Lions of the Grail

by Tim Hodkinson

  Savage stepped away from the cliff edge to give himself some room to move. Neither he nor Montmorency had any armour nor carried a shield, so they would have to rely on speed, manoeuvrability and swordsmanship for defence. This would not be the usual hack-and-slash battering encounter of broadsword fighting.

  It seemed counter-intuitive, but the most effective defence relied on keeping the point of the sword still, and parrying blows by moving the hilt right and left. Savage planted his feet slightly apart and lowered the point towards the Hospitaller.

  Montmorency did the same. For several moments neither moved.

  Montmorency lunged forward. He drove the point of his sword towards Savage’s chest. Savage kept the point of his sword level but swept the hilt to the right, sending the Hospitaller’s blade skittering sideways and away from its target.

  Montmorency struck again. This time a sweeping chop from above. Now Savage had to move the blade point and raise his blade above his head crossways to stop the blow. Metal clashed on metal and a shower of sparks ignited where the blades met.

  The Hospitaller bore down with his blade, aiming to force it lower onto Savage’s head. Savage strained to hold the sword off as it inched closer to his forehead.

  Montmorency had the advantage: it was much easier to push down than resist upwards. The only thing Savage could do to relieve the pressure was to move.

  Savage ducked with his thighs and spun away at the same time. His sword scraped up the Hospitaller’s blade as he pirouetted backwards. As Savage moved, Montmorency’s blade came down, missing him and striking the ground instead.

  Turning, Savage’s eyes widened as he saw how close he was to the edge of the cliff. Some pebbles and gravel, kicked by his feet, skittered over the edge of the precipice and tumbled down through the evening air to splash into the black pool far below.

  Montmorency’s eyes lit up as he saw his advantage. He took another step forward, sweeping his feet across the ground instead of lifting them, so as to never be off balance. He swept his sword back up off the ground towards Savage’s gut.

  Savage could do nothing but move again. He leapt backwards, this time along the edge of the cliff and away from the blade. Despite his care, his right foot skidded over the edge and his stomach lurched as he felt air beneath his toes. Panic gripped Savage and he threw himself sideways away from the precipice, springing off his left thigh.

  Montmorency followed and advanced again. He launched himself forward from his back foot. Savage, still trying to recover balance could not counter in time. This time Montmorency’s blade struck home. Savage heard the point of the sword tear through his sheepskin jerkin and felt the metal pierce his flesh on the left side of his ribs. It stopped momentarily, grinding into his six and seventh rib bones. Before it could penetrate deeper Savage smashed his own weapon upwards, hitting the Hospitaller’s blade and knocking it away before it did any more damage.

  Savage winced as he felt the angry burning of the stab wound. Warm sticky blood was already seeping into his sheepskin. A quick deep breath, however, told him that his lungs were intact and his injury was just a flesh wound.

  Quickly he resumed his defensive stance, once more levelling the point of his sword in Montmorency’s direction. If he was not more careful he would lose this fight.

  Again he thought of Alys and Galiene and realised he could not afford to lose.

  Montmorency pressed his advantage. He lunged forward, this time stabbing at Savage’s face. Savage swung the hilt of his sword to the right, deflecting the blow again. This time, however, he used an intercepting attack; he continued the movement by driving his own sword forward.

  Savage’s blade scraped its way up the Hospitaller’s, the point heading straight for his face. Montmorency, taken completely by surprise, only just pulled himself back in time. The end of Savage’s sword still caught him on the cheek, opening up a slice just below his left eye.

  Savage struck again, this time swiping a chopping blow aimed low at Montmorency’s legs. The Hospitaller jumped and Savage missed. Montmorency attacked but once more Savage met his blade with his own, halting the Hospitaller’s blow and pushing his sword sideways.

  Montmorency hit at Savage’s head again and once more their blades locked. For a couple of moments they stood, each trying to force his own blade into the other man, their faces barely inches from each other.

  Savage raised his knee, kicking Montmorency hard in the groin. The Hospitaller gasped and staggered backwards, breaking their deadly embrace.

  For several moments, both men stood apart, facing each other on the clifftop. They were panting hard from exertion and took advantage of the brief respite to try to catch their breath.

  ‘We both learned sword fighting in the Templars, Savage,’ Montmorency said. ‘We know the same attacks and defence. This could be a long fight. We are not that different, you and I. Why should we fight? Whoever bears the Grail wields enormous power. Why don’t you join me? Together we two could rule all this.’

  The Hospitaller swept his left hand around the stunning vista that lay to Savage’s right, beyond the edge of the precipice on which they stood. From the great height of the mountaintop, three kingdoms were visible: the distant blue hills of Cumbria in England lay to the south, Scotland lay beneath them and the Scottish Highlands, still capped with snow, could be seen far to the north. Nestling in the blue sea to the south-west was the Isle of Man and beyond it the black, misty shores of Ireland.

  Savage dropped one hand from his sword hilt and once more pulled the golden cup from his leather shoulder bag. For a moment he looked at it as the light played and danced across its glittering precious stones and the gold of its long stem.

  Montmorency smiled, sensing victory and the final fulfilment of his quest. His eyes were fixed on the goblet in an intense, longing stare.

  ‘Here’s your carpenter’s cup,’ Savage said, tossing the Grail towards the Hospitaller.

  He threw it high, aimed above Montmorency’s head so it tumbled through the air and out over the edge of the cliff.

  Montmorency gave a shout of surprised dismay. He dropped his sword and heedless of the precipice jumped, trying to catch the Grail, both hands outstretched.

  The goblet began to fall, tumbling end over end down the cliff towards the black lake below. Montmorency, still reaching, fell after it, his black cloak billowing behind him like the wings of a raven.

  They had both fallen about twenty feet when the Hospitaller caught up with the cup. His fingers grasped it and he pulled it into his chest, cradling it like a baby as he hurtled downwards. His body turned and Savage could not be sure, but he thought he saw Montmorency smiling.

  Eighty feet below the summit, the Hospitaller struck a rocky outcrop of the cliff with a sickening crunch. His body bounced off the stones, spiralling and cartwheeling like a bag of broken bones the final twenty feet to the bottom of the cliff.

  With a tremendous splash, Montmorency and the cup both hit the black waters of the little mountain lake below. A fountain of dark, peaty water erupted and they disappeared beneath it.

  As the splash receded and the waves from it subsided, Savage continued to watch, expecting Montmorency’s corpse to float to the surface. Time passed, the waves became ripples and eventually the glassy black smoothness returned to the surface of the lake. There was still no sign of the body.

  Savage realised that like most mountain lakes, the water was probably just a sheen over a bog: a morass so deep as to be bottomless and, once in it, there was no way to escape its sucking grasp. Even if he had survived the fall, the Hospitaller would now be on an unstoppable descent to untold black depths. Montmorency and his Grail had gone forever.

  Savage sheathed his sword and turned from the cliff edge. He had wasted enough time already.

  60

  Dawn broke over Cnoc Dreann. The first rays of sunlight struck the summit of the mountain, re-illuminating the trackway into the mound of Merlin’s Chapel and pouring light into the anci
ent building.

  The corpses of the previous evening’s battle had been taken outside the chapel. The spilled blood had been cleaned up and a large fire blazed in the centre of the room. The delicious aroma of warm bread filled the room from flat querns of wheaten bread that baked on a griddle over the fire.

  An exhausted Richard Savage sat perched on the altar of the chapel. Galiene, awake now and huddled in a heavy blanket beside the fire, stared into the flames, her gaze still haunted by whatever visions had manifested themselves the night before.

  Savage knew somehow that she would be all right. Her strength of character was amazing and though her experiences would stay with her for the rest of her life, they would never overcome her.

  Connor MacHuylin sat near the fire also. His thigh was wrapped in bandages and he was pale from the blood he had lost. Savage knew that he too would be fine. It would take much more than a stab in the leg to kill off that particular galloglaich.

  ‘You did what?’ MacHuylin asked.

  ‘I threw it off the cliff,’ Savage replied.

  MacHuylin shook his head. ‘Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. We come all this way, find the Holy Grail and you throw it off a mountaintop?’

  Savage nodded. ‘Into a bog.’

  Alys came in through the door. She had been outside watching the sun come up. She too looked tired, her face grey and drawn. She had been up all night, tending to MacHuylin and Galiene and using all her skills to keep both of them alive while she anxiously waited for Savage to bring the herbs from the forest at the foot of the mountain. When Savage had returned, she had the extra strain of trying to prepare the medicine from the herbs he brought using only the limited tools she carried with her and the cooking pots that were on the mountain top.

  Thankfully, it had worked.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Alys wondered aloud.

  ‘We need to get off this mountain,’ Savage said. ‘There is a castle near here called Corbenek. I think the lord who owns it will let us rest there until everyone is fit again.’

  ‘I need to get back to Ireland,’ MacHuylin said. ‘There is unfinished business there. Edward Bruce and his lackeys still need to be kicked out.’

  ‘That won’t be easy,’ said Savage. ‘They’ve already taken half the north of the island. Ui Neill rules the west. De Burgh is fighting the FitzGeralds in Connaught…’ He trailed off. It was obvious that none of these arguments had any effect on MacHuylin.

  ‘It’s my island,’ MacHuylin stated. ‘I have to fight for it. Why don’t you come with us? We will need good knights.’

  Savage shook his head. ‘I don’t know if it’s my island any more.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Savage sighed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Right now I don’t know. The Scots will kill us all if they get their hands on us. I’m still an outlaw in England. King Edward said he would pardon me but now the Scots have invaded Ireland I doubt he will want my services any more so I’ve no job either. I have no money and no home.’

  Alys de Logan gave a laugh. ‘You’re not much of a catch, are you?’ She smiled.

  ‘No,’ Savage agreed. He held her gaze for a long moment. ‘But would you marry me anyway?’

  Alys laughed again. She looked at Savage for a moment then walked over to him and took both his hands.

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled. She pressed herself to him and they kissed each other. After a few moments their lips parted.

  Behind them a heavy sigh came from Galiene. The look on her face showed her opinion of her mother’s behaviour.

  ‘It’s not just me you are marrying,’ Alys said.

  Savage nodded. ‘I realise that. Don’t worry, she’ll come to like me some day. Maybe when I’m dead.’

  Alys laughed. Galiene actually smiled.

  ‘Do you think it really was the Holy Grail?’ Alys said.

  ‘With all that gold and precious stones, it certainly was grand enough to be the cup of the King of Kings,’ Savage said.

  ‘Maybe too grand to be the cup of a lowly carpenter,’ said Alys. ‘It was certainly a grail, but was it the Grail?’

  Savage shrugged. ‘There’s no way to tell now. I do know one thing though.’ He looked at Alys and Galiene. ‘I’ve found my Grail.’

  END

  Author’s Note

  While the main characters in Lions of the Grail are fictional, the events against which they have their adventure are very real. The Scots invasion of Ireland in 1315 unleashed war, sieges and famine, the most potent of the spectres that have haunted Ireland through the centuries. Some of the minor characters are also artistic representations of real people who lived at the time.

  Edward Bruce’s Irish invasion led to a war that unbelievably continued despite coinciding with a disastrous famine that swept across northern Europe, killing millions.

  Henry de Thrapston and Thomas de Mandeville carried out a heroic and dogged defence of the besieged Carrickfergus Castle. An indication of how desperate things became is that at one point the defenders resorted to cannibalism, eating nine of their Scottish prisoners.

  Richard de Burgh returned to fight against the Scots but the suspicion that he was somehow in league with Robert Bruce never went away, and in the aftermath of the invasion he was arrested. He eventually retired to a monastery near Cashel and died in 1326. His title of Earl of Ulster only survived a few generations after him. When his granddaughter Elizabeth married the Duke of Clarence the title passed into the English royal family. Elizabeth moved to London and her household accounts show she employed a young pageboy who later went on to great things, one Geoffrey Chaucer. The name de Burgh survives in several forms, including the original. It also changed into the Irish surname of Burke, borne by many notable Irish men and women over the centuries, from the illustrious politician Edmund Burke to the infamous ‘resurrection man’ and serial killer William Burke.

  Syr Edmund le Bottelier (Butler) distinguished himself in the war against the Scots and died in 1321 while on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. His interest in poetry in this book is a nod towards one of his more famous modern descendants, William Butler Yeats.

  Some of the other Anglo-Norman names that appear in the book may seem unfamiliar to modern ears, but perhaps their modern forms are not so foreign-sounding. Le Poer became Powers, Blanquet became Plunkett, Roche became Roach while names like Fitzgerald and Fitzpatrick remain unchanged. Logan and Savage are names still found in Ulster.

  The ill-fated expedition to Ireland by Edward Bruce continued for another three years after the events in this book. The story of the war is an epic and bloody one, and continues in the next book in this series, The Waste Land.

  About the Author

  TIM HODKINSON grew up in Northern Ireland where the rugged coast and call of the Atlantic Ocean led to a lifelong fascination with Vikings and a degree in Medieval English and Old Norse Literature. Apart from Old Norse sagas, Tim’s more recent writing heroes include Ben Kane, Giles Kristian, Bernard Cornwell, George R. R. Martin and Lee Child. After several years living in New Hampshire, USA, Tim has returned to Northern Ireland, where he lives with his wife and children.

  @TimHodkinson

  www.timhodkinson.blogspot.com

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