The Grail War (35 page)

“Why not sit?” she offered. Her voice was neutral as her expression. He wondered if anything or any man could really touch her heart, and then understood:
she
gives
herself
like
all
do
,
but
gives
herself
somewhere
else
…
to
something
other
…
Think
what
you
like
,
every
wight
has
an
open
place
…
even
the
devil
,
I
don't
doubt
…

It was very warm and he was used to the stuffy smells now. He sat down but not too close to her.

“I might as well rest my bones,” he said, not directly to her. He felt those inscrutable eyes on him. “It’s too dark to go on now.”
Even
if
I
knew
the
way
… Well, he’d solve that tomorrow …

“Ah,” she said.

“Where did those works of art come from?” he wanted to know.

“I know not … This be Flail’s wagon.”

“The jester?”

“Is he?”

“Well … what is your town, then?”

“Ah. What, indeed.”

“Where be you bound?”

“Should I trouble for that?”

He looked at her, bit his lip. He’d been in the stews more than once: to be stewed with drink, water, and women … but this was different.

“Want me to undress you?” she asked. She must have sensed his tension and conflict. “You may as well travel on with us, in any case. Flall …”

“Good old Flall.”

“ … says there’s war and destruction everywhere.”

“Then you are traveling wrong, as the smoke blows
from
the south.”

She shrugged.

“Will you undress now?” she persisted. She slipped one cool hand under his belt and reached down across his belly.

He half-turned and set one large, hard hand on her silky shoulder. There were faint pox scars on her cheeks, but he’d seen far worse a thousand times … She was beautiful. He ran his unchecked hand over her body almost as if he were molding her form, somehow in a potter’s or sculptor’s gesture rather than a lecher’s … or lover’s …

“Do you have money?” she asked.

He smiled. She was trying to undo the front of his baggy trousers. He leaned back and held her hand away, looking up at the shadowed bulge of ceiling. There was a picture there, too.
Very
like
a
church
,
in
its
way
, he thought. The images were again haul to make out, but seemed to show men and women bound in chains to various instruments of torment while other men or demons (he couldn't be entirely certain and realized a lot of this might be drawn by his imagination) seemed to burn and whip and flay them … seemed … He squinted, but years of candle smoke had darkened it beyond certainty. Perhaps it was simply more sex. he reflected, bemused. But it surely
looked
painful …

“If you cannot fuck me,” she said conversationally. I can do what might please.”

“You’re a child, after all,” he told her, feeling deliciously sleepy and suddenly at ease.

“Ah. You want one of the older chips.”

“No. They’d be just women. You see that?”

Her face remained unaffected.

“You can look at the pictures,” she offered, “and do what all … or watch us others together … It won’t cost you more.”

Valit had just sat up on the mounds of covers across the way. A big-breasted black woman, sporting golden rings and circlets, was draped across his lap. A red-haired or blondish, over-round young matron was soothingly rubbing the Nubian’s feet.

“Broaditch?”

“The devil’s spared me,” he said, “but will they spare you yet?” He rubbed his eyes. “How came they to part you from a single farthing here?”

“Ah. Well, I struck a bargain — a bit of trade.”

“St. Michael defend their end of it!” Broaditch laughed. “That’s all I can say.”

“This be rare good fortune to come upon these folk,” Valit declared. “Did you fuck yet? What a rare time I had … A bit of good fortune after what's been, eh?”

“Mayhap so,” Broaditch murmured.

Except
it
may
prove
harder
to
escape
from
these
than
Balli
… He felt sleep starting to close over him in the stuffy warmth …
Am
I
truly
chosen
for
something
…?
Is
there
any
true
proof
…?
Or
are
we
all
sad
,
poor
bitch
and
bastards
…?
Without
hope
…
aye
…
save
for
the
pity
…
no
,
save
for
the
mother
that
never
quite
dies
in
a
woman
and
the
father
in
every
man
and
the
child
in
all
…
there's
that
,
there's
always
that
,
damn
you
…
there's
always
that
…

He sighed and let the darkness come sweetly washing over him …
and
fine
pictures
of
saints
or
whores
,
either
,
won't
help
me
…
not
a
poor
bastard
without
hope
except
for
that
glimmer
of
father
and
child
…

He tugged Minra’s hand over to his lips and gently kissed it.

“God defend you, my child,” he barely said, and was asleep.

She just looked at him, his wide, browned, and ruddy face, quick, light eyes where the smile (when open) never completely died. She watched him wordless as he began to lightly snore. And she stroked his graying hair and touched his cheek once, quite tenderly. And she sat there as Valit sank back down between the other two.

She looked now at the dusky, barbaric woman across the musky dimness. Pale Valit was pressing his face to the purple-dark breasts, but she was looking back at Minra and smiling with lidded, knowing, sleepy-seeming eyes a smile ambiguous and profound…

Wista couldn’t sleep. The other two were curled up like true professionals in the shelter of a crumbling wall of what was once a rambling stone building.

The constant stinks and puffs of stinging smoke were almost too much for him, though it was less intense here than some other places they’d passed.

He was pacing along the rutted road in a light, misting drizzle that would have no effect at all on the omnipresent fires … He saw how the passing army had churned the earth to half-damp porridge …

Yesterday’s shocks haunted him. For a time he’d feared he might go mad, but finally steadied his whirling mind. He was beginning to feel anger, not hot, but chill and deeper than his thoughts could reach … The immense monstrousness of it kept looming over his intelligence: because men had different goals and crests and countrysides where they lived and a thousand senseless distinctions more that vanished like dream-stuff when they died and weren’t there yet when they were born,
for
these
, he thought,
these
shadows
,
these
pictures
from
sleep
with
no
more
to
them
than
the
raving
demons
of
mad
Jack
-
a
-
moors
…
for
these
the
earth
is
being
…
is
being
… He couldn’t — wouldn’t — express it. His thought broke down and he stared as he paced a nervous circle on the road under the starless sky of smoke and clouds. He kept remembering again and again the blood and the dead and the ruins and wanted to scream with disgust and outrage, and muttered, instead, “Lord God, why do you draw me to the end of this bitter road?”

And he fell upon his knees there, clasped his hands, and desperately prayed, frantic, terrified … for a long time …

At some point he heard a moan, not far away. He fixed the direction and went a few strides from the road to where the same fouled stream Lohengrin had reacted to earlier trickled, stinking, on. He smelled death and stopped. He had no desire to view those dim forms heaped and tangled everywhere, as though the army in passing had simply churned them aside like a great, hellish plow …

But someone moaned in life and so he went another few yards and asked, “Who calls?”

The answering sound was almost at his feet. He stooped and saw a naked woman lying in the bloody mud where the stream had spread out from its choked bed.

She was not altogether nude, he noticed grimly. The tatters of the nun’s habit still partly clothed her. Her face shone somewhat in the wavering light from one of the many isolated fires burning themselves out in the vicinity, crackling steadily.

The spear thrust in her bosom gaped, but was caked over and barely bled. She was about to die, he realized.

He uncorked his water bag and dribbled a few drops on her chapped lips. She sighed her thanks. Her large, widened eyes stared far beyond him. He felt strangely ashamed to be seeing her body even under these conditions.

“What can I do?” he muttered distractedly. “What can I speak …? What … ?”

“Ah …” she whispered with a vague fluttering of breath. “There will be …”

“Will be? Will be what?” He was rooted to this moment, waiting for what might be said from behind death’s closing door. “What? Sister?”

“ … rain …”

“Rain, sister?”

“ … snow … then spring … the flowers …”

He sighed and gently stroked her face.

“Peace,” he whispered.

“No … the flowers come again … always …” Then he thought she was dead. Her eyes closed. “Peace,” he repeated.

“The heart is a flower …” she said and then was still. He remained there for a time. The flames crackled and the faint drizzle beaded on her face and shorn head …

By the time Parsival and the other two reached the end of the miles of spur and had to descend into the smoke and fog, they’d gained considerably on the vast armies that were advancing across the flaming country.

It was a blighted, dim dawn. The clouds in the sky were indistinguishable from the masses of smoke and drizzling black rain; snowed, wet, clinging soot. The winds were steady from the south and it seemed obvious that the forest fires in the brittle leaves and resinous firs were now beyond the control and intentions of the invaders. Gawain commented that they clearly were fleeing even as they attacked.

Parsival led them on steadily north, riding hard over difficult trails and untracked forest. They broke out into fairly open country by midday and met with a party of fleeing knights, nine in all: battered, soot-stained, bloody. The leader’s arm dangled loosely at his side; his steed limped. Gawain hailed them and they met on a crossroads on a rolling plain. Because of a vagary in the air currents, the fog was thinner here.

“Whose men are you?” Prang demanded.

The leader’s open helmet showed a blackened face streaked with the paleness of desperate agony.

“Whose men we were,” he said, his voice hoarse and strained. “We fought with Modred and Lady Morgan at Dale Creek …”

One of the other knights at this point simply crashed to the ground. The others were too exhausted to react.