Now there was faint grayish light filtering in from somewhere above. Blinked, focused and found himself in a wide, brick hall. High up there were streaks of light, and he thought:
God, I praise Thee for Thy mercy!
Looked around. Saw a litter of iron and steel, rusted helmets, bent blades … suits of armor … broken wheels, shattered pottery …
A junkheap.
… rotting mattresses, broken beds and chairs enmeshed by delicate massings of spiderweb that wisped at his face and further grayed the air … all these disparate items were joined and blended by this immense network … faded tapestries … even a smashed wagon and stacks of mildewed clothes … a shattered sundial …
He went on.
… rusted chains, broken scythes … a bent saw … a peeling portrait on wood of a roundfaced, jowly man wearing a crown with a seeming scepter in his hand, standing while others knelt, a sleek dog with lolling tongue looking up with adulation … Then a wooden door, ajar, brighter light behind it, and it wasn’t until he reached for the handle that he recalled the holy food in his hands, held them up and then flung away the muck that coated his fingers and palms, pushed through the door and emptied his beltpouch on the dusty earth in the yard where sun glared as though the ground were melting into flame. Watched the dull little rocks clatter, bounce and scatter …
He smiled. Shook his head.
I’ve been a fool … wasted so many years …
Headed outside, squinting. Stood in the courtyard staring at a few pale, dried weeds that pushed up through the cracked and dusty earth. Their shadows flicked lightly as the breeze shook them. Those near the failing well under the outer wall where they’d found more precious wetness, he thought with strange wonder, had more gracefully arched forms and were greener. He stared as if the dark he’d just passed through had blotted and soaked up troubles, memories, years, and now, pondering these delicate spears of attempted life, he realized he wanted to make things grow, suddenly, to take land, dig and plant, reap from the miraculous earth! And he knew he wasn’t mad. Possibly, he mused, for the first time in his life he wasn’t mad … Remembered now:
All the fleeing and blood and dead faces and suffering, lost faces of kings, lords, knights, serfs, women, children, all the ugliness he’d gathered since manhood, kneeling finally, not even weeping, by Arthur’s body wrapped in furs on the stones near the broken Roman wall where the black and white horse (that stood nearby, restless in the falling snow, tail jerking) had started at a snake and tossed the already wounded lord high (himself and the rest of the party watching in helpless shock) and he seemed to float down, his mind saying nonono, as his king rebounded once and then again.
And with the tip of his sword (he could see them now up on the walls and behind him in the yard but he didn’t even glance back) he cut a furrow in the hard, harsh, pebbly soil, leaning into it as if this were the real beginning of a new life and hope, thinking how at last he’d found his fit work because he’d left the deaths and bitterness behind in the dark that had changed him and there was only the baking hot sun … he stuck the blade upright, tossed his helm aside, removed his mail shirt, then took up the sword again in his light undergarment … the sun and earth … all the battles had become one slaughter and all the lives one single outcry and outrage that he didn’t even need to weep for … just the terrific sun on his neck and the now dusty blade cutting, turning the ground, and him digging it along, straining, because he wanted to have done this once, as if he really meant to cut to the world’s heart or leave a mark in the marklessness of it …
Felt the sweat, heat and sweet strain, and knew he wasn’t mad, thinking how this was his final work, that he’d been lucky to find it, that few men ever found it even for a moment and he wished, if he wished anything, he’d married and had a family … but … and he actually said (they were close around him now, silent, dark), as the first slash bit into him and the shallow line in the dirt wavered, zigged and stopped and blood like rain beaded suddenly in the dust and pebbles, said:
“Thank you for all of it … for all of it …”
Thinking as the next and next hit and the sun staggered with the sky: Even for what was not, thank you for that too …
Howtlande’s head was already turning with his massively fleeing body, so the arrow hitting home was the last image, hitting dead center in the vagueness under the savagely clenched face that froze his eyes until he broke himself free with the bow-twang and rocked and skidded crazily down the stairs, around and around, the windows and door arches flashing past as finally the great mass of stone itself seemed to immensely spin around him … down … down … fleeing not just death but the absurdity and curse of his life, begging Devil or God or any between for succor because he didn’t dare look back in case he’d missed that contorted, mad face. Imagined Skalwere (even dying) on his heels until, at bottom, in the huge main hall, he careened wildly from the stairs and looped and revolved across the room trying to check himself on the slick tile without having to fall, watching the tilting windows and walls speed sickeningly around, feeling the spasms in his vast gut … brightening windows … gray walls … dark figures … windows … walls …
No! he cried out silently. No!
Figures, beards, weapons … windows … walls …
Reeled to his knees, already heaving burning bile and foulness into his throat and mouth, crying out through it in a liquid, explosive howl that spewed out as if the cry itself were a stinking splash, because fate had him again, on hands and knees, rage in the spilling too, the vaulted space still rotating, then pitching over and rolling as the wildly black-bearded face and wiry, bent, pit-eyed little man with missing toes (the same who’d attacked Parsival by the stream) came closer and leaned a shaggy hook of a face inches away (spinning … spinning … ), dark caked short sword touching the floor cane-fashion.
“Uarrrrgggghh!” Howtlande heaved out of himself in a final spasm.
Lohengrin had come out of the trees into grayish dawnglimmer and wandered across the fields away from the castle. He wasn’t thinking about anything, just moving on, suspending all decisions and letting weariness gradually tug and grip at him and blur and press at his eyes …
By midafternoon, helmet off, sun beating at his black, curly hair, too thirsty to be hungry, he kept shutting his lids for a few steps at a time as the fine dust gradually coated his black and red armor and filled in the gaps and rips where loose links swayed and flickered.
Dusty fields unrolled, on and on, with spare, browned, failing trees. He kept hoping for even a trickle of stream or something that would afford real shade.
A mile or so ahead, low black clouds were packed above what seemed a dark forest. A long, low wall crossed the stony, dried field just ahead and he thought, vaguely, he might rest there …
He blinked and swayed slightly at what he first took for heat shapes as little dark-cowled men rose behind the wall, dozens of them, armorless but all armed. He looked around and saw others at a distance, moving, enclosing him in a kind of bag.
More troubles? he thought. What a world this is that I’ve forgotten …
Waited, motionless, broiling hot. Winced his painful eyes. He had no urge to fight. It had all been a miserable dream, one senseless scene after another rising around him over and over and himself with only a name attached to nothing, no real history or purpose to place him in the reeling nightmare and he knew it was, somehow, deeply unreal, and that he had to wake from it to … to … to what? … the splinter of pain still creased the side of his head throbbing in the violent sunbeats.
The bearded men were closing in, some creeping, some walking, some careful, others vacant, starey. He didn’t want to fight and he saw no point in dying. His hand suddenly drew his dagger and plunged it into the hard, harsh soil. He stood there, waiting.
Even if I tried to battle, that pain would probably block my strokes again.
He was strangely uneasy as they led him toward the gray, paintless wagon that seemed
equally made of dust and wood. The cloaked folk kept close and pressed him on when he hesitated. These bore no weapons and were equally mixed men and women, even a pair of long-limbed adolescent boys in the cluster. There were thousands in sight, moving on steadily. They seemed fairly well fed for these times. Raised an immense cloud of dust that shimmered in the fiercely cloudless sky where the sun beat like hot bronze. The vast migration of them was now approaching the dark hills and forest he’d seen from the wall where he’d surrendered.
Coming closer to the closed vehicle he noticed a narrow plank was missing from the rear door. A pair of dusty yellow mares tugged it along at a moderate walking pace. He’d just stepped over a fresh nest of droppings that appeared from under the wheels. Suddenly he knew this had happened before in the other lifetime, the lost days before the constant pain at his temple. His nerves tensed, heart ticked harder. This seemed important and he was afraid … why? … tried to remember as the soft pack of people pressed close around him, murmuring indistinguishably among themselves.
Stared at the dark slit, felt watched, wanted to struggle away … felt a chill and memory of sickness and shame. Tried to push through the massed, robed people, remembered something: a flash, light … lightning … fire, a solid blackness opening, a terrible voice commanding or raving … wincing internally now away from the hollow, muffled words already sounding inside the slit, rattling the planks as if the laboriously creaking and jouncing wagon itself animistically voiced the inner pain and fury of tortured wood:
“Come closer!” demanded the slit.
It’s him, his mind knew, it’s him.
“Closer,” it said. “Closer.”
XXX
“Come then,” he said, reddish mane swaying around his face above her. She reopened her eyes, not really looking at him, blurry, warm, far away. Oh, it wasn’t his fault, she told herself again. Outside the tent she could hear the night sounds, wind flapping the loosely tied opening … voices singing soft chants with a strong beat … They were always singing, she’d noted.
Dour, dour, dour, this one is always dour … always watching me and every least nothing stirs him into deeper glooms … You’d think I’d captured him or whatever was done …
“Layla,” he asked, “you do not want to?”
She tried to focus his face. The reddish-dark twilight shook steadily at the opening and shone on Tungrim’s pale, stocky, nude torso.
“Oh, Christ,” she breathed. “Why don’t you just do whatever pleases you?”
Instead of chilling her, the easy, warm wine-sea she floated in softened her bed of stinking, lumpy hides into one of silks.
She felt sly — knowing there was a stone jug of mead under the edge of the straw.
“You’re laughing,” he said.
She pulled the top covering away from herself and showed him her lean, graceful body.
“Here,” she told him.
“I cannot take you thus, Layla.”
“My lord, I know no other way.”
What does he want? Except she knew. Love. As if she were still a girl at castle Tratinee and this were the naked young fool Parsival kissing her, fumbling, baffled, while she thought: he’s a dream stepped from the world of sleep that clothed itself in strong, smooth limbs and sweetness … She reached now and stroked, far away, over twenty years away … kneaded between his legs, surprised to find softness, began to rhythmically work at it, feeling him stir and gradually fill …
“Ah,” he said, positioning himself. “My dear, fair one … my sleek fish …” His beard brushed her face. “Ah …”
“Am I?” she asked, opening her legs around him, directing the now straining hard, burning hot curve, letting it work around a little as he gasped and began to thrust. “Easy,” she told him. “Not yet I’m not wet yet.” Feeling a brief pain as it caught in a folding of flesh and then (floating into the images so that she opened in a sudden flooding) letting him spear into her with a breathless shock. “Oh.” She held him and watched the images: she was in a warm soapy bath among rose petals, the water soothing, sweetly draining, and a beautiful woman with long blond tresses wearing a pale shift soaped and oiled her body and there was daylight at the large, sunny windows where roses moved slightly in the syrupy air and she watched the lady’s seacolored eyes reflecting her own nakedness in the perfumy suds, gave herself (as even in this fantasy) with a small thrill of something sweetened with sin and fear … let the image fingers slip smoothly down across her body to where she ached and sighed, softened … burned … desperate …
“Oh,” she said, as he rocked on her, into her in the now blind dark. “Oh, Lord Christ! … Lord Christ! …”
The fingers flicked, stroked, circled … then probed … paused … pinched … vibrated faster … faster … clawed …
I need this, her mind insisted, I need …
“I love thee!” he cried out. “Layla! …”
And now the mouth, hot and sweet and sucking into hers, the honey taste triggered by her loins (beyond the beard and harsh, rhythmic bones, knotted elastic strength and fierce mass of him), the sea eyes absorbed her as the slick tongues probed in echo of the long, easy, slick sliding down below, between …
“Ahhhhh …”
Beard, pounding, arched gripping maleness, plunging maleness melting into the edgeless resistless taking in and in … always in … deep … deeper … deepest …
Later the air was dark and cool. He was sitting up, squatting on the covers beside her. She wasn’t even trying to see where he was. His voice floated out in the tide of dream and recollection surrounding her, sleep overlapping, lapping at her mind, body feeling boneless, saturated …
“I want you for wife,” he said.
She moved only her toes, very interested in the process. He almost had to say it twice before she responded.
“Everyone in this bed is married already,” she said, murmured.
“I have considered these things.”
She was trying to wiggle just the big one without moving the others.
“How something or other,” she said.
What a dour prince he is … in truth … Prince Dour of the North … They make love well and except … I don’t know what? … Men have strange minds …
“I say I’ve pondered this,” he insisted.
“It’s impossible,” she murmured, trying to move the toe, tensing her calf too now.
“Nay,” he said, gravely. “There’s a way. “
“The others move no matter what.”
Try as she might the little ones winked with each attempt.
“What, woman?” he asked. “Hear me. This is a hard thing. But I will put aside Jana according to just Norse custom.”
She gave up on the toes.
“Why?” she wondered vaguely, drifting again …
“Because I want you.”
“I have a husband,” she murmured, closing her eyes, thinking she also said: the son-of-a-bitch … “But it’s the bleak country you come from,” she said into the draining seapull, thinking: Makes you so dour …
“What? You speak oddly, woman. Are these not important sayings we say? Not many Vikings would make such an offer to an outlander. If he lives I’ll find and slay him.”
Wonderful, she thought. There’s a ready answer … She felt pressed flat, numb and more numb … She couldn’t even move her foot now. Stay him that’s a fine dowry … dour-ry … what does this man want? …
“Christ,” she said, as the numbing dark washed over her, sinking her at last. “What do they ever want?”
“Who?” he asked, somewhere far above the surface. She felt her lips move and that was all. Sank into silence. “I freely do you this honor.”
Then just sat there staring at the invisible tent wall before his face. He held her firmly with both hands but felt he gripped at running water or a wave and would be left with a few mere drops of moisture on his fingers in the end … Brooded over this in silence now. She resisted nothing and that may have
been the worst of it. He wanted to leave a mark in her. He realized that. She never struggled and he wanted …
He sighed. Baffled. Shook his head at himself. This was just a woman, why did it matter so? … What did he imagine lay in her flesh or mind to so draw him on?
“Do you sleep?” he wondered, huskily. Listened to her breathing. Wondered how it would be there with her under cold skies beside ice-green water … timbered huts, long snug nights … dancing, singing, drinking, fighting … snug by the coals while the snows sank the world in ghostly silence … How warm life was there … how clean and bright fire was there … sighed … yawned … lay down as if to sleep and stayed furious, tensed while she snored … murmured sweet formless phrases … shifted slightly, eternity away from him … waited as sleep fleetingly batted at him from time to time …
Waiting hot and bleary for the agonizing dawn and knowing he couldn’t talk himself out of it, that he’d want her again tomorrow because he didn’t know and couldn’t face what he really needed, what lust was merely a mask over.
Love is such comfort, he thought, savagely twisting to the other side, away from her. Lay on his belly. Felt himself hard again.
Rocked his hips a little, part consciously. Felt painsweet pressure … pictured her body and wanted to do things he’d never imagined with Jana: press with his face and reach with his tongue … rocked his hips …
Next morning he stood with his captains, eyes swollen, haggard. She was still in the tent. They had camped in the dark last night at the border of what they now saw was a strange country that rolled away into the horizon’s sunglare. A land, he was thinking through his headache, of ashes, of charred, limbless trees like poles row on row, crumbling, blackened blightscape.
“I say we turn aside from here,” one of the stocky men was saying.
“See how sudden was the ending of the fire,” a bald man put in, “as if it struck a wall … see …” Pointed. “… there are other trees untouched a few steps from that rim of blackness.” Shook his head. “I like it not.”
The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) Page 16
