The Knight. Part 20

"Why did you bring me here?"

She did not answer.

"Is it okay if I swim back up? I'd like to get warm again." Before you kill me? She was laughing at me, but it did not make me mad at all. I kind of liked it.

"You could kill me real easy down here if you wanted to." I will not.

"You killed the Aelf when they came to kill you. That's another thing Ga rsecg said." This world was mine. Mine in a time when there were no Aelf. They drove me from the land into the water, and from the water into these depths. I can be driven no farther. Would you see me?

Like somebody had just dropped it there, there was a clear picture in my mind. It was the statue, only alive.

You looked into the pool. What you saw was yourself, as you are to others. What you see now I am, in the eyes of others.

I could not imagine anybody hating anybody so beautiful. I asked why the Aelf hated her.

Ask them.

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"Well, why do you hate them?"

I do not, but I must fear them as long as they fear me.

The beautiful woman was gone. Instead I saw a strange forest. There were trees like phone poles, with a few big leaves at the top. There were pools of water all over, and down where the roots were, something really big was getting bigger and sending out feelers everyplace. The trees talked to this woman under them, and the little plants did too; she answered all of them, one at a time, and was great. She saw them all, and she saw their souls, because each of them was wrapped in a soul like a man would wear a cloak. Their souls were beautiful colors, and no matter what color they were, they sort of glowed. Insects ate the leaves and spilled their sap, and there were all sorts of an imals that would eat the bark and kill the trees. So the woman underneath them made protectors for them, taking little bits of their souls and little pieces of herself, pale gray wisdom that gleamed like pearls. Sticks, leaves, and mud, too, and fire and smoke and water and moss. All sorts of stuff.

At first the protectors were sort of like animals too, but the big woman under the roots looked up into the sky and saw Mythgarthr, and people up there plowing, and planting flowers and tending orchards. So she made the protectors more like them. They were a lot like scarecrows, but they got better and better and got so they could change their shapes to make themselves better yet. Some still protect, even from me. Do you know them?

I saw Disiri, and it choked me up. I felt like I was going to die if I could not touch her and talk to her, and I said, "Yes. I love her." Kulili said, So do I. Then Disiri was gone. Would you see me now? With your eyes of flesh?

I think I said yes.

We waited then. It was not like ten minutes or ten seconds. It was the time they had before somebody built the first clock. I hung there in the cold seawater, turning and waiting, and that was all I did. White, yellow, and green lights went around and around me, and hay-colored lights, and sky-colored. Our lamp.

They came together, and I saw they were really fish. There were little orange fish that glowed like the flames of candles, black fish with huge heads and bad-dream teeth that hung red and blue bait in front of their own mouths, long 192.

silvery fish with gills and tails like light bulbs, and big blue fish with rows of blue lights down their sides, and a lot more kinds that I forget. All sorts of reds and yellows and pinks and every kind of color.

Only they were not important. What was important was down under them, and it was white thread, a big, big tangle of white thread, all of it alive and sort of groping. When I first saw it I thought it did not have any shape, but as soon as I thought that, it did. There was a mouth that could have swallowed the Western Trader, and a nose like a hill. Only it was a beautiful nose and a beautiful mouth, too. Pretty soon there were eyes, white eyes that looked blind. They blinked, and they had pupils I could have dived into, and they were blue eyes, and there was color in the cheeks just like roses were blooming there. It was the woman the statue had been made like. Only the statue is usually bigger than the person. Way down in the dark seawater was the real person, and she could have worn the statue around her neck on a chain.

Will you kill me? Still?

In the first place, I did not want to. In the second place, I did not think I could. I said, "I'll have to try, Kulili. I'll have to try my best, because I promised I would. But I hope you get away. I hope I won't be able to do it." Now?

"No. These fish of yours could kill me pretty easy, and I haven't even got a sword."

May it be long before we meet again.

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CHAPTER 28.

THREE YEARS.

I t was a long swim to the surface. It is funny, but when you have been way deep down it always seems like you are closer to the top than you really are. It is black down where you are, darker than any real night ever gets. You swim up quite a way, and it gets light, you can see things and you think you are only ten or twelve feet down. So you keep swimming up, maybe twenty-five feet, maybe fifty or a hundred. And you do not get to the top and nothing much changes. I felt like I was almost there half a dozen times probably before I really got there. When I did, it was sort of a shock. For one thing I had not been breathing, and I was used to it. My head came out in the trough between two waves. I breathed out hard, and water ran out of my nose and mouth, and down my chin. And then a big wave hit me in the face. I choked, and when I got my head into the air again, I was making noises like a coffeepot. When I could breathe, I started to laugh.

After that I swam in and out of the waves and had a big time. Probably I played like that for half an hour.

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I could see the sun, so I knew I was back in Mythgarthr again, and not in Aelfrice. I also knew that when I had been way deep down with Kulili, that had been Aelfrice. I figured I was pretty close to the island, and whenever I wanted to I could swim over that way and see about the two Aelf girls and Ga.r.s.ecg, and tell Ga.r.s.ecg it was going to take a whole lot more than a spear or a battle-ax for me to kill Kulili, and I really did not want to anyway. When I thought about it, I started hoping that I could trade him another favor for that one. Maybe a couple of them, or three.

Pretty soon I decided that was enough fun, and anyway it might be a long swim to the island, so I had better get started. I jumped up out of the water the way that fish do sometimes and had a look around. After the first one, I did it again, and again after that. The island was nowhere in sight. In fact there was no land anywhere. The only thing I could see was a s.h.i.+p about a mile away. I decided to swim for that because it would at least get me up higher. There was quite a bit of wind then, but the s.h.i.+p was headed toward me on a slant, so all I had to do was cut across to where it would be and wait. I could swim faster than it was sailing anyhow, so catching it was bound to be pretty easy. I did not recognize it until it was close. A lot of paint had flaked off the forecastle, and some of the gold was missing from the wooden woman with the basket in front. But it was the Western Trader just the same. I could not believe it, even when I climbed up the side.

The lookout yelled something (I do not know what) and slid down the forestay dropping off it in front of me. He sort of goggled at me, then he got down on his knees. "Sir Able! I didn't know 'twas you, sir. I didn't know what 'twas, sir. I'm sorry, sir. I never meant no offense, sir. By wind an' water, I never done."

"Nor gave any," I told him. "No sweat. If--wait a minute! You're Pouk!" "Aye, sir."

"You've changed. It's the beard. How long have I been gone, Pouk?" "Three year, sir. We--I thought you wasn't never comin' back, sir. Cap'n didn't, neither. n.o.body done."

"The captain? I thought I killed him."

"Cap'n Kerl, sir, what was Mate. I--I signed papers, sir, 'cause they wouldn't feed me less'n I done it. An'--an' I been here ever since, sir. Topman o' the main now, sir, an' I've had worse berths."

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I shook his hand and told him I was proud of him.

"Only I won't be no more, sir, if you'll have Cap'n strike me off articles, sir. Your man again, Sir Able, same as before, if there's no feelin's about me doin'

somethin' else while you was gone." Pouk paused and gulped. "Or even if there is, sir, if you'll have me just th' same."

I did not know what to think of him, and I said, "You've got a good job here. You just said so."

"Aye, sir."

"I can't pay you or feed you. Look at me. I don't even have a pair of pants."

"I'll lend you 'un o' mine, sir. Only they'll be too small, maybe."

"Thanks. But you're right, I'd be sure to split them. Probably I couldn't even get them on. We'll have to talk to the captain. Captain Kerl?"

"Aye, sir." Pouk nodded.

"I know that you can't take yourself off duty, and you shouldn't even be talking to me. But before I go looking for Kerl I want to know why you'd quit your job to work for me, when you know I haven't got any money."

"Selfishness is all 'tis, sir." Pouk would not look me in the face.

"What do you mean, selfishness?"

"Crew's got to stick together, sir. You're s'posed to stick to your s.h.i.+pmates, see? But--but it's my big chance, sir. Likely th' only 'un I'll ever get. I'm goin'." He turned away so I could not see his face.

I patted his shoulder and went to look for Kerl. There was a little runway of deck alongside the forecastle, and as I walked along that I wondered what the rest of the crew would make of me.

As soon as I rounded the corner, I found out. I had not taken two more steps before I was surrounded by cheering men. "Below there!" a new mate shouted from the sterncastle deck. "What's that gabble? Stations, all of you! Stations!" A sailor I did not remember yelled, "It's Sir Able, sir! He's back!" Somebody else yelled, "Give a cheer, men!" They did it, and all the noise brought Kerl out of his cabin. He started asking questions, then he saw me in the middle of a bunch of sailors, and he just gaped.

It was not real easy to push through all of them without hurting anybody, but I did it. I got to him and told him we needed to talk, and the two of us went into the cabin.

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"By Ran's ropes!" he said. "By Skai, wind, and rain!" Then he hugged me. I have been really, really surprised a lot in the time I have been in Mythgarthr and Aelfrice, but I do not know if I have ever been any more surprised than I was when Kerl hugged me, unless it was by that one knight with the skull for a crest I fought up in the Mountains of the Mice. I do not believe there has ever been a human man that could squeeze me hard enough to break my ribs, not even Hela's brother Heimir, and Heimir was not strictly human. A lot of people would say he was not human at all, and as soon as it got to be hot summer he would sweat like a horse even sitting under a tree.

Only Kerl came pretty close. I could hear them creak.

"I've been in Aelfrice," I told him when he finally let me go. "I don't know for how long. I mean, I don't know how many of their days."

"Sit down! Sit down!" Kerl got out a bottle and pulled the cork, and found gla.s.ses for us.

I was thinking about the island that had come up out of the tear in the sea, the one where I had seen Disiri, and how I had watched the trees grow on it. So I said, "Maybe it was years there, too. I don't know if they have years, really. They talk about them, but maybe it's just because we do."

"Drink up!" Kerl shoved a gla.s.s at me. "This calls for a celebration." I shook my head, because I was still thinking about Ga.r.s.ecg and that had reminded me of Uri and Baki and the whole thing with the Isle of Glas. I sipped the wine, though, and it was really good wine, the best I had ever tasted up to then, and I told Kerl so.

"Gave somebody that needed 'em a couple casks of water." He grinned. "He gave me five bottles of this. Hard not to have three or four gla.s.ses with my dinner every night, but I don't let myself do it. This is different. It's a special occ asion, and I wouldn't want to die and leave one of those bottles wet."

"I'm lucky you feel like that." I drank some more. "Can you take me to Forcetti? Will you?"

"Aye! We're way down south here, and headin' back. We can stop off there." Kerl's grin faded. "I'm goin' to have to make some stops on the way though, sir. That all right?"

I said okay. I had been going to Forcetti because Duke Marder would probably need another knight, and sitting there naked in that cabin it hit me that if 197.

he had needed somebody to take Ravd's place he probably had him already, and I was going to need a lot of stuff when I got there. Like clothes. So I asked Kerl if they had anything on the s.h.i.+p that I could wear.

That brought the grin back. "We kept yours for you," he told me. He opened a chest and held up Sword Breaker, still in her scabbard, and the scabbard still on my old sword belt. "I don't guess you've forgotten this?" That made me smile. "I remember it pretty well."

"Clothes, too." Kerl lifted out a double armful. "Saved 'em all for you. Put cedar shavin's on 'em to keep the moths off, and they ought to be good as new." He put them on the bed for me to look at.

I thanked him, and told him how much I meant it (and I really did) and said I would sleep on deck and do whatever work I could to pay for my food.

"You'll sleep right here, sir." Kerl sounded like he meant that, too. "This here's your cabin just like these here are your boots, sir. Your cabin 'til you get off at Forcetti, sir, and I'm proud to give it to you."

"I can't pay--wait just a minute. I left money here when I went away with the Aelf. If you kept it for me too--"

Kerl could not meet my eyes. "I spent it, Sir Able. I had to. We was stove off Needam, and laid up seven weeks for repairs, sir. I'll pay it all back, I swear. Only I can't pay you back but a little right now."

He opened his strongbox for me and showed me what he had, and there was so little in there, just copper and bra.s.s and four pieces of silver, that I almost let him keep all of it. Only I knew I was going to have to have something, and I took half.

A couple of days after that we came in sight of the Mountain of Fire. I was curious about it because of what Ga.r.s.ecg had said, and I asked Kerl and some people in the little port nearby, where we sold some cloth Kerl had not been able to sell farther south. It had belonged to the Osterlings, and they had pushed people into the opening at the top because it bypa.s.sed Aelfrice and went straight to Muspel where the dragons are. If it had just been their own people, we probably would not have cared, but they raided, and ate people they captured the way they do, and pushed in the ones they would have liked to eat most so the dragons would help them.

King Arnthor had taken the Mountain of Fire, fortified it, and left a garrison 198.

there. Some of the men-at-arms were in the town when we were, drinking and trying to pick up girls. They were the first men-at-arms I had seen, and I was anxious to see knights. There were donkeys for rent at the stable, but I had very little money and Pouk had none, so we decided to walk.

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CHAPTER 29.

MY BET.

I f I had known what was in store for us, I would never have gone. And if I had gone anyway , there is no way I would have let Pouk come with me. As it was, we had a nice time of it, setting out early in the morning before the sun was hot, and holding walking races for forfeits. It got warmer and we slowed down a lot, basically walking from shade to shade if you know what I mean. We were lucky, because there was a lot of shade, but we were unlucky, too, because there were a lot of bugs. The bugs were not so lucky themselves, though. We must have swatted about a hundred, and I got to wis.h.i.+ng I could put them all together in one big bug and shoot arrows at it.

I was trying to figure out some way to do that when a farmer came along with a cart full of fruit he was taking to the Mountain of Fire. He gave us a ride, and let us eat mangos as we rode along. We promised to help him unload when he got to the mountain, but when he found out I was a knight he would not let 200.

me. When we got there, Pouk had to unload for both of us.

While he was doing that, I was talking to some of the men-at-arms there about the walls and towers and so on, and who was there. Lord Thunrolf was in charge of everything. We were already inside the first wall, a kind of little one but long, that walled off the whole side where the mountain could be climbed. I told them I was a knight, which I was, and said I wanted to go on up the road and see the big walls and towers up higher, and maybe even climb on up to the place where the smoke was coming out. Kerl had said the smoke came from Muspel, and I thought that was pretty tough to believe and it was probably just a story somebody had told him, so I wanted to see for myself. They said I could not go up unless Lord Thunrolf said it was all right. I said fine, where is he? Of course he was up quite a ways in the castle they called the Round Tower, so I got to see a lot while they were taking me up to him. It was beautiful and scary, both at once. You looked up and up, and what you mostly saw was towers and more towers, and walls one on top of the other, and big s.p.a.ces of bare rock. There were flags on the tallest towers, the king's flag, and Lord Thunrolf's, and the banners of some of the knights that were knights banneret, and the pennants of the other knights. There were s.h.i.+elds hung on the battlements of the towers, too, with each knight's arms on them. The stone everything was built of had been quarried right there on the mountain, and it was of all sorts of colors, mostly red and black and gray. And up above ever ything was the top of the mountain, with snow on it and smoke coming up out of the snow. Black smoke that drifted up and up into Skai as if the dragons of Muspel were trying to smoke out the Valfather and the other Overcyns. I will never forget it. It was a steep climb, but after a while it got cooler and there was a lot more wind, and before we had gone halfway I felt like I understood why Thunrolf bunked up there where he did instead of down in the lowlands. There were no more bugs, either.

With only one road going up to the top, it was pretty clear the Osterlings could not take back the Mountain unless they took all the fortifications along that road, one after another, or starved out the garrison. I never even tried to find out how much food and water they had up there, but Thunrolf told me there were big cisterns cut into the rock, and since it rained a lot they were generally full. But storming the walls and towers looked about as bad to me as 201.

storming the Tower of Glas. Back then I did not know that the Osterlings were going to take it away from us, or that we were going to take it back. If you had told me I was going to be the one that gave the order to give it up and retreat south, I would have said you were crazy.

Building more walls and more towers was the main thing Thunrolf and his men did there when Pouk and I were there the first time. They built up all the walls more and built new ones. The men-at-arms had to work on them some, and they had hired local people too. The knights bossed the job, and Thunrolf bossed the knights. Knights are not supposed to work with their hands, just fight and train to fight. I thought I knew about that from certain things I had picked up on in Irringsmouth, but I never really knew how strong it was until we got to Forcetti.

Anyway, they were taking every place where the road was narrow and the mountainside was really rough, and building walls with gates for the road, and towers so archers could shoot down on everybody. They had started at the bottom, and they were working their way up. We got to the big tower and climbed four or five flights of stairs to get to the floor where Thunrolf was. Then we had to wait and wait. We had eaten a couple of mangos each on the cart, but that seemed like it had been years ago. We were both hungry, and really thirsty.

Every so often somebody would come and talk to one or the other of us, asking who we were and what we wanted. I was tired and did not pay a whole lot of attention when they were talking to Pouk, and maybe that was a mistake. Finally I told him to go off and find us some food and something to drink, and after that I waited by myself. It got later and later, and I wondered whether Thunrolf or somebody would let us stay overnight and give us a place to sleep. I was about to try leaving to see if anybody would stop me when a serving-man came out and told me to come in. I had seen him before, he had been in and out of that room where Thunrolf was half a dozen times. But this time he had a kind of smirk when he looked at me. I did not like it, but I could not do anything about it, so I followed him inside.

Thunrolf was sitting at a table with a bottle of wine and some gla.s.ses on it. I had told the servingman my name, and he told Thunrolf. Thunrolf told me to sit down and motioned to the servingman to pour me some wine, which I thought 202.

was nice of him. He was a tall man with long legs. Most men his age have beards or mustaches, but he did not, and looking at him I decided he probably drank too much and did not eat enough.

"So, you're a knight."

I said yes.

"Here on a s.h.i.+p bound for Forcetti. You've come a long way out of your way."

I tried to make a joke out of that. "I generally try to go straight to the place I'd like to get to, but I don't seem to be good at it." He frowned. "Has no one taught you to say My Lord when you speak to a baron?"