The Knight

Until now, I have been recounting what I did and what others did, and reconstructing what we said. Now I think I had better call a halt to that, and explain how I felt then and later, and why I did what I did. I have been a general, sort of, and I can tell you that good generals march hard, but they do not march night and day. There is a time for marching, but also a time for halting and making camp.

I went forward alone, as I told you, with my bow strung and an arrow already on the string, listening to the murmur of the many, many lives that made up that string—to the noise of the people, if I can say it like that. To life. Those men, women, and children who made up Parka’s string knew nothing about me, nothing about my spiny orange bow, nothing about the arrow they would send whistling at some outlaw; but they sensed all of it, I think, sensing that their lives had been drawn tight, and the battle was about to start. There was fear and excitement in their voices. They sat at their fires or did the work they did each day; but they sensed that there was going to be a battle, and how it came out would depend on them.

It was not much different for me. I knew that I would probably have to fight half a dozen men, and that they would have bows, too, with plenty of arrows, and swords, axes, and spears. If I turned right or left, I would save my life; and Gylf and the man with him would know nothing about it unless they turned too, because they would both die when they got to the outlaws. If I turned back, they would know but I would save their lives as well as mine. Saving the lives of the people with you is supposed to be the big thing, and killing the people who are trying to kill you (and them) does not really count.

I went forward anyway.

If you ever read this, you are going to say it was because of what Sir Ravd had said. You will be mostly right—that was a lot of it. I wanted to be a knight. I wanted to be a knight more than I ever wanted to make the team or make the honor roll. I do not mean that I only wanted to call myself a knight the way I had been doing, or make other people call me one. I wanted to be the real thing. There were a couple of people on our team who were there because we could not find anybody good. There was a person on the honor roll who was there because his whole idea was to be there. He took gut courses, and if he did not get an A, he went to the teacher and argued and begged and maybe threatened a little until she raised his grade. The rest of us knew it, and I did not want to be a knight like that. This was the big test. This was one behind in the ninth, two out, and a man on second. It was not the way I would have chosen if I could have chosen, but you never get to choose.

That was only the smallest part of it, though. Let me tell you the truth right here. I thought Bold Berthold was dead. I thought his body was someplace around where his hut had been and I just had not been able to find it. I might not have found Disira’s if it had not been for Ossar, and there would not have been anything like that to tell me where Bold Berthold was. If I had been there, I might have run away when the outlaws came, and I might have tried to get Bold Berthold to run away too; but I knew Bold Berthold pretty well by that time, and he would not have done it.

The Angrborn had hurt him so much it seemed like he should be dead. He could not stand up straight. His hands shook, and sometimes it was so bad he could hardly feed himself. He could be kind of crazy, forgetting things that had happened a little while ago or remembering things that had never happened. He had been so sure I really was his brother Able that I had to answer to his name, and sometimes he had almost made me think it was true—and he thought I was still Able when I came back older-looking and bigger than he was.

All that was true, and there was more; but you could not scare him. The outlaws could have killed him, and I thought probably they had, but they would have to. They would not have scared him, and he would have protected Disira and Ossar until he died.

So Bold Berthold was dead.