Abaddon - Chapter 25

4: In The Lists

The crowd roared, and bayed for Percival's pasty white flesh. He wondered how many of them were actually human.

The jousting lists were a wide, sandy-floored bowl underneath an artificial hemisphere of sky, a close copy of the room in which Percival had first met Abaddon. This sky, however, had been executed by Turner rather than Michaelangelo. Unlike Turner's, of course, these clouds moved, twisting like a grey winding sheet drawn around the entire earth. There were no birds in this sky.

The steps of the amphitheatre came right down to the sand, with no attempt at safety barriers, and were populated by hordes of Abyssals, yelling and screeching their hatred of the man who was failing so pathetically to defend himself, and their love of the man who looked set to be his executioner. Percival had recognized a few faces among them when he'd first shambled in encumbered by his armour; he'd had no time to spot more. Kane was there, and Du Mont des Chênes, and Ahasuerus; their faces were crestfallen. And at one end of the arena, of course, enthroned in a royal box flanked by dazzling Greek and Slavic beauties who may or may not have been real, was Abaddon.

The first time his opponent’s weapon had swung in, it had come in with such force that Percival's own had shattered. He was fighting with half a sword now - not as much of a handicap as might be thought, since he was not getting any opportunity to use it to attack his opponent. All he needed was the foot or so of blade just up from the hilt, to block and parry. His opponent was faster than he was, and stronger, and never seemed to tire. Rather than a single sword which might stab in at him at intervals, he seemed to be facing a razor-edged disc representing any of the points the sword might occupy on a blinding, whirring arc around Bertilak. The disc also seemed to have a ton of weight behind it at all times; Bertilak was a physical giant, and was putting his every gramme of muscle mass behind every swipe. It was unthinkable that Percival could meet such force with anything even remotely equivalent.

The sword came in again; his final foot of blade splintered. This gave him temporary respite, but only temporary. The blade came round again in an almost unbroken circle that was felt rather than seen, before he had time to step back or use his shield. He felt his brain stem break from his spinal column, an odd sensation, and experienced excruciating pain as his severed head crashed to the gravel, rolling and bouncing simultaneously like a rugby ball, the world turning cartwheels all around him, the crowd cheering the half-human behemoth that now stood, sword and shield in hand, elevating its greaves and gauntlets to the heavens, accepting the adulation of all. He felt blood in his mouth. And then there was a blackness that seemed only momentary, and which he knew had lasted far longer, and he woke up again in the spider pit.

***

His newly healed body had already been bitten several times. The pain burst in like a red hot iron held, slowly and deliberately, against his funny bone. Bitten in three, perhaps, four places. By some of the big ones.

The web, he knew, had not been created by the biting spiders. It was a product of a miniscule garden spider he had imported from India, which, despite its tiny size, produced webs of such strength and volume they could hold a man fast. The biters lived within the web, and were not affected by it; Percival suspected Abaddon had done something to enhance their anatomies, maybe grafted genes into them from the webweavers. Spiders of their bulk did not normally weave webs. From their size he reckoned they could be nothing less than fully grown female Theraphosae, the largest spider on earth. Unless, that is, they were some extinct genus Abaddon had somehow resurrected. Many things supposedly extinct in the world above were not quite so down here.

He hoped that, this time at least, none of them would bite him on the face.

A light passed over his eyes, illuminating huge, multilegged shapes resting in the web. Waiting while the poison they had injected into him did its work, dissolving him from the inside. The grand fiction promulgated by Tolkien and other writers, that spider venom only paralysed its victims, was almost laughably untrue. Bilbo Baggins would have stabbed himself to death by now with his own elven dagger. Had he had the opportunity of death.

The spiders, he knew, had privileged status down here. Their venom had been altered. It was capable of inflicting damage on a resident of the Abyss, without that damage immediately healing. Percival wondered if it were possible to thrash around enough for the spiders to bite him enough times to actually kill him permanently. Kane had suggested it.

This was now the one hundred and thirteenth time he had been in the pit.

“WRIGGLE ABOUT A BIT”, came Kane’s voice from above. “GET 'EM EXCITED.”

“Don’t tell him how to kill hisself”, whispered a croakier voice, which Percival was almost certain was Ahasuerus. “He might go ahead and do it , and he’s got to get through to God.”

“If he’s going through to God, he’s going through to God. That’s how prophecies work, dingbat. And if Vlad’s prophecy’s wrong, he’ll be better off dead than alive down here. Gor, I wish it was me down there. I’d wriggle.”

“HAS ANYONE EVER SUCCESSFULLY KILLED THEMSELF DOWN HERE BY WRIGGLING?” yelled Percival. The sound of his voice sent huge hairy shapes dashing down the web towards him.

“NO”, yelled Kane back. “BUT IT CAN’T HURT TO TRY. ERM. WELL, IT WOULD HURT, OBVIOUSLY, BUT -“

“- OW. SORRY, BEING BITTEN. HOW’S MY OPPONENT?”

“RIDING ROUND IN CIRCLES ALL DAY ON HIS BEST CHARGER. HE’S SETTING HIMSELF A TARGET OF LOPPING OFF YOUR HEAD INSIDE TWO SECONDS THIS TIME.”

“HASN’T MIRACULOUSLY DROPPED DEAD IN THE INTERVENING PERIOD, THEN?”

“NO SUCH LUCK. HE’S DEALT WITH TEN MORE MEN SINCE THEN. THEIR REMAINS ARE SITTING IN HEAPS IN THE INFIRMARY, KNITTING THEMSELVES TOGETHER VERY VERY SLOWLY.”

“THE INFIRMARY.”

“LITTLE ROOM OFF THE JOUSTING LISTS. YOU WERE MOULDERING UP THERE A MONTH OR MORE THIS TIME AROUND.”

“MY WORD. HAS IT BEEN THAT LONG? GET OFF ME, YOU EIGHTLEGGED SCUMFREAK! TOUCH THE FACE, AND I’LL BITE YOU!”

“GET ‘EM TO FANG YOU IN THE WINDPIPE”, called Kane. “THEN YOU’LL CROAK FOR SURE, AND HIM UPSTAIRS’LL HAVE TO HAVE YOU OUT OF HERE.”

“WHERE IS IT, THIS PIT?” called Percival. “IS IT IN THE BRIDGE?”

“ON ONE OF THE LOWER LEVELS. POSSIBLY INSIDE ONE OF THE BUTTRESSES. YOU GO DOWN A TON OF STAIRS."

“YOU WALKED ALL THE WAY UP HERE TO SEE ME?”

If it were possible to hear a shrug, Percival would have.

“WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO DOWN HERE? THERE’S BEEN PRECIOUS LITTLE DEBRIS FROM UP ABOVE THESE PAST FEW DAYS. NO BEACHCOMBING TO BE DONE. I THINK THE WAR BETWEEN THE ROMANS AND DEMONS IS OVER.”

“I’M TOUCHED BY YOUR TRUE FRIENDSHIP.”

“FRIENDSHIP IT AIN’T. YOU’VE GOT TO IMPROVE YOUR GAME, PERCIVAL. YOU’VE GOT TO WIN ONE, SO AS HIM UPSTAIRS SENDS YOU THROUGH THE ABYSS TO GOD.”

“DOES HE KNOW VLADIMIR SAID I’D DO THAT?”

“ALMOST CERTAINLY. I BELIEVE IT AMUSES HIM. BUT I THINK IT INTERESTS HIM TOO. VLAD WAS A MISTAKE - A FAILURE OF ABADDON’S KNOWHOW. ABADDON TAKES THE ORACLE SMOKE THAT’S IN US AND DOES SUMMAT TO IT TO KEEP US ALIVE. MAKE IT SO WE CAN’T DIE - AND SO WE DON’T TALK IN RIDDLES EITHER. BUT TO DO THAT HE HAS TO LOSE THE BIT OF IT THAT MAKES US ABLE TO SEE THE FUTURE.”

Percival lay back in the web as the spiders fed on his arms and legs.

“AHA. SO THAT’S THE EXPLANATION FOR THAT. I HAD WONDERED WHY I’M NO LONGER ABLE TO SEE STUFF THAT HADN’T HAPPENED YET.”

“VLADIMIR WAS DIFFERENT. THE REJIGGING DIDN’T WORK ON HIM QUITE AS WELL AS IT DID ON YOU AND ME. OR RATHER, IT WORKED TOO WELL. HE STAYED ABLE TO PROPHESIZE. HIM UPSTAIRS HAS TRIED TIME AND AGAIN TO DO IT OVER AGAIN, BUT WITHOUT SUCCESS. HE FIGURED VLADIMIR WAS DIFFERENT TO US IN SOME WAY. SENT HIM DOWN THROUGH THE PARTS OF SATAN BECAUSE HE FIGURED HE’D FOUND HIS FINAL GUINEA PIG. SOMEONE WHO HAD A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ABYSS.”

“IF HE KNEW HE HAD A MAN WHO COULD PREDICT THE FUTURE, HE SHOULD HAVE HUNG ON TO HIM.”

“WELL, VLAD DID TELL HIM HE WAS GOING ALL THE WAY THROUGH. THING WAS, HE DIDN’T TELL HIM HE WASN’T COMING BACK.”

“AN ABSENCE OF A DEAD BODY”, shouted Percival, “DOESN’T MEAN THE PRESENCE OF A LIVE ONE. HOW DID HE GO DOWN?”

“IN A GLIDER HE’D INSTRUCTED ABADDON TO BUILD, A THING OF WOOD AND FABRIC. QUITE SOPHISTICATED CONSIDERING IT FLEW THREE CENTURIES BEFORE LILIENTHAL. IT WAS PAINTED TO RESEMBLE A GREAT BIRD, WITH ST. MARK’S CROSSES ON THE WINGS. PERSONALLY I PREFER PAN AM.”

Percival hung in the web, feeling the poison spread in his veins even as it dissolved them. “MAYBE, IN THAT CASE, IT IS BETTER FOR ME TO BE HERE THAN THERE, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.”

The voice upstairs became urgent, talking out of a rectangle of light that was probably a trapdoor opening into the Pit. “BUT YOU HAVE TO GO THERE.”

“WHY?”

Despite the fact that he couldn’t see the speaker, Percival heard him squirm desperately. “BECAUSE VLADIMIR TOLD US YOU’D BE THE ONE WHO’D BE COMING BACK. THE ONE WHO’D FINALLY FREE US. THE HARROWER OF HELL.”

***

The sword was the same sword. Percival knew it by its heft in his hand. It was occasionally replaced by a stock item, remade from another fight or newly manufactured. Percival could always tell the difference.

This was his sword.

Peculiar, that a man might develop such a close relationship with a mere lump of steel. But this lump of steel was all that stood between him and the spider pit.

The shield had been changed. And some of the armour. As usual, it took all his strength merely to stand up in it. Every time Percival died, he was remade anew, as a pasty, anaemic thirty-year-old without the required musculature for handling swords and shields and armour. But Bertilak did not die. He only ever grew stronger - and even if he had died, he would be remade as the same old mediaeval killing machine he'd always been. Percival was locked into a losing battle.

As the heralds, two prepubescent boys dressed identically in white, led him to the vomitory, the disorganized rumble of the crowd became one single jeer of disapproval. Percival had been killed in the same quick and easy fashion for the past fifty-seven fights. Percival was old hat. Percival was boring.

He always swipes in hard from the right, without feinting. And I always try to get my blade to it. And the blade always breaks. Sometimes I try to put the shield in the way of it. Then either the shield breaks, or I get hammered back like I was a nail in a lump of wood.

But if I slant the shield slightly - tilt the base of it upwards -

The blow swept in, so quickly only the arm that delivered it could be seen to move. Percival's arm jarred backwards, and he felt a terrific impact.

But the shield held. And he was still standing in the same place, and had not been forced backward, and Bertilak was the one staggering.

Gosh. Erm. What do I do now?

The blade reversed and came in again from the opposite direction. He panicked and held his own sword up to block it. The blade shattered. He woke up in the spider pit.

***

Got you, on the wrong foot!

Percival turned his entire body and tried to pour it into the killing edge of the sword. The sword bit down, and glanced off Bertilak's leg armour. Bertilak's blade leapt back towards Percival's throat - he dashed it away, almost without thinking, and launched a fresh attack at Bertilak's sword arm. The huge bulk of Bertilak's shield slammed into him. Try as he might, he could find no way around it - and then suddenly, it was gone, and Bertilak's sword was in its place, swinging its way vertically down towards the top of his head.

He was cut in two from the crown to the hip that time. When Kane and Laszlo came to him in the spider pit, they told him he had been two full months in the Regeneratory. Him Upstairs had feared Percival's brain might not re-knit itself.

***

Bertilak was stronger than Percival, but Percival had had one hundred and seventy two lives' worth of experience at being killed with a sword. If he remembered being killed, then his body also remembered reflexes, even if his muscles remained weak. Bertilak's overhead blow disappeared like a shower of troublesome rain on a perfectly executed sword parry; Bertilak, meanwhile, stumbled, not having expected his blow to meet so little resistance. Percival clanged into him with the targe and forced him to stumble further. While he was stumbling, Percival brought his own sword in and took Bertilak's entire helmet off, along with a substantial layer of his face.

The face seethed immediately with emerald regrowth. Percival swallowed in horror, realizing how difficult it was to permanently incapacitate a man down here, and feeling a new respect for his opponent; getting past the armour was only the beginning. He had never before seen Bertilak's head without the helmet; for this reason, he had imagined some deformed, plague-scabbed abomination out of Chaucer or Boccacio. It was the blond, chiselled face staring back at him with an expression of huge affront that stopped his hand for the vital half second required for Bertilak to chop his legs out from underneath him and then go to work on his arms and neck. This time, Bertilak was angry, and it was not quick.

Percival found himself astounded to realize that Bertilak might have a head inside his helmet. He reflected ruefully that the little time Bertilak spent inside the helmet was the only time Percival ever got to meet him.

***

Bertilak was tricksier now, and more dangerous now the crowd was not necessarily on his side. Percival also suspected he was actually enjoying himself more. But he feared the pit as much as Percival, and was fighting for his right to walk around free in relative comfort, if not actually for his life.

He had stopped hurling in a massive battering assault of furious swipes and cuts, and instead was picking at his victim, advancing and retreating, hiding behind his shield one minute, then opening up for an attack when Percival was worst equipped to deal with it.

Had been worst equipped to deal with it.

The sword blows had begun to flow into one another, to tell Percival where Bertilak's blade was next going to be like a braille map of the future. And not only did he know where the sword was going to be - he could take steps to deal with it being there, without having to keep his eye on it, break into a sweat, or hurry himself. Indeed, every time he had sweated or hurried himself in the past, he had ended up smacking the dirt floor with his face while he watched his own crumpling headless body revolve beneath him.

I am not going back in the spider pit. I will do anything, win anyhow. Anyhow at all.

He was beginning to appreciate, for the first time, exactly how good a swordsman Bertilak was. Maybe the Sassanid was not even as physically strong as he seemed.

But Percival, by now, was better. Because Percival had not ever had the luxury of being strong, and instead had had to learn subtlety.

And is not going back in the pit. Not ever.

Bertilak advanced in a blur of steel which Percival stepped into the centre of, unmoving, and sent a widowmaking cut down on to the crown of his opponent's helmet. Bertilak cringed beneath his shield, and Percival barged forward with his own and pushed the Teuton back into the arena-side crowd. Bertilak fell to one knee against an Old Testament prophet, and hacked desperately backwards to deter Percival from pursuing. A head flew off an early Christian martyr. Any normal crowd would have scattered in both directions - this crowd shuffled aside just enough to allow Percival to step in and hammer Bertilak's sword arm behind the elbow. The German wheezed in pain, and healing fizzed inside his armour. His shield came round to protect against the inevitable follow-through, but that follow-through came in from the wrong direction. Percival had stepped out to the left, taking advantage of Bertilak's temporarily deadened right arm, and brought his own sword clean through the armour jointing at the back of Bertilak's knee.

The crowd breathed in with such simultaneity that the pressure in the room seemed to drop a full half bar. There was absolute silence, broken only by the sound of a fully grown knight in armour collapsing to the sand. Almost comically, Percival poked the lower leg, which had been completely severed, across the floor away from the body with his sword. There was going to be no chance of the knight reviving in the immediate future.

He looked up at the royal box, where Abaddon sat rigid as a statue.

"I claim victory", he said.

Abaddon stared down at him.

"Finish your victory, then", he said.

Percival looked down at the body of Bertilak, which had at first begun to claw its way back toward the remnants of its leg, but had now thought better of it, and sat back staring up at Percival.

NOT going back in the pit -

He let his own sword clatter to the floor.

"Finish it yourself", he said, and walked towards the exit from the arena. Abaddon signalled with a finger, and a man-at-arms ran forward with an ancient Greek kontos.

He woke up in the spider pit.

***

"Percival?" The voice was a hiss, as if it hardly wanted to be heard. Percival looked up, but no light source could be seen.

"Yes?" Percival's own voice was a hiss too, but there were physiological reasons for this. A huge Theraphosa rearranged its legs slightly on the web as it fed on Percival's right arm. The arm had ballooned to the size of a football with the weight of poison inside it.

"It's me. Bertilak."

"Why are you whispering?"

"So that he does not hear me."

Percival laughed. "Rest assured, he can hear you. There are devices I can think of whereby he could spy on all of us simultaneously, and his own technology must be far in advance of mine."

There was a pause while the darkness above Percival absorbed this.

"He has decided you're to be the next to go down through to God. He believes you're the Flower of Knighthood."

Percival snorted, almost dislodging a dinnerplate-sized spider sitting on his stomach, which bit him to quieten him down. The pain made him retch, and it was difficult to turn his head to get rid of the vomit. He hoped that, this time at least, he would not die by choking on the stuff.

"Don't laugh", said the dark, mistaking his puking for laughter. "I think you're the Flower of Knighthood too. You defeated me. I have never been defeated in single combat. All my life, I wanted to be the best knight, the strongest and the bravest, like in all the stories. But I was not good enough."

"But you were the stronger man, Bertilak. I only defeated you once."

"But if we were to meet again, you would defeat me again, now. I know it."

"There is no point in me defeating you, or you defeating me. We are both human, after all. And being human, we should know who our true enemy is."

The dark was quiet a while. Then, as a Theraphosa scuttled up Percival's thigh, and came to rest on his breastbone followed by three or four others, Bertilak spoke again. Percival recognized the pattern of the spiders closing in for the kill.

"I am your man now. Wherever you go, I will go. I will fight with you."

"If the sainted Vladimir is correct", said Percival, "there may be places I can go that you cannot."

"I will not be far behind."

"As one delivery man said to another", said Percival, " If you provide the rearguard, I'll look after the van."

The first spider sank fangs the size of a little finger clean through his breastbone. There were a few moments' scuttling, biting, choking horror, and then he reawoke in the presence of Him Upstairs.