The Grail War (48 page)

Water from above was cutting deeply into his path and he had to jump widening fissures … They must see him! Yet those visors really only let them look straight ahead, and they seemed to be involved: there was a pale shape, Irmree, crawling on hands and knees along the ledge of trail with two knights who, through the blur of rain and staggering illumination, seemed gleaming, dark demons materialized from steely night …

Rage and horror hit his nerves like a blow and he bellowed fury into the wind, seeing the bluish-white glistening of a long blade being jabbed into her naked, bleeding backside. He realized they were taking time to enjoy themselves and he went a little mad. He could see Valit’s sprawled legs flopped out of the partial shelter of the overhang.

They expressed the face he knew, the blank, steel, red-eyed face that was exhaled from all the ruin and horror, gathered from smoke to solid: stupid, blank, black, blunt and stupid, stupid, stupid as stone —

“Bastards!” he screamed into the lashing storm. “Stupid, idiot bastards!”

And he was upon them, hurling himself over the fallen, bleeding woman, diving at the face he’d always loathed and fled for years on years, the frozen, silver-wrought masks that formed a single pair of fanged, gaping jaws of the whole head, and he kept shouting his war-cry: “Stupid! Stupid!”

Climbing in full armor was muscle and lung racking, even without a storm and slide of mud-water. Lohengrin was blinking violet spots from his vision as they twisted up in single file to the hilltop. If they halted he knew he’d drop on the spot. The continual dark-light, dark-light, hurt his eyes. The blurred-out one still hadn’t come back completely. The rain had soaked through the cloth wads he’d pressed inside the plates to try and waterproof himself. Every once in a gasping while he thought he still heard the voice rumbling, wailing, and howling on with the words of the wind …

Wearing and wobbling, plodding behind Howtlande’s massive back, a tireless mute coming at his heels, he suddenly was aware that he wished he were closer to the leader. He wished he had the strength to shoulder his way up past the others to the head of the line. He wanted to hear his words … no … he actually (and part of his consciousness spasmed in sheer disgust and outrage) wanted to touch, no, cling to his hand … yes … he did … he knew he did … but, he told himself, it was that narcotic room … or … or … the sickening chanting … He felt shame and raped and felt weakly (he knew too well) enraged … too weakly by half … He cursed himself and wanted to vomit with spite, but no matter, he needed … needed to touch, to hold him …
O
good
God
, he thought, with terror and desire, he needed …

He felt his hands shaking. There was an edge of hysteria in his thoughts and movements now.

He's
all
words
…!
Foams
at
the
mouth
…
He's
disgusting
…!
Deformed
,
not
even
a
proper
man
…
just
words
,
nothing
but
words
…

He kept cursing to himself to keep the other feelings back.

I'll
let
him
know
what
a
pasty
nothing
he
is
…
the
blow
I
took
from
that
idiot
…
Wista
…

No. He didn’t want to think about that, either. He pushed it from his mind violently, tensely, feeling trapped in this nightmare, overwhelmed by feelings that seemed to surface from terrifying gulfs and darkly stir the pool of his mind …

And then they were on the crest and he suddenly found himself face to face with the Lord Master’s brooding, rain-stippled features. Suddenly his hands were terrifically clasped by both of the leader’s and he felt gooseflesh and a strange, sweet warmth fill through his body as the somber, flaming eyes gleamed the lightning in their pale vacancy.

“We are very close now,” he rumbled, earnestly, magnetically. “It is just ahead. Do not fail me in this hour.”

“No,” Lohengrin heard himself saying, spilling the words from himself. “I will not fail you, master!”

And he meant it. He knew he meant it.

Parsival saw them ahead, a cluster of knights rounding a bend on foot. He had just reached the exposed, rocky hilltop. He glanced back and saw the whole country below illuminated by the rolling storm light. For a moment he paused and understood the scope of the desolation. Only a tiny part was visible here. It was starting to look like a sea down there. He didn't care to imagine what things were floating in it …

He turned and marched on. Finally drew his sword. He considered the blade. He turned the edge to catch the changing light. All their fates had led them to this moment. There could be no blame. Yes, but it had to be won otherwise. Another way. He’d tried swords enough already. This was a work of art and a teaching and a learning, too, for him. Because it was not the story, but how it would be told … Nothing else mattered. He was born to tell this with his life. He smiled a little, not quite wryly. As he lost and found and lost it …

He whirled the blade through the rain, posed on the roll of ridge, in an incredibly perfect, unbroken sequence of whirls, slashes, cuts, turns, drawing (in flickering blasts of bluish light) a breathtaking net of steel on the night, flowing with it in ecstasy, spinning, slicing, dancing along and over the crumbling, flooded pathway. At the end of the last explosively exquisite set of moves, he was a few strides behind the rear-most of two black-silver armored killers, one of whom had turned in time to see the finish, seeming fixed motionless by the sight, his own weapon still undrawn as Parsival in climax slashed a thousand dancing shadows to shreds, then dropped gracefully to one knee (the last cut inches from the stunned warrior) and tossed the weapon in a high, flickering arc, winking down, far down, the slope in a stopped series of flashes and was gone …

The fang-jaw, masked knight took a single, short step, drawing, and cut straight for the unprotected head with terrific speed and skill because these were the last of the elite of the elite, the best of Clinschor’s best …

Broaditch’s wrath was concentrated into a perfect thrust that struck reddish sparks, ripping through an eye hole and producing a wordless, blowing scream. Light flash: the knight reeling back, mailed hands pressed to the fanged faceplate … dark … flash: Broaditch skidded on his knees, the other fighter’s sword upraised … dark … flash: Irmree had risen, wailing into the keening, stuttering wind in time to receive the downstroke (the hilt hit her shoulder), which dropped her like a lead sack … dark … flash: Broaditch, slash-sliced straight from forehead to chin, right eye blotted out by blood, literally climbing up the warrior and yelling in pain and feral rage, gripping the shark-like helmet … dark … flash, flash: pounded it against the chisel-edged rock face, in too close to be cut again, again, again … dark … flash: again, the metal already a shapeless lump, blood spraying out the holes for eyes and mouth … dark, dark … flash: again, again, again, until he fell back, weeping into the streaming rain and the knight sagged and pitched sideways … dark … flash: Valit sitting up, wounds in his chest and side bleeding sluggishly, Irmree wallowing in agony in the mud … dark … flash: Broaditch kneeling, gasping in chill air … dark … dark … dark … flash, flash: another jaw-faced killer and a knight in black and red who seemed familiar, something he should remember … dark … flash: another smaller figure between the two, unarmored, in nondescript cloak, lifting the fallen spear from the foaming mud with an indescribable look of force and triumph … dark … flash: pressing it to his lips, eyes palely flaming in the hissing, crackling light … dark … flash: glancing behind himself, the silver, jaw-faced knight rushed to the rear, red and black one advancing as the spear bearer pointed to Broaditch …

Valit was supporting himself on his elbows. He felt no pain now, only a cold, empty draining … dark … flash: he witnessed Broaditch rising to his knees, bleeding, wobbling, unarmed, trembling with strain as the knight with black arms and legs and red torso and helmet strode forward, unsheathing his long blade in a brisk, businesslike way … dark … flash (the lightning seemed to him to buzz and blast close overhead now, as if this scene drew fire from heaven), flash, flash: Broaditch stumbled back, swaying in the ripping gale that flapped his clothes like sails; Irmree thrashed on the path … dark … flash-hiss-crack-flash-roar-flash-bang: the knight rushed him as cries and commotion broke out down to his left out of sight around the water-swept bend … dark …
             

Broaditch recognized Lohengrin through the open visor, the beaked nose and mocking dark eyes that he’d seen leaning from the shadows of the whorehouse bed over the stabbed and dying lord. He accepted he was a dead man. He had no strength left for running. He would fight somehow but not run anymore. He backed up slowly, step by step, weighted pouch rocking against his leg. His bleeding eye stung like fire in the sleeting rain …

Lohengrin thought:
I
know
this
dog
…
what
matter
… ?

“It is here!” Lord Master suddenly shouted, shrill behind him. “I
feel
it! I
feel
it!”

Lohengrin felt propelled forward, snarling, all his boiling emotions now concentrated against this big peasant who’d somehow just felled two knights. He couldn’t wait to cleave his bones and flesh, to see the heart-blood spurt and dribble. He hated the oaf for blocking the path, for resisting the sweep of events … You had to kill all resisters because they confused and weakened everything … everything had to be swept clean and pure, purged clean by blood and fire … no more dull-headed resistance, no more crawling weaklings, no more craven whining, no more ugly shapes (mind raced) … no more nightmares no more loneliness no more sweating fear no more weeping … no …
What
?
What
thoughts
are
these
…? Mad with fury, snarling and roaring in his helmet, howling as he charged, already tasting the blood (
What
? his mind flickered off in a corner of himself.
What
?), teeth bared, gnashing to sink in, to rip and rend and taste the smoking blood … words snarling: “Weak coward! Scum!” Sword blurring in the flashes, head beating, beating, beating. “Die!! Die!! Die!!” And then a wordless howling roar that for a moment beat back the storm, and he slashed at the rain-blurred figure to wipe it from the earth …

Parsival slid inside the mute knight’s blow with that uncanny relaxed grace and pushed and tripped him over the steep, soft side. He wondered if the fellow had learned anything. He’d just discovered how his body somehow
saw
in advance where to be. In the past he’d always been too caught up to catch what actually happened in a swirl of combat … It wasn’t power, exactly, he considered as the next two moved up, shoulder to shoulder, blocking the ledge of path completely … It was
time
… He wasn’t really fighting (could they see that?); he was giving himself to what had to be, and so it happened he was in the right place each moment …
amazing
…

He stood totally still and waited. He saw they were superb fighters. He could easily die. He accepted that. He felt the time building, gathering for the next moment. He was waiting, barely breathing. He saw they were too good to move. They left him no space. To pass the curve they defended on the flooding, crumbling pathway in the crackling light-shadow-light-shadow-light-shadow
was
death … He felt all past dreams and partial visions rushing to meet these coming moments, taking palpable form just beyond this black steel, silent pair whose heads were silver-flashing, gaping jaws … He felt the shadowy presences that haunted all the shimmering, violet-golden fields of rainbow flowers where women floated like breaths of moonlight, felt the nearness of unending bright worlds where radiant animals spoke in glowing air and sun-fire dripped like liquid … Around this bend the worlds were meeting … and he sucked in a breath that crackled like the lightning and sped forward, as if the surging wind bore him altogether, catching both armored wrists in their snapping, irresistible downstrokes, twisting between them as if his big body melted, turned, still gripping, so he was now facing the same direction as they, all in one smooth floating, and something (not himself alone) pushed and they seemed to throw themselves into the air as the mad light leaped, bounced, blasted, and boomed overhead. They both hit flat on their faces, as if flattened by an invisible hand. One went right on through the crumbling side of the path and vanished. He violently twisted the second’s helmet so that the eye slots were jammed, reversed, blinding him within the steel pot. The terrible jaws now faced behind.

He stood up quietly, already aware of the bulky knight standing there, flashes showing his elaborate, be jeweled chestplate and ornate helmet, which was open for conversation: “What quarrel have we?!” he wanted to know. “The war is done with … it were all madness … let us talk …”