The Grail War

by Richard Monaco

  Well, he thought, be all as may be let's first see what's to be done about His Grace.

  The rest of the planning he could feel without any details yet. Just a definite gist. It was growing and, he had to admit, the scope of it frightened him just a little. Thinking deeply on these and kindred matters, he hardly noticed the bright, lush countryside flowing by …

  Little, limping Lord Gobble was standing beside an overweight knight wearing silks of red and white. Gobble was in dull black velvet that draped over his body, which seemed twisted into a permanent half-turn to the right. Sooty torch light shifted shadow and smoke around the low-roofed dungeon.

  Massive Lord Howtlande was gesturing with a jewel-encrusted, ornamental mace. His flabby face was grim and martially furrowed around his surprisingly long, hooked, bony nose.

  The naked man hung facing them, as if pinned on the damp stones. The chains that supported him were hard to see in the wavering darkness.

  Gobble coughed and brushed his hand at a stinging puff of smoke that billowed from a nearby brazier where long irons were neatly poked into the coals.

  The victim’s bleeding head lolled. His mutilated body quivered slightly. He made no sound. A hooded executioner was busy nearby working at a jammed hoist mechanism with a tool. He suddenly cursed and kicked it in exasperation.

  “This here,” he said in outrage and apology to the two noblemen, “this here ain’t even of no worth, my lords … I ask and ask for new equipment … This here always jams on you …” He bent over it again. “It ain’t rightful …”

  “No matter, Jack,” Howtlande assured him, “we’re done with him now.”

  “What use to ask, I wonder?” Jack was muttering. “No use … If the master knew how things is done, why, I know some as would smarten up …” He nodded. “Aye, they would …”

  Gobble’s protuberant eyes rolled restlessly. He never seemed (Howtlande had noted, with contempt) to look at anything longer than a grasshopper sits.

  “Dispatch this follow straight,” Gobble ordered in his shrill voice. Jack looked up, alert under his masking hood.

  “Aye,” Jack agreed, “if he be not gone already, my lords.”

  “This knight here,” Howtlande said, jerking a flabby nod at the dying man, whom the executioner was advancing on with a businesslike step and raising an outsized broadsword, “confirmed what Hinct, the Grail traitor, said?”

  “He did,” Gobble agreed.

  “And what did lord high-holy think?”

  “Have a care, lord general, how smoothly you mock.”

  “Keep yer tools in order,” Jack declared to himself, calculating his downstroke with a cocked head. “So I ever says … order …”

  “We’re all in this pot stewing together,” Howtlande said. “So the traitor claims he will deliver the holy spear or whatever it’s supposed to be before we reach the magical castle where the Grail does whatever it does?”

  Gobble stared at him for longer than was his wont. He smiled, the other thought, or did something with his mouth.

  “I believe in Lord Master,” he said, his voice shrill as the shadow of Jack’s cut crossed them, and neither really noticed the sound of split flesh and bone or the bunk of the severed head on the cobbled floor. Jack grunted with satisfaction. “I believe that this Grail is real. Our investigations reveal that it is a spiritual power center. It has long been in the hands of the weaklings …” His eyes rolled fiercely around the dank chamber. “And they use it to soften the spirit.” He took a few limping steps across the uneven floor. “We need ruthless strength for our task … I believe that in the master’s hands it will magnify his will and we then become strong as god …”He twisted around to face Howtlande, who was simply taking in this strange credo without reaction. Gobble was calm. “Of course, the ignorant doubt this. But I assure you the master knows what he is doing … This, I believe …” The eyes rolled restlessly, Howtlande thought, like those of a troubled fish.

  “I never said I disbelieved,” he said coldly. “Still, no one ever tells me what this Grail is when I ask.”

  “Our studies haven’t revealed everything. But the master will recognize it. Why, he is more god than man, I sometimes think.”

  Howtlande narrowed his eyes.

  “He’s remarkable enough,” he affirmed, “though you carry the point far …” He glanced at Jack, who was tidying up now. “And what is the spear for, Gobble?”

  “The sacred spear,” the other murmured, nodding. “Very necessary … it is used to defend the Grail. This much is known. The traitor, Hinct, explained these things when he delivered a map of their country to us.”

  “Why did he betray them?”

  The other shrugged.

  “He knows their power is fading. We will triumph, rest assured, and you will see a new life begin for the world.” He did what might have been a smile again. At least his teeth showed in the grimace.

  Howtlande arched one eyebrow almost imperceptibly, but merely said, “Just so we succeed, I leave the magic of the gods to the rest of you.”

  “Ah,” Jack was just saying, lowering the ruined body, “well struck, old lad. Clean and sure as ever …” Howtlande swung his jeweled mock weapon before his face thoughtfully. It flashed the smoky light.

  “You will see a new life begin,” Gobble repeated conversationally, eyes rolling left and right, as if following an elusive something in the grim, chilly chamber …

  My lady Mary, Mother of heaven, she was thinking, I was starting to finally believe we were safe. That it would never come again … And now it's come …

  She was kneeling beside her daughter, Tikla, and youngest son, Torky, at the edge of the wheat. Their heads were just above the grain as they looked across the level field toward where the sunset was gathering and the slow, black smoke billowed up.

  They were returning from the lake. Alienor and Tikla had been washing clothes while Torky fished. He was holding a string of hand-sized lake trout.

  “Who are they, Mama?” he asked Alienor.

  “I cannot tell, son,” she whispered, though the distance was great enough to lose a normal tone.

  “Are they knights, Mama?” asked Tikla.

  “Peace, children,” Alienor murmured, straining at the shapes in the smoke-thickened dusk. She was sure she saw a glint of arms and plate. The horsemen were moving across the fields, half a dozen at least, followed by a line of foot soldiers who seemed to her very small, almost child-sized, digging in the potato fields with their spears.

  One looked back straight at where they were crouched and she had a fearful impression the man would see her. The dimming, smoke-blotted light cleared for a moment and she thought she saw a silver-pale grimace of a face, terrible, distorted. Her skin prickled. Then the figure on his huge, dark mount moved off in the wake of his fellows.

  She felt a lifting of relief. She waited while the stunted-looking marching men moved off into the deepening darkness. A few guttural fragments of speech sounded on the wind. Then silence …

  The house was burning down like a torch. There was nothing at all to be done.

  “Mama,” said Tikla restlessly, “can we go home when the fire stops?”

  “Hush, child,” Alienor said, embracing her. “Hush.”

  She already knew what she had to do. The mass of smoke touched by the vague last fingers of twilight high on the local lord’s hill told her that. This was no chance raid. This was war. After so many sweet years, that horror was opening before her like a furnace door … She reached and stooped and held her two children close. She stared across the field, as if into the dark, unknown days and nights and miles unnumbered before them …

  “Oh, hush, my dears,” she whispered, staring.

  The Duke watched the underbrush, rocking on his steaming, blowing horse, his light lance held ready. He was unarmored and wore a bright gold cape and hunting furs. Several mounted attendants watched with him. To his right was some Count, to his left, Lord Lohengrin of the shoddy fortunes
.

  The morning was clear. Dark, swampy trees grew like a wall before them. The dog pack was raving somewhere in the mucky woods.

  “My lords,” said the master of the hunt, a long, high shouldered peasant with a pointy red face, “he’ll turn soon. But he’s lost to us, I fear.”

  “Nonsense,” said the Count. “Why cannot we go straight in now? Hark! Ah, hear? The dogs are upon the bastard!”

  The Count bit his lip and smiled with nervous excitement. Yelping screams, squeals, and rasping grunts intensified in the grayish-dark damp woods.

  “My lords,” the master of the hunt insisted, “in this bottom section the pig will rule the king. A lance cannot be freed to strike straight.”

  The animal struggles seemed to be moving off and deeper again. There was a sudden, long-drawn-out screech of agony and a momentary pause in all other sound.

  “We must call back the dogs,” the master said, “or lose the pack.”

  “And let the porker off?” Lohengrin suddenly shouted and spurred forward into the dank, dark, stinking trees. “I go myself.”

  The others looked at one another and held back. The master of the hunt leaned close to the Duke to whisper.

  “My lord,” he said, “don't follow this fool.”

  “You know I must,” was the Duke’s reply, raging. “I am bound by custom.” He was half-snarling.

  “But, my lord …”

  None of the others looked at one another now as they sat watching the Duke move into Lohengrin’s wake, closely followed by the hunt master. The bushes caught and brushed at their legs. The tilted, fallen, dense-set trees forced the big horses into a kind of galloping crawl.

  “Rein off,” the Duke instructed after fifty yards or so, “and draw the hounds away.”

  He watched Lohengrin’s back dip down the rise before them.

  Parsival knelt between her legs on the tight-packed straw. He glanced around at the rich, musty barn. The rank-sweet animal smell flowed up to them from below the loft, which was warm and low-ceilinged. Moonlight poked dimly through spaces in the boards. He kept trying to remember something … almost had it … something from long ago that this place recalled …

  The lady was smiling, head tilted to the side. Her robe was parted and her fluid softness showed dim and pale.

  “Are you worried?” she asked.

  “You mean afraid,” he amended, re-sitting on his heels, hands resting on her knees.

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “A bearded, aging dreamer.”

  “All men are aging,” she put in. “Your form is youthful.” She considered the streaks and gouts of scar tissue on his lean, wide, powerful body. “Your eyes, Parsival, your eyes caught me. You didn’t know that?”

  “No.”

  “Your eyes.” She nodded her head. “I look into them and find myself dreaming by the sea … waves and shores unseen with magic birds in golden trees …” She smiled and moved her body, as if she were bound in sweet chains. “Yes,” she murmured.

  “My eyes do this?” He partly smiled.

  “So I just told you, sir.”

  “If those magical places are within me, I know it not.”

  “But I see them.” She delicately fingered his chest.

  “I wish no more dreams,” he said.

  “Ah, but they live in your eyes, sweet knight. Would you blind yourself to darken them?”

  He smiled again with a wry half-mouth.

  “And lose the sight of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never, my lady,” he said, and she wasn’t sure how deeply he meant it.

  “Never, sir?”

  “It is too late already,” he said neutrally.

  “So you love me, then.”

  He tilted his face and shut and reopened his eyes.

  “I feel,” he said, “I have been cold and stiff and dead for so long …” He sank down upon her, lips almost touching, inhaling her, dizzy with her, feeling as though his flesh were melting wax, except for one insistent part. “For so long,” he finished, kissing her cheeks and forehead.

  She held him firmly across his wide, scarred back and sucked, and licked, and gently nibbled his lips.

  “Oh,” he sighed and pressed himself into the burning yielding. “Oh, God … Heal me, my lady … heal me … heal all my dark years and heart …”

  And he believed she could, the sheer touch and intensity of her … he believed she could …

  Alienor followed the faint sketch of trail at dawn which grayly and sourcelessly began to glow among the dense pines. Their steps were muffled by the soft, fallen needles. The air was almost cold. She thought she could feel the steel teeth of winter nipping just a little.

  “Mama,” her daughter asked through a yawn, “will we find Papa soon?”

  “We’ll see, Tikla,” was the reply. She held the child’s hand. Torky, the boy, went on ahead, kicking up clumps of the brown woven turf, swinging a stick back and forth like a sword. Now and again he cut at some imaginary opponent.

  “Got you!” he declared. “How do you like that?”

  Alienor was still settling her thoughts. She had only a very general idea of what to do at this point. Her husband’s last message had come from Camelot by way of a carter. He had transformed her into a secret literate like himself — in fact, he possessed (or had until the fire) three fragments of books in the English tongue. She still had the scrap of parchment:

  MY LOVE. I AIM TO COME UNTO LONDON TOWN

  BY MID-SUMMER. WEARY. WILL STAY WITH

  JACK HANDLER’S KIN. B.

  Her first problem was food. There were potato fields beyond the hill they were crossing. If the raiders had avoided the back trails, the section would be intact. Well, there was nothing for it but to try for London. She was going to have to face that prospect. She didn’t want to think about the war. But for some reason she had a feeling it was widespread. She didn’t know why, but she was sure of it …

  The Duke’s horse was virtually jammed in the rotting beeches. It kept sinking fetlock deep into the black ooze.

  The eye whites showed as he strained under his master’s curses and goads and smelled the rank, raw boar scent.

  The Duke, as if the creature were to blame for his plight, kept punching the long head with his knotted fist.

  Lohengrin was atop the gully that the other man was struggling to cross. The boar’s snorting fury was clearly audible above the dog cries that were circling back toward them.

  “You’re mad!” the Duke flung at the younger knight. “If the beast turns into us here, why, we’re undone!”

  “Think a pig may slay two armed fellows like us?” Lohengrin smiled, showing his yellowish teeth.

  The Duke’s spear was now tangled in the vines that draped the pulpy trees. He tried to keep his grip as the horse pulled forward and he teetered back, tried to hold, then lost it and swore explosively.

  The riot of animal sound was close now. The Duke had worked his way up beside Lohengrin on the little spine of ridge. They moved carefully along the top, as if balancing, hooves slipping on wet and mossy stones. Then the underbrush crackled and shook and the baying and squealing seemed all around them: savage, grunting snarls, louder, louder, and then the musty, reeking bloody-tusked, boar broke out of the snapping trees, massive, violent, sudden, seeming to undulate along close to the earth. A hound, tongue flopping, foam spraying, loped out at his heels, and with incredible speed and force the boar doubled back on itself and in one sweep ripped and tossed the screaming dog back into the brush in a rain of blood.

  “You bastard!” the Duke was screaming. “You shit-sucking bastard!” He drew his dagger, more out of nervousness than anything else.

  The pig had turned again and was virtually below them down the ten-foot slope.

  “Where is that fool?” he muttered, craning around for the master of the hunt and seeing nothing but the gray netting of dead trees.

  And then he just had time to twist his raging, pale, d
espairing face around to glare his fury at Lohengrin and swing one futile cut with the blade as the bushy-haired knight braced the handle of his lance under his victim’s armpit and tilted him out and down into the steep gully to roll helplessly in the path of the furious beast.

  He kicked, pale and desperate, at the tusked snout, flat on his back. Lohengrin looked on with interest and professional detachment. He saw the boar’s first hit drive the Duke behind a bush. He couldn’t tell if he’d been slashed. He thought the older man was doing very well, considering. But without even a mail shirt, there was no chance, of course.

  The dogs were trying, circling, dodging in and out, but the dense, low-slung creature, thumping mud, shaking brush, snorting in a frenzy, came in again as the man got to his feet and took a few wild, windmilling steps through the dense, leafless trees, his outline blurring into a gray shadow. He screamed this time and went down, trees snapping, into a flurry of dogs and squeals and ripping and blood and a voice shouting somewhere out of sight (the master of hunt): “Your Grace! Your Grace!”

  Parsival was sitting up, nude, in the damp hay. Pieces of straw were caught in his hair. His body was still smooth, solid, and supple. His scars had faded as much as they ever would. He stroked his beard and, for no particular reason, said, “I’m going to shave this off again.”