The War Hound and the World's Pain (23 page)

Klosterheim sat back in his saddle. “Well enough,” he told me. “Lucifer is weakening. He retires. He will not fight. Our allies increase. You were a fool not to join me when I offered you the chance.”

“I accepted a task,” I said. “I knew that I had little hope of achieving it. But a bargain is a bargain. And Lucifer holds my soul, not you, Klosterheim.”

A shadow fell suddenly across the whole town. I looked up and saw the strangest sight I had yet met in Hell or the Mittelmarch. A huge black cat was looking down on us. If he had moved one paw or flicked his tail, he could have destroyed the entire city. I thought at first that this was another of Klosterheim’s allies, but it became plain that the witch-seeker was as surprised as were we.

“What have you conjured now, von Bek?” he said. He was disconcerted. Then he cursed at something he had seen behind us.

Sedenko turned first, yelling in astonishment. There was a great twittering: the kind of sound starlings make in the evening. I looked back.

A chariot, of bronze and silver, was drifting down through the sky towards us, drawn by thousands of small golden birds.

“Attack them!” cried Klosterheim. He drove his horse towards the platform, the black riders a mass of glowing metal in his wake.

As the chariot settled onto the platform, Klosterheim leapt his horse onto it and came riding directly at me. I parried his first blow. The armoured minions of Duke Arioch were dismounting, lumbering up the steps towards us. We were driven back rapidly.

I heard a voice from the chariot. It was a gentle, chiding, half-mocking voice. It said:

“Demon of the Sphere, I release thee from thy bondage on the condition thou hast made and on the further condition that you fight these enemies of your Master’s, for they conspire against Lucifer.”

In spite of the danger I turned my head. The little man in the chariot tugged at his beard and bowed to me. I caught the odour of Hungary Water. I saw lace and velvet. It was Philander Groot himself. “Will you join me, gentlemen?” he asked politely. “I think that Bakinax is about to become a battlefield and it will be no sight for sensitive men.”

Sedenko needed no further invitation. He was running hell-bent-for-leather towards the chariot. I followed him.

From out of the sphere, blinking and snarling, came the demon. He screamed his exultation. His scales clashed and began to glow. He laughed in hideous joy. And I saw a snarling Klosterheim still riding at us, still determined to kill me, even as we climbed into Groot’s chariot.

Now the Demon of the Sphere and the Knights of Duke Arioch were joined in battle. It seemed to me an unequal match, but the demon was accounting well for himself.

Klosterheim’s horse reared beneath us as we rose into the air, pulled by the little birds. His teeth were bared. He cried out almost as a child might cry out when it has been deprived of some favourite food.

The last I saw of the witch-seeker, he had leapt his horse from the platform and was riding away from the terrifying carnage taking place on the platform. I saw two armoured knights flung so far that they crashed into the Court. Bricks and stone collapsed. A horrible fire began to flicker wherever Duke Arioch’s knights fell.

Then, beneath the tranquil stare of that great black cat, we passed beyond Bakinax and over the red plain.

“I planned none of this,” said Philander Groot, as if he apologised to us. “But I knew that the state of balance which I had achieved could not last. I am glad to see that you are well, gentlemen.”

I was speechless. The dandy raised an eyebrow. “You are doubtless wondering why I am here. Well, I spent some time contemplating your story, Captain von Bek, and contemplating my old decision to remove myself from the affairs of Men, Gods and Demons. Then I considered the nature of your Quest and, you must forgive me this, I decided that I would like a part in it. It seemed momentous.”

“I had no idea that you were so great a magus,” I told him.

“You are very kind. I have had the sense, of late, that important events are taking place everywhere. Vain creature that I am, and growing a little bored, I must admit, with the Valley of the Golden Cloud and its decent moderation, I thought I might once again see if I could make use of my old powers, though I regard them, as I am sure do you, as childish and vulgar.”

“I regard them as Heaven-sent,” I told him.

He was amused. “Well, they are not that, Captain von Bek. They are not that.”

The dandy was silent for a little while as we continued on our journey through the upper air. Then he spoke more seriously than was his wont. “At present,” he said, “no soldier of the Dukes of Hell can pass into the ordinary Realm of Earth. But should Lucifer be defeated, there will be a wild carelessness come upon Creation and it will be the end of the world, indeed. There will be no single Anti-Christ, though Klosterheim could be said to represent them all. There will be open warfare, in every region, between Heaven and Hell. It will be Armageddon, gentlemen, as has been predicted. Mankind will perish. And I believe, no matter what the Christian Bible predicts, that the outcome will be uncertain.”

“But Lucifer does not wish to make war on God,” I said.

“The decision could be Lucifer’s no longer. Nor God’s. Perhaps both have lost their authority.”

“And the Grail?” said I. “What part can the Grail play in all this?”

“Perhaps none at all,” said Groot. “Perhaps it is no more than a diversion.”

PHILANDER GROOT’S CHARIOT came to earth eventually on a quiet hillside overlooking a valley which reminded me very much of my own lost Bek.

In the valley a village was burning and I could see black smoke rising from farmsteads and mills. Dark figures with brands marched across the landscape, setting fire to anything which would ignite. It was familiar enough to me. I had ordered such destruction many times myself.

“Are we still in the Mittelmarch?” I asked the dandy. “Or have we returned to our own Realm?”

“It is the Mittelmarch,” he said, “but it could as easily be the ordinary Earth, you know. There is very little now which is not destroyed or threatened.”

“And all this,” I said, “because Lucifer sent me upon a Quest for the Grail!”

“Not quite.” Groot motioned with his hand and the chariot ascended again into the air. He said as an aside: “That will be the last we shall see of that, I fear. Mostly such things are leased by the Powers of Darkness, even if not used in their work. Did you know that, Captain von Bek?”

“I did not.”

“Now that I am no longer of the Grey Lords, as those of us who are neutral are named by Hell, I do not expect to conjure things so easily.” He paused, smoothing back his little moustache. “You are an unusual man, captain, but your Quest has not brought all this about. Lucifer’s decision to attempt peace with His Creator is what has exacerbated a crisis which has been in the making since at least the Birth of Christ. The lines have become confused, you see. The pagan faiths are all but destroyed. Buddha, Christ and Mahomet have seen to that. To many the death of paganism heralded the coming decay of the world (and I will not elaborate, for it is a sophisticated theme, though it does not sound it). We have given up responsibility, either to God or to Lucifer. I am not sure that God demands that of us, nor am I sure that He wishes it. Nothing is certain in the universe, captain.”

“Nothing will be gained if I discover the Cure for the World’s Pain?”

“I do not know. Perhaps the Grail is no more than a bartering tool in a game so mysterious that not even the two main participants understand its rules. But there again, I could be utterly wrong. Know this, however: Klosterheim is now more powerful than you begin to realise. Do not think, because his pride made him bring the same twenty knights who lost you before, that he can command only twenty. He is now one of the main generals of rebellious Hell. Your Quest, you will recall, is the ostensible cause of that rebellion. They will stop you if they can, Captain von Bek. Or they will take the Grail from you if you find it.”

“But with you to help, magus,” said Sedenko, “we stand a better chance.”

Groot smiled at him. “Do not underestimate Klosterheim, gentlemen. And do not overestimate me. What little I know has been worked for. It has been wrested away from others, the power itself. They can claim much back, whenever they wish. My conjuring tricks with genies and demons are small things. They are pathetic in the eyes of Hell. Now I have not much left. But I will travel with you, if I may, for my curiosity is great and I would know what befalls you. We are a day or two farther on in the journey towards the Forest at the Edge of Heaven, and I fancy we shall see little of Klosterheim for a while. He must have lost some valuable knights in that brawl at Bakinax. But when he comes again into our ken he will come with far more power than he has ever possessed in the past.”

“Everything that is fantastic leagues against me,” I said, repeating Klosterheim’s warning.

“Aye. Everything that is fantastic is threatened. Some believe all these marvels you have witnessed to be productions of the World’s Pain. Without that Pain, some say, they would not be necessary. They would not exist.”

“You suggest that mankind’s needs create them?”

“Man is a rationalizing beast, if not a rational one,” said Philander Groot. “Come, there are horses waiting for us in yonder spinney.”

We followed him down the hill a little way, and sure enough the horses were there. As we mounted, Groot chatted urbanely, telling anecdotes of people he had known and places he had visited, for all the world as if we went on a merry holiday. We rode along the crown of the hills, avoiding the soldiers in the valley below, and continued through the night until we were well past it. Only then did we think of resting. We came to a crossroads in the moonlight. Philander Groot considered the signs. “There,” he said at last. He pointed to the post which said: To Wolfshaben, 3 miles.

“Do you know Wolfshaben, captain? Herr Sedenko?”

We both told him that we did not.

“An excellent town. If you take pleasure in women you will want to visit the harlotry they have there. I will entertain myself at the harlotry, where the beds are anyway more comfortable.”

“I’ll gladly join you,” said Sedenko with some eagerness.

“If I can have a good bed and no harlot,” said I, “I’ll cheerfully keep you company.”

My friends were entertained royally at Wolfshaben’s wonderful harlotry (which is quite famous, I gather, amongst the travelers in the Mittelmarch) and I slept like a dead man until morning.

The spring morning was fresh as we rode away from Wolfshaben, and there was dew on the light-green grass and a touch of rain upon the leaves of the trees so that everything smelled sweet.

Philander Groot, riding ahead of myself and Sedenko, sniffed at the air, for all the world like one of Versailles’s courtiers on a frolic, and cried: “A beautiful day, gentlemen. Is it not wonderful to be living?”

The road descended to another valley, as green as the last, and this was deserted of soldiery, apparently completely untouched by War of any kind. But as we took a turn we came upon a great procession of men, women and children, on horseback, in carts, with bundles on their backs and a look of terror about their eyes. They were from all walks of life. Philander Groot hailed them merrily, as if unaware of what they signified. “What’s this? Pilgrims seeking Rome?”

A man in half-armour, which had been hastily strapped about his person, rode up urgently. “We are fleeing an army, sir. You would be warned not to go any farther in this direction.”

“I’m grateful for the warning, sir. Whose army is it?”

“We do not know,” said a wretched woman with a cut across her brow. “They came upon us suddenly. They killed everything. They stole everything. They did not speak a word.”

“Nothing justified. No threats. No chivalry,” said the man in half-armour.

“I think, sir,” said Groot, glancing at us for confirmation, which we readily gave, “that we will travel with you for a while.”

“You would be wise, sir.”

And so it was in the company of more than a thousand people that we took another road than the one we had originally hoped to follow, though we did not go back the way we had come. We were with them for almost two days. For the most part they were educated men and women: priests and nuns, astronomers, mathematicians, surgeons, lords and ladies, scholars, actors. And not one of them could understand why they had been attacked or who had attacked them, though there were many theories, some of them exceedingly farfetched. We could only conclude that these were mortal soldiers serving the Dukes of Hell, but even that was by no means certain, particularly since a few of the clerics had come to the familiar conclusion that their community had committed some dreadful sin against God and that God had sent the soldiers to punish them.

We departed from this concourse eventually and found upon our maps a fresh road to take us westward. But armies were galloping everywhere. We hid frequently, being too faint-hearted to offer battle to anyone who might be a minion of a Duke of Hell.

Yet now all the world seemed to be afire. Whole forests burst into flame; whole towns burnt as fiercely as ever Magdeburg had burnt.

“Ah,” said Philander Groot, “it could be the End, after all, my friends.”

“And good riddance to it,” I said. “It is a poor world, a bad world, a decadent world. It expects love without sacrifice. It expects immediate gratification of its desires, as a child might, as a beast might. And if it does not receive gratification it becomes pettish and destroys in a tantrum. What’s the use of seeking a Cure for its Pain, Philander Groot? What’s the use of attempting, by any means, to divert it from its well-earned doom?”

“Because we are alive, I suppose, Captain von Bek. Because we have no choice but to hope to make it better, through our own designs.” Philander Groot seemed amused by me.

“The world is the world,” said Sedenko. “We cannot change it. That is for God to do.”

“Perhaps He thinks it is for us to do,” said Groot quietly. But he did not press this point. “Oh, look ahead! Look ahead! Is that not beautiful, gentlemen?”