Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (22 page)

PARSIVAL

They stayed in the caravan of death after they left the cave and set out through a misty valley behind the ragged hills. The road was beaten deep and rough by hooves and sliced by wheels.

At each fork or crossroad a cart loaded with plague bodies would separate from the main way for several hours; they were the only two left by the time they finally came to a village in rolling, lowland country. It had to be well after midnight under a mostly clear sky and setting half-moon. No one was stirring.

They stopped by the town well. Parsival assumed they’d drink and water the horses. He pulled up beside the other cart. The driver was British; the other wore a turban but no armor.

“Ar, Jack,” the driver said to Lego, who was closest to him, “this one’s ours.”

“What’s this?” Lego responded. “We can’t have a drink?” The fellow laughed.

“That’s good,” he said. “Why don’t you wait till we’ve done here, you’ll enjoy it more.”

This tickled him so much he shook with laughter. He and the other man got down from the seat.

“Well,” said Lego, “go first then, if you’re so thirsty.” He looked at their empty wagon.

“Yer done anyways,” he said. “You better go back fer more or you’ll find some trouble.”

They went around behind the vehicle and started unloading the corpses. Before the knight and the captain could react, they were dumping a naked plague victim into the well. It was half over the rim by the time Lego and Parsival stormed down.

“Anointers!” Lego cried. “Anointers!”

There was a popular theory that plague was spread by monstrous men who anointed places and people with polluted holy water or foul tokens of plague. To be accused of anointing sealed your summary doom.

“Be quiet ya fool!” The Briton hissed. “Ye’ll wake the town!”

“Die, Anointers!” Lego snarled, laying on with his captured scimitar. The turbaned man drew and struck before the Briton even reacted and would have sliced Lego’s arm if the tall knight had not bumped his captain clear with his hip and simultaneously chopped off the top of the turban.

“Pig-eater!” was the infidel’s first comment.

“Here, now,” said the Briton, backing around the well where the deadly dead body flopped, head down in the hole. “Here now …”

Lego chased him, cutting furiously.

“Traitor!” he said. “Devil! …” Cut, cut, stab. “Anointer! …” Stab, then a scream from the Briton as the razor tip nicked his breastbone.

The foreigner was very fast and slippery in the cloud-dimmed moonlight. He ducked under the cart forcing Parsival to chase him around the other side while the little man chopped out at his legs. The knight dropped to his knees within swordreach and faced underneath. He could hear Lego fighting as his opponent backed away down the road, insisting they were on the same side…

Normally, when Parsival fought, his mind was silent and he simply followed events as if he were the enemy’s shadow. But this was distracting. It was almost silly. Villagers were coming out of their homes. Candlelight flickered into a longhouse.

Lego came back, panting and unsatisfied, dabbing at his chest cut.

“He ran… the bastard …” Parsival stood up.

“This rat’s in his hole,” he said. “Let’s leave him to the cats.”

As the peasants came up, armed with sticks and scythes and hammers and stone, Lego told them: “There’s a foreigner under this cart. A nasty beast. An anointer we caught bringing the death to this vill. Putting dead in your well, here. Burn all these bodies and deal with this infidel as you see fit.”

“Good speech,” Parsival approved as one lanky man came closer, holding a staff, yawning.

“Who be you?” he asked.

“Men who fear God and love Britain,” said Lego.

We have to get horses, Parsival thought. We need an army to block the roads, protect the towns and warn the folk…

“We have to see the king,” he said, to himself.

The peasants were getting it and starting to surround the wagon, improvised weapons ready. The man underneath was panting, more from terror than exertion. He heard him farting, as frightened men often did. Lego leaned down, sneering:

“Come out ya windy rat in a hole,” he said, poking his sword under as if driving a cat or dog from under a bed.

The man screamed and lashed a cut wildly at the blade and everyone’s feet who stepped too close. Two men had already dragged the body from the well, the rest (about eight) were reacting to the bodies in the cart. Some women and older men were coming outside now. The fellow underneath was yelling in his own language which wasn’t doing him any good.

One long farmer squatted down to peer into the shadows. The moon had come out of a rill of clouds and the area brightened.

“What use is this?” he asked the infidel, who answered with a slash that cut his cheek.

That was enough. One man had come over with a torch and another with an armful of dry thatch reeds which he tossed under the cart, silently, while the other, silently and instantly thrust the torch and pulled away from the sudden, crackling, smoking blaze. The little man screamed and thrashed around trying to flail away the flames, and then rolled out, clothes smoking. Two other men freed the mules from the traces.

“We got to burn these up, anyways,” the long farmer said to Lego, as the villagers closed around the screaming man who, turbanless, was gleaming bald in the moonlight, waving his blade and patting his smoldering clothes.

Parsival wasn’t watching. He turned to the farmer and said: “Keep the other cart and team. We need two sound horses.”

The infidel was crouched, trying to shield his head from the stabs and blows raining down on him.

The man’s eyes were round and almost frog-like. He studied Parsival.

“Oh, yes?” he responded. “And who be you?”

“Mind yer insolent mouth,” snapped Lego. “This is my master, Sir Parsival of Wales.”

The infidel was silent now. He just lay there like a heap of shadow as they poked him a few last times. The wagonfull of dead had caught fire and the flamelight showed a spreading pool of blood.

“Where’s ‘is armor then?” the farmer wanted to know.

“Ya fool,” said Lego, ready to punch the man, “yer all farmers here. Do you take yer ploughs everywhere ya go?” Lego was speaking now as he had as a village boy.

They picked up the fallen man, who was close enough to being dead, and tossed him on the cart on top of the heap.

“Get us two mounts, fellow,” the knight said, turning to watch the cart burn. “We have to see the king.”

“Aye,” said Lego. “An I’ll pick’m out myself, you churlish, long roll of dung! You’ll not palm off some broken bone-sacks on my Lord.”

One of the men who’d just dispatched the infidel (who was starting to smoulder with the rest of them), short wide, bearded muscular, sweaty, a bloody scythe in his hand, walked into the firelight and confronted them. He was barefoot in hide shorts.

“What if we say ride off on shanks’s mare and be damned to you?” he said.

Parsival gripped Lego’s arm to restrain him. He spoke softly.

“We need to see Arthur,” he explained, “so this whole land may be saved from poisonous death.”

The blocky man rubbed his beard.

“Walk then,” he said. “Yer feet isn’t broken.”

Others had gathered behind him. There were a few chuckles. “We’ve got no lord over us ‘ere,” the long, frog-eyed peasant explained. “This be no manor at all, think what you thought. We don’t relish to give up no horseflesh to any as comes by. An’ you bear the same foreign steel as that there little bastid who’s now a-roastin’.”

“Ya ungrateful pigs!” yelled Lego, violently shoving the fellow sidewise several stumbling steps. “We just saved yer filthy little cesspool of a vill and now I think I’ll shit in yer fucked well, ya fucked, ugly, dull, foul-smelling piss-pans!”

“Hush, captain,” said Parsival, who was coldly angry himself at this point. “You people are behaving with stupid selfishness,” he explained. “You will merit the misfortunes that come upon you, I fear.”

“What’s he sayin’?” the blocky, bearded man wanted to know. “That yer close to death,” answered Lego, “you shit-pot.” Parsival stepped quietly closer to the man. Just in swords reach.

The fire was at his back. His shadow was long and shook wildly over the half-circle of villagers as flames billowed around.

“Your garment ill-becomes you,” he said.

In a flicker of motion that seemed no more than a stray flash of light, the knight cut at the fellow, turned his back and walked to Lego and the long man. Nothing seemed to have happened; but two steps later the blocky man’s hide shorts parted in front along the line of the swordcut he hadn’t even noticed much less felt, and then fell, leaving him shocked, scared, and naked.

“Our horses, if you please,” Parsival said.

MIMUJIN

He walked his little unshod nomad’s pony quietly, alert in the darkness. He heard shouts and clash of arms ahead where across the level fields he could barely distinguish, the outline of the low village roofs where Parsival and Lego had just trapped the little man under the cart.

He sat the horse, totally still in the deeper shadow of a tree when he heard footsteps running, a man panting. Drew his curved blade and waited. As the man drew abreast, Mimujin could see he was too small to be the knight or his companion. He decided to question the fellow before killing him, so he just laid the sword out flat on to catch the light and hissed:

“You stop!”

The man, recognizing the accent, was relieved. Stood breathing hard, hands on knees for a few moments.

“Ah,” he gasped, “two strangers… came with… cart… we were dumpin’… bodies …”

“Strangers?”

“Aye… they fell upon us …”

“Who with you?”

“Varin.”

There were many voices shouting now and a sudden fireglow.

Then a scream.

“You run. He dead.” The man understood and instantly twisted and ducked to try and escape the vicious slash that just creased his head in a sear of fire. He plunged on, in a panic. Mimujin drew his bow and casually shot at the man. Missed. Then rode on, not too fast, watchful, patient. He had only one purpose so it all was simple. The pain where his pinky had been throbbed steadily; was a reminder he didn’t need.

LOHENGRIN

He rode all afternoon through the flat, sparsely wooded valley. Watching the sun’s slow arc, he developed the idea of heading southeast to the Channel; maybe find one of the boatmen who ferried people and animals up and down the coast. He had no clear idea of distances.

Near sunset he came to a wide, gentle river that took big loops as it worked through increasingly forested, low hills. He was on a well-used road now and was just passing through a cultivated area as the sun was setting and the long shadows fused together into general twilight.

He slowed the horse as he came into a village. He was relieved because the animal had developed a slight halt in his gait.

There’ll be a blacksmith, he thought. Or I’ll find a new mount…

Except the place was deserted. As the light failed, he rode through and back again: no people, no animals, no fowls, no dead.

Yet there are crops in the fields, he pondered. He knew enough to know farmers didn’t willingly leave good land. Feudal peasants never really went anywhere.

In one of the thatch-roofed dwellings that were partly dug into the earth, he found a side of bacon (was amazed a villain would have left such a treasure behind) and a hard, black loaf.

He cut some bacon and bread and went outside to eat. As he chewed and washed it down with water, he thought about Hal. Rested and let time pass.

Could his adventures have matched mine?

Mind blurred… drifted off into a long nap… went deeper… no dreams this time…

Suddenly back, he looked above the low trees where the waxing half-moon was now rising. It bleached the little town of cave-like houses into mysterious rills of light and shadow.

They all left here together…

No signs of violence either, nothing smashed or burned. They’d gone in a hurry but not fleeing.

Keep on to the sea, he decided. I’ve come this far…

He lay back on the soft earth, hands locked behind his head. Watched the moon. The leaves cut dark, sharp outlines across the bright, whiteblue, halved disk.

His thoughts drifted to his favorite ambition: to gather a band of fighters; find hungry outcasts, outlaw knights, younger brothers dispossessed by the laws of inheritance…

He yawned. He’d inspire them. Shut and opened his eyes at intervals. Without his noticing it, the moon was suddenly straight overhead – which more or less meant dawn was near.

He rubbed his eyes. Everything was a silvery blur. Then a female voice that still seemed a part of a dream was saying:

“It’s well I came back, comrade.”

“Came back?” he muttered and yawned. “To see if any were left behind.”

She was young and sounded intense. He forced himself to sit up. The taste in his mouth was ugly. It reeked of bacon grease and dogshit, he thought. She stood in front of him, shortish wearing a hood and cloak. The moon shadowed her face.

“I just got here,” he told her.

“Well, your good fortune I came,” she responded. “You can leave with me.”

He rubbed his whole face this time.

“I can leave with you?” he wondered. “At least show your face so I can fairly judge.”

She seemed nonplussed

“My face? What matters my face?”

“If you’re toothless with a cast in one eye and drooping ears,” he said, “that will influence my decision.”

“You are strange, young sir. I mean to save you from doom, and you wonder about my looks.”

“Save me? Only if you’re pretty.”

She was amused. “Myself,” she returned, “I’d hold a leper’s hand to save my life and ignore a handsome knight who’d lead me wrong.”

He was amused. “You’re too wise to be much pleasure,” he told her.

He was waking up. Stared into the shadows of her face without much success. These women I meet…

He thought back to the tall, red-haired, devastating witch whose feet he’d worshipped in the strange tent… then the next, the pale girl behind the bars set in the stone cliff who’d had the strength of a demon and offered him strange immortality by kissing death on the mouth or whatever… then the dead girl…

“Sit down,” he suggested. He had some vague idea of pulling back the hood and kissing her neck, if she proved attractive.

Mayhap she is fair and pleasant…

“I came back here to lead whoever was left to safety,” she declared. “Not to sit and soon find myself on my back in the clover.”

“You’re no serf’s girl,” he said. She started walking away.

“Come or not,” she told him.

“How old are you?” He wanted to know.

“You are a fool, I think,” she returned back over her shoulder. “Come or not.”

“Nay.” He stood up. “You take me for my father.”