The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (14 page)

XXIII

She stared at the mule’s backside that, she idly thought, seemed to somehow grow flies of itself, since she never actually noticed any arriving from anywhere else. They stirred, bunched and spread whenever the brushtail flicked and coiled. The sun was steady, harsh on the dry fields where grain and long grasses were bleached and crumbling. She was trying to remember how many days had passed since the rain and found she couldn’t remember; then found she really didn’t care, because her mind was on the wineflask hanging at the mule’s flank.

She barely noticed Tungrim, chunky, barelegged, straddling the animal, just the leather sack swaying and spinning … Swallowed, telling herself:

Noon
…
it’s
barely
noon
…
I
can
wait
…

Telling herself it was merely thirst except she had no real urge for water. On all sides the Norsemen marched quietly in leather-trimmed armor and conical half-helmets, canvas-strapped carts squeaking along, her own mount rocking under her, heat beating at her hood … She kept dryly swallowing, fighting the faint nausea, the pain only a hint around her eyes now, a casual claw touch.

She thought about asking him for the drink, trying out different ways of circumventing his refusals. Shifted in the saddle and tried to distract herself by looking around at the band of them marching in from the coastline where their famous dragon ships lay moored.

Tried to interest herself in where they might be going. Failed. Thought about discussing it with him … discussing something, anything with him.

Hear him grunt or regale me with tales of the virtues of the freezing northlands … God, what a dullard!

She already knew the answers to her own satisfaction: they’d loot the next starving village. Then the next … What a life, she mused. For senseless waste, it compared favorably with the last years of her marriage. Well, Tungrim had saved her, she had to admit, and her fucked, breakwind husband had “saved” her from her family. At least she owed him that.

Good Mary and her sweet son what a life! He helped me, the dreary, honest bastard with his platitudes like stale bread … O the wisdom of the Vikings, who can match it? Surely not donkeys or mere stones? … Mayhap a lump of steaming dung might narrow the gap …
She glanced again at the sloshing winesack. Then pulled her eyes away.
No … no good troubling my mind … but God, wine is a medicine for time! The only one …

The world was a hot ache, a soreness, and she kept thinking of the soothing taste and gentle touch of the drink, a soft embrace, an intimacy with herself alone, a fullness with herself alone, the thoughts, the wit of herself and the slow, sweet passing of shapes bright and dark, the rolling sun and moon no trouble to her … passing into quiet sleep …

Can
he
deny
me
just
a
single
sip?

She knew he would. Well, he’d helped her.

None
of
them
else
cared
a
shitstain
…
none
…

And there was still the nightmare, the dank passageways under the cold earth of the recent and crudely dug den where the terrible people who’d stolen her from her home hid under the green hills and waited for something she never discovered. The terrible people: squat, yellowish and pale, jabbering endlessly in a raucous tongue (she never learned to decipher a fragment), knights in jet black armor who never spoke or were seen with their helms off or even open … stink, stagnant air … human waste dropped everywhere in the muddy, timbered tunnels for flies and long, shuddering worms … guttering torches, muddy sleeping straw … her rusty chains … waiting in sunless fetidness … waiting so she’d no longer wondered if she were mad but simply how long she would remain so … stringy hair caked with foul mud, lice nipping, skin scratched to bloody streaks … she became so dulled she’d no longer even asked the mute knights or the babblers anything, no longer begging: “Please, why am I kept here? Please! Why did you slay them?” … finally numbed out of time and caring, there was commotion, clashing, cries, and the squat people fled past going deeper into the inner tangles, followed by black gouts of smoke thickening until she gagged and in blind reflex struggled for a life she no longer distinguished from the choking dreams that came and went as hopeless as the grim muck and stones that pressed endlessly in … then flame roar, furnace heat blasting into her as she twisted and roasted, smelling her hair burning, preserved so far only by the layered filth and oil that coated her gaunt flesh and then the rusty chainring snapped from the wall and she was rolling and crawling away through crackling timbers and raining sparks … somehow powerful hands were gripping her, lifting her into a rush of sweet, cool air, a new incomprehensible language all around her … shock of brilliant daylight, hot sun impacted in the sea and shimmering on the lush hills, the blur of battle all around, furred and horn-helmeted warriors striking down the black knights and their dwarfed companions … saw on the horizon immense masses of black smoke and ripping stormcloud. She couldn’t know that this was where the war for the Grail was ending in defeat for everyone and the nearly total destruction of the heart of Britain … now a reddish-bearded face with eyes like steel chips peered, smiling, into hers and she heard a screaming she didn’t know came from herself until (as the shock of everything hit and the madness vanished) she was already falling into soft, soothing darkness …

His mule was beside hers now and her hand already reached out before she was really aware of moving and then he had her wrist, steelchip eyes on her and she heard herself curse him, mechanically, furious, hopeless …

XXIV

Lohengrin sped out of the nearly invisible trees, holding his sword ahead as if it somehow lit his way. He was certain he’d missed his man, lost him back at the moat, but was sure, too, there was no reason to go back … and so he nearly ran into the horse, a plunging dark mass that suddenly was motion against an infinitesimally lighter background of field and sky, and then it snorted and there was another ahead and whispery voices. He froze, straining to check his burning breath.

“He’ll find us,” a male voice was assuring someone, “never fear, Unlea.”

“I’m not certain I do fear it,” she replied.

“Well and whatever,” the other rejoined, then to his mount: “Come up, you silly fartwit.”

Lohengrin saw him now, a vague metal gleaming. Heard the muffled hooves.

They
must
have
bagged the feet
, he thought,
to
dull
the sound
…

“Do we go straight on?” a coarser voice asked.

“Till we pass what used to be the river,” the knight Lohengrin didn’t know was Gawain said. “Are you not pleased he’s come back?”

“Am I not?” she ambiguously returned.

Lohengrin only partly listened. He stood, indecisive, sword unmoving. Should he speak up? Perhaps this knight knew something about
Lohengrin
… the sounds, movement faded quickly into the muffling night … the breezes shook the trees into an invisible hissing high up, out in the fields …

As he started to follow someone spoke close behind him and he turned, nearly in panic, scanning to pull a sure shape out of the hollow blottings of the night.

“Will you spare me slaying you?” the man asked.

“What?”

“Walk back the way you came. Follow not this path.”

There were still shouts, ringings, shifted and swallowed by the wind.

“Are you certain to best me?” Lohengrin asked.

“Save my breath and yours,” was the answer.

The young knight felt his scalp prickle and he inched back a few paces, testing the vacant air with the tip of his blade. He recognized death in the voice that touched a memory somewhere in the lost, empty recesses of himself.

“I mean no harm,” he told the darkness that he felt completely exposed in. His running sweat was chilled. Who was this terrible man who’d stood against a hundred?

“Leave then.” the voice was behind him again. Lohengrin twisted around, backed and circled. He felt his cold rage flowing into him. Fear made him furious.

“Very well,” he said. “Are you a wizard, sir?”

“In the dark,” came the amused answer, “there’s magic everywhere.”

Lohengrin barely listened. He was inching up to where he thought the fellow was. He was sure he’d caught a dim steel gleaming a bare sword length to his right. The rage poured into him like iced blood. He told himself it was time to act, to conquer, lead. That was all that appeared to bear reason in this absurd world he found himself wandering through, with rent past and no purpose … Unfair! … Stupid … He’d give them back the only coin anybody seemed to count, he’d have this much purpose: slay whomever dared stand before him! Command the rest. Ring himself with power … other things stirred now and he remembered, peripherally but intensely, one of the captured village girls, long graceful hands, long back … He was awakening, so there was going to be that too, pictured her sweet mouth with his angled hardness thrust into it … he was awakening, at last! Gritted his teeth.

“Sir,” he said, “I am not one of those men back there. I am a lost knight whose memory has been stricken from him like pages torn from a book. I need good counsel above all else. Why I know not even my
name
, for certain.”

“Is this truly spoken?” the unseen warrior wondered: Except he just could make him out now: a tall shape, the vaguest glimmer of chain mail and light hair.

You
son
-
of
-
a
-
bitch!
Lohengrin thought.
I
have
you
now
.

“I swear it, sir,” he said.

“What name have you?”

“Someone said Lohengrin …”

And then, body whipping like a steel spring, he uncoiled a terrific stroke, sidewise and level, that stunned even himself with its frenzied malice and power, anticipating the impact, crunch, split and shatter, his own voice beating in his ears and head, exploding a warcry!

Howtlande felt the mule shudder just before it spilled him, going down spraddle-legged, the shadowy attacker still hacking the long, flopeared creature with relentless and senseless savagery that terrified the pop-eyed leader because the killer was so totally unconcerned with him and the sword he snicked the air with, reaching for the small, rapid shape plying its longhandled ax; chopping the beast’s skull to unnecessary splinters. Howtlande rolled backwards with surprising agility. He somehow was convinced his enemy could see in the dark, imagined reddish feral eyes … He scrambled away still hearing the frenzied ax, splat, splat, hack, crunch, thinking:
I
always
live
I
always
live!
puffing, fleeing for the gate, the wild battle all around, men colliding, rebounding in the night, the nimble, deadly attackers cutting through and around like a diabolic wolf pack, striking, yelping incomprehensibly, someone tittering, penetratingly …

He was going full tilt by the time he reached the torchlit gateway and burst into the jammed men there like (Skalwere thought, watching from the wall, perched with a fistful of spears) a stone through a straw roof, and rolled into the yard, shrieking:

“Shut the gate! Shut! Shut! … Demons from hell! … Gate! Gate! You pissbuckets! … Shut! Shut! …”

Skalwere searched for a target (not forgetting to consider Howtlande himself for a moment), then fired a spear and thought he scored … saw another climbing the wall like, he thought, a spider, shockingly long, swamp-pale limbs creeping rapidly up: threw and watched the climber writhe and twist down into the earth’s darkness …

I
have
to
live
, Howtlande told himself, racing for the castle, massive belly heaving,
I
have
to
live
…

As he reached the steps a spear spat sparks and clattered loosely beside him.

No, his mind said,
Not
yet
…
not
yet
,
you
filth!

Plunged against the massive portal, yanked and strained at the handle expecting the bite and shock in his back every sweating instant …

And Skalwere, wild with outrage, fired another in a high arc, hissing:

“Coward! Fat coward!”

Knew he’d missed again and raced along the wall and down the stairs as the fighting spilled into the yard. He was holding two spears now. Nothing would stop him. He’d slay the fat sack. He’d slain far better among the Vikings and nearly got to Prince Tungrim himself … bad luck had ended that and he’d fled … a swordstroke away from being a great lord himself … that was fate … But this fat coward would not escape …

Parsival hesitated. Didn’t know and never knew why. He held the long mace part lifted. Saw the faintly glowing armor three feet before him. Didn’t strike. Shrugged. He’d let him go past, followed and then hesitated … then they had their strange conversation.

All throughout he thought about Unlea. Kept watching an image of her that hung in his inner sight, a shape that delicately hinted at subtle things, hopes, touches, washes of sweet light opening into soft landscapes that took his longings deeper, deeper into partial forms and exquisite colors, and he wanted to talk or sing or do something about it, some gesture or shape to hold the ecstatic delicacy … felt the blow coming and instantly realized this knight had succeeded where unnumbered others had failed and he was actually going to die here and now with that flowing magical vision drawing his attention …

Lohengrin, his son, saw brilliance that was blinding white pain as though his skull had burst and the light streamed not in but out through the fragments and he felt the something, the burning cold and bright and agonizing something there, feeling even the shape of it like a steel splinter under the skin or a sliver in the eye, and he knew something was in there, in the wound, all this virtually timeless in perception as arms and back cracked with the supple strain, slamming the cut home as everything went fluid and slow and flimsy in the terrific bursting light and himself and the other seemed shadows, part of the dark that was part of them both, his own movement mechanical, meaningless (he somehow saw) momentum … pointless … pointless … disconnected from life … who was this fellow shadow? … What was himself? … Too late to check the absurd blow, except he didn’t realize until a shock of time later that his hands had already (as if briefly separate from his will) released the hilt …

He’d partly doubled up before he felt the narrow shock of pressure along his side, felt the steel links shear, and the pain, and was still trying hopelessly to wrench away as the ground slammed into his face and knees. Felt the slosh of blood as the blade (he didn’t know) spun, bounced and skidded away in rebound and the man (he’d just realized was impossibly, insanely, but probably his son!) was already fleeing as if in horror and ultimate repudiation of what he couldn’t have known was attempted parricide, fleeing blindly (he heard him past the pain and desperate breathless sucking of his lungs), crashing and clinking across the field through brush and saplings and moonless obscurity, and he tried to call after him but his lungs felt flattened and his mouth gaped like a beached fish’s, only his thoughts racing on:

My
son
…
Was
that
my
Son
? …
Sweet
Mary
,
was
that
my
son
? …

Parsival sat on the hard ground for a while, listening to the night. The distant sounds of fighting had faded. His son, he thought, if it really had been he, lost himself in the dark woods.

His fingers discovered the wound in his side was superficial. That surprised him. He’d been winded by the blow but there wasn’t much blood. The fellow must have misjudged, he decided …

He stood up after a time and went on in the general direction taken by Gawain and the others. After dawnlight he’d be able to pick up their trail.

Those ribs will be sore as the devil’s whang tomorrow,
he realized.
That bastard was sly enough to be Lohengrin … Taking me like that … I’m getting to be quite the ordinary great man,
he thought, sarcastically
. If this keeps on I’ll begin to believe I’m mortal after all … whoever he was if fate keeps up this game we’ll meet again …

He moved carefully through the trees, somehow (he never questioned it anymore) feeling where they stood and avoiding collision.

The next problem would be Unlea. What to do about that? Well, another bridge to wait to cross …

“Anyway,” he muttered, “if that was my boy I hope he gives me time, when next we meet, to say I’m sorry.” Smiled, wry.

Parsival
, he told himself,
you
collect
problems
like
dogdung
breeds
flies
.
And
even
if
you
don’t
think
them
up
they
leap
out
of
the dark
at
you
…