Purgatory

For hours, Galahad sat on a stool with his back against a rock, cleaning blood off arrowheads before grinding them against a worn whetstone to make them sharp again. He shortened shafts that had splintered so they could be reused, and re-fletched them with cut bits of cloth, as his supply of feather had run out long ago. The arrows that were too damaged to reuse would be recycled as pins, caltrops, wedges or fire wood. Nothing ever went to waste. His work was meticulous. He had been doing it for so long that he could probably do it in his sleep, but that didn't mean he found it tedious. Rather, he enjoyed the moments of rhythmic activity, and let his mind wander to times and places that should have been long since forgotten. Even as he scraped and inspected, he could hear the clang of sword on shield in distant battles he had fought side by side with two men - dead and buried by now – who he had once thought of as brothers. He could see their faces, as he could see the forests of almond, olive and pine trees surrounding Jerusalem. Some days, he could even smell the sweet scent of the almonds, or taste the salty ocean air on his tongue. Other days, he found himself lost in a miserable world of brown and grey rock walls, alone, and wondering why he persisted after all this time. On his worst days, it was a struggle to maintain his sanity. He had to focus on the importance of his mission, and persevere.

When he was finished, he trudged toward the back of the cavern where he came to his makeshift bedroom. Beyond that was another corridor, concealed by the angle it was cut on, which descended slightly before leading almost all the way back to the front of the cavern. Originally, Galahad had employed locals to dig the cavern out, a task that took almost two decades. This corridor, however, was one of the more recent additions to the cavern. One he had dug out himself, originally just a means of passing the time during an especially long lull – for a while, he had thought his original plan had worked and the Chalice had finally passed from human memory. But eventually the treasure hunters returned, and in greater numbers than ever. Over the years, he had collected a sizable stockpile of tools and resources collected from defeated hunting parties. With them, he constructed an effective though elaborate floor trap, which consisted of a series of floor tiles that spun on metal rods leading through a section of cavern with a low roof that had to be passed to proceed to the next area. Some of the tiles released tripwires when they were stepped on, which caused axes to spring from hidden wall cavities, rocks to drop from the ceiling, or spears to thrust up from below. The low ceiling made these especially difficult to avoid. Others were thin, designed to break when stepped on, allowing the victim's leg to fall through where it would become trapped on spikes recessed beneath the tile space. The spikes were angled, designed to trap the victim, but sometimes they would be lethal as the spikes cut into femoral arteries. Other times, the unexpected drop would cause the victim to fall forward, often triggering other tiles. This cavern went underneath the floor, providing the means to draw the cranks back on the spears, remove trapped bodies and re-attach tripwires.

By the time Galahad had finished refurbishing the arrows and resetting the floor tiles, he was exhausted. It would be better when he could replace all the arrow traps with the crank-loaded crossbows, but he didn't have enough of those yet. They had only started appearing in the hunters' possession over the last few years and they didn't all survive the traps – the cranks on the spear traps had been salvaged from broken crossbows that were beyond his expertise to repair. In the meantime, he had to do it the old fashioned way, by the strength of his own muscle, which was tiring. The chances of another expedition to his cavern so soon after the last was extremely unlikely, but he didn't dare take the time to rest until he was finished. Back up the corridor he went, and then down the main cavern to the entrance. He paused, as he always did, at the edge of the shadow cast by the light breaching the cavern entrance as he considered – not for the first time and far from the last time – walking the extra fifty metres or so and crossing the threshold back into the world outside. Bright and inviting, it called to him. It seemed wrong to have to renounce the outside world in order to save it. And for what? Being denied the very thing he was fighting to protect was only the beginning. The greater cost was the one he paid in blood. The very blood of those he was trying to save. If only they knew. But they did not know. They could not know. And they kept coming.