Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (20 page)

LAYLA

“No, no, no,” she said, and dove for the back of the tent, clawing frantically, digging, scraping, burrowing under the thick, harsh fabric, on her belly in the dirt scrambling under and out.

I’m not going to change hands again! She insisted.

She was vehement. Her body was vehement. Before the first spike-helmeted fighter ripped through the tent fabric sword first behind her, she was gone into the darkness. On under faint starshine, through dips, curves, rills, brush and scrub tree branches that plucked and tripped her… falling, getting up… she went on, not even considering the possibility of capture, hearing nothing but her own breathing and sounds of flight.

“Never,” she would mutter. “Never… never …”

Until she could pause and the screams and clash had died into the soft winds and drone of summer night-bugs.

LOHENGRIN

He opened and shut his eyes and shook his muddled head. He was on his hands and knees as if he’d been vomiting onto the weedy, rocky soil. It seemed he had.

“By Saint Jane’s left teat, he swore. “How vile …”

I’m sick of dreams and weakness… may I gag up all such… may I spew up the whole week… Burped and sucked in his breath. I’m getting up, he assured himself.

“And going on …” he didn’t move. “Any time now …”

For the first time since he was a toddler, living in the nursery with other castle children, as was the custom, home seemed a good thing. He wanted to go home. Even the boring fief, his semi-anonymous father, martyred and sharp-fanged mother and all the dull characters from Hal (whom he actually missed) on down seemed just fine right then. All those whom (he believed) wasted their lives in those bleak and stupid northern hills a world away from greatness, ambition and opportunity; the tasteless cousins and crude guests (like Sir Gaf and family) not to mention the occasional wandering, second-rate knight who came to try and learn the art of murder from his father.

He was coming around and felt a little better. Thought that maybe he’d go to London Town instead. After all, he was young. The stiffness was already easing.

Find a horse… poor Firetail… and find gear…

With only a tunic and surcoat, weaponless he felt bare, exposed. There was a long, straight slope ahead. The road zigzagged through the sparse, second-growth trees. There’d obviously been a forest fire: all the vegetation was new.

He went on in a kind of steady stagger. He was determined to go on until something made sense. Why was the road, for instance, zigzagging on a virtually unbroken surface? And the road was clearly used: hoofchewed and footbeaten.

There’ll be a village or something ahead… I’ll ride a mule or pig… find something… even a woodcutter’s ax would do…

“Stupid road,” he muttered, striding faster now around a zig or zag when he tripped on a stone and went down flat in the dust. “Shit!” he snarled, jerking instantly up to his knees. Paused before getting up. Then stared in shock, because, beside the road stood a naked man wearing only a steel helmet with closed visor (a knight?) pressing his short, stocky-squat, muscular body rhythmically over a pale, spread-eagled woman or girl who seemed to just lie there, motionless except for his impacts.

Why fuck by the side of the road? He wondered. Is she asleep, in any case?

If he was a knight, he’d have to have a horse. A mount, he thought, other than the woman bouncing stiffly under him.

Lohengrin’s crafty nature stirred. His armor had to be nearby, as well. Probably strapped to the animal.

So he crouched to his feet and quick-stepped into the underbrush which filled in the thin woods to about man-high.

Closer now, he could hear the man grunting and thrashing. The sun was poking and spearing through the hazy cloud trails and Lohengrin realized it was early afternoon. He felt there was still a lingering, faint, charred smell in the earth. The air was warm and a little humid.

“Keep humping and bumping, fool,” he whispered, now spotting the light-dappled, golden flanks of the saddled horse just ahead through the screening brush.

Armor too. A mace was strapped to the neck, a sword to the flank. He has what he wants, I have what I want…

He prepared to mount, making soft, soothing sounds – except, like something from a mad mystery play, the naked knight suddenly popped through the bushes.

“What, done already?” quipped Lohengrin. He coolly freed the mace from its thong and tested the heft, cocking one bushy black eyebrow at the ludicrous apparition. “Why hide your face? Looks it like a dog’s arse?” His witticism soothed him.

The otherwise naked man (stocky, scarred, and knotted-looking) stood there, bushes still swaying behind him, breathing hard inside the helmet that was adorned on top by what the young man took for a brass mouse.

“Ho, ho,” said the man, voice tinny, muffled and very deep.

“Ho, ho?” echoed Lohengrin, studying his genitals: the receding penis and shapeless sac. “Fellow, you should wear a helm over your dick, as well, the sight of which diseased and misshapen stub would revolt the devil himself.”

“Ho, ho.”

“Again? Now I see why that girl was asleep under you. Your wit stunned her like a blow between the ears and what followed left her undisturbed.” Lohengrin forgot his anxiety and discomforts while jibing. “Spare me another ‘ho, ho.’”

“Cowardly thief,” the man rumbled. “Name thyself.”

“Lohengrin of Wales who will cut your head off second. Your nether parts being unbearable to view a moment more.”

“A dangerous boy to a man unarmed.”

Lohengrin grinned and cocked a half-nod at him. “I’ll perform a service to mankind…nay, womankind,” he said.

“Let me have my sword and I’ll serve you as you merit,” the man suggested, voice deep enough to vibrate in the earth.

Lohengrin touched the swordhilt poking up on the other side of the horse. A sword was his preferred weapon.

“Ho, ho,” he said, preparing to mount. “Next time.”

“Hold.” The man came closer. “Hear me, she’s a rare beauty, lad. Wish you not to enjoy her ere you depart?”

The young man leaned on the horse, one hand on the saddlehorn, the other gripping the mace.

“To have one you’d touched first would be like eating the cheese where the rat has bitten.”

“Were you hungry enough, you’d eat the rat along with it, lad. This one is honey to the senses, not yet sixteen. No peasant slut, either. Child of a noble family. Sweet and soft and will deny you no pleasure.” His deep, deep voice was a soothing persuasion.

“I’m not yet sixteen myself,” Lohengrin told him. “And I’ll enjoy spilling your polluted blood if you step nearer.”

“She says no to nothing, whatever you wish of her. I have seen to that. She is a perfect woman.” He inched nearer but Lohengrin read no menace, now. “You’re a stout lad. I like you, I who hate all men. I’ll teach you pleasures you cannot conceive!”

“What fortune that I happened on you,” Lohengrin said, spinning the mace effortlessly in one hand. “Now my life will take shape, at last.”

The bizarre knight headed back into the brush.

“Come with me and find life’s sweetness, lad.” He didn’t look back. “Unless you enjoy men or beasts more than woman’s love.”

Lohengrin smiled.

“That’s my weakness,” he said. “You have me.” But he was curious. An idea was forming that involved taking the girl with him and exploring her charms along the way. He was already following, mace over his shoulder.

Shortly, he was standing over the red haired girl. Her beauty choked his breath. The outspread legs; the reddishgold tuft; the length and naked impact of her. He was instantly excited and now felt she’d been drugged. The idea of her utter helplessness drew at him. The image of how she’d just been vigorously fucked.

He knelt, keeping aware of where the naked knight was, and gently poked her cheek.

“She’s dead,” he exclaimed.

“Go on! Go on!” cried the knight, hopping from foot to foot. “She is perfect! She is sweet… So sweet… Go on! There’s nothing here but your pleasure, boy. No resistance, no discussion… nothing but pleasure …”

Lohengrin lost his erection at once in a spasm of fear and disgust. He’d been so blurry with desire he hadn’t noticed she’d been strangled: livid bruises on her throat, blood on her lips. And the too-deep, dull voice was still inveighing him to mount her and give himself up to exquisite, mad, dark joys.

“You… you fuck a woman you kill …”

The word was cut off by a tremendous blow that imploded his chest. His breath blew out. His lungs felt flattened. The other man had delivered a kick that lifted Lohengrin and dropped him on his back four feet away.

Despite pain, suffocation, light and dark blotches clawing at his consciousness he was, after all, Parsival’s natural son and grandson of the mighty Gahmuret, so he still gripped the mace.

The naked, stocky knight (or whatever he was) went around the horse and drew his sword.

“I’ll put you both together,” he said, in his tinny, dull, deep voice, “one atop the other and I’ll fuck you both till you start to stink too much and then I’ll keep your skulls to piss in.” Laughed. “As you rot you get softer and sweeter, at first.” He suddenly jumped up and down crying out incomprehensible noises as if in the grip of demons or a fit, Lohengrin thought, with a detached part of his mind.

He could only lie there, arms at his sides, the one on the far side from the killer holding the haft. The man was a blur looming above him as if he lay underwater, fading in and out, still airless from the blow. Whatever he was saying had no more content for Lohengrin than the rumble of distant thunder. The flashes in his head could have been lightning.

“Do you know what number you are, boy?” the man was blatting. The boy didn’t understand. His detached thoughts kept going over the fact that he’d been taken like a fool. “I need a monk to inscribe my deeds in a book and keep the count.” Flat, blatting laughter. “You are number —”

But he never finished because the teenager told his arm to strike from that impossible position and he arced the heavy weapon across his body as if it were a willow wand and managed to take the murderous man’s leg from under him just below the knee.

The answering swordcut just dug dirt and the ruined man toppled sidewise in a spray of blood and curses. Lohengrin was just wheezing his first actual breath into the white-hot agony of his chest.

He paid scant attention to the man’s thrashing and blowing as he struggled to open his faceplate – as if that would help. He rolled through a puddle, pounding his fists, splashing mud and foam.

The young man heaved himself to his knees. He’d never done anything harder. He was finally breathing and wondered which ribs were broken.

Holy Mother, he thought.

And then he got up, still holding the mace that was smeared with mashed flesh and bone from the blow that had half-taken off the killer’s leg. He watched him bleed and stop trying to open his helmet. He lay flat in a spreading puddle of blood and muddy water. He was just moaning now.

“One sneak,” said the boy, “met a better sneak.” The other whispered around his moans:

“I slew… I slew… ah… I fucked… ah …”

“Turn your mind elsewhere,” Lohengrin suggested. “You’re done with all that.”

“Fucked men… women… beasts… ah… ah… the pain is… is …”

The young man rubbed his beaked nose-edge. He touched his ribs next and decided maybe he’d be alright. He found the maniac interesting.

“And there you lie,” he said. “I… have known… ah… pleasures …”

His voice was draining away into gurgles. Lohengrin was thoughtful – by his standards. He watched the man dying. The big leg artery had been smashed apart.

“Why did you not seek fame and power in battle?” he wondered. Squatted down by the man’s concealed head. Worked his helmet off. Nothing special, which surprised him. No demon’s dark and twisted visage: just a plumpish, pale face with small, colorless eyes. “How strange you were.” The man whispered something as he drained away. “What’s that?” Lohengrin bent closer, alert for a possible last attack. “Speak up.”

“Taste her,” the deep, dying voice managed. “No… one… can stop… you …”

Lohengrin stood up, annoyed. He looked at the victim and her beauty stunned him again, dead or not. She looked sweet and soft, outspread and waiting.

What’s wrong with you? He asked himself. She’s not willing, she’s a corpse… why did he waste her like this? Why sleep with the dead? He makes it sound like paradise… taste her…

A spray of small, white butterflies were collecting and recollecting on the bushes among small, bloodred flowers. The young man noticed a fat, black weasel a few feet away mixed in among treeroots and shadows. The dark, bright eyes were alert and deadly.

“I’m alone here,” he said, “but for bugs and animals and a dying madman.” He chuckled. “I’m not alone at all.”

But he knew he was alone. He wasn’t directly facing that fact because of where it might lead his mind. He could have gone on but he looked back at the nude girl. It was true, you could do anything you pleased with her without discussion, consent or force… and none to know.

He rubbed his face violently.

What thoughts are these?

It was like, when he was twelve, finding a dim, musty, remote spot in the cellars of the castle and, stripping off his clothes and lying nude on a blanket he kept there, thrilled and afraid, taking out the stocking he’d stolen from his mother’s lovely attendant whom he thought and dreamed of ever since he’d seen her in the bath, rubbing the stocking on his body, touching himself rhythmically, and, as his passion pyramided, sniffed, inhaled, then, arching in childhood’s first sweet sensual dissolution, crammed into his gasping longing mouth, bit down, sucked, cried out overwhelmed by shame and joy… and then rose, dressed, put it all away and refused to think about it until the hint and titillation, as a day wore on, drew him inevitably back to his secret place…

He’d stopped and forgotten all that two years later after having actual intercourse – though the pure erotic darkness of those moments of strange surrender would haunt his entire life.