Sketches: 1: A Knight and His Daughter

Humans are amazed when a kunjel seems to know the future, or makes choices knowing full well consequences exist.  Perhaps it is our sense of smell.  Maybe we smell things far away on the horizon others can't.  Maybe the movements of the gods leave a trail, a vapor bearing their names.  The blood on the gods' hands, the ones who rebelled against the Highest One, maybe stays and bends the tops of the grasses over, attempting to hide the shame, but not hiding it from us.

Regardless of what humans think, with their pitiful sense of smell, kunjels sometimes have a knowledge of what is ahead.  Sometimes.  Not always.  It is not sight, not foresight.  It is difficult to say.  I wish I could say it the right way, put the words down so that no storm knocked it over, so that no enemy broke into them and robbed them of their meaning.  As I said, kunjels have a sense, a sort of way of knowing when a decision is a bad one.  It keeps them from drunkenness and irresponsible behavior, from the snare of the dark ones.  It allows kunjels to know trails, to know a little bit about the future, to know how to avoid dangerous things....

But not always.

Once, a knight had gone out of the town into the Great Grass Sea.  He was to perform a routine patrol, nothing exceptionally profound or dangerous.  He was merely going to check a few of the lem fences at the border lands, perhaps ride through a village here or there.  He thought of leaving his armor at home, but a knight doing his duty without proper attire tasted of dishonor, so he put his armor on, a piece at a time, careful to make sure it was straight and in place, and free of dings and dents and scratched places.  For each attire, there is a time and a place, and a knight's attire is meant to impress, to make others take notice.

For days and days, the knight's daughter begged to be with him on one of his patrolling rides.  She wanted to visit the other wolches, to see other people, to see the wide expanse of Grass Sea.  She wanted to see her father do his work and be proud of him, to put meat on the stories he shared with them at supper time.  She imagined them going to slay dragons, or fighting off a million gremlins, or telling a hial to go away back to his lands and watching the dark figure turn and retreat in respectful terror.

And for days and days, though peace reigned through the land, the knight said 'no.'  It wasn't that he knew why he said so, except that it was not fit for a girl to go with a knight.  Something...smelled...wrong about it, perhaps.  He had planned on going to some of the Droddy villages in the Southwest territories, and to go among humans could be troublesome.  But his daughter's eyes were so big, and her voice so sweet, and her pleas so persistent, he could not refuse her.  He tried to put her off with tales of terrifying encounters, the legacies of quelling riots, slaughtering hials, fighting against vors that would try to break his back.  All the while, he told her about the itching grasses and the poisonous grasses, the floating lems that paralyzed and disemboweled people.  He tried to instruct her, but all he did was excite her.

So, this day, when she came into the barn to see him off, he asked her if she still wished to go riding with him, and she eagerly agreed.  He told her she could go if she was dressed and ready before he had finished putting on his armor.  She was back before his helmet went to his head.

They rode together on the back of their big japal, down the trail leading away from their wolch, into the southern territories of Kunjel Thortinis.  And all around them was the world, bright and beautiful.  The sky was like a great spidersilk blanket, and the clouds like little tufts of cotton.  The grasses, even the poison patches and the sweetgrass patches and the itchgrasses all waved as though swaying to the same music.

The knight's eyes never settled on any one thing, not even the sweet-smelling hair of his child in front of him.  He looked at everything, all around him.  They scratched the surfaces of every blade of grass, every stone jutting up from them, every tree whose limbs clawed at the wind.  When they crossed a tiny trickling stream bed, his one hand held the rein of the japal, and the other was on his sword hilt.

His daughter, who knew nothing of the ways of the world, who didn't know the strange smells of darkness, hummed a tune she heard in church.  The knight put a hat on her head to keep the sun from her eyes, and it spun first one way, then another as she also looked around herself.  But she looked in wonder.  She pointed at birds and giggled at wums landing their big, fat fuzzy bodies on flowers and bending them over.

"Look, Papa, mefs," she cried, pointing at a pasture of sweetgrass, surrounded by a small fence.  Above the waving blades were the huge fur-covered backs.  Their gigantic hind legs, made for jumping, were bent up against their bodies like bell towers by a temple.  Their great big ears flopped along their backsides, or flipped about to discourage flies.  The smaller mefs huddled round the mothers, nursing, ready at any time to run scurrying away in danger.  

The father and knight looked at the mefs, not really because his daughter pointed at them, but to check to see that the big ones were wearing mefshoes, and to make sure they were far enough away to not become a problem.

The day grew older, and the little girl slumped a little in the saddle in front of her father.  The world was not very new anymore.  The wums and the mefs were the same as they always were.  They found lem fences, and he repaired them, leaving the girl in the saddle.  It was merely a matter of tying the string with the little pieces of rusty metal, glass, and gremlin bone thorns woven into it back on its posts.

"Why does a knight have to do that?  Why not just some farmer?"

"Farmers have to farm.  We are far away from most places.  If a father went out to tend to this, he might spend all day, and if he were attacked, what would become of his family?"

"The mother would take care of the children, wouldn't she?"

"Yes, but then she would have to come out here and fix the fences, too.  And then if she were attacked, where would her family be."

The girl didn't have an answer immediately.

"Well, when women go out to hunt, couldn't they fix the fences then?"

"They could, but I have to travel and patrol anyway, so I might as well be the one to do it."

It grew late in the day.  The knight was approaching the first of the Droddy villages at the very edges of Thortinis.  He stopped for a moment.  He knew an inn was there, but he would not take his daughter.  They would have to camp probably.  He did not want to camp.  He turned the japal back and headed north again.  On another ride, perhaps in three days, he could go back to the Droddy village.

The girl, not realizing she had missed the sight of a stranger place than she had seen, did not complain.  Instead, she leaned against her father, trying to find a comfortable place to rest herself, to sleep until they arrived back at their homewolch.

Again, they passed pastures and fields, the occasional grove, as the knight tried to find shortcuts back.

He heard a piercing sound, a shriek like a bird falling from the sky in pain.  Then, another sound, like a stick stuck in the ground maybe.  Something warm on the knight's face, just a drop on his cheek.  Did it rain?

He wiped his cheek with a finger and sniffed blood.  Something pressed against his face, a feather, attached to a stick, stroked the knight's beard....