The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (16 page)

XXVII

Howtlande ran through the dark passageways and unnumbered chambers of the castle, feeling his pursuer like a tangible pressure at his back. He choked a scream as something caught his legs, violently tipped him up and over and he rolled across cold, battering stone.

A
chair
, he realized,
a
chair!

Got up and plunged on, sweating, panting … up stairs … around bends … on …

Skalwere crossed the yard at the cost of one thrown spear that clattered harmlessly past a bowed, shadowy attacker who went after someone else anyway … through the door that Howtlande hadn’t dared pause to bar, and slammed the giant bolt home before moving into the dark interior.

Outside, the silent, cynical Sir Galahad was slashing, banging, looking for breathing room, armor dented, head ringing from a dozen blows, only his bent shield keeping death at bay as the deadly men leaped in like wolves at the sluggish, frightened mass of victims.

He knew he had to get inside. Backed, turned, made short fierce charges, chopping his way again and again and he vaguely wondered why he kept trying to live, since he had no particular aims left. He let it be his body, purposeless, instinctive … clawed past the last men in his way, knocking one flat in the dark with swordhilt and pushing another into the obscure fray where he seemed simply sucked into the frantic fury. Then he fled, backed under the main stairs through an arched portico, panting, leaning on the wall, letting his lungs pull deeply at life.

“All right,” he whispered. “I live for the moment again …”

Aye
…
since
before
Arthur
died
…
oh
my
king
…
my
king
that
was
…
You
taught
me
emptiness
as
love
taught
me
hopelessness
…

What point, since death had to close in a few heartbeats one way or another …

Brute
that
I
am
yet
I
wrote
verse
for
my
love
…
yet
everything
must
always
come
to
be
lost
,
that’s
beyond
prevention
…

Time took all, as from the merchant who clutched his gold and coppers in a fantasy of permanence and then but passed it to the next hoarder of scraps … like keeping life’s breath in a sack …

Under the arch he found a grillwork and was slightly surprised when it skreaked inwards. He went through into total blackness.

And I slew for Arthur. I loved him. I slew in such momentous and pithy causes that are now all long lost … It was no better than fighting for this fat man … Why must I still think? The curse of Eden was the rambling brain that left animals in peace and man in pain …

The dark was so total that each step he expected to crack his face. Each unblocked stride into the cool, mudsmelling depths was a minor surprise … His mind freed by the blackness, leafed through the past uncontrollably.

His life began to fail with that boy, he suddenly decided. The half-naked, blond, beautiful boy who’d knelt before him praying to him as if he were a God … the boy Parsival, so long ago … He’d said knights hope to have shining glory and the words were stone that hurt his mouth to speak. He’d spoken of glory to that blue-eyed innocent, kneeling there ready to believe as a sponge to drink … It began to fail there, with having to say
glory
…

Remembered Parsival at court, years and years later. Adult at last. Coming to a feast with two deep scratches beside one eye and the story was his wife had literally chased him down the corridor with the teenage boy (Lohengrin) waving a dirk, his younger sister clinging to his legs and weeping, the mother raging too, and the famous knight holding his hand to his bloody face, fleeing down the stairs to where only her tongue could still rip … so he’d been told …

He groped ahead down a slippery slope into utter lightless-ness.

The wife, Layla, had shouted, they said: “You’re not even a man anymore now, you son-of-a-bitch!” And the great hero had supposedly wept into his streaming blood. Saying nothing. Standing in front of everyone, servants, men-at-arms, knights and ladies. Cried out: “Forgive me … I tried … I tried!” And his son trying to crawl down the steps with the sister still clinging, bushy black hair shaking as he yelled: “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” And then (they said) the father ran out into the castle garden where he just leaned his face against the far wall in cold autumnal drizzle that gradually soaked into his silken robes, pounding his fist over and over into the cold, wet gray bricks. His wife at the door now, frozen as if an invisible barrier blocked her in, shouting across the fallen, colorless flowers: “You failed at everything! Face it! Be a man for your own sake, Parsival! You failed and all I asked was some little sweetness … Face it now!” And (they said) he stood like a penitent lad who’d blundered lessons, face to the wall until she silently went inside … stood there as the rain went on …

Had that been my wife … But I never had nor ever will have … no matter … well, mayhap he were praying at that wall, for short after he fled to join, they say, the monks at their untiring nonsense …

He realized he was in a large space. Clinked his sword on the scabbard and heard the hollow, rattling echoes. There was still mud underfoot.

I
went
on
crusade
with
Gawain
instead
…
Oh
,
that
was
lovely
,
that
had
rare
meaning
… Groped on.
Great
Christ
,
is
there
no
end
to
this
darkness
? …

Skalwere believed he would actually smell the fear of his fat quarry. He was asking himself why he ever listened to any promises of obscure triumphs or heeded his flabby orders. He snarled thinking about it. Howtlande, the fat, pompous toad! They would soon meet and that idea soothed his mind …

He had to get a ship again and escape this miserable, wasted land. The sea was the only way … He remembered, with a kind of longing, night raids on the coast, the excitement of moving in with careful oars, aiming through the faintly luminescent surf, the longships leaping, cracking, holding steady all the way into the grinding sand … splashing over the side, up the beach, each sense ready, into the sleepy village … a pair of quiet voices, a drowsy watchman with his pale torch, then the surprise, sudden flames, blundering men trying to fight, women … panic … fleeing … out to sea again, counting over the loot on calm, slow swells, the gathering of dawnlight on rimless water, feeling sweetly spent, a little drunk … a peace with life … the smooth roll and lifting on …

He froze, listening. Was sure of a slight sound ahead, squinted, his night eyes probing down the long corridor, saw the thin outline of a chamber door.

You’ll greet the heatless sun of hell this morrow
, he said to himself.

Padded on, delicate and terrible, over cool, stepworn stones, last spear ready. He never questioned this. It was man’s life, ritual, a kind of formal dance where now his thrust was necessary. He was actually without deep malice, even cursing the enemy was a formality, proper manners for the kill. Fate played and a misstep was formally fatal …

Howtlande found a slit tower window overlooking the dark courtyard. The rich, dry summery air puffed over him as he leaned out. They were milling indecipherably in the castle yard, the cries and banging muted by the height.

The
thing
, he was still thinking,
is always
to
live. No dead man ever raised a kingdom … I live for more than my mere self, that’s the point even if few believe in me yet
… the idea was somehow a comfort.
They
won’t stay here, whoever they are … there’s no food … I’ll wait and when they move on I’ll begin again … find stouter fighters … that’s the advantage of being alive …

XXVIII

The unseen planks banged, crackled, hissed with strain as the dark seemed a solid thing jolting, battering at them.

Broaditch never ceased to struggle as the wagon rolled on. Until morning light drew a blurry rectangle around the door and traced a few cracks across walls and ceiling.

Torky moaned in his fitful sleep. Tikla snored softly. Alienor rested against him, napping a little.

He twisted his numbed wrist and thought he finally felt a strand give slightly … a fraction … a fraction … He grunted and winced with fresh pain.

“Peasant man,” Pleeka suddenly said.

Broaditch regathered his breath and responded:

“What wise words have you now?”

“All has been betrayed,” the man said from the far end of the rocking, battering vehicle. Outside the hoofbeats were steady and not so rapid as their exaggerated inner movements suggested. Broaditch assumed the road was especially rough (this was true) and the rig badly constructed (also a fact).

“Are you working on your ropes?” he asked Pleeka.

“I cannot see how all this happened Here I lie in disgrace … betrayed by good John … I cannot see …”

“While you ponder these things,” Broaditch suggested, “why not struggle for freedom?”

“Freedom? Only through God can freedom come, peasant man.”

“Getting loose here will be a start and give Him less to do.”

“I will tell you these things.”

“Don’t feel …” Broaditch twisted and tugged his numb, aching forearms violently. “… don’t feel you have to …” His muscles cracked and he arched his brawny back. The rope gave again. His hands felt about to burst, swollen with blood.

“This is the hour of the beast,” Pleeka confided. Broaditch went on with his strainings. Fraction by fraction through the searing constrictions the bonds were yielding …

“Unn,” muttered Broaditch.

“The hour of the beast and his dreadful reign, I say … Aiiii!” he suddenly cried and Broaditch heard him hit flat on the boards. Alienor fully wakened and Torky groaned in his dreams. “… I have seen it and have been the right hand of the beast … aiiii …”

“I think,” Broaditch told his wife, “he has lost his fondness for John the Silver Duck or Farting Eagle or what you will.”

“Methinks he’s taking a fit,” she said.

There were rhythmic thumpings and bangings and gasps against the slow careening of the wagon. Leena and the boy crouched near the door. They were gray, ghostlit by the fuzzing of dawnlight.

“Aiiiii! … and the beast hath seven heads … aiiii … and ten horns and crowns … and all the nations followed the beast … for who is like unto the beast and who can make war against him? … aiiiiiii … aiiii! …” Crash, thump, thud, gasp, gasp …

“Can I help?” Alienor asked.

Torky was sobbing a little and she comforted him in the lurching dark.

“I’m nearly free …” he panted, “but … nearly … is … not home …”

“Aii … I have his mark upon me … upon me …” Thump, bang …

“He’s off and bent,” she commented.

An
inch
more
, he thought.
An
inch
…

Leena began to pray, fierce, steady, not quite loud or hysterical, as Pleeka raved on:

“The beast was my brother and behold I knew him not and saw not … aiiii … saw not the word
blasphemy
writ on the crowns …”

“That John,” Alienor said. “That bastard John.”

Broaditch paused for breath and to ease the burning, cutting.

“What?” he wondered.

“… the word and the blood of many …”

“John the priest,” he said. “I knew him on first foul sight. Him who raised the peasants and let them perish. Him.”

“… brother … brother …” Growling now and Broaditch imagined him chewing the floor and foaming. “… the beast were my brother whose number be six hundred threescore and six! … Aiiiii!! …”

“I knew him too.” Two decades ago. He’d followed John to betrayal and outrage of what had been a promise, a shining hope for freedom after all the horror of those days …
Of
all
days
, he thought.
Of
all
days
…
How
could
nature
suffer
such
a
thing
to
live
on?

With an intense explosion of air and a shriek Pleeka (Broaditch knew instantly) burst his bonds and began caroming around the confined and pitching space.

“
Ave
Maria
,” Leena was saying, chanting, “
gratiae plena
…”

And then he was free himself, a rush of tingling agony pouring into his hands, which he held as if in disbelieving prayer before his face. Locked his teeth tight together.

Pleeka was flopping weakly now, like a fish, Broaditch thought, on the dock. The girl’s litany went ceaselessly on, almost uninflected …

“They are lower than the lowest low,” Pleeka was whispering. “Lower than the slime worms and offal of the deepest dark … they have shat in the clear well of the heart … aiii …” His screeches now were bizarrely conversational … all foul practice is their delight and their abominations have fouled the waters … all the nations follow blasphemies and the beast …”

Broaditch sat up, realizing the lurching motions had ceased. He barely noticed the girl’s voice or Pleeka’s raving.

Well
, he thought,
here
we
are
somewhere
but
where
and
for
what
?
By
Mary
,
I
may
regret the answer more than the question
…

“Give me your hands, Ali,” he told her, painfully moving his fingers. “I’ll free you now.”

Clinschor had insisted on riding inside the only other closed wagon. He’d had them lay bedding on the floor and drape the inside walls with hangings, tattered garments, rags, anything they had (to him they seemed the rare and perfumed silks of his past) until a soft, smoothly hushed interior was created. He further commanded a single chair (though it had but three gnarled legs) to be nailed to the floor facing the single slit window in the rear door he’d had them make by removing a single board and now he sat there in the muffled obscurity peering out at the grayish-pale morning, watching the narrow strip of already passed field and hillock and forest flow away …

He felt suffused by peacefulness. Rocked slightly with the long swaying tilts of the quite stable wagon — unlike the one where the captives rolled and tossed. His big, soft hands gripped his knees and his stomach griped with pain, ground and squeezed his first substantial meal in weeks. Burped. The gas pocket remained. Grew with slow probings. Pushed deeper. He drew unsteady breath and sweated from the pain. Understood he was being attacked magically again … Burped … Which one of them, his mind wanted to know. Then he knew this was the work of Morgana the witch! Snarled as he bent forward in agony. Clenched and unclenched his long, wide fingers on his knees … strained … cursed when he couldn’t move the wind. Pictured her pale redheaded face and began muttering a spell which he periodically broke off in fresh attempts to fart as lines of marching, dark-robed Truemen passed across the slice of vision before him. Groaned, strained and muttered …

Once I reach the
fortress
, he kept reminding himself,
my power will know no limit! Then Morgana, you’ll see what you’ll see!
Gritted his teeth and pressed his bony knees tight together. Still no relief … Stepped up the spell’s intensity. Thought of others who would suffer beyond imagination when his time came: that blond fiend who’d cast him from the shining heights into that freezing, deadly, stinking muck! That one, that wizard’s form who’d defiled him and drowned him into unconsciousness so he’d forget who he was because he could not be slain by them. Vast, immortal beings had charge over him and he felt their unseen presence always. Shut his eyes and called them, sensed them reaching to him from far, far below the earth’s surface in their great halls … Parsival had thrown him down and he sent them his image and asked for his destruction … Parsival and Morgana, he sent, concentrating, swaying.

“Destroy them, O mighty ones!” he whispered. “Destroy them!”

Tightened his hands, pale, bony, wide forehead clenched, not even feeling a long, hot push of gas bubble and fizz slowly from his narrow, bony hams …

Outside, John, tall, erratic-moving, brushed his wild, stiff hair back with a nervous hand. He was walking, keeping pace with the captives’ wagon. His captains in their shagginess and robes were close around him.

They were just crossing a thin drool of river where the waterflow barely topped the wash of smooth, pale stones.

“A month behind,” a short, red-haired, bulge-eyed man commented as the two wagons banged and scraped over the crumbling banks, “this ford were knee deep.”

“There’s been no rain since,” another put in, a stout longbeard. “And Lord God has sent us great heat.”

“To fulfill what was written,” John broke in. “The world shall perish in great heat.”

“Praise His name,” the first asserted, crossing himself and rolling his eyes with a strange seeming of joy.

“We are the reapers, brothers,” John went on, jerking along, elbows tipping out after each step, splashing through the spatters of water that felt sweet on his feet, “of all the burning earth.” He headed for Clinschor’s wagon on the other side. In the first touch of sun he felt like iron on an anvil.

“And,” said a quick-faced redhead, “He has sent His oracle of flame to guide us! Praise Him!”

“Amen,” added the second, blotchy-cheeked, blinking, moundishly formed.

“What do we do next, Father John?” red hair called over as they topped the far bank and headed into the pale, sparse trees.

“He goes,” another said from under his beard, “to consult with the angel.”

John glanced back. His eyes were like polished pebbles. But not bright. The light seemed unimpacted in them.

“Each sign,” he told them, “will be greater than the last.”

His expression showed nothing but determination, abstract, unswerving. He turned to the slit in the wood. He looked neither reverent nor afraid, just intent, expectant under his bushy white-stained hair. “God,” he told the slit in the wagon, “hath given us meat and drink in the parched desert.”

“What is it?” the muffled voice rumbled within.

And John quoted:

“Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God: That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and they that sit upon them, and the flesh of all men both free and bond, both small and great!”

Broaditch had freed Alienor and was crouched over Pleeka, who was kneeling now, facing a crack in the wall.

“Will you stir yourself to save yourself?” Broaditch demanded. Nothing, no response.

“What ails him now?” asked Alienor, holding the children as they tilted and slid towards the back. Though they couldn’t know it they were mounting the embankment of the drying stream. The sun was a hammer on the exterior and the stale air thickened. They were all soaked in sweat. Leena was silent as the young boy, now. The creases of sunlight lit them dimly. “How fare you, child?” she asked Leena. No reply. “And you, boy?” she went on.

“I want to go home,” he said.

“Ah.”

“Yet,” said the girl, suddenly, “he has none. There’s naught there save blood and ashes.”

And then she was silently praying again. Pushing the red away from her eyes, looking away from the sunbrightness at the crevices that held tints of that terrible color of flame and bleeding. Shut her eyes tight and rapidly, hoarsely prayed …

“What are these
Truemen
,” Broaditch hissed, “that they follow a crackbrain killer half-dead of plague and hunger? Tell me that, by Christ!” He was angry with disgust.

“They’ll give him food and drink,” Pleeka said into the lurching wood. “Never fear.”

“Truemen, shit!” said Broaditch. “We have to escape.” He pressed his eye to the plankspace and winced at the sun’s impact. Finally made out, in the blinding day, lines of them marching across parched, nearly treeless fields, the wagon rolling almost evenly now in the baking heat. He wiped his eyes and stared again. Couldn’t see more than a narrow strip.

“Where did they come from?” Alienor asked Pleeka. He twisted around. His face flickered with tics.

“Ah,” he said.

She touched his forehead, his wiry hair.

“Poor soul,” she said, “you trusted them.”

“Ah,” he agreed. “Him.”

“Him?”