Grailblazers (28 page)

(Three, said Toenail, opened his eyes and returned to his darning.)

‘Absolutely,' said Galahaut. ‘No trouble at all.'

Wearily, Toenail picked himself up, put the sock carefully away, and walked over. He took his time. Why hurry? Where's the point?

‘You'll be wanting the rope now, then,' he said.

Boamund's eyes were fixed on the girl. ‘Rope?' he said.

‘The rope I just happen to have with me in this holdall,' Toenail continued resignedly. ‘And goodness me, what's this? Gosh, it's a grappling hook and some crampons. Talk about coincidence, eh?'

Boamund nodded, with all the animation of a hunting trophy. ‘Right,' he said, ‘this won't take a jiffy. We, er, take the hook like so, we pass the line behind the hook to make sure it doesn't tangle, then we swing the hook one, two, three and ...'

The hook soared into the air, hung for a moment like a strange steel falcon, and came down again, precisely where the girl would have been standing if Galahaut hadn't moved her.

‘You idiot!' Galahaut shouted. ‘Give me that hook.'

‘Shan't.'

There was a tussle. Both knights fell over and started pulling each other's hair. Toenail finished off the sock and started on another.

Eventually, Galahaut won control of the hook, stood up and dusted himself off. ‘Like this,' he said. ‘Watch.'

He threw the hook, and far above their heads there was a faint chink of steel on stone. Toenail stared in amazement.

‘All right,' he said.

Not long afterwards, the gate opened and the four of them passed through. They didn't, however, pass unnoticed. On the main security monitor in Radulf's stall, a green light began to wink ominously. The old reindeer narrowed his brows, studied the screen and shook his head until the tinsel in his horns swayed.

Then he sounded the alarm.

 

 

‘Pass the salt.'

‘Sorry?'

‘I said pass the salt, there's a good fellow'

‘There you are. Sorry. I was miles away.'

Aristotle shrugged, salted his kipper and turned to the sports pages. There is a difference, he always said, between not being one's best in the mornings (which was something he could respect) and being dozy. His mood wasn't improved when he read that Australia had gone down thirty-seven to three against the All Blacks.

‘Typical!' he said.

On Aristotle's left, Simon Magus looked up from the letter he was reading and said, ‘What is?'

‘Huh?'

‘You said something was typical.'

‘Oh.' Aristotle closed the paper. ‘The bloody Newzies have walked all over us again, that's all. We've been no good ever since they capped that idiot Westermann.'

Simon Magus looked at his neighbour over the tops of his spectacles. ‘By us, I gather, you mean the Australians,' he said. ‘I never knew you came from those parts, Ari.'

‘Certainly not,' replied Aristotle severely. ‘As a philosopher, I am above nationalism. On the other hand, I am logical. There is no point following rugby football unless you support a particular team. On purely rational grounds, I selected the Australians.'

Simon Magus grinned. ‘I did that once,' he said. ‘At five to one on. Never again.'

Aristotle frowned at him down the great runway of his nose, and reached for his toast.

‘Beats me why you want to follow sport anyway,' Simon Magus went on. ‘Complete waste of time, if you ask me, a lot of idiots running about chasing things. When I used to be a teacher we had to take it in turns to be referee. I loathed it.'

‘You,' Aristotle replied, ‘are not a philosopher. If one has any pretensions to philosophy, one must cultivate understanding. I study humanity. Humanity is obsessed with sport. Therefore, if I want to understand humanity, I must study sport. It's purely scientific, you see.'

Simon Magus grinned. ‘It wasn't entirely scientific a couple of months back,' he said, ‘when you made us have the telly on all day in the Senior Common Room for Wimbledon. I distinctly remember you standing on the table waving a bloody great flag round your head and chanting
There's only
one
Boris Becker
every time the other one fell over. It was embarrassing.'

‘Research,' Aristotle mumbled through a mouthful of toast. ‘Just research, that's all.'

‘Or what about that time after the World Cup when you made that big statue out of wax, and you called it Maradona and threw teacups at it? You can still see the marks on the wall.'

‘One has to try and enter into the spirit ...'

‘Spirit, maybe,' Simon Magus replied, ‘but there was no need to throw a brick through Dante's study window just because he supports Italy.'

Little red spots appeared in the comers of Aristotle's cheeks. ‘It was offside,' he snarled. ‘I've got it on video, you can see if you like. And Dante had the ... the
infernal
nerve to suggest ...'

Simon Magus chuckled. ‘I'll say this for you,' he said, ‘I do believe you've got into the spirit of the thing. Have some more coffee?'

Aristotle, offended, waved the pot away and returned to his newspaper. Still chuckling, Simon Magus leant back in his chair and called to the small, wizened figure sitting on the other side of Aristotle.

‘Merlin,' he said. ‘More coffee?'

‘Sorry?'

‘Would you like some more coffee?'

‘I do beg your pardon, I was miles away. No, no more coffee for me, thank you. Two cups are quite sufficient.'

Simon Magus nodded and turned back to his letter. He had read it seven times already, but he wasn't bored with it yet, not by a long way.

As he read the final paragraph, Simon Magus's brows gathered in a slight frown. Perhaps it was indeed all a coincidence, but perhaps not.

He lifted his head and looked out of the window - easy enough, since all the walls, floors and ceilings of the Glass Mountain are windows of a sort. Far away, he could see the earth, twirling gracefully and apparently aimlessly on its axis like an enchanted and very stout ballerina. He looked at his watch. Only another two hours to go ...

To keep himself from being impatient, Simon Magus turned his thoughts to the Graf von Weinacht. A sad case, certainly; understandable, too, very understandable. In his position, anyone would probably react the same way. And a brilliant man, too, before it happened, although even then people were saying some very strange things about him.

The hall steward removed his plate and he sat for a moment, letting his mind relax. Nice to know that young Bedevere had finally made something of himself. Always a lot of promise there, he had often thought, just waiting for an opportunity to get out. No, that's not quite right; waiting for a situation in which he would be forced to take charge and make sure the job got done. Without that extra little bit of pressure, he could never achieve anything. Well, then.

He pushed back his chair, nodded affably at Nostradamus and Dio Chysostom, and strolled through into the library in search of the latest issue of the Philatelic Monthly. Instead, he found himself stopping in the Astrotheology section and taking down a very big, extremely dusty book that nobody had moved for quite some time.

Simon Magus pulled up a chair, crossed his legs and began to read.

 

Klaus von Weinacht knelt in the snow and howled at the sky.

Five hundred and twenty miles north of Nordaustlandet, in the middle of the bleakest, wildest, most inhospitable of all the desert places of the earth, is no place to break down. The nearest telephone box is in Hammerfest, five hundred miles the other way, and it's usually out of order. Besides, the chances of getting a garage to come out this far on a Sunday are practically nil.

Having vented his rage on the howling winds, von Weinacht opened the toolbox, took out a cold chisel, a wrench and a very big hammer, and set to work on the broken runner.

‘Bloody - cheapskate - Far - Eastern - gimcrack -' he snarled in time to the hammer-blows. ‘Ouch,' he added. He paused, sucked his throbbing thumb and calmed himself down. Now then, Klaus, he could hear his mother saying, you'll only make things worse if you lose your temper.

He picked up the wrench and set to work. Last time he allowed himself to be talked into buying a stinking Japanese sleigh. No idea of craftsmanship, just thrown together any old how, Friday afternoon job. Anger surged up inside him, and he stripped a thread.

‘Sod!' he roared at the flat horizon. Then he hurled the wrench to the ground and jumped on it.

Permafrost may be thick, but there are limits. There was a cracking sound, like the earth's crust yawning, and the Graf jumped clear just in time to avoid going down a ravine. The wrench, however, was gone for good.

‘Right,' said the Graf. ‘Let's all keep absolutely icy calm, shall we?' He went back to the toolbox, found another wrench, and continued with the job.

He ached all over. If ever he caught up with that' misbegotten bloody knight - what was the bastard's name? Something sounding like turquoise. Any bloody knight, come to that. They're all the same, knights. Scum, the lot of them. Without realising it, he picked up the hammer and started to beat the hell out of the oilcan.

An hour later, he had managed to destroy a complete set of tools, smash the sleigh quite beyond repair, and frighten fifteen heavy-duty Trials reindeer into a stupefied trance. He threw down the hammer, lay on the ground and beat the ice with his fists.

Then he got up and pulled the walkie-talkie out of the saddlebags.

‘Radulf,' he shouted. ‘Beam me up.'

 

‘Gosh!'

‘Yes, miss,' said Toenail automatically. His head swivelled from side to side, looking for somewhere safe. Optimism is another dwarfish characteristic.

‘What's that funny ringing noise?' asked Galahaut.

‘That's the alarm,' the girl replied. ‘Do you think somebody could have broken in?' She shivered a little.

Brill, said Toenail to himself. ‘I'm already lumbered with two idiots, now it looks like I've got a third one to look after as well. Any more, while I'm at it? Bring out your idiots.

He nudged Boamund in the ribs.

‘Boss,' he said, ‘don't you think we ought to be, well, getting along? You know...'

Boamund looked at him blankly for a moment. ‘What?' he said. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, good idea.' He remained where he was. In fact, the dwarf noticed, the three of them together looked remarkably like the legs of a table.

It was, in fact, the girl who broke the spell.

‘Do excuse me,' she said, ‘I'm completely forgetting my manners. Would any of you care for some tea?'

 

The early history of the Grail is surrounded by legends, most of which were put about by the PR department of Lyonesse back in the tenth century to create artificial runs on Byzantine long-dated government stock.

When the emperors of Byzantium ran into financial difficulties, they raised money by hocking sacred relics - the Crown of Thorns, the True Cross, the shin-bone of St Athanasius, and so forth. The record of the Empire in those days is not so much history as pawnography.

The value of these relics was determined by the market, which in turn was influenced by supply and demand. So complete, however, was the Empire's collection of holy bits and bobs that it very nearly constituted a full set. There was only one worthwhile relic missing; but it was also the big one. So long as it was unaccounted for, the market could never crystallise, for fear of what might happen if it should ever reappear.

Clearly, as far as the market-makers were concerned, this was a situation that had to continue, if they were to have any hope at all of controlling the market. And in order that the Grail should stay missing, it stood to reason that they had to find it themselves, quickly. Then they could arrange for it to get permanently and definitively lost.