The Grail War (18 page)

“I turn no man from my gate whether he be,” said Bonjio coldly, “gentle or a thankless and insolent son-of-a-bitch.”

“I’ve too many years nailed to my back,” was the reply as the fellow shifted slightly within his armor, as if, Parsival thought, to scratch some patch of skin.
He
always
itched
, Parsival thought. “Too many years to be that.”

“Are you under a vow,” Prang asked, “or will you show your face? Your device I know not.” He referred to the single eye on a green triangular field painted on the round shield. It was odd, to say the least.

“It should tell you that I seek to see,” the knight told him. “My helmet stays closed for now.” He turned directly to Parsival. “How are you?” he asked.

“Well enough, Gawain,” Parsival answered.

The knight nodded.

“Gawain?” Bonjio seemed reasonably impressed. “I suppose this is an honor, though it is said you died in Brittany.”

“Sir, I am always dying somewhere.”

Was Gawain still a little mad? Parsival wondered. He seemed his old self. But it had been so many years …

“Parse,” Gawain said, “I see much gray in the gold.” He walked his massive steed closer. The horse seemed as relaxed as the man. Smooth. Steady. Gawain rubbed himself inside the plate again. “Yet are you still God’s child?”

“As much as any else, I think,” Parsival replied.

“I look forward,” Gawain said, chuckling, “to renewing our friendship.”

“Is that what it was?” Parsival asked neutrally.

“Come, come, I ever was fond of you.” Gawain seemed a little hurt. “We had slight differences.” He gestured vaguely, depreciatory. “Are you training these lads here?”

“Did you follow me again?” Parsival asked.

Gawain cocked his steel head.

“After all this time?” he said. “For what?” He nudged his stolid horse on past. “We’ll talk anon, Parse. I’ll hear the news … no … the
history
. It’s gone past news by now.”

Broaditch and Valit, as night fell, were struggling across deserted, boggy stretches of flatland. The wind was chilly. The strange, erratic weather was in full sway, Broaditch thought. Late summer intercut with fall and winter … endless rains … then spring … He’d learned, with his years, that these portents had real significance. The stars and weather and men’s fates mixed all together. Something was coming, something vast and perhaps terrible … He believed the old man in the boat had meaning, too, but the reality was fading: the problem was to march to shelter, not meditate metaphysically, and to start for home once he discovered the direction.

God, but how he ached … sheer misery. Shock had silenced his young and bitter companion for the time being … on and on and on … sucking bog everywhere, mists, stink … Valit’s gasping breaths, his own rasping …

Suddenly Valit gave a cry that ended in a burble: he’d sunk to his face in the clinging mud. His hands sloshed feebly at the surface.

“Help,” he bubbled, spitting and shaking his head.

Broaditch stood perfectly still. The fast, cold clouds were streaked with whitish-gray. Last light gleamed vaguely on the bog and spiny, dark clumps of marsh weed. He squatted and reached his hand out carefully, bracing his feet as best he could. The young man strained for it. Fingertips brushed. Broaditch tried to shift closer. He couldn’t tell where the firmer footing ended. He knew it would be abrupt.

“In the name of the saints,” Valit sputtered and begged, “I’m lost … I’m lost …”

“Are you still sinking?”

“I cannot tell … I’m lost … oh, mother … mother …”

Broaditch felt his nearer foot slide and splash over the slick, sudden edge. He jerked it back.

“Be quiet,” he snarled. “Is that the only tune you know?”

“Lord God,” the young man spluttered on, “I’m lost … mother, help me … help …”

“Hold yourself without stirring and you may yet live!” Broaditch commanded. “Stop whining at every turn. I scarce believe you the son of a brave man. Don’t stir or speak.”

While delivering himself of these sentiments, Broaditch was moving carefully, groping in the mud until he found a thick, twisted stick which he dragged from the sucking earth and duck-walked back to Valit’s head and wildly reaching, long, pale hands and arms. Each breath he drew sputtered and bubbled. He seemed, Broaditch later thought, a creature born of mire and seeking escape, except, he thought,
men
make
their
own
mire
and
sink
themselves
…
and
have
to
be
pulled
free
…

The stick was clutched with white-knuckled desperation. The rescuer leaned all his weight into the effort and pulled steadily. He set his mind to pull and never relent. He realized what he was doing was virtually impossible. It would take a sound mule. So he set his teeth and gradually squatted himself upright as Valit gripped with both mucky hands and sobbed and wheezed.

“I'm doomed!” he cried. “I’m not budging …”

Broaditch pulled and concentrated. Eyes bulged, muscles cracked … bright spots burst in his eyes. A nightmare: endless straining, slipping, pain, and then, infinitely slow, the soggy, slim young man began to inch free …

The last stain of twilight had long since drained away to pitch, moonless darkness before Broaditch could get a grip on those pale, long, groping hands and twist and haul him free …

They both lay gasping on the chill bog for a long time. Broaditch could hear the young man’s teeth chatter …

Need
I
be
reminded
so
often
, Broaditch thought at one point,
of
how
death
is
at
the
end
of
every
movement
?
Breathing
in
is
living
, he thought, as his lungs labored,
breathing
out
is
dying
…

Finally they staggered on. Valit was trying to stay directly behind Broaditch.

“And if I go under,” Broaditch asked him, “will you raise me free?”

He was using the stick to poke before him. They seemed to be on a ridge of relatively firm footing. A step or two off the line and the stick dipped deep. He kept probing to find the solid lane which suddenly twisted left and after that turned every so often, as if they walked, Broaditch didn’t say, on the spine of a gigantic snake …

The nightmare continued. The sea wind freshened and chilled. The bog seemed endless. In the hills before them a faint spot of firelight winked redly like a furious, demonic eye. Broaditch assumed a fisherman must live there.

On and on along the serpentine track, glopping ankle-deep in cold mud, wobbling on, Valit even past complaining, holding on around the big man’s back like a babe … and on … the hills crept closer and then the crescent moon rose behind them. Broaditch could see solid, rocky ground less than fifty yards ahead … A few straining steps more and he slipped: the footing gave as if the spine moved, and he left the stick poking irretrievably in the mire. So he had to probe with feet only now, and, for the first time, he considered surrender, to lie down and wait for the inevitable turn of the tide that would lift the muck and drown them … But he went on, thinking just a little more and he’d quit … just a little more … Valit held his leather belt and slipped and stumbled in his footsteps …

When they were about twenty yards from the solid shoreline, his leg went to the knee on all sides without bottoming. The submerged ridge was finished. There was no way to be certain how deep this final channel was. So they stood there as the moon swung higher … He knew he was being tested again. So soon …

At the moment of certain doom, he’d let go and surrendered to the sea. There had been despair in it. Now he wondered if he had to have faith without even surrender. He lacked the energy to even cynically smile at himself.

He shut his eyes. He’d never really prayed except in battle. But prayer wasn’t really needed here — not faith, because faith meant you hoped, believed, but didn’t really know … Magical help was worthless. He had to do this himself … He somehow knew something was aware, watching him, and would refuse magic … This was the moment he had to
know
, had to plunge into the slimy, dark, sucking ooze of the earth and
know
his path, vivid and real as blunted bone and battered flesh … Now he smiled. It didn’t simply
seem
mad: it was mad. He stood listening to Valit’s chattering teeth and sobs and then shook his head and stepped forward off the edge, sunk waist-deep, and sloshed forward with the young man hanging on. still too miserable to even complain as the stinking slime oozed up steadily …

Lohengrin went with them. He dried and dressed in a loose silken robe and they walked him out. First came the helmeted leader and massive lieutenant whose black beard hid most of his face. The turbaned, cold-featured guards followed. As they went out, Lohengrin turned to Wista, in the doorway.

“Say nothing to anyone,” he ordered. “Wait for me.”

“Ah,” remarked the lieutenant, “here’s an optimist.”

“Wait.” Lohengrin repeated, his voice firm as stone.

And then they were gone into the hidden door, the guards’ torches moving away down the corridor, an unsteady splash of light, and then the door swung shut and there was only blank wall and no visible seam.

“What does this mean?” Frell asked, still clutching Wista.

“Nothing splendid, I assure you,” Wista returned.

“My sister says your master is bound to be a great man.”

“Well, in any case,” Wista said, “he’s not very pleasant.”

“He’s handsome,” she said, “in his way. Do you know his father?”

“No.” Wista wrinkled his nose at the stench, then turned toward the fireplace, where the dead man lay charring and smoldering.

“Ugh,” she said. “He smells like meat.”

“Anyway,” he said absently, “you had better stay with me for now, I think.”

The captain led the way down a spiral passageway that ended among the dank foundations where the wet, massive stones seemed, in the wavering torch gleam, like the beams and buttresses of the earth. Lohengrin reflected how this would be a fitting support for what the world was: the slimy stones, the vague, scuttling things that rattled and scraped across uneven floors, the dungeon hollows where skeletons could be glimpsed dangling in rusted, brittle chains. The cold air was stale.

“So,” he said as they crossed the vast cellar toward a barred cell where a faint taper gleamed, “You mean to butcher me here? Why waste so many steps?”

He didn’t really think this, though his heartbeat proved he feared it.

The bushy-bearded lieutenant glanced at him, grinning with deep-set eyes.

“Why, your new Grace,” he said, “we may only leave but part of you here and take the rest back with us.”

None of the turbaned men laughed or reacted. Lohengrin had an idea they knew no English at all. He suddenly realized how much he wanted to live. And, yet, how long? A few more years flickering past in the remorseless face of eternity? Why live at all, except like the flame that can’t help but burn until wick and wax fail and the night closes over without effort …? Life is all effort, he believed, and his hapless urges forced him on and on … He thought of all the dead behind him and living to come after, thought of the life and pleasures they’d taste, the days they’d see … and the pain …

They passed through the grate into not a cell, but a narrow tunnel steeply slanting down. The walls were rough blocks with pressure mud slowly seeping through.

A startling flash, a red eye near the passage roof. He thought, for an instant, a giant demon loomed over them. Then it flicked and fluttered away.
A
one
-
eyed
bat
, he thought.
Or
something
like
it
.

Down and down and down they went in single file. This, he thought, was more a mineshaft than anything connected with the castle above. He had a feeling this way had existed for ages. But could even the Druids have done this work? A deep puzzle … Was there truly magic, as his father insisted …? Who could have carved this passage that corkscrewed down like, he thought, a length of bowels?
God
, he thought,
but
this
air
is
dead
and
stifles
the
breath
…

They suddenly came to a wider space. Most of the guards had dropped behind; he hadn’t noticed where or just when. Lohengrin, the captain, and bushy-beard went on, lower and lower. There was decay on the draft rising into their faces. He just had noticed it.
Now
were
through
the
belly
, he thought,
and
soon
we
reach
where
the
shit
of
the
earth
gathers
… He smiled grimly to himself. Then the idea set him chuckling for an instant. Well, he
was
nervous. Bushy-beard looked at him.