The Grail War (46 page)

Alienor kept looking straight up at the stars over his shoulder, head rocking in a pool of her hair on the dry grass. She let her body unbend, open, and move faster … faster … hurl itself melting into relief, letting it pour out everything, all the scorched days and shivering nights … everything … and she looked out at the stars …
He wasn’t thinking as he slogged shin-deep up the road that had become a river. He had an appointment in the hills above here. He recalled he had once dramatized it, painted it in red, black, and white strokes. Now he was simply ready for it.

Actually, Parsival was enjoying the great, arching bolts that suspended in motion the myriad, gleaming raindrops and racked trees. It was magnificent, thrilling. The scene was so vibrant and totally clear … He watched the vivid, shifting shadows and he saw them like the light and shadows in his mind, saw it was the same thing, and now that the nightmare was past, he understood good dreams were the same, and all the endless questings from horizon to horizon took place within the little space of the sleeper’s head while he never left his bed … So he had nowhere to rush off to anymore, and though now he was moving as fast as possible, he was taking his time with every moment … The flashes were so beautiful. He watched each pattern, each frozen moment, and each was the utter equal of the last … none was better or worse so he wanted no power to control or shape anything … Each flash was a whole, surprising, intricate, clear, exquisite landscape, and he didn’t realize he was not even seriously wishing for the storm to end because he was too fascinated …

He heard a moan: a bearded soldier had partly pulled himself onto the belly of a dead horse to keep above the mounting water and was clinging there as the fury howled and tossed his hair and washed the blood from his streaming mouth and nose. Parsival saw a deep, mashed rut across his abdomen. He’d obviously been crushed by some kind of wheel. He was dying rapidly and had demonstrated amazing tenacity, still holding on as the rushing waters dragged at him …

“Life wants to live,” Parsival whispered, soundless in the wind.
It
keeps
pushing
out
… He saw an image: a seed pushing into the bright, mild, breathing air; the flower exhaling itself into fullness; the petals falling, all one movement, dying every fraction of the way …

He stooped and gently stroked the man’s forehead.

“The … bastard …” the fellow groaned. His chalk-pale face was framed by black beard and hair. “ … run … over … us …”

“Peace,” Parsival said, face close enough to hear and perhaps be heard over the violence of the night.

“The great … master … bastard … goes right … bloody … on …”

And he died. Parsival prayed with a word.

“Peace.”

And thought:
So
I'm
chasing
him
this
time
instead
of
the
other
way
around
… He smiled. The great master. You didn’t leave the dream just because you knew what it was. He had an appointment in it. He had to do his utmost asleep or awake.

So he stood up and now began to run with tremendous power, irresistibly churning through the sucking muck and currents of flood …

Which was more than Broaditch could do, leaning on the bending spear, crouching close against the steep slope, certain they were behind him again.

He virtually went to his hands and knees, pressing himself into the beating, stinging gale that slammed over the crest. He happened to look back and in a sustained flurry of lightning flashes he spotted something that filled his throat with the start of a scream, and he clawed and scrambled over the hilltop and struggled on along the twisting path. It seemed a giant’s skull-mask, a red, gleaming visor eyes lit glaring with faceless, blazing fury up at him from down among the slanting, shaking trees. He tottered and half-ran, overcome by a nameless terror from childhood, the lurking thing only hinted at by imagination, moving in the night shadows, stalking your naked, prickling, fleeing back …

You
fool
…
you
fool
, he was thinking in a corner of himself,
look
what
you've
come
to
…
rushed
all
these
leagues
to
greet
the
devil
…

Clinschor was howling through the slit of what Broaditch had just taken for Satan’s helmeted head.

“More men! More men! Burst your hearts! Die in your worthless tracks! Only push! Push! Push!!”

Lohengrin was outside. He watched the last man-at-arms (who hadn’t already dropped to die) staggering into the trees. They were half-swimming even here on the steepening slope. It was hopeless. He only wondered why he didn’t follow after them himself.

Fat Sir Grunt (as Lohengrin termed Howtlande) and a handful of black guards were all that remained from what some claimed had been half a million men … And himself, too. He grinned, sarcastically.

The rain spattering through his visor did him good, he thought. It cleared his head from the sickening sweet-sour atmosphere inside the mired ball.

Howtlande was leaning down from his shivering, exhausted mount, which stood spraddle-legged in the muddy current.

“We’ve no better choice than this,” he told Lohengrin for some reason.

“There’s surely no going back,” Lohengrin allowed with a sour edge of contempt. He wanted to get away, go somewhere and lie down … sleep and sleep all these dark days away …

“He may yet be right,” the puffy, hard-eyed lord general insisted. “Consider all he’s done before. He may just be right.”

“Right? About what?”

“The power of the Grail. What we seek here. What this war was really fought for.”

Lohengrin was suddenly leaning on the hard globe, shaking slightly, silently. Howtlande just gaped down at him.

“What?” he said. “What?”

But Lohengrin just shook his head and gasped, and then his laughter became audible in a lull. Clinschor had stopped screaming for the moment, it seemed.

“Of course,” Lohengrin assured him, “of course. The power of the Grail … yes …” And he broke up again, to the other’s unending puzzlement. Then began to regain control and asked, “Was this a war, General Grunt?”

“What?” Howtlande cocked his ear, leaning down, as the storm picked up in force again.

Now the Lord Master was raging around inside away from the slit, Lohengrin noticed. He was trying not to think about any of this because each time he lightly tested the concepts, he started to bubble and shake and his sides were already sore and he felt weak … He took a few deep, damp breaths, then decided he was in control. Looked up at Howtlande’s intent, piercing expression and desperate eyes and knew he was lost.

“The Grail,” he couldn’t resist saying, knowing full well what was going to happen, “we must have the Grail.”

And this time he sank down to one knee, tried to hold his sides through the armor, and rocked back and forth.

“By all means,” he gasped, falling back limply into the iron, his armor clunking. “It will save the day!”

“Are you injured?” Howtlande yelled, unable, Lohengrin realized, to hear his laughter over the storm, which added fuel to the uncontrollable blaze of humor until he was sure he was going to die.
Onward
,
men
!
Onward
to
the
Grail
! he thought, and fell on his side in the chill flood.
The
fairies
are
dancing
away
with
it
…
better
stop
them
… But the shock of the water did what his mind couldn’t, and he managed to get up. The humor, he reflected, was pretty much used up, anyway. But he nonetheless carefully avoided certain phrases for a while …

Howtlande kept his face close and shouted his views: “Balls or not,” he rasped, “the screaming banshee has changed the world. You have to give him that. Look at all he’s done! They’ll not forget him soon!”

“No. I agree with that.” His chest and stomach hurt.
No
more
, he told himself,
no
more
.

The globe of black metal was rocking itself now with the fury of what was exploding within. Then the door swung open and was banged violently into the side by the shuddering wind. The black servant, lip crushed and bloody with what Lohengrin took for tooth marks on his neck, leaped out and tore away without a sound, light garments fluttering, instantly drenched, splashing across the road and into the swaying, twisting trees. The draft howled over the opening, flapped and cracked, and then Clinschor came to the doorway and Lohengrin's first impression was of the rapidity with which his upcurled moustaches vibrated, then the rain, spraying into his face (enclosed by a gray hood), then the eyes that seemed to stare now like an old, old man’s, then the wild, trembling hands that clutched and wrung one another …

He's
broken
, Lohengrin thought,
he's
broken
.

Then he spoke and the young knight found his body moving immediately, as if energy had been poured into him by the resonant tones. His sleepiness cleared up.

“Bring me a mount.” He was calm, confident, commanding. “Come. The Grail is just ahead. Everything is in order.”

It was, Lohengrin realized, astonished, as if nothing had happened, as if all the incredible days before were instantly dismissed. He’d wanted — expected — to see a broken, pitiful figure emerge. Anyone should have been destroyed by this, and yet here he stood … and he knew, with a sinking certainty, that he wasn’t even really mad …

“Yes, master,” he realized he’d just said. This was beyond human. The fate of the world still lay centered in this stooping, indomitable figure who’d just put an entire nation to fire and sword. It
had
to be beyond human. Here was the terrible scope of a god! Who could doubt the impact of such purpose? He’d clearly been let down by the weakness of other men and ill chance. But it was not too late to redeem the promise. There was a Grail; he saw that now. There had to be a Grail. It was the key, the focus, something worth countless lives and castles and villages … He was taking deep breaths as he climbed on his horse and bent forward into the wake of the others, into the unrelenting pressure of the elements … There was no waste. There couldn't be. It was real. He believed it was real with a sudden intensity he couldn’t have explained. This man knew and he would follow him. There was no reason to return to the ruined, empty lands because he was privileged to move in this dwindled company, riding with thunderbolts, climbing to destiny at the end of the world, moving with arrogant giants whose vision ripped through the pale shreds of mortal existence … He clamped his teeth together and concentrated only on that. Looked up at the dark hill above, crowned with lightning. It was true … It was true … It was
true
…

As they climbed higher into the exploding night, he thought he could hear the voice, throbbing steadily, the sound torn and wrenched by the wild inflections of the wind … no words … just the throbbing, throbbing, throbbing …

Valit felt the warm, rushing, mounting buildup that locked his body. He felt himself about to lift from himself for a moment and fall up, up, away, and out … Her fingers were soft and steady, stroking faster and faster by sweet degrees …

But his mind was working quite apart and abstractly: he was sketching the outlines of a plan. They had to reach a city where he could make best and proper use of her talents. She was naive enough, in her way, whore that she was (which was at least profitable for one who had to be a woman, so that was all right) and this hard living was slimming and hardening those overloaded hams. Why, with her in good condition, he might not need to pair her right off … They could save their coppers and silver pieces, then, gradually, when the time came ripe, build a fine stew and live well … He pictured a good-sized stone house, some silken clothes, pewter cups, silver knives, and yes — why not? — plates like the Jew had himself … yes … wines from across the water … get far, far off from all this nonsense. Broaditch would find no treasure. But he’d wait just to be sure. For the lowborn didn’t waste an opportunity, even a slim one, as this was … He heard himself cry out now, felt a sweet spurting that went off within like the lightning without … saw several whores in a brocaded interior, thinking that it was sense that you built a better trade staying in one locale than wandering the country wide in search of customers like that silly minstrel of a whoremaster …

“Ahhhhh,” he was just crying out as Broaditch arrived.

And was shouting, “Remain thus at your peril!”

He shuddered as her rain-washed hand squeezed the last, ecstasy-less gobbets from him. He sighed with sleepy delight and relief even as the chill world burst in again.

“Doom is at my heels,” was Broaditch’s next word.