The Wizard

Chapter 10. Oaths And Ill Mews

“A naked girl.” Ulfa looked Toug up and down. Toug nodded.

“Did I say you hadn’t grown since the last time I saw you? I know I did. Ymir! Was I wrong!”

“I didn’t expect it either,” Toug assured her, “and we don’t have to have clothes. She’s hiding, and she can keep on hiding. But if she could get clothes she could talk to people—it’s pretty dark already because of the snow, and it’ll be night before too much longer.”

Ulfa nodded wearily. “Winter days are short up here.”

“So we don’t have to, but it’d help. Boots for me would help, too. And I’ve got to find that cat.”

“King Gilling’s cat.”

“Lady Idnn’s. Only maybe he’s really Sir Able’s. Cats don’t like to tell you about this stuff.”

“He’s not—” Ulfa searched for a word. “Outgoing? Not as chatty as you might like him to be, this cat.”

“Oh, he talks a lot.”

“A talking cat.”

Toug nodded. “That’s why the king wants him, or part of it. We’re supposed to be in our room and Thiazi’s watching, so he must know we’re gone. Have you got any clothes besides what you’re wearing?”

“Upstairs.” Ulfa gestured, and Toug trotted after her.

“You’ve got nice clothes yourself,” she said when they had started climbing a stone stair whose steps were far too high. “What happened to your nice warm cloak?”

“Baki’s got it now,” Toug explained. “Lady Idnn gave it to me. She said if I fought well when we fought the giants, she’d give me a shield with the white griffin on it. And she did, only it’s back with Sir Svon. When she gave it to me, she gave me this too. She said somebody who was going to be a knight shouldn’t shiver.”

“It’s always cold here. I suppose you’ve noticed I’m dressed in rags?”

“They aren’t that bad,” Toug declared stoutly.

“They’re the best I’ve got. Why don’t you get your friend Lady Idnn to give this—this naked girl—”

“Baki.”

“This Baki some clothes?”

“She might,” Toug said thoughtfully. “Only all the rest of us are outside the walls. When Mani—Mani’s the cat.”

“The talking cat.” Ulfa looked back at him.

“Yes. When Mani talks to the king, he’s got to get him to let them in. Or that’s what I think.” He looked up the steps into darkness. “Aren’t there any torches?”

“Just cressets. It’s a basket of iron straps you can burn things in. If this castle weren’t stone, we couldn’t use them. And there aren’t many of those, because the giants can see in the dark and they don’t care if we fall off.”

“I see,” Toug said.

“Which means you don’t. All our men are blind, so they don’t care that there’s no cressets either. Are we going to have to go back down to give my clothes to your girl?”

“She’ll come up with us, I think.”

Ulfa stopped to look behind her, and he bumped into her in the darkness. “Sorry!”

“I don’t see her,” Ulfa declared.

Baki’s hand slipped into Toug’s. “You might not,” Toug said. “Or Mani either, if Mani didn’t want us to see him.”

The three of them went down a dismal hallway that would have been as dark as the stair if some of the doors along it had not been open; at the end Ulfa opened the door of a room larger than Toug had expected. In it, two narrow beds had been pushed together to make a wide one. Ulfa tossed fresh wood on the embers in the little fireplace.

“This isn’t so bad,” Toug said.

“Most aren’t this nice. Pouk can fight.”

Nodding, Toug went to the window and put his head out. The turret in which he and Mani had been confined was visible far below and to the right, with an umber flag standing out straight from, a pole on the roof.

“You’ll catch cold.” It sounded like home.

He turned back to Ulfa. “I will anyhow, I guess.”

“Here.” In quick succession she handed him a woman’s linen shift, stained but serviceable, a gray wool gown with holes under the arms, and a short cloak that might once have been bearskin, although most of the fur was gone.

“I don’t have shoes,” Ulfa told him, “and I don’t have stockings I can spare. Pouk might be able to give you a pair of boots.” She considered. “But I don’t know and I’m not about to give away his things, not even to my brother. Or he might be able to get you some.”

“I really appreciate this,” Toug said. He held up the gown. “I’m afraid this will be too long.”

“Then she’ll have to hem it. This girl—I thought you said you and the cat were the only ones they let come in.”

Still looking at the gray gown, Toug nodded.

“Then where did this girl come from? Is she one of us?”

“She followed me, I think. She was hurt and I helped her. Sir Able told me how.” Memories of long rides through snow and freezing wind returned, and he added, “This was down south, just this side of the mountains.”

“You want me to help you find her now?”

There was a soft knock. Toug said, “That’s her, I’m pretty sure.”

He opened the door and handed the clothes out to Baki. “She’ll come in when she’s dressed.”

In a moment Baki did, smiling as she returned his cloak.

Ulfa stared at her. “I thought you said my gown would be too long.”

“She’s gotten taller,” Toug explained.

Baki made Ulfa a curtsy. “Thank you for sharing your clothing with me.”

Ulfa was looking at Toug. “This’s your—your...?”

“My friend, that’s all.”

“There’s a lot going on here that I don’t understand,” Ulfa said. A stubborn set to her mouth reminded Toug of their father.

Baki said, “There is so much that I do not understand either, Ulfa. You are Toug’s sister? That is what he says, and your faces are like.”

Ulfa nodded. “I’m three years older.”

“More than that. Why are you in Utgard?”

Toug said, “You were at home the last time I saw you.”

Ulfa nodded. “Do you want the whole story? It won’t take long.”

Baki said, “I do.”

“All right. A knight called Sir Able came to our house in Glennidam.” Ulfa sat down on a stool near the fire. “Do you know how many women would kill to have your red hair?”

“Certainly. I know Sir Able, too. Much better than you do. Did you want to marry him?”

Ulfa shook her head.

“Of course you did.” Baki smiled, not quite carefully enough to hide her teeth. “Why else would you chase him?”

Ulfa turned back to Toug. “You wanted me to dress your girl. I’ve done it. Do I have to look for your cat, too?”

Toug considered. “I don’t think so. For one thing, Mani’s looking for you, so the best thing might be for you to go on doing what you’d do usually, so he can find you. If he does, tell him we’ll be back soon.”

“Tell your cat that.”

Toug nodded. “He won’t talk to you, and probably he’ll pretend not to understand. But he will, so tell him. Talk to him exactly like you would a person.”

Baki giggled, a brass cymbal tickled with fingertips.

“Meantime you two will be looking for him.”

Toug nodded, and Baki said, “Yes. We will.”

“Listen here. You look for my husband, too.” Toug stared.

“Are you married now?”

“Yes. His name’s Pouk. I told you.”

“Sir Able’s servant,” Baki explained.

“I don’t know what he looks like,” Toug said.

Baki said, “I do.”

Ulfa ignored her. “Not much taller than I am, big nose, tattoos on the backs of both hands.” For a moment, Ulfa smiled; it was the first time Toug had seen her smile since he had found her. “You said you wanted my story.”

Baki said, “But you did not tell it.”

“No. No, I didn’t. I will now. I met Sir Able. This was when he took Toug away.” Toug himself nodded.

“We were all terribly worried about him, but my father wouldn’t let me look for him, and he couldn’t go himself and leave my mother and me alone. So I left after they’d gone to bed. I had money from some outlaws Sir Able and my father killed. It wasn’t a lot, but I thought it was. I buried half in the woods. I took the rest, just walking you know, with a long stick.”

“You could’ve been killed,” Toug told her.

“That’s right, but I could’ve been killed at home, too. There was a man who tried to rape me, and I got his sword and just about killed him. Except for that, it wasn’t too bad.”

Baki cocked an eyebrow. “You were not in love?”

“I thought I was. I didn’t say I wasn’t in love, I just said I didn’t expect Sir Able to marry me. He was a knight, and I’m a peasant girl. Or I was then.

“I asked about him everywhere I went, but it was years before I struck his trail, north along the War Way with a squire and a war horse and the rest of it. Sometimes at inns and where they’d stopped the people mentioned a manservant, too.”

Ulfa fell silent; to start her again, Toug said, “Pouk.”

“Yes, and I was interested in that because I was hoping Sir Able would hire me. I was a servant or a barmaid when my money ran low. He knew me, it seemed to me he’d liked me, and a servant—a woman who was willing to work and willing at night, too, you know what I mean—might be able to find out what he’d done with you.”

She smiled again, bitterly. “I used to imagine you starving in a dungeon. You’re thin, but I wouldn’t call you starved. What did he do with you, anyhow?”

“I don’t think we ought to get into that right now.”

Baki said, “What we must do right now—so I think—is tell each other exactly what we want most. What each hopes to do. I am going to make a rule, that each of us must name one thing and one only, the one thing that concerns—”

Toug said, “Won’t they all be different?”

“I am coming to that. Before we name it, every one of us must swear we will help the others. I will help you and Toug, Ulfa. But you must help me, and not Toug alone. Toug must swear to help us both.”

Ulfa said, “I don’t know about swearing,” and meant that she was not sure whether she should swear or not.

Baki interpreted it as she chose. “I do. Each of us will swear by those over us whose claim to our allegiance is sanctioned by the Highest God. Hold up your hand, Toug.”

Toug raised his right hand.

“Repeat this after I say it. ‘I, Toug, as I am a squire and a true man, do swear by those who are in Skai’...”

“I, Toug—” Something took Toug by the throat, but he gulped and pressed on, his voice stronger and stronger at each word. “As I’m a squire and a true man, do swear by those who are in Skai.”

“‘By the Valfather and all his sons, I swear, and by the Lady whose name may not be spoken.’”

“By the Valfather and all his sons, I swear.” For a moment it seemed to Toug that Sir Able had drawn Eterne; tall figures stood in the corners of the room, gleaming shades of dust and firelight; and he felt their eyes upon him.

Ulfa said, “Well? Are you going to swear or not?”

“And by the Lady whose name may not be spoken.” By some small miracle, the draft from the window bore a faint perfume—the scent of lilacs far away.

“‘That all that lies in my power shall be done for my sister Ulfa and my worshipper Baki, that they may achieve their hearts’ desires.’” Baki smiled as she spoke.

Toug saw her teeth as clearly as he had ever seen Mani’s, and the yellow gleam of her eyes. “That all that lies in my power,” he repeated, “shall be done for my sister Ulfa...”

Ulfa smiled too, and her smile warmed him as much as the fire she fed; the shadowy watchers were gone.

“And my worshipper Baki, that they may achieve their hearts’ desires.”

“Your worshipper Baki?” Ulfa asked.

“Because I cured her,” Toug explained hastily.

“Now it is your turn, Ulfa. Shall I repeat it?”

Ulfa shook her head. “I, Ulfa, as I am by rights a free peasant of Glennidam, do swear by those that are in Skai—”

“By the Lady now,” Baki whispered urgently. “By the Lady whose name may not be spoken.”

“As by the Valfather...”

“As also by the Valfather and his sons, that all that lies in my power shall be done for my brother Toug and his worshipper—”

“You must say ‘my worshipper,’” Baki whispered urgently.

“I didn’t heal you!”

Baki sighed. “Begin again.”

Ulfa looked to Toug, who nodded urgently. “If I’ve got to,” she said. “I, Ulfa, as I am by rights a free peasant of Glennidam, though at present a slave of King Gilling’s, swear by those who are in Skai, by the Lady who mustn’t be named, and by the Valfather and his sons, that all that lies in my power shall be done for my brother Toug and my worshipper Baki, in order that they may achieve their hearts’ desires. Will that do it?”

“It will. I, Baki, as I am a true Aelf of the fire—”

Ulfa gasped.

“Do swear by those who are in Mythgarthr, by Toug and by Ulfa, and if he excuse the impertinence by Sir Able himself, that all in my power shall be done for these sublime spirits of Mythgarthr Toug and Ulfa, that they may achieve their desire. So swear I, Baki, who does by this oath and others renounce the false and deceitful worship of Setr forever.”

Ulfa stared. Toug said, “Who’s Setr?”

“Of that we shall speak presently. First we must name the one thing we most desire. You swore first, and thus should speak first. Or so I feel. Will you dispute it?”

Toug said, “Well, we were going to look for Mani...”

“For this woman’s husband, too,” Baki said. “For Pouk. But finding neither can be your heart’s desire, surely. Your heart is larger than that.”

“I need time to think.”

Ulfa said, “Are you really an Aelfmaiden?”

“Of the Fire Aelf. Would you see it?”

Ulfa nodded. A moment later, she caught her breath.

Toug looked up. “What is it?” Ulfa was on her knees.

“You have seen more,” Baki told him. She helped Ulfa rise. “It was very wrong, what you were doing. I am greatly honored, but honors one does not deserve are only crimes by another name. In my heart I kneel to you.”

“I—I...”

“Have no need to speak, unless you will speak first. Will you? Or is your brother ready?”

“I’m not,” Toug said.

“I didn’t know.” Ulfa gulped. “My old gown. It’s not even fit to wear.”

“But I wear it proudly,” Baki told her, “and believe we shall have better by and by.”

Ulfa gulped again, and bowed her head.

“Now we will have your heart’s desire. Please. Name it. Toug and I have sworn to do all we can to help you.”

“We just want to get out of here.” Ulfa spoke so softly Toug scarcely heard her. “Pouk and me. We want go back to Glennidam. Or anywhere. Help us to get out, both of us.”

“We will,” Baki told her. “Toug? Your desire?”

“This isn’t it.” Toug tried to keep his voice steady. “I have to say something else first.”

“Then do so.”

“I want to be a knight. Not just a regular knight. It would be wonderful to be a regular knight like Sir Garvaon or Sir Svon. But what I truly want—this isn’t my heart’s desire, not yet—is to be a knight like Sir Able. I want to be a knight that would jump on the dragon’s back.”

Neither woman spoke, although Ulfa raised her head to look at him.

“I’m a squire now.” Toug squared his shoulders. “I really am, Ulfa, and probably I’ll be a knight sooner or later unless I get killed. So I have to learn fast. I know that if I wait ‘til I’m a knight and try to be like Sir Able then, it won’t work. I have to start before I’m knighted.”

Baki’s voice was just above a whisper. “Even so things may go awry, Lord.”

“I know. But if I don’t start now, they won’t ever go right. Well, Lord Beel and Sir Svon want me to get King Gilling to let them in here, into Utgard, so Lord Beel can be a real ambassador like our king wants. So that’s my heart’s desire. I want to do my duty.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed a new voice. Mani was seated on the gray stone windowsill, as black and shiny as the best-kept kettle, with a gray winter sky behind him and the winter wind ruffling his fur.

“Bravo!” Mani repeated, and sprang from the windowsill, and then, with a bound that would have done credit to a lynx, onto Toug’s shoulder. “I bear glad tidings.” He looked at the women with satisfaction, his green eyes shining. “You shall have them in a moment, but first I’d like to hear the rest of this.”

“Yes.” Toug reached up to stroke him. “What’s your heart’s desire, Baki? You’ve heard ours.”

“Do you really wish to hear it, Lord? Recall that you have sworn to help me get it.

He waited for Ulfa to speak, but she was gaping at Mani, and he said, “We can’t, unless we know what you want.”

“Not consciously, perhaps. The politics of Aelfrice are complex, but I must talk about them if you are to understand my heart’s desire. My race, whom some of you worship, was brought into being by one we name Kulili. She created us to love her, but we came to hate her and rebelled against her, and at last drove her into the sea. We are of many clans, as perhaps you know.”

Mani said, “I do.”

“I am of the Fire Aelf, and we Fire Aelf hated Kulili more than any. We led the advance, and we were the last to retreat. When she disappeared into caverns beneath the sea, it was we, more even than the Sea Aelf, who urged that she be extirpated to the last thread. This though we saw her no more, and our land no longer spoke with her voice.”

Toug, who could not imagine a being of threads, opened his mouth to ask a question, but closed it without speaking.

“We and others followed her into the sea and fought her there, when she could retreat no longer. I am a maid and not a man. Will you believe that I, too, fought?”

Mani said, “Yes,” and Ulfa, “If you say it.”

“I do. I did. ‘Spears of the maidens!’ we shouted as we joined the melee. ‘Spears of the Fire Maidens! Death to Kulili!’ I can voice those cries, but I cannot tell you how faint and weak and lonely they sounded under the dark waters. We charged her sharks as we had been trained to charge, and after a moment or two we few who still lived fled screaming. You, Lord, would not have fled as I did.”

Toug said nothing.

“You would have died.”

“Continue.” For once Mani seemed subdued.

“In the days after that terrible day, our king tried to rally us. Many would not come, fearing we would be asked to fight again. It was a year before the assembly was complete, and it was complete then only because it was inland. There were many—I was one—whose spirit would have failed if they had been asked to venture within sight of the sea.

“Our king spoke of those who had died, first praising his bodyguard, of whom three-fifths had perished, then our clan in general. We had been one of the most numerous. We were fewer than any, and he told us so. ‘We cannot fight her again,’ he said; and we whispered when he said it, and sighed deep, and few cheered. Then he revealed his plan—a plan, he said, by which we might yet triumph.

“We no longer paid reverence to this world of Mythgarthr and you who dwell in it. You, we felt, were dull and sleepy and stupid, unworthy gods who no longer credited us even when we stood before you. There was no help to be had from you, he said. I doubt that there was anyone who did not agree.”

Ulfa looked at Toug, her eyes full of questions.

Mani smoothed his whiskers with a competent paw. “We’re their numina, you see. I am a tutelary lars in animal form myself, a totem. My images confer freedom, and what’s always essential to freedom, stealth.”

“Yet there were others who would help us gladly,” Baki continued. “He had summoned them. Among them was Setr. For a time our king continued to rule, relaying the commands of Setr. With Setr and the rest to lead us, we stormed Kulili’s redoubt again, and were defeated even as we had been defeated before. Not all our tribes fought, and some sent only a few score warriors. Such were the Bodachan and others. Setr said this was the reason for our defeat, and we believed him. We would not fight again, he promised, until every clan was ready to fight as we had.”

Baki paused, and Mani asked, “He would compel them?”

“Exactly. He set out to make himself ruler of all, and to that end built the Tower of Glas, so lofty that its summit is an isle of Mythgarthr. He built it, I said, because that is how we speak. But we built for him, and he drove us like slaves.” Baki held out her hands. “You would not credit me if I told you half what these have done.”

“I would,” Ulfa said.

“Our king was no more—crushed between the jaws of a monster of the deep, Setr said. He would not permit us to choose a new king, then said we had and that we had chosen him. When the Tower was complete he made us Khimairae to guard it. Have you ever seen a Khimaira, any of you?”

“I haven’t,” Mani told her, “and I’d like to.”

In a moment, the old gray gown was off and lying like dirty water on the floor, and Baki wreathed in smoke. Her flesh darkened as if in fire, hard and cracked; her ears spread, her mouth grew and her teeth with it, becoming hideous fangs. Her feet and hands turned to claws, and she spread leathern wings.

Mani stood on Toug’s shoulder with every hair erect and hissed like two score serpents.

The Khimaira hissed in reply; the sound was ice on ice, and held the chill of death. “Thuss I wass, and thuss I sstayed. I hated my form, yet did not wish to change. Such was Setr’s hold on me.”

Again smoke poured from her eyes. When it retreated, it left a long-limbed Aelfmaid with coppery skin. An Aelfmaid, she snatched up the gray gown. When it had passed over her, she was a human with flaming hair, fair to look upon.

“Sir Able made me renounce my oath to Setr,” she said, “and returned me to the lithesome shape you saw. Yet my oath bound me still. First, because my rejection had been forced. More signally, because I feared him. I served Sir Able, and called myself his slave. This I do even now.”

Toug nodded.

“And yours, for gratitude and love of you. Setr I fear, but I shall strike the thing I fear. You would be a knight. Learn from me.”

“I’ll try,” he said.

“And so my heart’s desire.”

The sound of horses’ hoofs drifted up from the bailey, and Mani sprang to the windowsill to look.

“It is simply said,” Baki continued, “but will not be simply done. Or I fear it will not. I would bring Sir Able to Aelfrice and have him lead us against Setr.” Mani turned to stare at her, his green eyes wide. “And you and your sister are sworn to aid me.”

Toug looked to Ulfa (for he felt his heart sink), and Ulfa to Toug; but neither spoke.

“Little cat, you wished to see a Khimaira. You have seen one. Are you satisfied?”

“The Khimaira,” Mani told her, “has seen me. That is what I wanted, and it has been accomplished. I knew you were no common girl. Now you know that I’m no common cat.”

Baki made him a mock bow.

“My good news has been taken from me,” Mani continued, “and my fate has supplied only bad news to replace it. Which would you hear first?”

Ulfa said, “I have no hold over Sir Able.”

“Then you must gain what hold you can,” Baki told her.

Toug said, “He doesn’t owe me anything.”

“He sees himself in you, and that may be enough. Cat, you have taken no oath, and I know cats too well to imagine you will submit to one. But will you help us?”

“I’ve strained every sinew at it already,” Mani told her sourly, “and there isn’t an Overcyn in Skai who could say why. Will you hear my news? I myself greatly like the good, but you’ll want to spit my ill news from your ears.”

“It said the good news wasn’t true anymore,” Ulfa muttered. Wearily, she rose from her stool.

“Not so,” Mani told her. “I said that it was no longer news. It was that King Gilling has graciously consented to Lord Beel’s embassy. He and my mistress and all the rest—your master, Toug, and so on—have entered this castle. You heard their horses, if any of you were paying attention. You can see them now by looking out this window.”

Toug went to window to look, and Ulfa joined him. “It’s very grand,” she whispered.

“You should have seen it before it was looted,” Mani told her complacently, “as I did.”

She stared at him, and then at Toug; and her expression said very plainly, Cats can’t talk.

He cleared his throat. “Some can. It varies. I mean, Mani’s the only one I know, but he can.”

“He’s going to use that power,” Mani said, “to remind you that we’ve gained your heart’s desire. Our mission was to get His Prodigious Majesty to admit our company, and we have done it.”

Slowly, Toug smiled.

“I include you because you accompanied me, and because I am large-hearted and generous to a fault. In my wanderings, I chanced upon the king and his great clumsy wizard.”

“Thiazi.”

“Exactly. I spoke, and they were amazed, the king particularly. Do you think you’ve heard me talk? You haven’t heard me talk as I talked then. I was eloquent, diplomatic, and persuasive. Most of all, I was forceful, concise, and succinct. Gylf used to say I had a thin voice. Used to upbraid me for it, in fact. You recall Gylf.”

Toug nodded.

“He should have heard me when I spoke to the king. I doubt there’s a courtier in Thortower who could hold a candle to me. I explained that King Arnthor had sent us not as enemies but friends, to help him govern—”

“Toug...” Ulfa gripped his arm. “I—the cat’s really talking, isn’t it? I haven’t gone crazy?”

“Sure he is, and he wouldn’t talk with you around unless he liked you. Don’t get all upset.”

She pointed. “I saw a—a thing. Just now. Just for a moment. All those grand people down there were getting off their horses and it was over by that wall, and it was almost as big as the giants, only it wasn’t one. It was horrible and the same color as the wall. It moved and disappeared.”

“His name’s Org.” It was the best Toug could think of.

“I’ll protect you from him,” Mani told Ulfa. “You need not fear Org while I’m around. He’s a simple sort of fellow, though I admit I don’t much care for him myself. Simple and good, once you set aside his appetite for human flesh.”

“You persuaded the king to let Lord Beel and his party into Utgard,” Baki prompted Mani. “That is your good news, good because it was the desire of Toug’s heart. You said you had ill news too. What is it?”

“Ill for you,” Mani told her. “Ill for Toug and his sister, and not only because they’ve promised to help you. With your consent, I will say something else first, something cheering. I think it will gladden their hearts.”

Baki nodded, and Mani spoke to Ulfa. “You’re the king’s slaves, you and your husband? You belong to him?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“One who’s already persuaded the king in a large matter might well persuade him in a small one too, don’t you think? When the opportunity is ripe, I shall suggest to King Gilling that you and your husband—with the horses and so forth—would make a trifling but entirely welcome gift to Sir Able. Wouldn’t that get you your heart’s desire?”

“You—you’d do that?”

“Mani.” His voice was firm. “My name is Mani.”

“You’d do that for us, Mani? For Pouk and me? We’d be in your debt forever.”

“I know. I would. I will, at the appropriate moment.” He surveyed the two human beings and the Aelfmaiden, his eyes half closed. “This brings us to my ill news, which you had better hear. King Gilling contemplates engaging an army of bold men—human beings as opposed to his Angrborn—who would serve the throne beyond the southern borders. Beyond the present borders, I should say. These men, these stalwart soldiers of fortune, if I may so characterize them, would not be slaves. Far from it! They’d be liberally rewarded, and heaped with honors when they were successful. In time their commanders, having proved their loyalty to His Prodigious Majesty, might even hold fiefs south of the mountains.” Mani waited for comments, but none were forthcoming.

“In short, they would conquer Celidon for him. It would become a vassal kingdom, paying an annual tribute in treasure and slaves. His Majesty hopes to enlist Sir Able to organize and lead this army.”