The Knight

“I don’t.” I thought about what had happened, and how nobody on the Western Trader would have cared. “I know you won’t pay much attention to this, Master Agr, but it really wasn’t fighting. I hit him with my fist, and afterward with the stool. But I wasn’t really fighting him, because he never fought me.”

“Go on.”

“I hit him because he was going to threaten me, and keep on threatening me until I did. His Grace’s ban on fighting is a good idea when everybody acts decently. Is it really worse to have a fight now and then, than to have people like him, people who like to hurt other people when they can’t fight back, spitting in somebody’s face while he’s trying to talk to somebody else?”

“I take your point,” Master Agr said. “Anything else?”

I shook my head.

“Then I have something else, Sir Able. Before I begin, let me say that I like you. I would be your friend, insofar as my office permits. I would like you to be mine.”

“I am,” I told him. “I know you’ve done a lot for me. I owe you.”

“I locked away your weapons after the fight in the practice yard, your bow and quiver, and that—that false sword you’re wearing now. I had to, or they would have been taken. His Grace told me to return them whenever you asked for them. You may recall it.”

I waited, sure I knew what was coming.

“Yesterday it struck me that you had never asked, and I went to look for them, intending to have a page take them to you. They were gone. Today I see that you are wearing your sword belt. I take it you have your bow back as well? And the arrows? Because I no longer have them.”

“They’re up in my room.” I winced a little, remembering the dreams my bowstring had given me the night before.

“Can you tell me how you got them?”

I shook my head. “We’d only fight, because you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me, Sir Able. I’d like to know how you got into my cupboards.”

“Do you believe that I was knighted by Queen Disiri?”

Agr did not answer. Somebody was running outside, and we both heard him at once. He was heavy, and running pretty badly, because the footsteps were not regular. We heard him stop at the door and gasp for breath.

“The sentry will send him away, whoever he is,” Agr said.

But the sentry did not. Before Agr had finished what he was saying the big oak door banged back and Caspar stumbled in and fell down at my feet.

Chapter 43. The War Way

Out of all our long trip north, the night I remember best was the one on which we separated. Svon took care of the horses, making Pouk do most of the actual work but watching to see that it was done right. Gylf had gone hunting, and I sat at our fire, looking into the flames and thinking of Sir Ravd, of Muspel, and of nights at our cabin in the woods—how you and I had gathered sticks, building a big fire in the little stone fireplace and roasting weenies and marshmallows.

And wondering, to tell you the truth, how the heck I had gotten from there to where I was now. Agr had told me that if I hurried and had good luck I could be in the mountains in six weeks. When he said it, it had not seemed possible that it was going to take that long.

―――

We had met in a big, pleasant room in the duke’s private quarters, we being Agr, Caspar, the duke himself, and me. I would have liked to have Hob there, too; and in a way he was, because he was what the rest of us were thinking about. Org had killed and eaten him.

“This pet of yours,” Marder said to me, “this ogre you put into my dungeon, is the least of our troubles. So let us deal with it first. Can you send it away?”

“To send him away would be to doom him, Your Grace.” I had argued the whole thing out with Agr already, before we went in to see Marder. “You’re going to say that he should be killed, and so is Master Agr. Master Caspar, too. All right, maybe the three of you are right. But I’ve accepted him into my service. I can’t send him out to die.”

Marder fingered his beard and Agr tried to pretend that none of this had anything to do with him. Finally Caspar said, “We got to get it out of there, Your Grace. Get it up in the bailey where the knights can get at it.”

Marder shrugged; I had never seen him look so tired and old. “Sir Able will not order it out of the dungeon, knowing that he would be sending it to its death. I can send knights into the dungeon and have them kill it there.”

Caspar shook his head. No way.

“But I could not guarantee their success. From what you say, they might not even be able to find it.”

Agr repeated something he had said already, rephrasing it. “If this ogre is Sir Able’s servant, Sir Able should have given it the strictest instructions, emphasizing that his protection would be lifted if it disobeyed.”

“I ordered Org not to hurt anybody,” I said, “and he promised he wouldn’t. I think he must have heard that I’d hit Hob. He must have thought Hob was my enemy and it would be okay.”

Marder nodded, I suppose mostly to himself.