The Grail War Read Online Free PDF Page A

they thrashed and wallowed, the slight man continually giving ground, slogging back, knee-deep, both already dripping black mud and blood. Then, in a sloshing flurry, the smaller one went down and began half-crawling, half-swimming to escape, but the other, with huge, bouncing strides, managed to get closer and aim full, sweeping blows so that the first was forced to twist and sink down to break the impact, covering his Own head with stick and torn forearms. Now his enemy began spearing him, poking him under the surface, straining all his weight into it until the little man howled and sputtered and rolled aside like a wounded whale, blowing bursting breaths. And then, somehow, the sticks were broken and lost, one left poking upright like (Broaditch thought) a pole in a river …
    They’d worked their way closer to the onlookers. Covered with muck, eyes wide and white, they clawed and rolled and thrashed. It seemed to Broaditch as if he watched primal men newly raised from the wet clay of creation heaving up, struggling, falling back. He felt pity and sickness. The little man kept trying to scream now as the other rode his back and frantically rammed palmfuls of mud into his face, pressing it into his mouth and nostrils, cursing and puffing, too drained himself to even hold the desperate face under the surface long enough to suffocate him. The little man bit his hand as the other hooked and gouged feebly at his eyes … Then both went under and heaved out of the mire apart, blowing throats and noses clear, like great surfacing swamp creatures.
    The little man cried out as he slogged away, crawling and wriggling: “Help me … O Holy Mother … help me, please, please help me …! ”
    “He prays,” someone remarked.
    “In season,” said another.
    They fell and rose again and again, near collapse, until the big man finally caught up with the smaller, who simply lay on his side, chest heaving, spasming. One of his ears was bitten loose and flopped in its blood. His eyes were shut and his mouth gasped breathless words. His enemy hesitated and looked toward the crowd, standing a few yards away. His hollowed, searching look had a terrible, silent plea in it. He had learned something, was seeing something now, and had no way to say it except with his wild eyes — or so Broaditch believed. A massive warrior at the edge of the swampy field shook his somber head.
    “You must slay him,” he pronounced, “or else die yourself.”
    “See, see!” cried Valit with fear and excitement. “One rides the other!”
    Broaditch turned away as the big man knelt himself upon the other’s head and finally forced the bloody face for good under the slimy muck. One great bubble popped up after a long space of silent time. And the crowd shortly began to break up and drift away. The spent, quivering victor remained, kneeling up to his waist over his now-invisible opponent as if, for some ascetic reason, he was praying alone in the reeking field …
    Broaditch walked among the rain-beaten tents. He stopped beside a squire who was struggling with the soaked harness of a balky charger.
    “Young sir,” he said, “have you seen the knight Lohengrin this day?”
    The boy glanced up.
    “Old sir,” he said, “I have not.”
    “Well, then, would any here know his whereabouts?”
    “Yes.”
    The boy waited, expressionless, sly.
    A pause.
    “All right,” Broaditch said, “do you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where?”
    “In his tent.” The boy showed nothing.
    He takes me for a bumpkin or a fool , Broaditch concluded.
    “Which tent?” he asked patiently. He was looking across the gusty field at the line of them, the fog whipping and twisting. He noticed half a dozen knights in full mail gathered around a tall red tent with black trim. For some reason he understood that was the one. It seemed strange that they’d be guards, he decided. Stranger still was the fact that they stood, axes, spears, and swords poised, facing in on all sides. Broaditch