Free The Grail War by Richard Monaco Page B

warrior pulled the door open. He lit a torch with flint and they wound their way down a spiral stone staircase in a whisper of fine dust.
    Even well below ground level the stones were still smooth and dry. At the bottom they entered a passageway and then a low chamber, where the smoky flames gleamed and glimmered on a wall, hung with old, in-wrought armor and massive weapons.
    Parsival stood there a long, silent moment. Prang was testing the heft of a mace.
    “Your father must have been a strong man,” he observed with appreciation.
    Parsival was binding on a suit of red and gold chain mail. It mainly protected his torso and thighs. He tied his ragged robes closed over the steel.
    “This mace pleases me,” Prang said.
    “I recommend you throw it at Lancelot ere you come to grips,” the older knight advised. “I tell you, dance like a juggler for as long as you can.”
    Prang looked interested. A flame light hollowed his eye sockets and cheeks.
    “There may be fifty men out there,” he remarked, raising an eyebrow.
    Parsival buckled on the mesh sword belt and took up his father’s red-and-black-enameled helmet. The visor was missing, torn away. He remembered the story Broaditch had told him. They had just come back from the village together. The common man had found him hiding in a barn. He must have been twelve years old … He’d been watching a peasant festival day. His mother had forbidden it … He remembered standing on the hillside looking over the bright green valley. He remembered it had been spring but no longer recalled Broaditch’s name. He didn’t try to bring it back. “Your father fell in a joust,” Broaditch had said.
    “A joust?” young Parsival had wondered.
    “A noble sport, young sir. Not as light as a dance or as easy as sleeping in hay … A lance tip in the face is uncomfortable.”
    Parsival had made little of those remarks. “My father,” he’d said, looking off into the blue-green shimmer of horizon, “loved my mother — as I do.”
    “A lance tip in the face,” Parsival whispered, unconsciously, setting the helmet on his head. The cowl of his robe fit over it fairly well. His father’s name, Gahmuret, was worked in gold across the dome.
    They went out through the far end of the narrow chamber, Parsival holding the sputtering torch. They stooped through a low tunnel, mossy stones slippery under their steel-shod feet.
    “One death may be as good as another,” Prang said. “Why don’t we fly and take revenge when time and numbers favor us?”
    They came out beyond the moat. The moon was low, the night cool and misty. Still …
    “Why not?” Prang whispered, watching his teacher moving quietly along the grassy slope, parallel to the walls and a long, low growth of pines that-stood like a screen beside them.
    “I have to bury them,” was the quiet answer.
    Suddenly there were torches all around. About a dozen shadowy men came up the slope and through the trees, running, weapons glinting.
    Prang saw Parsival move: a blur, a flying shadow, a flashing of steel, spangs, crunchings, screams, sighs, sobs, curses, men scattering and falling like, he thought, rats before a striking cat. Before he could close with anyone, those who weren’t down were ducking and running and Parsival stood alone in the guttering light from the dropped torches, sheathing his sword. Prang’s heartbeat was rapid. The idea that he had sought to slay this man seemed humorous … The famous knight moved like a phantom and his every blow sheared plate, mail, and flesh. He’d never seen such work. Why would someone with such skill and power throw his sword away? What more could any knight have wished for?
    “My lord,” he said, a little breathless, “that was magnificent, my lord.” He stepped over a faintly moaning man-at-arms who still convulsively clutched his shattered spear in the tangle of his shadows.
    Parsival was walking again. His mail clinked softly. Prang followed with the long mace over