the south.” Idnn’s voice grew gentle. “This old couple we see—the woman is chained. Were they slaves in Jotunland?”

“I don’t speak proper for a queen,” Berthold rumbled, “but you’ve the right of that.” Gerda whispered urgently, and he added, “Your Majesty’s got the right of it.”

“They blinded you, goodman?”

“Took my eyes. So they done.”

“We have hundreds like him in Utgard,” Idnn told Marder, “though all are younger and most much younger. It was dark, as we told you, but what is darkness to a blind man? And who had better reason to hate my royal husband?”

“I should not have pressed you for an answer,” Marder confessed. “Let us talk no more of this. If the Angrborn came to think as you do, they would slaughter every man. Do all of you who heard Queen Idnn understand?”

“We’ll say nothing,” Woddet assured him; others nodded.

“We may be wrong,” Idnn whispered. “We hope—oh, how we hope!—we’re wrong.” She paused to collect herself. “We slid from His Majesty’s shoulder, as we said. We’d had Mani, but we must have dropped him. We carried His Majesty into the keep, where there were a few lights, and some slave women came with lanterns. We didn’t know how badly he was hurt. We didn’t even know whether he was still alive, and his blood was crawling everywhere.”

I asked, “Where’s his wound?”

“In his back.”

Idnn laid aside her trencher and rose, and we with her; I had forgotten how small she was, and shuddered when I tried to imagine her in a crowd of fighting, veiling giants.

“Would you—Hela, is that your name?”

“Your Majesty’s servant. Perhaps it would be more convenient for Your Majesty if I knelt?”

“No, stand. Stand, and turn your back to them.”

Hela did. Rising on tiptoe, Idnn pushed aside the ragged hide Hela wore to show the place.

“On the right,” I said, “under the shoulder blade?”

“Yes, that’s it. That’s it exactly.”

Marder said, “Struck from behind by a right-handed foe. If one of us held the dagger, he’d have to be a tall man.”

“A very tall man, with a dagger,” I said. “I’ve never seen King Gilling, but I’ve seen Angrborn, and stabbed a few. They’re much bigger than Hela.”

Woddet said, “He could’ve been standing on something.”

Marder shook his head. “Not likely.”

“And yet,” I said, “Lord Beel, who was there, fears it was one of his party. He joined you, Your Majesty, while you were guarding the fallen king?” Idnn nodded.

“He was with you, when you carried the king inside?”

“Of course. Our husband was talking then. He’d only been moaning before. He asked our father and Thiazi who had struck him. Our father said he didn’t know, and Thiazi that he’d been stabbed by some rebel. We carried him upstairs after that—the slaves did, but we went with them. He was coughing blood, and each time he coughed I thought he was going to die. It was horrible. We were walking behind his litter then, and there’d be great clots of blood. They...”

Abruptly, Idnn sat again, and Marder, Woddet, the Knight of the Leopards, Blind Berthold and Gerda, Hela and Heimir, Uns and I resumed our places as well, permitted by her nod.

“We were going to tell you they seemed alive,” Idnn said weakly, “but that wasn’t really how it was. They were dying. Like—like jellyfish. Did we tell you we’d bandaged him? We had, and there wasn’t much blood from his wound, but he kept coughing and coughing.”

Marder said, “A sucking wound,” and I nodded.

“We got him into bed, all the slaves and Thiazi and our father and we. He said to bar the doors of the castle, you understand. He was afraid the person who’d stabbed him would come in and... Finish. That was what he said. Finish.

“Thiazi went to see they were barred; the knights had followed our father in. Sir S-Svon and Sir Garvaon. They’d killed Skeol before the king was struck, and after that had just been trying to save their lives. They’d come up with him, with Master—with Master Papounce and others of our father’s folk. Some were hurt, and we bandaged them.”

I drank the last of my wine, poured out the lees, and put aside my flagon. “You wish us to return to Utgard with you. I will if I can, but maybe it’d be good for you to tell us about it. What can we do?”

Idnn raised her head. “Our father talked to our husband while Thiazi was gone. We were there and heard it, but took no part. He began by asking our husband whom he could trust, and when our husband said he could trust only Thiazi, our father assured him that he could trust us, saying we had been sent in friendship by our king and would never betray him.

“Our husband was grateful. He was weak, you understand. Very weak, but he thanked our father over and over. Then our father reminded him that Thiazi’s magic had said the throne would stand secure if he took you into his service.”

She looked at Marder, Woddet, and the Knight of the Leopards. “We don’t think you know about that, but it did. Thiazi recited spells and looked into his crystal, and a spirit there said the king must get Sir Able to fight for him or lose his throne. He and Thiazi had told our father, and our father reminded him of it.”

Marder asked whether the king had agreed.

“Oh, yes.” Idnn drew her black velvet cloak about her more tightly; the sun had vanished behind the mountains of the west, and the wind promised snow. “He wanted our father to send for you, and our father promised he would.”

“No one has come,” Woddet said.

“We have come. We wed His Majesty next day. It seemed to us—we mean to our husband, our father, and we—that it would be best if the ceremony were witnessed by Thiazi, Thrym, and other Angrborn. We sacrificed to our Overcyns and the Giants of Skai. Only small sacrifices, three fowls and two rabbits, but they were all we had. Our husband...”

Marder said, “Yes?”

“He wanted to sacrifice twenty slaves. We were able to dissuade him, telling him that King Arnthor would never come to our aid if he knew we’d offered human beings.”

“You hoped for help from Thortower?” Marder asked.

“Yes. Yes, of course we did. We do. We hope that when King Arnthor learns that we, a noblewoman of his realm, have become Queen of Jotunland, he’ll send help.”

“At last I understand,” said the Knight of the Leopards.

“Understand also that silence is best,” Marder told him.

I said, “Your father promised King Gilling he would send someone for help. He cannot have intended to send you.”

“He’ll be half mad with worry,” Idnn conceded, “but he will soon persuade Thiazi to view us in his crystal, or view us himself in a basin—you may tell the rest about that if you wish. Then he’ll see us here speaking to you, and that we’re safe. Sir Garvaon and Sir Svon offered to go, but they were badly hurt. I was terribly afraid my father would let Sir Svon go. He isn’t wounded as badly as Sir Garvaon and is younger. He has recovered remarkably. Their squires offered to go in their places, either or both together, but one’s been wounded and they’re only boys. So we went.”

“And came through safely,” I remarked.

“By the Lady’s grace. We prayed—prayed ever so hard—that she’d let us live ‘til our marriage was consummated, and she’s given us reason to hope she’s granted our prayer. You’ve been patient, all of you. May we try your patience a bit more? Sir Able, you hold His Grace’s parole?”

“I suppose I do, but I’ll free him of it whenever he wishes. I ask no ransom.”

“Then free him, and we’ll beg him to go to King Arnthor and tell him how badly we need his help in Utgard.” Idnn turned to Marder and took his hand. “You’ll go, won’t you, Your Grace? Peace—a peace with Jotunland that will last—is almost within our grasp, and we’ll bless you to the end of our days.”

“You are a most excellent queen, Your Majesty.” Marder shook himself as Gylf would when he left a river. “So good, so beautiful and brave, that it’s a great temptation to give you whatever you ask, no matter how unwise. Ten years ago, I probably would have.”

He rummaged in a pocket of his jerkin. “Let us arrange lesser matters first. Sir Able, I have money in earnest of my ransom. You have given me fealty have you not? You must obey my instructions. Take this and do not argue. We must ride tomorrow, and we should ride early.”

The purse I had refused earlier landed in my lap.

“For the remainder of my ransom, you will have my favor as long as I live, and a seat in my council.” He cleared his throat. “Now you’re to answer yes. Are those things, with the foreign coins, sufficient?”

“Your Grace—” I began.

“I thank you for your most gracious acceptance,” Marder told me firmly. “In return, I free you from your oath. You have held the pass indeed, but you have held it long enough.”

Uns started to clap, but I silenced him.

“I ride north at first light in service to the Queen of Jotunland,” Marder continued. “I take it that you, my loyal vassal, will ride with me?”

“Joyfully, Your Grace.”

Woddet exclaimed, “And I with Sir Able, if he’ll have me.” To which the Knight of the Leopards added, “And I!”

Marder thanked them both. “As for your errand to King Arnthor, Your Majesty, my herald can-perform it better than I could. I’ll send him in the morning, south at the same time the rest of us go north. But I warn you, whatever help our king sends will probably arrive too late. Men will have to be collected and supplied. Your yourself rode from Thortower to this point on the border of Jotunland, did you not?”

Silently, Idnn nodded.

“How long did it take you, Your Majesty?”

“Two months.” Idnn’s answer was so softly voiced that Blind Berthold cupped his ear to hear her.

“Before winter set in?” She nodded.

“My herald must reach King Arnthor first. Preparations will not began until he does.” Marder tugged his beard. “I told Sir Able once that he was to hold this pass until there was ice in the bay. The bay will be clear before we can have any hope of help from King Arnthor. We will have to settle this ourselves, and we’ll need every sword for it.”

Next day, still early of a dark morning, when Cloud was eating league after league of the Plain of Jotunland with a swinging walk that pressed every other animal in the column, and Heimir and Hela were loping at my right and left like the Valfather’s wolves, I felt Thiazi’s gaze. I touched spur to Cloud and drew Eterne; and so it was that Thiazi, looking up from his crystal, could report to Beel (and to Toug and Mani, who had just come in) that Idnn and I were riding north at the head of an army.