The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (21 page)

Stepped, jerked his foot back from sudden softness and squatted over what he instantly knew was a body. One of them. Dead? Asleep? Poised the rock to strike. The limbs were quivering and Broaditch stemmed a cry of pain when his thick finger poked into its chomping mouth and (because Broaditch hadn’t identified it yet) was shocked by the snapping gnash, and then the man went on quietly thrashing through his fit and Broaditch stripped off the garments (sweating, straining as one suddenly stuck), then tossed the cloak over himself and tramped on into the crowd, thinking:

Fate
or
chance
? …
Fate
or
chance
? …

The wind veered and the heavy, sweetish smell from the pits broke over him. The strange moaning song was all around.

Someone (not John) was calling out a blessing and the crowd stirred as steaming, dripping hot hunks of meat were passed from hand to hand:

“Here is the gift of life from the father. Let the father hear our gratitude that we perished not but were fed by his word and wisdom! Amen!”

“Aaaaaameeeeennnnn,” swept through the crowd. Broaditch winced at the heat billowing up from the pit. Shadowy figures with poles were laying what his mind was still trying to see as hogshape, the outspread, cloven trotters, the tapered snout, except his eyes were insisting against his brain on the long legs and arms and the face, illumined by the puff of burning hair as the already swelling, charring features writhed in hideous parody and madness and he knew he wasn’t going to escape because he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself (thinking of the girl, too, afraid to look or not look), turning, unaware of the stone in his hand, not hearing the half scream of disgust, fear and fury so intense as to blast his movement into a white, silent, obliteration, two of them already down, not even feeling the impact on their skulls, kicking, smashing into the shadowy crowd, roaring as if to hold off weeping and pain, flailing on, converting even shock into a mad charge, doomed, the rock already lost somewhere in the shouting, screaming, only stone fists and feet now (too late to stop or flee, thinking of Alienor moments too late to matter), fighting suddenly for life and whatever slim chances were left to break out of the crowd into the open night … too late, hearing finally his own bellowing voice, sucking breath and screaming; snarling:

“Slime! … Slime! … Slime! …”

Striking, veering as blows jarred him, lanced light into his head … endless hands caught at him, bodies jamming closer … closer … biting, foaming, clawing now … and then he was face down in the choking ash still fuming and heaving in unquenchable anger, the voices a meaningless rushing all around … spitting the bitter dust from his bleeding mouth, still trying to curse them …

XXXIII

“We were set upon,” the long-haired Viking said, breathing hard but evenly, the soot coating him in patches, running with sweat and blood. “They slew Rufflo and Walgrim. There were too many so we fell back.” Three others stood with him facing Tungrim, bloody and blackened as well. The sun was coming up towards high, white, violent noon over the desolate black landscape.

“You slew in turn?” the bald, red-bearded captain asked.

The soldier nodded once. Pointed.

“A great many. In dark robes. Half a day’s march ahead.”

Layla and the mule were stained, as was everyone, by the dark strokes of this terrible place. She watched Tungrim covertly. She had a headache and no appetite today. Felt drained and remote. She looked at him and thought, without phrasing it, he’d won … she wasn’t going to struggle about it … no struggle and strain … there was no better way to go, and since she wasn’t dead yet what difference did it make?

At
least
he’s
a
man
, she told herself.
At
least
he’s
that
…

Watched him push his hair from his eyes as he spoke and gestured, one fist tilted into his hip. The men, at his commands, moved into compact packs, spreading out among the black, ruined trees, raising the fine black dust like smoke, round shields cocked, horned helmets flashing the relentless light. Hundreds of unflinching, untiring fighters moving with grim accord; here and there were shieldless berserkers with axes only, moving apart from the others: mad shock troops ready to race at death, to welcome blows and destruction as others might sink into a lover’s kiss and groping soft sweetness of arms …

She watched him mount his bare-back pony and turn to her. She wanted to say something but couldn’t yet. Was still accepting everything with a kind of numbed hope because all her dreams had bled and burned away to this char and there was nothing better or worse so she’d live … and wanted a drink of wine. Licked her dry, chapped lips as he pointed to the circle of carts.

“Follow behind with these,” he told her.

A few camp followers, wounded and one or two older warriors were occupied there.

“Yes,” she said.

Two of his chiefs waited as he shook his head, baffled, annoyed.

“You think me so dull,” he said, “after your Lord Fops.”

“No,” she said.

“You anger me, woman.”

“There’s a hole in me nothing can fill.”

He squinted through a frown, then smiled. Guffawed.

“You still think this,” he said, relaxed for a moment. “I must mistake my size like a fisherman the catch he lost.”

“Not that,” she replied, not even amused outwardly. This hole I pour wine into without end.” Then she smiled too.

“Come, lord,” redbeard said.

He snapped the reins and started off, the dust smoking around him.

“Well,” he called back to her, “like a stripling, with each fresh hope my spirits rise. Let me go then, with hope, my strange, fay Briton lady.”

“I cannot prevent hope,” she said, still smiling. And as he rode on ahead there were words in her mind:

You
may
hope indeed, rough sir, but you’ll need to hold up my end of the
pole
… She looked towards the carts.
One
drink
is
all
,
to
soothe
me
…
I’ll
have
but
one
…
it’ll
quicken
my
appetite
…
one
only
…

Howtlande was all sweat and soot, tottering, corky arms lashed to his sides, prodded by the spearbutts of the epically unkempt Truemen. His captors drove him and several other survivors of the fight across the sea of ashes, wading and tripping, the sun on his head like, he thought, a metal hammer.

He walked behind the single bowlegged and filthy horse they’d loaded with half-a-dozen corpses. The limbs and heads jounced and rocked stiffly where they poked through the ropes. They’d buried all their own dead, left the rest to rot, so why bear these along? It was baffling but that was the least of what troubled him.

Even with a swollen tongue, blurred eyes, mouth half choked with soot, he kept trying. That was his nature. Kept cocking his head and squinting significantly, raising his eyebrows, running through his various routines like a spring mechanism, desperate and widely ignored, still at it even as they reached the loosely bounded, inching mass march:

“… you see, my friends,” he was saying, “you see, I could have great value, a man of my years and knowing …” panting as the mallet sun beat without cease and his head floated a little and eyes blinked futilely at the bright shimmering blackness everywhere. “… you see, never to waste a man like myself … for I’ve plans … great plans … for great deeds! …”

One of the bleak fellows, eyes like glass chips sunk in wild beard matting, tall, stooped, spoke sidewise at the bent, steelsprung older one who’d attacked Parsival by the foul stream in the swamp that now seemed a precious camp to have given up, for they’d seen no thread of water since.

“Rozar,” he was saying to the other, “here’s rare feeding for the brothers and sisters.”

Rozar ground his gapped teeth together, reflectively, bouncing along, steel and fluid quick, shin-deep in the oddly slippery, grinding stuff. One arm swung low, anthropoidic.

“Why bring’m back?” he wondered. “Why not stay as was? That’s what I ask.”

“Because it’s for the folk, Rozar. For father.”

“Arrr,” was the reply as he jammed the long, warped spearshaft into Howtlande’s sweating fatrolls. “I ain’t so certain.”

“You don’t believe in father and all? Him what brought us to succor and safety?”

“Arrr,” semi-shrugged the older man. “What was we before? We do the best we can, mate. And what we must to live. This John be not the first wight to promise all and more to come, and yet see the world’s all a cinder still … arr …” Prodded Howtlande again. “What care I about
believe
, lad? I cross the bridge seems soundest and go on.”

“Well,” remarked the more theoretically-minded youth, scratching his frizzy beardling, “we serve father in diverse fashions.”

“Right now,” Rozar allowed, “he’s got the mill a-turning so I’ll grind me bread at it. The rest of you be free to mumble prayer as you best please.”

“Well,” said the youth, blowing his nose into his hand and flicking the results into the black dust that seethed like smoke under their feet, “I believe God blessed us and what we do. That’s what I believe.”

“I ain’t putting my hand in your mouth, lad. Say what please you.”

“Else we’d be the worst than beasts,” said the frizzybeard. His glasschip eyes flashed fanatic, nervous. “God blessed us, as father says.”

Howtlande glanced behind as they neared what he didn’t know was Clinschor’s wagon.

“You seem a fellow of sense,” he directed at the older man, whose eyes were like black pits. “A fellow of my own innards, I think.” Caught his breath. The day danced and swayed. “You’ll find … good use for me.”

Rozar tittered.

“We will, we will!” he practically shouted and in an excess of glee struck him a terrific blow across the back that puffed the coalblack dust as if he’d exploded and Howtlande fell on his face, weeping with agony. “We’ll find a fine use for this partridge.” Tittered. The other helped Howtlande rise.

“When father leads us to the land of plenty,” he said, flatly, blankly, “we’ll eat fit things again.” His eyes were widened, pale through his scraggles of beard. “We do what God wills!”

“Reap the crop that grew,” said Rozar, grinning. “Dream not by the empty furrow.”

The chip eyes stared. Howtlande tried not to really understand what lay behind their words. He felt sick, chill panic deep within …

“I believe these ills will pass away,” the young one said. Others were now cutting loose the corpses up ahead and tossing them into a flatbed cart as the march crawled on.

“Meanwhile you feed like a churchyard worm, lad,” Rozar suddenly snarled. “Don’t dream of dainties! You’re a worm and that’s that! Look what we are … your fancy God smiles on us?” Rozar tittered. “Look what we are, you simple ass. Think you Christ guides mad John? Aaarrr! Know you not your true master, worm? Eh?” He gripped the other by the greasy, sooty folds of cloak and pulled him off balance. “Your griping belly, is what! This be all there is! No more … We’re all graveworms. You silly shitstick!” He flung him away and strode on, one arm swinging low, hooked below his knee as he stooped along, furious, kicking Howtlande and the other pale prisoners on. “The world’s a grave and we’re the worms in it.” Face locked with concentrated rage as the victims cowered away from the blows. “Some eat and some are et!” Howtlande had lost his speech at last. “You kept enough fat to be sweet,” Rozar let him know. Grinned. “I know not how you kept it. The stars bring fortune, it would seem, even to maggots.” Tittered suddenly in fine (if mad) humor again. Howtlande said no more, struggling to keep, he hoped, ahead of more kicks and blows

…

John was riding one of the bony horses. There were a few left here and there. They’d been saved when God revealed the new diet.

The widespread horde was funneling into compactness as they moved into a gradually narrowing valley, following the ash-choked bed of a lost river.

Howtlande was roped like a strung fish with a line of others behind one of the two closed wagons. He kept squinting at John, who wasn’t far away. They were all near the head of what was becoming a lumpy column. At least, he realized, the terrible sun was now cut off by the steepening walls.

About a dozen Truemen came limping and straggling towards them. Most were wounded. Howtlande watched them reporting (just out of easy earshot) to their leaders.

“How far was this?” John demanded. He glanced up at the darkening blue sky.

“Few miles, father.”

“And?”

“We left the fresh meat ahead.”

John still was looking up.

“Good,” he said.

“Savage men,” put in another. “Norse bastards such as I’ve seen on the coast.”

Howtlande looked away, restless, agonized, exhausted.

He was first in line and stared randomly (through blurring skullpain) at the black-stained boards bobbing along a few feet in front, and then started, stung with fear, because the eye was watching him out of a strip of blackness and his mind said:
It’s
an
animal!
And then he remembered exactly what it was (just as Lohengrin had) and was just trying to shake off the notion when the muffled, unforgettable voice vibrated the wood, earth and his insides too and he thought:

No
…
Good
Mary
…
How
? …

“The unseen hand reaches out,” the voice was saying, “and brings all things before me that were far off.”

And then, after panic, he understood it wasn’t addressing him at all.

It
’
s
he
…
it’s
he
…
I
should
have
known
the
Devil
wasn’t
finished
with
him
yet
you
don’t
throw
away
a
sword
with
a
chip
or
two
in
it
…

Lohengrin braced against the rocking, crouched near Clinschor, who was still staring back at the narrow slice of dark ground and toiling prisoners.

“I have a circle of magic surrounding us,” the bony man confided in a confident rumble. “Nothing may penetrate it.”

Lohengrin could see Howtlande when he shifted his head, arms stretched out by the cord as if in prayer or supplication.

“Tell me about myself,” Lohengrin demanded again. Memories shifted and pressed around him. He reached for one; saw the blond knight he now believed was his father holding the slender dark woman (had to be his mother), only this time both of them were crying as the image eluded him, blurring where he most sought to focus … like rain on reflecting glass … they were speaking and he strained for the words that blurred away … “Tell me,” he insisted and felt the large, soft hand touch his shoulder, flutterlight.

“You are my chosen son and heir,” the big voice suddenly decided.

“Your son? But —” Winced as the wagon banged and a lance of pain sawstroked his skull.

“I make you heir to all my fortune and power … I name you Bungamarl! That’s a magical name and will set your enemies in terror … Understand me, boy … understand me …