The Grail War

by Richard Monaco

  “You’re mad, old man!” Valit shouted from behind the woman. “You’re bent by mummery and visions!” He patted her great rump as Broaditch stooped and replaced the leaden sphere in his pouch. “Take your ‘more than riches’ and flee the shadows!” He patted her again. “There is only this — this is real life. Nothing else! I only followed you to prove it so!”

  Let others dream, he thought with satisfaction. I've made a good beginning … The cow you tie up in your yard is the cow you can milk.

  Irmree was kissing his hand. She was content. He decided to try and sleep despite the howling gusts that stuttered and drummed and sucked at their shelter. Anyway, it couldn’t last forever. This was as snug a spot as he’d be likely to find, thanks to this woman’s useful bulk blocking the worse of it … He was quite satisfied, in his way: look at the uses she had already, and this was but the beginning … He closed his eyes and vaguely heard or imagined he heard Broaditch’s nagging shouts, but it all was fading and blowing away … He was sweetly weary and nestled his face between her pungent hams … Everything drifted off into the distant thunder roaring …

  He added a vegetable garden to the cheerful stone house and a pond with plump geese …

  Mayhap they won't be seen, Broaditch thought without much conviction as he moved back toward where the path became the steep, walled road. The weight in his pouch swayed and bumped …

  About now Parsival reached Clinschor’s deserted iron ball mired in the flooding road. The horses stood miserably in their traces. The door had been resealed. He peered in the slit but saw pitch-blackness only. The metal rang dully under the pelting downpour.

  He was aware of the Nubian watching from the swampy undergrowth. He paid no attention. His senses were incredibly keen and effortless again. He went on, climbing, trotting rapidly despite his chain mail suit.

  In a way he was uninterested in just what lay ahead. Details no longer concerned him because everything was the same problem. One need with a thousand faces and forms. Ten thousand fancies and shadows, but all grown from a single darkness. Only that darkness mattered, not which particular shape cast the shadow …

  Up a ridge and out of the trees, bucking the down-slanting gusts, he could look back over the castle towers. He understood he was being drawn to the Grail. He smiled within himself. He was always being drawn to the Grail. It was one of the rules of the dream.

  He accepted that, but the point was each heartbeat surprised him. Each breath was unlike all others. Each step brought a new world into view … He’d do what he must, yes, but the darkness that waited for him was incidental, even if it destroyed him — a possibility he considered perfectly likely … What mattered was the mystery netted in each flash of light, the contortions of wind sketching shapes in the gleaming rainfall … He still felt a little taller than himself, and that was a towering vantage point, he thought … because the light would also glisten in the air and on the very sword that cut him down, and each following moment would unfold the heart within the heart of time … He felt twelve years old, in a way, and twelve thousand: tireless, open, fascinated, reaching out in every direction, seeing deeper and deeper into the unending reaches of everything, touching with wonder — and in one corner of all this he had a chore to do, a moment to live, to act, and he would take all the power and awareness in him and make something with it, reveal something through it, show and be and be and show … because it was all so incredible and mysterious and exquisite and forever … He felt forever, breathed forever, and felt its pulse, and yet it was unbeat, unbreath, unlight, unshadow … He would never end because he swam in the waters of forever …

  “Merlinus,” he said. “I know you can hear me. And you were right. I’ve finally come home. I could have stayed there to begin with.” He smiled, then trotted on, climbing, moving easily as the path zigged and narrowed, as if on calm flatlands …

  Broaditch had dropped back about twenty-five yards and had nearly reached where the wall began parallel to the roadway when he caught a liquid shimmer of steel in a lightning flicker barely in time to throw himself aside as the broadsword arced with a silky rip a fraction from his neck. He’d forgotten, he’d forgotten, and was he going to die for that? For stealing this worthless spear he somehow had believed was going to guide him to that light from his dreams? What madness … and now to die with only a leaden lump to show for it, which even Valit had tossed away, he who clung to penny whores … What had possessed him to follow his dreaming to his destruction … ?

  The knight advanced from the shadows, blade ready, helmet open. The rain foamed and thinly drummed over him.

  “Put down the spear,” he commanded. The wind burbled and whistled through his armor. “Common oaf!”

  The common oaf was backing up along the pathway, tilting the weapon for a desperate, hopeless (he believed) thrust.

  “Put it down!” the man snarled.

  Does he fear it? Broaditch asked himself. Is it possible?

  He tried a tentative jab with emphasis on tentative, falling back a half-step even with the thrust. But he needn’t have bothered: the warrior winced backward and actually crossed himself.

  “So, then!” Broaditch yelled, planting himself firmly.

  “I have something here, have I?” He remembered the flash when he’d first touched it. He knew that was real and he had found the castle and … yet his mind kept trying to insist he’d struck his head and slept an instant … No, it had been the spear. Why keep fighting the simplest things off? “The holy spear, is it?” He knew the story: the Roman Longinus had eased Christ’s agony by spearing his side, and blood and water had run out, and the weapon had been transformed by the contact …

  It might as well be true as anything else, he thought, advancing half a step more as the knight said nothing. In the intermittent light he saw the dove crest on his steel chest. This fellow believes it well enough …

  Then he heard a mortal howl on the wind behind, overlapped by a high-pitched woman’s shriek just as he was thinking: And why did I risk drowning myself in the moat and ten other recent deaths to hold onto this thing? And with the outcry: Again I must … Giving it up, all of it, the image of escaping fate and finding his family and a peaceful old age, already lunging fiercely at the knight’s face and seeing him retreat so fast that he slipped in the slick mud, went over backward, and went sliding down (like a lad's sled) the steep-inclined road beside the curving wall, accelerating rapidly, rebounding off the sides, spinning, waving arms and sword wildly, careening around a bend and out of view. Broaditch was already running back the other way, thinking: I always have no choice … always … Heard another shriek. No doubt they find her charms overpriced. He was running. No choice … It had to come to this, never mind mages, sages, portents, dreams, and the riptide of fate: it was himself in the end who sent him ever running the wrong way because he had no choice and the wrong way was always right …

  He charged the last few yards, concentrating on his footing, flimsy spear cocked as once again his mind doubted everything and told him they’d brush this toy aside and chop him to the liver …

  Always running one way, then the other, back and forth, bouncing and re-bouncing through life like a child’s wooden ball on cobbled streets …

  He saw them seeming to jump and shift in each shock of light, metallic glitter and gleam, as the armor formed from the shadows. He concentrated on not slipping. There were so many … Had they seen him yet …? Closer … closer … If he could toss them off the road, they’d roll and slide to the seething bottom.

  Water from above was cutting deeply into his path and he had to jump widening fissures … They must see him! Yet those visors really only let them look straight ahead, and they seemed to be involved: there was a pale shape, Irmree, crawling on hands and knees along the ledge of trail with two knights who, through the blur of rain and staggering illumination, seemed gleaming, dark demons materialized from steely night …

  Rage and horror hit his nerves like a blow and
he bellowed fury into the wind, seeing the bluish-white glistening of a long blade being jabbed into her naked, bleeding backside. He realized they were taking time to enjoy themselves and he went a little mad. He could see Valit’s sprawled legs flopped out of the partial shelter of the overhang.

  They expressed the face he knew, the blank, steel, red-eyed face that was exhaled from all the ruin and horror, gathered from smoke to solid: stupid, blank, black, blunt and stupid, stupid, stupid as stone —

  “Bastards!” he screamed into the lashing storm. “Stupid, idiot bastards!”

  And he was upon them, hurling himself over the fallen, bleeding woman, diving at the face he’d always loathed and fled for years on years, the frozen, silver-wrought masks that formed a single pair of fanged, gaping jaws of the whole head, and he kept shouting his war-cry: “Stupid! Stupid!”

  Climbing in full armor was muscle and lung racking, even without a storm and slide of mud-water. Lohengrin was blinking violet spots from his vision as they twisted up in single file to the hilltop. If they halted he knew he’d drop on the spot. The continual dark-light, dark-light, hurt his eyes. The blurred-out one still hadn’t come back completely. The rain had soaked through the cloth wads he’d pressed inside the plates to try and waterproof himself. Every once in a gasping while he thought he still heard the voice rumbling, wailing, and howling on with the words of the wind …

  Wearing and wobbling, plodding behind Howtlande’s massive back, a tireless mute coming at his heels, he suddenly was aware that he wished he were closer to the leader. He wished he had the strength to shoulder his way up past the others to the head of the line. He wanted to hear his words … no … he actually (and part of his consciousness spasmed in sheer disgust and outrage) wanted to touch, no, cling to his hand … yes … he did … he knew he did … but, he told himself, it was that narcotic room … or … or … the sickening chanting … He felt shame and raped and felt weakly (he knew too well) enraged … too weakly by half … He cursed himself and wanted to vomit with spite, but no matter, he needed … needed to touch, to hold him … O good God, he thought, with terror and desire, he needed …

  He felt his hands shaking. There was an edge of hysteria in his thoughts and movements now.

  He's all words …! Foams at the mouth … He's disgusting …! Deformed, not even a proper man … just words, nothing but words …

  He kept cursing to himself to keep the other feelings back.

  I'll let him know what a pasty nothing he is … the blow I took from that idiot … Wista …

  No. He didn’t want to think about that, either. He pushed it from his mind violently, tensely, feeling trapped in this nightmare, overwhelmed by feelings that seemed to surface from terrifying gulfs and darkly stir the pool of his mind …

  And then they were on the crest and he suddenly found himself face to face with the Lord Master’s brooding, rain-stippled features. Suddenly his hands were terrifically clasped by both of the leader’s and he felt gooseflesh and a strange, sweet warmth fill through his body as the somber, flaming eyes gleamed the lightning in their pale vacancy.

  “We are very close now,” he rumbled, earnestly, magnetically. “It is just ahead. Do not fail me in this hour.”

  “No,” Lohengrin heard himself saying, spilling the words from himself. “I will not fail you, master!”

  And he meant it. He knew he meant it.

  Parsival saw them ahead, a cluster of knights rounding a bend on foot. He had just reached the exposed, rocky hilltop. He glanced back and saw the whole country below illuminated by the rolling storm light. For a moment he paused and understood the scope of the desolation. Only a tiny part was visible here. It was starting to look like a sea down there. He didn't care to imagine what things were floating in it …

  He turned and marched on. Finally drew his sword. He considered the blade. He turned the edge to catch the changing light. All their fates had led them to this moment. There could be no blame. Yes, but it had to be won otherwise. Another way. He’d tried swords enough already. This was a work of art and a teaching and a learning, too, for him. Because it was not the story, but how it would be told … Nothing else mattered. He was born to tell this with his life. He smiled a little, not quite wryly. As he lost and found and lost it …

  He whirled the blade through the rain, posed on the roll of ridge, in an incredibly perfect, unbroken sequence of whirls, slashes, cuts, turns, drawing (in flickering blasts of bluish light) a breathtaking net of steel on the night, flowing with it in ecstasy, spinning, slicing, dancing along and over the crumbling, flooded pathway. At the end of the last explosively exquisite set of moves, he was a few strides behind the rear-most of two black-silver armored killers, one of whom had turned in time to see the finish, seeming fixed motionless by the sight, his own weapon still undrawn as Parsival in climax slashed a thousand dancing shadows to shreds, then dropped gracefully to one knee (the last cut inches from the stunned warrior) and tossed the weapon in a high, flickering arc, winking down, far down, the slope in a stopped series of flashes and was gone …

  The fang-jaw, masked knight took a single, short step, drawing, and cut straight for the unprotected head with terrific speed and skill because these were the last of the elite of the elite, the best of Clinschor’s best …

  Broaditch’s wrath was concentrated into a perfect thrust that struck reddish sparks, ripping through an eye hole and producing a wordless, blowing scream. Light flash: the knight reeling back, mailed hands pressed to the fanged faceplate … dark … flash: Broaditch skidded on his knees, the other fighter’s sword upraised … dark … flash: Irmree had risen, wailing into the keening, stuttering wind in time to receive the downstroke (the hilt hit her shoulder), which dropped her like a lead sack … dark … flash: Broaditch, slash-sliced straight from forehead to chin, right eye blotted out by blood, literally climbing up the warrior and yelling in pain and feral rage, gripping the shark-like helmet … dark … flash, flash: pounded it against the chisel-edged rock face, in too close to be cut again, again, again … dark … flash: again, the metal already a shapeless lump, blood spraying out the holes for eyes and mouth … dark, dark … flash: again, again, again, until he fell back, weeping into the streaming rain and the knight sagged and pitched sideways … dark … flash: Valit sitting up, wounds in his chest and side bleeding sluggishly, Irmree wallowing in agony in the mud … dark … flash: Broaditch kneeling, gasping in chill air … dark … dark … dark … flash, flash: another jaw-faced killer and a knight in black and red who seemed familiar, something he should remember … dark … flash: another smaller figure between the two, unarmored, in nondescript cloak, lifting the fallen spear from the foaming mud with an indescribable look of force and triumph … dark … flash: pressing it to his lips, eyes palely flaming in the hissing, crackling light … dark … flash: glancing behind himself, the silver, jaw-faced knight rushed to the rear, red and black one advancing as the spear bearer pointed to Broaditch …

  Valit was supporting himself on his elbows. He felt no pain now, only a cold, empty draining … dark … flash: he witnessed Broaditch rising to his knees, bleeding, wobbling, unarmed, trembling with strain as the knight with black arms and legs and red torso and helmet strode forward, unsheathing his long blade in a brisk, businesslike way … dark … flash (the lightning seemed to him to buzz and blast close overhead now, as if this scene drew fire from heaven), flash, flash: Broaditch stumbled back, swaying in the ripping gale that flapped his clothes like sails; Irmree thrashed on the path … dark … flash-hiss-crack-flash-roar-flash-bang: the knight rushed him as cries and commotion broke out down to his left out of sight around the water-swept bend … dark …

  Broaditch recognized Lohengrin through the open visor, the beaked nose and mocking dark eyes that he’d seen leaning from the shadows of the whorehouse bed over the stabbed and dying lord. He accepted he was a dead man. He had no strength left for running. He would fight somehow but not run anymore. He backed up slowly, step by ste
p, weighted pouch rocking against his leg. His bleeding eye stung like fire in the sleeting rain …

  Lohengrin thought: I know this dog … what matter … ?

  “It is here!” Lord Master suddenly shouted, shrill behind him. “I feel it! I feel it!”

  Lohengrin felt propelled forward, snarling, all his boiling emotions now concentrated against this big peasant who’d somehow just felled two knights. He couldn’t wait to cleave his bones and flesh, to see the heart-blood spurt and dribble. He hated the oaf for blocking the path, for resisting the sweep of events … You had to kill all resisters because they confused and weakened everything … everything had to be swept clean and pure, purged clean by blood and fire … no more dull-headed resistance, no more crawling weaklings, no more craven whining, no more ugly shapes (mind raced) … no more nightmares no more loneliness no more sweating fear no more weeping … no … What? What thoughts are these …? Mad with fury, snarling and roaring in his helmet, howling as he charged, already tasting the blood (What? his mind flickered off in a corner of himself. What?), teeth bared, gnashing to sink in, to rip and rend and taste the smoking blood … words snarling: “Weak coward! Scum!” Sword blurring in the flashes, head beating, beating, beating. “Die!! Die!! Die!!” And then a wordless howling roar that for a moment beat back the storm, and he slashed at the rain-blurred figure to wipe it from the earth …

  Parsival slid inside the mute knight’s blow with that uncanny relaxed grace and pushed and tripped him over the steep, soft side. He wondered if the fellow had learned anything. He’d just discovered how his body somehow saw in advance where to be. In the past he’d always been too caught up to catch what actually happened in a swirl of combat … It wasn’t power, exactly, he considered as the next two moved up, shoulder to shoulder, blocking the ledge of path completely … It was time … He wasn’t really fighting (could they see that?); he was giving himself to what had to be, and so it happened he was in the right place each moment … amazing …