The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3)

by Richard Monaco

  “We don’t stop tonight,” Tungrim had announced. She was riding next to him again.

  “I don’t care,” Layla said.

  “We eat on the march, as Norsefolk should.”

  She wasn’t looking at him.

  “And drink,” she said. Waited. She knew he’d be frowning He was, she’d previously reflected, a serious barbarian.

  He said nothing.

  “What can you still want of me?” she asked. “Think you have not had all?”

  “Mock me not,” he returned, gruff, uncomfortable. He shifted on the steady mule. Their shadows had melted away into the silvery wash. One of the marching Vikings called over to him:

  “Tungrim, we’re far from the sea!”

  A few others guffawed.

  “Aye, right so,” one added.

  “Peace, my brothers,” Tungrim said. “I promise it will wait for us till we return.”

  Laughter and a fairhearted cheer. Someone began singing, lilting, high-pitched, haunting … another joined in … Long grasses rustled softly … fireflies scribbled obscure, hinting twists and streaks on the dimming air.

  “Well?” she finally said, still not looking towards him.

  “Here,” he said, ripping the wineskin free from his mount’s withers and slamming it blindly at her hand, and then she, unhurried, uncorked it and held herself still, except (and she knew it) something inside was at the edge of frantic.

  “You can say it,” she informed him, tilting it up now, amazed at how she relished and sustained the moment, the first stinging, bitter wash over her tongue and burning warm in her throat … She shut and opened her eyes. Shuddered. “You can say what you like, my lord Tungrim.” Dunggrim …

  “I ought to have left you where I found you.”

  Held her in his thick arms in front on the unsaddled horse riding down to the beach where the longships were drawn up in line like, she’d imagined, mysterious giant fish in the bright moonlight. Barrel-bodied horse hissing through the sand, the burning stronghold far above and behind them now, the sea air helping, clearing her lungs and mind …

  “I am called Tungrim,” he’d told her. “Prince in the north-lands.” Reined up by the dragon-prowed ships. “I am come to this land to find a damned kinsman.” They’d dismounted and she’d fallen on the cold, damp sand and he’d helped her up and held her. His head came a little above hers. He was very wide and thick.

  “You’re a fine-looking wench under it all.” He’d given her a swallow of rich sweetness (it didn’t burn until far down within her) that was mooncolored and she later learned was called honeywine. She’d coughed and looked into his face, eyes deep, dark and lost …

  That was … and now she took another swallow. The impact was less this time. She felt very comfortable and even a little amused. Men were silly beings. All of them. This bear wasn’t so bad … Fuzzy-backed … but what did he expect from her? That was a question … No, not what, but rather when would he say it out because all he had was her body and time and few of them would ever be so satisfied even when it was all they actually wanted after all.

  “Am I still a fine-looking lady?” she wanted to know. “Have I not stolen your heart, sir?”

  He didn’t respond. She wondered if he was going to rage again. She felt almost giggly. The peaceful night drifted past marked by the silent yellow streaks and spots … as if in echo the stars were showing. She smiled.

  “Tungrim?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I never told you my name.”

  “Did I ask?”

  “Ah.”

  “What is it, woman?”

  “What seek you here, in this country … besides loot? You once said …”

  “Loot? There’s precious little loot. This land is cursed unto death.”

  “Then?”

  She drank again knowing he was watching, though his face was set straight ahead. She smiled within herself because these were her best moments, when first it took hold, before the memories spilled into it too and then she had to drink to hold them away and mute … but now it was still fine, light and easy as being young and courting in the castle garden to music and tender candlelight, except … except there was always a small stone under her back, she thought … always a stone …

  “It were once a single thing,” he replied.

  She thought he meant well. Felt warm from the drink. Meant the best he could. He might have chained her to his bed if he’d liked. What a shock she’d suffered, torn away from everything. She’d never really understood how unyielding and chill the outside was, until she was dragged from her home. The world finally closed down around her to a few blank feet of dimness, filth and misery … No, no, she thought, not yet … I care not to remember yet … leave it smooth and blank, for Jesus’ sake!

  “And what is now, Tungrim?”

  “I seek Skalwere, the traitor. This be a blood matter. And Viking men turn not aside from such!”

  “And what is not a blood matter?” she murmured.

  “Do you mock me? You said I were … pompous.”

  “Did I? I remember not …” She felt his hurt with strange surprise. Reached and touched him gently. “I mock you not, sir.”

  He turned to her, features an edgeless gleaming. The soft light brought back one of the memories: a phantom face on a twilit lawn, kneeling beside him on the silky, warm summer grass, tentatively touching his bared chest … the phantom, beautiful face, long hair a watery sheen gathering the blurry light and she said, both to the ghost and to Tungrim, tenderness, lostness in her tone:

  “My name, though you haven’t asked, is Layla.”

  XXVII

  Howtlande ran through the dark passageways and unnumbered chambers of the castle, feeling his pursuer like a tangible pressure at his back. He choked a scream as something caught his legs, violently tipped him up and over and he rolled across cold, battering stone.

  A chair, he realized, a chair!

  Got up and plunged on, sweating, panting … up stairs … around bends … on …

  Skalwere crossed the yard at the cost of one thrown spear that clattered harmlessly past a bowed, shadowy attacker who went after someone else anyway … through the door that Howtlande hadn’t dared pause to bar, and slammed the giant bolt home before moving into the dark interior.

  Outside, the silent, cynical Sir Galahad was slashing, banging, looking for breathing room, armor dented, head ringing from a dozen blows, only his bent shield keeping death at bay as the deadly men leaped in like wolves at the sluggish, frightened mass of victims.

  He knew he had to get inside. Backed, turned, made short fierce charges, chopping his way again and again and he vaguely wondered why he kept trying to live, since he had no particular aims left. He let it be his body, purposeless, instinctive … clawed past the last men in his way, knocking one flat in the dark with swordhilt and pushing another into the obscure fray where he seemed simply sucked into the frantic fury. Then he fled, backed under the main stairs through an arched portico, panting, leaning on the wall, letting his lungs pull deeply at life.

  “All right,” he whispered. “I live for the moment again …”

  Aye … since before Arthur died … oh my king … my king that was … You taught me emptiness as love taught me hopelessness …

  What point, since death had to close in a few heartbeats one way or another …

  Brute that I am yet I wrote verse for my love … yet everything must always come to be lost, that’s beyond prevention …

  Time took all, as from the merchant who clutched his gold and coppers in a fantasy of permanence and then but passed it to the next hoarder of scraps … like keeping life’s breath in a sack …

  Under the arch he found a grillwork and was slightly surprised when it skreaked inwards. He went through into total blackness.

  And I slew for Arthur. I loved him. I slew in such momentous and pithy causes that are now all long lost … It was no better than fighting for this fat man … Why must I
still think? The curse of Eden was the rambling brain that left animals in peace and man in pain …

  The dark was so total that each step he expected to crack his face. Each unblocked stride into the cool, mudsmelling depths was a minor surprise … His mind freed by the blackness, leafed through the past uncontrollably.

  His life began to fail with that boy, he suddenly decided. The half-naked, blond, beautiful boy who’d knelt before him praying to him as if he were a God … the boy Parsival, so long ago … He’d said knights hope to have shining glory and the words were stone that hurt his mouth to speak. He’d spoken of glory to that blue-eyed innocent, kneeling there ready to believe as a sponge to drink … It began to fail there, with having to say glory …

  Remembered Parsival at court, years and years later. Adult at last. Coming to a feast with two deep scratches beside one eye and the story was his wife had literally chased him down the corridor with the teenage boy (Lohengrin) waving a dirk, his younger sister clinging to his legs and weeping, the mother raging too, and the famous knight holding his hand to his bloody face, fleeing down the stairs to where only her tongue could still rip … so he’d been told …

  He groped ahead down a slippery slope into utter lightless-ness.

  The wife, Layla, had shouted, they said: “You’re not even a man anymore now, you son-of-a-bitch!” And the great hero had supposedly wept into his streaming blood. Saying nothing. Standing in front of everyone, servants, men-at-arms, knights and ladies. Cried out: “Forgive me … I tried … I tried!” And his son trying to crawl down the steps with the sister still clinging, bushy black hair shaking as he yelled: “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” And then (they said) the father ran out into the castle garden where he just leaned his face against the far wall in cold autumnal drizzle that gradually soaked into his silken robes, pounding his fist over and over into the cold, wet gray bricks. His wife at the door now, frozen as if an invisible barrier blocked her in, shouting across the fallen, colorless flowers: “You failed at everything! Face it! Be a man for your own sake, Parsival! You failed and all I asked was some little sweetness … Face it now!” And (they said) he stood like a penitent lad who’d blundered lessons, face to the wall until she silently went inside … stood there as the rain went on …

  Had that been my wife … But I never had nor ever will have … no matter … well, mayhap he were praying at that wall, for short after he fled to join, they say, the monks at their untiring nonsense …

  He realized he was in a large space. Clinked his sword on the scabbard and heard the hollow, rattling echoes. There was still mud underfoot.

  I went on crusade with Gawain instead … Oh, that was lovely, that had rare meaning … Groped on. Great Christ, is there no end to this darkness? …

  Skalwere believed he would actually smell the fear of his fat quarry. He was asking himself why he ever listened to any promises of obscure triumphs or heeded his flabby orders. He snarled thinking about it. Howtlande, the fat, pompous toad! They would soon meet and that idea soothed his mind …

  He had to get a ship again and escape this miserable, wasted land. The sea was the only way … He remembered, with a kind of longing, night raids on the coast, the excitement of moving in with careful oars, aiming through the faintly luminescent surf, the longships leaping, cracking, holding steady all the way into the grinding sand … splashing over the side, up the beach, each sense ready, into the sleepy village … a pair of quiet voices, a drowsy watchman with his pale torch, then the surprise, sudden flames, blundering men trying to fight, women … panic … fleeing … out to sea again, counting over the loot on calm, slow swells, the gathering of dawnlight on rimless water, feeling sweetly spent, a little drunk … a peace with life … the smooth roll and lifting on …

  He froze, listening. Was sure of a slight sound ahead, squinted, his night eyes probing down the long corridor, saw the thin outline of a chamber door.

  You’ll greet the heatless sun of hell this morrow, he said to himself.

  Padded on, delicate and terrible, over cool, stepworn stones, last spear ready. He never questioned this. It was man’s life, ritual, a kind of formal dance where now his thrust was necessary. He was actually without deep malice, even cursing the enemy was a formality, proper manners for the kill. Fate played and a misstep was formally fatal …

  Howtlande found a slit tower window overlooking the dark courtyard. The rich, dry summery air puffed over him as he leaned out. They were milling indecipherably in the castle yard, the cries and banging muted by the height.

  The thing, he was still thinking, is always to live. No dead man ever raised a kingdom … I live for more than my mere self, that’s the point even if few believe in me yet … the idea was somehow a comfort. They won’t stay here, whoever they are … there’s no food … I’ll wait and when they move on I’ll begin again … find stouter fighters … that’s the advantage of being alive …

  XXVIII

  The unseen planks banged, crackled, hissed with strain as the dark seemed a solid thing jolting, battering at them.

  Broaditch never ceased to struggle as the wagon rolled on. Until morning light drew a blurry rectangle around the door and traced a few cracks across walls and ceiling.

  Torky moaned in his fitful sleep. Tikla snored softly. Alienor rested against him, napping a little.

  He twisted his numbed wrist and thought he finally felt a strand give slightly … a fraction … a fraction … He grunted and winced with fresh pain.

  “Peasant man,” Pleeka suddenly said.

  Broaditch regathered his breath and responded:

  “What wise words have you now?”

  “All has been betrayed,” the man said from the far end of the rocking, battering vehicle. Outside the hoofbeats were steady and not so rapid as their exaggerated inner movements suggested. Broaditch assumed the road was especially rough (this was true) and the rig badly constructed (also a fact).

  “Are you working on your ropes?” he asked Pleeka.

  “I cannot see how all this happened Here I lie in disgrace … betrayed by good John … I cannot see …”

  “While you ponder these things,” Broaditch suggested, “why not struggle for freedom?”

  “Freedom? Only through God can freedom come, peasant man.”

  “Getting loose here will be a start and give Him less to do.”

  “I will tell you these things.”

  “Don’t feel …” Broaditch twisted and tugged his numb, aching forearms violently. “… don’t feel you have to …” His muscles cracked and he arched his brawny back. The rope gave again. His hands felt about to burst, swollen with blood.

  “This is the hour of the beast,” Pleeka confided. Broaditch went on with his strainings. Fraction by fraction through the searing constrictions the bonds were yielding …

  “Unn,” muttered Broaditch.

  “The hour of the beast and his dreadful reign, I say … Aiiii!” he suddenly cried and Broaditch heard him hit flat on the boards. Alienor fully wakened and Torky groaned in his dreams. “… I have seen it and have been the right hand of the beast … aiiii …”

  “I think,” Broaditch told his wife, “he has lost his fondness for John the Silver Duck or Farting Eagle or what you will.”

  “Methinks he’s taking a fit,” she said.

  There were rhythmic thumpings and bangings and gasps against the slow careening of the wagon. Leena and the boy crouched near the door. They were gray, ghostlit by the fuzzing of dawnlight.

  “Aiiiii! … and the beast hath seven heads … aiiii … and ten horns and crowns … and all the nations followed the beast … for who is like unto the beast and who can make war against him? … aiiiiiii … aiiii! …” Crash, thump, thud, gasp, gasp …

  “Can I help?” Alienor asked.

  Torky was sobbing a little and she comforted him in the lurching dark.

  “I’m nearly free …” he panted, “but … nearly … is … not home …”

  “A
ii … I have his mark upon me … upon me …” Thump, bang …

  “He’s off and bent,” she commented.

  An inch more, he thought. An inch …

  Leena began to pray, fierce, steady, not quite loud or hysterical, as Pleeka raved on:

  “The beast was my brother and behold I knew him not and saw not … aiiii … saw not the word blasphemy writ on the crowns …”

  “That John,” Alienor said. “That bastard John.”

  Broaditch paused for breath and to ease the burning, cutting.

  “What?” he wondered.

  “… the word and the blood of many …”

  “John the priest,” he said. “I knew him on first foul sight. Him who raised the peasants and let them perish. Him.”

  “… brother … brother …” Growling now and Broaditch imagined him chewing the floor and foaming. “… the beast were my brother whose number be six hundred threescore and six! … Aiiiii!! …”

  “I knew him too.” Two decades ago. He’d followed John to betrayal and outrage of what had been a promise, a shining hope for freedom after all the horror of those days … Of all days, he thought. Of all days … How could nature suffer such a thing to live on?

  With an intense explosion of air and a shriek Pleeka (Broaditch knew instantly) burst his bonds and began caroming around the confined and pitching space.

  “Ave Maria,” Leena was saying, chanting, “gratiae plena …”

  And then he was free himself, a rush of tingling agony pouring into his hands, which he held as if in disbelieving prayer before his face. Locked his teeth tight together.

  Pleeka was flopping weakly now, like a fish, Broaditch thought, on the dock. The girl’s litany went ceaselessly on, almost uninflected …

  “They are lower than the lowest low,” Pleeka was whispering. “Lower than the slime worms and offal of the deepest dark … they have shat in the clear well of the heart … aiii …” His screeches now were bizarrely conversational … all foul practice is their delight and their abominations have fouled the waters … all the nations follow blasphemies and the beast …”