The Wizard

Chapter 36. The Fight Before The Gate

Even as time in Aelfice runs more slowly than in Mythgarthr, so time in Muspel runs more slowly than time in Aelfrice, and time in Niflheim slower still. We had been away half a day. When we returned, Kingsdoom lay in ruins, the red rag floated over Thortower, and the season was high summer.

We found a woman begging food. We had none to give her, and our coins were worthless—there was no bread to buy “The king’s dead,” she told us, “and Osterlings rule Celidon, eating those they don’t enslave. I have a hiding place.”

She would not show it to us, saying there was room for one and no more. The Earl Marshal asked about his castle of Sevengates, but she knew nothing of it.

“I’d like to go to Thortower,” he told me. “Payn’s my bastard. Did you guess?” He knew a secret way; and I told him I would go with him, hoping to find Wistan. He said, “I must have a sword. I won’t see sixty again and was never a good swordsman. But I’ll try, because I must.”

I said, “That’s all swordsmen do, My Lord.”

We thanked the beggar woman, promised we would bring food when we had found some, and went to the inn. It was a grim business to walk, that fine summer day, and find cobbled streets choked with rubble, shops burned, and people gone. In a public square, the Osterlings had kindled a fire and dined on human flesh. Bones littered the fine paving blocks, gnawed and half burned. “I know of nothing more horrible than this,” the Earl Marshal said.

“I’d a servant,” I said, “who did the same, though he didn’t cook his meat. Thus I’m inured. Is it worse to kill a child, or to eat it before the worms do?”

The inn was still standing, its windowpanes gone and its doors smashed. I called for Pouk and Uns. My shouts brought Uns to a fourth-floor window, but brought a patrol of Osterlings as well. Uns threw rubble from his window, and the Earl Marshal snatched the leader’s sword as soon as I dispatched him, so we fared well enough.

We went up when the fight was over, meeting Uns on the stair. (It was on that stair that a thought from Cloud reached me. Lonely and wild, joyous at the touch of my mind; but fearful, too.) Uns had my shield, he said, and my bow and quiver; we followed him to the lumber room where he had hidden them. “‘N dis, sar. Dis ol’ hat. Ya fergit dis?”

It was the helm, old, as he said, and rusty again. I put it on, and saw Uns sturdy and straight, the Earl Marshal older, knowing, and because he was knowing, frightened.

“Pouk’s gun hum ta see his wife,” Uns told me. “On’y he’s got some a’ yar dings, ta. ’E’s keepin’

‘um fer ya.”

I asked about Wistan, but Uns knew nothing; nor had he more news of the war than we had heard from the beggar woman. We held a council then, speaking as equals. The upshot was that the Earl Marshal and I would go to Thortower as planned while Uns collected the beggar woman we had promised to help, fed her (for he had some food), and packed such possessions as we could carry. We would meet again at the inn and try to reach Sevengates, which might still be holding out.

That decided, I drilled the Earl Marshal with his new sword. It was a saber whetted on the inner edge; he found it unhandy at first, but soon grew fond of it. I thought it too short and too heavy at the tip; but the blade was stiff and sharp, and those are the most important qualities.

We slept, woke after moonrise, and went into the broken lands east of the city. Bushes hid an iron door in a cliff little taller than a lance; the Earl Marshal produced a key and we went in, I fearing we would find we were in Aelfrice.

So it nearly proved. Hands snatched our clothes from the time we relocked the door behind us, and the thin voices of Aelf mocked and challenged us. When the end of the long, narrow tunnel was in sight, I caught one by the wrist; and when the Earl Marshal unlocked a second door and admitted us to the wine cellar, I dragged her into its lesser darkness and demanded her name.

She trembled. “Your slave is Baki, Lord.”

“Who thought she’d have fun with me in that tunnel.” I drew my sword.

“T-to t-take you to Aelfrice where you w-would be safe.”

“Who abandoned me chained in a cell.” I felt no rage against her, no lust for vengeance, only a cold justice that had pronounced sentence already. She did not speak.

The Earl Marshal asked whether I knew “this Aelf.”

“She’s declared herself my slave a thousand times,” I told him, “and I’ve freed her over and over, and neither of us believed the other. Would you like an Aelfslave?”

“Very much.”

“She’ll swear fealty to you, if I spare her. And betray you at the first opportunity. Won’t you, Baki?”

“I was your s-slave because Garsecg wished it, Lord. I will be his, if you wish it.”

I spoke to the Earl Marshal. “We’re going up, aren’t we? It’s obvious that neither of them are down here.”

Baki said, “There is a stair to your left, Lord.”

“Thanks. I could kill you here, Baki. Cut your rotten throat. I’m going to take you where I can see to make a clean thrust instead. Want to talk about the blood I drank when I was hurt? Let’s hear you.”

Perhaps she shook her head—it was too dark to see.

The stair opened into a pantry, the pantry into a wide hall hung with shields and weapons. Night had fallen while were in the tunnel, but candles guttered at either end of the hall, more than enough light for a good thrust.

“May I speak, Lord? I know you will kill me, and it will be no use to defend myself. But I would like to say two things before I die, so you will understand when I am gone.”

Perhaps I nodded—doubtless I did. I was looking at her through the eyes of the old helm, a thing like a woman molded of earth, blazing coals, and beast-flesh.

“You have refused me a hundred times. I have been bold, and you have refused. I have been shy, and you have refused. I have helped you over and over, but when my back was broken you would not mend me yourself, bringing a boy to do it. I knew that if I came to your cell and freed you, you would refuse again. I hoped that if I left you there until you were nearly dead, you might feel gratitude. I would have come before you died. I would have demanded oaths before I fed and freed you. That is the first thing.”

The Earl Marshal said, “I don’t know whether I should envy you or laugh, Sir Able.”

I released Baki and removed the helm; I had seen her too well, and the sight sickened me. “Would it help you to know I’m just a boy playing knight, My Lord? I’ve seen you as you are and Baki as she is, and if you saw me the same way you’d know. Men don’t mock boys—or envy them either.”

“Then I’m no man,” the Earl Marshal told me, “for I’ve envied a thousand.”

I turned to Baki. “Why don’t you bolt? You might save your life.”

“Because I have more to say. We pinched and tweaked you in the tunnel. How many of us could you catch?”

I had heard the soft steps of scores of feet; I made no reply.

“Only me, because I was trying to draw you to Aelfrice and safety while the others only wished to tease you.”

I believe I might have stabbed her if I had been granted another second; Osterlings burst in, and there was no time. Baki snatched a sword from the wall and fought beside us, an Aelf a maiden, and last a living flame. The sword Uri had stolen sifted our foes and drew me on and on, but Baki was always before me, cutting men as harvesters cut grain.

When the last had fled, she confronted me, her stolen sword ready. “Who carried the day, Lord? You?”

“No.” I had on the helm but would not look at her.

“Will you meet me? Sword-to-sword?”

“No,” I repeated. “I’d kill you and I don’t want to. Go in peace.” Her sword fell to the floor; she had vanished.

“We’d better not stay here,” the Earl Marshal said; I agreed, and he showed me a narrow stair behind an arras.

Describing our search of Thortower would be weary work—indeed it was weary work itself. We had to stop more than once to rest; and in the end I searched alone, and returned for him (hidden in his library) when I was sure that neither Payn nor Wistan were to be found.

“They are dead, I suppose.” He rose stiffly. “I was trained with the sword as a boy. It had been twenty years and more since I’d handled one.” He held his out although I had seen it earlier. “Do you know how many men I had slain with the sword?”

I shook my head and dropped into a chair, exhausted.

“None, but I killed four today. Four Osterling spears, with one the Aelf and I killed together. How long can such good fortune endure?”

“Until we reach Sevengates, I hope, My Lord. East?”

“Five days ride.”

“Then three or less if we hasten.” I was hopeful, for I thought Cloud might rejoin me soon.

“We’ll be hurrying into the teeth of the army the Caan will send to recover the Mountain of Fire.” The Earl Marshal wiped his face and stared at the ceiling. “If we take the direct route, that is. You know the north?”

“Tolerably well.”

“So do I. It might be better for us to turn north at first, then east, then south.” This we set out to do, tramping away from Kingsdoom unopposed, although we had left Thortower in an uproar. The first night, while the Earl Marshal, Uns, and the beggar woman Galene slept, I lay awake staring up to Skai; once I believed I glimpsed Cloud among the stars, and sent urgent thoughts to tell her I was below. They cannot have reached her, for there was no thought from her.

Next day we encountered Osterlings everywhere. Twice we fought them. We had to leave the road, and when we returned to it, to leave it again. They had striped the countryside, burning every village and farm, and devouring people and livestock. That night we finished the bread and bacon we had carried; and although we continued to feed our fire when they were gone, we would much rather have fed ourselves.

“I have dined well throughout a long life,” the Earl Marshal remarked. “I’ll die now with an empty belly. It seems a shame. Do they eat well in the Lands of the Dead? Queen Idnn told me you spent some time there.”

“Only as a visitor. No, My Lord, they do not.”

“Then I won’t go, if I can help it.”

Galene looked at Uns, but he only grinned and said, “Ya feed dem Os’erlin’s, if’n ya die, sar. Yar belly be emp’y, on’y not deirs, nosar.”

“May I speak openly of the last place in which we were well fed, Sir Able?” I nodded.

“Might we not go to Aelfrice again? All of us?”

“Are you asking if I could take so many? Yes, I think I might. But food is uncertain there, and we might lose a year while we ate.”

“Better to lose a year than to lose our lives,”

“We might lose those too. You didn’t see the dangers, My Lord, but there are many. Dragons come there often, and there are many others, of which the worst may be the Aelf themselves. Don’t you remain there?”

He nodded.

“Let that be enough.”

Galene muttered, “You know nothing of hardship.”

Uns corrected her. “Sar Able do.”

“A knight, with servants? I don’t think so.”

The Earl Marshal told her to mind her tongue; I said that if I could endure the swords and spears of our enemies, I could surely endure anything a woman might say—provided she did not say it too often.

“I don’t know what you might have gone through, that’s fact. Wounds and all. Fighting’s a knight’s trade, but the rest shouldn’t act like it’s just a trade like a butcher’s. I been poor my whole life and what I had was taken ’cause you knights didn’t fight enough. I’d a man. We’d a baby...”

“Many of those knights paid with their lives,” the Earl Marshal muttered.

Uns put his arm around Galene and held her hand in his, which seemed more sensible. Looking into the fire, I saw Baki’s face. She mouthed a word I could not catch, pointed to my left, and vanished. Excusing myself, I rose.

Deep in the shadows, a woman with eyes of yellow flame wrapped me in such an embrace as few men have known. I knew her by her kiss, and we kissed long and long. When at last we parted, she laughed softly. “The wind is in the chimney.”

I agreed that it was.

“I had better go, before the fire burns too bright.” I stepped back and she vanished, although her voice remained. “News or a promise—which would you hear first?”

“The promise, by all means.”

“Unwise. Here is my news. Baki says you were looking for your squire and the fat man’s clerk. If you still want them, they are defending a little place called Redhall. We last met near there.”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“There are two hundred attacking it, and more coming. It is already full of women and children who fled them. You may know some of the women.” I asked who they were.

“I paid no heed to them, and would not have known the fat man’s clerk if I had not spoken to the boy. Toug?”

“Wistan,” I said. “Toug’s Sir Svon’s squire. Or he used to be.”

“I doubt it matters. Do you care about the big women more than you care about me?”

“I care for no one as I care for you.”

She laughed, delighted. “I enthrall you. Wonderful! My reputation remains intact. Are you going?”

“No! I’m going to Aelfrice with you, forever.”

She stepped into the moonlight, naked and infinitely desirable. “Come then.” Her hand closed on mine. “Leave the others to their deaths. They die soon in any case.”

Until then I had not known we stood upon a hilltop; the ground ahead fell gently; jeweled air shimmered not far down the slope. “I can’t,” I said.

Disiri sighed. “And I cannot love you as you love them. Will you come if I promise to try? To try very hard?”

“I can’t,” I repeated. “Not now.”

“I will tire of you. I know you know. But I will come back to you, and when I come back we will know such joy as no one in either world has ever known.”

She must have seen my answer in my eyes, because she vanished as she spoke. The hill vanished with her, and I stood on level ground.

Uns and Galene were sleeping when I returned to the fire. “Wistan and Payn are at my manor of Redhall,” I told the Earl Marshal. “It’s besieged. I’m going to help them.”

The old helm stood before the fire in the place where I had been sitting before I left it. I sat beside it, put it on, and removed it at once.

“How do you know?” the Earl Marshal asked.

“Disiri just told me.”

He said something else then, but I did not answer and I no longer recall what it was.

I tapped the old helm. “I wasn’t wearing this.”

The Earl Marshal raised an eyebrow. “Of course not.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t. Very glad. Are you going?”

“To Redhall with you? The queen said specifically that Payn was there?” I nodded.

“Then I am. I must.”

I had hoped he would not, and had planned to send Uns and Galene away with him. I made it clear that I had no reason to believe Payn and Wistan were there beyond Disiri’s assertion, and warned him that no Aelf could be trusted.

“I loved his mother,” the Earl Marshal said. “I loved her very much. I couldn’t marry her. She was a commoner, one of Mother’s maids. I’ve never told anyone this.”

I said he need not tell me.

“I want to. If I die and you find Payn alive, I want you to know. She became pregnant and hid in the forest, half a day’s ride from Sevengates. I gave her money and bribed my father’s foresters to bring her food. Sometimes I went to see her.” His face writhed. “Not nearly often enough.”

Setting the old helm on my head once more, I beheld such suffering as I hope never to see again.

“She was four days in labor. She could not deliver. A forester had fetched his wife, and when she stopped breathing Amabel opened her and took out my son.”

I removed the helm. “You’re torturing yourself. It’s of the past, and not even Overcyns can change what’s past.”

“They adopted Payn for my sake, the forester and his wife. Their names were Hrolfr and Amabel, rough people but goodhearted. Payn was thirteen when my father ascended, and after that I was able to see that he received an education. When His Majesty raised me to office, I made him one of my clerks. I could’ve given him a farm, but I wanted him by me. I wanted to see him and speak to him daily. To advise him.”

The old helm fascinated me. When I wore it, our fire was only a fire, but the stars!

“My wife has born no child, Sir Able, and I’ve had no lover save Wiliga. You understand why, I feel sure. I’ve never told Payn I’m his father, but I believe he must have guessed long ago.”

Reaching Redhall we hid in the forest, weaving fruitless plans and hoping for some means of crossing the besiegers’ lines and scaling the wall. While the Osterlings built catapults and a siege tower on wheels, Uns wove snares of vines and willow twigs. He caught conies and a hedgehog, and Galene found berries which were not poisonous, though sour. Without that food we would have starved.

The Osterlings were their own provisions. When they had nothing left, they attacked; those killed or sorely wounded became food for the rest. They used scaling ladders, and it was by these that we hoped to mount the wall.

“Darkness and rain would favor us,” the Earl Marshal said, not for the first time. “It seldom rains at this season, but the moon is waning.”

“So’s us,” Uns remarked dolefully.

“You can eat me when I die,” Galene declared quite seriously, “but I won’t die so you can eat me.”

That decided me. I had given my oath to the Valfather indeed; I would break it, only by a trifle, and take whatever punishment he imposed. I spoke to Skai when none of the rest could hear me. Clouds arrived to blind the moon at my order, and autumn’s chill crept south from Jotunland in servitude to me.

“Here you are!” Galene grasped my arm. “We’ve been looking everywhere. This’s the time.”

Stealthily we left the forest, the Earl Marshal behind me, Galene behind him, and Uns behind her armed with a stout staff. Rain pierced the blind dark, delighting us.

We were nearly close enough to steal a ladder when the gate of Redhall swung wide and its defenders rushed upon their foes. Tree-tall women overturned the tower on wheels, sending it crashing down on the huts the Osterlings had built. The ropes of catapults were cut and axes laid to their timbers. A great golden knight, a hero out of legend, led the attackers, fearless and swift as any lion. I shouted “Disiri!” as I fought, and saw the moment at which he heard my cry and understood what it portended, and his joy, and how he raged against the Osterlings then. His sword rivaled the lightning, and his shout of Idnn! its thunder. My blade rose and fell, slashed and thrust beside his, and as in Thortower, it seemed to seek, tasting the blood of each who fell, and springing away dissatisfied. I fought in our van at first, and afterward before our van, for that sword drew me forward, thirsty and seeking, slew contemptuously, and sprang away.

There came new thunder, a black storm that raged across the field raining blood. I knew his voice and called Gylf to me, as tall at the shoulder as any black bull, with eyes that blazed like suns and fangs like knives.

I would have said I was weak with hunger, and that the sea Garsecg had waked in me could lend me no strength. It was long coming, but came when a chieftain of the Osterlings barred my path. His armor was savage with spikes, and he wielded a mace of chains with three stars. They outreached my shield as a man reaches over a hedge and knocked me flat in the mud. I rose as the sea rises, saw him for the horror he was, and I drove the stolen sword into his throat as Old Toug might have dispatched a hog. How many fell after that I cannot say; but the rest fled, so that what had begun as a sally ended as a victory, the first of Celidon in that war.

Dawn came, yet the storm still blew so dark we scarcely knew it. Every knight who reads this will say we ought to have mounted and ridden in pursuit of our foe. We did not. We had few horses, those we had were thin and weak, and we staggered with fatigue. I took off the old helm, for the sweat was pouring down my face, there in the rain and the cold; and by gray light I saw the field of battle for what it was not, mud and water before the gate of Redhall, littered everywhere with the leaves and sticks of the fallen huts, with chips and notched timbers and the pitiful bodies of the slain. And the rain beat upon their faces and the faces of the wounded alike, on men and women who screamed and moaned and tried to rise. Some went among the wounded Osterlings and slew them, but I did not.

Instead I looked for the golden knight who had led us. He had dwindled to Svon—Svon with half a shield still on his left arm, and half a swan on it, and a swan on his helm, a swan of gilt wood that had lost a wing in the fight. We embraced, something we had never done before, and he helped me get the Earl Marshal into the manor, with Gylf gamboling to cheer us by his joy, and wagging his tail.

Twenty or thirty people came crowding into the room, drawn by the news that a nobleman of high station had joined them. They hoped, I am sure, that he had brought substantial reinforcements; but they were gracious enough not to grumble when they learned that Gylf, Uns, and I comprised the whole. (Some may even have been relieved, for they were on short rations.) We made them stand back and be quiet, and finding Payn among them let him attend his father. Other wounded were carried in. The many women cared for them, while Svon and I with others went out to search the field for more, and collect such loot as the dead might provide.

Outdoors again, I asked Svon who commanded.

“You do, Sir Able, now that you’re here.”

I shook my head. “I saw Her Majesty among her guard.”

“My wife will defer to you, I’m sure. This is Redhall, and Redhall is yours. Your duke is not present, and you are no subject of ours.”

I congratulated him on his marriage, and he smiled, weary though he was. “It was my hope, my dream, to rise to the nobility. You remember, I’m sure.”

“To return to it. Your sire was noble.”

“I thank you. To return.” The bitter smile I had come to detest in my squire twisted his lips. “I would have been overjoyed to die a baronet. Now I find I am a prince.”

I congratulated him again, saying Your Highness.

“A fighting prince far from his wife’s realm, who finds his experience as a knight invaluable. Do you want to hear our story?”

I did, of course. Idnn, as I knew, had taken a hundred young Skjaldmeyjar with her when she came south. They had astonished Kingsdoom and had attended the nuptials of their queen, attestation to her royal status—a status Arnthor had readily recognized, seeing an ally who might restrain Schildstarr. When he had refused to free me, they had fought the Osterlings, the most feared troops in his host, in the hope that he would grant Idnn a boon.

The first warm days had shown only too plainly that the dreaded Daughters of Angr could not continue to fight. Idnn had marched north with Svon, Mani, and a few others, but was stopped short of the mountains by the Caan’s northern army which had already ravaged Irringsmouth and was scouring the countryside for food to send south. Driven back, they had joined others who fled or fought, taking refuge in manors and castles that the Osterlings had quickly overwhelmed, and so come to Redhall. Of the hundred Skjaldmeyjar, twenty-eight remained before our battle, and twenty-seven after it. The unseasonable cold had made it possible for them to fight, and Svon had ordered the sally; but it was certain they would be unable to fight again until the first frost.

“Would you like to meet the leader of those who joined our retreat?” Svon asked. “He’s over there.” He gestured, the rain (warmer now) running from his mail-clad arm.

I said, of course, that I would very much like to make his acquaintance. In my own defense, I add here that the day was still dark, and the man Svon had indicated was wearing a cloak with the hood up.

“Sir Toug! Sir Able is eager to speak with you, and I’m surprised you’re not at least as eager to speak with him.”

Toug managed to smile at that, and gave me his hand. I asked about his shoulder, and he said it had healed. That was not the case, as I soon discovered; but it was better.,

“I said I didn’t want to be a knight, and you said I was one, that I couldn’t help it,” he told me, “and we were both right. The Osterlings came, and there was nobody to lead our village who knew fighting except me, so I had to do it. They didn’t want me at first, so I led by being in front. We beat off a couple parties and a Free Company joined us. Our stock was gone and the barley stamped flat, so we went south. We got to where Etela was, but they’d only started fixing it back up. She’s here, and her mother and father, too.”

I asked whether Vil were her father, and Toug nodded. “They didn’t want to say it ’cause they weren’t married, Sir Able. Only now they are. He won’t let you say my lord, though. He’s still Vil.”

“Quite right,” Svon muttered.

“But I’m Sir Toug and Sir Svon’s Prince Svon now. He knighted me—I was his squire up north. You did that.”

I nodded again.

“So he did, and Etela and I are going to get married next year if we’re still alive.”

Gylf leaped up, putting his forepaws on Toug’s chest and licking his face. It amazed and amused me like nothing else. I cannot help laughing when I think of it, even now.

“There’s somebody else here I ought to tell you about,” Toug said, “you always liked them. It’s the old couple from Jotunland, the blind man that was a slave on some farm.”

A thousand things came rushing at me then—the ruin of the land, Arnthor’s eyes, the drunken smile of his sister, and the empty, lovely face of his queen. Sunless days in the dungeon, cold that was the breath of death, Bold Berthold’s hut, wind in the treetops—Disiri’s kiss, her long legs and slender arms, the green fingers longer than my hand. Gerda young, as Berthold had remembered her, with flaxen hair and merry eyes. Mag in Thiazi’s Room of Lost Love.

The Lady’s hall in the flowering meadows whose blossoms are the stars, and, oh, ten thousand more. And I, who had been laughing only a moment past, wept. Toug clasped me as he would a child, and spoke to me as his mother must have to him: “There, there... It don’t matter. It don’t matter at all.”

A rider came, the same Lamwell of Chaus who had played at halberts with me in the tournament, so worn that he could scarcely hold the saddle, on a horse so nearly dead it fell when he dismounted. The king lived—was in the south in need of every man. We held a council and I said I would go, that the rest might go or stay, but the king who had freed me had need of me and I would go to him. Pouk and Uns stood by me, and their wives by them; they must have shamed many. Idnn said she could not go, the Daughters of Angr could not fight in summer and could scarce march in it—they would have to march by night, and short marches, too. She and Svon would go north now that the enemy in this part of Celidon had been beaten, and hope for cooler days in the hills. They had lost three-quarters of their number in service to a foreign king, as she reminded us, and overturned the siege tower. We agreed, some of us reluctantly.

Afterward I spoke with Idnn privately; it was then that she told me of her visit from Uri and her interview with the Valfather. When we had talked over both, I asked a boon. “You may have any in our power,” Idnn said, “and we’ll stay if you ask it. But aside from our husband we shall be of scant service to you.”

“You may be of greatest service to me, Your Majesty, at little cost to yourself. I gave Berthold and Gerda to serve you in the north. Will you return them?”

She did most readily.

And did more with it, creating Payn a baron of her realm—this sworn before witnesses. When it was done, the Earl Marshal declared that if he died, Lord Payn of Jotunhome was heir to his castle and lands, and all he had.

I would have left next morning, but could not. There could be little provision in the south. Two days we spent in gathering all we could. There was another matter, too. I hoped Cloud would join me. If she had, I would have left the rest and ridden straight to the king; she did not, though I called every night. She had been the Valfather’s last gift, and it seemed to me that she knew I had broken the oath I had given him and was executing his mild justice. After we left Redhall, I called to her no more.