by Judith Tarr
Olivier on his right, Turpin on his left beat off those whom Durandal did not touch. Thibaut and Milun fought beyond them, and Ogier the Dane roaring with Berserker fury; Gerin and Gerer, twinned and inseparable, fierce Anseis and Otker the valiant, and Ascelin of Gascony who saw his countrymen among the enemy, but fought for the Frankish king. Twelve paladins, twelve great warriors bound as brothers. They laughed as they fought, and sang as they slew.
Roland sang strongest of them all. When the ambush broke upon them, he woke to a white, mad joy. He counted the numbers against them, reckoned the ranks drawn up from hell, and laughed.
Durandal drank heart’s blood from a thing with a wolf’s jaws and an owl’s great round eyes. A half-naked Gascon leaped yelling in the thing’s wake. He fell with his head nigh cloven from his shoulders. There was another behind him, and another, and another, a swarm of fangs and blades and claws.
Milun was down, Thibaut standing over him, howling like a wolf. Anseis had fallen. Gerin and Gerer he could not see at all.
The enemy were innumerable, inexhaustible. The wall of them drove the Companions together, those who were left.
Veillantif shrieked in mortal agony, reared and fell thrashing. Roland tumbled free. Limbs tangled, blades clashed. Something smote him between the shoulders, but his mail-coat held. He dropped, rolled, staggered up. Claws raked his face. Durandal hewed the demon down.
Behind him a stallion screamed. He whipped about. A snow-white shoulder thrust against him. Long white mane streamed, catching his free hand. Tarik all but flung him onto the broad white back, no saddle, no bridle, but the puca needed none. His sorrow rang in Roland’s skull, made fiery with anger. He had come as swiftly as he could, but he was sore hindered. Demons—no kin of his, by the old gods—had barred his way.
It did not matter. He had come; he fought with more than mortal strength. He carried Roland among the Companions, those grievous few who still stood: Olivier, Turpin, Ogier bloodied to the eyes, and Ascelin the Gascon fighting with grim and loyal ferocity.
There was no end to this battle, no respite. No moment to rest, to breathe, to bind one another’s wounds. They could not take up the dead, nor mourn them, either. They could only fight for their lives and their souls’ sakes.
Three fanged wolf-things together pulled Ogier down and gnawed his throat. Ascelin shrieked something appallingly profane and flung himself at them. A mob of Gascons, of his own people, fell on him and hewed him in pieces.
Tarik lunged. Roland glimpsed fangs—no blunt horse-teeth in that gaping mouth. Durandal whirled of her own accord, cleaving, hacking, killing.
He saw Olivier sway, with half a dozen men and devils gathered to pull him down. Roland caught him with mad strength and heaved him up on Tarik’s back. Tarik barely staggered under the more than doubled weight.
Olivier’s arms closed about Roland’s middle. His voice rumbled in Roland’s ear. “I don’t suppose this beast has wings?”
Roland did not trouble to answer that. “Turpin. Where—”
“Down,” said Olivier, brief for once.
Roland would weep. Later. For them all, all the paladins, and his beloved Veillantif who had been so valiant.
“You might,” said Olivier, “blow your horn. The king probably doesn’t know—”
“Lost it,” Roland said, with little breath to spare amid a storm of fangs and steel.
Something thrust against Roland’s free hand. He almost batted it away, but his eye caught the shape of it. It was the aurochs’ horn. “Hold it for me,” he said.
“I’d rather you winded it,” Olivier said. “Remember what he said. If there is need—”
Roland could not fight and talk and lift the horn, not all at once. Olivier was leaning heavily against him. He had to take the horn or let it fall. His battle-brother’s breath was loud in his ear, thick and labored. He did not want to hear what he heard in it: the bubble of blood.
“Wake the hosts of heaven,” Olivier said, faint now but determinedly light. “Let the mountains ring. Blow the horn!”
The hosts of heaven, thought Roland. Except for Olivier, he was all alone in that swarm of hellspawn. No mortal men here, no simple human faces. They were all demons. He could not see the army at all, nor the baggage. Only the seething mass of devils.
It was rout, it was slaughter. It was, he knew with perfect clarity, all for him—for Merlin’s child, the last and least of his blood.
He prayed to God and to His holy mother that the king was safe, that the greater part of the army had escaped; that only the rearguard had been so beset. It was a forlorn hope and perhaps a vain prayer, but it gave him a little strength. It let him fight a few moments longer.
Olivier had stopped even trying to defend himself. Roland protected him as he could. He fought his way to a little rise of ground, a low hill on which he could make a stand. There, for a miracle—or perhaps for a mockery—he was given a few moments’ pause.
Olivier slid from Tarik’s back. Roland had no strength to catch him. He crumpled at the puca’s feet. His body was a mass of wounds, his helmet lost, his face white and far too still.
He could not be dead. No, not Olivier. They had made a pact. They would live to a great old age, and then they would die together in the same woman’s bed, in the same moment, neither before or after the other.
Roland flung himself down, heedless of the hordes that circled the hill. He took Olivier in his arms, cradling the big fair head. The blue eyes were open. They were empty. There was a faint frown on his brow.
A great wail rose in Roland’s throat. He did not let it go. Instead he did as Olivier had bidden him, the last words he ever spoke. He lifted the great ivory horn to his lips, filled his lungs and blew.
No man, even Roland who was other than mortal, could have made such a sound. It rose up and up, higher and higher, clearer and ever clearer, till heaven itself rang with the strength of it.
And as that long note died, he sounded a second, clearer and even stronger than the first. His ears were ringing, his lungs burning. But he found breath in them for a third great blast, with all his heart and soul in it. So strong was it, so powerful the force of it, that his sight grew red with blood, and blood trickled from his ears. The horn burst asunder in his hands.
The shards fell. He all but fell with them, blind, deafened, reft of breath and strength. But not of will. Somehow, with arms that shook as if with palsy, he raised Durandal, and steadied his feet as best he could. He stood against the tide that poised to overwhelm him.
The horn’s cry was ringing still, echoing in the deep valley, resounding among the peaks. As hell’s children swarmed upon him, he saw heaven split asunder. A host rode forth in armor of light. And at their head—
He laughed, there on the border of death, for surely he was dreaming. Sarissa rode foremost on the back of a great white swan, and on her head a crown, and in her hands a cup brimming over with blood. She was beautiful beyond mortal measure, shining with power, splendid, glorious.
And she was too late. The Companions were dead. The rearguard was gone—cut down, vanished, he did not know. Roland would die before she came to him.
Still he laughed, for she was beautiful, and he was not afraid to die. Durandal’s song was faint and thin after the horn’s great cry, but it was wonderfully sweet. The sword was insatiable in her hunger for demon’s blood. He was more than glad to feed her.
CHAPTER 35
Death was a swift fall of dark and a slow return of light: cool white light and a breath of wind scented with snow. There was pain—dim, distant, but startling; had he not left the body behind?
It would seem he had not. The wind blew unhindered across it. There was stone beneath it, cold but not unpleasantly so. All about him was sweet unearthly singing.
Voices of angels. Angels bent over him, nine ladies clad in white. And foremost, as beautiful as he ever remembered, but higher and stronger and far more powerful, stood his beloved, his lover, Sarissa.
She lifted his head in the curve of her arm. Her warmth was human, and her strength, but her face was unreachably remote. She set a cup to his lips. He sipped blood-red wine, or wine that was blood, or blood that was fire. Or it was all of those things. It seared his throat. It coursed through his veins. It drowned him in light.
Death in darkness, death in light. His third death was silence and walls of stone, and Turpin sitting near him, chin on breast, snoring softly.
It was just as it had been so often before: waking from a long sleep or a wound, to find himself in a soft bed, with his friend watching over him. Roland lifted a hand that felt and looked like his own, and touched a face that surely was his, though there was an oddity to one cheek: a faint interruption, as of healed scars. A dim memory dawned, of battle and blood and the rake of claws. Would his beauty be marred, then, though this was heaven?
Truly he seemed to be in his body, with a new count of scars, but all old, all healed. He was not weak as he should have been; once dizziness had passed, he felt hale enough. He could stand, walk. His bare feet trod carpets of Eastern richness, woven in the colors of heaven: red and blue and purple and gold.
This seemed to be a room in a palace, or perhaps a castle. It had a window, set deep in the stone of the wall. He leaned into it and looked out across infinite space. Clouds drifted below, tattering on the jagged teeth of mountains.
“This is not the heaven I expected,” he said.
The voice that answered him was not Turpin’s, though the archbishop’s snoring had stopped some little while since. “Not heaven, though not earth, either. This is the castle of Carbonek, in the kingdom of Montsalvat.”
The names rang like bells. Roland turned. Turpin was awake indeed, but silent. And Sarissa was standing just within the door.
Here in what must be her own place, she was more beautiful than ever, more truly and splendidly herself. Roland, naked and chilled and confused, stood as straight as he could. When he spoke, it was not to her. “Turpin. I thought you had died. Are the others—is Olivier—?”
Turpin’s face was stark. “Olivier died at Roncesvalles. Thibaut, Milun, Ogier, the rest—gone. Anselm and Eggihard from the king’s own household fell beside them. I was left for dead, but these kind folk found me and brought me here.”
Roland swayed against the wall. It was cold against his back, and hard, and as grimly real as the truth Turpin had spoken. Dead, all dead but they two. “And the king? The army?”
“The king is safe in Francia,” said Turpin. “He heard your horn; he came back. It was too late by far for any of us, but he took vengeance on those rebels whom he found, gathered the dead and marched over the mountains. All the baggage was lost, all the gold and treasure of Spain.”
“But we are not—”
“You were brought here,” Sarissa said, “before you could be killed. I grieve for Olivier and for the others. We came as swift as we could, but we were too slow.”
Roland pressed his hands to his forehead. His head was throbbing. “We should be in Francia or laid in tombs. Why are we here? How did we come here?”
Sarissa beckoned. Servants entered, laden with a copper basin and jars of water and the rest of the accoutrements of a bath. They were men, mortal enough to look at, dark and slight and sharp-featured like Romans or Spaniards. Their long tunics were of linen undyed, their mantles of deep clear blue, each held at the shoulder by a brooch in the shape of silver swan.
They bowed low before Roland, set down the basin and filled it, and gently but irresistibly coaxed him into it. He could not but remember the last time he had had such service, in the king’s tent before the ascent to Roncesvalles. He nearly broke down and wept; but he would not do that in front of these strangers.
They washed him with an air almost of ritual, moving in unison, without a word spoken or a glance exchanged. When he was clean, his body dry, his hair damp on his shoulders, they clothed him in a long white garment like a monk’s habit, then took the bath and went away, as silent as they had come.
New servants came behind them, bearing cups and bowls and jars: a light feast, with wine and new bread, cheese and fruit and lentils stewed in spices, but no meat. He began to wonder if this was an abbey that he had come to, though she called it a castle—Carbonek, in the kingdom of the Grail.
He could not eat, though his stomach growled. Sarissa sat by the bed, poured a cup of wine, gave it to Turpin. The archbishop seemed at ease; he smiled at her. She smiled in return. One would think, thought Roland, that they were friends of long standing.
“Tell me,” he said. “What must I be strong enough to know? What is worse than the death of all my friends but one, and my king’s bitter defeat?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Your king is safe in his own kingdom—I promised you that, and I kept my promise.”
“Did you?” Roland set his back against the wall again, as if it could protect him from he knew not what. Grief was darkening in him, turning to anger. Olivier, his heart mourned. O my brother!
“You asked me,” she said, “whose champion you had been chosen to be. This is the answer I could not give you then. You are the champion of Montsalvat.”
Time was when Roland’s heart would have swelled to hear such a thing; when he would have been dizzy with joy and pride. But he had fought in the slaughter of Roncesvalles. He had seen those he loved cut down one by one. When he closed his eyes, he could see that battle still, and the hordes of devils swarming down upon his people.
“Was there need for that?” he demanded of Sarissa. “Was it necessary that so many die? They were aimed at me. They struck for me. Because they knew what I was. If I had known—”
“You were not their only purpose,” she said. “Our enemy—your enemy, my lord—sought to seize the Frankish army and twist it to his own ends. That, we were able to prevent. We saved the great bulk of your king’s army, so that it was free to escape. The rearguard . . .” She paused. “Come,” she said abruptly. “Come with me.”
He might have refused, but she had seized his hand. He could not break free.
He could walk, or he could be dragged. He chose to walk. She drew him out of that room, down a long winding stair in what must be a tower, along a passage lit with lamps that burned with a pale and steady light, and across a courtyard open to the aching blue of the sky.
The wall that bounded the far edge of that courtyard was the outer wall of the castle. Twin towers warded its gate. Sarissa led him to the summit of that on the right hand, and stood with him on the battlement, looking down into a fair green valley.
It was beautiful, that valley. Yet he hardly saw it. His eyes were caught and held by what lay just below the walls.
A camp was pitched there, tents enough and fires enough for a fair army. There were horselines, though most of the horses grazed at liberty in wide pastures. Men watched over them, and tended campfires, and practiced exercises both mounted and afoot. He saw no idlers, though there were men sitting still, fletching arrows or mending shields.
He knew those men, those tents and that order of encampment. The rearguard of Charles’ army camped below the walls of Carbonek. From the count of tents, the full ten thousand of them must have come through the battle in the pass, or near enough to make no matter.
“This is not possible,” he said, leaning on the parapet, gripping it till his fingers ached. “I saw what came against us. It was red slaughter.”
“That was all for you,” said Sarissa. “The others, he wanted for himself. Those forces of his were only sent to kill you. For the rest, they were herdsmen. These men were to pass through the gates of hell, and so be enslaved.”
He heard the ring of truth in her words. And yet his anger made his sight far too clear. It showed him another thing, a thing that set his heart in stone. “You, too. You wanted my king’s army—and my king—to fight for you in whatever war you see before you. He escaped, didn’t he? You didn’t let him go. The enemy confounded you, even as you confounded him. You o
nly won the rearguard because I was in it. He wanted me dead. You needed me alive. You sacrificed the van and the center, but won this much. Ten thousand Franks, mourned for dead. And still you let the Companions die. Why? Why could they not have lived, too?”
“We came too late,” she said. It sounded as if she honestly grieved—but he would not believe honesty of her. Not any longer. “We made all speed we could. First we had to shut the hellgate. And when we had done that—”
“That’s why you couldn’t tell me, isn’t it? Because you needed the army. Not to conquer Spain. To come here. If you had needed me alone, you could have persuaded me to come. But to bring so many of my king’s men—all of them, if you could—that needed a degree of treachery. Of deceit. Of—”
“You see clearly,” she said, “but your understanding is clouded.”
“What is there to understand but that you conspired to steal an army? If you had asked—if you had even begun to trust either me or my king—”
“We dared not,” she said. “The stakes were too high.”
“So high that you risked losing all at the last? Men are not children, my lady, nor animals, to do as they are told without regard for their will or their wishes. You should have spoken with my king. You should have asked. He would have given himself gladly, if he had reckoned the cause just.”
“And if he had not?”
“He rode into Spain at the behest of an infidel Caliph. Do you honestly believe that he would refuse to aid your kingdom?”
“We could not take that risk,” she said. “We had to be certain. To take, and not to ask.”
“Then you are fools,” he said. “Arrogant, and fools.”
He turned his back on her. Anger built a wall between them, raised it high and guarded it well. Olivier was dead. Ten thousand Franks snatched away into captivity were no recompense. No, not even a hellgate broken and a king escaped. Olivier was dead.