Kingdom of the Grail (43 page)

CHAPTER 52

T
he children slept well past dawn, after the night they had had, but Gemma was up as early as ever. She happened by Marric as he tended the fire, waiting for the first recruit to stagger out yawning and demand a loaf of his new-made bread.

“We'll need flour in a day or two,” he said, “and more ale.”

She nodded. “I'll tell the quartermaster.” Clearly she had somewhere else to be, but she paused, squatting beside him. He waited for her to say what was on her mind. “Have you seen Count Roland this morning?”

“Not since last night,” Marric said.

“He's not in the Franks' camp. He's not in his tent here. His horse is in the lines. His clothes are in the tent, except what he had on.”

Marric's ears quivered, but he kept his expression bland. “You've been looking for him?”

“He's always about. He should be pacing by now, waiting for the children to be up and at arms practice. He's nowhere at all.”

“He could be in the castle,” Marric said.

Her eyes flashed on him. “Why? Was he summoned?”

“No,” said Marric. “But I saw him go in. He hasn't come out. I presume he's safe there.”

She shivered, rubbing her arms. It was cool this high in the mountains, but he did not think that chill was of the
body. “He was summoned,” she said, “if he went there. Every step he takes, he goes higher. He'll go to the Grail, be sure of it.”

“Are you afraid for him?”

She shrugged irritably. “I can't get out of the habit of fretting over him. Not that he needs me now, or has for a long time, but I keep remembering. He was such a sweet thing. Everything so new, everything so strange. Those eyes of his were always wide. And no malice in him at all.”

“There isn't now,” said Marric.

“No, there isn't, is there? But I worry. It's having so many sons—I keep thinking he's another.”

“He wasn't exactly a son to you.”

“That's over, too,” she said. Her voice was flat. “They say the enemy will be here in a handful of days. Maybe sooner.”

“I heard that, too,” he said, taking the shift in stride.

“Pray we're ready.”

She rose. He watched her go and sighed. Gemma was a wise woman, and strong. Surely she would not let Roland become a weakness.

Roland came out near noon. He was on foot, plainly dressed, but clean and fresh-shaven. The
puca
in cat-shape walked at his heel. Sarissa was behind them, as plainly dressed as he.

He was wearing a sword, which he had not done before. And the great gate had opened for him, not the postern through which lesser folk could come and go. He crossed the bridge and walked down the narrow road into the valley.

The army saw him coming. They were all awake, the recruits at practice, the veterans idling about. All but the Franks. They, though veterans all, had elected to follow the recruits' example.

They stopped in a long wave, all down the field, and stared at the two figures walking from the castle. As they drew nearer, Marric saw the hilt and pommel of the sword he bore: plain silver, white stone. The bogle's teeth clicked together.

“So that's why he wouldn't take a sword,” Kyllan said. “He left his behind.” He unstrung his bow and coiled the string, absently, while Roland drew closer.

Cait made her way from the edge of the line. “I hear all the commanders have been called together. There's someone new in charge. Some new general.”

“That must be where he's going.” Kyllan slipped his bow into its case and slung it behind him. “Are you coming?”

She was already in motion. So were Cieran and Peredur, and Marric silent behind.

The commanders had gathered in a green hollow somewhat apart from the camp. A ring of trees surrounded it. A broad stone table stood in its center. It had an air of old sanctity, which seemed fitting for the occasion.

They were all there, lords and captains, men and women of rank both high and low. Marric saw Gemma near Lord Huon.

She was watching Roland, who had come in among the last. She did not look as relieved as one might have expected.

No one else took much notice of him. Their glances passed over him and went on. They were all waiting for some prince from the castle.

While they waited, they fell into their factions. Marric watched Roland watch them. He seemed to be idling about, roving the edges, catching snatches of conversation. But Marric thought that his ears were perhaps keener than most men's were.

Marric, whose ears were not even partly human, marked the three strains that ran through the babble of sound. He did not trouble to name those who sang the antiphons; there were so many, it did not matter.

“Do you think,” asked a man in the blue and gold of Lyonesse, “that Carbonek can wisely choose a general for us? The king is dying, or for all we know is dead. The ladies in their shrine—they're long sundered from the lands they rule. Surely we're best fit to elect our own commander.”

“No, no,” said a woman near Lord Huon. “It will be Morgan, or one of the knights of the Grail. They're well fit to lead us.”

“Or it will be someone else,” said a man of Poictesme. “The champion—”

“There is no champion,” his companion said.

“There was.”

“He was lost.”

“But if he comes back—”

Roland had left the edges and woven though the clusters of conversation. Kyllan and Cait and Peredur had slipped into his shadow, as quiet and almost as subtle about it as the
puca
was.

In the center, by the stone table, Roland stood still for a while. The babble was rising. People were arguing. One substantial faction was set to elect a general, with a handful of contenders for the office. The others looked ready to rise up in revolt.

Roland sprang onto the stone. A few eyes turned to him, but most were caught up in contention. What was he, after all, but an outland captain?

He drew the sword that he had brought out of Carbonek. It sang as he swept it up, a high fierce song. He whirled it flashing about his head and grounded it between his feet, point resting against the stone, cross-hilts gripped in his hands.

The last of the babble died away. His eyes raked their faces. Marric felt the heat of that glance even from the edge of the gathering.

He had not seen Sarissa move through the crowd, nor had he seen Morgan come there at all. Yet there they were, standing on either side of the dolmen.

“My lords,” said Roland without raising his voice; yet they all heard him. “Princes and commanders of Montsalvat. I bring you word from Parsifal the king.”

The silence was absolute.

“I was chosen,” Roland said, “to be the champion of Montsalvat. This is the sword Durandal, which was wrought for that choosing. Now your king bids me speak for him. I will command this army. I will act as he would act, in his name and by his will.”

Marric's lips twitched. Elegant that speech was not, but Roland, Marric had noticed, was not one to speak when he could act.

The same could not be said of the lords he faced. But he gave them no chance to raise their voices. “The enemy comes,” he said. “He'll pass the borders of Carbonek in a hand of days—perhaps sooner, if he presses the march. There will be guards posted, and scouts in the outlands.
The rest of us will wait for him here. How we wait, what order we take—I give you this day to advise me. But be quick, and be wise. There's no time to waste.”

“
Ai
,” said Gemma beside Marric. “He's high-handed.”

“Maybe it's time someone picked them up and shook them,” Marric said.

Her brows went up. “So that's why the champion had to be an outlander. He's not part of any faction. He can say what nobody else will dare to say.”

“And he has that,” Marric said, tilting his chin toward Durandal.

She nodded. She was frowning, but not with temper. She was watching Roland as she had since he came out of the castle.

Roland stood on the dolmen, staring down either defiance or objections. He had come as a shock to too many of them. They all knew him, or knew of him: Huon's young captain who had insisted that the levies be trained for war.

He should have dressed as a prince, maybe. And maybe not. In plain clothes, with no mark of office but the sunlit shimmer of the sword, he was irrevocably of them, not unreachably high above them.

“Advise me,” he said. “Reckon the count of your forces. Tell me what they can best do.”

The babble rose to a roar again, voice vying with voice, each striving to out-shout the other. There were again three camps: those who would bring the war to the enemy in the empty lands, those who would take the Grail and retreat to the far reaches of the kingdom, and those who would make a single stand here, at Carbonek.

Roland laid Durandal down on the stone and sat behind the shield of her, knees drawn up, chin on them, watching and listening, waiting them out.

Marric laughed silently. He skipped through the crowd, sprang up onto the stone table, sat exactly as Roland was sitting.

After a moment, Sarissa understood. She grinned, sudden and rather startling, and followed suit. Then Morgan did it; then Cait, and Kyllan, and Kyllan's two brothers; and from nowhere as it seemed, Turpin in his brown habit and his worn mail. That was as many of them as the stone table could hold.

Lord Huon saw them first. He hushed those who were nearest, who would do as he bade. He drew their eyes toward the dolmen. His own were glinting. Only lordly courtesy would be keeping him from laughter.

It took some little time, but at last there was silence, again. Again, they all stared at Roland. He stared back, his eyes as blank as coins.

“It seems,” Lord Huon said, “that we have little to offer you.”

Roland shook his head. His eyes cleared, focused. He said, “First tell me what our enemy wants.”

That did not please many of them: they were muttering of village idiots and outland fools. But Huon answered, “He wants the Grail. He'll devote all his energies to that. He won't care how much of his army he loses, if only it opens the way to the shrine.”

“Can the Grail be taken away from Carbonek?”

Eye flashed to eye among the lords, but for a wonder they kept silent. They let Huon speak again for them. “The Grail can live anywhere it pleases. But Carbonek was built by its magic. If Carbonek falls, the Grail loses much of its power.”

“But it will still be ours!” cried someone far in the rear.

“If we take the Grail,” said Roland, “the enemy will follow us wherever we go. Where the Grail is, there is the war. So tell me. Is there any castle in this kingdom that is stronger than Carbonek?”

“None,” said Huon. Even those who objected most strongly to that course were nodding—scowling, but agreeing.

“So then,” Roland said. “The Grail will stay in Carbonek. Now advise me. How can we best defend both this castle and the Grail?”

There was more order in it now, more plain courtesy. They spoke one by one, in order of rank, from Gwyn the prince to Gemma the commander of the levy from Greenwood—but Roland heard her with as much respect as he accorded the highest of princes.

Idlers from the army had long since wandered in earshot of the commanders' gathering. From the stone table Marric could see how many had come—an impressive number. Maybe all of them. Faces as far as he could see, and eyes, fixed on Roland.

They settled it before the sun had sunk too far. The bulk of them would defend the castle and the shrine. They would bivouac not on these fields but beneath the castle itself, in a maze of caverns that descended far into the earth and stretched for a great distance under it. Magic of earth and fire were strong there. The light had held it for time out of mind, since even before the Grail came to Montsalvat.

“That is all very well,” said the Prince of Poictesme, “but as strong as we may be if we all gather in one place, so much the easier will it be for the enemy to destroy us all in a single stroke.”