The Black Chalice (33 page)

The young standard-bearer lunged forward, gripping the pole of the banner with both hands and driving it savagely into Karelian’s midsection. He buckled over the horse’s neck, vomiting, and the wood clubbed a second time against the side of his face.

“Enough,” Gottfried said. “He will be treated like a nobleman until he has been tried. After that….”

Karelian straightened, slowly and painfully. The white-clad knight leaned close again, spotting the thong around his neck.

“Ha! And what sacred relic is this, I wonder?” He reached, as the count was still reeling, and slashed it free.

And the power of Car-Iduna exploded out of the forests of Helmardin, out of the wild-running Maren, out of the sky and the wind and the trees. A thousand searchings, circling and crying, hit against a sudden emptiness and shot through it, like lightning through a crack of sky, and found him. The impact was almost physical, too brief to identify, but he knew it for sorcery, some kind of sorcery, Raven’s creatures, Raven herself, perhaps, reaching out to him with a driven, single-minded power. It only lasted for a moment, before the crack was closed again. But the moment was enough for him to know, and knowing was enough to make him fight.

The young knight of Saint David tore open the pouch, and pulled out the raven’s feather, holding it up triumphantly:

“Look, my lord! Where we bear a cross, he bears the token of Odin!”

Karelian laughed — for whatever else they were, they were a pack of fools — and then he flung the red shell down among them. It smashed into fragments, and out of every scattering fragment leapt a wolf. One after another they leapt, already ravening, wolves of some other, darker world, black and lean, wild with a thousand years of hunger. They leapt for the throats of horses, for the flailing arms of knights with swords and crossbows. Men and animals screamed, colliding and falling in their panic. Karelian drove at the white knight’s rearing horse, and in a single motion swept away his shield and slammed it into the face of another who came at him. A black mass leapt past him. The young knight screamed as a wolf sprang upon his thigh, its jaws closing through ring mail as if it were parchment. Karelian snatched pouch and feather from his hand, drew his sword, and wheeled his mount towards the gates.

He had been in a thousand fights, and most of them were chaos. But he had never been in a fight more mad than this one. Sometimes he could do nothing at all except try to control his plunging horse. That it did not fling him into some enemy’s flailing sword, or into the path of a panic-fired arrow, he could credit only to blind luck, or to his lady’s astonishing magic. He saw Otto from time to time, fighting desperately beyond his reach. He saw the manor’s house-guard in the thick of it. The serfs had mostly fled, but some were throwing rocks, and running at Gottfried’s fallen men with clubs. And all of it fed his black and singing fury. He had neither helmet nor armor, only his sword and the shield he had snatched in the fray, yet men were falling back from him— falling back or going down. He caught the full sweep of a mace on his shield; he leaned forward and struck, and the mace-wielder tumbled over the neck of his horse, and disappeared among the wolves and trampling hoofs. Karelian laughed. Even chaos no longer mattered. He was happy. He was drunk with happiness and ferocity, with the joy he had always taken in his own skill: body and judgment and will all bonded in a dazzling unity, and courage bottomless because nothing could hurt him; even if he died nothing could hurt him. He was a warrior of the Reinmark. Whatever he should have been or would have been in some other kind of world, it made no difference now. He had learned to fight, and he had learned, sometimes, to love it. And when he truly loved it, nothing living could stand in his path.

A blade slashed deep across his side; he never felt it. He struck the man down. He noticed, briefly, the blood still running fresh from the other’s sword, and wondered where it came from, for no one else was there. No one else at all. The gate was clear. He bent low over the beast’s neck and rode. Like a mountain stag, they said after — those few who saw him — or like the elves on their horses of wind.

Until the moon rose twice and went down again, the duke and his men rode after him.

A long time passed before he became aware of pain, of a great wetness running down his side and soaking into his boot. He groped at his side, and found the gash in his tunic; his hand came up blackened and drenched.

“Christ…!”

It was a deep wound, still bleeding. It was quite enough to kill him if he went on like this. And he would have to go on like this if he hoped to reach any place of safety.

He bandaged himself as best he could. His hands shook with exhaustion; he could hardly knot the strips of cloth. He was a whisper from collapsing, and he was quite alone. Wherever her people were, however they were hunting for him, they had lost him again, and their power was gone.

“Raven….”

He looked back. He could not see his pursuers in the darkness, but he knew they were there. Hundreds of them, Gottfried’s whole army, perhaps, fanning out across the hills, pitiless as hounds.

He took out the feather, touched it with his fingertip, and put it away again. He was desperate enough to use it now, but he did not trust its magic to reach her. She was too far away, and Gottfried too close. But he could use the shells. Whatever their power was, whoever had fashioned it, it was present and immediate, locked within them, a power which depended on nothing but itself.

He took the green shell from his packet, and threw it against a rock. Nothing happened. Or so it seemed to him, but it was dark now, and the world no longer steady. He sighed and rode on, too weary and in too much pain to look back.

So he only heard tales, after, of the great thorn hedge which suddenly appeared on the plain of Lys. It grew right across the pastures and the barley fields, so deep and tangled a mouse could scarcely scramble through it. It reached for miles, even over streams and roads; Gottfried’s men rode half the night to get around it. It died soon after, and the peasants cut it down for bonfires. By the time the war was over, only the stories about it would remain.

Karelian knew nothing of this. He rode almost till moonset, walking his horse and barely conscious on its back, and Gottfried did not catch him. By then he was deep in the Schildberge. He might have thought it elf country, if he had been awake enough to think about anything at all. He found a ravine, and followed it down to its depths. There, by a pool among some fallen trees, he slid from his horse, and drank, and broke the last black egg-shell in his hand. And the dark of the earth closed around him, and wrapped him against its heart. The sun rose, and men came, quite a lot of men, armed with a trampling, insatiable rage. They were certain they had found his trail, and for hours they would not give up searching.

But in the end they cursed and shook their heads and rode away, for there was simply nothing there, nothing human at all, only deadfall and dark pines and shadows.

TWENTY-SIX

All for God’s Kingdom

When we are stripping a man of the lawlessness of sin,
it is good for him to be vanquished, since nothing is
more hopeless than the happiness of sinners.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

* * *

Another man than Gottfried might have taken Karelian’s splendid manor house for himself, and commanded the scouring of Lys from its warm and well wrought halls. “It is a den of sorcery,” he said, and had it burned, and lodged himself in a silken tent outside the walls. There, as darkness approached on the second day, I was dragged to him in irons.

The weather had turned heavy and overcast. The Schildberge rose beyond the valley in a dark, impenetrable ridge. It did not rain properly, but bits of wetness would flick now and then against our faces; the air smelled misty and restless and cold. It was common enough weather for the season, yet it troubled me. I knew Karelian had escaped; the guards and the other prisoners talked about it all the time. How useful it would be to him, this melancholy, darkly descending sky. And how cold and judgmental it felt to me.

Gottfried’s men went about with hard-set faces, questioning the people, searching their houses, riding off in small groups into the forest. They found everywhere — as they would have found in any village in the Reinmark in those years — ample evidence of superstition, sorcery, and pagan worship. (Had the soldiers troubled to search each other, they would have found more.) A great pile of objects began to gather in the yard for burning. Years after, the people still were bitter about it. They said most of the things the soldiers took were harmless: jewelry and keepsakes, simple medicines, children’s toys.

“They took my father’s cane,” one of them said to me, spitting. “What sorcery is there in having a stick to lean on, tell me that?”

But I’ve seen many such innocent things in my life, including a cane with a demon’s face carved in it, cunningly hidden in the whorls of the wood, where only a knowing eye would see it. The Christian world was vigilant, and so of course the pagans masked their charms and idols. As time passed, and the Church grew more vigilant and more concerned, they found ever more devious ways to do so.

Yet the ugliness of the day distressed me: the sense of pervading terror, the bewilderment. The common people were a stupid lot, ignorant rather than bad; most of them meant no harm.

Worst of all was the pity I saw in their eyes as I stumbled through the mangled yard, dragging my chains. There was blood on my face and my clothing, and the soldiers were deliberately brutal towards me, for reasons which I only afterwards understood. And I saw how the people of Lys reacted. Most of them spoke only with their eyes, but a few muttered aloud, after we were past:
What are they doing, God curse them, he’s just a squire…!
Squires were highly privileged young men. Always of noble birth, we were valued far more than civilians; yet because we did not fight, we had all the rights of non-combatants. A knight could kill a defeated soldier without dishonor, but it was judged despicable to kill a squire.

It occurred to me, then, looking into the faces of Karelian’s house-carles and tanners and serfs, and seeing their outrage— it occurred to me why my lord might have refused to knight me.

I stumbled, and threw up on the ground like a dog.

Gottfried’s tent was large but spartan. Theodoric was there when I was brought in, and a number of other knights, most of whom I did not recognize.

Never since I left the Holy Land had I been in a place which felt so utterly a place of war. And it was not simply the presence of so many armed men; one could find those at any jousting field. It was something quite different: a rawness, a sense of permanent urgency, and above all, a complete absence of women and all the small encroachments of the world. I knew, without having to be told, that Gottfried had begun his sacred mission, and hereafter nothing and no one would distract him from it, even for an hour.

He looked up when I was brought in, briefly, without apparent interest, and went on speaking with the men before him.

“You are telling me, then, that no one will accuse Karelian?”

The knights glanced at each other; one of them shrugged slightly.

“They will accuse him of anything we might wish, my lord,” he said, “but in the next breath they’ll contradict themselves, and say they never saw it, they only heard about it. Or thought they did. As for the pagan altars we found, everyone I’ve spoken to says they were here before he came.”

“But he did nothing to remove them.”

“Neither did the count before him. Or the priests. These things are still common, my lord, all over Germany.”

“Well, it’s time they stopped being common. We have seen where they lead— to barbarism and treason.”

He stood up. “Keep on with it. And remember, we must be just. Any of them who willingly give up their sorceries, and undertake to live as proper Christians, are to be treated gently. Whatever they say or don’t say, Karelian has already convicted himself.”

He dismissed them all except Theodoric, and then turned his attention to my guards.

“Unchain him,” he said. “And then leave us.”

The guards gave him a long and dubious look, but they obeyed.

“My lords,” I said hesitantly, and bowed. For a time neither spoke. They watched me, and my thoughts returned to the courtyard, to the demonic moment when Karelian conjured up the wolves against his captors.

Never before in my life had I seen, or even imagined, such blind, out of-control terror. All around me, men were being thrown from maddened horses, slain by random, ill-directed arrows, dragged from their mounts by jaws already streaming with blood. I could not believe it was happening. No one could. Men screamed to God for mercy, and one of them, right beside me on a plunging horse, slashing wildly at everything in reach, shouted over and over: “What are they? What are they?” as though it weren’t perfectly obvious what they were.

I never tried to answer him. I looked about for Gottfried, desperately. As a shipwrecked sailor flails about for a timber to cling to, so I searched the tumult for a sight of the Golden Duke. Gottfried had to stop it.

And I saw to my horror that he could not. He was standing in his stirrups, shouting, the willstone shimmering in his hand. He held neither sword nor shield, only the crystal pyramid; it caught all the colors of the falling sun. The wolves raged towards him, and veered, and raged away. It was as though a circle of grace were wrapped around him. They could not pierce it, but neither could he reach beyond it. I could see he tried; he crashed against their power like a flood against a cliff. The wolves leapt and howled and slaughtered as though he were not there.

No! They aren’t stronger than you! They can’t be! They can’t…!

Then my horse threw me into a stone wall, and I saw nothing more.

The duke moved towards the table, and I remembered where I was. He looked weary, I thought, and ever so slightly disconcerted, like a man who had begun a difficult task with the utmost care, only to discover, in the very thick of it, that he’d forgotten something essential.

I had been so certain of his power. I had expected him to fling out a single, riveting command, and the creatures of hell would crumble into dust at his feet. But all he had been able to do was shield himself.

Suppose he is just a man? Suppose it is they who have all the power…?

No,
I told myself,
it isn’t possible, God would never allow it.
But I felt cold in all my bones.

He poured a cup of wine, and brought it to me.

“You need this, I think.”

I took it eagerly. I had not eaten since I walked away from our hunting camp in the Schildberge. “Thank you, my lord.”

“I hardly need tell you I believe you now,” he went on. “And I thank you for the warning. There is food on the table; sit and eat. I want you cared for, but no one must see you favored.”

I thanked him, half dazed with gratitude. There was a great bowl of roasted chicken waiting for me, and slabs of bread, and wine. The duke sat opposite. Theodoric did not sit at all, but paced about the tent as though he wished he were somewhere else.

The duke let me sate the worst of my hunger, and then he spoke again.

“You offered once to serve me, Paul of Ardiun. Are you still willing to do so?”

My heart leapt, but I could only nod, for my mouth was full of chicken.

“Good,” he said. He did not wait until I could answer him properly. “You’re still in the former count’s favor, I take it? You’ve kept his trust?”

“Yes, my lord.”

His eyes held me like spears. “Was it difficult?” he asked.

I swallowed, and put the chicken down. Suddenly, I wasn’t hungry any more. I knew I was being tested, but I did not know for what.

“Yes,” I said, and then realizing the implications, I added quickly: “No. What I mean is, he’s never suspected me of anything, not ever, that was easy enough, only—”

“Never mind.”

Why did he look at me so, with such… distaste? I had only done what was necessary.

“The traitor is wounded,” Gottfried went on. “He left a trail of blood into the hills. In fact, he may be dead by now, but I don’t think so. He’s gone to ground somewhere. I want you to find him.”

I stared at him. Once, years after in the Levant, I lived through an earthquake, and experienced the sensation, unlike any other which can be imagined, of rock-hard earth dissolving under me. A feeling of bottomlessness, at once horrifying and impossibly unreal. So I felt now, hearing Gottfried’s command.

“My lord…? But I thought…. My good lord, please, will you not accept me into your service?”

“You
are
in my service. Or so you keep telling me.”

I could find no words to answer him. My stomach was all in knots. I wished I had not eaten. I wished I had never been born.

Theodoric paused in his pacing, and looked at us. “I’ll wager he wants gold, my lord. Give him a hundred marks, and send him back to his mother.”

I looked bitterly at Theodoric. He was the duke’s son, and shared his sacred blood. It had to be so, but I could never quite believe it, except by an act of will.

“I do not want gold, my lord,” I said, with all the dignity I could muster. “I never have.”

“I believe that, Pauli,” the duke said. “But as for what you do want, you’ll have to earn it. Find Karelian Brandeis, and lead me to him.”

“But my lord… how can I possibly find him? And if I do… surely he will know, my lord? He’ll know I went to you—!”

“There’s no reason he should know.”

“But he must know someone betrayed him, and I’m the only one who could have! I’m the only one who remembers Helmardin!”

“You’re very young, Paul, and this matter is more complex than you think. There are many ways I might have come to know of the count’s treachery. You may be quite unaware of them, but I assure you, he is not. A betrayal from you, his unworldly and faithful young squire? No; it’s the last possibility he’ll consider.”

As it happened, I knew a great deal more about the matter than Gottfried imagined, and I understood at once what he was saying. He thought Karelian would blame the power of God.

And no doubt Karelian would. But he himself had the power of a sorcerer. Suppose he merely needed to look at me to know?

“He’s been looking at you for quite some time now,” Gottfried said dryly, “and he hasn’t noticed anything.”

“You read my mind, my lord,” I whispered.

“You will escape tonight,” he said. “I’ll make sure it’s easy for you. I expect the villain will go to Karn, to his friend Lehelin; or he will go to Aachen, to plead against me with the emperor; or he will go to Helmardin.”

I knew without thinking about it where Karelian would go; he would go to
her.

“And if I find him, my lord, what then?”

“I leave it to your judgment. You may simply send me word; an ordinary messenger will serve. You are Brother Fortunatus, on a pilgrimage to Compostela. You have fallen ill in such and such a place. Write to me of your misfortunes. However many days you have been ill, so many men he has with him. If she is there, tell me you are dying. That is one possibility.”

He paused, and added quietly: “The other possibility is to kill him where you find him. Though I warn you, I’ll accept no one’s word that he is dead — neither yours nor any man’s — without proof.”

Kill him where I find him? You had a thousand men in arms, and you couldn’t manage it….

“My lord…?” How could I say it, without seeming a coward? “How can I kill him, my lord? He’s a sorcerer! We saw what he did in Lys—!”

“No. We saw what the demons of Car-Iduna did. He didn’t conjure up those hell-hounds, Pauli. He brought them with him, prisoned in a wyrdshell. Or so Father Mathias assures me, and he has made a study of such things. Karelian doesn’t have that kind of power. He’s nothing but their minion.”

“But they will protect him—!”

“Perhaps.”

He stood up. His eyes were as they had been when I faced him in Stavoren— relentless and prisoning.