Grail

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “Yes,” he murmured absently. Squinting his golden eyes against the glowing sky, Myrddin surveyed the long blue-black line. I observed that the wind, which had been at our backs through the day, had died down now, and the land was quiet—save for a small, distant rhythmic rumbling, like that of ocean waves pounding against cliffs.

  At last, the Wise Emrys said, “When we discussed your sojourn in Llyonesse, you said nothing about a forest. Why was that, Gwalchavad?”

  “Lord Emrys,” I said, turning my face towards him, “I mentioned no forest for the simple reason that there was no forest.”

  Lifting a hand to the squat stripe sitting thick and dusky on the far horizon, Myrddin replied, “There is a forest now.”

  “How can this be?” I wondered aloud; doubting him never occurred to me. “I did not think we had come so far out of our way. We must have wandered further astray in the fog than I imagined.”

  “No, Gwalchavad,” Myrddin said, “we have not wandered out of our way.” He turned and began walking back to camp, leaving me to ponder the more subtle implications of his words.

  Did he mean, I wondered, that the forest had grown up since I had last passed this way? Or that the forest was always there, but I had not seen it? Could I have ridden through a forest and never noticed a single tree?

  Either alternative was as unlikely as the other. Possibly, some bedevilment had blinded me to it, or caused me to forget. I decided to ask Peredur about this, and discover what he remembered.

  I found the young warrior helping raise the picket line for the night. As when in war, Arthur had commanded the horses to be picketed, rather than tethered, so they might be readied more quickly should need arise. I called him from his work. “Follow me. I have something to show you,” I said, leading him away.

  He fell into step beside me, and I asked, “Do you remember when we were here last time?”

  “I have been trying my best to forget.”

  “Well, I would ask if you recall passing through a forest during our sojourn in Llyonesse.”

  “Forest!” he exclaimed. “Why, the place is barren as a desert—as you very well know. If we had—” Realizing that I was in earnest, Peredur stopped and regarded me strangely. “Lord? Forgive me, but I thought you in jest. Why would you ask such a thing?”

  We gained the hilltop where Myrddin and I had just stood. There, I pointed to the bruise-colored line hugging the gently undulating southern horizon, and said, “See now! A forest where none was seen before.”

  Peredur gaped at the sight, glanced at me, and then returned his gaze to the tree line, visible now as a blue-black band below a swiftly fading twilight sky. “It might be clouds only.”

  “The Emrys is in no doubt,” I replied. “Trees—not clouds.”

  The young man’s face squirmed into a frown. “Myrddin cannot be faulted, I suppose,” he allowed reluctantly. “It must be that we strayed far from the trail when we rode in the fog.”

  His tone did nothing to quell my suspicions, but I agreed and we returned to camp and helped finish the picket by tying horses to the central line, before hurrying to one of the four large fires that had been lit to keep us warm through the night. There was a stew of salt pork, black beans, and bread for our supper: bland-tasting mush, but hot and substantial after a cold day in the saddle. When the meal was finished, some of the warriors tried to get Myrddin to sing again, but he would not. He said a sword is made dull by dragging it out all the time, and he wanted a keen blade when next he reached for it.

  So we huddled near the fire and talked and dozed instead, and night tightened its grip on us. One by one, the Cymbrogi succumbed to the all-pervasive silence of the blighted land. We wrapped ourselves in our cloaks, closed our eyes, and tried to sleep. Sometime during the night, the wind rose again, this time gusting from the south, colder. I tasted snow on the icy air, and edged closer to the fire.

  We awoke to a hard frost and wind like a knife cutting through our cloaks. There was no snow, but a low gray sky spat dry sleet on us, making for a miserable slog as we began the day. We broke fast, and started out, only to halt again as we crested the first hill.

  Myrddin flung out his hand, and Arthur pulled hard on the reins; his mount reared. The company stopped behind us, alert to danger. I heard the dull ring of weapons being readied. The Emrys glanced over his shoulder and motioned me to draw alongside.

  I was beside the king and Myrddin in an instant, and saw what had brought them up short. The forest, last seen as a thick line on the far southern horizon, now rose directly before us—a dense growth of hornbeam, elm, and oak standing just across the valley.

  Astonished beyond words, I stared at the wood as if never having seen a tree before. There was, so far as I could determine, nothing at all to suggest that the trees I saw before me were not what they appeared: solid and thick and, like all trees everywhere, deeply rooted to their places through years of slow, inexorable growth.

  Gazing in disbelief at the dense woodland, I slowly became aware of a strange, unsettling sound. I think the sound had been there from the first, but I noticed it only after the first shock of seeing the trees had passed. Nor was I the only one to hear it.

  “What is that?” asked Arthur, his voice low. He half turned his head, but his eyes did not leave the dark wood for a moment. “It sounds like teeth clicking.”

  Truly, it did; it was the sound of many teeth, large and small, gnashing against one another—not fiercely, but softly, almost gently, in a low, gabbled muttering.

  Arthur’s eyes swept left and right along the stout line of trees for any break in the wood. The line met us as a timber wall, and there was no breach to be seen anywhere along its thick-grown length save one only: directly ahead, a gap opened between the close-grown trees.

  The trail we pursued led straight into the heart of that dark wood. What is more, the mist was rising again; it was already filling the valley between us and the wood’s edge.

  Bedwyr and Cador reined up beside us then. Having observed the forest from their rearward places, they now joined us to learn what the king and his Wise Counselor made of it. “Unless it was hidden by mist,” Bedwyr declared, “I cannot think how it has come to be here otherwise.”

  “Perhaps,” Cador suggested, “like the warriors in your story, Myrddin, we have slept a thousand years, and the wood has grown up around us.”

  Bedwyr frowned at Cador’s frivolity, and reproached him with an indignant grunt. But Myrddin said, “In this place, that is as sound an explanation as any other.”

  “If that is what passes for reason,” Bedwyr said darkly, “then folly is king, and madness reigns.”

  “A wall before us, a wall behind. There is but one way through,” Arthur said, “and there is no turning back.”

  So saying, he raised his hand and signaled the column to move on. I returned to my place behind Myrddin. “Well,” I said to Rhys as we urged our horses forward once more, “we are going in.”

  “Was there ever any question?”

  “No,” I answered. “Alia jacta est.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “ ‘The die is cast,’ ” I told him. “It is something old Caesar once said.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My father used to say it—I never knew why. But lately, I begin to think I know what he meant.”

  We crossed the valley and entered the wood in silence. No one spoke, and all kept a keen eye for any sign of attack, though many, I noticed, cast a last glance at the sky before the intertwining branches closed overhead. It was like entering a tomb—so close and dark and silent was the unchancy wood. The trail narrowed as it passed among the broad boles of the trees, but rather than ride single file, the men urged their horses together and rode shoulder to shoulder and flank to flank.

  Like all the others, I cast a longing glance behind me as we entered the wood and saw the same look of sick apprehension on one face after another. But there was nothing for it. We clutc
hed our weapons more tightly and hunched lower in the saddle as if to escape notice of the tight-crowded trees.

  Keeping my eyes on Myrddin and Arthur ahead of me, I remained alert to the sounds around me, but there was little to hear; a thick mat of pine needles cushioned the horses’ hooves, and the men made no sound at all. Neither was any birdsong heard—nothing, in fact, but the incessant clicking, and the hush of muffled breath passing into the dank, dark air.

  As to the ceaseless clicking and clicking and clicking, after a time I discovered what created that unsettling sound: the wind twitching the bare upper branches. Fitful and gusty, the wind did not penetrate the forest at all, but continually mumbled and fretted overhead, stirring uneasily in the high treetops and making the thin branches quiver. So close were these limbs and so entangled, they chattered against one another in endless motion. Even this, however, did not strike the ear with any vigor, but reached us as a faint muttering falling from high above, sinking down and down into the soft forest floor below.

  The forest swallowed everything that came into it—sunlight and wind, and now the Pendragon and his warband. Everyone who comes into a woodland wild feels something of this oppressive enclosing; it is what causes a traveler to skirt the shadows and stay to the trail, proceeding with wary caution. What is more, this uncanny sensation seemed to increase with every step deeper into the wood until it took on an almost suffocating aspect, becoming a thing of towering proximity and ponderous weight.

  We came upon a stream—little more than a muddy rivulet dividing the trail—and stopped to water the horses, taking it in turn by twos, and then moving on to allow those behind to get at the water. We rode a fair way farther, whereupon Arthur halted the columns, turned his horse, and sat looking down the long double line of warriors. Without a word, Myrddin rode down the center, passing between the warriors.

  “What do you see, lord?” I asked, turning in the saddle to learn what held his attention.

  “It is what I am not seeing that causes me concern,” the king replied, still gazing back along the trail.

  The trees along each side and the branches thickly interwoven above made of our trail a shadowy tunnel, like the entry shaft of a cave or mine. The Cymbrogi, riding close to one another, sat their horses, awaiting the call to move on. Owing to the dimness of the light and the narrowness of the trail, I could not see past more than twelve or fifteen riders as I looked down the line. Yet I could discern nothing amiss.

  I was about to say as much when Myrddin shouted something and came pounding back along the trail to join us.

  “Well?” said the king.

  “I cannot see them,” Myrddin replied. “They should have rejoined us by now.”

  Only then did I realize what they were talking about. The fifteen or so pairs that I saw behind us were, indeed, all that remained of the long double column. The others were not lost to the shadows—they were gone completely. Obviously, we had become separated from the rest of the warhost. The warband led by Bedwyr and Cador had vanished.

  “Lord, allow me to ride back and find out what has happened,” I volunteered. “No doubt meet them before I have gone a hundred paces.”

  “Very well,” Arthur agreed, “but take Rhys with you—let him signal us when you have reached them. We will wait for you here.”

  I returned to my horse and informed Rhys of the king’s command as I swung into the saddle. We passed down the line of warriors and back along the trail. I counted thirteen pair: twenty-six warriors out of fifty, I thought, and wondered what had become of the rest. Could twenty-four mounted warriors simply disappear?

  Once past the last of the Cymbrogi, we urged our mounts to speed and raced along the close-grown track. When, after a fair ride, we still caught no sight of the stragglers, I halted. “We should have seen them by now,” Rhys said as he reined up beside me. “What could have happened to them?”

  “Until we find them, we only waste our breath asking such questions,” I pointed out. In Llyonesse, anything might happen, I thought, but kept the thought to myself.

  “Well, what do you suggest, O Head of Wisdom?” Rhys gave me a sour frown.

  “Either we keep riding until we find them, or we go back,” I suggested, and Rhys rolled his eyes to show how impressed he was with my reckoning. “Which is it to be?”

  Before he could answer, there arose on the path behind us the strangest sound I have ever heard. If you were to imagine the sound of a bull stag belling out his rage as a pack of baying hounds raced in for the kill—imagine that, and then increase it tenfold and add to it the roar of a stream in full spate, and you will have some small idea of the sound that broke upon us as a single blast, like that loosed from a horn.

  A seething, restless silence reclaimed the trail. The horses shied and tried to bolt, but we held them tight. In a few moments, the sound came again, closer. The bare-limbed trees quivered, and I felt the dull tremble of the earth in the pit of my stomach. Whatever made that sound was coming our way, and swiftly.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The next sound I heard was the sharp slap of leather against the withers of Rhys’ mount as he wheeled the frightened animal and gave it leave to fly—nor was I slow to follow, pausing only long enough to cast a fleeting backward glance. I saw nothing but the shadow-crowded path and darkness beyond. Even so, the shudder of the trees told me that the thing was charging towards us with speed.

  I gave my mount its head, and a heartbeat later, I was racing along the forest trail, trying to catch Rhys.

  It took us longer to reach our waiting companions than I expected, and I feared we had somehow lost king and Cymbrogi along with all the rest. But then Rhys slowed and I saw, just beyond him, two horses in the track ahead. The Cymbrogi had dismounted to rest the horses while awaiting our return. They called out to us, asking what we had discovered, but we did not stop until we had rejoined Myrddin and Arthur.

  Rhys slid from the saddle before his horse had come to a halt. Arthur and Myrddin had risen to their feet, the question already on their faces. “We did not find them, lord,” Rhys was saying as I dismounted.

  “Then what—” began the king.

  Before he could say more, the creature behind us loosed its bone-rattling cry. The forest trembled around us and the horses began rearing and neighing. The waiting warriors leapt to their mounts, stretched for their dangling reins, and retrieved spears from beneath their saddles.

  Arthur, sword in hand, ordered the battle line and, an instant later, we were armed and ready to face whatever came our way. The trail was too narrow for horses to maneuver, so Arthur ordered the fight on foot. “It will come at us on the trail,” the king cried, his voice taking on the vigor of command. “Let it come! Open a way before it—make a path—two men on each side. Let it come in—then close on it from either side.”

  It was a desperate tactic, borrowed from the hunt, most often used when a man finds himself unhorsed during the chase. Arthur established himself at the forefront of the line. Myrddin stood to his right, with Rhys and me to his left. The Cymbrogi led the horses to safety well up the trail, and then quickly filled in behind us in ranks four across.

  We stared into the gloom, tree limbs quivering on either side and overhead. I could feel the trembling of the ground as the shudders passed up through the earth and into my feet and legs. A hundred horses pounding hard down the path could not drum the earth so. What could it be?

  The unnerving cry thundered again. Closer. The entire forest seemed to ripple like a wave. The unnatural sound sent a cold flash of fear snaking through the ranks.

  The drumming thud in the ground grew louder. The Cymbrogi stood gripping their spears in silence, staring hard into the gloom ahead.

  The roar sounded again. Closer still: an unearthly howl that pierced to the heart. Cold, sick dread spread through me and the wood seemed to undulate; a black mist gathered before my eyes as the ground shook with the pounding of unseen hooves.

  I tightened my grip on my sp
ear and shook my head to clear it, thinking, The thing must be nearly on top of us now…but where is it?

  And then I saw, looming out of the murk of shadows, the form of a beast: a great dark mass racing with impossible speed directly towards us. God help us, it was enormous!

  Out of the shadows it came. I heard several stifled cries behind me, and others gasped and muttered hasty prayers.

  Curiously, the creature had no substance, no solidity. Even as it swept swiftly nearer, I could get no clear notion of its appearance. The thing seemed nothing but shadow and motion. Indeed, I could see the dimly quivering shapes of trees and branches through it.

  And then it was upon us. The ground heaved beneath our feet, and I smelled the rank scent of animal filth. But though we stood steadfast with our spears at the ready, there was nothing substantial to fight.

  The shadowshape charged through our midst and I received the distinct impression of a massive beast with the sharp spine and high-humped shoulder of a boar, its foul hair long and flowing in matted shreds like the tatters of a rotten cloak. I imagined two huge yellow eyes glaring balefully out from a flattened piglike face, beneath which bulged a massive jaw from which two great, curved brown tusks jutted in upward-sweeping arcs like a pair of barley scythes. Short, powerful, stumplike legs pummeled the earth, driving the creature forward on the cloven hooves of a stag.

  This, as I say, was merely an impression, an image that burned itself into my mind. There was no actual creature, nothing corporeal at all—just a dark-gathered mist of churning shadow and motion.

  Some of the warriors let slip their weapons, and one or two dropped to their knees.