The Knight

Papounce had mounted again and was trotting back to the camp. Idnn caught my sleeve and pointed.

“Yes,” I said. “We’ll know soon, My Lady.”

She got up on tiptoe; I saw she wanted to whisper and bent so she could talk into my ear. “Something’s happened! He’s not galloping. He needs time to think.”

I stared, then bent again.

“Your cat told me, and he’s right! Trotting, with Father’s eyes on him? Something’s afoot!”

Papounce dismounted and drew Beel aside. For at least two minutes they conferred, and I (I had been trying to edge nearer) caught Beel’s incredulous, “Split the rock?”

Then he raised his hands for silence. “Sir Able has three.” There were murmurs and shouted questions, all of which he ignored. “Sir Garvaon has the next shot. Clear the way for him!”

It missed the target, falling to the right.

This time Beel spoke to Crol, who bawled, “Sir Garvaon has three!”

I had shot my best arrow first. I picked a good one from those I had left and nocked it, telling myself firmly that I did not need to hit the middle again. If I hit the target at all, that would be enough.

I shot, and Papounce was sent off exactly as he had been before, and there was another wait while he galloped to the target and looked it over. I unstrung my bow and made myself relax, trying to keep from catching the eye of anybody who might want to talk to me.

I got another three. That made my score six.

Garvaon shot again. His third arrow hit near his first.

I was starting to feel like I was cheating, and I did not like that. Instead of shooting at the target, I aimed for the top leaves of the scrubby little tree they had hung it on. I shot, and watched my arrow fly true to aim. It passed through the leaves and hit the cliff-face behind them. A few pebbles fell, then a few more.

All at once the cliff face gave way, collapsing with a grinding roar.

―――

Gylf found me about a mile away from our camp, and woke me by licking my face. I sputtered and sat up, thinking for a minute that I saw the old woman from my dream, the one who had owned the cottage, behind him. It was very dark. “Why here?” Gylf demanded.

“Because it’s sheltered, and I hoped it wouldn’t be quite so cold.”

“It” was a crevice in the rocks.

“Hard here,” Gylf explained. “Tracking.”

“Hard sleeping, too. I’m p-pretty stiff.” The fact was that my teeth were chattering.

“Fires back there. Food.”

I said sure. “But I wouldn’t have gotten anything much to eat before. Everybody wanted to talk to me. I told Lord Beel I’d meet him in his pavilion later—”

“Give it to you?”

“The pretty helmet?” I stood up and stretched, and wrapped myself in my cloak, adding the blanket I had taken from camp. “I don’t know. Or care, either.”

“All asleep.” Gylf wagged his tail, and looked up at me hopefully.

“You want me to go back, don’t you? It’s nice of you to worry about me.”

Gylf nodded.

“But if I stay here ...”

“Me, too.”

“You’d keep me warm, anyhow. I wish I’d had you here earlier.”

He trotted ahead to show the way; and I followed more slowly, still cold and tired. I had hoped to find one of the caves the Angrborn called Mouseholes, and was mad at myself for having failed. Gylf would have found one for me, and I knew it. Or Uri and Baki probably could have, if I had called them and they had come. But that would have been Gylf finding it or them finding it. I had wanted to do it myself.

The moon had not yet risen, and the camp looked ghostly—Beel’s scarlet pavilion dead black, Garvaon’s and Crol’s canvas pavilions as pale as ghosts, the bodies of sleeping servants and muleteers like new graves, and the few tortured cedars like Osterlings come to eat the bodies.

A picketed mule brayed in the distance.

“I’m going to send you to Pouk,” I told Gylf. I had not decided until then. “Not right now, because you deserve food and a good rest before you leave. In the morning. I want you to find him and show yourself to him, so that he’ll know I’m nearby. Then you can come back here and tell me where he is and whether he’s all right.”

Gylf looked back and whined, and a sleepy sentry called, “Sir Able? Is that you, sir?”

―――

When I finally got to my cot in Garvaon’s pavilion, I found the gold-trimmed helmet on it. After I had adjusted the straps inside, it fit like it had been made for me.

Chapter 53. Boons

Next morning at breakfast, eating off byourselves because Garvaon had told some of his archers and men-at-arms to keep everybody away, he and Gylf and I were joined by Mani, who got in my lap and ate whatever I passed to him, just like a regular cat.

“Lady Idnn’s just about adopted that tomcat of yours,” Garvaon told me. “She may have him if he wants her.”

Garvaon stared, then laughed. “You’re quite a fellow.” The point of his dagger carried a sizable chunk of summer sausage to his mouth, and he chewed in a way that showed he was thinking about something. “Can we talk man-to-man?”