The Knight

I knelt, took one of the two remaining seeds from my pouch, and planted it near where the earlier stump had grown. When I rose again, his face was streaked with tears. Once more he led me away, then stopped to wave his staff at the wilderness of saplings and bushes that stretched before us. “Here was my barley field. See the big tree way in back? Come on.”

Halfway there he pointed out a speck of shining green. “There it is. Spiny orange don’t drop its leaves like most do. Green all winter, like a pine.”

Together we went to it, and it was a fine young tree about twenty-five feet high. I hugged him.

It seems to me that I should say more about the spiny orange here, but the truth is that I know little. Many of the trees we have in America are found in Mythgarthr too—oaks and pines and maples and so on. But the spiny orange is the only tree I know that grows in Aelfrice too. The sky of Aelfrice is not really strange until you look closely at it and see the people in it, and (sometimes) hear their voices on the wind. Time moves very slowly here, but we are not conscious of it. Only the trees and the people are strange at first sight. I think the spiny orange belongs here, not in Mythgarthr and not in America.

Chapter 4. Sir Ravd

Lad!” the knight called from the back of his tall gray. And again, “Come here, lad. We would speak to you.”

His squire added, “We’ll do you no hurt.”

I approached warily; if I had learned one thing in my time in those woods with Bold Berthold, it was to be chary of strangers. Besides, I recalled the knight of the dragon, who had vanished before my eyes.

“You know the forest hereabout, lad?”

I nodded, giving more attention to his horse and arms than to what he said.

“We need a guide—a guide for the rest of this day and perhaps for tomorrow as well.” The knight was smiling. “For your help we’re prepared to pay a scield each day.” When I said nothing, he added, “Show him the coin, Svon.”

From a burse at his belt the squire extracted a broad silver piece. Behind him, the great bayard charger he led stirred and stamped with impatience, snorting and blowing through its lips.

“We’ll feed you, too,” the knight promised. “Or if you feed us with that big bow, we’ll pay you for the food.”

“I’ll share without payment,” I told him, “if you’ll share with me.”

“Nobly spoken.”

“But how can I know you won’t send me off empty-handed at the end of the day, with a cuff on the ear?”

Svon shut his fist around the scield. “How do we know you won’t lead us into an ambush, ouph?”

“As for the cuff at sunset,” the knight said, “I can give you my word. As I do, though you’ve no reason to trust it. On the matter of payment, however, I can set your mind at rest right now.” A big forefinger tapped Svon’s fist; when Svon surrendered the coin, the knight tossed it to me. “There’s your pay for this day until sunset, nor will we take it from you. Will you guide us?”

I was looking at the coin, which bore the head of a stern young king on one side and a shield on the other. The shield displayed the image of a monster compounded of woman, horse, and fish. I asked the knight where he wanted me to take him.

“To the nearest village. What is it?”

“Glennidam,” I said; I had been there with Bold Berthold.

The knight glanced at Svon, who shook his head. Turning back to me, the knight asked, “How many people?”

There had been nine houses—unmarried people living with their parents, and old people living with their married children. At a guess, three adults for each house ... I asked whether I should include children.

“If you wish. But no dogs.” (This, I think, may have been overheard by some Bodachan.)

“Then I’ll say fifty-three. That’s counting Seaxneat’s wife’s new baby. But I don’t know its name, or hers either.”

“Good people?”

I had not thought so; I shook my head.

“Ah.” The knight’s smile held a grim joy. “Take us to Glennidam, then, without delay. We can introduce ourselves on the road.”

“I am Able of the High Heart.”

Svon laughed.

The knight touched the rim of his steel coif. “I am Ravd of Redhall, Able of the High Heart. My squire is Svon. Now let us go.”

“If we get there today at all,” I warned Ravd, “it will be very late.”

“The more reason to hurry.”

―――

We camped that night beside a creek called Wulfkil, Svon and I putting up a red-and-gold tent of striped sailcloth for Ravd to sleep in. I built a fire, for I carried flint and steel now to start one, and we ate hard bread, salt meat, and onions. “Your family may worry about you,” Ravd said. “Have you a wife?”

I shook my head, and added that Bold Berthold had said I was not old enough yet.

Ravd nodded, his face serious. “And what do you say?”

I thought of school—how I might want to go to college, if I ever got back home. “A few more years.”

Svon sneered. “Two rats to starve in the same hole.”

“I hope not.”

“Oh, really? How would you support a family?”

I grinned at him. “She’ll tell me how. That’s how I’ll know when I’ve found her.”