The Grail War

by Richard Monaco

  He nodded self-agreement. Best to go on with grayhead, after all. Logic said it … However, from where he lay exhausted last night on the slope, he’d seen Broaditch enter that hut …

  He stood up, turning these matters over in his mind. His limbs were sore, but bearable. And he was hungry. He smelled the broiling meat from the smoking chimney. He idly considered whether the troll man was cooking up his companion …

  Some of the goats had strayed close to the trees. There was a female standing in the dappled light, full bellied, jaws working sideways, eyes calm and round.

  Milk, he thought. Yes. Then wait and see. Perhaps there was no danger. Give it some time. He didn’t want to think about being afraid just now … The whole business could wait a few hours. No sense in trotting down there by daylight. A few hours just to get the feel of the situation … that made sense … So he moved stealthily toward the goat, carefully not looking at the center of the problem …

  Balli, it would seem, was largely nocturnal. He settled down to sleep with his monstrous back to the door. And was soon snoring. That and the stink from the befouled bucket were enough to push Broaditch toward desperation. He pondered the round, disturbingly smooth head for a while. The “O” of pursed mouth sucked air with a strange, irregular rhythm so that, from time to time, his captive was almost certain he’d died … until a subsequent gasp exhaled away all hope …

  And were he to die there, Broaditch reflected, I'd needs must cut a hole through that gross flesh, for never could I budge it.

  He’d noticed Balli wore a knife, but wondered (even if he might snatch it) if any thrust would reach a vital place. Through all that blubber and rind. What does this retarded lump want of me? Is this my great purpose, to be thus butchered at the hands of an obscenity?

  Was this another test? What an idea! After the drama of the sea and toiling through the endless bog and the incredible escape from the serpent to be a victim of a defecating, gluttonous mound of witless anger! He stared at the shut eye, at the scar tissue that seemed to have been molded like clay over the neighboring socket.

  He must weigh five hundred pounds, or Tm a nobleman … Well, what now, Broaditch, messenger of the gods? he thought with all the irony and self-mockery in his power.

  Might as well sleep and be less sore later for the “trial.”

  “And what is the penalty, then?” he asked, with fear and sarcasm. “At you little assizes?”

  “What does he say?” Balli seemed to ask his unseen companion of the same name.

  “At the trial — what will it cost me to be guilty?”

  “Hmm?” Balli had frowned. “Balli knows. He does …” The eye scowled. “Thief finds out pretty soon … pretty soon.”

  “What do you do here?” Broaditch asked for reasons he considered hopeless. But he’d try.

  “Do?”

  “You keep goats?”

  “Balli keeps many goats.”

  “Have you seen my comrade?”

  “Keeps many goats?”

  Balli had sat down at this point with his back to the door.

  “Is there a village close at hand?” Broaditch persisted.

  His host-jailer shrugged.

  “Balli stays here. Eats, shits, sleeps. What else?”

  There was a time, Broaditch considered, when I had more likeness to this dull lump than is comforting to recall … Mary in purity, lend me heaven in need! He sighed and shifted his sore bones. He inched over to where he could reach the skin where the cheese was wrapped. And what happened to Handler’s strange boy …? And what am I supposed to do …? Wander for all my days waiting for a sign …? Dung and blood I must go home! Am I a mooncalf …? He sighed, exasperated. I heed old men in boats who speak darkly in hints … He sighed. Why am I ever caught like a cat with a piece of string? Why must I ever chase something just because it moves …? He shook his head. I must expect something … something, but what …? He stared at the torpid, erratically snoring sack of flesh blocking the exit. He’s like a cork in a bottle … God send me a corkscrew! He sighed yet again and closed his eyes in frustration.

  At dusk Valit forced himself to walk down the slope. He did not hurry. There didn’t seem any clear reason. He had no idea what he meant to do, either. Notions of knocking, calling out … or sneaking a peek, yes, that made some sense. No point in blindly pushing into this business … He felt something was almost driving him when his brain said: leave it. Somehow it was important. He kept sensing so many things he hadn’t done, hadn’t seen, lying green and bright before him, and this rashness might end all that … Why, he’d had only one woman three times so far in his life; there had to be more of that, and once he had gold and property … life would be so sweet … He didn’t want to die, he realized, simply because there was so much to miss … He resented Broaditch now … resented whatever was forcing him into this confrontation.

  He stopped, cocked his head, listened a few feet from the door. He thought he heard voices. He carefully inched closer to listen. When his ear was virtually pressed to the clay-sealed wall wood, he heard a moist, high-pitched, strident voice saying: “Balli accuses the thief!”

  Inside Broaditch was still squatting on the floor. His host and accuser sat at the table, eating another whole goat, pulling it to pieces and stuffing it into his mouth, speaking through his voracious chewing. He held up a forelimb like a lord’s wand of high justice and brandished it, making his points.

  Clearly, the defendant realized Balli had seen trials and been impressed. There were odd smatterings of legal procedures even more twisted and, he thought, senseless than the plain originals. Broaditch had himself seen a few courts of justice.

  This belly and gorge, he thought, might do well in many a town proceeding. However, he sticks far too close to the meat of the matter at hand to have studied professionally …

  “Balli accuses,” came the mouthed statement, “and my lord condemns you ,”

  “Wait! You deem this a trial? Where is the lord who — ”

  “Balli is lord and judge. He condemns — ”

  “Evidence? What of evidence?”

  Broaditch half-stood up, but his lord judge raised high the leg of goat and he squatted back where he was. “You were in this house,” Balli said.

  “True. But — ”

  “Ate Balli’s cheese.”

  “But I was lost and starving and — ”

  “So lord Balli sentences thief to hands cut off and ears cropped.” Balli wiped his mouth and drew his rusty, wicked, fat-bladed skinning knife. Broaditch felt fear, sweat, and rage at the same time.

  “You mad, bloated, foul-breathed simpleton! You curds of scum in a sack! Brainless …! How come you mad and ugly as this? How — ”

  “Balli came mad,” was the conversational reply, “from his mother. Balli was hurt by men. Burned his face.” He touched the lumpy scar tissue where the right eye had been. “Balli likes to watch the justice from the wall.” Balli remembered how he’d sat day after day for months in the open courtyard, rain or sunshine, mud or dust, forgetting for long hours even the chains that bound him to the castle wall, squatting, sitting, and lying; wearing the befouled, ragged hides of a fool, feeling the tearing pain gradually stiffen and fade into cold scar, the memory of the boy in the cart dimming so he clearly recalled only the shock of the stick on his skull, then reaching up, gripping, and then the boy seeming to float away into the ditch, then the sound his head made on the rocks like a splitting gourd, then the faces of the men, the hot, flashing pain … He’d lie there watching when they brought out the lord’s bench and the cases passed before him and he heard the words over and over and the deeds likewise of the law, all of which engrossed him as did, at other times, the various slantings of light through the stringy trees along the wall, the birds wafting about the castle towers … Eventually he would wait impatiently for the law to commence and then tilt his head and cock his ears to study every movement and word of it, an expression (often remarked by onlookers) lucid and int
ent on his face whenever judgment was pronounced … After a time he seemed to have been forgotten there, faces changed around him, and he was a part of the place like a leashed, familiar hound …

  One day, in sheets of rain, serf boys with jackets pulled up over their heads were standing there in the misty downpour and one voice he paid no special attention to was saying, “How d’ye like it, witless? Like them chains, do yer?”

  “His mama was had by a right troll, she was. Lookit him,” another added.

  “They’re goin’ to burn out your other eye, y’lumpy bastard!”

  And stones hit him that at first he didn’t realize were being thrown: a sharp blow just under his nose, a white flash of pain, and he was up, charging into their laughter, yelling, bellowing, tasting his blood, not even noticing when he reached the end of his chains and kept going after a single, blurred, terrific jerk that barely broke his stride, feeling their panic as they slipped, and skidded and splashed away, himself panting after, mouthing the words over and over, following one straight out the open gate, the guard’s spear sailing past his ear as he brushed the fellow aside and didn’t pause to watch him tumble across the mucky yard, hard on the heels of the terrified boy he’d singled out, roaring into the mist and twilight, his bellow overriding the boy’s shouts of mortal terror …

  “The justice … Balli wants the justice … the justice on you … on you … on you …”

  He was now on his feet standing over Broaditch, the ragged knife ready. Broaditch felt like he was gazing up at a mountain. He glanced hopelessly around for a weapon. He couldn’t accept this as happening. He felt strangely inert in the face of this absurd fate …

  Balli, stooped and snatched him by the neck, Broaditch twisting, punching, kicking viciously as he was effortlessly turned on his belly, and a crushing knee flattened his back and ground his face into the packed clay floor. He felt like a squashed bug, like a child, once again totally powerless …

  “Mother of God,” he gasped, “pity … pity me …”

  He felt a stinging grip tug an ear flap out and ready for the blade. The sweat and fecal stench of Balli was upon him. He wanted to vomit and scream …

  “You promised, father,” Modred was fuming and moaning in pain. His injuries, over a month old, still had him bedridden: ribs split, thigh bone cracked.

  His aunt, Morgan LaFay, red-haired and taut looking, leaned over the bed, pale skin vivid against a black samite gown. Only faint lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes betrayed her age in the soft candlelight.

  “Don’t remain a fool a day longer than need be,” she recommended, “though coward you must ever be.”

  “You promised never to slay me,” he sputtered, eyes raging and afraid.

  “What is a promise to a dead man worth?” she wondered. “And yet, I swear, lamb, I want you to be lord of Britain. So, lamb, content yourself. I mean to discover who did this thing to you, if I can.”

  Modred’s eye remained uneasy, but he let himself feel somewhat soothed. He tugged the wrinkled covers up under his chin and stared into the dark, vacant recesses of the chamber. His advisor, Sir Gaf, and the glint-eyed bishop were standing close at hand.

  “In the event you overlooked it, my lady,” the knight said, “there are worse troubles upon us than this.”

  Morgan was smoothing her nephew’s forehead, murmuring.

  “Are you making magic?” he fearfully wondered.

  “I need not have come here for that,” she replied, smiling mildly, “had that been my desire. But, you know, magic is but another way of paving the road, and you must still pass over it yourself … Gather your strength, lamb. I will make it all as easy as I can.”

  “Yes,” the prelate put in, “Sir Gaf here says well. There are powerful forces against us — an army.” He squinted one eye almost shut and stared with burning fury. “With Godless heathens in their midst.”

  “Our vassals are gathering,” she said, still keeping her gaze steadily on the Prince’s upturned face. In the shadowy, uneven flame light, it seemed to be melting into the pooled darkness of pillow and quilts.

  “One of my priests came upon a dying knight on the old high road to Camelot,” the bishop half-whispered, moving closer.

  “And?” Morgan queried, unstirring, bright red hair loose along one pale cheek.

  “And the knight told him — ”

  “How did he come to be dying?” Sir Gaf asked uneasily.

  “The priest was no doctor … though he declared blood flowed from mouth, nose … eye, and ears, as well, I think he said.”

  “A blow to the head, then,” Sir Gaf said, “no doubt a blow to the head.”

  “Never mind the delightful details,” Morgan put in, straightening up. Modred followed her with his eyes.

  “He told the priest,” the bishop continued, narrowing both eyes now, “that he were struck down by three knights all in jet-black armor wrought with bright silver — silver shields with a device of sharp fangs in a gaping mouth.”

  “In Freya’s name,” Morgan snapped, “get to where you mean to go!”

  “I shall,” said the undisturbed lord prelate. “I remember such knights as these.”

  “The mouth design?” she asked.

  “Nay. That were new. But the armor.”

  “Any man can put on what gear he pleases,” she contended.

  “Yes, lady,” the bishop said, “but hear this much more: when the knight demanded their names and conditions, when laid low, they spoke not a word, even when he cursed them … Not a single word spoke they!”

  “Well … well …” she demurred. “So they were under some vow, mayhap.”

  “Ah, but spoke not among themselves, either! And battled in silence, as well.”

  “Why did he engage three thus?” the knight wanted to know.

  “It seems he tried to pass them by, so he said, but they followed. He felt they may have been an advance guard because, he said, he glimpsed many others in armor yet hidden in the trees, seeming to wait. Then he fell. And passed on to heaven in the arms of that pious — ”

  “He spoke with long breath for a dying wight,” Morgan felt.

  “In silence all the while?” the knight mused, frowning. Modred raised himself on his elbows.

  “I know what you’re saying here!” he cried, “the devils are back! The black devils! That’s the meat of it!”

  “Peace, lamb,” she soothed. “This is far from proved.”

  “But there’s yet one thing more,” the bishop said. “Yes?” she asked.

  “He was a stout fighter, this fellow, and well known — Sir Alfred of Dornn.”

  “Yes?”

  “I know the name,” the knight affirmed.

  “He swore to the priest, dying as he was, that before any were close enough to deal a thrust with lance or sword he felt a terrible blow in his heart that stunned him so his limbs went weak as water. So he swore, ere he rose to glory, being shriven and — ”

  “A stone struck him?” she wondered.

  “He said it was the devil’s fist,” the bishop stated. Modred’s eye rolled. Sir Gaf fidgeted.

  “But,” she suggested, “he sought to excuse himself for falling so and leaving no other in the dust with him. A fancy, no more.” She shook her imperious head. “Wool and moonstrands.”

  “Yet he so swore with his failing breath,” solemnly pronounced the prelate, “on our lady and the cross.” She hesitated. The chamber was silent for a few moments. Outside a watchman cried the hour in the distance. Midnight.

  “This fellow seemed to say more in dying,” she finally pointed out again, “than many in much life.”

  The lord bishop shrugged.

  “It were God’s will, then,” he said, “that this tale be told.”

  “Magic that smites an armed man in his seat,” Modred said, excited, “is more than paving a road, dear aunt.”

  She frowned.

  “Fear not, lamb,” she murmured, touching his hot forehead again. “I
’ll raise you to greatness.” She looked coolly at the others. “Fear nothing.” It was a command.

  Tikla was fascinated by the dust rising in a great, sun-shimmered mass across the cultivated valley. The oncoming riders seemed, to her fancy, the feet of the cloud, as if the cloud detached itself from the dark smoke (that she couldn’t tell was a burning village) and rolled at a gallop toward them.

  She was clinging to her brother, who was clinging to her mother, who was clutching the seat of the mule-drawn cart. The long, lumpy-faced driver was lashing the twin animals into the best run they could make on the winding slope that ran into the dark pine forest above.

  Tikla stared back at the glitter of dark armor and bright weapons storming across the potato fields where the four of them had just filled a sack.

  “I said they was all over here like fleas on a hound,” the driver, Lampic, was expostulating.

  “Would you rather o’ starved on the road, then?” her mother responded sharply.

  Her brother was watching, too. She was trying to see which of the men would reach the trail here first.

  “Look, Torky,” she said, “I couldn’t count how many!”

  “I wish I was a knight,” he said.

  They heard the pounding now; the hillside shook under the mass of warriors.

  “You can’t be a knight,” she informed him, big eyes watching, making out the helmets now. “You’re lowborn.”

  She felt her mother turn and start slightly.

  “Mary help us,” she breathed, digging her sharp elbow into the driver’s ribs, “we’re undone in a moment.” Most of the men, to Tikla’s vexation, veered away down the valley road on other business while a few continued up the slope in pursuit.

  “We’re nearly safe,” Lampic said.

  “Safe?” her mother wondered. “On the lap of heaven, mayhap, or the devil’s knees!”

  “Never you mind,” the man growled, heading the madly rocking, bouncing cart between two twisted trees. Now they were on terrain that favored mules over any horses: round, slippery stones and loose shale. The riders crashed on behind, but Tikla was disappointed to see them dropping gradually back.