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

IV

“You needn’t bind this one,” Howtlande said, pointing to the short, soft-faced woman who was staring, numbly, straight ahead, not even trying to cover her breasts where the cloth was ripped away. The sacklike garment hung to the ankles, streaked blood showing on her thighs through the rents. Skalwere was knotting the ropes on a sullen, chunky girl’s wrists and looping them to the next in line, a weeping, thin red-haired woman. “Get them moving,” he went on, staring meditatively at one of the peasant men who was face down in the ditch, legs uptilted as if he were diving into the earth, up to his eyes in his own caking bloodmuck.

Howtlande was sitting on the mule. The bulk of his men started straggling ahead in drifting and approximate line. No one even bothered to joke about the women now among the twenty-five or so bandits. Most, he reflected, were masterless men-at-arms, with a few gallows birds and that one, odd, actual knight. The only other knight besides himself in the band. A darkhaired, longjawed, dour middle-aged bastard who told you nothing in any conversation and was unmatched in battle viciousness. Howtlande felt certain he would know the name if he ever were to learn it. He’d only asked once and the eyes had looked at him like dark stones as the fellow said:

“You have the sword.” Voice hard and smooth. “Why trouble further? Call your own horse your own way.”

Howtlande had readily agreed, though he hadn’t tried calling that horse anything just yet. But he couldn’t help speculating about the possible past … he was well-trained, that showed at once, a perfect captain. He must have served kings; perhaps even his own former master, the ball-less wizard.

Hah
, he thought,
who finally ran short of spells, too … the cringing son-of-a-bitch, I don’t see how he ever took me in to begin with … well, he took enough others. There’s no such thing as a lonely disgrace, it’s always shared with someone …

He spat into the fine dust that was rising and hanging behind them like yellowish smoke. A butterfly rose, erratic, sudden, falling, tipping, tilting through the air with exquisite awkwardness. He barely registered it stuttering across the road and vanishing as if blown dissolving into the glitter of underbrush and long grasses.

“How far do we march?” Skalwere wanted to know.

“Tired already?” Howtlande joked.

“No, fat man,” was the unsmiling reply. “But it be well to know your destination.”

“Not far. Half a day on foot. I know the place, Viking.”

“Spare me,” Skalwere cut in, “more answer than question.” And moved toward the head of the scraggly column, past the roped women, the part-armored men in varying states of personal scarring: one-eyed, -eared, -armed, bloated, lean, short, long; bent and straight; speaking and silent, all hot …

Vicious
,
runty
bastard
, Howtlande thought, and half-muttered. The knight was striding, silent, at the flanks of the mule.

“How do you fare today, sir?” Howtlande asked. The man didn’t look at him. “There may be horseflesh in this village. There’s few enough steeds left in the country for our finding Else I’d not be mounted thus, eh?” Smiled. The man glanced at him and said nothing.

A
fit
companion
for
Skalwere
.
The
pair
of
them
could
match
their
wits
and
elegance
together
…

He went on, still trying to stir a wriggle of conversation from the fellow:

“Once we have good mounts beneath us and raise more men then things will be different.”

“Once were dead, things will be different too,” the knight reflected, not-quite-smiling.

“Don’t give in to the pessimism of these times,” Howtlande insisted. “That’s a great mistake. In my view, sir, there’s a whole new world of opportunities opening before us. Look you, men rise up in any condition of life. There’s a leader in prisons … among serfs … beasts … you take my meaning?”

“I don’t take it very far,” the knight returned, composed and aloof.

“Oh? Hear me, first we take this town, then the next, and so on. Then we keep heading north. I have a route in mind that will allow us to gather strength like … like a ball of snow rolled down a winter’s slope.”

“And so,” the knight replied, “we only grow by speeding to the bottom.”

“What? Hear me, sir, were both cut from the same sheet.” His voice was confidential. “Don’t yield to this pessimism. I say there’s no limit to what may be ours, in the end.”

“The length of a grave may be ours, in the end.”

“You’re worse than a monk.” Howtlande was exasperated. “You have to use your imagination.”

The other smiled.

“I do, baron,” he said. “I’ve had to or else I’d face the truth.”

“You served great men, in your time, I think.”

“None but. All dead. And the greatest of them once told me his whole life was hollow at heart. And I didn’t understand him then.” He scratched the back of his neck where it showed reddened and thick above the bright links of mail. “Later I came to understand him.”

Howtlande opened his round mouth, then closed it again. Watched the man sink back into himself, into a granite silence …

V

Suddenly the sickening falling ended with a shock that was pressure before it became chill suffocation and he kicked and struggled up from the muddy bottom, sucking air and remembering everything instantly, bursting into a mounting wail that became (at the end) a howl as teeth flashed and chewed water and air in the bony edge of a face, the cry echoing from the riverbanks, a bitter eruption so violent it seemed the scarecrow frame would burst to pieces … and then he was swimming, lashing, pounding at the dark water, clawing, scrambling, kicking at the shore as if to wound the earth itself, spitting fury, racing over the land now without even taking the trouble to straighten up, hands still flicking at the ground, hissing, over and over:

“So … so … so … they think me set aside, do they? … so … so … so …”

Jerking along now, following the stream, too caught up in a frenzy of remembering to grasp or even care that he was plunging blindly into the silver-haunted shadows, bulging eyes fixed on bright, vivid shapes, the flowing past lost and then becoming (as he gradually slowed and stood upright) the future … pleasant images, so that he was down to a reflective walk a few yards later as he gradually gained control of himself. The shock of remembering was fading … that that he’d lost; the sickening frustration of seeing it all slip away … now he was watching each enemy, each betrayer dragged to justice, and the details absorbed him: he watched Lord General Howtlande being bound to the wheel, his fat, sweaty flesh quivering, mouth shrieking and pleading, rolling his eyes as the executioner stepped closer.

His smiling mouth murmured into the peaceful, silvery glowing night, just louder than the throbbing of frogs and general screech of nightbugs.

“No mercy, general,” he said.

Then he mouthed the other’s desperate reply:

“Please, my lord, I beg you, please! Pity me! I’m sorry I failed you … I’m sorry …”

“Too late, general,” he told the image in the darkness, “far, far too late.”

“Please … please …” Sobbing, bubbling, chewing his foamy lips, then screaming as the burning red steel drew a ring under one eye and the socket suddenly filled with bubbling, charring jelly.

“Far, far too late, traitor.” His voice was smoothly, contemplatively calm. “Now the other eye.”

“Please … O mother of God … please … no more … I beg you, lord … I’m sorry … I’m sorry …” Only one eye still could weep. “Don’t hurt me more … this is enough … I’ve learned my lesson … I’m sorry … I’ll do anything … please …”

“Bum it out!” he hissed, clenching both fists. “Burn it out! Out!”

And then he tripped and went to his knees. Groaned, rubbing his foot. One toe throbbed terribly under the splintered nail. A log lay across the path in the faint gleaming. He stood up and limped on a few more steps, then nearly walked into a wall. Wooden. He pressed his palm to the timber, groped along it thinking this was a great defense built by his enemies to keep him outside, blocked off from the source of his power. He smiled with grim determination. Could feel the power pulsing deep in the dark country ahead like a sunken sun within the depths of the earth fitfully guiding him. He clenched his teeth, drawing himself back a little. He would smite this wall with his concentrated will. Did they think his force waned so far that this pitiful barrier would check him? He paced a few steps and began muttering a spell, chanting, singsong, reaching one big soft hand out, pouring the energy into his fingers, visualizing the wood bending, splitting under the psychic impact, his body and then the earth beginning to vibrate as his immensely bass and resonant voice filled the night and hushed the droning sounds … then, suddenly, violently, thrust himself forward and sagged, surprised, into unresisting darkness, toppling over what he didn’t know was a window ledge (the invisible sill hitting him just above the knees), getting up inside and straining his sight into the corners, chuckling under his breath.

“A new enchantment,” he muttered.

He was quite satisfied. The merest touch of his strength had been enough.

He crouched and groped around the thick-smelling interior: earth, smoked wood, old sweat … heard a fly buzz somewhere, invisible … touched something soft, crumbly; smelled it on his hand: cheese. Very good … He murmured a spell to take off any poison or curse and ate some, feeling a little gloat of smugness. Crammed it in, swallowing and spilling moist crumbs.

“Rest now,” he half-said.

Began creeping around the floor looking for something to wash it down. His wet clothes sloshed. Found nothing. There was no telling how vast the place might be. He saw it running off into an endless, treacherous labyrinth … He had to sit and rest his eyes a moment. Leaned against the cool, mudchinked wall; started to repicture Howtlande on the wheel, one eye seared out … lost it … saw armies under a blazing greenish sky hurling themselves against a vast, black stone fortress … slid down the wall onto something soft; dimly felt cloth on his cheek … the massed troops glittered like black ants; then darkness lapped over him totally in a massive, soft surf …

Then brightness, harsh, digging into his eyes and head. For an instant he felt the attack of magical forces and struggled to collect his power, then blinked and shook fully awake. Stared around the hut, which was a small shock to him: a sagging little kennel with the sun coming straight in the window and cutting through slight spaces in the wall and roof.

He saw the hunk of cheese on the low table, gourds hanging above a hearth overflowing with ashes and then the peasant man, face blackened and bloated, lying on his back, tongue thrust out as if in violent mockery and defiance of the flies that spiraled and hummed around him, arms starfished out, great, lumpy swellings under the armpits, belly bulged up; then the woman on the low pallet in her shapeless garments. He turned his head on the softness and saw the third face, much too close, just as the woman exhaled a terrible rasping that he didn’t know were words. The young girl’s face was inches from his own, blue, empty, frozen eyes staring out from purple-black flesh; soft, golden glints of hair caught in a stir of air and the edge of a stray sunbeam; inches away; the tongue that at first he took for a chunk of dark sausage, and he knew they’d won, his enemies had tricked him here, to certain, horrid death. Heard the woman’s words now, a gurgle and hiss across the room:

“… waaaar … teeerrr … waar … terrr. Wa … rter …”

And he jerked his head from the soft, cold breast he’d Iain on all night, staring, hearing too (as if amplified) the burring buzzing of the gathering flies, their bright flash and greenish flicker at the window where the sun spilled in.

He scrambled to his feet and saw the open door and was already stumbling, fleeing into the gold-lanced green outside, moaning under his breath, straining, angular, jerky, over the crest of hill; across the road in a spume of dust; along the clean, smooth hillside through the scraggly wheat … across the village proper, the huts moving past; a blur of faces he didn’t even glance at, fleeing by an old woman working the well-rope; a group of playing children rushing past, shouting at him; one running along for a few of his panting yards as he went up the reverse slope shouting, dry, vacant, violent:

“Death is come! Death is come!”

He did not see the knight in black and red robes just coming out of the bam, yawning and stretching in a flood of clean, hot sunlight, then staring curiously after the gangly figure in the rent rags who struggled up the hill as if pushing his outsized, twisted shadow ahead of him and, still running, jerking up and down, disappeared over the far crest.

The knight turned quizzically to the matronly woman beside him.

“I wit,” he said, “that fellow grew tired of this village.”

“Nay, lord knight without-a-name, I know him not. He had the look of a holy man.”

“Mayhap he flees the Devil,” the knight returned.

“Or his fasting cracked his brains,” she offered.

I
know
about
the
Devil
, he thought,
that’s
curious
.
But
what
do
I
know
about
the
Devil
?
Curious
… He frowned, puzzled.

Her face wasn’t quite fierce but set against all times and weathers. There was iron in her, he thought. He was amazed again at all he knew, the words and images at his command. Except so much was missing … his name … when he tried to remember too much he saw brief, vivid, inexplicable flashes of what he assumed was the past; flashes out of a general dimness. He frowned, trying again:

What’s
my
name
? … Nothing.
A
name is the sound
or
a
mark
they
make
to
…
to
separate
a
thing
from
other
things
… Frowned.
Why
do
that
? …
the things are the same anyway … Where did I come from?
… Shook his head slightly.
Why
does
it
matter
? …

He saw the same scene: an unbelievable storm, wind and rain sheeting almost horizontally into a hillside that leaped and shook in the incredible continuous lightning … flashes of sword and armor in chaotic fragments … slashed bodies … a robed man, mouth yawning, screaming into the thunder and rage, long moustaches fluttering, pale eyes burning as if invoking the fury through himself … he felt sick and nervous, remembering this, and then shook himself out of it. Blinked at the sunny brightness, the brilliant points of dew, scattered bright flowers.

They
don’t
name
each
one
of
those
,
do
they
?”

“Well,” he said, “where are those wicked men you fear, woman?” He felt warm and strong. He realized he had little fear in him. Whatever he had been, he decided, he must have been fairly successful at it. Smiled, faintly. Or comfortable with it …

“Never mind, good sir,” the woman said, holding out an onion and piece of cheese to him, her eyes seeking and finding a boy and girl playing together at the edge of the cultivated fields, a mothers automatic checking. “Troubles always find their way home. This is a thing I’ve come to trust for truth.”