The Grail War (21 page)

His breathing was violent now, as if he’d run a great distance or fought a fierce combat.

“Nothing!” he cried, standing up. He caught his breath, stood there. Parsival wondered if he might not be mad. “So,” Gawain said with a partial return of his old sarcasm, “you see what even an iron-head like me can come to, eh, Parse?”

Parsival suddenly found himself stepping forward and reaching across the table to take his friend s hand, as if he meant to bodily wrench him from some danger. They stayed like that, silent in the dancing shadow light. Parsival didn’t completely understand why, but he felt tears burn in his eyes. The two powerful hands stayed locked in their now-speaking silence …

Broaditch plodded on until his vision shook with purplish flashes and his lungs burned and seemed flattened to his ribs. He was conscious of Valit clinging to his massive back, mumbling continually, though Broaditch assumed the ramblings were from the random workings of his own fading consciousness …

The firm shore was only a few steps away when he felt something fat and cold slip along his waist, and at first he thought he’d walked into a thick rope just under the surface, except it moved and he knew it coiled with sentience.

Christ
! he thought and suddenly sank in watery mud nearly to his chin as Valit screamed. It wasn’t much thicker than water here. They could have swum. He would have rejoiced, save for the reddish eyes that flashed in the moonlight set in a fat wedge of head arched on a long neck that was body, too.
Christ
!
Has
there
ever
been
such
a
snake
save
in
tales
? There were fangs that flashed like curved daggers. It hissed and yawned its jaws. Valit didn’t even scream this time. He was already climbing up over Broaditch’s back, as if he meant to submerge him or perform an acrobatic trick.
I
want
to
go
home
, Broaditch’s mind was saying volitionlessly,
God
and
the
sweet
saints
,
I
want
to
go
home
!

The dark creature wriggled massively through the muck. Broaditch realized he’d but felt the last coil of the seemingly endless tail. Straining, sloshing, gasping within three feet of the slimy bank, calling on unplumbed resources of energy and resistance, Valit clinging to his head and shoulders, h£ stretched out his arms as the jaws snapped down and the astoundingly long body churned the muck to foam. A reflex: the empty, burning eyes zooming close (resembling, his mind distantly registered, a ship’s lanterns looming over a drowning sailor), firmer bottom underfoot, Valit, superhuman in his panic, actually standing on his shoulders and head now, leaping onto the shore as Broaditch, without hesitation, as if his will was vast enough to disregard his panting, fainting flesh, heaved up from the slimy water and seized the huge, slippery neck, shouting something like a wordless and primal war cry, as if the sound itself could stun the terrible beast from the dark, submerged, mucky terrors of existence, smelling its stink and (in a strange insight) feeling its life as he might have with a harmless domestic creature, thinking in a corner of consciousness:
it's
not
evil
,
it's
just
blind
… Among a welter of dissolving impressions, feeling the immense strength, as if the black tides of the earth flowed up into it, his arms jerked, half-dislocated, pain, back muscles cracking, feeling himself lifted almost clear of the water surface, slammed against the bank, stinking swamp breath in his face, mind crying out:
No
!
Not
like
this
!
Not
in
these
idiot
jaws
! And somehow he got his feet braced again and threw himself into a berserk, scrabbling run like a mad bull, raging against it all, all muck and terror, and for a moment the neck gave and slipped aside and, feet digging in, sliding, plopping, straining to the verge of blackout, he reached the top of the mossy embankment and smashed his fist into one redly luminous eye just above the snapping, hissing jaws, the impact deflecting the downstroke, which caught his shoulder glancingly and spun him over the top. He rolled into the clutching of a spidery hand and arm in the deep marsh grass. It locked across his chest. He screamed, threw himself upright, flailing to free himself as Valit was crawling on hands and knees deeper into the dense, mist-smoky reeds. He paused and twisted around to look through a thinning of the fog at the ghostly figure of Broaditch, black with muck and paled with mist, leaping and twisting in what seemed a violent dance with a flapping, clacking, living skeleton, the gleaming jaws snapping at his neck. Valit opened his mouth, then shut it, and kept on crawling without another glance behind into the stinking fern and reed …

Broaditch, shuddering in his panic, conceived that the water serpent had transformed into this horror, reached blindly behind his back, staring into the fleshless face that gaped and grinned over his shoulder with empty eyes and flashing teeth, and, starved for breath, he staggered, vision ripping open, and his last thought was:
so
now
he
takes
me
,
after
all
… And fell into unending darkness, fell through the misty, dim stuff of the world …

He awakened and groaned: demons of the netherworld were jabbing their spears and daggers into his body. He knew this and so was surprised to see the moon still in the sky above the swaying reeds.

He groaned and rolled over, plucking a sharp point from his side and another from his ample buttocks.
Sticks
, he thought,
no
,
bones
. Why, he’d fallen and crushed the skeleton that his fear had obviously animated.

He groaned and sat up, sore and soggy with weariness and reeking of swamp. And at his age the muscles took longer to recover. He knew he’d be stiff for days.

He looked around and listened, then probed the cracked skull at his feet with the toe of his shapeless, mucky boots.

A
fine
omen
, he said to himself.
Anyway
,
where’s
that
foolish
fellow
? He’d wanted to learn about life, he’d said. Well, he was certainly finding out a few things.

“Valit,” he called. He’d a hundred times rather have had Handler along than this peculiar, insinuating, sharp-tongued son.

So
far
I’ve
met
all
too
many
signs
to
guide
me
.
If
I
meet
yet
another
,
it
will
be
my
end
.

He pictured home as it was the day he’d left, almost a year ago: just after rain, the air clean and scented, sun-sketched clouds towering over the hills; the harvest laid by in the fields beside the curving road; rich, full trees; a country dance tune being played on distant pipes …

He slogged through the reeds and soupy muck through a mounting din of frogs and screaming insects that fell silent in a little circle around him and filled in again as he passed.

“Valit,” he called louder. Nothing. Just the momentarily hushed throbbings. He wobbled on, wondering if he’d actually fall asleep moving upright. And he was hungry, desperately. “Valit!”

Devil
take
you
, he thought.
Well
,
mayhap
he
has
… A little tune kept bouncing through his brain: dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-da-da-dum …

Suddenly the earth was stony and firm and he was mounting the hill he’d seen from out in the swamp. A few scrubby trees were scattered around the coarse, grassy soil.

Topping the rise there was a gleam of winking, reddish light. For an instant his mind imaged a single, evil snake eye blinking … He narrowed his focus and saw it was a lantern inside a hut. The open door swung back and forth on a loose latch, blocking, then showing, the smoky light.

He went closer. Silence. Just the steady dinning down in the marsh and the creaking of leather hinges …

He went inside, wrinkled his nostrils at a special stink, even smeared with reeking mud as he was (he’d wiped only his face and hands somewhat with reeds), so that he imagined he looked like one of God’s false starts where He cast the clay aside … The air was rank, as if foul old meats had been charred and left to rot … There were embers on the hearth and the place was fairly snug, the wattles tight. In the dim glow he made out a gourd of water and a crusted cheese set on a sway-backed table. He crumbled a handful and ate with wincing, ravenous bites, drank deeply, and had barely wiped his mouth with the back of his hand when he (or his legs) decided to sit on the lumpy, unclean pallet (where his own mud would add little or nothing) and rest a moment. He vaguely wondered about who lived here. His eyes were numb. He had a faint urge to get back outside into purer air … His sight now doubled all he saw: along the dim back wall hung what seemed skinned bodies … must be meats … not even a crack of window in here … Were his eyes still open …? He waited a little too long to be sure and his last impression was that two red-gleaming eyes were looking in the door, and he thought:
but
there's
only
one
flame
… and then darkness swallowed Broaditch in one soft, sinking, gentle blot …

Night. Alienor and the children were huddling around a fire with a dozen or so other refugees, as it turned out. The night was drizzly, chilly. They were partly sheltered by pines overhanging the road, in the distance orange flame light made an ominous mock sunrise.

It was really happening. She had accepted it by now. From what she’d heard on the road, bands of armed men and knights had sprung up all over the country and no one was safe. Nobody knew “which was supposed to be fighting why,” as one wag put it.

The people huddled miserably. No one said much. A friar sat opposite Alienor. He was middle-aged, with a soft look on his face. He kept licking his lips nervously and shaking his head at the flames.

“What these eyes have seen this day,” he said without really looking at anything, “ah, what these eyes have had to see …” He shook his head. “I confess … I confess that Christ became but a word to me today … but a word … I could not even pray … my tongue cleaved to my mouth’s roof …” He shook his baffled head. “I could not pray …”

“Well a-day, priest,” said a dour, spare, long-faced fellow with sour, washed-out eyes and a long, beaked-nose profile to Alienor, who was holding her dozing son and daughter.

The befuddled friar sighed. His beard was but a white-sewn fringe on his chin. He didn’t look at the quietly furious peasant beside him with streaks of blood and mud on his crease-graven cheeks.

“Aye,” the fellow suddenly went on, “all you priests living so soft in your dreams. What do you know, old kneeler? What learned you today? Eh?!”

Alienor realized his rage was not actually directed at the older man. It was much worse than that: it was passion without hope, a fury that expected nothing back but its own eternal echo. “Old kneeler, why don’t you just dream you’re back in the damned church, all warm and safe, with Jesus blessing your fine wine? Eh!?” His long, uneven teeth flashed.

“Oh, let him be, why don’t you?” Alienor put in.

“Let
him
be?” the man returned. “Let him first but call down Jesus Christ to make the damned stones bread! Or restore me son and wife and me brother … aye, like He did his part Lazer. Let
him
be! Why, he let
me
be all these days to this one!” He showed his teeth again, but
only
fancy
, she thought,
would
take
that
grimace
for
a
smile
. She turned to the burning horizon that gleamed on the low-lying clouds.

“Oh,” she said, let him have what dreams he’s got, fellow. They don't bring you harm,”
God
knows
we
all
need
them
…
or
at
least
can’t
help
them
…

“Let him wake up,” the man said. “Let him greet all a man knew burned to black and forever gone! Aye, let him wake up, the full-fed old bastard!"

“Curse not a holy man,” a wince-faced farmer interjected.

“I could not pray,” the friar said wonderingly, eyes stunned.
As
if
she thought,
Ave
Maria
or
Pater
Noster
would
restore
the
world
again
…
no
… because, she understood, if he could have prayed, he would have been safe from it. And there was surely God enough to prevent that.
Bah
,
I
roll
my
mind
like
my
poor
husband
,
as
though
my
thoughts
mattered
beyond
finding
more
potatoes
and
shelter
tomorrow
…
I’ll
not
lose
my
precious
ones
—
I’ll
not
see
that
,
not
while
I
draw
breath
in
this
miserable
world
…