Kingdom of the Grail

by Judith Tarr

  “We’ll be out of the mountains soon,” Charles said, breaking in on his maundering. “There’s the pass of Roncesvalles ahead of us, steep and narrow as it is. Past that the road grows easier. And then at last we’ll be in Francia.”

  “And possibly in a Gascon rebellion,” Roland said.

  “If so,” said Charles, “we’re prepared for it.”

  Roland nodded—more of a twitch, if truth be told. “I don’t like the pass,” he said. “It’s narrow and steep, and the trees are thick clear to the top of its walls. We can’t go round it, we can’t go up it. We’ll be rats in a trap.”

  “Well then,” Charles said, not quite as if he indulged a fit of folly, “take the Companions and such of the others as you trust, and guard the rear. I’ll see to the van. The quicker we’re through, the better.”

  “My thanks, sire,” Roland said.

  “Listen, now,” said Charles, leaning over to tap the horn that Roland always carried at his saddlebow, the horn of the great aurochs, the last perhaps that had been in the world. “If you’re in need, wind that. The sound will carry in these mountains. I’ll hear it and come running.”

  Roland bowed to that. Charles clapped him on the shoulder.

  It was a dismissal. The Companions, who had been listening shamelessly, were already turning back toward the rear. Some of the others caught Roland’s eye: a raised brow here, a quick grin there. They were not mocking him or reckoning him a fool. If they thought at all on the rumor of sorcery and worse, they did not let it trouble them.

  Their regard warmed him even in his confusion of mind. They trusted him. They would fight for him if they were called to it.

  He followed them back along the line. The rearguard was still in the remnants of the night’s camp, as the baggage-train finished forming and began to move out. Oxen lowed and mules brayed. The drovers cursed: their morning song.

  Olivier lounged in the saddle, finishing a breakfast of cheese and roast ox rolled in last night’s bread. He broke it in thirds as Turpin rode up with Roland behind, and passed a portion to each. “That’s a fair troop of champions the king’s sent back with you. Who’d you leave to look after him?”

  “The whole vanguard,” said Roland. And, he thought, Ganelon was well back toward the rear with the rest of the clerks—just ahead of the baggage. Roland could keep him in sight, and track him by the crawling under the skin.

  “I expect,” said Turpin, “that if there is an attack, it will go for the baggage. Every bandit in the Pyrenees must know by now that we’re carrying Pamplona’s gold.”

  Olivier downed the last of his truncated breakfast and eyed the portion half-forgotten in Roland’s hand. Roland passed it over with some relief. He was in no mood for breakfast, just then.

  “Don’t look so grim,” Olivier said. “The king must be safe enough if you’ve let him send his Companions back here. We’ll make short work of any robber who tries to take the king’s treasury.”

  “A fight would be a pleasant diversion,” said Thibaut. He loosened his sword in its sheath and thumped his cousin Milun on the helmet. “Chin up, boy! We’re moving out.”

  Easily, lightly, laughing and mock-squabbling, they fell in behind the last of the rearguard. The troops were grinning. They found the Companions greatly entertaining.

  Roland was glad that they could be so light of heart. It did not lessen their vigilance; and that was what mattered.

  He rode last but for a pair of scouts that he had sent to range the rear and along the slopes as much as could be. That was not much, the farther they went. The way was steep, the valley dark, the mountains looming high above it.

  The trees closed in. The road narrowed. The pack-mules scrambled up it well enough, but the wagons lurched and lumbered. A day never passed without at least one broken wheel, but today had a curse on it. The way was too narrow for a broken wagon to draw aside; if one failed, they all had to halt till it could be mended.

  Some considerable distance up toward the pass, where many of the men had dismounted to clamber beside their horses, a wagon lurched over a stony ledge, caught and held. The drover urged the oxen forward. They threw themselves into the traces. The wagon groaned. The oxen lowed with the effort. The whip cracked over their heads. They scrambled on the hard stony ground overlaid with leafmold, slippery as ice in winter. One ox slipped and went to its knees. In the same instant, its yokemate surged forward.

  The yoke twisted and snapped. The wagon wheel gave way. The heavy wagon overbalanced and slid down the slope, dragging the oxen with it.

  The wagons behind had nowhere to go. Those directly in back of the fallen one caught and slid. “Brace! Brace, you sons of whores!” roared Olivier, nearest and quickest of wit. The rearmost wagons lumbered to a halt. Such as could turn broadside, made haste to do it, making a wall of sorts against the tangle of wagons and oxen.

  It all ground to a halt somewhat short of the rearguard. Wheels were locked together, oxen down and caught in traces. Somewhere in the midst of it, a man was screaming.

  Roland left Veillantif with the rearguard and pushed his way on foot to the edge of the confusion. Olivier had it in hand. Roland pulled a man out of the ranks. “Run ahead,” he said. “Bid the rest of the army wait. We’ll be some little time unknotting this.”

  The man nodded. He swung off his horse and struck upward through the trees, making his way doggedly along the slope.

  Roland would have to hope that one messenger would be enough. There was a great deal to do here: wagons to untangle, oxen to sort out, wounded to tend. Of that last there were few, thank God. Worse was the damage to the wagons, and two oxen so badly hurt that they had to be destroyed.

  “Roast ox for dinner again tonight,” said Olivier, smacking his lips, as he helped with the butchering and flaying.

  The sun had lifted over the peaks by the time the column was in order again: a good part of the morning gone, and still the pass to ascend. At least, thought Roland, they would have honest daylight to do it in, however briefly, before the valley’s walls cut off the sun again.

  The baggage could move no faster than the oxen’s slow and labored plod. No word came back from the center; Roland’s messenger did not return. The scouts had not come back, either.

  He caught himself wishing for Tarik, who could fly as a hawk and bear word to the king; but the puca was nowhere in evidence. Nor was Roland willing yet to spread his own wings. Not for a prickling between the shoulderblades. The wagon had fallen by sheer unhappy chance. No art or magic had caused it.

  Had it? He had searched with more than eyes and ears, found nothing. But there were powers that could conceal themselves from him.

  He put the thought aside. What he could do, he had done. Both Companions and rearguard were watchful, weapons at the ready. They had all put on their helmets, though the sun beat into the deep cleft, reminding them fiercely that it was summer in Spain.

  The great aurochs’ horn shifted on his saddlebow, and he steadied it. He seldom blew it: it could smite men down with its power. If he raised its voice in these passes, not only Charles in the van would hear it. The great archangel at the gates of heaven might take umbrage, thinking that a mere mortal man had dared to call the dead to judgment.

  Roland’s lips twitched. It was a poor jest, and Turpin was not near enough to share it. But it lifted his spirits a little.

  CHAPTER 33

  Sarissa watched from the peaks as the Frankish army ascended the pass. Charles rode in the van, unmistakable even from this distance: he wore a golden helmet that flashed in the sun. The long train of his soldiers and servants wound behind him, down into the deep valley.

  The scouts that he had sent ahead slept in the shadow of a stone, lost in dreams of joy and peace. Tarik crouched by them in cat-shape, ruffled and surly. There was a wishing on him, the first compulsion that she had ever laid on that fierce free spirit. But need knew no mercy. Set free, he would have vanished on swift wings, bearing word to Roland of what she did
here. The time for that was not yet—though it was close.

  A man climbed toward her summit, a wiry Basque born to these mountains, light and agile on the sheer and treacherous slopes. “It’s ready, high one,” he said in his ancient tongue.

  That same tongue came easily enough to her, though she did not doubt that her accent was abominable. “Wait on the signal,” she said.

  The Basque inclined his head. That, for his kind, was deep obeisance indeed. After a moment he said, “Others may not wait.”

  Sarissa did not speak her first thought, which was that his men would obey or know the consequences. They were in position, obedient to her will. “Others?” she said.

  “Down below,” he said. “Gascons. They stink of brimstone.”

  What she felt was not surprise. It was a kind of relief. “Where? Show me.”

  “They’re not to be seen,” said the Basque. “We smell them. We trust they’re not yours.”

  “Not in this world,” she said.

  “We wager they’re doing the same as we. I don’t suppose we’ll make common cause with them?”

  “Not likely,” she said through set teeth. “Send a small company of your men, those with the keenest noses and the strongest minds, and bid them find these Gascons. Let them not be found themselves, but send word back, and wait. Let the Gascons move first. We’ll judge our course by what we see.”

  The Basque looked as if he might have had somewhat to say of that, but he bent his head again, turned and made his way back down the slope.

  Sarissa stayed where she was. Her own men were no more visible than the Gascons—and those belonged to the old enemy, she was as certain as she was of the sun beating on her head and the wind whipping her cheeks. She could hope that they had had no inkling of the forces above them. Ambush upon ambush. What it did to all her plans, she could not yet tell.

  She kept fear at bay, and kept her mind clear, her spirit strong. In that state of pellucid calm, she saw the line crumble far to the rear as the king reached the summit of the pass. He went on in ignorance of the confusion behind him. The center drew away from the rear, likewise unaware.

  That was accident, but accident shaped into design. A glint drew her eye. In the same instant, one of the younger Basques bounded up the slope, light as a mountain goat. He was red-faced when he came level with her, perhaps with exertion; or perhaps it was a furious blush. He spoke clearly, at least. “High one, my cousin Ioan says, the Gascons move.”

  She could see the movement for herself, distinct from above, invisible no doubt from below. Men were creeping through the deep wood, closing in on the column.

  “Tell Ioan,” she said to the boy: “to arms, and swiftly. But quietly! We’ll ambush the ambush.”

  As he bounded back down the mountain, she set Tarik free. The grey cat vanished without so much as a glance. A falcon sped on swift wings toward the rearguard so far below, and so far apart now from the rest of the army.

  Her own forces were well up in the pass. They streamed down along it, silent as shadows. The army passed oblivious.

  She left her vantage, making her way along the ridge. It was rough going, the wood thick, tangled with undergrowth. Once she was in among the trees, she could see nothing. Nor was there anything to hear. The birds had fled the coming of so many armed men. Not even a squirrel stirred in the trees.

  She kept her hand to the hilt of the Roman shortsword that she had had since she was as young as she looked. It was smooth and hard and familiar. It had drunk deep of Gascon blood before the lurker in the trees was even aware of her existence. He never saw her face; when she saw his, his eyes were glazed in death.

  She paused for a moment to clean her sword on his breeches. He was armed with bow and sword and spear, but wore no armor, only a light helmet. His breast was bare—sensible enough in the heat of this day. He wore something about his neck, a small object on a string of leather.

  She was careful not to touch it. Unlike the Basques, she did not smell brimstone, but she saw darkness lingering yet about him, the serpent’s tooth sunk deep in his spirit. The talisman that he wore sealed him to powers that she knew too well, and shielded him from others that woke her to heightened wariness.

  She went on more quickly but with greater caution. The wards that she had laid on her men were holding, though she felt the strain about their edges. There was no sound of battle, nothing to alert or alarm the Franks in the pass.

  At length the trees opened on a bare stretch of stony hillside. Men were fighting on it: her Basques in leather and steel, the Gascons in light armor or none. It was a fierce fight, but nearly silent. Neither side, just then, seemed stronger than the other.

  A great blow struck the wards and flung her to her knees. Her skull rang with the force of it. Fool, she thought. Fool and fool. The enemy was older, stronger, and far more devious than she. He had lulled her into complacency, lured her forces out of hiding, and provided them with this thoroughly mortal diversion.

  The battle itself was elsewhere, raging over the heads of the Franks—and directing its strongest blow to the rear. Desperate it might be, and dangerous, but she left her body lying in the shelter of the trees and opened wide the eyes of the spirit. Dark wings spread over the Frankish army. What waited beyond the pass was such a thing as she had not seen in long years. To men’s eyes it would be nothing more than a mist in the mountains. To she who was more than man, it was a wall and a gate, and beyond it a darkness she had no desire to plumb.

  Powers waited on her command. Forces gathered in the heights. The gate cast them into confusion.

  Her lovely plan of battle was all in ruins. Her Basques were prevailing over the Gascons, but they mattered little in the face of that gate. Already the Frankish van was coming near to it, breasting the summit of the pass and beginning the descent into shadows and mist.

  She left her body altogether and sent her spirit winging aloft. Chains of flesh dragged at her. Dark sapped her strength. It was aware of her. It laughed at her.

  She blocked out the laughter and gathered all such strength as she had. She summoned the powers from the heavens and from the mountaintops. She forged of them a shield and a spear, and smote the gate asunder.

  Men saw lightning out of blue heaven, and swift melting of the mist: strong enough portents, but nothing that they would understand. The darkness reeled. Its mockery had died a merciless death.

  But there was laughter in it still, and a stab of triumph. She hurtled into the bonds of flesh, snapped together, rolled, caught the stab of swordblade down the length of her arm. The pain sealed her to her body. The man who would have cloven her asunder fell dead. The Basque chieftain had already turned away to strike down another of the Gascons.

  She barely took notice. As she plummeted into her body, she had seen the broader shape of the enemy’s design. The van and center of the Frankish army were escaping, safe from that dark gate. But the rear, the baggage, the Companions and the king’s picked troops, and last of all the Count of the Breton Marches, fought a bitter battle in the defile of Roncesvalles.

  She yearned with all her heart for wings. That gift was not given her. She had her feet, and a glimmer of magic still, that lengthened her stride and lightened her step. It was slow, too terribly slow. An army had fallen on the rearguard, men and creatures other than men. They were cutting it to pieces.

  All the powers of air were scattered in the fall of the gate. What other forces she had were farther away than she herself was, cut off like the king of the Franks, oblivious to the great need behind them.

  As little as was left of her, as hopeless as it might be, she made all speed she could. She gathered men as she ran. The diversion had nearly played itself out: most of the enemy were down, dead or wounded. “No prisoners!” she cried. “Kill and go. There’s worse below.”

  They ran for life and for the fate of kingdoms. She ran for all that, and for the commander of the rearguard, the king’s Companion, Merlin’s pupil, Roland whom she loved.
She knew with terrible certainty that he was the focus of that divided attack; that the others had been meant to pass through the gate, but Roland was the enemy’s personal, special prey.

  Not, by all the long-dead gods, if she could help it. She stretched her stride, bounding down the steep hillside, spending strength and magic without care for the cost. She would pay it later, when the battle was ended. When Roland was safe. She made of that a prayer, ringing in her heart as she ran.

  CHAPTER 34

  The ambush burst upon the rearguard as the last of it ascended into the pass. There were hundreds, thousands of the enemy. Nor were all or even most of them human, though they were man-sized, roughly man-shaped, and ran more or less as men ran. But no man wore the face of wolf or bear or leopard, or raked flesh with great curved claws, or bit out throats with long sharp fangs.

  The Franks were strong and seasoned men of war, even the servants in the baggage-train, but against such enemies they were utterly out of their reckoning. Brave men shrieked and cowered and fled from creatures out of nightmare. Weak men simply died of terror where they fell.

  The rearguard held as best it could, but horses were never meant to stand against such horrors as this. Far too many went mad, flung their riders to the ground and bolted.

  The twelve Companions held to their saddles, which for some was a war in itself. Roland’s Veillantif kept his head, but barely; he snorted and plunged but did not run.

  This was not a battle. It was a massacre. They were trapped in the narrow defile, with enemies swarming from above, from before and behind. The guards on the baggage died swiftly. The rearguard fought in close ranks, drawn up afoot. The Companions, among the few still mounted, defended the edges as they could.

  The enemy converged on them, driving direct for them, drawn by the horses and the wealth of their armor: finely woven mail, blazoned shields, bright helmets, and weapons of rare quality. Roland above all, with Durandal singing her sweet eerie song, was drowned in attackers both human and not. They swarmed on him like wolves on a stag, leaping, snapping, tearing at whatever they could reach.