"Obey them!" called Klosterheim.
The survivors began to drag themselves away. I saw mountains behind them, but they were not the high peaks of the Mittelmarch. These were grassy and low.
Limping, leading their mounts, swearing at us, nursing wounds, the bewildered rogues retreated. We watched. When they were a good distance from us we saw that their breath began to steam and they showed signs of cold, shivering and stamping their feet, looking about them in some surprise. They had gone into the Mittelmarch. Then they vanished.
"Duke Arioch's warriors could not follow us," I suggested. "And you had those men waiting if we succeeded in returning to this world. The damned can no more enter the Earth than the innocent can enter the Mittelmarch."
Klosterheim was shaking. "Are you going to kill me, Von Bek?"
"I would be wise to kill you," I said. "And all my better judgement tells me to do so. But I am aware of what killing you means, and unless I am fighting you I cannot easily bring myself to kill you, Klosterheim."
He found my charity disgusting, it was plain, but he accepted it. He feared death more than anyone I had ever seen.
"Where are we now?" I asked him.
"Why should I tell you?"
"Because I could still summon enough anger, perhaps, to do what I know should really be done to cleanse the world of an obscenity."
"You are in Italy," he said. "On the road to Venice."
"So those mountains behind us would be the Venetian Alps?"
"What else?"
"We must go west," I said to Sedenko. "Towards Milan. Groot said that our goal ties in the west."
Klosterheim's pale features became tense as Sedenko wrenched the sword from his fingers and threw it away.
"Dismount," I said. "Your horses are fresher than ours."
We tied Klosterheim to a tree by the side of the road and transferred our saddles to his beast and another which had belonged to a dead ruffian. We kept our own horses and packed the remainder of our gear on them.
"We should not leave him alive," said Sedenko. "Shall I cut his throat, captain?"
I shook my head. "I have told you that I cannot easily consign any soul to the fate which inevitably awaits Klosterheim."
"You are a fool not to kill me," said the solder-priest. "I am your greatest enemy. And I can conquer yet, von Bek. I have powerful allies in Hell."
"Not as powerful, surely, as mine," I said. Again I spoke in High German, which Sedenko could not understand.
Klosterheim replied in the same tongue. "Indeed they could now be more powerful. Lucifer has lost Himself. Most of His Dukes do not want Reconciliation with Heaven."
"There is no certainty that it will come about, Johannes Klosterheim. Lucifer's plans are mysterious. God's Will is equally mysterious. How can any of us judge what is actually taking place?"
"Lucifer plans to betray His own," said Klosterheim. "That is all I know. It is all that is necessary to know."
"You have simplified yourself," I said. "But perhaps that is how one must be if one follows your vocation."
"We are betrayed by God and Lucifer both," said Klosterheim. "You should understand that, von Bek. We are abandoned. We have nothing we can trust…even damnation! We can only play a game and hope to win."
"But we do not know the rules."
"We must invent them. Join me, von Bek. Let Lucifer find His own Grail!"
We got up onto our horses.
"I have given my word," I said. "It is all I have. I hardly understand this talk of games, of loyalties, of betrayals. I have promised to find the Cure for the World's Pain if I can. And that is what I hope to achieve. It is your world, Klosterheim, which is a world of moves and countermoves. But such gamesmanship robs life of its savour and destroys the intellect. I'll have as little part of it as I can."
As we rode away Klosterheim shouted fiercely at me:
"Be warned, war hound! All that is fantastic leagues against you!"
It was a chilling threat. Even Sedenko, who did not understand the words, shuddered.
Chapter XII
WE RODE NOW across comparatively flat country which was broken by the low white buildings of farms and vineyards, yellow and light green under the heavy sun.
At the first good-sized town we came to I sought a doctor for our wounds. I had Satan's elixir, but preferred to keep it for more urgent purposes. By dint, however, of a little of Satan's silver we were able to get the doctor to tend to our horses as well. The man made a fuss but I argued that he had probably killed more men than horses in his career and that here was his opportunity to try to even up his score. He saw no humour in my jest, but he did his work skilfully enough.
We took the road to Milan, falling in with a mixed group of pilgrims, most of whom were returning to France and some to England. These men and women had visited the Holy City, bought all sorts of benefices, observed all the wonders, both ancient and modem, and seemed thoroughly satisfied that they had gained much from the hardships of travel. They had stories of maguses, of miracle-working priests, of visions and revelations. Many displayed the usual sorts of gimcrackery still sold as the bones of this or that saint, the feather of an angel, pieces of the True Cross and so on. At least three separate people I met had the real Holy Grail but considered themselves too sinful, still, either to perceive its actual beauty (these things were pewter got up to look like silver, mostly) or to be allowed to witness its magical properties. Naturally, I neither informed them of my Quest nor attempted to persuade them that the artefacts they had purchased were false.
When we got to that lovely city of Verona, we found the place in a bustle. Some Catholic knight, doubtless tired of the War in Germany and believing the Cause without much worth anyway, had aroused a group of zealous young men to join him in a Crusade. The object of the Crusade, it seemed, was to attack Constantinople and free it from the Turks. This idea appealed greatly to Sedenko, whose people lived to take the city they called "Tsargrad" out of Islam's chains. When he saw the leader of the Crusaders, however, a near-senile baron evidently eaten with syphilis, and the tiny force he had gathered, Sedenko decided to wait "until all the Kazak hosts can ride at once to Saint Sophia and destroy the crescent which profanes her altar."
Near Brescia we witnessed the trial and burning of a self-professed Anti-Christ: a gigantic man with wild black hair and a black beard, wearing a red robe and a crown of roses. He called upon the people to give up their false pride, their presumption that they were the children of Christ, and admit that as sinners they were followers of his. The Final War must come, he preached, and those who were with him would be triumphant. The Bible, he said, lied. It was plain that he believed every word he spoke and that his concern for others was sincere. He died at the stake, pleading with them to save themselves by following him. During his burning a thunderstorm began some miles away. The priests chose to see this as a sign of God's pleasure. The people, however, plainly expected the beginning of Armageddon and knelt to pray. In the main they prayed to Christ, though I believe I heard several praying to the charred bones of the Anti-Christ. And in Crema I was taken to meet another mad creature, some hermaphroditic monster, who claimed that it was an angel, fallen to Earth and, having lost its wings, unable to return to Heaven. The angel lived on what it could beg from the people of Crema. They were kind to it. Some of them half-believed it. However, I had met an Angel, albeit a Dark One, and I knew what they were like. But when this angel of Crema begged me, as a holy traveller and a Goodly Knight, to confirm that he had truly plummeted from Heaven, I told all those who would listen that, to the best of my limited knowledge, this was what an angel looked like and that it was quite possible that this one had lost its wings. I suggested it be given all possible comfort during its stay on Earth.