The Wizard Knight - 01 The Knight by Gene Wolfe

Author:Gene Wolfe [Wolfe, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fantasy, Need to Read, Award Winners, Nebula Nominee
ISBN: 9780765313485
Publisher: New York : Tor, 2004.
Published: 2005-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 35. There Was Ogres

Pouk’s mind was still on the imaginary battle. “If I’m goin’ to be back at th’ wagons, how’m I s’pposed to look out for you? S’ppose you’re th’

’un gets stuck on somebody’s lance, sir? How’m I goin’ to get to you an’ find you in all that?”

“That will be my squire’s task, if I have one.”

“An’ I still don’t think it makes no sense for knights to come at each other the way you do, you an’ Sir—Sir ...”

“Woddet.”

“Aye. You never did hurt th’ other ’un a-tall, just you knocked him off his horse.”

I corrected the record. “He knocked me off mine, Pouk. Three times.”

“Only twice ’twas, sir. That other time—”

“Which makes three. There are half a dozen holes in your argument, Pouk, and I doubt that it’s worth our while to plug them all.”

“If you say so, sir.”

“Besides, we’ll be at the farm before I could do it. But I ought to tell you that I’ve never been in a real battle in which knights fought on horseback. What I’ve said about them, and what I’m about to say about knights fighting, I learned from Sir Ravd, Master Thope, and Sir Woddet. From Master Thope particularly. He’s a regular goldmine of information, and I could listen for hours.”

“Looks a pretty decent place, sir,” Pouk said, regarding the farmhouse. Its mud-and-wattle walls were whitewashed, and its thatch looked new.

“They’re doing better than a lot of people I’ve seen.” I paused, recalling Master Thope’s impassioned growl. “Your complaint is that Sir Woddet and I didn’t actually hurt each other much, much less kill each other. He knocked me off my horse, and once I got lucky and knocked him off his.”

“Aye!” The syllable bore a world of satisfaction.

“The first thing, the main thing you’ve got to get, is that Sir Woddet and I weren’t trying to kill each other, or even trying to hurt each other. In a battle the knights are out to kill one another.”

Pouk nodded reluctantly.

“We used practice lances made of wood not strong enough for real ones. You don’t want a practice lance to be strong. Somebody might get hurt or killed. A real war lance is as strong as it can be made. It has a sharp steel head, too. Ours were blunt. By hitting me hard with a stout dagger, one of the Osterlings was able to stab through my mail, remember? His stab opened a couple of rings, and that was enough.”

“Aye. We was a-feared you’d die, sir.”

“I just about did, and maybe I would have eventually if it hadn’t been for Garsecg. Now suppose instead of a dagger that mail was hit by a heavy war lance, with the weight of a knight and a galloping horse behind it.”

Pouk scratched his head. “Go through it like it was cheese, sir.”

“You’ve got it. What’s more, Sir Woddet and I aimed at each other’s shields. The shield’s what’s generally hit with a lance in a real battle.”

“An’ what good does that do? It’s just like what I was sayin’, sir.

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