“Since I was a little girl, sir. He has looked after me from the time when my brother, my mother and my father were all killed. By the eagles, sir.”
“Well, then,” I said, “lead us to the dying hermit.” Sedenko had a thought: “Could this be your Groot, captain?”
“I think not. But he could know of Groot. Most of these hermits tend to be rivals, in my experience.”
We clambered up the snowy rocks in the wake of the girl until the cave was reached. A dreadful stench came out of it, but again I was familiar with the kind of stink surrounding such holy creatures and braved it readily, with a hand over my mouth.
The girl pointed into a corner. Something stirred there. Sedenko remained outside, complaining. I made no attempt to force him to follow me.
A gaunt face raised itself a little and dark eyes stared into mine. If the smell and the sight were sickening, the worst was the smile I was offered by the hermit. It was radiant with insane piety. It offered itself as an example, it accused, it forgave all at once. I had seen such smiles before. More than once I had killed the ones who had presented them to me. I had once argued that a smile of that kind upon the lips was worth a second smile in the throat.
“Greetings, holy hermit,” I said. “Your servant tells us that you are ailing.”
“She exaggerates, sir. I have a wound or two, that is all. But what are my wounds compared to the wounds of our own dear Christ, whom we all wish to follow and to imitate? Those wounds take me closer to Heaven, in more than one sense.” “Ah, and they smell of Heaven already, do they not?” I replied. “I am Ulrich von Bek and I am upon a Quest for the Holy Grail.”
I knew that this would have an effect. He fell back, almost resentfully. “The Grail? The Grail? Ah, sir, but the Grail would cure me!”
“And all others who are dying or lie sick,” I said. “However, I have not yet found it.”
“Are you close to your Quest’s end?” he asked.
“I do not know.” I stepped closer. “I will get you something to eat. Sedenko!” I called back to my companion. “Food for this pair.”
Sedenko with a certain reluctance scrambled back the way we had come.
“I am honoured to be in the company of one so holy,” said the hermit.
“But you are quite as holy as I,” I said.
“No, sir, you are far holier than myself. It stands to reason. How you must have suffered to have attained your present state of grace!”
“Oh, no, Sir Hermit, I am sure that your sufferings outstrip mine a hundredfold.”
“I cannot believe that. But look!” He held up an arm. There was movement in the arm which was not muscle or bone. I peered hard at it.
“What must I see?” I asked.
“My friends, Sir Knight. The creatures I love more than I love myself.”
The main stink, I now realized, was coming from the arm he displayed. And as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom I could see that his limb writhed with maggots. They were feeding off him. He smiled at them, much as he had smiled at me. He doubtless regarded them with more affection than he felt for any human being. After all, these were actively aiding him in his martyrdom.
I am a man used to disguising my disgust, but it took a considerable effort of will not to turn away from that madman there and then.
“Such pious suffering is outstanding,” I said. I straightened and looked towards the cave-mouth, yearning for the clean air and the snow.
“You are very kind, Sir Knight.” With a sigh he fell back into the general filth.
The thought of putting food into the mouth of this wretch so that he might feed his maggots was obnoxious to me, but the unwitting child deserved to eat. Sedenko reappeared and I went towards him, taking the bread he gave me and handing it to the girl. She immediately broke off the largest piece and took it to her master. As she crumbled the bread and placed it between his lips he chewed with a kind of eager control, the saliva running down his grimy chin and into his beard.
For a moment or two I stepped outside, barely able to quell my nausea.
Sedenko murmured: “That girl is wasted here. The old beast will be dead in a few more days at the most.”
I agreed with him. “When he has finished eating I’ll ask him what he knows of Groot, then we’ll be on our way.”
“There are holy men of his kind in many parts of my country,” Sedenko said, “thinking that dirt and humiliation of the flesh bring them closer to God. But what can God want with them?”
“Perhaps He desires that we should all follow this hermit’s example. Perhaps it satisfies God to see His Creations denying all the virtues they believe He has instilled?”
Sedenko muttered at me: “Heresy, captain. Or close enough.” He did not like my tone, which I am sure contained more than a little mockery. I was in a darkly embittered mood.
I moved back into the cave. “Tell me, Sir Hermit, if you have heard of one of your kind. A certain Philander Groot.”
“Of course I have heard of Groot. He dwells in the Valley of the Golden Cloud on the other side of these mountains. But he is not a holy man, though he may claim to be. Why, I have heard that he even denies God. He does not mortify his flesh. He is said to bathe very frequently, at least ten times in the year. His clothing …” The creature began to cough. “Well, suffice to say that he is not of our persuasion, though I am sure,” added the hermit with some effort, “that he has his reasons for choosing his particular path and it is not for us to say who is wrong or who is right.” Again that smile of exquisite and self-congratulatory piety.
“He has no maggots, I take it,” said I.
“Not one,” said the hermit. “So far as I know, Sir Knight. But I could be condemning him without cause. I have only heard of Philander Groot. There were once many other hermits living in these caves. I am the last. But they used to tell me of Groot.”
“Thank you,” I said with as much courtesy as I could muster. I looked from the hermit to the girl. “And what will become of your protegee when you finally attain Heaven, Sir Hermit?”
He smiled upon her. “She will be rewarded.”
“You think she will survive this winter?”
The hermit frowned. “Probably not, of course, if I do not. She will rise up to Heaven with me, perhaps. She is, after all, yet a virgin.”
“Her virginity will be sufficient passport?”
“That and the fact that she has served me so loyally all these years. I have taught her everything I know. When she came to me she was ignorant. But I have taught her of Sin and of Paradise. I have taught her of the Fall of Lucifer and how our parents were driven out of Eden. I have taught her of the Ten Commandments. I have told her of Christ’s birth, suffering, death and resurrection and I have taught her of the Day of Judgment. For a woman, she has been blessed with more than is usual, you will agree.”
“Indeed,” I said, “she is a singularly fortunate young person. What else do you think she will inherit from you?”
“I have nothing,” he said proudly, “but what you see.”
“Shall you leave her your maggots?”
For the first time, now, he caught my irony. He frowned, lost for an answer.
I grew impatient with him. “Well, Sir Hermit, what’s your answer?”
“You jest with me,” he said. “I cannot believe …”
“I think it is time you received your reward,” I told him, and I drew my sword. “It is not just that you should wait any longer.”
The girl gasped. She ran forward, guessing my intention. I pushed her back with my free hand, shouting out for Sedenko’s assistance. I advanced upon the hermit.
Sedenko appeared beside me, grinning. Plainly, he approved of my intention. He seized the girl in both arms and bore her from the cave as I raised my blade.
“Go with my friend, girl. There is no need for you to witness this.”
“Kill me, too,” she said.
“That would be unseemly,” said I. “Should you die,
too, it would be a veritable surfeit of sacrifice. I doubt if God Himself could contemplate so much at once. But if you wish to sacrifice something, do not make it your soul. I am sure that Sedenko here can think of some pleasurable alternative.”
She had begun to sob as I turned my back on them and looked down on the holy man. He showed no fear.
He said: “You must do what you have to, brother. It is God’s work.”
“What?” I said. “Shall you and I take no responsibility at all for your murder?”
“It is God’s work,” he repeated.
I smiled. “Lucifer’s my Master.” I found his heart with my steel and began to push slowly. “And I suspect that He is yours, also.”
The hermit died with only the smallest groan. I walked out of the cave. Sedenko was already carrying the girl down. He was grinning at her and saying something in his own language.
That night, while I tried to sleep, Sedenko took his pleasure with the girl. She became noisy at one point, but then grew quiet. In the morning she was gone.
“I think she will try to get to Ammendorf,” he said.
I was not in a talkative mood.
For the next few days we travelled through the mountains while Sedenko sang all his songs several times over and I contemplated the mysteries of an existence I had come increasingly to consider arbitrary at best.
Chapter IX
I HAD FALLEN into the habit of deriving a kind of joy from the irony of my position, from the paradoxes and contrasts of my Quest. It led me to contemplate the most horrible crimes which could be committed by me in the name of the Grail Search. Was I strong enough, I wondered, to commit them? What kind of self-discipline was involved in forcing oneself, against one’s own nature, towards vice? My inner debates became increasingly complex and unreal, but perhaps they served to take my mind off unwelcome actualities.
A hard week saw us through the heart of the mountains. We had experienced landslides, a couple of poorly organized attacks from local brigands, two or three near-falls on the higher passes and, of course, the ordinary vicissitudes of the climate. Sedenko’s spirits had not declined a jot and my own gloom had begun to lift when we halted our horses on a high promontory and looked down into what we assumed must be our destination.
All we could see was glowing, golden mist, filling the wide basin of a valley, whose cliffs were snow-capped and whose sides were almost sheer.
“There’s where Philander Groot dwells, captain,” said Sedenko, leaning on his pommel, “but how do we reach it?”
“We must keep looking,” I said, “until we find the way in. It must surely exist, if Groot has come and gone from there.”
We began, by means of a narrow trail, to descend. There would be about four hours left until twilight, when we should of necessity camp. These mountains were too dangerous for night travelling.
The first intimation we had of the valley’s guardians was a whistling in the air. When we looked back and up towards the clear blue of the sky we saw two of them, sharply outlined. Their intentions were clear. They meant to kill us.
I had never seen eagles so huge or so resplendent. Their bodies were pretty near as big as those of a small pony and their wings were, each one, about twice the length of their main bulk. They were predominantly white and gold and scarlet, with a certain amount of deep blue around the heads. The beaks shone like grey steel and were matched in appearance by their wide-stretched claws. As they came down on us, they shrieked their intention, celebrating their anticipated triumph.
Our horses began to rear and cry out. I pulled one pistol free, cocked it, aimed and fired. The ball struck the first eagle in the shoulder and it veered off silently, blood streaming from the wound. Sedenko’s sabre cut at the second and caused it to stay its attack, fluttering over his head and making such a wind as to threaten to blow us down into the valley. My other pistol was produced and fired. This was a better shot, to the head. With a terrible wail the eagle tried to regain height, failed and fell heavily into the chasm. I watched its body pass through the mist and vanish. Its companion (perhaps its mate) sailed over the spot for some little while before its attention returned to us and, glaring and screaming, it resumed its attack. I had no time to reload. We had only our swords, now, for defense. The creature dived and snatched and, had not Sedenko ducked his head, the young Kazak would have been carried off for certain. As it was his sabre sliced several tail-feathers from the gigantic bird. These Sedenko grabbed from the air and brandished with a grin as a prize.
The bird came to me next. Those claws could easily impale me as readily as any pike. My horse was bucking and trying to flee and half my attention was on him, but I struck back with my sword and drew blood, though nothing worth the trouble.
The eagle was flying erratically, thanks to its wounded shoulder and lack of tail-feathers. Sedenko got in another blow which removed the better part of one claw and now the bird was weakening, though it had no thought of giving up its attack.
With every fresh dive it was driven off, having sustained another small wound or two.
And that was how we fought it. Slowly but surely we cut the great creature to pieces until all of its lower body and limbs, its neck and head, were a mass of blood and ruined feathers.
On the bird’s final attack, Sedenko leapt onto his saddle and, standing on tiptoe, sliced so that a wing-joint was severed. The eagle fell to one side in the air, desperately trying to regain its balance, then smashed down into the snow which immediately became flecked with blood and feathers of white, gold and scarlet. It screamed in outrage at what we had done to it and neither of us had the stomach to watch it die or the courage to descend the slope and put it out of its misery. We looked at it in silence for a few minutes before sheathing our blades and riding on. Neither of us believed that we had won any kind of honourable victory.
Slowly the trail led down through the glowing, golden mist, until we could hardly see a couple of feet on any side. Again we dismounted and went with considerable caution, until night fell and we were forced to find a relatively flat stretch of ground where we might tether our horses and camp until morning.
Before he slept, Sedenko said: “Those birds were supernatural creatures, eh, captain?”
“I have never heard of natural creatures like them,” I said. “I am certain of that, Sedenko.”
“They were the servants of this magus we seek,” he said. “Which means that we have offended him by killing his servants…”
“We do not know that they serve him or that he will be angry at our saving our own lives by killing them.”
“I am afraid of this magus, captain,” said Sedenko simply. “For it is well-known that the greatest sorcerer is the one who can command the spirits of the air. And what were those eagles but air-spirits?”
“They were large,” I said, “and they were dangerous. But for all we know they saw us merely as prey. As food for their young. There can be few travelers in these parts, particularly during the winter months. And little large game, either, I would guess. Do not speculate, Sedenko, on things for which no evidence exists. You will waste your time. Particularly, I would guess, in Mittelmarch.”
Sedenko took this to mean that he should be silent. He closed his lips, but it was obvious he had not ceased to consider the matter of the eagles.
We continued our journey in the morning and noted that the air grew gradually warmer, while the golden mist became thinner, until at last we emerged onto a broad mountain trail which wound down into a valley of astonishing beauty and which was completely without snow. Indeed, it might have been early summer in that valley. We saw crops growing in fields; we saw well-ordered villages and, to the east, a large-sized town built on two sides of a wide and pleasant river. It was almost impossible for either Sedenko or myself to realize that all around us lay stark crags and thick snow.
“We have gone from spring into winter in a single stride,” said Sedenko wonderingly, “and now we are in summer. Are we sleeping, li
ke the old man of the legend, through whole parts of the year, captain? Are we entranced without realizing it? Or is this valley the product of sorcery?”
“If it be sorcery, it’s of an exceedingly pleasing kind,” I told my friend. I took off my cloak and rolled it up behind me.
“No wonder they guard this place with gigantic eagles.” Sedenko peered down. He saw herds of sheep and cattle: a land of plenty. “This would be a place to settle, eh, captain? From here it would be possible to ride up into the snow when one wished, to sally out on raids …” He paused as he contemplated his own version of Paradise.
“What would we steal on the raids?” I asked him good-humouredly, “when all that we should need is here already?”
“Well”—he shrugged—”a man has to raid. Or do something.”
I looked up. The golden mist stretched from end to end of the valley, giving it its name. I could not understand what caused this phenomenon, but I believed it to be natural. Somehow the cold, the snow, did not touch the valley. I had known well-protected places in my time, which were harmed less by the seasons than most, but I had never witnessed the likes of this.
We rode down slowly and it took us well over an hour before we had neared the bottom. Here, on the trail ahead of us, we saw a great gate, impossible to pass, and before the gate a mounted sentinel, standing foursquare on a giant charger, dressed in all the warlike regalia of two or three centuries since, with plate armour and crests and plumes and polished iron and oiled leather, in colours predominantly gold, white and scarlet, bearing a device of just such an eagle as we had fought above.
From within the closed helm a voice called out:
“Stop, strangers!”
We drew rein. Sedenko had become cautious again and I knew he was wondering if this being, too, were of supernatural origin.
“I am Ulrich von Bek,” I said. “I am on the Grail Quest and I seek a wise man who dwells in this valley.”
The guardian seemed to laugh at this. “You are in need of a wise man, stranger. For if you seek the Grail you are a fool.”