The nameless knight had forced a way to the path and was holding the last roll of high ground before the village, but he realized men had already slipped around him through the bush and willow even before he heard the screams and shouts among the huts.
The moon was just lifting through the hill treetops and he saw vague figures all around him. None seemed too anxious to close altogether but he was panting now, sweat flooding over his face, and his limbs felt swollen and heavy. The spearmen kept darting up, thrusting and leaping back from his vicious counterstrokes. Each effort drained him perceptibly. He moved towards the huts, blocking and shifting. A squat shape hunched too close and, an instant slow in getting back, was clipped by just the swordtip in the face; gestured; lurched; bawled and fell and vanished as though into the earth’s deeper darkness. The men around him were just hints and glints, stirring, shifting as he half ran up the slight slope towards what (through the sweat-blurring of his sight) seemed warring beings of flame and darkness.
Is this magic here before me?
And the word was a shock: something he knew and didn’t know.
There are holes in the world, his mind said, and magic is a hole in the world …
He slashed … then whacked a furious spear aside. Closer, saw the huts were aflame and a mad tangle of shadows flew around the men holding the torches: women, children fleeing, falling in the wild light and then he was (panting and wobbling) near the barn and saw the big woman, two teenage boys and others, old people (in the ruddy, flaring torchlight) crouching around the mound of potatoes, makeshift weapons poised in despair, fury and something like embarrassment too: an old man with a scimitar (brought from God-knew-where), a boy with an oversize mace … the raiders gathered at the door to charge inside. One of them was down, sitting, holding his wounded midsection. A woman sprawled half out the door, face lost in blood and shadow.
He turned as a fully armored knight strode with drawn sword out of a blazing hut in a rush of sparks and fire-flashing, seeming to draw the flames behind him a moment as he headed straight over, businesslike, holding a smallish, round shield casually.
“Here’s the knight!” a spearman was shouting, pointing him out to the newcomer, who tugged his red-reflecting vizor closed and came on quickly now. The rest waited as the two armored men closed, circling briefly, and the nameless one thought:
This is a new manner of fellow … And then struck, and his terrific, bone-wrenching cut was deflected by the shield and the air was ripped by the percussive counter. Over his opponent’s shoulder he glimpsed fragments of the scene in the barn, the flurry and screaming, raging, a woman falling into the potatoes, dress and limbs flopping like a dropped doll, blood spattering over the food, the raider keeping his spear in her chest, still rushing, crashing into the mound himself, spilling the bloody lumps like a sack of stones everywhere underfoot, combatants, victims, everyone skidding, going up and over …
He ducked away from the knight’s next cut, legs wobbling a little, lungs raw with each sucked breath. Sensed, heard someone moving behind him, tried to twist around but knew it was too late and without even surprise felt a titanic weight bang over his head and a white light flared everywhere and his sight and mind went supernaturally clear in the shock of it and he recorded every face and every detail of the scene: the people flailing, tumbling and bleeding and screaming, rolling on the potatoes, clinging and clutching like dancers at a mad feast, reeling singly and in locked groups and pairs around and around as panic and hate kept them spinning, reaching for passing walls, partners and enemies, gripping forever-failing support as flames burst out all over and in blind escape now dragged one another back in a welter of fire, blood and shadow … Then something sharp ground in his skull and brain and he screamed wildly, clutching at his head as all light winked out and he knew his true name and was trying to shout it out within the silent blackness that was himself.
X
Parsival was still fuming, walking rapidly around a curve in the passageway, unconsciously turning right at the next crossing, thinking:
I’ve been fates fool for forty years and I won’t be tricked into anything again … never … no witchcraft or empty praying … I’ve seen all the visions I need to see and I have heard if you deny it, it all goes away like a dreaming … which way here?
He faced a forking. High above a line of slit windows streamed whitish daylight that was swallowed by the general dimness. Dark pennants hung unstirring, obscure.
He looked left, then right. Both passages gaped blank and dark.
“You bastards!” he abruptly raged aloud, gritting his teeth. “May you lick the Devil’s hind in hell!”
Thinking in fury:
More tricks! To trick me into what this time? Sarcastic: “Why take the road that always rises, boy.” Oh, yes. I heard that nonsense before, you mystical bastards! No more empty journeys warring with ghosts and unwitting men …
“I fought your fucked wars for you, you sons-of-bitches!” he shouted. The muffled echoes rattled dully back.
Raging again he stormed at the right, checked himself, and plunged into the leftward way.
The Devil’s way is left, I hope, he snarled to himself. I’ve had enough of what they say God’s was …
The passage dipped … rose … then he was in a huge, round hall, windowless, lit by man-tall candles set around the wall. He hesitated, looking up, squinting. There was a gigantic mural composed like a wheel around the entire ceiling in equal parts lit and dim. There was what seemed a flowering garden outside a little castle, a bar of dark blotting part of the scene where a woman stood among flowers. She had long hair and large, shining eyes that reminded him of someone. In the next lit panel a deer was fleeing, a spear angled into the chest … darkness … then death, as a skeleton, jousting with a knight. He looked back at the woman: yes, he thought, it somehow resembled her … his mother … the eyes at least.
Dear God, he said to himself, I haven’t thought of her in so long …
He looked elsewhere on the incredibly detailed picture: A great battle, tantalizingly at the edge of a shadowy area where a knight in what seemed tattered gear was moving through dense forest, holding something in his hands that appeared to shine like a jewel …
I could think this all meant just for me … perhaps all men could …
He pulled away and crossed the hall to the narrow door at the far end. Pushed it open, expecting anything (except “anything” would have to be thinner than his shoulders’ width to get through there) and was dazzled by a hot burst of sunlight. Blinking, he twisted sidewise through the doorway.
He found himself in another walled garden, this one very large, outside the monastery proper, with walks and tall trees. It seemed deserted. There was such a flood of sweetness he felt dizzy. Banks, no, waves of flowers swayed in an unbroken glow everywhere up to the shadows of the ancient, massive oaks that all but covered the high outer walls.
He waded knee-deep through the incredible sea of color and scent, rich with bees and butterflies. He paused at a delicate stream that flowed blue over pure white stones, glittering like cut crystal. He stooped and drank from his hands. The water was cool and tasted of sunshine and slow green earth. The breeze was a vague whisper and fingered his long, blond-gray hair. He took a full, lush breath and sat down … then reclined, looking at eye level across the shimmering field.
I’ll climb the wall, he thought idly. It’ll be simple. He didn’t move. In a little while … First a little rest …
He lay back and shaded his eyes with his arm. The sun was always so much hotter when you were prone. He let the drowsy warmth sink into his flesh … drifted with the coils of laden breeze …
No, his mind said, this is a trick too … this … is … is butterfly bread and God’s forgetting … and then with a whooshing of leaves and shaking light the trees were explaining things to him, laying the whole problem out with the help of thin pencils of sunlight, sketching on the sweet grass … he understood he’d fallen throu
gh the inner hole in himself guarded by dreams and the sun kept him awake within his sleep, and then she was there in a radiance soft but intense as daylight, and he was absorbed in watching each shifting, gleaming part of her, each slight breath of movement that stained the iridescent atmosphere; her body clothed and bathed in unending, unrepeating color, her face a sweetness beyond expression, and he feared to move his mind at all and perhaps disrupt the ineffable unfolding of that silent womanlight …
And thought said:
No … No … You cannot merely watch like this … you’ll be lost …
He was amazed at how conscious he actually still was. He felt that if he opened his eyes the vision and field would both be there.
No, no, not just watch!
Because he sensed he would be absorbed forever in watching, that he’d sink and drift passively away into eternities of silent, soft beauties. He had to do something with this or be lost, drained away … What? … What? … He tried to somehow get closer to her, feel her … wordlessly speak … wavered there, rising and falling over the blank depths of sleep …
Is this my mother too? Is this my own heart’s image? Is this holy? He felt a golden rush of joy suddenly. Is this flowering from me? He asked the tree voices. Felt the ecstasy as the sun wrote answers on the field. He couldn’t read it. Strained but couldn’t read … Was trying to wake up now and the tender, feathery being of purest flame was gone and he was thinking as he struggled back:
Do things do things …
He sat up sweaty, shocked in the sea of blossoms. Stood up, rubbing his face and eyes. Swayed a little. Then he was wading across the field through the cool, fragrant shade towards the high, white garden wall.
I’m not fighting everybody’s battles, I’m going to put my life together … I don’t need visions … I’m going to find my child and try to show him something …
He touched the wall with one hand, absently, as if surprised to find it solid and sun-heated.
I need a woman too again … I never really loved anyone enough …
He locked his fingers and toes and began climbing, and on top he looked back at the odd monastery, which seemed deserted from here: empty fields, no smoke from any chimney. It looked totally abandoned.
He shrugged. More of their tricks, perhaps. Or it meant nothing. He really didn’t care.
He swung over and dropped a body length into the weedy outer field.
Let it be, he told himself. Because he was going to live his own way, let them fill the world with visions, portents and all mysterious, vast significances …
He strode away and didn’t look back again.
I’m going to put my life together …
XI
The pain in the amnesiac knight’s head was so intense (as if beyond mere feeling) he found he could stare right through it. He blinked at the morning light. The pain leaped a little each time the world shook and then he looked around, saw the trees passing slowly and unevenly through the hazy heat … saw soldiers … women … boys and girls … blinked at the long, rabbitlike mule ears for a moment before realizing he was bouncing behind them atop a cart loaded with raw and scorched potatoes. A pair of cows were snubbed close to the rear and lowed from time to time. He smelled their rich, sourish warm breath.
He tried to sit up and the pain was white iron claws in his skull.
“Aiii,” he sighed and held his head with one hand.
“Good morrow,” a bluff, smooth voice was saying.
He turned his eyes that way. The speaker was mounted, keeping pace with the toiling cart, the rising sun behind him so that he was a bulky, blinding silhouette.
“Good morrow,” the voice repeated, “knight in the cart.” A chuckle. “Better such disgrace, I think, than be left behind, don’t you agree?”
“Ahhh,” the hurt knight sighed.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Why … Why …” He was still trying to see the man clearly, but the sun was almost directly behind him and the beams stabbed into his sight. He twisted his face away.
“The next village is in view,” the voice (he couldn’t know) of Finlot called back to Howtlande who, mounted on his mule, looked away from the knight on the potatoes. Howtlande rattled a crudely sketched map of the territory.
“Excellent,” was his response. “Unless they have famous lords like this one among them I expect little trouble.” He smiled with oily satisfaction, sucking on a scrap of cold pork fat, tongue lashing at the greased edge of his moustache. He leaned out of the sun over the sides of the halting wagon and fixed the injured fellow with his dark, active eyes that coldly belied the netted, perpetual humor wrinkles surrounding them. “Well, are you with us, lord general?”
Holding his head with both hands, the knight struggled up to a semi-sitting position on the food heap that shifted under him. His neck was stiff, back out of joint. The unrelenting pain clawed at his head. He sighed and leaned against the wicker side that sagged a little and creaked with each slow jounce of the wheels …
“Ahhhh,” he murmured.
“He ought to been dead,” was Finlot’s opinion. “I lain a five-pound hammer over his noggin. His helmet’s all flat.” He sort of sniggered. “He ain’t bled a lot, considering.”
“Well, well,” Howtlande declared, “you were not treating with an ordinary knight. This is a great and legendary fellow.”
“Oh?” Finlot wasn’t too sure. “All them what I hits on the noggin is fair ordinary.”
“Which great one, do you say?” a new voice behind the pain and sunbrightness pushed in: the dour warrior with a red silk surcoat.
Howtlande leaned back up into the brightness, holding his mule’s neck. Sucked thoughtfully at the ball of fat in his stubby hand. He looked suddenly sly.
“The lord general,” he said.
“Which lord general?” the dour, nameless knight persisted. “And of what?”
“Do you know him not, sir which-and-who?” Howtlande narrowed his already squinty eyes. When the dour knight said no more he went on: “Well, if you will not say who you are yourself expect no floods of information.” Grinned, the fat shining on his lips which he ineffectively wiped with the leather sleeve end that hung raggedly below his steel wristlets.
The knight in the cart was staring, holding his hand up against the sunglare.
“You,” he said at the bulky figure featureless with the hot sky behind.
“Yes, general?” Howtlande was feeling expansive.
“You know who I am?”
“Would that not take much knowing, sir?” was the reply. “Had you a wife it might tax even she to know you altogether. Or your mother, say, I —”
“By Odin’s dangling fuck-maker,” a new voice interjected with disgust, and the knight didn’t bother to turn his eyes because there was pain enough in looking straight ahead. “He’s like a great wind that blows and rages to shake a straw!”
“Well put, Skalwere,” Finlot called out. “If we could fight as fierce as he speaks long and to no point, why none could hold us for a heartbeat.” Guffaws here and there.
Howtlande sneered.
“And if all your brains were gathered in a pile,” he told them, “an ant would step over it unseeing.”
“Do you know who I am?” the wincing knight demanded. Adjusted himself on the potatoes. He realized there was no hope of (or point in) getting to his feet. The pain even seemed to be ebbing slightly. “What is my name?”
“Know you it not yourself?” the fat man wondered, scratching his hawk nosetip. He was finished sucking the lard. Cocked his round head. The nose was the second warning (after the eyes) that nature had placed on that jolly mask.
“Would he then ask?” Skalwere called over. “Though you might, in his place.”
“What be he lord general of?” Finlot wondered. “That village of mud and cowflops?” Guffaws here and there in the marching line.
“Say, if you can,” the knight insisted, holding his lumpy, bloodcaked sku
ll, gingerly.
“Why scatter your advantages?” Howtlande asked no one, licking the last sweet traces from his shiny lips. “The blow took your memory, it would appear, sir. So your name now would be little use. Surely it’s a blessing to have a light mind. I’ll not be the one to weigh it heavier.” He spurred the mule, whose sharp hooves plip-plopped more rapidly than the actual forward motion justified.
The mysterious subject of conversation finally shut his eyes. Sighed under his breath with each rut and stone the warped wheels battered into and over. He decided to wait until the pain eased, then he’d follow up. Here was a key to his past … but right now he’d rest … yes … that was it … rest … Ah … it hurt … Ah …
The pain and dreams jarred in and out as the day flashed on and off. He saw the dark-eyed, beautiful woman again and this time with a man … flash of burning sun prying at his eyelids, into his raw skull … the man and woman under cool trees by a glittering stream. He was tall, blond, in red, silky robes and the woman crooked a basket of thickly-gleaming red berries under her long arm. The green spring light was cool and sweet. This couple was so tall, godlike, somehow … his head was ripped into again as if by sawblades that ground over the bared bones … Then the peace and coolness, the purling swish of water, the birds, breezes high up in the pinetops … voices … her voice, saying words he didn’t really follow … divine, mysterious utterances …
“So,” she was saying, “I spent a lifetime getting away from there and now you want to go back.”
“What harm in a visit?” he wondered.
“They love you little enough, great husband.”
“Your father’s ill.”
“Not enough by half.” She didn’t look at him. “I don’t want to go back there.”
… he knew these were memories … then the light stabbed and pounded at him but he sank under it again into the cool, easy lushness of that shady afternoon somewhere in his lost past. The tall, blond man was drinking from a wineskin. Stained lips and chin with what seemed a dribble of blood which he didn’t wipe away. A little girl, ash-blond, about three, naked, was kneeling at the stream’s rocky edge, piling smooth, dark, round stones in a heap, careful and grave. Threads of reflected sunlight flicked over her intent face as the awkward, stubby childfingers sorted and plucked and added to the stack.
The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) Page 5
