The Knight

“They said he asked about the Free Companies, only they didn’t tell nothing, none of them did, even if they all had to swear. Are you sure you don’t want some mush? We’ve lard to fry in from the barrows Pa slaughtered last fall.”

“I’ll kill a deer for you,” I promised her, “in payment for these clothes.”

“That’ll be nice.” The black thorn was back between her teeth.

I drew my bow, reflecting that it had been all I could do to bring an arrow near my ear the day before. Talking to myself, I said, “A short arrow at that.”

“Hmmm?” Ulfa looked up from her work.

“In my quiver. Two arrows I made for myself from spiny orange, and two I took from a boy I fought.”

“One of the boys with him had splendid clothes,” she confided. “I got as close as I could to look. Red pants, I swear by Garsecg’s gullet!”

“That was Svon. What about the other boy?”

“Him? Oh, he was ordinary enough,” Ulfa said. “About like my brother, but might be good-looking in a year or two.”

“Didn’t he have a bow like mine?”

“Bigger’n yours, sir.” She had finished cutting her cloth and begun to sew, making long stitches with a big bone needle. “Too big for him was the look of it. Brother had one too, only it’s broke. Pa says when a bow’s not strung it oughta be bigger than the man that carries it, and most is smaller of what I’ve seen. Like foois is, sir.”

‘“I need longer arrows,” I told her. “Does your Pa have a rule for arrows, too?” Still plying her needle, she shook her head.

“In that case I’ll give you one I just made. An arrow ought to reach from the end of the owner’s left forefinger to his right ear. Mine are far shy of that.”

“You’ll have to find new ones.”

“I’ll have to make new ones, and I will. What if I were to tell you I was the boy with the big bow?”

The needle stopped in mid stab, and Ulfa looked up at me. “You, sir?” I nodded.

She laughed. “That boy that was here yesterday? I could’ve shut my hand “round his arm, almost. I doubt I could get both ’round yours, sir.”

Pushing the trousers she had been making for me to one side, she rose. “Can I try?”

“May I try. Yes, you may.”

Both her hands could not encircle my arm, but they could caress it. “You should be a knight yourself, sir.”

“I am.” My declaration surprised me, I think, much more than it surprised her; yet I recalled what Ravd had said—“We find this man to be a knight”—and it carried an inner certainty. “I am Sir Able,” I added.

Hidden by her shift, her nipples brushed my elbow. “Then you ought to have a sword.”

“Others have swords too,” I told her, “but you’re right just the same. I’ll get one. Go back to your sewing, Ulfa.”

When the trousers were finished and she had begun the shirt, I said, “Your father was afraid Sir Ravd would rape you. So you said.”

“Ravish me.” She nodded. “Only not because of his name. I don’t think he knew it then.”

“Neither do I. Isn’t your father afraid I’ll ravish you myself?”

“I don’t know, Sir Able.”

“A man intent on rape could do much worse. Have you no mother, Ulfa?”

“Oh, yes. By Garsecg’s grace she’s still among us.”

“But being blind, or crippled in her hands, she can no longer sew?”

Ulfa bit her thread, waking a memory. “She can, Sir Able, I swear to you. She sews better’n I, and taught me. Only skillful sewing takes sunlight.”

“I see. Who’s in this house, Ulfa? Name them all.”

“You and me. Ma, Pa, and brother Toug.”

“Really? They’re uncommonly quiet. I haven’t heard a voice or a step, other than yours and mine. Where is your mother, do you think?”

Ulfa said nothing, but I followed the direction of her eyes, and opened the door of a wretched little room that appeared to be a sort of pantry. A woman Brega’s age was huddled in its farthest corner, her eyes wide with fright.

I said, “Don’t worry, Ma. However this falls out, I’ll do you and your daughter no hurt.”

She nodded and compelled her lips to smile, and the pain of her effort made me turn away.

Ulfa joined us, eager to distract me. “Try it on now. I have to be sure it’s not too small.”

I did, and she ticked like a beetle in the wall, saying I had the shoulders of a barn door.

I laughed, and said I had not known barn doors boasted shoulders.

“You think you’re ordinary, I s’pose, and the rest of us dwarfs.”

“I saw myself in the water,” I told her. “I had been with a woman called Disiri, and—”

“Disira?”

“No. Disiri the Mossmaiden, who I imagine must have given Disira her dangerous name. She wanted to lie in the shade, but she left when the sun was high. I happened to stand in the sunlight, and I saw my reflection. I was ... I was held back once, Ulfa. Not allowed to grow with the years. She said something about that, and she undid that holding back.” It hurt, but I added, “I would guess for her own pleasure.”

Ulfa’s mouth formed a small circle. She said nothing.

“Anyway I am as I am, and I have to make myself longer arrows.”

Hesitantly, Ulfa said, “We try to stay on good terms with the Hidden Folk.”

“Do you succeed?”

“Oh, a bit. They heal our sick sometimes, and watch the forest cattle.”