Now lord general Lohengrin was fuming. He leaned out from his horse as it cantered, whooshing dead leaves as smoke puffed between them, alternately dimming and revealing their shapes to one another.
“Be still, weakling!” he yelled. “My father is a fool!” Then they both bent their heads against the smoke and coughed and wiped at their burning eyes. “I serve a man … a man with a holy passion who speaks for the gods themselves!”
“Gods? What heathen …”
“Be still!” Lohengrin’s voice was pitched ice-deadly. “We are unleashing the greatest powers and only the worthy will survive these days. This hour is the harrowing of the gods and the winnowing of the earth!” He had just quoted Clinschor without realizing it. He took them for his own words. Wista just stared at him now, dizzy, stunned, blinking, watching the stained hand gesture, hooking its fingers at the thickening air … He stared in silence as they rode in the massed, trampling, pounding van of the army. The wind was building up. It sucked and twisted and billowed the smoke. They all had to cover their faces now. Lohengrin clapped on his helmet.
Finally Wista cried out, had to: “Do you mean to destroy everything?!” he said over the wind, din of the troops, and the gradually mounting fire roar coming on from the side and behind. “Answer me!” he yelled.
They were a little apart from the others and the thickening clouds isolated them.
Wista wasn’t thinking now. His heart kept racing. His head jerked slightly, uncontrollably. He was giddy, trembling. He somehow knew if he thought at all he’d fall raving or weeping or flee without direction.
“Answer me, you bastard!” his voice shouted again.
He didn’t hear the muffled reply.
What can I do? What will I do? What must I do?
He nervously, unconsciously, drew his sword, seeing only the tube of black, slitted, faceless helmet turned toward him. His mouth was dry. He squinted into the smoke.
What? he asked himself.
“What?” he said without knowing it.
“You have no time for foolishness,” Lohengrin bellowed, snapping the sooty visor open. “I give you …” — he coughed — “ … I give you this chance to join us …” — coughed — “ … I’ll bring you to him after the battle’s done.” He coughed and spat violently. Over the crackling explosions of flames there was now a roaring and unmistakable clashing that meant the enemy was engaged at last. “I must hasten,” Lohengrin said. “I have a fondness for you, lad, I …”
Wista thought: No! No! No! — as if the last remark was more than he could bear, so he was crying, too, and choking, feeling his own outpouring of affection and hate and madness, too, tears streaming into the soot and gagging smoke as he struck, rising in the long stirrups, flailing the blade down as he’d been trained, seeing the helmet’s dark metal spark and split, just perceiving a blurring as the knight rocked and seemed to shift himself but never saw the draw and automatic, irresistible counterstroke, that, at the last fraction, Lohengrin tried to check and twist into the flat of the blade, and then came a burst of pure white light, and a deep, spinning blackness yawned all around as his sense scattered and fluttered away … He never saw his teacher, bloody sword hanging down, staring through the blinding clouds, or heard him crying out: “Wista …! I cared for you …! I cared …”
Parsival drove his horse out of the press, over the heaps of struggling men that were jamming up between the trees into a solid wall of flesh, every mad effort wedging them tighter until in places (in the filling and emptying billows) they were packed motionless except for raving heads and outstretched, clutching, waving arms as those who tried to clamber over were gripped and held and drawn back to the swelling heap as the terrible heat pressed closer …
He barely struggled free: dying, frenzied men tried to hold onto the horse and his legs in an effort to be drawn along, and he’d had to slash himself free. He’d shut his eyes to do it. He was never going to simply surrender again.
He’d come out on a trail that wound up through the mounting hills. “The road you want always rises,” he remembered, with almost a smile …
Well, and this be not right, there'll be no second way …
Behind the mass of fumes, the flames were flooding on and he hummed loudly to partly overcome the sound when they reached the tens of thousands of trapped men … hummed, and pushed on along the twisting way … He’d caught the first massed scream that become one voice and the sputtering bursting that sounded like a fat-rich boar on the roasting coals … He could not drown out the stinking wind that followed him or check the fires leaping ahead … saw blackened bird bodies that had rained down everywhere … was aware that virtually no one could be in front of him, just bare yards from the waves of fire, faint from the incredible heat …
He struggled around a bend, another, swaying in the saddle. There was no hope of distancing it in these thickets. A sheet of flame crossed before him. He hesitated, but there was no turning back. He spurred the near-hysterical animal straight in and through a flash of terrible heat, and half-roasted in his hot steel, he wobbled on the narrow, torturous path. Weariness hit him like a maul blow. He held on to the laboring beast at the edge of falling with each doubling and bump … Blinding flashes ripped through the clouds that he thought were his mind … He felt the invisible forces close to him, warring themselves, and he thought, vaguely, spinning, if his side lost, then the claws would get him … because he couldn’t resist that now … his eyes were sealed shut and swollen … Though he was a drained and battered shell of himself the power still flowed through him, and, able to see merely shadows with his right eye and nothing with his left, he was having flashes in color on that dream-like level: suddenly the landscape and sky would swell into shattering brightness, pulsing, rainbowed, and he seemed to see dark, fearful, clawed limbs and gaped-mouth shapes entangled with what appeared to be knights wearing crusted diamonds for armor, fluid, slashing, spearing, blocking … then smoke and flame would close in … another brilliant fragment … then the choking present, where his armor seared wherever it touched his flesh and scorched his undergarments …
Broaditch was just leading the other two around another serpentine bend and thinking: it's over. And he cocked the flimsy spear.
“What? What?” Valit demanded.
“Look,” Broaditch said, pointing at the three armed and armored men standing in the narrow road ahead. The way was walled on the outside here (the cliff face to their left) and the warriors were shoulder to shoulder. He was puzzled, wondering how they could move freely enough to fight.
“What?” Valit repeated. Irmree whimpered.
“There, you ass!” Broaditch shout-whispered.
“Fog and smoke?”
Which was how Broaditch discovered his eyes were somewhat changed. He could see farther into the surrounding, irritating obscurity than before.
A few steps on and Valit froze, but by now Broaditch wasn’t worried. He went up to the men. All wore the dove crest; all were dead, faces netted with blood within smashed helmets. They’d been propped up like this to block the way. It must have been the work of the man behind. Of course, one or more of these might have been his companions …
As he tugged them loose to topple, banging, onto the stony surface, he realized one had been looking the other way, so there was no direction intended to their facing.
“What is?” Irmree asked fearfully, clinging to Valit, who was hardly a secure support at this point. “What is?”
“Shut yer hole!” that gentleman snapped nervously.
They went on, climbing steeply now. Broaditch was certain the knight was following and paused to cock his ears from time to time, but it was unlikely that, unless he stripped off his metal clothes, he could maintain their pace.
The climb stayed steep and the stones slid underfoot. That plus the thickening smoke had them all wobbling and puffing. Near the top Valit planted himself behind the woman and shoved as his partner tugged her arm from above while she muttered s
matterings of several languages. Broaditch recognized the German, French, and English, but others were obscure.
“Pull, God curse and damn!” Valit fumed and gasped. “If she falls, I’ll be undone …”
“That’s the price …” Broaditch grunted, heaving her up to fairly level ground near the crown of the hill. “ … the price, I say, of bearing your worldly fortune … fortune with you everywhere.”
He leaned his elbows on the wall, and shielding his eyes with his palms, stared into the roiling blankness: through vague rifts and rippings he partially made out an immense, fuming, swelling, twisting pillar of dark smoke miles and miles in width, striking his fancy as a gigantic being advancing on flame feet, towering overhead, gesturing with outstretched black and glowing arms, spitting meteoric sparks, fantastic torso belted by an astonishing play of lightning, searing, flailing as the torrent of up-pouring heat sucked a world-shaking storm from the tortured atmosphere. Rain and hail seethed down and terrific clouds of steam blasted from the inferno’s base and he could hear the thunder’s distant rattling rumble over the oceanic roaring and hissing of the marching miles of fire … Then, as the view shifted with the near clouds, he caught a glimpse of the castle (he half-turned away, expecting a blast of intolerable light), the tall, graceful towers no more than a straight mile down the ridge-slope. It looked like a long, circling walk along the steep sides from here, but there it was! It was real … real …
Well, Broaditch, he assured himself, now you'll need faith, magic … everything …
He gripped the spear. Perhaps he held the key to the gate. This weapon obviously meant something … His hearing seemed keener, too. He was certain he heard footsteps, clinkings, back down the twisting, walled-in trail.
Irmree was sitting down again, back to the wall, which was about five fee) high on the average.
“Get your fortune up, boy,” Broaditch commanded, “unless you care to wait for that gentleman behind us.”
“There’s always something unpleasant behind us,” Valit complained. He poked Irmree in the side with his foot.
“Ne,” she said. ‘We.”
“Come on, you foreign sow,” insisted her would-be pimp. “Broaditch, you gather trouble like a fishnet fish! Why did you steal that bastard’s spear? You’re mad!” He shook his head violently. “You’re a cracked pot … Rise, damn it!” He kicked her and she cursed him in some language. “Why don’t you leave the damned thing here and let him find it and …” He kicked again and she slammed a meaty fist into his groin. He gasped, eyes popping, staggered back, doubled over.
“You have her,” Broaditch said cryptically. “I have the spear. Let’s hope the one proves as valuable as the other.”
“Stay here, then!” Valit cried, and still doubled forward, he started to hobble down the twisting trail past where the wall abruptly ended.
Broaditch wasn’t surprised when the bulky woman heaved herself up and, adjusting her long, sooty braids waddled quickly after the young man.
“Vait,” she called. “Vait … I am come, messire … Vait …”
Mary, Joseph, and the nose of St. Alman, be this love?
He grinned and followed after, spear across his shoulder.
Instead of the expected impact of the baking, sooty earth, Alienor felt a shock (she didn’t know was cold) and suspension, then was spluttering for air, kneeling, then going with the stream’s strong pull, seeing the silhouette of Lampic holding Torky, plunging in himself, just as the sheeting, exploding fire arched over and closed down all around and she had to keep ducking her own and Tikla’s head to keep their faces from roasting as the healing safety of the water bore them on through the center of the inferno, as if floating in a magical spell … on … until, tumbling under a stone bridge that zipped overhead (she wondered fleetingly if it would end with them dashed to death against rocks), they slowed steadily (still as by magic) and found themselves in a wide pool beyond the limits of the flames as the country opened up into rolling fields and stone walls … They struggled out through a tangle of lily pads and muddy roots until they stood on the swampy bank and looked across at the farthest edge of raging destruction in the shadow of the miles of towering black clouds. Looking the other way beyond the dark boiling that stretched overhead, beyond the advancing layers of gray, flat-bottomed rain clouds blowing from the south, she saw, with a shock of disbelief, a stunning splendor that dropped her jaw slightly in weakened awe: a rim, a pure wash of greenish-blue that at first she didn’t recognize as being simply unstained sky …
She was still rapt when tall Lampic, holding Torky, struggled, all angles, from the water and fell drenched, burned, half-drowned, to his weary knees and just sucked breath after breath after breath …
Wista’s blow had stunned Lohengrin and his left eye’s vision seemed set in a blur for the time being. Through all his determination and mission and demands of command (which had been greatly reduced by these impossible conditions), he felt sick at heart.
The silly ass, he kept reiterating, why did he seek death …? The silly ass … why did he hate me so … ?
These thoughts were unusual for him, but he’d believed he would convince the squire, teach him, and had actually looked forward to the disputes and satisfactions of the process …
“Where’s the master?” he roared at a knight bearing the standard of the inner circle of command: white jaws on red and black background. He felt a slow trickle of blood down his neck.
I taught him to strike hard, he thought. I taught him that …
The knight with the banner pointed.
“Just ahead!” he yelled over the constant roar.
And a minute later he saw it: A close-packed mass of horsemen tearing through the hot clouds and the fairly open field, a dim wall of trees just beyond, rising, and the huge, black, iron wagon shaped (he thought) like a melon, drawn by three teams of magnificent armored horses, wide wheels grinding into the earth. The only opening in the curving sides were three thin-grated slits spaced around the circumference. Three armored men rode on top, one driving. Even under the soot, he made out the silver trim of the elite guard of mutes. Lohengrin had yet to discover where those men came from …
A dozen more immediately surrounded the wheeled sphere. He called to the nearest: “Where’s Lord Clinschor?”
The mute turned his fang-faced helmet to Lohengrin and pointed to the rolling fortress, grunting tonguelessly.
Delightful gentleman, Lohengrin commented and wondered what protocol demanded here: Did he shout? Poke his hand into the slits? Bang on the sides? He doubted the wisdom of that. He’d already learned that all the other servants of Clinschor, whatever their rank, were extremely circumspect around these devil-masked warriors.
He settled on riding close and calling out.
“Lohengrin,” came the ringing bass rumble from within, “ride close here.”
“You sent for me, my lord?” Lohengrin said to the slit.
“I want you with me.”
“But should I not stay with my men until the battle …”
“The battle is won,” Clinschor interrupted. “I need you at the castle of the Grail.”
Lohengrin was still incredulous.
“But is this real, this Grail?” he shouted over the general din that Clinschor's steel-muffled voice had no difficulty overriding. “What is it?”
“Time enough for that.”
They were close to the Grail forest now. Through a space in the clouds, masses of men were breaking like a dark surf over the rocks and rills and into the trees. Flames sprouted everywhere and sparks hissed overhead like, he thought, arrows of hell …
A massive iron door swung suddenly open and Lohengrin blinked his good eye, startled by a flash of concentrated plushness: glowing ruby-covered lanterns, rich, deep rugs set off by festooned silk hangings, a gleaming black table with ivory legs, and then a shadowy Nubian servant in Oriental regalia holding the door, the master himself seated at the table in his colorless robes.
/> The black man extended an arm as thick with muscle as a normal man’s leg and helped Lohengrin lean from his saddle into the startling interior.
Inside the floor rocked and banged less than he expected. He unscrewed his helmet, looking around. Mechanics or magic? he wondered in passing.
Clinschor was facing a barred slit, talking to a rider (Lohengrin could just see) out in the smoky, flame-shot world. It was as hushed in there, he thought, as in a chapel. It seemed ironically fitting. Through the slit the world seemed strangely distant, he reflected, like a moving painting. He heard the muffled voice of the messenger from out there, but found himself engrossed in the intricate designs on the walls: golden scrolls depicting peaceful, fantastic scenes in which naked men and woman floated among puffy clouds and gigantic flowers. There were astonishingly rich and fresh perfumes in this inner air. The smoke outside was barely noticeable.
He found himself sitting down on the gently yielding rug, unbidden. He was more weary than he realized. He distantly heard Clinschor’s conversation. The other openings were all sealed, though he didn’t notice that at first.
“ … but, master …” — the man outside was shouting, though the sound came through as a bare murmur — “ … most of the army is trapped by the fire!”
“Fate is fate,” Clinschor snapped impatiently. “These are the risks of any great enterprise. Has the enemy been crushed?”
“Aye, master,” came the reply, and Lohengrin found himself vaguely interested. He studied Clinschor, sitting by the narrow opening, arms folded across his chest, head bent forward meditatively, long, large, pale fingers restlessly opening and closing.
“Are any left to oppose us?” he demanded, with a certain redundancy, Lohengrin noted, as if he wanted to re-experience the pleasure of hearing it again, although it didn’t appear to satisfy him.
The Grail War Page 30
