Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II (9 page)

“Be still Beef,” his father commanded quietly. “Raise the sail.”

He heaved his shoulder until the boards sprung. The tubby boat ground free of the shore and a moment later his lean limbs and body came easily over the side. The way he moved told me he wouldn’t be easy to take, if it came to that.

“He took his horse,” I said, thinking aloud as the sheet crackled and whumped, billowed out on the breeze. The craft quickly gathered way.

“Aye, that’s so,” Veers told me, settling down at the tiller.

“Where’s he planning to ride it?” I wondered.

“He didn’t say.”

We moved through the softly glowing mist about where I’d seen the ship disappear. Veers seemed relaxed and confident. Small bay waves slapped steadily into the bow.

When I looked at the shore it was a fuzzy outline with a faint orange glow where the fire burned on the beach. It made me think of things, of darkness and mist and a little hint of light to lead you, one warm spot of glow in a mysterious, foggy world. It was always like that for me.

LOHENGRIN

The beast was nervous. But where I was going, they said there were no horses. Why not try for every advantage possible?

The four sailors seemed nervous as the slow boat worked out through the fogbank. Reefs and what not, I suppose, on every side. I hoped their skills were equal to their work. What could I do, in any case? No sense to worry where it won’t help.

It was cool out here, and I was enjoying a sausage with raw onion and some hard bread. I never had delicate tastes. I leave that for my father. The esteemed one.

I sat on the railing on the high deck. When I was small, I remembered, I’d seen a painting with a ship like this in it. It looked about to topple over.

I’d promised these rogues a purse for this jaunt. They hadn’t asked for coin in advance. I think they took me for young and reckless. Maybe they thought they’d have it all, horse, gear and my testicles for fish bait.

I gave them the map, but they knew the island group I wanted. They said they never landed there. That no one did that they’d heard. I pretended to believe they were fishermen. The evil-looking, one-eyed captain (like someone from a tale) was built like a pork barrel. His knobby hands were as big as my head. He was standing in the fluttering light of a torch set in a black iron sconce at an angle from the mainmast. I think he smiled, watching me eat. It could have been a smile.

The fog was thinning out there. Wisps puffed past and vanished into the moonsilver darkness.

I smiled myself and waved to the stocky bastard. Hoped I looked simpleminded. I’d surprise them a little later if they were stupid enough to try me.

Then I frowned, thinking back to the cornfield where I’d lost the pursuit. I’d had to set the outraged husband on his ass. Hadn’t killed him though. Probably a mistake.

I shrugged, thinking about it, chewing sweet sausage. How in hell did they bring my damned father in on it? What a shock to see him there. Jesus God. He always mocked me. Nothing good or pleasant would have drawn him so near.

LAYLA

They were serious. By flickering torch light, I watched them kill my guardsmen. Others fled or tried to flee. This was no battle-ready fortress. Never had to be.

I yelled, protested (still wine-blurry), and I think I hit that swine of an ex-lover with my balled fist. My hand was swollen the next day and his lip bled, I think. I hope so.

The black-armored knight, the one they carried on poles like a steer, had me brought into the main hall, which was dusty with long disuse. They lit wall torches. The leaps and shaking of reddish light showed dust on everything, from the sagging, velvety pennants strung from the ceiling, to the twin, warped, uncomfortable wooden thrones that (Parsival claimed) his mother and father used to sit in to give justice to serfs or whoever else happened to desire it. It makes me sleepy to think of it. That whole family was demented, and even a mud-brained peasant would have known better than to have submitted himself to their findings. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. But they were strange folk by every account. Even their own.

The black knight with his dangling legs reminded me of a toad when they lumped him down on the larger throne. It suited him perfectly. His grated visor was still down and clogged with beard. He looked just right sitting there.

It was starting to seep in through my shock and soft numbness: my daughters were here. I blinked. Gave up struggling in the armored hands that held me facing the high seat. One of his useless legs had caught over the armrest and bent out sidewise. How silly it looked. It was hard to look at him. Hard to accept that this was grim life and death business, for me and my family.

“Where is your husband, woman?” he demanded. The beard moved absurdly when he spoke.

I was having difficulty staying focused on essentials.

“Why don’t you fix your leg?” I asked him. He reacted about as I’d expected: rattled his head in his black helmet and clenched his armored fists. Snarled. Pounded the leg so that it flopped senselessly and then limply crashed to the stone flooring. A dead extremity. The foot lay twisted out at a strange angle. Not much better.

“Your husband broke my back,” he said, conversationally. The tufts of beard poking through the grating vibrated. “Yes … yes, he did that …” His whispery voice was awful. I worried about my girls.

“I did you no harm,” I protested. “My husband —”

“Will suffer,” he said. “Suffer.” He nodded his big head. “I swore never to open my helmet, never to take off my armor until I encompassed his destruction.” Clenched and unclenched his hands. The iron crunched and squeaked in the silent room. Puffs of raised dust drifted past the torchflames. His men just watched and waited. I heard nothing in the halls outside now.

“Vengeance is my faith, love, and hope. I’ll have his children served in a stew to him. I’ll see him eat their flesh.” Shook and bounced up and down in his seat, the useless legs spasmed. “I’ll blind him! I’ll make him swallow his own balls!” I think he tried to spit, but it never got past the matted, massed beard.

“Who are you?” was the best I could manage. “I think you are full mad.”

“Who doubts it? I am long mad. He despoiled my wife and ruined my life. Who would not be mad? But I am doom. My true name is Doom. Doom is fire in my heart and in all my veins. Doom sustains me.”

“Doom?” I wondered. Why did these men follow a madman?

“Duke Orlius,” said the man gripping my arm. I glanced back. Saw my ex-lover over his shoulder. I preferred the mad man.

“Doom,” repeated the Duke, muffled, whispery.

Orlius
, I thought. The name was a memory. I tried to fix it: some tale Parsival told me when we were first married. I failed to bring back any details. I never could listen to him when he’d go on and on …

“Lock her up,” the mad Duke commanded. “Bring the daughters to me. “

I barely felt the big hands whisking me backwards. I saw only that ugly armored face with bristly beard poking out like a bush overgrowing a fence. I felt the full weight of betrayal and mother’s terror, shouting:

“No! No! Leave them alone! Leave my children alone!”

HOWTLANDE

We rode north by east, I think, for about three days and nights. Lord Gobble was in a hurry and cruel to his horse. A man ought to respect the beast that bears him. Well, at some feasts, you can’t choose who sits beside you.

The country was clammy, bleak, foggy. Worse, on the whole, than my homeland.

We took a skiff to an island, a spine of rock in sight of the coast where the wind wailed and gusted over heavy seas that shattered into spray on dark stones that reminded me of a broken jaw. The whole place may have been a mile across. Desolate. Caves everywhere and (as it turned out) a network of connecting tunnels. The island was a hive underground. Thousands of pale, filthy people lived there.

I was miserable, following the canting cripple across a flat wash of round, smooth stones where fog scudded and strung like scarves over wispy, bristly brush and leafless, stick trees.

“This is the worst place I’ve seen yet,” I remarked, thinking how I should have gone to the southern countries or east to the Orient.

“Aha,” Gobble said back, head lurching around with each labored yet tireless step, “this is a garden of delights compared with where I was born.”

That was interesting. The first personal conversation I’d had yet with him. I wanted more.

“But I thought you and your master came from Sicily?” Glorious south where the sun was a golden kiss; the young girls brown and ripe like fruit on the vine …

“You did, did you?”

“Yes. Not that I’m a man prejudiced, one way or an other. Fine men are bred in all climes and conditions.” I wanted to make that clear to him. It was the truth. Often, when I hope to be most precise, people seem to lose my gist. I always tried very hard to be precise.

“Where do you think I come from?” he asked, pale face glancing back with each straining lurch, his bad foot hitting hard on the wet stones.

“I don’t know. As I said, I had an idea, but it’s proven false. Still, I wish, myself, that I’d come from the southern lands. The hot, golden sunlight, the —”

“I hate the sun.”

We’d entered a narrow cut in a rock wall. Went down a steep, clammy, foul-smelling tunnel. Gobble’s feet crunched unevenly on the gravelly floor.

“I gather you come from the far north, in that case,” I suggested. He said no more. I didn’t try to draw him out further.

Dim, oily torches smouldered at about fifty-pace intervals. What a place! So this was what appealed to my friend here. No wonder dumping him in the well led to nothing. I was surprised he ever came back up willingly.

We passed a pair of what I took for guards: squat, ugly, tough-looking customers with knotted, filthy beards. Trolls on their granddam’s side, I wagered. They grunted and vaguely saluted Gobble. One was chewing a legbone, I think. Some big beast. I wondered where they got it. It failed to stimulate my appetite.

The passage had a low roof. I had to stoop. It curved like a hurt snake. The air grew fouler. I’m not a prissy fellow, mind, but I like a little comfort, when possible. But I kept thinking how, in time, I’d rise to a high place in the world even if I had to start by creeping under the earth.

The air was hot, wet, stinking of decay. I heard harsh, grating voices; violent songs rasped in side chambers …

We descended to a chamber guarded by two fairly tall knights in jet black armor with silver facemasks. The faces were unsettling: like shark teeth.

“This is like a hive of ants,” I said to my little companion. “Good morrow, sirs,” I addressed the knights who made no response.

Gobble turned around and hissed at me in his fanatical way:

“Mind your mouth, Howtlande. This is the womb of the new kingdom. Not a place for levity. The lordmaster dislikes levity.”

“As you say, as you say. Forgive me my choice of words, sir.” Never bait the bear in his own den. The Kingdom smelled like a latrine. Perhaps my agnostic senses were too dull to appreciate the wonders there.

I followed his lurching back into a low-roofed, dim, rank hole that reminded me of a tomb. The greasy torchlight showed black-armored men with the silver visors crouching (the roof was that low) around a square stone. Everybody save Gobble either had to stoop or crack skull on the rocks.

A grim, dead-pale man wearing a plain, greasy, gray robe over a frail-looking bony body sat there, holding one hand to his long, bony, almost expressionless somber face. The long, thick fingers tugged at his drooping moustache.

I shuffled closer, bowing awkwardly and unintentionally with each step. Was this really the leader? Yes, it was, because Gobble proclaimed it with a screech of almost religious fervor:

“Lordmaster! Hail to thee! Hail to victory!”

He knelt close to the wide, pale feet of the seated man who then enlarged his eyes. I felt a strange shock. The hollow, pale pupils seemed to flash and gather the smoky light into a palpable force. It seemed to touch my brain.

And then a rumbling voice that sounded like the stone in the foundation of the world shifted and ground together. My breath seemed frozen in my chest.

“Where is the precious thing I seek?” it demanded. “Have you brought it to me?”

“My lord,” said Gobble, staying on his knees, “not yet. Not yet.”

“Then,” thundered his master — I took a step back at the impact and cracked my head on the roof — “what are you doing here?”

Gobble nodded his tilting, twisting head. I was still seeing sparks of painful light. “Ah, Lord,” he said. “We were betrayed by she who was our ally.”

That had to be Morgana. Or whoever that girl actually had been. Well, Parsival had slain her, right enough. And nearly had finished the lot of us. He was a knight to give a wide berth to and yet, obviously, we had to seek him out, keep reaching in the hot coals for the coin, as the peasants say in my country.

“Betrayed. She led us on a false scent.” Gobble stood up now and jerked into movement. His shadows spasmed around the chamber. “I suspect she has the key needed to obtain the Grail. “

A pause. The strange, hollow stare seemed to withdraw and dim as he lidded his eyes and leaned on his side across the black stone, reminding me of a woman at a feast.

“What is your idea, Gobble?” he rumbled. “If you have one. “

“No doubt,” came the reply, as he rocked and pivoted, “she has it on her stronghold island. I need some men. Some men. More of my little ones. Well, they’d died, anyway. Those nasty dwarves.”

Clinschor looked thoughtful. I was just getting used to seeing the legend himself. Strange. The ogre whose image women used to frighten their children. I was increasingly sure I’d put in with the wrong side. Morgana might have proved a wiser choice. I didn’t see this legend rising again from this dank hole where he seemed so content.

“Take men, General Gobble,” he said, at length. He clasped and unclasped his big, soft-looking hands. His mouth was set with impressive determination. “I am gathering new forces in the north for the great day to come.” He sat up, folding his arms over his lank, half-bared chest. “Parsival. What of him?”

Gobble shrugged.

“He escaped me. I’ll find him again.” His hands made small fists. “He’ll tell all he knows. Never fear.”

“I expected better results.”

“Never fear, my Lord. He’ll tell all he knows.” He seemed quite certain, though my dealing with that noble gentleman left me doubtful of any outcomes involving him.

“Go to this island,” Clinschor thundered.” This time I didn’t quite hit my head. “Bring back what I desire most.”

Gobble looked delighted.

“Yes, yes,” he said, stroking his pointy chin. He paced, as always when something excited him. His crippled shadows reeled around him. “There’s a slave woman here. I hope she still lives. I remembered her on the road. She was raised by Morgana the witch. I’d thought of using her to spy on Arthur.”

Clinschor frowned thunder this time.

“What of it, Gobble?”

“Just this, Lordmaster. If she can tell me where the island is, we can take the old paths and come there by secret. The witch is keen, but she’d never expect such a ruse, I think.” Clinschor seemed satisfied. “The girl,” Gobble went on, “is probably still living in the pens. I long ago gave orders she was not to be damaged or destroyed.”

“What …” I started to say without thinking. Clinschor and Gobble turned and stared at me.

“What have you brought to me?” the Master wanted to know, making me sound like a roast fowl.

“A useful knight. He has come to join our cause. I offer him for the blood union.”

Blood
? I thought.

“Ah,” rumbled the leader, then addressed me. When I glanced behind (with vague ideas of fleeing) I saw the black armored guards had blocked the only door, stooping, plumes crushed against the low roof. “Candidate? …”

“Howtlande,” Gobble filled in.

“Candidate Howtlande, come to me!”

His voice seemed to jerk me forward. I was suddenly sweating. My heart pounded. I was dizzy. I went forward and his pale, burning stare seemed to enlarge and suck away my strength. “No,” I tried to protest, but an unseen hand pressed my throat.