Kingdom of the Grail (7 page)

Roland's lance broke on a shield. He swept out his sword, the familiar blade that had been his father's. It was never as fine as the one that they all fought for, but it was a sturdy thing, and well fitted to his hand. He had grown to manhood with it, and won many a battle, real as well as feigned.

It was like a part of him, a long and deadly arm, smiting men who rose up before him, beating aside lances and swords. People were shouting—screaming. Someone was down; he glimpsed the bright scarlet of blood.

They were falling back—the line was bending, weakening, breaking. Roland glanced aside. Charles' blue glare met his. They needed no word to be in perfect agreement.

Charles on his left hand, Olivier on his right, Turpin beyond the king, gathered and poised and drove in a bright wedge through the massed enemy. They caught him by surprise: off balance, shaped to drive forward, not to fall back. They thrust the ranks back and back, battering them with lance and sword.
“Montjoie!”
they cried together, the king's war-cry.
“Montjoie!”

The retreat halted. It had found the strength to fight back. Roland mustered himself for yet another onslaught.

There was no need. The green pennants had reached the field's edge. Charles' side had driven them back as far as they could go. The horns rang, halting them, proclaiming the king's victory.

There were gaps in the ranks, men down, stunned or bleeding. But they were laughing, those who were not groaning in pain. It had been a splendid fight, and bravely fought.

In winning it, the king's side had won the right to contest for the sword. Comrades in arms eyed one another warily now, each seeing his companion as his rival for the prize.

“Don't hate me,” Olivier said to Roland, “if I knock you about a bit. That sword . . . oh, saints, I want it.”

“It's mine,” said Thibaut. “Be wise, yield now. Spare yourself a broken head.”

“I'll break yours first,” said Olivier sweetly.

As the last of the wounded hobbled or were carried from the field, the emir Al-Arabi rode among them again. This time he carried the sword crosswise in his arms, brilliant in its silken wrappings. “You will fight,” he said, “man to man. Two by two. As your opponent falls, you will turn and engage the man on your right hand. He who is still standing engages again. And thus until only one man stands. To that man, I give this blade.”

They all sighed as they had when they first saw the sword, as no few of them did at the thought of a willing woman.

“Oh, I'll love her,” someone murmured indeed, not far from Roland—and maybe it was Olivier's voice, and maybe it was not. “I'll cherish the very heart of her.”

Roland had not had a woman in—how long? Not since before Olivier won the toss, the day Ganelon came to Paderborn. Like a fool, his body remembered that now, with urgency that made him catch his breath.

Not now,
he told it.
Not till this is over.

His body was not minded to listen, but he was master of it still. The lines were drawing up, dismounting, horses being led away. Man faced man along the breadth of the field. Those who had lost the melee crowded beyond. They took it in good heart, as far as he could see.

Roland braced his feet on the earth. It was trampled, treacherous. He was a little tired from the melee, but never enough to slow him. This was battle as he had been born and bred to fight it. Single combat, best and most deadly of all.

In the shifting of sides, he found himself face-to-face with a man he knew slightly, a minor lord from the south of Francia. They were a fair match for size and weight, but Roland's eye was quicker and his arm stronger. The man
fell in a few swift strokes. And there was one waiting, and one after him, in a blur of clashing steel.

Roland had danced wardances like this, from opponent to opponent to opponent. Sometimes there was a lull: a man down—sometimes laughing, sometimes snarling, occasionally unconscious—but the two on his right fought on. Then he would lean on his sword, or even sit on the ground, and simply breathe.

He did not like to pause too long. If he did, he would become aware of the aches of bruises and the stabbing of wounds, small but sharp.

The Companions were holding their own. So too the king; he did not tire as quickly as other men, and he had a remarkable store of patience. He could husband his strength while others squandered theirs, and be fresh to fight long after they were exhausted.

Roland had learned that lesson from Merlin, but Charles had taught him to master it.

It was no great surprise, then, that as the sun sank, casting long shadows across the field, two pairs remained to fight on it: Olivier and Turpin, and Charles turning from fallen Thibaut to face Roland. Roland smiled at the king. Charles' eyes glinted.

They raised blades in salute. Charles inclined his head. Roland bowed as lord to king. They sprang together, as fierce as if they had been bitter enemies.

Charles was taller, stronger, heavier. His reach was longer. And he was very, very cunning.

But Roland was faster, and he had learned cunning from a devil's son. As wise as Charles was, he still wanted to end this as quickly as he might, with but two opponents left between himself and the sword. Roland could not overwhelm him with the power of his arms, but he could outwait even that king of foxes. He fought only as hard as he must to defend himself, and to keep that heavy blade from beating him down.

Charles tried to draw Roland out, to force him to fight more strongly: hammering and hammering. But Roland was air and water, slipping away from the blows, letting them fall harmless or catch the edge of his blade and dissipate without weakening him overmuch.

Roland waited and watched, and eluded blows that
came faster and faster. Everywhere about him was the blur of steel. It closed in ever tighter. It drove him back and back, till like the enemy in the melee, he had nowhere else to go.

But there was no stricture here, and no requirement but that one of them fall. He ducked beneath a blow that was meant to finish him. It brushed him and rocked him, but he did not topple. Charles half-spun with the force of it. Roland saw his face clearly as he realized what he had done to himself: anger, frustration, rueful acceptance. The flat of Roland's blade caught him neatly beneath the ear and sent him crashing down.

There was no time for Roland to assure himself that he had done no lasting harm. Even as he bent to help the king to his feet, a strong grip on his shoulder spun him about.

Olivier grinned at him. “Brother! I'm winning the sword.”

Roland bared his teeth in reply. “Brother,” he said, “stand aside for me.”

“Over my unconscious body,” said Olivier.

“Gladly,” Roland said.

They were both bloody, bruised, running with sweat, staggering, but giddy with the delight of the battle. To be fighting as brother to brother—it was lovely, inevitable. Roland still had his helmet, by a miracle. Olivier had lost his. His hair hung lank over his forehead. A great bruise split his cheekbone.

Roland did not suppose he was any more lovely. Nor did he care. He firmed his grip on his sword, gathered himself, swept it up.

Olivier's met it with force that staggered them both. Olivier grunted. Roland had bitten his tongue: his mouth tasted of blood.

They knew each other too well. Each knew what his battle-brother would do next, each move as familiar as the steps of a dance. For every thrust a parry, for each step forward a step back.

It could last past the sunset, which was not so far away now, and all night long, for the matter of that. But they were both well worn with a long day's fighting, and they were hardly minded to let it go on as long as that.

Roland could not wait Olivier out. Olivier was wise to it.
Nor could he overwhelm Olivier with his strength: Olivier was his superior in that. He had only his determination, and something that he had not even known was a gift until he became a man and a warrior. In the strongest heat of battle, the world slowed. Each move, each breath, was a matter of great deliberation. Men drifted like fishes beneath the sea. When a sword lifted, there was all the time in the world to meet it and turn it aside. Blows endured for long ages. He could slip beneath them, elude them, return them before anyone had seen him move.

It was not magic. It was something that a man could do, any man, if he was born to it. Olivier had it. He would not have been a great fighter without it. But Roland was quicker than he was.

Even at that, Roland was hard pressed. Olivier fought with all the skill that was in him, till his very soul was battle. Leap, thrust, leap away; spin, whirl, strike. Stamp, shout, stab and stab again, then come round in a great sweeping blow that nigh split Roland in two. Roland barely escaped, twisting, staggering, half-falling. Olivier's foot caught him in the side. Something cracked.

He felt no pain. In this world undersea, adrift in light, he felt nothing at all. He feigned to double up, to crumple. Olivier drew back the merest fraction. For the glimmer of an instant he was unguarded.

Roland darted into the opening, empty-handed, his sword lost, he did not remember where. Olivier was bending to finish Roland, who was no longer where Olivier had looked to find him. Roland's knotted hands smote him at the base of the neck.

Olivier went down like a felled ox. The earth shook as he struck it. Roland staggered but somehow, by God's grace, kept his feet.

The sky was spinning. There was a roaring in his ears: men's voices, shouts, cries, wild cheering.

There was no one else on the field. Everyone was gone, every man, except Olivier. Olivier lay like the dead.

Roland's heart stopped. Then the broad breast heaved. Olivier gasped, coughed, rolled onto his back. He was alive. White-faced, gagging, but alive.

Figures moved, drifting toward Roland. He was still in that time outside of time. He could not seem to come out
of it. The people who came seemed to swim as if through deep water. He recognized most of them. The king. The emir Al-Arabi. Turpin and the rest of the Companions. But before them all trod one whose name he had never heard, but whose face he knew as he knew his own: a woman in white silk girdled with silver, with a drift of silver veil over her hair, and in her hands the sword.

After all he had done to win it, he hardly saw it. Her eyes filled the world that was left to him, between the darkness and the narrowing span of light. Beautiful eyes, long, gold-brown, set slightly atilt in a narrow oval face. They were not smiling. They were—angry? Startled? Horrified?

The light was almost gone. He saw his hands reach up to take the sword, for if he did not, it would fall ignominiously between them. He felt it, cold and hard and somehow clean, as if it had been forged of water and not of steel. He could no longer see it. Only her eyes. Her eyes . . . her face . . .

Even in the fall of darkness, she was with him. She stood beside him. She guarded him against the night. She and the sword, the wonderful sword, whose name—yes. He heard it on the edge of hearing.

Durandal. Its name is Durandal.

And then was night, and rest, and such peace as he was ever given.

CHAPTER 6

T
he Frank dropped like a stone at Sarissa's feet. She could make no move to catch him. It was the warrior archbishop who did it, the one called Turpin, whom she had seen fighting beside this man, this Roland, in the melee and after. He was wounded, but not badly, and Roland was a lightweight for his strength; Turpin lifted the limp body, sword and armor and all, with no appearance of effort.

People were murmuring. The shouting and cheering had died. “Is he dead?” someone asked. The word spread.

Dead—dead—dead.

“He's not dead!” cried Charles the king. “He's alive. Make room now. Make room. Let him breathe!”

People pressed back, falling over one another. Turpin carried Roland through them. The king followed, and the Companions after, and the emir, and all the rest of them in a long murmuring train.

Sarissa was caught among them, borne along with them. There was no thought in her. It was all struck out of her in the moment when she came forward with the sword in her hands, and stood in front of the man who had won it, and he lifted his eyes to hers.

Such eyes. Such a face. Such . . .

No one had warned her. She did not know if she was angry. Perhaps she was. Someone should have spoken. She
should have known. All her visions, her forebodings, her powers and her magics, and she had not foreseen this.

That was no human man. Oh, he had mortal blood, no doubt of it, but something altogether different had begotten that face, so white, so keenly carved, and those eyes, so like a hawk's and so little like a man's. And in those eyes lay more power, more sheer raw magic, than she had ever looked to see in a man of this blunt and forthright nation.

Did he know? He must. He had the look of a man who was well aware of what he was. And yet the Franks seemed not to see, or to understand. To them he was only Roland, the Count of the Marches of Brittany, the king's Companion.

Roland the Breton, who had won the sword.

They carried him to the king's own tent, and there laid him down. Servants freed him of his armor. There was blood, though not, she thought, to excess. Red blood, human enough to look at. He was not invulnerable, that one, or perhaps he did not wish to be.

He had a fine young body. Sarissa knelt beside it. Some of them objected, but the king spoke, stilling them. “This is a healer. She healed the queen; she has great skill. Let her be.”

Sarissa ran hands over that body, not touching it. Pain was like heat against her palms: bruises, cuts, the stabbing of cracked ribs. Exhaustion was worse, and loss of blood from so many small wounds. And shock—the power of the sword coming upon him when he was so weak, he who of all men must be most open to it.

“Is he well? Will he live?”

Sarissa looked up into a face rather more bruised and battered than Roland's. The man who had contested with him for the sword, the Companion Olivier, was bending over her, swaying with the effort, but grimly determined. “Tell me! Will he die?”

“Not at all,” Sarissa said. “He only needs rest and tending.”

Olivier loosed a great sigh of relief, so great that he nearly toppled. “Look to him!” Sarissa said sharply.

People obeyed. They carried Olivier off, protesting volubly but too weak to resist.

Most of the others left with him, which was well. She sent for water, cloths, her box of medicaments: and there
they all were, waiting, by the king's forethought. She bowed low to him before she went to work.

Charles lingered for a while, but duties called him, and the feast at which Roland should have held the place of honor. But Roland was going nowhere this night, nor was Sarissa.

Even the servants left. But the archbishop, who had sent them away, stayed beside Roland. “When you finish,” he said, “lady, you may go. I have some arts myself; I can watch over him.”

“I will stay,” Sarissa said.

“You need not,” said Turpin.

He was strangely insistent. She raised her brows. “I think it best that I stay with him,” she said. “He will be well, but he was taken rather strongly. He may need more tending than I've yet given him.”

“I can summon you if there's need,” Turpin said.

“I will stay,” she said.

He looked ready to oust her by force; but she caught his eyes and held them until they looked away.

They settled for the long watches of the night. It was dim and close in this small space, curtained off from the rest of the king's tent. Sarissa could have borne it more easily if she had been raised a Saracen indeed, and lived as their women did, confined forever within veils. But she would endure.

The sword lay at Roland's side. When the servants had tried to move it, his hand had proved to be locked about the hilt. His fingers had relaxed since, but she did not try to take it away from him. It was singing softly, oh so softly, as a mother croons to her sleeping child.

There was another song with it, one that she knew well. Her nape prickled. She traced the song to its source, the heap of clothing and armor that had been taken from Roland. Wrapped in the tunic, tucked deep inside it, she found what she had not even known she had lost.

Her fingers twitched toward the silver coin on its chain. But she hesitated. It had slipped away from her—when? When she had come to this camp?

These tokens went where they would. It had come to this man, as the sword had; as if she needed any clearer proof that he was what she sought.

A champion. A great lord and warrior to fight a war that the world knew nothing of.

And yet, what else he was . . .

She knelt beside him, sitting on her heels, and contemplated his face. Yes, there was other blood than human there; old blood, wild blood, and little of the light in it, either. Even with the wild golden eyes closed, it was not truly a human face.

She reached without thought, to brush a stray lock of black hair from his forehead. He was cool to the touch, no sign of fever. His skin was smooth. Her palm fitted itself to the scant curve of his cheek.

She drew back her hand with a distinct effort of will. “No fever,” she said to the archbishop, as if she could excuse herself so easily. Turpin nodded. If he saw through her, he did not show it.

The sword sang. Its song lulled her into a doze.

She roused abruptly. Nothing had changed. Turpin sat motionless but open-eyed. The lamp flickered. Roland slept.

He stirred, murmured. Sarissa's eyes sharpened.

He was shimmering like the light of noon in the hills of al-Andalus. His face shifted: fierce curve of falcon's beak, wolf's muzzle, stag's horn-crowned head.

Turpin set himself between Sarissa and the—man?—in the bed. She met the archbishop's eyes. “If you breathe even a word of this,” he said, low and fierce, “I'll wring your neck.”

She regarded him with an utter lack of apprehension, which took him visibly aback. “Do you all conspire to protect him?” she asked.

He opened his mouth, shut it again.

“Tell me what he is,” she said.

“Why? So that you can destroy him?”

“Don't be a fool,” she said, as brisk as if he had been one of her own; and that too caught him off guard. Franks, she thought, had not met the likes of her before—even as strong-minded as their women were.

“Tell me,” she said.

“The Count of the Breton Marches. The king's paladin.”

“Surely,” she said, “and what was he when he was in Brittany?”

“A child,” said Turpin. “A count's son.”

“And an enchanter?”

Turpin's lips set. He was not going to trust her, his face said.

She almost smiled. Calmly she drew light from the air, shaped it into a globe, and balanced it in the palm of her hand. “Now tell me the truth,” she said.

Turpin was not nearly as convinced by the light as she had hoped. “What if you mean him ill? What if you came to break him? That sword of yours—it ensorceled us all. It struck him down when he touched it.”

“It was meant for a champion,” she said.

“He is!”

“And more,” said Sarissa, rocked somewhat by the force of his insistence. “Tell me now. I have to know.”

“Why?”

“To heal him,” she said.

Turpin was not going to answer. He was a stubborn man, and fierce in his friend's defense.

Before Sarissa could speak again, another voice brought them both about. It was faint, but clear enough. “First tell me who you are.”

Roland was sitting up, paler even than his wont, and his eyes less like a human man's than ever.

Sarissa's wits had scattered to the winds. She scrambled them back together. “My name is Sarissa,” she said. “I come from Spain.”

“My name is Roland,” he said, a mocking echo. “I come from Brittany. I won your sword. It is yours, isn't it? Not the emir's. Why? What is it for?”

“For a champion,” she answered.

“Yours?”

“Not . . . exactly mine,” she said.

His finger ran down the blade, slowly, a gesture so simple and yet so oddly potent that she stood transfixed. “You didn't expect me,” he said. “What did you expect?”

“Your king,” she said. “He was supposed to—”

“Then you should have simply given it to him. It would have been a splendid gift.”

She shook her head. “It couldn't be given. Not from hand to hand. It had to be won.”

The black brows went up. “Truly? And you thought we'd let him win.”

“That is usually the case, with kings.”

“Not here.”

“That,” she said, “I've come to understand.”

“You need a champion for Spain,” he said. “My king will do that, with or without a sword. Unless you ask me to—”

“The sword has chosen,” Sarissa said. “It chose you. I have to trust its wisdom.”

She must have sounded doubtful. His mouth quirked. “You didn't expect a Breton witch. Are you horrified?”

“Startled,” she said. “All the foreseeings, the foretellings—we saw your king. We never saw you. Except . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Always he had a falcon by him. A golden falcon. Sometimes it perched on his fist. More often it crouched behind him, wings mantling, curved about his head and shoulders—protecting him. Guarding him. That was you, it must have been. But we never—”

“He calls me his defender,” Roland said, “and his champion. In battle, you see, we fight side by side. And I am very fast. Blows don't strike him. Arrows don't fall.”

“Because you stop them.” She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I understand. But we need a king.”

“You have a king. You also have the king's champion.” He smiled. Dear God in heaven, such a smile. “A yellow-eyed witch from Brittany. I promise I'll devour no children, nor sup on virgins' blood. Plain bread and bad wine will do for me, as for any soldier.”

“Are you a Christian?”

The question was so abrupt and her voice so harsh that those golden eyes went wide. And yet he laughed, as if at a grand jest. “Why, lady! I am even baptized—and I didn't fly shrieking at the water's touch.”

“No,” she murmured. “No, you would not.” She shook herself. She turned to Turpin and said, “Now he will be well. Stay with him if you will; see that he sleeps. He'll not need me again before morning.”

She was gone before either of them could speak—trying not to run, but succeeding poorly. Her tent was a refuge, as small as it was, and dark, and wrapped in the familiar scents of herbs and spices, sweet grass and smoke and a faint undertone of cat.

Tarik was there, curled in cat-form atop her coverlet. He
opened a lambent green eye at her coming, and uttered a sound halfway between a growl and a purr.

“You knew,” she accused him.

His tail flicked slightly: a shrug. He was not accountable for human follies, that shrug said. If Adam's children saw plainly what was to come, and insisted on interpreting it all awry, then that was their misfortune.