When Alienor and the children awoke in the little church, they greeted the same brackish daylight again, worse, if anything. From the rim of the hill only the vaguest blurring suggested that any landscape existed beyond a hundred steps.
She was wondering about the old woman as she got everyone packed up with their few possessions and scraps of food, soothing Tikla’s misgivings and reducing Torky’s morning crankiness.
“Momma,” Tikla asked, “can we go home, Momma?”
“In time, my dove,” she told her. “In time.”
As they were starting down the hill in what she hoped and guessed was the direction of London, someone shouted. She turned quickly, hand closing on the long dirk tucked under her shapeless leather dress.
A mounted man, she thought, who came out of the fog tall and lean. As she was about to start the children running she recognized the cart driver Lampic. He was apparently mounted on his surviving mule. He hailed her, urging the beast up on the slope.
She noted that though he was sooty, muddy, and worn, he seemed fit enough. A lean, tough one. She knew the type. He’d be stronger than would seem possible.
“I’ve not been so far behind as you might think, woman,” he said laconically. “But you kept a smart pace.”
Her eyebrows knitted slightly. His manner still bothered her. Just a little too familiar. Still, he’d been a help.
“We’re pleased to find you living, Goodman Lampic,” she said.
He grinned, showing uneven teeth in his askew mouth. His eyes were dark and warm. She recalled he didn’t panic. She felt a certain relief that he was back because she knew her determination might outlast her actual strength before very long.
Meanwhile, to the north (beyond the rough circle of the Grail country where the heirs of Arthur were gathering for a last stand) on the far side of those rugged hills (blocked valleys intercut with fordless streams, whose tortuous paths were now jammed by groups of warriors behind felled trees) the lee side, as the river of smoke broke over it and spread there, her husband was awake, too, in that windowless wagon rolling blindly on into the desolation she was struggling to escape.
Valit was half-dressed as Broaditch stood by the door swaying with the bumps and tilts of the springless vehicle.
“You’re a moon brain,” Valit told him, pointing at the nude women sleeping in the lantern’s flicker glow. The heavy woman was snoring beside the voluptuous Moor, who was half-wrapped in a silken sheet. “I thought of this before, in London. A man’s fortune might be made in this trade. And it might easily be improved in a dozen ways.”
“Well, Valit, my lad, why share this with me?” the other said, cracking the curved door and letting in a chilly draft and blurred, bleak light. He noted the murals were discolored and peeling away in spots. Minra was sitting up in the shaft of harsh daylight, blinking. Her eyes were swollen, mouth staying parted as she breathed. Her lips were chapped and dry. Her dreams don't rest her, he thought. She silently watched them. Valit finished dressing. He leaned down to murmur something to the heavyset woman. Then he twisted his face around to Broaditch.
“Isn’t it softer to bed in hay here,” he reasoned, “than wander to nowhere?”
“Stay and enjoy yourself, lad.” Broaditch opened the door and poised on the steps. He called around to the driver. “You … you, Flail!” He craned around the side and saw the cap and bells as the jester, with an unreacting, yet voracious, expression, peered back at him. “Rein up, will you?”
“You’ve had enough?” Flail yelled back, fog streaming around him, as if he smoldered.
“I’m bound a different way.”
“How can you tell in this weather?” He gestured around at the stained vapors.
Broaditch smiled with mild sarcasm.
“I steer from a cloud of smoke by day,” he called out, “and a pillar of fire by night.”
“And how d’you mark the cloud in this?” Flail pressured.
“That’s the full miracle of it.”
The wagon halted and the big pilgrim got down. He waved once as Minra came to the door and stood beside Valit, who hesitated as it started up again. When it was vanishing into the obscurity, he cursed and leaped down with a gunny sack over his shoulder and, to Broaditch’s wonder, was followed by the flaxen-copper-haired, round, and round-faced woman.
He waited for them as the wagon went on, its curved shape giving the impression that it simply rolled away, wheelless.
Valit looked, Broaditch thought, moderately pleased with himself.
“Has this maid captured your heart?” the older man asked, deadpan.
Valit shrugged.
“This be Irmree,” he explained. "She’s from the German wilds.” He raised his eyebrows, furrowed his forehead. “Cay-am of Camelot said me sooth: 'Better to own a spraddled mule yourself than hold the reins for a knight's stallion.’”
Broaditch began walking, shaking his head.
“So you’ve begun to make your fortune at last,” he commented, amused and amazed.
“It takes but a single hen to begin a flock.”
“If the rooster's handy." He rubbed his heard. "And in her case …” — he looked the ample lady over — “ … you start with a pair already …”
As they marched on into the fog. Irmree said, “Irmree.” She giggled and touched her expanse of bosom, which quivered and rolled from the impact to a disturbing degree. “Irmree,” she repeated, then smacked Broaditch’s behind with (he thought) a blacksmith’s vigor, giggling again.
“What amuses you?" he asked, wincing.
“Irmree,” she informed him, and he let the subject pass …
Lohengrin reached the crest of a long, rock-edged hillside that steeply leaped out of the clouded forest lowlands. He was directed to the circular, crumbled ruin of an ancient, hollowed-out fortress without a single section intact.
He sent his horseguard and captains to join the main body, which was here dimly visible moving out over a wide front through the thinning forest. The word was that the enemies were near … Everywhere tents were being struck; battle groups forming up; men at arms raging commands clarified by complex curses and extraordinary maledictions; men relieving their bowels and bladders or stuffing in last bites of bread and meat; falling and being driven into line; messengers galloping across the grain of march, voices dinning, rattle, clang, slog, crunch, brisk whinnies as the vast masses moved forward like a tide into the fluctuating, ghostly curtains …
Within the shattered ring of rough-hewn stones and bricks, he found a single set of steps leading down into the basements and lower levels. As he crossed the weed-overgrown interior courtyard with furious strides, he met the flabby-faced, fat, hook-nosed Baron Lord General Sir Howtlande of Bavaria, commander of cavalry army “Fang,” just emerging from below. Lohengrin knew he was jealous of his own rapid rise, but they were civil to one another.
Howtlande smiled widely and raised a meaty fist to the shoulder in salute.
“Greetings at the hour of triumph," he boomed, eyes like shrewd, black, humorless pits, “Sir Lohengrin, Your Grace."
“Yes," was the controlled answer. “Is the Lord Master here?"
Howtlande nodded, looking faintly uneasy and even more faintly, almost, contemptuous.
“He’s eating iron today," he said in a low tone, “and shitting flame."
“Mayhap he’ll share my anger, as well."
Howtlande hazarded an uncertain smile. He glanced around the broken walls. The air was somewhat clearer up here, though all views were a seamless blur at any distance. Messengers and nobles hurried up and down the stairs and crisscrossed across the hilltop … Somewhere out of sight there was a continuous pounding of steel on steel as armorers and blacksmiths worked as though (he thought) they were literally hammering the world into a new shape …
“No one can share his anger," the corpulent commander assured him. “Impossible. I would tread quietly around him today." He smiled, bluff, except for the unchanging dark eyes.
/>
Lohengrin tapped his foot.
“He’s down below?" he wanted confirmed.
“Hmm. If he comes out at all, it’s mainly at nightfall. He rides the pumpkin.”
“What?”
“Ah. You’ll see it before long.” He leaned closer with the air of confiding a great secret. Lohengrin realized the man couldn’t resist gossip, even if it endangered him at times. “He’s no lover of day, not him. Why, they call him the ‘bat.’”
“Who does?”
The round lord shrugged.
“It’s an expression heard,” he said.
“Do you believe in what he’s doing?” Lohengrin suddenly demanded and watched the flabby face grow stern and dedicated. If it was acting, it was very effective and would account for the high position this man held; Lohengrin knew his martial prowess was not considered awe-inspiring.
“Naturally,” Howtlande declared firmly. “He is the greatest man in the world … as he has said himself.” No flicker of expression suggested anything one way or the other about his remarks. No great leader, Lohengrin accepted, could fail to have a few questionable advisors and instruments … Men like this probably accounted for the blunders he’d witnessed along the way …
Lohengrin nodded and headed for the steps. Howtlande followed for a few strides.
“Have you news?” he asked.
“Why is he angry?”
“Why isn't he?” A shrug. “Short supplies, objectives not taken … he expects perfection.” He nodded, frowning. “Also, he doesn’t like the smoke.” He tapped his chest, indenting the flesh under the gold-brocaded silks. “Lungs. Sometimes it makes him retch.”
Howtlande stopped at the head of the stairs as the other lord general descended.
“These are great days,” he called after him.
The smoke had diminished somewhat and the mists thinned toward midday. The sky remained stained almost black. Wista thought (in the brief glimpses he had) that it was worse in the rounded mountains to their right. He had seen flickers of flame crawling at the churning cloud bases there.
They were crossing a cindered field, through twisted, burned-out trees. The horse hooves stirred up choking black powder. “We all look like bloody Moors now,” Grontler had remarked, trying, ineffectually, to wipe away some of the charcoal dust from himself.
“We’re fucked close,” Grontler announced. “The ground is still stove-hot.”
Wista paid no attention. He had nothing to say. He rode like a doomed man. Miles and miles of charred death and these were minor, outlying blazes …
They passed a line of blackened foundations still smoking. He didn’t quite look at the burned stick skeletons that lay broken on the scorched stones. He didn’t have to look. He was overloaded. He needed no more sights or sounds … nothing … He refused even to think, just rode on and on and on, aware (as if awareness weren’t within him, but rather waiting at some juncture of his fate) that his moment was coming, aware that the unbearable immensity (that had overcome him beside the dying nun) would find an outlet through him like a pinhole in a dam that would drip, spatter, spray, and finally explode, bringing the whole mass down in a flood of pressure and stone … All he had to do was wait; and thinking or showing any reaction in the face of all this would be impertinence … Wait … He would come to Lohengrin in time. Lohengrin had seen to that. Had insisted on it …! Yes … that was somehow important, too … he had insisted…
They rode on, horse legs spuming the pitch dust as sledders sprayed snow …
Broaditch was afraid. They’d reached the foothills of the tangled, dense country he’d seen in his dreams or visions. It was just as pictured. His flesh tingled because this was the first nearly absolute proof. This cut him off from past certainties, even of hopelessness. There were laws, tides of time, and the world was a dreaming, a fabric woven and unstitched each sleep. He felt himself sweating in the chill as he accepted these things … What, then, was solid when the dreamer dreamed himself, too …? He took a shaky, deep breath as he recognized the waterfall spilling down a damp, dark cliff; recognized the massed pines that showed no ground, the dim outline of the general shape of this whole area, which resembled a giant mound raised by titan gardeners and set on the rolling plains. He’d never seen country quite like this in Britain. It rose before them, a seemingly impenetrable mass of rock and crosscut channels of rapid water and enknotted trees. It was harder to enter here than a fortress because there was no simple wall to scale, but an entire fractured, uneven, twisted, blocked landscape …
The dreams flashed back on him: he’d floated in the glowing air above the pulsing, shining heart of this country. For the first time he felt anxious to get in there because (though his legs were actually shaking) he now believed there was a meaning to it … He watched the mists and smoke shift the outlines, hint and cover … He was afraid, yes, but the thought of going back was unbearably flat and stale … There was a meaning, he was going to meet something … something, he suddenly thought, from the space between sleep and waking, something from neither world, and as his imagination tried to give it form (and failed to do more than stir vast, cavernous fears and draw immense, gaping faces that were not faces), he pushed himself forward a step, a single step …
“So now we’ll have to trek around,” Valit was complaining. “A fine lodestone you are, Broaditch.”
Irmree was sitting down, a thing she frequently did. She was panting faintly through parted lips.
“How can we profit by what we now have in this miserable wilderness?” Valit asked the air.
“We?” Broaditch commented. “You, lad, are welcome to all you gain thereby. Spare me a whoremaster’s offices.”
“What matter?” Valit shrugged. “Just words. Say I’m a Jew or a Moor, too, or a condemned Italian, and I care not so there be coin in my purse.”
“In any case, get your fortune back in tow, for our way leads straight on.”
Valit shook his head and spat.
“Turn me into a crow,” he recommended, “and I quibble not but follow straight … Or call upon your wizards and angels if you must.”
“Neither pimp nor wizard,” said Broaditch, starting to march, digging in his staff to additionally support his still shaky legs, wild salt-and-pepper beard riffling in the uneven breezes. “I go on.”
He couldn’t explain, he simply knew he now had to have the courage not to think or ask or fret or hesitate … above all, he had no doubt it would work. Nature had constantly been instructing him in this. Now would come the test of all those lessons, because if life had no inner intelligence, then dreams were broken, mad fragments of waking’s senseless accidents …
So he knew it would all be like leaping into the sea again, into the claws and fangs of those slashing reefs … he had to leap … as he’d been taught.
He didn’t have to look back to see Valit hesitate, then follow. That didn’t matter, either. He had a strange impression that something somehow watching him was relieved and pleased; but that might have been a level of himself, as much as anything outside. He wondered if there was ever anything outside … He knew, setting his feet on the first steep tier of heaped sharp stone, glancing up at the blackening folds of smoke breaking over the obscure hilltop, he knew that death waited at the end of this road.
Lohengrin tried to keep his outrage firm as he stormed down several levels of stairs, passing a pair of the black-armored mutes at every new turn. His hands were sweaty. It was dim and dank down here, and for all his confidence and the power his promotion had conferred, he felt flimsy, vulnerable. And he’d never actually seen Clinschor face to face. He wondered if Lord Master held these conferences through an eye hole in the wall …
He was admitted through an iron gate into a perfumed darkness (he chooses to live in dungeons) and his first impressions: a long stone table supporting three tree-trunk-sized candles with incongruously tiny wicks that faintly gleamed on several lords. He recognized the powerful Lord Gobble (a short, bent man wi
th a stiffened leg), but he stared past him, focusing on the middle-sized figure at the far end of the table, a hunched-over, large-headed, soft-featured man of more than middle age with two almost absurdly upcurling moustaches. His violently outstretched finger was pointing at a dim map on the table. All the others were bent forward, obviously straining to follow his point. Lohengrin wondered how they could see in the feeble light. He couldn’t believe this was the terrible Clinschor himself, the terror of nations and kings, the afflicted master wizard who penetrated beyond life and death, the irresistible voice … Then the eyes flared briefly, taking him in mid-rumbling speech. They struck Lohengrin as vacant, feline, depressed, and suited to the massive voice that was still saying: “ … with this map the gates of the final stronghold are open. The three routes, the only three known, untangle the maze. Our armies break the last resistance.” He slammed the fist of one large pale, restless hand into the soft palm of the other. Then the finger darted. “Then march here … here … and here … and they are trapped in the center … the fortress is ours!” The smoldering eyes flashed along the two lines of commanders. “No more error!” he boomed. “No more incompetence! Tomorrow will be hailed as historically the greatest day of all time. Heroes have returned from the past to shake the world again, to bring determination and wisdom to a hopeless, cowardly world, to bring fire from heaven …” Here he clenched his fist before him, eyes staring beyond them all, Lohengrin believed, into unguessed reaches and depths. The man held the room spellbound as titanic energy suddenly filled the stooped, unimpressive figure until he seemed a giant. Lohengrin felt he could lose himself in those eyes, as in staring into a starry night. As a boy he would stand on the battlements and watch the bright rust-red speck of the planet he didn’t yet know was Mars, stare and wonder at what he imagined was the eye of the night, a hole in heaven behind which fire burned. More than the Moon or Venus, he’d been fascinated by the red, burning gaze of it …
The Grail War Page 27
