The Knight

Somebody, I guess Master Aud, brought us the blunted swords. They were just regular old swords, pretty plain with the points and edges ground flat. The knight that was going to fight me took one, and I explained again about how I was not going to use a sword, even one like that, that was not sharp. So Thunrolf sent somebody for the chief cook, and he came, and Thunrolf explained and told him to bring me a shield and something I could use that was not a sword. That was when they took Sword Breaker and my bow.

The chief cook came back pretty quick, and for a shield he had one of those pewter covers they put over a dish, and for a sword a long iron spoon. I did not like it, but I had to get up on the table and take them. Everybody was telling me to by then and yelling and laughing, and to tell the truth they picked me up and set me up there. I thought, all right, I am bigger and stronger than this guy and

I am going to show them.

Right here let me get rid of the excuses. I had drunk too much wine with

Thunrolf and I was none too steady. That is the plain truth. Also they were grabbing my ankles and trying to trip me. That is the truth, too. Only neither one of those was what really did it. He was a swordsman, a good one, and I was not. Until I tried to fight him, I did not even know what a good swordsman was or what one could do. I hit his shield hard enough to bend my spoon, and so what? He never hit my serving dish cover at all. He hit around it, and he could make me move it whenever he wanted, and wherever he wanted. He was probably a pretty nice guy, because I could see he felt sorry for me. He hit me three or four times, not too hard, and then he knocked me right off the table. I got up and gave him the ceptre I had borrowed, and that was the end of our bet. Thunrolf was laughing, everybody was, and he slapped my back and made me sit by him. There was beer and more wine, and soup, meat, and bread. There was a kind of salad, too, that had cut-up roots in it or something crunchy like that, and oil and salt fish. That was pretty good, and so was the meat and bread.

Afterward there was fruit, I think the same mangos we had ridden on that morning. I ate a lot, but Thunrolf did not eat much at all. He just kept drinking, but he never seemed really drunk. Later I got to know Morcaine, and she was like that, too. She drank brandy instead of wine, and she drank quite a bit of it.

It put a lot of color in her face and she swayed sometimes when she walked, but she never sang or got silly or passed out. I never understood why she drank so much, or why Thunrolf did either.

Chapter 30. The Mountain Of Fire

When supper was about over, Thunrolf stood up and banged on the table with one of those silver glasses until everybody quieted down. “Friends!” he said. “True knights, brave men-at-arms, bold archers.” He sort of stopped and looked hard at them before he said, “Loyal servants.”

He kicked over his chair and went down to the servants’ table, and his voice got slow and serious. “I have reason to believe that offense has been given. Given to us all, but to you loyal servants most of all.”

He spun around after he said that, and came close to falling down, and pointed to Pouk. “Aren’t you a servant? Sir Abie’s servingman?”

Pouk jumped up. “Aye, sir!”

The other servants sort of growled at that, and so did the men-at-arms Pouk had been eating with.

“You have pushed in among your betters,” Thunrolf told him, “and turned your back on your comrades. If I left your punishment to them, you would get such a beating as would cripple you for life. Would you like that?”

“No, sir,” Pouk said. “I just—”

“Silence! I will spare you the beating. Is the smith here?” He was with the men-at-arms too, and stood up. Thunrolf whispered to him, and he went out. “I want six intrepid knights. Six in addition to Sir Able there.” He named the ones, and said that anybody else could come who wanted to see it.

Thunrolf had a horse, and so did his knights, but Pouk and I had to walk, and so did most of the ones that came with us. The road got steeper and steeper, and finally there was a long flight of stairs where the ones that had horses had to leave them, and then more road, and then more stairs with snow and ice on them clear to the top. Some people stopped there and went back, but there were men-at-arms watching us, and we did not try. I told Pouk it was not much to somebody who had climbed to the top of the Tower of Glas, and he told me it was not much to somebody who had climbed to the top of the mainmast as often as he had. We cheered each other up like that, but the truth was that it was a stiff climb, and when I had gone up the stairs in the Tower of Glas with Uri and Baki we had stopped to rest every so often. Going up the Mountain of Fire, nobody stopped at all.