The Grail War

by Richard Monaco

  He looked wildly around, blinking, blurred.

  “Bonjio,” he said desperately, “Bonjio.”

  Bonjio had fallen from the saddle and lay in a seeping red stain on the greenish earth as men fumbled around him, Working to stop the bleeding with strips of rag.

  Parsival knew he could have avoided the blow if only his eyes had been clear, if only he’d been paying real attention …

  He stared, blinking, at the foggy figure before him.

  “Forgive …” And he couldn’t even say “me.” He was thinking it was custom again, and pain, too, and … and the man had been his friend … and … there were no more and because this was the low point, the end of roads … He tore off his helmet, pressed at his eyes, and pounded his forehead: it wasn’t just Bonjio, either, or her … or any certain thing; it was the hole in life, the absence … weight of world and whirring of time, like a chariot’s wheels, each day sinking down to the next and the brief exalted moments of rest … For the first time he couldn’t trick himself with a hope, a prospect, a goal ahead, and so it all slammed in on him and he felt swept forward on and on like a swimmer caught in a dark river at the brink of the shadowed falls gazing hopelessly back to the far shore, where the sun still flamed a sweet rose and gold over the enduring earth … no woman … no work … no vision … and nothing, no mother’s sweet word or the unimaginable voice of life spoke to him as he turned in stunned bleakness, bare head inviting blows that never came, though he would not have moved a fraction to escape now … no voice, no words, no touch — just the faint, drizzling chill keeping the blood undried on his steel shell … He rode on into the blurring, his horse wandering along the darkening, sharply curving stream, and when the animal reached the bottom of a steep U-bend and halted to nibble at the pale, bleached grass, he dismounted, his sight now different in each eye so that what was clear in one for an instant was bent by the other, and he was more deceived in his steps as he walked along the bank than if he were totally blind, everything deceptively refracted so that when, in his restless, frightened grief, he strode out onto the clustered lily pads and ripples, he saw only firm earth and thought fleetingly that a spell had struck him as the ground opened, air a wet shock, and then he was under the surface, dragged steadily to the mucky, weedy bottom by his armor’s weight until he was looking straight up through several feet of sluggish stream at the grayish twilight paling around the shadowy masses of water plants whose strange roots clustered and swayed all around him. His eyes were cleared by the shock, and he felt oddly comfortable as driblets of air slowly oozed from him … the mud was as soft as cushions … the water moved over him like a cleansing wind … He wondered what it would be to breathe it … not the gasps and swallows every swimmer knows, but to suck it deep and cold into his fluttering lungs … He wondered, vaguely, as the air within him became a burning pain, if at the end his body would struggle to rise and save itself, because he knew his mind wasn’t interested anymore, the body could do what it had to, the mind cared nothing and was waiting now because, perhaps, there would be an image still to come or the voice … the word …

  Gawain and Prang had stopped to water their mounts. The older knight had leaned over the stream’s edge to cup a palmful of water as the horses dipped their muzzles a few feet downstream.

  The setting sun was just breaking out of a level layer of clouds, and a reddish gleaming appeared all around, as if the world lit itself from within.

  So he thought it was simply a reflection at first, except, even diluted, the metallic taste was obvious. He spit out a mouthful and frowned at the pinkish stain streaming in thinning clouds around the bend.

  For some reason he stood up, decided it wasn’t an animal, and pushed quickly upstream through the whip-like, wiry brush and bare prickers …

  “The last beams of the sun touched the water,” Gawain was saying to Prang where they both sat in the warm shifting ring of firelight, sipping mugs of hot meat broth, “through a space in the trees … which was the only reason I saw him.” They both glanced at Parsival, who was lying perfectly still on the mounded earth, the flames gleaming on his silvery mail. His eyes were shut. “It shocked me, boy,” he continued, “to see him lying just as he is now on the stream bottom … the blood I took for his, still washing away … His eyes were open, turning to me, I say, as the last bubbles issued from his drowning mouth …” He shook his head.

  “But what do you make of it, Gawain?” Prang asked. “Was he injured? Bound by a spell?” Prang looked nervous and crossed himself abruptly a second later.

  Gawain shook his head.

  “I must tell you,” he went on, “his eyes looked at me, yet he troubled not a single limb to raise himself from watery doom …”

  “So you pulled him out.”

  “Just so,” Gawain said, nodding, “but not before he breathed in and shut his eyes.”

  Lay in the last, lingering blood-red sunbeams that illuminated him on the dark bottom among the shadowy water plants, arms crossed over his chest as if keeping vigil, long golden-silver streaked hair unwinding into the easy currents that seemed to flow the darkness over him and blot out the last thinning thread of life as his shuddering chest inhaled the chill and then it was night …

  “Have you ever dragged a caparisoned man from four feet of water?” Gawain wanted to know.

  “Nay,” said Prang, shaking his head and staring at Parsival.

  “Well,” Gawain concluded. “I got him to the bank, as you saw … with my one arm.”

  They both had finished the job. Then Gawain had stood on Parsival’s back and pressed a sloshing amount of stream out. And though he seemed to breathe, from fitful time to time, he had not reopened his eyes. At least two hours had passed and Prang, for one, was convinced he never would. Gawain seemed sanguine, however.

  The waning moon was up, the fire now crushing itself to violet embers, Prang half-dozing, before Parsival actually looked at them from the dim shadows.

  Gawain was turned away, working on a frayed saddle girth, wrapping it with wax twine to make a new join.

  Prang thought himself asleep: across the faint blowing sputter, the large gray-blue eyes were suddenly fixed on him, seeming to magnify the vague illumination with some cold, inner brightness. He pinched his cheek, frightened by the distance in that look, frozen by it, as if something not altogether mortal gazed dispassionately at him. The feeling passed somewhat a moment or two later.

  “Sir,” he said, meaning Parsival, though Gawain looked up.

  “Eh?” he wondered, then saw where Prang stared. “So you’ve come back,” he stated, as if with secret knowledge, Prang thought.

  Parsival didn’t speak immediately. He breathed deeply. He finally said, “Yes. Back.”

  Gawain nodded (Prang felt) knowingly. But why?

  “Are you recovered?” Prang asked, feeling irrelevant.

  “That’s another question altogether,” Gawain said. “It’s enough he’s come back.” He tilted his head toward his friend. “So now you know this, too?” he asked, rather gently, Prang thought, all in all.

  Parsival gingerly touched, then rubbed, his face, as if surprised to find flesh on the bones.

  As well he ought, Prang commented silently, considering what has been.

  “Yes,” Parsival said to Gawain. “Yes …”

  “You speak as though he’s been off on a visit,” Prang put in.

  “Do we?” Gawain said wryly. “He wanted to let it go,” he directed at Parsival.

  “Yes,” that calm man affirmed. His hands fell back onto his chest again. He breathed deeply. “I’ll sleep now,” he said and shut his eyes.

  Gawain seemed pleased. He settled himself down close to the last embers, wrapping his woolen cape around him.

  “Tomorrow, young Prang,” he said lightly, “you’ll find out where we’re going … and it won't leave you any choice … to speak of.”

  “What?” Prang said. “What?”

  But Gawain muffled himself up and sai
d no more.

  Lohengrin was only a day’s ride behind the main force by nightfall. The road he was following with his bodyguard troops (about fifty horsemen) led over a rise northerly across the sunset. He was puzzled by how long it was taking the deep red glow to finally fade from the dark, massed clouds. They clattered over a narrow bridge and he saw dark shapes in the sluggish, gleaming water. A moment later he realized they were scattered bodies. He glimpsed a woman and child among the rest as they thundered past, up the steepening slope. Earlier in the day they passed under rows of gibbeted men and women where trees overhung the road. He’d wondered in passing what their crimes had been. In the late, angled sun, their bodies had cast long shadows that swayed gigantically over the bleak, autumnal fields.

  Atop the ridge of a long line of hills that curved on either side (as far as he could see) to enclose the valley country below, he reined up, shocked, staring because the sun had nothing to do with this light: what must have once been a good-sized town and sprawling castle beyond were sunk in a sea of flames. There, even at two miles’ distance, he felt the heat. The air, sucked toward the center of the towering fire-jet, whipped the trees and long, dry grasses. The forest beyond (straight along the valley with open fields) was cut with long, blazing rivers as dry wood and leaves literally exploded and clumps of pine roared like torches … The dense smoke gathered, filled, and spread out over the sky. The crackling roar broke like thunder.

  As they followed the road, wincing and turning away from the furnace across the field, Lohengrin spotted a peasant woman with a young boy and girl crouching in the flame shadows behind the low, broken wall. It was poor cover, he thought, but the best in the vicinity. He pulled out of line, motioning the others on, and crossed over to them.

  He sat his horse, looking down at the frightened little girl, the pale, defiant boy, and the red-and-silver-haired woman. She had a sharp nose and almost ferocious hunger in her expression, a dauntless desperation too concentrated to show fear. He could see she wouldn’t die easily, and he respected that.

  “What happened here?” he demanded, flipping up his visor.

  “Where?” she said, watching him from hungry, shadowed eyes. She was lean and ready, he noted, hands hidden within the folds of her cloak.

  She has a weapon under there, he thought.

  “Was there fighting here?” he pressed her.

  “I saw only one army today,” she replied, “with none to oppose them.”

  That's true. This whole section is undefended. But why would we destroy anything here? Killing a few rabble to keep order is one thing …

  The children were watching the line of horsemen, dark shadows against the wall of fire in the distance, passing in single file at a steady trot.

  “How did the fire start?” he wanted to know. Her eyes, he realized, never left him. He frowned, feeling vaguely uneasy, almost unsafe.

  “Try your wits to guess,” she couldn’t help saying.

  Who was the stupid general to allow this? You kept good order at least until after the battles were won. What fool let them have their head now?

  “So,” he said, mainly to himself, “the troops got out of hand.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Eh?”

  “They threw everybody into the fire,” the little girl suddenly said in a too-high-pitched voice. There was a scream haunting the timbre. He realized she wasn’t afraid of him. She kept staring past even the flames and horsemen. “They threw …”

  The woman (mother, he thought, had to be) pressed her hand to the child’s lips.

  “Hush,” she said. “Hush,” she said, watching him, just watching him.

  These are our villages, he thought. Why?

  “Did any attack the troops?” he asked, floundering for logic.

  “Attack?” she returned, watching him, “As cattle attack the butcher.”

  The line of men was past now and receding.

  “What stupidity!” he said. Well, the master would hear about this. He was supposed to join the main armies here, northwest of London, which Lohengrin had assumed was the main objective. From here and Camelot, if need be, they could establish rule over the south — that was, unless more idiots persisted in burning out the rich countryside to make the conquest worthless … As he reined his charger to follow the men, he glanced, scowling, quick-eyed, back at her. “How did you survive?” he wanted to know.

  Just as he was sure she wasn’t going to answer, she spoke.

  “Always some survive,” she said. “Anything.”

  He started to speak, then shut his mouth. He scowled, nodded, and headed back to the road, thinking about what he’d say to Lord Clinschor later, thinking about the great plan and purpose that had changed his life, had turned a faithless adventurer into a dedicated emissary. Yes … but he really needed to see the master again, to clarify some things, as well as to complain …

  Broaditch knelt over the dark water. The moon’s image shook slightly in the deep pool near the riverbank. The silver-black lacework of clouds glowed around the blotting outline of his head. He heard Valit sigh in his sleep under the overhanging willow tree.

  He waited, watching under the surface. He wasn’t sure anything would happen. It was an instinct, he thought, or a voice without words urging him … He waited as the moon sailed in and out of the clouds and mounted higher.

  He thought wonderingly for a while … half-dozed … then sat very alert, without a stir in his mind for an instant as moon and shadow formed shapes like rough-wooded and bone-bare hills; a lake; the narrow river (he was sure) right there, where it wound away from their direction … He seemed to see the best approach across the plains to the almost-round mass of high country they had to penetrate … He was almost certain he glimpsed that circle of brightness again that was (or shone through) a fortress, too … And then he blinked himself, he thought, awake as his face touched the cold water and he grunted.

  This was no dream, he told himself. He was sure of the direction now. The place was surprisingly close. And then he was frightened a little. What happened when he got there? Because whatever it was, it would be the worst and hardest thing yet …

  “What are you doing?” a voice asked and Broaditch started, twisted around, and recognized Valit a moment later.

  “Ask your eyes,” Broaditch remarked.

  “Praying to the water?” Valit wondered.

  “Praying for more wisdom and fewer young asses.” Broaditch stood up, went and sat under the willow.”

  “You think me simple?” Valit wondered.

  “I was studying our future. Do you believe that?”

  Valit shrugged and settled himself down again.

  “You are not light in wit, Broaditch,” he replied. “So I’ll watch and wait.”

  “For your profit, Valit?” Broaditch grunted.

  “What better thing for a man to watch and wait for?”

  After a time, Broaditch cryptically remarked, “If you truly mean to be like Jews, you do better to take on their trust in heaven and dauntless spirit. For even though they be in error, yet they defy all the armies of man and time. For if they truly cared for profit alone, all would’ve turned Christian ere this.”

  There was no reply. Broaditch smiled, turning on his shoulder and wishing he could turn aside the constant fear that haunted all his waking time. And, he wondered, God knows what each night's sleep may bring in these times …

  Wista was riding north along the same track Lohengrin had followed several days before. Wista had been summoned and two warriors accompanied him. They were poor companions: one of the turbaned Orientals who spoke spare fragments of English, and a stocky, tough, old veteran commoner, a mounted sergeant, foul-mouthed, taciturn, and world-weary to an astonishing degree.

  Wista was thinking about Frell. He’d been sorry to leave her, it turned out. She was a sweet taste, a tense, awkward, wonderful experience … She gave herself so intensely in the end, and, surprisingly, with few words and long, tender, s
troking hands … he remembered …

  The air was brisk. Time was crossing into winter, though it was still too warm for snow. The pale sun barely pressed through a misty sky. He noticed a castle on a nearby hilltop. He’d seen it a number of times before. It looked like an empty shell, was his first thought: gutted, blackened, walls thrown down, shattered, gaping.

  “Was there a siege here?” he asked Grontler, the sergeant. “So near and yet we heard not of it?”

  “Hah!” the soldier replied. “That was orders. You’ll see yer fill of such sights on this road, laddie.”

  “Was it a battle, then?” Wista pursued.

  “Hah! Not fucked much a one.”

  Despite Wista’s efforts, the man had no more to say on the subject.

  Toward noon they stopped to rest by cultivated fields marked off by low stone walls. Wista sat on the soft earth chewing a small loaf of hard bread that slipped from his bite and rolled into a furrow. He dusted it off on his sleeve, took another mouthful, then spat it out. It burned. He swigged water from his leathern gourd.