Just as the grasses rise again when the wind ceases to make them bend with no thought but to grow taller yet, so too did Sir Johan, denied the walls, loose right away a javelin and suffer no grief for his undone plan. That missile struck the bull but failed to stick in the thick and brown hide that warded off harm. The bull bellowed then, lowered his flesh-ripping horns, and attacked for the sake of ending the battle.

The knight did not allow that, but stepped aside and fixed a shaft in the enemy's side by the strength of his arm, which was big. He thought still to make his way to the steps and win thereby a height bad for the bull his enemy, though he ran not straight there for fear the four-footed pounder of earth behind would overtake him in the race and win his life as the prize. Dodging the charge became the goal of his feet, and he threw javelins when he judged himself able to plant them deeply, for he had seven only.

Four of them he flung when the bull passed by him, not as two travelers on one road might but in iron-splitting charges it were death not to avoid, before his feet reached the stairs he hoped to climb and make his triumph sure. The bull, wary and unwilling to lose, tried to watch him and for that lost an eye to a well-thrown javelin. Nor did the wounded beast bear that calmly and give up the struggle from the pain of it, but raged all the more so that he rushed at the walls with no care for the hurt it caused him and with such might as was rare among beasts and among men never found. The well-fit stones were jarred loose by that charge and fell, the bull working alone what an army with engines might fail to do.

Sir Johan fell too, and his death then was sure but that the stones were not less heavy for the bull's wrath, and they fell on the animal and stunned him. While that proud, four-hooved lord struggled to shake off the wreck with tosses of his terrible head and horns he suffered worse wounds, for the baron's long sword in the hands of the blood-shedding knight pierced through his neck more than once and watered thereby the ever-thirsty ground that drank up all the vigor he had.

The contest over, the servants praised the knight and carried away the bull, a task for more than one or two, while Sir Johan rested again to gain back his wind. He had need of it soon, when Gualter the chamberlain showed him his seat where food was brought to him, for so much meat there was, and drink enough to match it. And he thought it right that it should be so, since the bull was great in size when alive, but there was more even than that.

“Is the rule for the guest to eat his own meal and the host's as well?” He asked that, marveling at the number of dishes and how high they were piled so that he ate not the third of it, hungry as he had been.

Gualter answered him this. “Not so, and neither does the master have so much save for those days the bull comes, for his strength of body is lowered then by the hardship of the struggle.”

“I do not think less of him for that, and I may not be wrong if I say I know his mind today better after that trial than I do the speakers in Ampherae who waste an hour or more telling us of theirs, every corner it seems. Yet I wonder that he is away at this time, if the bull's visit is foreseeable, as you said before.”

“The day itself cannot be known, sir knight, but an attack sometime during each month is sure.”

“Then it is only chance that such a feat was given to me to do, which is good for my fame at the least. Nor has any meat I ate before regained me strength to this amount. It seems a hearty life here, more so than the city, whatever you say about its poverty. Already I am full able to take on another task, though the day has been long.”

“It is well that you are so full of wind and vim, sir knight.” Gualter left and returned with an ax unlike the sort the knight had seen woodsmen use, for its head was narrower than most. “The master likes not to leave the walls with such gaps in them as the bull makes, and stone also is of use elsewhere in the barony. For the selling of lumber is the trade his people do most of all, and to build with it themselves seems a waste when other material is at hand. No quarry is near, but a tree there is which has this trait that makes it strange, which is that its trunk is rock-like and hard though it grows like a tree and is ready for the ax once a week. The master fells it himself, and no other can or will try that feat save the guest, who must.” He spoke thus the will of Baron Onophrio and set down the ax for Sir Johan to choose whether he would remain or leave fully fed like a fire that visits a forest or else a village of wood and straw which, after it plunders the place to the very twig, takes its leave in the guise of eye-clouding smoke.

Stolen story; please report.

Sir Johan had no mind to do that however when he heard what help the stone would be to the barony and that the baron was able to do the task. He said nothing on the trouble of it or the habits of hosts and guests elsewhere, but asked only, “Where is this tree more wonderful than others?”

“Martim my brother knows where it grows, and will guide you.”

Sir Johan set out with Martim beside him, whose shield and sword he had wielded before against brigands. Some length on they reached a hill, small, an orphan with no brothers near it. It had however its share of wealth. Gualter had called it a tree, but no cypress had ever been such, or pine, or any apple or orange tree that men love for their fruit. Wider in its trunk than any of them, yet shorter than most, it had for its leaves sheets of rock that crumbled when the limb-shaking wind blew them to the ground, and its trunk was elsewhere called a column and carved to be pleasing to the people who passed it.

Sir Johan sought a place free of knots and saw the whole trunk to be so. No sun-seeking tree with waving branches had he ever viewed that was so even in its bark as that, though he was no woodsman. For that reason he followed the lesson drills and battle had taught him, which was that the first stroke was oft the last. He swung the ax therefore in no halfhearted way. Gravel spewed from the gash he made, a cloud of it. His arm shook at the blow and he changed his grip, then battered that trunk in the manner as happens to castles rather than quarries.

Martim knew as the baron's man to stay back when that work was done for fear of harm from slivers of rock that flew out of the wounds made in the tree. He marveled at the knight's puissance, who chopped through the mass wondrous swift and made a tunnel fit to undermine the walls of an unyielding fortress, and he said, “I had my try at it once, sir knight. The ax fell from my hands and I was unsuited for toil for two days after.” And he was awed at Sir Johan's tireless limbs.

Indeed that knight halted for another reason, the wind still in him, which was that the width of the trunk in the middle made it hard to press forward there. He fixed his feet to the side and began again from there, and in that way, circling the tree, he cleaved the bottom from the sun-yearning top. Then the tree became unsteady, as when a city long used to settling the affairs of its neighbors is minded to count its treasury and what wealth is in it, only to find less than was thought, so that there is doubt about the coming years. Even so did the stony pillar that joined the earth to the firmament creak, shudder, and shake off pebbles that warned the men below what care they should have. Sir Johan, when he deemed his work done, shoved the tree and withdrew.

There was for the column no escape from its doom that it should fall, and it did, and the ground bore it though the weight was much. Martim showed the knight then how the baron behaved, which was to roll the mass down the hill in the way he pointed. There was a boulder there that broke the trunk into smaller parts, sized better for the servants who later would haul the stone away. That done, the two walked back on feet lighter for the success.

The chamberlain and every person else was amazed at Sir Johan for his deed which Martim told them, for as odd as the customs of Esteril were in other ways, it was deemed wrong there as elsewhere that a guest should boast when servants were about that might spare him the need of it. The household there had cheer at what the knight had done, but he for his part pondered this.

“If Baron Onophrio were of Ampherae he would have trouble there, for we do not like that a man should do so much, and we distrust him who is capable of it. Regardless of that, is there aught else to be done by the guest today?”

Sir Johan asked that, and Gualter answered him. “At other times there are tasks the master likes to do, but when the bull comes this is enough for him. You have carried through the part of the guest just as the rule demands and may rest as you like, on the lord's bed as well, without pillow or cushion as it is.”

“That the lord of a rough barony would not love ease is nothing odd, but I wonder that an unkind bed and hard sleep should ready the body for such tasks as your lord is wont to set himself.”

“That is so, sir knight, and the master behaves in this way when he desires better rest. There is a goose that likes to visit this court from its lake where it lives and rules over birds and fish, for it is stronger than they, and prouder. Once each day it passes over the walls to strut about and play the lord, and at times the baron is minded to watch and take mirth from it, while at others he chases it down and plucks it. For its feathers have these virtues that are a marvel to learn, that they will fill any pillow or bedding no matter the size and that they give such softness to it that the man whose head rests on it will sleep and have heaven-sent dreams though nightmares troubled him before. The third trait of them is strangest of all. Those feathers, better than others in all other ways, shrivel after a single night, so that you must pluck the goose on the very day you wish to enjoy their comfort.”

Sir Johan bethought himself and reasoned this, that Baron Onophrio would have sought ease on that day if any. For that reason it was right for him to do the like, willing as he was to follow the habits of that place, odd as they were, but suited to the might of a far-traveling knight. “What must I have to challenge the goose?” he asked, and had from Gualter therefore the goose-tangling net the master of Bevim Manor used.