The Grail War (37 page)

“He’s eating iron today," he said in a low tone, “and shitting flame."

“Mayhap he’ll share my anger, as well."

Howtlande hazarded an uncertain smile. He glanced around the broken walls. The air was somewhat clearer up here, though all views were a seamless blur at any distance. Messengers and nobles hurried up and down the stairs and crisscrossed across the hilltop … Somewhere out of sight there was a continuous pounding of steel on steel as armorers and blacksmiths worked as though (he thought) they were literally hammering the world into a new shape …

“No one can share his anger," the corpulent commander assured him. “Impossible. I would tread quietly around him today." He smiled, bluff, except for the unchanging dark eyes.

Lohengrin tapped his foot.

“He’s down below?" he wanted confirmed.

“Hmm. If he comes out at all, it’s mainly at nightfall. He rides the pumpkin.”

“What?”

“Ah. You’ll see it before long.” He leaned closer with the air of confiding a great secret. Lohengrin realized the man couldn’t resist gossip, even if it endangered him at times. “He’s no lover of day, not him. Why, they call him the ‘bat.’”

“Who does?”

The round lord shrugged.

“It’s an expression heard,” he said.

“Do you believe in what he’s doing?” Lohengrin suddenly demanded and watched the flabby face grow stern and dedicated. If it was acting, it was very effective and would account for the high position this man held; Lohengrin knew his martial prowess was not considered awe-inspiring.

“Naturally,” Howtlande declared firmly. “He is the greatest man in the world … as he has said himself.” No flicker of expression suggested anything one way or the other about his remarks. No great leader, Lohengrin accepted, could fail to have a few questionable advisors and instruments … Men like this probably accounted for the blunders he’d witnessed along the way …

Lohengrin nodded and headed for the steps. Howtlande followed for a few strides.

“Have you news?” he asked.

“Why is he angry?”

“Why
isn't
he?” A shrug. “Short supplies, objectives not taken … he expects perfection.” He nodded, frowning. “Also, he doesn’t like the smoke.” He tapped his chest, indenting the flesh under the gold-brocaded silks. “Lungs. Sometimes it makes him retch.”

Howtlande stopped at the head of the stairs as the other lord general descended.

“These are great days,” he called after him.

The smoke had diminished somewhat and the mists thinned toward midday. The sky remained stained almost black. Wista thought (in the brief glimpses he had) that it was worse in the rounded mountains to their right. He had seen flickers of flame crawling at the churning cloud bases there.

They were crossing a cindered field, through twisted, burned-out trees. The horse hooves stirred up choking black powder. “We all look like bloody Moors now,” Grontler had remarked, trying, ineffectually, to wipe away some of the charcoal dust from himself.

“We’re fucked close,” Grontler announced. “The ground is still stove-hot.”

Wista paid no attention. He had nothing to say. He rode like a doomed man. Miles and miles of charred death and these were minor, outlying blazes …

They passed a line of blackened foundations still smoking. He didn’t quite look at the burned stick skeletons that lay broken on the scorched stones. He didn’t have to look. He was overloaded. He needed no more sights or sounds … nothing … He refused even to think, just rode on and on and on, aware (as if awareness weren’t within him, but rather waiting at some juncture of his fate) that his moment was coming, aware that the unbearable immensity (that had overcome him beside the dying nun) would find an outlet through him like a pinhole in a dam that would drip, spatter, spray, and finally explode, bringing the whole mass down in a flood of pressure and stone … All he had to do was wait; and thinking or showing any reaction in the face of all this would be impertinence … Wait … He would come to Lohengrin in time. Lohengrin had seen to that. Had insisted on it …! Yes … that was somehow important, too … he had insisted…

They rode on, horse legs spuming the pitch dust as sledders sprayed snow …

Broaditch was afraid. They’d reached the foothills of the tangled, dense country he’d seen in his dreams or visions. It was just as pictured. His flesh tingled because this was the first nearly absolute proof. This cut him off from past certainties, even of hopelessness. There were laws, tides of time, and the world was a dreaming, a fabric woven and unstitched each sleep. He felt himself sweating in the chill as he accepted these things … What, then, was solid when the dreamer dreamed himself, too …? He took a shaky, deep breath as he recognized the waterfall spilling down a damp, dark cliff; recognized the massed pines that showed no ground, the dim outline of the general shape of this whole area, which resembled a giant mound raised by titan gardeners and set on the rolling plains. He’d never seen country quite like this in Britain. It rose before them, a seemingly impenetrable mass of rock and crosscut channels of rapid water and enknotted trees. It was harder to enter here than a fortress because there was no simple wall to scale, but an entire fractured, uneven, twisted, blocked landscape …

The dreams flashed back on him: he’d floated in the glowing air above the pulsing, shining heart of this country. For the first time he felt anxious to get in there because (though his legs were actually shaking) he now believed there was a
meaning
to it … He watched the mists and smoke shift the outlines, hint and cover … He was afraid, yes, but the thought of going back was unbearably flat and stale … There was a meaning, he was going to meet something … something, he suddenly thought, from the space between sleep and waking, something from neither world, and as his imagination tried to give it form (and failed to do more than stir vast, cavernous fears and draw immense, gaping faces that were not faces), he pushed himself forward a step, a single step …

“So now we’ll have to trek around,” Valit was complaining. “A fine lodestone you are, Broaditch.”

Irmree was sitting down, a thing she frequently did. She was panting faintly through parted lips.

“How can we profit by what we now have in this miserable wilderness?” Valit asked the air.

“We?” Broaditch commented. “You, lad, are welcome to all you gain thereby. Spare me a whoremaster’s offices.”

“What matter?” Valit shrugged. “Just words. Say I’m a Jew or a Moor, too, or a condemned Italian, and I care not so there be coin in my purse.”

“In any case, get your fortune back in tow, for our way leads straight on.”

Valit shook his head and spat.

“Turn me into a crow,” he recommended, “and I quibble not but follow straight … Or call upon your wizards and angels if you must.”

“Neither pimp nor wizard,” said Broaditch, starting to march, digging in his staff to additionally support his still shaky legs, wild salt-and-pepper beard riffling in the uneven breezes. “I go on.”

He couldn’t explain, he simply knew he now had to have the courage not to think or ask or fret or hesitate … above all, he had no doubt it would work. Nature had constantly been instructing him in this. Now would come the test of all those lessons, because if life had no inner intelligence, then dreams were broken, mad fragments of waking’s senseless accidents …

So he knew it would all be like leaping into the sea again, into the claws and fangs of those slashing reefs … he had to leap … as he’d been taught.

He didn’t have to look back to see Valit hesitate, then follow. That didn’t matter, either. He had a strange impression that something somehow watching him was relieved and pleased; but that might have been a level of himself, as much as anything outside. He wondered if there was ever anything outside … He knew, setting his feet on the first steep tier of heaped sharp stone, glancing up at the blackening folds of smoke breaking over the obscure hilltop, he knew that death waited at the end of this road.

Lohengrin tried to keep his outrage firm as he stormed down several levels of stairs, passing a pair of the black-armored mutes at every new turn. His hands were sweaty. It was dim and dank down here, and for all his confidence and the power his promotion had conferred, he felt flimsy, vulnerable. And he’d never actually seen Clinschor face to face. He wondered if Lord Master held these conferences through an eye hole in the wall …

He was admitted through an iron gate into a perfumed darkness (
he
chooses
to
live
in
dungeons
) and his first impressions: a long stone table supporting three tree-trunk-sized candles with incongruously tiny wicks that faintly gleamed on several lords. He recognized the powerful Lord Gobble (a short, bent man with a stiffened leg), but he stared past him, focusing on the middle-sized figure at the far end of the table, a hunched-over, large-headed, soft-featured man of more than middle age with two almost absurdly upcurling moustaches. His violently outstretched finger was pointing at a dim map on the table. All the others were bent forward, obviously straining to follow his point. Lohengrin wondered how they could see in the feeble light. He couldn’t believe this was the terrible Clinschor himself, the terror of nations and kings, the afflicted master wizard who penetrated beyond life and death, the irresistible voice … Then the eyes flared briefly, taking him in mid-rumbling speech. They struck Lohengrin as vacant, feline, depressed, and suited to the massive voice that was still saying: “ … with this map the gates of the final stronghold are open. The three routes, the only three known, untangle the maze. Our armies break the last resistance.” He slammed the fist of one large pale, restless hand into the soft palm of the other. Then the finger darted. “Then march here … here … and here … and they are trapped in the center … the fortress is ours!” The smoldering eyes flashed along the two lines of commanders. “No more error!” he boomed. “No more incompetence! Tomorrow will be hailed as historically the greatest day of all time. Heroes have returned from the past to shake the world again, to bring determination and wisdom to a hopeless, cowardly world, to bring fire from heaven …” Here he clenched his fist before him, eyes staring beyond them all, Lohengrin believed, into unguessed reaches and depths. The man held the room spellbound as titanic energy suddenly filled the stooped, unimpressive figure until he seemed a giant. Lohengrin felt he could lose himself in those eyes, as in staring into a starry night. As a boy he would stand on the battlements and watch the bright rust-red speck of the planet he didn’t yet know was Mars, stare and wonder at what he imagined was the eye of the night, a hole in heaven behind which fire burned. More than the Moon or Venus, he’d been fascinated by the red, burning gaze of it …

“ … to bring flame and steel and strength so the giants from the ancient past may return … This is an awakening! The secret fortress will fall, the Grail will fall, and all else will follow … Great powers from beyond this earth …” — some of the listeners, Lohengrin noted with contempt, were obviously frightened — “ … great powers will return and God help …” — both clenched fists were raised to shoulder level — “ … God help the weak, quivering sheep who’ll not stand up and be a giant!”

His commanders roared agreement. And in the subsequent shock of silence, Lohengrin (standing at the opposite table end from Clinschor) spoke: “Lord Master,” he hesitated.

Everyone looked at him. Clinschor said nothing, simply inclining his head, giving tacit permission to go on, but offering no warmth or support.

Rather than let the silence continue, Lohengrin plunged: “You spoke movingly of the new world we’re creating.” Clinschor gave another single nod, waited. “I believe in this. I am completely committed.”

One of Clinschor’s large, pasty hands began tapping its long, soft, thick fingers on the tabletop, rattling the map. The weak light brought out the angular bone structure under the soft face flesh and the deep hollows under the eyes. Lohengrin felt sweat on the back of his palms. He couldn’t explain it. He kept telling himself to hold firm; this was a great man, yes, but still a man … Even wizards (if there really were such) were men …

“Yes, Lord Commander?” Clinschor said, harsh, but even in tone.

“Who has permitted the burning and the total devastation I saw?” Lohengrin asked. “I believe you should hear what is being done in your name, Master.”

The warlord nodded violently, jerking his neck.

“Yes,” he rumbled, “the fire should not have been allowed to spread to the woods so soon. This was an idiotic blunder and threatens our flank!” Lord Gobble looked uncomfortable. “Still, Commander Lohengrin, my revised plans take this into account. We’ll be through the dense country and into the open lands beyond before the flames are a serious problem. Now …”

“But, my lord,” Lohengrin insisted, “the country is being utterly ravaged … destroyed. I — ”

“On what do you base your objections?” the master coldly asked.

“Why waste the whole country?” Lohengrin felt the sweat trickle around the neck of his undergarment. “What will be left to rule, to — ”

Clinschor’s expression brought him to silence. His hands had just jerked into fists.

“Are you all fools?” he said looking at the low, soot-stained ceiling in exasperation.