The Grail War (30 page)

“Who are they?” Unlea asked nervously. Her lover shrugged.

“If they be who they seem, they stand undernumbered to trouble us.” He took a deep breath. Felt ready. For the first time in years he looked forward to the release of combat. Sensed it had to do with the pressures of recent days …

“Are you of the unholy mutes?” he called over, easing his horse toward them. “But then, if yes, you cannot say so.”

They were silent and still almost as carvings; only the horseheads slightly moved.

Now a third warrior emerged from the foggy, dripping trees. A stocky man in polished silver steel and a white and black horse. He looked familiar. He came steadily, one hand on the over-sized hilt of his broadsword, the other holding a lance upright.

“And you?” Parsival demanded. “Name yourself!”

The man made violent snortings inside his helmet. He clearly had a headcold. Voice doubly muffled and obscure when he spoke.

“I know you,” he said, sniffing and swallowing. “Well,” he went on thickly, “you’re not my proper business anymore. You don’t recall me, then, Parsi-bird-head?” he laughed and sniffled. “But let’s just have one passing play?” he let fall his lance, drew his blade, then came in quickly, the sword casually poised, and Parsival felt the fellow’s skill like a pressing, tangible force, and he unfocused his eyes to widen his awareness and let his body relax to the steady rhythm of his breath, sword still undrawn. Parsival didn’t even bother to slam his visor shut. He knew if a man like this struck home, he might as well be bare-headed. This was a fellow master and death was one or two cuts away. He heard the knight’s raspy mouth-breathing, he seemed too close but forced his mind to wait and watch and let the body fight: which it did, exploding, leaning into the short, irresistible cut, drawing, twisting in one shimmer of motion, tested to the limit, beyond, and not in the perfect shape for it he’d have been in even a month ago. Both cuts became parries and as the horses passed close he felt a flick across his throat and turned at the same time to see part of the other’s gauntlet sheared away and felt a trickle of warm blood under his neckpiece. To Unlea it had seemed a flash, a whirr, a heartbeat’s terror …

The stocky knight unhinged his visor, sneezed violently. It was Lancelot, with a beet-red nose. They just sat and looked at one another.

“Magnificent,” Lancelot said, “I’d kill you in time, but — ” he rasped up some more phlegm. “This a witch’s curse laid upon me! Dame Morg or some shit-sucking sister …”

“Have you forgotten you’ve murdered my wife and child?” Parsival asked, waiting, watchful, thinking that fate was going to force him into further pointless combat.
Custom
again
, he thought,
the
custom
of
pride
and
pain
… Unlea by the gray river’s edge, blurred by the drizzling rain, seemed a wisp of lost hope receding like a smoky shape of fog …

“What?” Lancelot wanted to know.

“At Castle Tratinee. Where you found me first.”

Lancelot sneezed again. Wiped at his moustache with his steel glove improving matters very little. The hairs remained caked and shiny.

“Why, I had naught to do with any of that,” he declared.

Parsival knew Lancelot was not terribly clever, and was aware he never had been known to lie. “What he has for brains makes the flowers grow,” Gawain had said, years ago.

“Ah,” Parsival said, “you and your men were but there to watch.”

“No,” Lancelot pronounced gravely, smearing a finger under his nose again. “Not to watch. To slay you. As I then openly declared.”

The other thought it through.

“Very well,” he said. “Who slew my family then?”

“I know not,” Lancelot shrugged.

“And you are no longer bound to kill me?”

“This is true. But I would joust with you betimes for the sport.”

“Who sent you to slay me? I knew not your sword was lightly for hire.”

“For hire? Who dares say for hire!” The famous knight’s face instantly swelled, blue eyes snapping.

“For honor?” Parsival was almost incredulous.

“Aye!” stormed the legendary warrior. “A debt I owed. To Duke LaLong who did great service for me and the dead King Arthur.” Lancelot spat phlegm, turned his horse and prepared to depart, still frowning and obviously debating whether to reattack here and now. “The only King who was a man,” he added. “Say no more to me Parsival, you bird.”

“But how came the Duke to lift the obligation of my death?”

“By means of his own,” Lancelot said impatiently.

“And whom does
honor
bid you serve now?” Parsival wanted to know, indicating the silent pair of black knights.

Lancelot’s frown was grim and cold. His red nose sniffed.

“What’s this you’re saying?” he demanded, hand on his hilt. “Ask them, then!” he raged and spurred his mount away back into the trees.

“Because they’re mute?” Parsival called after. “Are they?” he shouted as the blocky knight was gone, muffled hoofbeats fading. The other two followed after.

Well,
what
is
it
to
me
? he thought, looking back at Unlea, who was staring at the water, sad and lost-looking among the faint wisps of fog and the general grayness …
What
matters
black
or
orange
knights
to
me
?
All
that's
behind
…
I'll
find
a
place
for
us
…
I
will
…

He stared at her, imagining her happy, walking in a garden of lustrous flowers, a golden-haired boy-child playing nearby, a flash of brilliant blue eyes looking tenderly up at her, in radiant streams of sunlight, as if wading in the shimmering colors … and as if to seal his vision with an omen, the sun broke through the grim cloud cover and flashed, sparkling on the water, and touched her face, and his mind knew something was wrong, although he was too caught up looking at her to bother with it … She was staring at the sun then away across the flattening fields ahead, frowning.

He rode close to her, smiling with new confidence. He nodded to himself.

“You are so lovely, Unlea,” he told her and was surprised she was shaking her head and not looking at him. “Unlea?”

“No,” she said. “Please … let me go.” He opened his mouth and then sighed through it. “Please, Parsival, before I come to loathe our sweet hours and hate the sight of you …” She was terribly urgent. “It cannot be, Parsival. Cannot you see that?”

“But …”

“Oh, you …” She shut her eyes. “You child, who are yet a man, too …” She opened them with tears this time that caught the already fading sunlight as the rainwater drizzled over the wide-brimmed hat. “This is the
world
, Sir Parsival,” she continued, weeping and trembling and yet strong; he saw, for the first time, how strong she could be, a woman could be.

“But I love you,” was all he could find to say. The tears burned in his own eyes now. “I love you, Unlea.” He suddenly felt that this had been his last chance and now it was lost. He’d failed again, he kept thinking, and
no
…
no
,
there
has
to
be
something
I
can
do
, which he knew was his mind moving in the reflex of the already dead, like a just slain body that seemed to breathe and stretch its limbs … “But I — ”

“Look,” she said, pointing at the fading sun. “are you so entailed by this that your senses are darkened?” She faintly smiled. “My child and tender man …” He saw her bite her lip. He found himself hanging on each slight sign, each hope of hope that somehow love would be magically enough …

“Unlea?”

“Look at the sun,” she insisted; just as it was lost again, it hit him. It was not east, but west. West …
The
river
must
have
circled
, he told himself.

“This is the green plain,” she said. “My home is just beyond. The fog hid it from me until now. The land looked different from this direction.”

“Then we must turn around.” He knew she was going to shake her head. Of course.

“Please,” he heard his voice saying, “please.”

“Free me, Parsival,” she virtually begged, “for love, if for nothing else …”

“No,” he said, knowing it was yes.
Yes
!
Yes
!
Yes
! He shut his burning eyes.

“There’s no hope,” she was telling him and herself. “This is the world of waking, my sweet, lost one …”

He said nothing … waited.

“Let me free,” she pleaded again, though (he noted) her voice was quite sure now … and he finally nodded. He wouldn’t look at her looking at him now. “Turn away,” she said, desperate, too, “turn away or I cannot go”

“And,” he said at length, “will you be safe?”

“He’ll not injure me … He never has.”

He knew it was true, knew … it was a coldness in his stomach …

“And this is all?” he murmured.

She didn’t answer, didn’t need to. So he turned his horse and started away.

“But don’t you want the mule, too?” was the last thing he heard her say, and silently seared with tears, he shook his head, as if that mattered, still clinging to every last contact and already, as the rain closed around him, feeling the memory begin … When he finally looked back there was nothing but rain and mist and the seamless gray earth and sky …

He went on, drifting now, looking down at the wet ground as the well-paced horse slogged on. He’d left the river and was crossing a wide, rolling, muddy plain.

He didn’t look up as the animal minced on the bank of another stream running flat, greenish-dark, straight. He didn’t look as the riders caught up with him. Every so often tears would overspill his eyes. He paid no attention to that, either. He barely noticed the voice shouting and the tinkle and clink and bang of steel and horse sounds … When he finally glanced bleakly through hopelessly reddened and blurred eyes, he blinked at dim, gleaming figures. He didn’t trouble to count them. He blinked on, but his eyes had been wept out of focus and, for all he knew or cared, forever.

He really didn’t listen, either, just politely awaited until the voice stopped raging, blinking his fogged eyes. He had never been depressed to such depths. And distraction. Oh, he knew remotely that the voice ringing in the open helm was Bonjio’s, but that fact connected nowhere because he was replaying images of her softness in the first hay, the bed, the tent silks, under moon, stars, and sunlight … kept wanting
her
voice, kept wanting to turn and go after her, try again, not knowing what he’d say or do … The future was so vacant and terrifying now … Sometimes he worked together perfect speeches that would win her back with eloquence alone … How could any other have equaled their passion …? It was hard for him to care just now about the Earl and his men and all that, so, as he made up his mind to say something (because there was a silence), he peripherally perceived the shadow of the ax stroke arced for his open face mask, and he drew and slashed at the arm in one motion with that unearthly reflex speed, and ax, hand, and wrist sailed past his face, the streaming blood spattering his cheeks like red pox, the chopped arm still held out straight, as if in stunned salute, blood jetting, splashing over him, as if (his mind said in a blurry corner) that was the real attack: running, pooling; dripping too thick for the faint drizzle to rinse, and then, with a bellowing scream, the stump was snatched back, and desperately, futilely, a metal-bound hand tried to stanch the incredibly rapid flow as Parsival, in terror, understood what had happened, wanting to scream himself and pray to have the blow taken back, to have those few moments returned, that fragment of unyielding time (there flashed a memory from what seemed a thousand years ago: a buck deer jerking its polished antlers, speared through the chest, collapsing in a shimmering splendor of sunshine and himself wanting the cast back, feeling the pain, begging life for life there, the first time) …
Oh
,
my
God
in
heaven
, he thought heavily,
it's
always
a
moment
too
late
…
always
…

He looked wildly around, blinking, blurred.

“Bonjio,” he said desperately, “Bonjio.”

Bonjio had fallen from the saddle and lay in a seeping red stain on the greenish earth as men fumbled around him, Working to stop the bleeding with strips of rag.

Parsival knew he could have avoided the blow if only his eyes had been clear, if only he’d been paying real attention …

He stared, blinking, at the foggy figure before him.

“Forgive …” And he couldn’t even say “me.” He was thinking it was custom again, and pain, too, and … and the man had been his friend … and … there were no more
and
because this was the low point, the end of roads … He tore off his helmet, pressed at his eyes, and pounded his forehead: it wasn’t just Bonjio, either, or her … or any certain thing; it was the hole in life, the absence … weight of world and whirring of time, like a chariot’s wheels, each day sinking down to the next and the brief exalted moments of rest … For the first time he couldn’t trick himself with a hope, a prospect, a goal ahead, and so it all slammed in on him and he felt swept forward on and on like a swimmer caught in a dark river at the brink of the shadowed falls gazing hopelessly back to the far shore, where the sun still flamed a sweet rose and gold over the enduring earth … no woman … no work … no vision … and nothing, no mother’s sweet word or the unimaginable voice of life spoke to him as he turned in stunned bleakness, bare head inviting blows that never came, though he would not have moved a fraction to escape now … no voice, no words, no touch — just the faint, drizzling chill keeping the blood undried on his steel shell … He rode on into the blurring, his horse wandering along the darkening, sharply curving stream, and when the animal reached the bottom of a steep U-bend and halted to nibble at the pale, bleached grass, he dismounted, his sight now different in each eye so that what was clear in one for an instant was bent by the other, and he was more deceived in his steps as he walked along the bank than if he were totally blind, everything deceptively refracted so that when, in his restless, frightened grief, he strode out onto the clustered lily pads and ripples, he saw only firm earth and thought fleetingly that a spell had struck him as the ground opened, air a wet shock, and then he was under the surface, dragged steadily to the mucky, weedy bottom by his armor’s weight until he was looking straight up through several feet of sluggish stream at the grayish twilight paling around the shadowy masses of water plants whose strange roots clustered and swayed all around him. His eyes were cleared by the shock, and he felt oddly comfortable as driblets of air slowly oozed from him … the mud was as soft as cushions … the water moved over him like a cleansing wind … He wondered what it would be to breathe it … not the gasps and swallows every swimmer knows, but to suck it deep and cold into his fluttering lungs … He wondered, vaguely, as the air within him became a burning pain, if at the end his body would struggle to rise and save itself, because he knew his mind wasn’t interested anymore, the body could do what it had to, the mind cared nothing and was waiting now because, perhaps, there would be an image still to come or the voice … the word …

Gawain and Prang had stopped to water their mounts. The older knight had leaned over the stream’s edge to cup a palmful of water as the horses dipped their muzzles a few feet downstream.

The setting sun was just breaking out of a level layer of clouds, and a reddish gleaming appeared all around, as if the world lit itself from within.

So he thought it was simply a reflection at first, except, even diluted, the metallic taste was obvious. He spit out a mouthful and frowned at the pinkish stain streaming in thinning clouds around the bend.

For some reason he stood up, decided it wasn’t an animal, and pushed quickly upstream through the whip-like, wiry brush and bare prickers …

“The last beams of the sun touched the water,” Gawain was saying to Prang where they both sat in the warm shifting ring of firelight, sipping mugs of hot meat broth, “through a space in the trees … which was the only reason I saw him.” They both glanced at Parsival, who was lying perfectly still on the mounded earth, the flames gleaming on his silvery mail. His eyes were shut. “It shocked me, boy,” he continued, “to see him lying just as he is now on the stream bottom … the blood I took for his, still washing away … His eyes were open, turning to me, I say, as the last bubbles issued from his drowning mouth …” He shook his head.

“But what do you make of it, Gawain?” Prang asked. “Was he injured? Bound by a spell?” Prang looked nervous and crossed himself abruptly a second later.

Gawain shook his head.

“I must tell you,” he went on, “his eyes looked at me, yet he troubled not a single limb to raise himself from watery doom …”

“So you pulled him out.”

“Just so,” Gawain said, nodding, “but not before he breathed in and shut his eyes.”

Lay in the last, lingering blood-red sunbeams that illuminated him on the dark bottom among the shadowy water plants, arms crossed over his chest as if keeping vigil, long golden-silver streaked hair unwinding into the easy currents that seemed to flow the darkness over him and blot out the last thinning thread of life as his shuddering chest inhaled the chill and then it was night …

“Have you ever dragged a caparisoned man from four feet of water?” Gawain wanted to know.

“Nay,” said Prang, shaking his head and staring at Parsival.

“Well,” Gawain concluded. “I got him to the bank, as you saw … with my one arm.”

They both had finished the job. Then Gawain had stood on Parsival’s back and pressed a sloshing amount of stream out. And though he seemed to breathe, from fitful time to time, he had not reopened his eyes. At least two hours had passed and Prang, for one, was convinced he never would. Gawain seemed sanguine, however.

The waning moon was up, the fire now crushing itself to violet embers, Prang half-dozing, before Parsival actually looked at them from the dim shadows.

Gawain was turned away, working on a frayed saddle girth, wrapping it with wax twine to make a new join.

Prang thought himself asleep: across the faint blowing sputter, the large gray-blue eyes were suddenly fixed on him, seeming to magnify the vague illumination with some cold, inner brightness. He pinched his cheek, frightened by the distance in that look, frozen by it, as if something not altogether mortal gazed dispassionately at him. The feeling passed somewhat a moment or two later.

“Sir,” he said, meaning Parsival, though Gawain looked up.

“Eh?” he wondered, then saw where Prang stared. “So you’ve come back,” he stated, as if with secret knowledge, Prang thought.

Parsival didn’t speak immediately. He breathed deeply. He finally said, “Yes. Back.”

Gawain nodded (Prang felt) knowingly. But why?

“Are you recovered?” Prang asked, feeling irrelevant.

“That’s another question altogether,” Gawain said. “It’s enough he’s come back.” He tilted his head toward his friend. “So now you know this, too?” he asked, rather gently, Prang thought, all in all.