The Knight

I knew perfectly well that Setr had given him nothing but bruises.

It was the Western Trader, and I know you guessed it a lot quicker than I did. It did not look much better than it had a year ago; but it did not look much worse either, and when we went on board and had a chance to look around I saw that most of the sails were new.

Kerl and I hugged, and he told me how he had gone to the Round Tower looking for Pouk and me. That had been a week after we had gone down inside the Mountain of Fire, and he had been told we were dead, and Thunrolf was dead, too. So I told him most of what had happened, just saying that Thunrolf had wanted to shame his knights, which was true, and leaving out his trying to kill me when he saw Setr and I would not run.

I got the old woman to sew a pennant for me while we were waiting for the Western Trader to unload and load and get ready for sea again. It was silk and made of scraps left over from when she had made a gown for the daughter of the Captain of the Port. It was made of green silk, and she cut hearts out of red silk and sewed one on each side. Kerl flew it on the foremast for as long as I was on board. Later I put it away and sort of forgot it until I made a lance out of spiny orange. Then I remembered it and got it out, and put it on that lance. It was on there when that lance was hewn through.

Pouk and I stayed on shore with the old captain and his wife until the ship was ready. First, because we had gotten very comfortable there. And second, because I wanted to let Kerl keep his cabin for, as long as I could. He was not going to charge me anything and would not hear of our paying, but I had decided that when we got to Forcetti I would leave behind the Osterling knife Olof had given me. It had a silver hilt and a silver scabbard, both set with corals, and so it was pretty valuable, but it was too close to being a sword for me to like it.

I did that, too.

It seemed like we were never going to sail. The big spar broke, and Kerl had to find a long piece of good wood so the carpenter could make a new one, and he had to make it, and after that they had to load the rest and get everything stowed. Back when I was living with you, I read stories about sailing ships and pirates, and fighting Napoleon and all that, but it had never really gotten through to me how slow everything was. How long everything took. There are about a thousand things that have to be ready all at once, and when everything else is set you load the water, because the water starts going bad the minute it gets in the casks. Small beer is nicer, like Pouk said, because it keeps better. But it costs, and water is free.

Pouk and I had small beer in our cabin. Wine, too. The wine there is not real wine because they cannot grow grapes. But they make other stuff out of fruits they can grow, the same way we do cider. It had been cheap there in the little port town where the Mountain of Fire is, and we had gotten used to it. We had ship’s bread too, and cheese and jam, and three different kinds of salt meat, two kinds of smoked fish, and a lot of other stuff. The old woman had fixed a basket for the first day: sandwiches and fruit, and all kinds of pickles. There was so much in it we ate it for the first three days. The old captain gave me his brass marlinspike that he had in the seabag he carried onto his first ship. He said I ought to learn to splice rope while I had the chance. It was a handy thing to know, and I might need it sometime. So I did.

Because we finally did put to sea. When it happened we had been waiting so long it did not seem possible.

Most people here have never been on a ship, and some of them have never seen the sea. (Disira had not.) People in America are the same way, and it does not bother them. So there are some things I ought to explain, and one is about bread and cooking and so on. There is a stove in the galley, and the cook bakes bread for the crew when he can. But he never lights his stove in bad weather because some coals could spill out and burn the whole ship. In bad weather you get ship’s bread and cold meat. Everybody does, even the captain. In good weather the cook boils your meat in seawater to get some salt out. But any cooking he does costs firewood, and there is only so much of that. In cold weather there is no heat except for the galley stove. None. It got colder and colder as we went north up the coast. Winter was about over, but it was still cold north of Kingsdoom. I had been gone about three years with Garsecg in Aelfrice, and one year exactly with Thunrolf in Muspel. Time always runs slower in the worlds underneath Mythgarthr, but you can never be sure how much. Sometimes it is just a little slower, but sometimes it is a lot.