“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?”
It was a tall structure which reached to the sky, all curves and angles of crystal. A great building of glass and quartz such as I had never seen before.
“It’s gigantic,” said Sedenko. “Look inside. There are trees growing there. It is like a jungle.”
Philander Groot put fingers to lips and drew his brows together. Then his face cleared. “Why, it is the famous aviary of Count Otto of Gerantz-Holffein. Shall we go through it, gentlemen? You will see that the road passes directly into the aviary and out the other side. I did not realise it was so close. I have heard of it, but never seen it before. Count Otto is dead now. His obsession was with exotic birds. He had the aviary built by a friend of mine many, many years ago. That is why it is full of trees, you see. Trees for the birds. And it still stands! It was a miracle of architecture. Or are you nervous? Should we skirt the place?”
“We’ll go through,” said Sedenko.
“I should like to see it,” I agreed. I felt that I would be glad of any relaxation, however temporary.
“Count Otto was so proud of his aviary and his collection of birds that he insisted on all travelers visiting it,” said Philander Groot, “which is why he had the road going through it.” He seemed genuinely delighted.
As we came closer I saw that the entrance to the vast aviary was overgrown and neglected; it seemed to have been abandoned for years. I listened for birdsong. I heard a noise, a kind of chattering and murmuring, like the inner musings of a disconsolate giant.
“Count Otto had at least one example of every known bird,” said Philander Groot as he led the way into the miniature jungle. Branches tangled over our heads, but the road was fairly clear. “When he died his nephew would have nothing to do with the aviary. That is why it is now as it is.”
There was a strong odour of mould and ancient undergrowth and far ahead of us, through soft, diffused, greenish sunlight, I saw the glitter, I thought, of bright feathers.
“It’s a large enough bird,” said Sedenko. He glanced about him. “A perfect place for Klosterheim to set an ambush …”
“He’s behind us,” I reminded the Muscovite.
“He has hellish aid,” said Philander Groot. “He is now one of Arioch’s chief generals. He is not constrained by the considerations of mortals; not at present. But no one place is any more dangerous to us than another, given the powers Klosterheim commands.”
“Is that why you seem so insouciant. Philander Groot?” I asked the dandy-magus.
He turned to me with a smile and was about to speak when it came crashing out of the foliage.
It was at least four times the size of a horse and limping on three of its legs. The other, the right foreleg, was lifted above the ground and had plainly been wounded a long while. Its scales were what I had seen and mistaken for feathers: primarily glowing reds and yellows. Its gaping jaws were full of silvery teeth, and its heavy tail thrashed behind it like the tail of an angry cat.
It came at us with incredible speed. Groot went one way, Sedenko the other, and I had drawn my sword and was left facing the lame dragon.
I had no experience of dragon-fighting. Until now I had not believed that such creatures existed. This one did not breathe fire, but its breath stank mightily. And it meant us harm. There was no doubt of that.
My horse was shrieking with terror and trying to escape, but I knew that I could not flee and live. I struck at the beast’s snout with the point of my sword and drew blood. It roared and snapped, but it slowed its progress. I struck again. It half-reared on its hind legs, unable to strike with its single front leg without toppling forward. I rode past it, leaping over the thrashing tail and forcing it to turn, its passage hampered by the heavy tree-trunks. Silver teeth snapped at my sleeve and caught some flesh. I cried out, but I was not seriously hurt. I glimpsed Philander Groot and Sedenko riding up behind the dragon, striking at it with their own swords.
I was being forced farther and farther back into the undergrowth until I came to a great wall of glass and was trapp
ed. Again the dragon’s head darted down and the teeth narrowly missed me, fastening on the neck of my horse which screamed. I fell backwards out of the saddle as the horse was lifted clear of the ground. I landed heavily, amongst branches, and began to get to my feet at once.
The horse was dead, hanging twitching in the dragon’s jaws. It sniffed at the air for a moment before dropping the beast, which crashed down a few yards from me. The dragon plainly had me for its prey and would be satisfied with nothing else. I had only my sword for protection. I tried to crawl into the cover of a large tree-trunk, but I knew there was nowhere I could find safety in that ruined aviary.
Glass cracked as the dragon’s tail struck it. From the roof came a strange chiming and then, as if awakened, a flock of varicoloured birds went flapping upwards, twittering and crying. Then they began to descend upon the corpse of the horse. They ignored the fight and the dragon ignored them. They began to feed.
The long snout sniffed at the air again and found my scent. Hobbling, the dragon continued in pursuit of me, while behind it Philander Groot and Grigory Petrovitch Sedenko yelled and struck, to no effect. My strength was fast going. Shards of crystal began to fall all around me, one of them almost impaling me.
Again the teeth found me and I felt my left arm raked. It was as if the dragon had shredded the whole limb in a single movement. I became faint, but continued to flee.
Philander Groot was calling to me, but I could not distinguish the words. I struck again at the dragon’s mouth, driving my sword up into its palate. It grunted and lifted its head, taking my sword with it, then spitting it out. I was totally without defense now.
I fell. I began to drag myself along the ground, hoping to find some temporary sanctuary. A claw found my right leg and pain sang up to my spine and suffused my whole body. Yet I continued to move, grasping low branches to pull myself along.
Then my hand fell upon something smooth and cool. Through fading eyes I looked and saw that it was one of the shards from the broken roof. It was like a long icicle. I saw that it tapered to a sharp point. With one hand I attempted to lift it, using my good leg as a lever, until it was braced on the ground between two roots, the thin, jagged edge jutting towards the dragon.
The beast reared again and tottered forward on its hind legs. Saliva ran from the jaws. The silver teeth snapped. I rolled behind the huge shard of crystal even as the dragon dropped down upon me.
The point caught it in the chest, just below the throat, and went straight through. The dragon roared and bellowed, glaring down at me as if it recognised me as the source of its pain.
Black blood burst from the body as the dragon struck with its good leg at the shard, and every blow had the effect of forcing the wound wider so that more blood came. I was covered from head to foot with the horrible liquid, but I fancy I was grinning, too.
Philander Groot and Sedenko had dismounted. They came running towards me, ducking under the branches. Groot had another spear of crystal in his arms. He drove this with all the strength of his tiny body into the side of the dragon.
The beast groaned and turned towards this new source of pain. A terrible coughing began to sound in its throat.
Then it had heeled over against one of the walls, already cracked, and smashed through. For a moment it seemed that it would try to rise as it lay amongst leaves, bits of broken tree, the fallen fragments of glass and crystal. It snorted and blew blood through its nostrils for several feet. The birds were rising from the body of my horse. They had picked its bones completely clean. Again the awful, almost pathetic coughing began to sound from the dying dragon.
One last, long sigh and it had expired.
The bright birds began to settle on the scales until the dragon was completely buried under a wave of bustling feathers and bloody beaks.
Philander Groot and Grigory Sedenko came to my aid. Their faces were full of concern. I turned my head and looked at my arm. It was torn to the bone. My leg had fared scarcely any better.
I gestured towards the skeleton of my horse. My saddlebags were untouched. “The little bottle.” I gasped as the pain began to manifest itself.
Sedenko knew the bottle I meant. He ran to the saddlebags and found it. It was dented and buckled, but still in one piece. It took him some while to tear the cork free and put it to my lips. I drank sparingly. The pain gave way to something akin to a kind of cold ecstasy and then there was oblivion. I dreamt that I was a youth again in Bek and that this adventure had, itself, been nothing more than a nightmare.
When I awoke, my friends had cleaned my body and changed my clothes. I wondered, for a moment, if, like Siegfried, I would be made immune by dragon’s blood. My left arm was a mass of scars, but I could move it and there was only a soreness and a stiffness to it. Similarly, my leg had healed.
Philander Groot was smiling at me, tugging at his little beard. He appeared as composed as ever. His dress was perfect, as was his poise. “Now you are a true Knight of Chivalry, Captain von Bek,” he said. “You have slain a dragon in pursuit of the Holy Grail!”
From his sash he withdrew his scabbarded sword. He offered the beautifully wrought hilt to me. “Here,” he said, “you cannot be a knight without a blade.”
I did not hesitate in accepting his gift. I am still unsure why he made the gesture or why I so readily responded to it.
“I am grateful to you,” I said.
I was sitting upright in a corner of the great aviary. Through the foliage I could see the shattered wall and the bones of the dragon beyond it. There was no longer any sign of those birds. It was as if they awoke only when they smelled death.
I climbed to my feet.
“You have been insensible for a full day,” Philander Groot told me as I strapped his sword to my belt.
“Precious hours,” said I, “lost to Klosterheim.”
“Perhaps,” said the magus.
Sedenko came forward, leading the two remaining horses. “I have ridden ahead,” he said. “There is a great plain beyond us. And beyond that is a blue-green forest which reaches to the sky. I think that we have found the edge of the world, captain.”
Chapter XV
“IT IS JUST like my homeland,” said Grigory Petrovitch Sedenko with considerable joy, “just like the steppes of Ukrainia.”
Beyond this rolling grassland the world seemed to curve upwards so that it was possible to see the hazy blue-green of a great, tranquil forest.
We were crossing a small stone bridge which appeared to have been built for a town no longer in existence. “Count Otto loved to live here, by all accounts,” said Philander Groot. “It is said that he built his castle within sight of Heaven and that when he died not only did he rise up to Heaven, but that the castle was taken with him. Certainly there is no sign of it in these parts.”
“Well,” I said, “it should be only a little while now before I am at the end of my Quest.”
“The Grail really lies yonder?” said Sedenko.
“I shall know soon.” I hesitated. “I shall know if all these adventurings, all these ordeals, have been meaningless or not. Man struggles in the belief that he can, by dint of perseverance, affect his own destiny. And all those efforts, I think, lead to nothing but ruin.”
“You remain a fatalist, then,” said Philander Groot quietly.
“I know that Man is mortal,” I said. “That famine and disease are not his to control. I sought to become a man of action in response to what I experienced. And all I brought to the world was further Pain.”
“But now you could be in reach of its Cure.” Philander Groot’s tones were kindly. “It might be possible to free Man from his captivity, his dependency on either God or Lucifer. We could see the dawning of a New Age. An Age of Reason.”
“But what if Man’s Reason is as imperfect as the rest of him?” I said. “Why should we praise his poor logic, his penchant for creating laws which only further complicate his lot?”
“Ah, well,” said Philander Groot. “It is all we
have, perhaps. And we must learn, must we not, through trial and error.”
“At the expense of our natural humanity?”
“Sometimes, perhaps.” Philander Groot shrugged. “You must take my horse now, Sir Knight. I shall follow on foot as best I can.”
“You have no further magic to aid you in your journey?” I asked.
“It is all used up, as I said. The Dukes of Hell are recalling every scrap of power they have leased to the likes of me. Let them have the fantastic and the sensational. I had rejected it once and now reject it again. Though I do not believe I have the choice, as I once had. However, since when I had the choice I made the same decision, I have no great sense of loss. And my need for it disappeared many years ago.”
Sedenko cried out suddenly: “Look! Look back!”
We turned our heads.
Beyond the bridge, beyond the hills, a great, dark cloud had gathered and was moving.
“It is Klosterheim and the Forces of Hell,” said Philander Groot simply. “You must make haste now, Captain von Bek. They pursue only you.”
“So many?” I said.
He smiled quietly. “Are you not flattered?”
“They will kill you, Philander Groot,” said Sedenko. “I insist that you ride pillion with me.”
“I love life,” said the magus. “I will accept your offer, Muscovite.”
And so we continued our journey, with Philander Groot clinging to Sedenko’s back. We travelled far more slowly than our urgent hearts demanded, with the black cloud looming larger, it seemed, with every step. And soon we felt the ground trembling beneath us, as though an earthquake had begun, yet we ignored it as the far horizon became filled with blue-green haze.
Soon it seemed that half the world was dark and half was light. Behind us were the Forces of Hell and Klosterheim; ahead lay Heaven, which we could not enter. We were in a kind of timeless Limbo, the last three mortals caught between adversaries in a mysterious and meaningless War which threatened to destroy all the Realms of Earth.
We were still several miles from the forest when we heard shouts in our rear and saw about a dozen riders bearing down on us. Outriders from Klosterheim’s main army.