John, riding, held a torch. The shadows ate at his long head. Other flames showed here and there. They seemed to be looking for something besides escape and Broaditch didn’t care a fractional damn what it might be.
At some point they stopped and all three flopped down. The man behind kept panting and coughing. Black-robed Truemen flitted here and there in the flamelight. Broaditch’s wounds were stiffening but the bleeding had stopped. He gritted his teeth and looked at nothing. He sensed that all his troubles and absurdities would simply fall away from him like water spilling around a boulder. He’d outlast them. Suddenly he murmured as if alone:
“We were away. Safe,” he said, straight into the night. Reset his jaw. It was a curse or inscrutable purpose again because he’d had to talk at a perfect time for silence. “I said to him, I know not why, even as we moved low and crouched among the trees …”
The man still panted on one side, the other, equally invisible, rested motionless.
“Said what, brother?” the silent one suddenly said.
“Am I your relation and know it not?” wondered Broaditch.
“We’re the family of doomed bastards,” was the reply which the other found excellent.
“Aye,” he said back. “How came you here?”
“I used to …” He suddenly tensed. “I … I … lived … I …” Paused. Then: “But what said you, brother? Nay, a tale may take my mind from its pains.”
“But make mine fresh,” Broaditch replied. “It’s not even a tale. Just madness.” His voice was hard. “Or a poor joke of fate, which may be one thing, in the end.”
“You remind me of him I knew.”
“Who?”
“What died this recent … died …” Voice trembled. “All died … all … all … He were called Flatface for his face were like unto a Lenten cake … we used to farm the land together … but the land died too and so we planted dead and grew hell’s crop … poor Flatface, he dove deep for his meanings, now he’s deep …”
“He dove deep, did he? Well, I sink for mine … Hear how the fire flared up and showed us, Alienor … my babies … ah … ah … but if we’d moved on apace …” His tone was flat, hard.
“Up,” someone said out of the night as the rope suddenly heaved at them, yawing their wrists around. “Up and on.”
The other wagon banged and strained a bend or two back. The booming thunder voice had stopped by the time it (driverless) caught up with them. Above the ravine walls a few hazy, swollen-looking stars showed.
“Go on,” Broaditch was continuing, talking at the invisible shape of the man roped ahead of him. The other still panted behind and said nothing. “I said. “Go on,” to Lohengrin but he wouldn’t move. The fire showed us …”
“Why not move?”
“He had to ask questions.”
They lurched and swayed around a bend. The ash was shallower here. The fire had not come that far.
Because Broaditch didn’t know why he’d had to say it after so long a silence. Yet, he mused, over and over, that was his special flaw, the error he had to commit in the wild red flaring light of the blazing carts and goods, Lohengrin dark against it, his family crouching behind him, saying an hour ago:
“I struck you. On the mountaintop. In the storm.” Wishing he’d chewed his tongue raw instead except, perhaps, he’d sensed the young man had needed to know this and that it was the beginning of a kindness …
“I remember,” he’d said, excited. “You were the peasant … you threw the stone. I was trying to slay you.”
The ash and smoke boiled around them, the red flaring on the dead-black earth. Alienor was dragging at his arm, children muffled close to her. She said nothing, just pulled. Lohengrin was blocking the way forward but this time he went at him, actually pushing the armed knight on, saying:
“We cannot speak here, for Christ’s sweet sake, lad!”
But it was too late and robe flapping, lithe figures seemed to spring up from the lifeless ground everywhere at once and the last thing he saw, in the tortured glare, was Lohengrin hit in the head by a red-spinning flash that merely (falling himself a moment later he understood) was a tossed ax this time and then he was on his face, choking again, darkness lapping over his consciousness …
The rope whipsawed his bound wrists as they rocked around another turn. His feet kept slipping.
“Fly,” he’d screamed into the ashes. “Alienor, fly! Fly!” Screamed until his choked throat failed him and the darkness all ran together …
Alienor stood still, a hand on each child’s shoulder, the black trees around her, the flamelight, a wisp of color on their faces, was swallowed to nothing everywhere else. She’d hesitated as the shadowy men pounced into her shouting husband (she saw the others, the horned ones, battling through the fires and heard the agony behind them) and she was just whirling when someone gripped her by a wad of clothing and yanked all three of them (because her grip on the children was locked) as the little girl cried out in pure and terrible hurt.
“Father! Father! Father!”
Torky struggled to free himself as she writhed in the violent grip and her mind flashed that this was death, the dance of death, he had them as the night closed in and a voice whispered, repeated at her ear with breathless pain:
“I’ll get you away … I’ll do this …” She recognized Pleeka’s strained tones. “The times have done it … the times have made them mad … I won’t let them feed …”
And now they were running into the blind night because of the children … the children … feeling the staggers in his gait even as he fiercely yanked and balanced, hurled her along past the limbless, lifeless dim trees, her mouth raw with thirst and dust and each breath and foot impact shocking, flashing pain …
They were climbing the steep side of the valley that had become a ravine, blundering, snapping through small trees and fallen branches, charred brittle; scraping their hands on edges of rock, moving part up and part parallel.
She was half-carrying Tikla again. Pleeka stayed in front. She heard him scrambling on, almost continually muttering. She caught few of the words … just live, she told herself when she told herself anything … just live …
They passed through my body into all this so I’ll keep them as long as I may … I did it before … I did it before …
Because she was dreaming now (though she hadn’t realized it) of the water …
We’ve used up the gift, she thought in fear, she’ll not save us again … She of water, she of all benediction, because to Alienor it had a face and form, an almost face of wet light all clothed somehow like summer and spring, and clutching her frail daughter, the male at her other side, uncomplaining (as if she willed it so because she was half-helpless, beyond her limit, driving herself up into darkness) behind the mechanically muttering ex-believer. Alienor could almost see the image almost above her, neither beckoning nor rejecting, almost luminous, almost palpable …
“Onward,” she told her children.
“Thirsty, mama,” said Tikla.
“Soon,” she answered, firming her voice for their sakes. “Just onward now. Soon …”
Not far behind in the same darkness the Vikings descended into the stony, burnt-out cut. Few of them had been killed or wounded. Tungrim was on foot now.
“It’s serious,” he told Layla as they went side by side near the head of the column. He’d ordered all the animals slaughtered for food except for her mount.
Several men with torches were out in front, casting strange, horn-headed shadows among the dark stones and pole-like trees.
“Hmn,” she replied.
“Were lost,” he told her.
She rested her long hands on the mule’s ridged back and didn’t think about there being no wine left. The animal was gaunt and chewed its lips together with thirst.
The mountainsides had become actual cliffs here. Their feet ground over smooth pebbles. There was little soot suddenly. Obviously this had been a riverbed.
&nbs
p; Layla looked dully at the fat man who called himself baron. He’d clearly been grosser but hard living had loosened his flesh into great pouches. She didn’t like his stony little eyes. He was smiling, of course, holding a torch and gesturing intensely.
“Gentlemen,” he was saying, waving something in the torchlight, holding it up to Tungrim’s face. “Here’s solid proof enough.”
“Keep still your hand then, slayer of Skalwere,” the prince said. Plucked it from the other: a bone, freshly chewed with scraps of gristle. It had obviously been cooked. “This but proves some go before us.” Squinted at the fragment in the shaky glow.
“At least they have meat, my lord,” Howtlande pointed out as the captains silently watched him, expressionless. “That’s worth following after these days.”
“The seas, fat one,” redbeard baldhead put in, “are full of fish and not such land-garbage.”
“Well come back to the sea in time,” Tungrim told them, flicking the bit of flesh and bone away as they went on, crunching over the streambed, the sound almost as though water flowed there …
“Do you believe this fat cheese and his tales?” the lanky captain added. He walked ahead with his torch flashing over the pale wash of pebbles and ever-narrowing walls.
“Which tales?”
“About treasures of the great wizard.”
“They’re sooth,” Howtlande insisted, “sooth.”
“We should have slain you,” redbeard added to the discussion. The flames gleamed on his smooth skull.
“Peace, Thorere,” Tungrim quietly commanded. “This fellow smote our enemy.”
“This load of gull droppings?” the lanky captain snorted.
“I never lie,” Howtlande lied, with firm dignity. Prince Tungrim raised his eyebrows. “I knew the wizard. I heard him telling countless times about this place, this hidden fortress he’d made in the earth. This be where all his treasures are kept secure.” He was trying to distinguish their expressions in the fugitive orange glow. “I heard him say the secret of his magic is there.”
“What might that be?” Tungrim responded laconically.
Layla felt chilly though the night was warm. Crossed her arms over her chest. Each sway of the mule irritated her.
At least let’s camp and sleep, she thought. Thank God for sleep. There’s little to say for waking …
“The Grail,” Howtlande was saying, “The Holy Grail of power itself.”
“Eh?” Tungrim was baffled and faintly disgusted with the conversation. “The what?”
She was already twisting around in the saddle, almost shouting:
“Grail? Grail?” she said. “Kill him! You hear me, Tungrim? Slay this gross fool!”
Their faces were shadowhollowed as the torches rocked and the flames bent and puffed. The four stared at her with eyes blotted out, gleamless.
“I’m a Norseman,” Tungrim began, tediously, “and Norsemen are bound by their honor to —”
“It’s a curse!” she raged, arms refolding over her slightly shivering body. “A fucked curse!”
“Lady, I —” Howtlande began but was cut short by the Prince.
“I want no accursed magic,” he bellowed. “I’ll have no such —”
“Fool!” she said, shivering so that her voice shook. “I had my life spoiled by that nonsense … that Grail …” She spat out the word. “Slay the fat fool for his own sake … It’s a disease that eats your husband’s mind and leaves you loveless with tormented children and —”
“Woman!” he said. “Woman!”
“Clinschor,” Howtlande insisted, “swears it’s real.”
“Oh, yes,” she went on, cold with fury too. “No doubt. They all believe it … all of them … Slay them all, I say!” She twisted around to stare into the blankness before her. Saw him, Parsival, the long, bright hair flamed with rose-red from the sunrise, mounted on a blur of horse, red armor (helmet in his lap) like quickening coals … remembered only her feelings, wordless … remembered begging him to stay and he said something and something … the red fire in his hair, the clear, blue remoteness in his eyes, and she’d felt death was like that: seed … growing … filling out … drifting into goneness … gone … she’d shouted something about how they’d lied to him to get him lost following the Grail … and he went and the old, old tears of that long, lost morning had really been wept because she’d been walled off from her love dreaming … the wall never came down again …
“Grail,” she whispered, refusing to look over at them again, clinging to the bony back of the staggering, mincing mule. Shivered and felt no appetite.
I cannot ask him either … Wondered if some warrior in the column might have a skin of wine put away in his pack. The son-of-a-bitch … the hooves lightly and unevenly clicking on the bed of stones … Now they’ve got me too … even me … they’ve finally got me following it …
“Grail,” she almost spat into the blankness beyond the wavering torch glimmer …
XXXVII
Now they had no water. Gawain had poured part of a flask into one of the two kegs the men bore by turns on their backs. Parsival had shattered it with his sword. The other was finished. He held it up. Shook it, smelled the sweet, damp wood. Flicked loose a few drops that vanished into the black, burned soil. The sun was high and fierce in the stifling haze.
They were alone now. The peasants had fled on before dawn when a second woman and a man were killed despite the fires and watchers because Parsival had been struck down by the poison water: he’d paced and stared, the blade across his shoulder, peering into the darkness beyond the charcoal glow … and then his sight blurred, ears roared, teeth rattling together madly for a moment and then a silence as if sound, sight and all senses had been sucked away into a vast blot of nothingness: he heard screams, terrible screams of panic and pain. He’d run at the sounds, seeing … not seeing … seeing again … the terrors echoing strangely around him as if he were closed in a walled chamber.
“Unlea,” he’d shouted. “Unlea!”
Suddenly the woods were daybright and he had an impression that he’d slept and dreamt everything except it was wrong: the trees were in full bloom, lush with heavy, midsummer greens, earth a softness of deep grasses … deserted … silent except for the pleasant winds wooshing across the fields … he knew that he knew the place and tried to recall it: a thin stream, banks in an aura of sunlight, a long, smooth crease and then he saw the mounted knight coming down, the giant horse rocking through the grasses as if breasting seawaves, faceplate shut, armor a blood-red glint on man and mount and he believed it was someone dressed to look like Sir Roht the Red (remembered slaying him so long ago with a thrust javelin in the throat, blood misting and leaking down the shaft over his own pale hand as he braced against the shocking weight of the toppling man, his hot rage already run out, and he was bewildered, curious, hoping he was doing what was expected of a knight, the hot blood drops on his face and fool’s garments … ) or a dream yes, that was it, he was still asleep … no … the water, the poison water … the knight lowered a red lance and began a slow, flowing charge straight at him and he felt cold draining fear, trying to raise his blade and finding it tremendously heavy as if he now moved underwater … the red warrior came on, massive, silent, three-edged lancetip dead on his chest … closer … closer … trying to move, fight or run … frozen to the spot he finally watched the spear come ripping in, piercing his heart and his heart burst and flooded him with warm, golden, soothing light … then blackness … then the dark fires again and Unlea, one leg up as if suspended in midflight, even her garments fixed, silks billowed out and still in the night air, and beyond her, in the orange-red glowing, moved vague, dark, threatening shapes … then all gone and he was kneeling over the fallen knight, the helmet freed, javelin pulled out from the round hole where the blood gurgled in a dying trickle, the redhead’s blue eyes looking at him, suddenly free of their deathglaze, blood clotted, mouth moving, speaking:
You’ve done me, boy.
I bad to become a man, like you, sir.
Now you have to bear it.
What, sir?
This suit of steel. It’s heavy, boy. I can no longer rise in it.
I have to be a knight and know the brightness …
Forgive me, boy, for I brought you to this.
Forgive you? But I slew you …
I wasted all my moments until this one and this one is my best.
“But you died,” Parsival was yelling into the darkness. “You never spoke a word!” Saw Unlea running, then motionless again, as if (he thought) in a childhood game of “Trollstill and Scamper.” “Never a word.”
And the night was gone again and he faced a stone wall laced with ivy where the sunlight tangled the shadows and flashed hot and bright and he recognized the priest just coming through a low, barred door which he shut and locked behind himself. Straightened and watched him.
I told you, he seemed to say, nervous hands adjusting his robe and patting at his tonsured hair, you truly have no choosing. Now you’re locked in here.
“No!” he yelled, or thought he yelled.
You’re getting more chances than ever a mortal was given before. How many can you waste?
And Parsival rushed past him at the door, through which he saw a long shimmer of water. Stooped down, face near the close-set, thick bars, staring at the scene: long hills where flowers were golden flame and clouds unwound in slow, mellow light that seemed a condensation of all childhood summers; a single sailboat out in the blue stillness winked smoothly away into the haze where a castle stood on an island, delicate spires mounting high and clear white with golden trim like sun flashing … and he began to weep, face on the cold iron …
The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) Page 22