Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II (2 page)

“There’s time for that,” Lord Civility reproved. “I have a proposition to put, first. If you’re a man of sense you’ll see the wisdom of my words. If —”

“If I have unusual lusts, you’ll satisfy them?” For some reason, they didn’t worry me. Maybe I just didn’t care.

“We know your reputation,” fat Howtlande ignored me. “Yes, indeed. We’re in an enterprise here where a stout sword arm would not go unrewarded. Yes, indeed.”

“To use my arm, you’ll have to put a blade in my hand.”

“Assuredly, ah yes … most certainly. We simply need your word, Sir Parsival of the Round Table, to serve us faithfully.”

“Round Table,” scoffed the runt. “Round as a chamber pot.”

“I’m not a paid assassin,” I pointed out. Except that’s just what I’d become. I wore the hat but refused the name. I frowned and stared into the depths of the long chamber. Where was this place?

“Great rewards can be yours, sir,” Howtlande went on. “We ask only your aid against attack. No more.”

The reedy-voiced little cripple swayed above me. His features were puckered to one side, and his eyes shifted and rolled constantly as if tracking movement all around the walls. He’d drawn his sword. When he pointed the tip at me, I liked him less and less. His steel was ill-kept: rusty and gritty. “Howtlande,” he squeakily gloated, “let’s just cut his throat. I don’t trust him.”

They weren’t in charge, I decided. Parsival was starting to get clever. “There’s nothing to trust me with,” I pointed out. “I haven’t said yes.”

Howtlande leaned over me. His gray mail and silks billowed like sails. His nose was a harsh, sharp hook in the putty of his face. “Yes would be a wise word to use, just now,” he said. It was hard to disagree.

“Very well,” I said, “whom do you serve?”

“What?” He didn’t like that. I grinned. Why not? I could play these games all day or evening or whatever.

“Don’t trouble yourself over these things,” the runt recommended. “Be grateful to keep your head.”

“It does me little good,” I replied. “It fills with worries and makes a tempting target.” I really disliked him.

“Well, he’s with us, Gobble,” Howtlande said optimistically. “Dread not, Sir Parsival, you’ll learn more as the days proceed in their inevitable round of bright and dark and —”

I shook my chains at him. “Why don’t we trade places and I’ll give
you
dull platitudes?” I suggested.

“Bear with it a moment,” he told me, and left. There was more to it, more to come. Somebody obviously had to be asked for the key. I consoled myself, thinking at least this was more interesting than going home. I didn’t wish to wait for whoever it was to say yes, no, or maybe; I needed motivation. Always did.

“Cripple,” I called out, “your face looks like rat shit!” The wild eyes tracked around. For all I knew he’d feel complimented. But he didn’t like me either. He couldn’t resist twisting over and waving the sword at me.

“You carrion —” he began, but since I could fill in the rest myself I hooked his bent leg out from under him. He bounced almost noiselessly on the padded floor. As he rose, he whipped the blade down hard enough to split me.

I rolled aside, violently jerked the chains and they hummed and snapped with a brittle, bright
ping
! As I expected. Mother always said, “Your strength is a curse from your father who perished of his own.” Mother was like that.

Gobble really popped his eyes this time, and scuttled backwards as I stood up, sour, rubbing my lacerated wrists. The manacles were thin and both had given way. I grinned at Runty. He chopped a desperate cut and I caught his forearm and took away his sword. His eyes were spinning with hate and dread. “Where’s the lady?” I asked, testing the rusty edge with my thumb.

“Here, Sir Parsival,” her voice lilted behind me. She and the fat man had emerged from the massed, muffled hangings. I debated holding a pillow across my naked loins but decided that would be worse. She didn’t seem to mind.

“I think I can serve you better now,” I told her, flicking the sword in an easy arc. Howtlande’s expression was alert and thoughtful in the background. “Shall I start?”

She was almost smiling. “These gentlemen and I,” she said, “have come to an understanding. I won’t deceive you. The real danger still lies ahead.”

“I’ll face it better in my armor.”

“Naturally, naturally,” Howtlande said. “However, always best not to be too hasty, sir. With patience, determination, and imagination, we all reach our respective goals.” Nodded. “Ambition, drive, how rare these qualities are becoming in our time. “

What a windbag. I was getting restless. “Somebody better make sense soon. Where in hell are we? Why was I trussed up like this?”

“We were, well,” said Howtlande, “unsure of your ultimate position in this affair.”

“What affair?”

“Anyway,” Morgana put in, moving closer to me, something faintly like disappointment showing, “the fact is we’re all in it together now. “

“In what?” I was exasperated.

“We all, if I may say so,” interjected Howtlande, “now share a common ground and purpose.” He looked like his neck was sweaty though he didn’t mop it. “Circumstances can lead men on to greatness and, in the end, form deeper bonds than mere ties of affection and —”

“We’re in the castle of the Grail,” she broke in as the bloat was warming to his subject. “The very place you found as a boy.”

“I was seventeen, to be exact,” I said. A year that haunts me. “I never saw the Grail — you’re all a bit old for this, don’t you think?”

“Imagination, vision —” Howtlande began. Gobble cut him off this time.

“We know you never understood anything, Parsival. That’s no secret.” Looked at the others. “He’s useless. We don’t need him for the rest of it. My master says —”

“Never mind your master,” she snapped and he lunged to his feet and snarled his way to her.

“You want to steal it for yourself,” he hissed, furious and uncoordinated. “You’ll pay for that bit of treachery, my sweet lady! The master —” She cut him off by spitting in his face. He clutched at her with raking nails, so I tapped him, not too hard, atop his narrow head. The twisted leg flipped out from under him and he flopped to the deep carpet. Then he snaked his skinny neck about and chomped his teeth into my bare foot. I hopped and yelled and nearly sliced his head off; he wriggled aside, still chewing, my blood running from the corners of his long mouth. The needle pain blinding me, I finally stood on his strange skull and kicked myself loose. He rolled away over the cushions and carpets.

“Stop it,” she demanded. Across the room, he crouched, his restless stare shifting past me. He snarled, and my blood dribbled down his cheeks and neck.

I dabbed at my foot with a pillow, staining the fluffy lace. “I ought to cut yours off,” I muttered at my twisted friend. I’d be limping for days, if nothing worse. He’d ripped into the sole and heel, half a tooth deep.

“Parsival,” Morgana went on, touching me while I tore some silk coverlets into long, wide strips and knotted them around my loins like a diaper. Appropriate. “Ignore this pettiness. We must work together or perish together.”

“Where were you?” I asked her.

“When?”

“Until you came in here.”

“Begging them not to be fools and kill you.” Her dark blue look said nothing. “We need one another. We’ve been followed here by assassins. “

I grunted. Gobble was back on his twisted feet. Howtlande was hovering, tentative, anxious. “What happened to the rest of them?” There’d been a half dozen, at least, milling around me in the dusk before the blade smacked my skull sidewise.

“You slew two and the rest fled,” she declared. “You were very terrible.”

“Where did these two gems come from?”

“They followed after.”

“I love a good joke,” I said.

“It’s true,” Howtlande put in (now that he had the story, I supposed), “which is why we left you chained. Natural caution is understandable. Why, such a warrior as you, I’ve never seen such power. And I at once thought: here’s the very fellow to round out our determined numbers and —”

“You liar,” Runty snarled, “you wanted to cut his throat while he lay there and —”

“Peace, enough!” she commanded. “We were fleeing the men you cut down. There were worse things chasing me than these two.”

“We’re all in it, for now,” the runt declared. “Together.”

I just shook my head at them. What a crew!

So we followed her through endless, padded corridors and muffled chambers. I limped and cursed the gimpy little Gobble, who always managed to be just out of reach. Well, unless his teeth were poisoned like an asp’s, my foot would heal. Grayish light gloomed in the high slit windows. We went on … and then the corridor reached a triple branching and Morgana stopped, perplexed and nervous. Paced back and forth.

“Well,” Howtlande said, “never fear, never fear. You’ll recall the way, eh? Confidence is the soul of all human endeavor —”

“I’ve never been here before, you ass,” she snapped. I grinned and adjusted my diaper, glad this place was so inexplicably padded and deserted. Warm, for a castle. They claimed my armor was missing when they went back for it.

“Do you hear a voice,” I wondered, “that guides you? I wish I did.”

“This isn’t funny,” she informed me. “I had directions from an old druid. But he knew only the way to the chamber of three directions.” She gestured at the corridors.

“She tortured the old bastard,” Gobble hissed, “and he died when he came to this part.” He grinned with malice, his small teeth a shark flash in half light.

Morgana flicked a glance at me. “He always lies.” Flicked one over him. “You twisted little thing.”

He poked his tongue between his teeth. But before he could speak she held up her hand for silence and listened, alert. I made out a faint click-clack behind us. Howtlande looked more uneasy. “Pursued,” he muttered. “Alas, how all human precautions sink beneath human misjudgment —”

“Shut up!” she snarled, secret eyes flaming now like a bright dagger’s edge. Howtlande suddenly lunged for Gobble and nearly caught him. He had surprising speed, too. The ferret-faced cripple had to resort to his floor writhing tactics to escape.

“You little wretch!” the fat man cried, stomping his iron shod feet at the other’s frail but repulsively supple limbs. “You betrayed us! You betrayed us.”

God, what a crew!

“Morgana,” I demanded, “you’d better choose.” I could hear muffled footsteps and weapons banging, and her two henchmen were going at it with a passion.

“Only one way leads to the Grail,” she said, searching my face as if the answer lay there. “The others lead to certain destruction. “

“So, it would seem, does staying here.” I glanced at the burly knight, who was towering over the cringing cripple. “He betrayed us to black Clinschor!” he insisted. “His foul dwarves are at our heels!”

“Someone’s always at my heels,” I commented. “Come on.” I strode down the central corridor as if I knew where I was going. Each step hurt. “Anyway,” I said over my shoulder, “they’ll have two ways to go wrong when they reach this spot. “

She was right behind me. Howtlande talked steadily. I think he was disputing with Gobble. Even here, the walls and floor were padded. What a vast deserted place. What a waste of time.

“I hear them!” Howtlande said. “A single misjudgment is a keystone pulled from an arch! All must fall!”

“Aaaah, you bloated coward!” his companion whined. “I tell you, the master’s men will aid us.”

Master Clinschor, I thought, what nonsense. Everybody claimed he was alive and in hiding here or there. For twenty years men rumored him to life. Amazing ghost he must be to still claim followers.

“They’re hard upon us!” Howtlande cried. He was right. Pounding feet and plinking chainmail. There were lots of feet. “Well, great champion,” she said, “I hope you’re equal to the tales they tell of you.”

I sighed. “I’d prefer a better shield than reputation, at the moment.” My foot hurt. I saw Gobble lurching near me. I slammed the flat of my blade across his rear end just where the armor spread a little and was rewarded by a yelp and a snarl. I felt better.

“Just greasing my joints,” I explained.

“You bastard,” said Gobble, adding some other memorable things. I felt refreshed. Then he was yelling into the shadows behind us, “Hear me! I am Lord Gobble of the Inner Circle! I expect to be obeyed!”

I wondered if he’d also expected the ax that grazed his shoulder and seemed to drag a huge, panting warrior after it.

“Worm!” Gobble shrieked, sticking his dagger into the fellow’s foot right between the iron plates. He seemed bent on making everyone like himself. The knight howled inside his faceplate and hopped from wall to wall. Howtlande laid him low, two-handed in a blur to my left as I met the next two big, clanking gentlemen. I spun flat into the wall hangings so they missed me, and then hit the nearest. Oh, I was good at this work! I was good. They’d sent this many because everyone knew it: these had to be Arthur’s hirelings. Arthur thought being a ruler meant never giving anything up. He hadn’t always been that way. We were all ducking, dodging, hacking shadows. Howtlande held his own, not talking for once, and little Gobble slunk and stabbed and squeaked and hit the floor when pressed, wriggled and writhed away and stabbed at feet and calves. My sword broke, in someone’s skull, I think.