Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (13 page)

LEGO

Lego was following the river trail about an hour behind his lord. He came to the place by the wall where he noted many sets of hoofprints coming together. He dismounted and studied the signs: Parsival’s horse joined the rest and cut through a break in the wall into the forest.

No marks of a fight, he thought. It was hard to imagine Parsival being taken against his will. Odd… odd…

He remounted and followed. A short distance in, the trees opened into a little glade where the sun lay in hot, mellow brightness on the wild grass and stony earth. The air was heavy with afternoon heat; grasshoppers flipped semi-sidewise like chips of brown wood or flickers of grass; bees stirred in the bushes; birds twittered and the day murmured in a way that made him long, suddenly, to stop and stretch out and sit in the shade like a day-dreaming child.

A few yards later, just before the forest closed in again, he heard the snarl of flies in the brush. He twisted his mount aside to see what was dead because he noticed the horse snort and shy slightly, as horses will when they smell blood.

So he wasn’t too surprised to see the dead man (he didn’t know was recently Hubert the Bailiff) lying on his back with his chest cut open, both eyes wide, stunned and glassy. The bush’s shadow hid the worst of his wound but blood fresh enough to be still red was spattered around him like dew in the relentless sun.

Lego unconsciously touched his swordhilt and squinted hard into the waiting tree shadows. The hot breeze plucked at the grasses and ticked the heavy leaves. He felt watched. He sneered, without knowing it, breathing carefully. He liked being alive. He suddenly felt there were so many things still worth doing. He hoped his lord hadn’t been killed, somehow.

“Come on if you’re coming,” he whispered, waiting while his horse jogged its head and snorted, nervous, uncomfortable, flicking its tail and ears at the stray flies that drifted from the feast. “Let’s have it now.”

Nothing. Just the buzzings, whooshings and general murmur of the afternoon. So he drew his blade anyway, rested it across his armored lap, and urged the horse back along the trail into the trees.

PARSIVAL

They came out of the cool trees into an open place that was almost perfectly squared off as if the pines and other trees had been chopped to frame a barren, stony rise that wasn’t quite a hilltop. A dark, muddy trickle of stream pooled and puddled its way along the shallow slope.

The woman immediately noticed the bugs: the air was full of nasty, tiny midges that went straight for the ears. She grimaced and kept slapping at them. This spot seemed far more humid than the rest of the forest. And there was a foul odor. Parsival realized (with revulsion) they’d been using that sluggish little stream as a latrine.

“Christ’s eyes,” he muttered.

“Who are these creatures?” she asked.

“They seem like infidels from the Holy Land.”

“Why came they here?”

The tall knight shrugged, running his fingers through his long, brown and copper-streaked blond hair. “Maybe to rescue us from the grip of Jesus,” he remarked, wryly.

The leader came out of one of the sorry, stained, ragged tents pitched along the near wall of evergreens. He sported a red, greasy turban and ragged robes over the same light, rusty chainmail favored by most of the others. A scar sliced down his forehead almost vertically and virtually divided his wide, flat nose before ending in a pucker at his upper lip.

“What is it to be?” Parsival asked him.

The fellow responded in damaged English. “You are knight?” he said.

Parsival blinked.

“I am sunset,” he said, staring at the little man.

“We bring knights to someplace,” the fellow elucidated.

“Wonderful,” Parsival told him.

“We look for king.”

“Your king is missing?”

“You know where is king?”

He tipped his head and blew out one of his nose-halves onto the ground and wiped the nostril with the back of one hand.

“Your king?” Parsival reiterated, trying to decide how seriously to take this talk.

“No our king. KING.” He waved his arms around, inclusively. “King Arthur?”

The fellow scowled and rubbed his noses. “Bah,” he said. “Great king. King of allbody.”

“Ah,” said the tall knight. “That one. No head.”

The woman poked at Parsival. “What is this madness?” she wanted to know.

The two of them stayed on the horse who was just dipping its head to lick a fetlock. The ragged-looking troops had gathered around them and were silently, avidly watching. Parsival felt somehow that he and the woman were giving them an appetite. “They look like wolves,” she concluded.

“I’m no lamb,” the knight said. He let himself center within, not focusing on anything, waiting for the crisis. He’d decided it would be an interesting fight.

“King,” the leader demanded, shrill, tense, “where is king?”

“Which king?” Parsival wanted to know. It struck him this was a formula, somehow like a ritual because the fellow didn’t really seem that interested in his response; he rubbed his strangely split nose with his middle finger, then drew his curved blade with a jerk and gestured at the sky.

“Tell or die!” he screamed. “Tell or die!”

Parsival nodded as the woman shrank back against him.

“Very well,” said the knight, holding her shoulders with one hand, and, with the other, brushing his long, blond bangs away from his eyes. “I’ll reveal all.” He pointed. “Follow the sun for seven days and nights. Especially nights. When you come to the river of blood, swim or sink, as you will. On the far shore you come to the king’s kingdom.” He smiled with half his mouth. “You’ll know it by the stink.”

“You jest with these?” she ask-whispered, afraid.

He shrugged. He realized the oily-dark little man hadn’t paid any attention anyway. He’d sheathed his blade and was snarling commands at some of his men.

“Jest?” replied Parsival. “For all I know its sooth and a half.”

“Will they kill us now?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Who knows? They seem right mad.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Don’t fear yet.”

“Will they slay us?”

“Not all of them. Only a few, if any.”

“Why is that?” She twisted as if to look at his face.

“I will kill most of them, if it comes to that.” He brushed at his hair again and made a mental note to trim it soon. “Maybe all.”

She didn’t drink the whole cupful because she said:

“Am I a babe to be soothed by a tale?” She sniffed. “You’re not even armored.”

“You err. I am armored.”

“In madness?” She watched the leader who was now squatting on his hams, having a bite of dried meat with his scimitar in his lap. She kept studying his scarred, divided nose, wondering where his breath went.

“No. It’s a skill I have no pride in,” the knight told her.

“You are that strong?” She twisted around to glimpse his face just above her own. The ragged troops seemed to be gathered, waiting for something.

“Other men are, often, that weak.”

He stayed centered, looking at the treetops interlacing a rich blue edge of sky. He didn’t see any birds. He was wondering if every time someone tried to kill him he might have a mystical vision. The burnt hay scent of her hair was a distant distraction.

The leader came close and peered up at them. His expression wore a kind of permanent fury. Spittle flew in a fine mist from his mouth when he shouted and Parsival could smell the strange acridity of his breath.

“You ignorant,” he cried.

“And you annoy me,” the knight said. “Everyone always liked to tell me I was ignorant. My wife still delights in it.”

“We want king who dwells under earth,” the leader said. “We look.” He moved his arms, significantly. “We seek… we make sacrifice to him… we ask… we follow… we pray.”

“Quite a full roll,” Parsival commented. “I commend your energy if not your demented purpose.”

The warrior screwed his face into a scowl that twisted his divided nose as if he had two faces trying to form a double fury. He swept his arms to include his men.

“We are one!” he cried. “We will find lost king!” Then, apparently, shouting the same sentiment in their common tongue, they all clashed their weapons and chanted for a few moments.

“Let us part now,” said the knight, “and we will look too. And if we find your king I’ll come straight to you.”

The little man smiled. The scowl (Parsival thought) was better. The lean, contorted face was close to the horse’s shoulder as the beast drifted a step or two, nodding into a clump of grasses.

“He, ha,” the dwarfish leader said. “You no go.”

“Ha, hoo,” said Parsival. “Say you so?” To the woman: “A fine lot of trolls.”

“You learn soon.”

Parsival tried one:

“Why do you seek this king-in-the-ground?”

The face was right under him now, looking fiercely up. The knight resisted kicking the pointy chin.

“He holy man. He will take …”

“Take?”

“What was stole.” The face was grim. “Enough. Now come or you die.”

“I love a choice,” the tall, wide-shouldered knight replied as he freed his foot from the long stirrup and flicked a kick that should have dented in the little fellow’s ear. Except he was snake-quick and ducked and snapped a cut at Parsival’s near leg so fast it was almost sliced.

With cheers of pleasure half-a-dozen more warriors charged forward, circling to enclose the riders. The woman started to clutch at his legs so Parsival shoved her forward into what resembled jumping position, face close to the horse neck.

He needed a sword. He drew his long dagger and deflected the next slash from below.

“Christ!” he hissed, seeing that more little men were coming from all sides. “This is no jest.”

“I thought you were going to flail them all like bunches of grain,” she reminded him.

“That’s not a quote,” he responded, turning the horse hard and fast, looking for a gap to ride at. With an ululating wail the line of wild-looking, scruffy fighters charged, scimitars chipping the hot summer sunlight.

“Oh, God,” she said. She shut her eyes.

“Here come more madmen,” he said, wheeling the horse, then breaking it backward, high-stepping hooves spatting mud as he withdrew across the sluggish streamlet, stirring up nasty clouds of nipping black bugs. “Always madmen.”

The attackers spread wide to cut him off, as he’d expected. He shoved her forward once again onto the beast’s neck to give himself striking room.

“Hold fast,” he said.

“Can we escape?” She shut her eyes.

He aimed the horse suddenly on a slant (now that he’d spread them out) wrenching violently around so that he was now rolling up their curved line.

“Can they?” he replied, setting his teeth for combat, dagger held along his thigh, as his mount’s chest and legs were knocking the first two down. The rest circled to close again but he twisted violently the opposite way and broke free of their net.

He felt the strange, hot, high excitement of combat. His concentration was tight but fluid. He saw everything without really looking. He was aware that there were bowmen coming into it now. That wasn’t so good. Short bows. Handy in thick underbrush.

He stopped the horse dead so that the nearest man could cut at his side. She screamed. He kicked up into the fellow’s armpit, whipped sidewise and grabbed the thin wrist. By breaking the force of the stroke he was able to twist the curved sword free as he backed and whirled his mount around again and looked for another thin spot in their line.

One little fighter with scattered stubs of teeth in a distended mouth darted close to snatch at the reins near the bit and stab the horse in the throat. Parsival lifted him by kicking the mount into rearing and before he could drop back and escape the knight’s blade poked into his ribs and he went down with a curse and scream.

“God save us!” Katin gasped.

A moment later the first arrow whizzed under his chin. He was impressed by the instant accuracy.

“Piss,” he said.

He wheeled so that his back was to most of them, to cover the woman a little. He didn’t like the situation, but didn’t want to quit yet. Cut the animal left, right, left, right, left, left, right…

Another near miss and a few wild shots scattered into the trees. He needed the trees badly. Crashed across the mucky stream at a canter and cut in among the pines. Altered the horse’s gait now: slow… slower… fast… stop… back… up… forward —fast, keeping the tree trunks in the way.

She clung to the animal’s neck and gasped and reeled with the intense movements. The knight was good; very good. Had he been armored he might have slain most of them, as he’d told her.

He couldn’t lose himself in the trees because the foot fighters had been scattering around him and infested the bushes and shadows. The sunbeams flicked and flashed through the branches. His sweat beaded his face in the hot air.

Arrows banged into wood and skittered through leaves.

“Piss,” he repeated as one bare-topped little fat belly burst from behind a fallen tree trunk, wild moustaches flying and stabbed a spear at Parsival’s side.

The tall knight parried with the scimitar, then skidded the blade down the haft and chopped wristbone. The infidel yipped and rolled under the fallen tree to escape another awesome counter-stroke.

A ricocheting shaft hit Parsival in the back and the almost spent shot nicked a rib.

“Wormy bastard clods!” he yelled, yanking the horse hard left and down a sudden slope where the trees were suddenly gone. He slammed through a last screen of high berry bushes and realized the little devils had driven him where they wanted because suddenly there was loose, dried-out clay and dirt and the hooves were skidding and slipping down a suddenly too-steep drop that ran in a huge circle: a pit, with worn crumbled ramps corkscrewing down. He realized it was a long abandoned excavation. An open mine.

The infidels (as he thought them) were turning up all around then. Working, scrambling down the crumbling ramps to get at him as all he could do was hold the reins and Katin (who was now screaming) as the horse slid almost on its rump down and the sky and the rim of the pit leaped and rocked with each wild careen and bump as they hit each narrow ramp too fast to stop.

There was going to be no way to ride back up the huge spiral even if they weren’t spilled any second: bowmen on top could skewer half an armored army trying to fight their way back much less one gearless knight and a frightened woman.

They’ve got me this time, he thought. Like a pig in a sack…

And then the straining, outstretched forelegs caught behind a stony ridge and Parsival cursed as he heard the awful snap of the bones and horsebleat, the woman’s shriek and felt himself and her sail out and down with at least fifty feet to go to the bottom; a sickening space… then a semi-soft but solid wham as the earth seemed to punch him with a vast, dull fist and he went from bright to instant blackness…

Lego had come out of the trees into the squarish clearing at the far side from where Parsival and the woman were crashing across the mucky stream into the dark pine shadows with the whole crowd of smallish warriors fanning out, dodging close, then back, actually driving the knight towards the abandoned mine working just beyond the wall of trees…